So Many Steps To Death

By KallieRose

Chapter Eleven: By the Pricking of My Thumbs

Spike stood listening at the door to Willow’s bedroom, knowing she was upset about his attempt at seduction, but unsure what he should do about it. In point of fact, he wasn’t even certain that he did want to do anything about it. So, instead of trying to smooth things over, he merely listened.

He heard her sniffle occasionally. And she paced. There seemed to be a lot of pacing going on.

She was cursing him too, without a doubt. Railing against him for taking things farther than she wanted them to go. He couldn’t actually hear her doing it, but he could feel the malevolence in the air.

“Red?”

Silence greeted him, although she had stopped pacing, so he was sure she could hear him.

“We gonna talk about this? Or are you gonna sulk?”

“Leave me alone, Spike.” There was an implied ‘or else’ to her tone, so of course he had to keep pushing her. It was almost like she was challenging him.

“It was just a bloody kiss. No need to get so worked up over it.” He knew as he said it that it was a lie; there was a lot more to it than just the kiss. But that was all he was willing to admit to at the moment.

“Why’d you have to go and do it? Couldn’t you leave well enough alone?” The words were soft and wistful. He heard her approach the door and felt the shift in weight as she leaned against it.

“Doesn’t have to mean anything,” he told her, his ear pressed against the door.

Only a piece of wood separated them now; he could hear the deep breaths she took, and almost feel the air as she exhaled. He could get to her easily; could tear the door off its hinges, if he needed to. But that wouldn’t get him anywhere.

She sighed, and it sounded very sad and lonely. “You don’t understand,” she told him.

“Explain it to me, then.”

Silence for a moment, and then, “To you, sex is just a game.”

He knew where she was going with this, of course. It was the old, ‘I can’t have sex with someone unless I’m in love with them.’ Quite the opposite of the way it had been with Buffy. She could only have sex with him because she didn’t love him. Women were such contrary creatures, he thought. No two of them were exactly alike.

“And to you it’s like a sacred bond, created out of love, hearts and flowers, and so on, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I get that.” Her startled gasp on the other side of the door was quickly followed by an annoyed snarl.

“You could at least *try* to take me seriously,” she muttered.

“I take you very seriously,” he assured her. And it was true; he did take her seriously. He just thought she could use a little improving here and there…

“See, your problem is, you refuse to admit that sex can be…well…just sex. Recreation. It doesn’t have to mean anything besides two bodies enjoying all the ways that they can fit together.”

“I don’t do casual sex.”

There it was, straightforward and cold as ice. For someone who was usually so open-minded, she seemed to be taking a pretty firm line on this one.

“I deserve better,” she whispered, so quietly that he almost missed her words.

Better than meaningless sex? Or better than him? The latter rankled, whether she’d meant it that way or not. “It was good enough for Buffy,” he shot back, stung.

“I’m not Buffy!” she hollered, pounding her fist on the door for emphasis.

Spike lifted an eyebrow, even though he knew she couldn’t see it. He just felt that the absurdity of her statement needed some sort of physical acknowledgement. “Got that right,” he told her.

Apparently she thought she’d been insulted, because he could sense her anger, and her next words were less than kind.

“So, maybe if I beat the crap out of you a couple of times, I can be enough like Buffy for your tastes?”

He took in a sharp breath, an angry growl starting deep in his chest. She was taking the slowly healing wound that was his life in Sunnydale and poking and prodding at it. Apparently, she thought that if she pissed him off badly enough, it would distract him from the conversation he was trying to initiate.

Talking to her was useless. Maybe she’d be more receptive later, once she’d had a chance to calm down. But right now, he might as well be pounding his head against a brick wall.

“Fine. You want to be like that? Go right ahead. I’m going out. You can have the whole house to yourself. Enjoy.” The last word was uttered with a bitter twist of sarcasm that left his lip curling even after he was finished. Fuck, she was such a child sometimes.

Deciding not to waste another minute on her, he stormed out the door, slamming it shut behind him with enough force to rattle the widows. He felt a simple satisfaction in being able to make that much noise.

Hopefully it would annoy the hell out of her.

---

Willow waited exactly fifteen minutes before opening her bedroom door. She wouldn’t have put it past him to say he was leaving and then not really go. But the house remained swathed in silence, and although she couldn’t be one hundred percent sure that he was gone, she finally decided to take him at his word.

