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Buffy was quite sure that she was losing her mind – or would before this was all over.

She had long since given up quietly sitting in the chair Giles had provided for her, as she seemed increasingly full of nervous energy, and was instead pacing up and down as far as the chains that held her would allow – which was only a space of about six feet. In fact, a mere moment ago she had shoved the chair rather forcefully away from her – with her foot – in irritation when it got in the way of her ever more frenetic pacing.

Giles calmly regarded the shattered pieces of the wooden chair against the far wall – thankfully the wall facing the street and not the one facing the store, which hopefully had served to make the sound less noticeable to any customers still in the store. He looked back up at Buffy silently, concern evident in his ice blue eyes.

Buffy stopped for a moment, staring at the broken piece of furniture, before turning toward her Watcher with a slightly embarrassed pout on her face. “Sorry,” she muttered reluctantly.

“Buffy – I know it seems rather pointless to ask, but – are you quite all right?” the Watcher hesitated a moment before speaking the words, realizing a moment later that, yes, they *did* sound every bit as inane as he had imagined they would.

She gave him an incredulous glare as she snapped, “Why, yes, Giles, doing just great! Aside from the fact that I’m chained to a wall because I’ve been taken over by some malevolent force that just tried to make me hit my own mother! Oh yeah, and the fact that we don’t have the first freakin’ clue what this force is or where it came from in the first place…”

*And the fact that I’m losing my mind from being away from Spike…God, I need him! *Now*! No! Hold on, Buffy, come on, you can do this…keep it together…*

“…yeah,” she muttered, her eyes downcast as she slumped backward against the wall, forcing herself to stop pacing for a few minutes. “just peachy, Giles.”

“Buffy – I’m quite sorry. I realize this is difficult. I just meant that – well, if talking about it would help…”

*Yes, Giles – I think I’ll feel lots better once I tell you that the main problem at the moment is my overwhelming need to jump the bones of the vampire that I just claimed as my eternal mate – the vampire that I happen to beat the crap out of almost every time I see him lately – and do things to him that you probably can’t even spell, if you’ve ever even imagined…*

Giles was still staring at her with a questioning look of clueless expectancy.

She sighed wearily, leaning her head back against the wall behind her. “No,” she said in a soft voice of defeat. “I’m sorry, Giles – I know you want to help – but – I *really* don’t want to talk about it.”

“Again, Buffy, I’m sorry – if you don’t want to talk that’s fine. You just seem a bit – nervous.”

“I am not nervous!” she snapped irritably – emphasizing her point by jumping nearly out of her skin when the door suddenly opened.

She forced herself to relax again when she saw that it was Willow, but she could feel her body trembling with a mixture of the nervousness she denied, a result of the complete uncertainty of her situation – and the overwhelming desire in her to be with Spike.

She could feel a slowly building anger in her, and wondered with a very real fear how long she would be able to restrain the force inside of her. She kept reminding herself, over and over in her mind, that she was here by her own choice. She was not being kept away from Spike by anything he or anyone else had done to her. She *wanted* to be as far from him as possible right now.

She hoped that this line of thought would keep the possessive rage at bay – and so far, it seemed to be working.

For how long – she had no idea.

Willow stared at her for a long moment when she entered the room, her eyes widening in surprise and dismay.

“*What*?” Buffy demanded after a moment, feeling bad when the redhead flinched slightly.

“S-sorry, Buffy,” she stammered. “I just – I knew you were – chained up – I mean – that you *asked* to be, but – but I just wasn’t expecting to see you – well – so – chained up,” she finished with an apologetic little grimace, walking further into the room and sitting in the seat Giles had provided for her, setting down an enormous stack of books on the end of the pommel horse beside her.

“Yeah, well – if you and Giles want to stay in one piece, I think it’s gonna have to be this way until we can figure this out,” Buffy forced herself to say – and then forced herself to calmly take a seat in a new, unbroken wooden chair that her Watcher silently brought for her.

She was sorely tempted to tell them that she was feeling fine, completely in control, and they could unchain her now – and then make her way directly to her vampire. Of course, she knew that that was not the thing to do. She could not endanger her family – or Spike -- again.

And besides, they wouldn’t believe her anyway. Not now.

Giles seemed very relieved that Willow had finally arrived. “All right, so let’s get right down to business, as I’m becoming quite sure that time is of the essence. Tell us about exactly what you did that night, Willow.”

