The Things We Do For Love

[litzie]

Author's Note: So I'm feeling strangely prolific these days, and have finally started a fanfic that has been in my head since the first time I watched season 3 three years ago. In an effort to make sure I actually finish it, I'm going to post the first part and hope this motivates me a bit. So, more coming! In theory!

Title: The Things We Do For Love
Author: Litzie
Disclaimer: Not Mine
Rating: PG
Set in season three, between Choices and The Prom.

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Willow was moving the desks in the classroom when Buffy came in. A circle of space had formed in the middle of the room, and a dark pentagram was etched onto the floor. When Willow saw the direction of her glance, she smiled and held up a bright yellow and green box.

“Don’t worry – it’s washable. I got the Crayola finger paint stuff for three year olds.”

Buffy shook her head. “Magic is very, very strange.” She hopped onto one of the desks near the door and pulled her legs up into a ball in front of her. “So…what do you need me to do?”

Willow looked up from where she was arranging a smaller pentagon of candles in the middle of the room. She brushed a fallen piece of hair out of her face, her eyes wide.

“Do? Oh, nothing much. Don’t worry. You just hold a candle and provide a base while I do the chanting. No biggie.”

“Is it more Latin? Because you know when you speak in Latin you get all frazzled over pronunciation, and then…”

“No, no,” Willow said hastily, setting out a bowl of some kind of herb next to the large glass bowl in the centre of the pentagon. “I wrote this spell myself – it’s in English.”

“Whoa, you wrote it yourself?” Buffy said, uncurling her legs and leaning forward. “What is this spell for, exactly Will? You know, sometimes your spells don’t go exactly according to plan…”

“Hey!” Willow said, standing up quickly, hands on her hips. “My spells are awesome! Or…most of the time they are anyway.” She knelt back down and arranging the herbs in the pentagram. “Besides, this is just a tiny protection spell, to give you an edge against the Mayor if we have to deal with him again before the ascension. No biggie.”

“Will, you know, that’s the second time tonight you’ve said ‘no biggie’…”

“Well I just think you should have every advantage you can against the Mayor! Especially after…”

“He kidnapped you and ate a bunch of spiders? Yeah, I agree. Man, he pisses me off!”

“Yeah, all that stuff about you and Angel. That was really low.” Willow looked up from her work, her gaze suddenly intense.

Buffy shifted in her seat, uncomfortable. “Yeah, well…that stuff doesn’t mean anything. Angel and I are way different from him and his wife. For one thing, we’re not psycho evil politicians, so that helps!”

“So…it doesn’t worry you at all?” Willow asked, watching Buffy’s reply closely.

“Well…I don’t know.” Buffy’s voice lost the edge of fake cheerfulness it had taken on. “I wonder…and I think he wonders…Will, I think he wonders a lot. I don’t care what the Mayor says, but what if Angel does? What if he…” she shook her head, and crossed her legs. “No, I’m being crazy. It’ll be fine.”

Willow smiled comfortingly. “Yes. It will.”

“And speaking of Angel…I’m supposed to meet him after this, so it’s not going to take too long is it?”

Willow shook her head, then adjusted the candles one last time and stood up. “Right! Done!” she said,. “Now, you stand here…”

She led Buffy to one point on the inner pentagram and handed her a black candle. She took up a position directly opposite, and picked up a candle as well. With a quick swipe she ignited a match and lit her candle, then Buffy’s, before throwing the burning match into the large glass bowl. The herbs there immediately caught fire. Buffy almost took an involuntary step back as a surprisingly large wave of heat rolled off the large flame in the bowl, but managed to stay in her position.

“Jeez, Will, fire safety isn’t really the main conc-” she started.

“Shh!”

Willow closed her eyes for a moment, and then poured the first bowl of herbs into the large glass bowl. The flames shot up again, dancing high between the two girls. Willow took a deep breath.

“Diana, goddess of love and the hunt, I call on you.”

With a flourish she emptied the second bowl of herbs into the flames, and sparks rose. Buffy thought idly that magic fire never seemed to set off any fire alarms, and wondered if that was because it didn’t generate any smoke.

“Do my will in this, shape the world to my desire.”

Or perhaps magic fires generate magic smoke, which isn’t detected by normal smoke detectors?

“Change the past to change the present, unite these souls in humanity. Bring them together in mortality.”