The house was empty. She wandered from one room to the next, looking for something, but not sure exactly what. She felt on edge and unhappy; and now that Spike was gone, a lot of her anger had dissipated, leaving her a little empty in its aftermath.

Why had he gone and broken their uneasy truce? If he had been able to keep his damned hands and lips to himself, things would have continued to go on as they had. Comfortably. With no surprises, and no bumps in the road.

And now he was trying to make her feel like it was all her fault. Which it wasn’t.

Tired of wandering, she fixed herself a sandwich and sat down at the table, her fingernails tapping restlessly against the wood surface while her eyes stared blankly in front of her. She wasn’t hungry, not really. The sandwich had been a poor idea, engendered by her lack of anything better to do.

“Stupid vampire,” she shouted, wishing she could yell it loudly enough that he could hear it.

Not that he’d care.

If she knew Spike, he was probably off drinking; having easily convinced himself that he was absolutely blameless.

She wished she could be like him; it would be so easy to find pleasure in touch and sensation, without thinking about the consequences. It had been so long since she’d had someone touch her for the sole purpose of giving her pleasure. Not since Tara…and that had been a lifetime ago.

The thought of having that kind of connection with another person was tempting. But to have that without love…well, it seemed disrespectful. Like a mockery of everything she and Tara had shared.

Why did things have to be so complicated? Why did *she* have to be so complicated? Why couldn’t she just be like Spike, and live for the pleasure of the moment, without thinking about tomorrow?

She picked at her sandwich for a while longer, hoping to find answers. Eventually she gave up and turned on the TV, losing herself in an old episode of Murder, She Wrote. Maybe distracting herself with someone else’s problems would make her own disappear.

It was worth a shot.

---

Spike sat at his usual table, ignoring the patrons who talked and laughed around him. Instead, he stared into his bottle, watching the amber liquid swirl inside the glass, and tried to figure out how the hell things had gotten so horribly out of control.

He had been feeding happily, lost in the joy of fresh blood, and her blood in particular. It was especially tasty that evening, and he hadn’t really thought about why. And then, the next thing he knew, she was pushing his hand away from her, and making threats about cutting off the food supply. He vaguely remembered kissing her neck, up to her lips, and then she just freaked out and ran into her room.

It wasn’t like he had planned any of it, he reminded himself self-righteously. He most definitely had not. But she just freaked out and immediately blamed it all on him. Like she always did.

She was so afraid of actually feeling something that she bottled all her emotions up inside, hoping that by doing so, she could ignore them and they’d eventually go away.

The contrast between her and Buffy was not lost on him. One would do anything to feel something, while the other did everything she could in order not to.

Just his luck he was stuck with the one who *didn’t* want to shag him.

---

The next week passed quietly enough, at least in Willow’s mind. Spike still fed from her daily, but he usually kept his hands to himself, and Willow was very careful to keep herself out of dangerous territory. No unnecessary touching after feeding time was over, no sitting next to each other on the couch; in fact, as much as possible, she spent her time in her room.

It was safe, but god, it was boring.

More than anything, she looked forward to her next meeting with Giles. It was a shining beacon in the dull gray darkness that her life had become.

---

She materialized again in the library, smiling as she took in the sheer number of books that lined the walls. Giles was nowhere to be seen, but she wasn’t worried. He was probably just running a little late.

And a moment later she was grateful that he wasn’t there yet. Without thinking, she had attempted to sit in one of his comfortable-looking reading chairs and had fallen unceremoniously to the ground. Just because it looked solid, didn’t mean that it *was* solid. A fact that she already knew but had momentarily forgotten.

Although, in the chair’s defense, she admitted that it was actually her that was not completely solid. What she didn’t understand was why she didn’t just fall right through the floor of the house, to the ground below.

But that was a question for another day.

By the time Giles finally showed up, Willow was beginning to get worried. One look at his face told her that her concern was well-founded. His face was drawn, his cheeks sunken, and the intelligent eyes looked tired beyond belief. He looked, frankly, at the end of his rope.

He swept into the room, obviously in a hurry, and then stopped suddenly when he spied Willow. The surprise on his face confirmed her suspicion that he had completely forgotten about their meeting.

“Oh, Willow. I—I’m terribly sorry; I forgot that you would be here.”