“Well,” Willow began, sounding more than a little nervous. “The whole idea was to – to make Spike’s chip stop working so that he could take part in the dominance challenge. So I used a basic, um, loosing sort of spell…to undo the chip’s restraining power over him.”

Giles frowned, a bit of alarm in his eyes. “A loosing spell?” he repeated. “And how could you be certain of exactly what this spell would ‘loose’, Willow?”

The witch gulped, her eyes wide at the barely concealed anger in the older man’s voice. Okay, he was already suspicious and bordering on upset -- *so* not good. “No, Giles,” she hurried to reassure him. “I was very specific – you guys want to see the spell I used?” Her voice sounded even more shaky and uncertain than usual as she picked up the top book in the stack beside her, glancing at Giles with wide, fearful eyes for reassurance.

The Watcher was too caught up in his own worries for his Slayer to notice her unusual demeanor, and he nodded as he replied in a tone of slight impatience, “Yes, Willow – please read it aloud for us.”

With trembling hands the young witch turned the pages of the book until she found the spot she had marked earlier. She took a deep breath before beginning in a quiet, timid voice that sounded a bit strained.

“Well, after you light the candles and incense and have everything else set up, you read this incantation…it goes like this…it’s in Latin, but the basic translation is…um…”

“Willow, please,” Buffy interrupted impatiently. “Please just hurry. I’m not sure how much time we’ve got before this thing takes over completely.”

Those alarming words spurred Willow on, and she nodded anxiously. “O-okay,” she agreed. “It says basically, and you guys gotta realize that the translation makes it a little different, from Latin to English – ‘Unleash the source of the bound warrior’s power, free from restraint until it should be bound by another’.”

They were all three silent for a few moments, Buffy and Giles just taking in the words she had just spoken, while Willow waited anxiously for their reactions, hoping that the other two would not be able to figure out that there was something she was not telling them.

“Unusual wording,” Giles commented finally, a troubled frown on his face. “They were awfully specific. It almost sounds as if the spell were created specifically for such a situation as ours was – although I’m quite certain such a situation had never before existed.”

“Oh!” Willow exclaimed, obviously very glad to have a question raised to which she knew the answer. “I read up on that before I did the spell. See? I *was* careful!” she assured him in a slightly defensive tone.

“See – it’s actually an ancient rite that soldiers had performed over them before going into battle, to ensure that they would be at their best during the fight. It was designed to help with whatever might be holding a warrior back. Like, an injury, or maybe a strong fear that was making them freeze up under pressure, or whatever,” Willow explained.

“The wording – the extra clause about ‘until they’re bound by another’ was to keep any one warrior from gaining too much power. See, if there was no limitation placed on it, then, hypothetically speaking, they could be completely unstoppable – if nothing could ‘bind’ or hinder them in battle again. So they added that extra bit in so that if something else happened to hinder them – a new injury or whatever – the rite would have to be performed again. They couldn’t become completely invincible.”

She waited for reactions from the others, who were still silently listening to her words and processing them carefully. Uncomfortable with the silence, she explained in a quiet, anxious voice, “See – Spike was bound by the chip, so I figured the spell would free him from the chip, until he was ‘bound by another’ – until Buffy won the dominance ritual.”

She waited a bit breathlessly, hoping that both Slayer and Watcher would completely buy her story – which was after all, *mostly* true. After the talking to she had received from Giles following her badly botched “will-be-done” spell, she just knew that he would be angry if he knew she had made any changes to this spell at all, even a completely harmless one like the one she had made.

“Let me see that, please, Willow,” the Watcher instructed in a thoughtful tone, reaching to take the book from her hands and studying the Latin text with a pensive frown. He read it over again to himself several times before looking up at her, and although his expression was calm, the veiled anger in his eyes was still quite clear.

“ ‘Unleash the source of the bound warrior’s power,’” he quoted softly, holding the young witch’s gaze searchingly. “And Willow – did you by any chance take any measures when casting this spell to – well, to ensure that the ‘warrior’ affected by the spell would indeed be *Spike*?”

Willow looked a bit taken aback by that question, unsure how to respond, as it was really the last thing she had expected to hear. “Well – no,” she admitted in a slightly defensive voice. “I didn’t think that was actually necessary, considering that he was the only one in the situation who was bound or restrained in any way.”