Buffy’s brain finally caught up with Willow’s words. “Wait, what? Willow, I thought –”

Willow’s threw the last bowl of herbs into the flame, and it turned blood red and shot up to the ceiling. Her free hand grabbed Buffy’s hard, and her eyes were black.

“Blow the candle out!”

Buffy did, at the same moment as Willow blew out hers. The room was suddenly shrouded in utter blackness, darker than the night outside the classroom windows. Then, with a jerk, Buffy was thrown to the ground, her hand ripped from Willow’s. A dim glow returned to the room, and she stood up, brushing off her strangely dirty pants – in fact, the floor was incredibly dirty. It was made of dirt.

Sound suddenly buffeted her from all sides, and Buffy looked up in surprise as a carriage drawn by two massive horses appeared a few feet away and drove toward her.

[litzie]

With a start Buffy located Willow, getting shakily to her feet a foot to the right, and threw herself at her, dragging both of them out of the path of the incoming carriage. Willow let out a gasp of surprise as they landed in something cold and slimy. Feet jammed in around them, and Buffy quickly pulled Willow to her feet. They were covered in mud and something that smelled quite a bit worse.

She looked around. It was like they’d landed in the middle of the dirtiest renaissance fair on earth. They were standing on the side of a street, where carriages and horses were passing by at a quick but steady pace. The road seemed to be cobblestone, underneath the dirt, and along what she supposed passed for a sidewalk were men in long coats and old fashioned suits and women in long ball gown type things and cloaks.

She was suddenly very aware of the cold, and looked down at her mud-covered sun dress and strappy sandals. Willow nudged her arm with her elbow, and leaned in.

“Um, Buffy? I’m thinking we should get off the street…”

She gestured to the people on the street, who had started to notice the girls and were pointing and staring. Buffy nodded, and they ducked into the nearest alleyway. A few crates were set against one of the stone walls. Buffy sat on one and looked at Willow expectantly. Willow simply stood in front of her, squirming.

“Willow. What was that? Where are we? What the heck happened?”

Willow shrugged, and began to twist a piece of hair in her fingers. Unfortunately her fingers were covered in mud.

“Well…you see…that wasn’t actually a protection spell.”

Buffy jumped off her crate and landed next to Willow.

“No shit, Sherlock! Aside from the fact that the words to your spell had nothing to do with protection, WE’RE IN THE MIDDLE OF A SHAKESPEARE PLAY!!! What gives?”

“Well, actually, I think we’re way too late for Shakespeare…” Willow said, taking an involuntary step back.

“Wait, so you know where we are? Where are we?”

“Well…basically, the spell went wrong.”

Buffy just looked at her, expectantly.

“See, what I meant to do…what I was going to do…well, see, I wanted it to be a surprise, I was going to do something nice for you and Angel, since you guys rescued me from the Mayor and since, you know, you guys out of everyone deserve the chance to be happy, and I didn’t think you’d ever let me try it you knew what I was going to do…”

Buffy tried to take a deep calming breath. “Will! The spell! What were you trying to do?”

Willow tensed up her shoulders and brought her hands up to cover her eyes. “I did a spell to make Angel human.”

Whatever Buffy had been expecting, it wasn’t that. She sat down on the crate again, suddenly boneless.

“Did it work?”

Willow peaked out from behind her fingers. “I don’t think so…at least, not the way it was supposed to.”

Buffy looked up quickly, her eyebrows drawn. “Will, I’m sure you were trying to help, but…how could you do this without asking? Without asking Angel! What if something had gone wrong?” She looked around. “Wrong-er!” She paused, fearful. “Wait, Angel is ok, right? Nothing went really wrong, did it?”

“No, no! Or at least…I don’t think so.”

“So what did happen?”

“Well, I made the spell out of a love spell, because I wanted to use your love for each other as the bond that would draw him toward humanity. And I think, instead…his humanity drew us here.”

“Wait, what?” Buffy jumped down from the crate again and began to pace. “You mean Angel’s here too? And he’s human? You really managed to make him human?” She began to smile. “I mean…not that I needed him to be human, but…wow, this is just so amazing! Think of all the normal stuff we could do now…picnics! There could be picnics! In the park! At noon!”

Willow reached out a hand to stop her. “No, Buffy, you don’t understand. That was what I wanted to do. But instead, Angel’s humanity drew us to it. We’re in Galway, in Ireland. In 1753. And I think it’s the night that Angel got turned.