Buffy glanced anxiously between her friend and her Watcher, trying to follow the very vital conversation taking place around her, through the now-continuous thoughts that flooded her mind with images of a bleached blonde across town that she would much rather be paying attention to.

She knew that this conversation was very important, and tried to focus, turning expectant eyes to Giles as she waited for his response. Willow’s reasoning so far seemed to make sense, she thought. *She* had certainly not been restrained in any way from fighting at her best – so why would that particular phrase of the spell have affected *her* so strongly?

“Willow,” Giles replied, his voice still calm, but steely with anger that he was no longer trying to hide. “You must know by now that any sort of assumption whatsoever when using magic is utterly foolhardy. You didn’t use – something *belonging* to Spike? To ensure that he would be the only one you cast the spell on?”

A slight pout rose to Willow’s lips as she dropped her gaze, a bit sullenly, with embarrassment. She had thought that she had left out the part of the story that would get her into trouble. “No,” she admitted in a small, quiet voice.

“And your translation is faulty as well,” he pointed out impatiently. “You indicated to me that once the ritual of dominance was complete, Spike’s chip should have begun to function again.”

“It was *supposed* to…”

“No,” Giles interrupted sharply. “Again, a foolish assumption on your part! The wording of the spell never says that the loosing effect would be temporary. It’s the freedom of the one on which it is cast that is temporary. The loosing of the original bond – in this case Spike’s chip – is quite permanent.”

“But – it says the warrior would be freed from the thing that had bound them *until* they bound by another…” Willow began to object.

“No – it says the current bond would be removed, so that the warrior would be free – until bound by *something else*. The temporary state refers to their freedom. ‘Until’, because by necessity when something else binds the person in question, they are obviously no longer free. But nothing in the text indicates that the *original* binding thing would return.”

“So – Spike’s chip is *permanently* turned off, then?” Buffy ventured with a frown.

“It would seem so,” Giles sighed with a weary nod.

“And – this spell apparently affected both of us – for him, it freed him from his chip – for me, it loosed – what?” Buffy was utterly confused, and increasingly terrified.

*Permanent?*

“I mean – I wasn’t bound by anything to begin with? How can this have even happened? *What* has happened?”

Giles glanced at the text again. “It says specifically that what would be loosed is ‘the source of the warrior’s power’. For Spike, that would be his demon, which was held back by the chip.”

“So – what’s the source of *my* power?” Buffy asked in a very soft, frightened voice.

Giles stared at her for a long moment, a worried frown on his face. “That’s a very good question, Buffy,” he said quietly. “One that unfortunately I do not have an answer to – and frankly, I’m not sure that anyone does.”

“But – if I’m the Slayer – a warrior of – of good,” Buffy struggled over the concept in a trembling voice. “And – what was loosed was my power – why is it so dark, and – and – I just don’t understand.”

“I shall have to contact the Council…”

“No!” Buffy looked up at him in alarm. “No, I don’t want them to know about this! They’ve tried to kill me more than once already – what do you think they’ll do if they find out about this?”

“I am well aware of the risk, Buffy,” Giles said, a soft sympathy in his voice as he looked at the girl who was like a daughter to him. “I would never do anything to place you in danger from them again. I shall be very discreet, I assure you.”

Buffy nodded, albeit reluctantly, not wanting him to talk to the council at all, but knowing that is anyone had any additional knowledge on the source of the Slayer’s power, it would be them.

“I – I’m sorry,” Willow said timidly, not really looking at either of them. “I’m so sorry, Buffy. I thought it was – the right spell to use. I didn’t mean to…”

“You didn’t mean to last time, either, did you?” Giles snapped.

“Will,” Buffy said urgently, shooting her Watcher a warning look. He merely looked away in silence as she went on, “I know you didn’t mean to. It’s okay. I mean – it’s a mess, but – but we’ll get it figured out. I know you were trying to help.

Willow was silent. Buffy was being very understanding, but the words she had really wanted to hear were noticeably absent. Buffy did not say, “It’s not your fault.”

Because they all knew that it was.

With a sigh, Buffy looked up at her Watcher, who was looking at her dubiously. “Do you have, like – a cot, or a sleeping bag or anything? I think I’m gonna need to spend the night here.” She sighed as he nodded, adding sarcastically with a slight pout, “Judging by the Council’s usual overwhelming willingness to help us – this could take a while.”





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