She could see something behind his eyes, something assessing and calculating. He was trying to make a decision on the fly, and was considering his options.

Something had happened. Something bad. “What’s going on, Giles?”

He walked over to the bookshelves, quickly and methodically pulling volume after volume off of the shelves and stacking them in a pile on the floor. “Could you—oh, bugger. No, you can’t, can you? Non-corporeal.” He shook his head in disgust. “It’s got me so flustered that I’m making the most ridiculous mistakes,” he muttered to himself.

“What’s got you so flustered?” Willow could hear the panic rising in her voice. Something that was bad enough to scare Giles was pretty damn bad. “Is something wrong in Sunnydale?”

Giles stopped for a moment, and she saw how he tried to put on the demeanor of the friendly high school librarian again. But it didn’t fit well, and she could see his near-panic escaping between the cracks.

“It’s—something big is coming. Something…evil. You remember—I told you about the dead Potentials?” At her nod, he continued, “Well, it’s getting worse. More Potentials are dying, and Watchers as well.” He paused for a moment, and Willow could see grief in his eyes.

“Good men and women—very careful people—are dying.” He stopped pulling books off the shelves for a moment and turned to face Willow. “The time to act is upon us. The Council,” he paused for a moment, jaw clenched, as he tried to control his anger, “the Council has decided upon one path, but I have decided upon another. I am going to try to collect as many of the Potentials as I can, lead them to one place, and make them into a force to be reckoned with.”

At Willow’s surprised expression he hastened to explain. “The Council feels that having so many targets in one place is too risky. They want to leave them where they are, to make it more difficult for our enemy to get to them. But they’re wrong. There is safety in numbers, and the only way we will be able to beat this thing is to attack it en masse.”

He looked so sure of himself that Willow was forced to believe him. After all, this was Giles. He was, without a doubt, one of the most intelligent human beings she had ever met. So there was absolutely no hesitation in her voice when she asked him, “What can I do? To help? Do you want me to meet you wherever you end up going?”

She could tell that the idea tempted him. He thought for a moment, but then regretfully shook his head. “No, I’m afraid that would not be wise. The Council will be looking for me. And quite possibly, they will find me. I do not want you to be with me as well; that would be bad for both of us.”

Willow saw the wisdom in his words, but couldn’t help but feel left out. The ringing of Giles’ phone brought her attention back to more important matters.

Giles’ voice was clipped and harsh as he answered the phone. “Yes, this is Rupert Giles. Yes. Yes.” He nodded as he said the words, out of habit, probably.

And then, suddenly, his face went white, and his hand clenched the edge of his desk so hard that Willow was afraid that either fingers or wood would break. “Oh, no. Dear God, no.” The pain in his voice was even stronger than the fear, and Willow felt as if her world had just fallen to dust. She didn’t yet know what had happened, but she knew, just knew, that it was something that would change her life forever.

When Giles hung up, Willow could see that his hand was shaking. “What happened, Giles? What was that phone call about?”

Eyes that were filled with pain and despair met hers. “It was about the Council. They—they’re gone. Just—gone.”

“Gone? How?”

Giles felt for the chair that he knew was behind him, carefully seating himself and then running his hands over his face. “There was an explosion approximately fifteen minutes ago. The entire building is gone. There were—” he stopped for a moment, his voice suddenly choked with emotion. “There were no survivors. There couldn’t be. Not from a blast like that.”

Willow’s eyes widened in horror. She knew that thousands of people worked in that building. The thought of that many people dying…it made her sick to her stomach. She wanted to vomit. Or scream. She needed to do something to let out the raging emotions she felt building inside her. Despair, anger, fear, sadness, she felt them all within her, clamoring for release.

“Do they know who did it?”

Giles nodded grimly. “I’m sure that the government will cook up a likely tale for public consumption,” he said bitterly, “but the truth is, it was done by minions of The First.”

“The First?” she echoed.

“Yes.” Giles looked around, his eyes fixing on the stack of books he had gathered earlier. “I don’t have time to explain in full, Willow. I have to believe that The First’s followers will be here soon. This is too big of a repository of knowledge for them to pass it up. I must take what I can, as quickly as I can, and run.”

He got to his feet, although his movements were still a trifle unsteady, and left the room for a minute, coming back with a couple of boxes. Moving quickly, he filled both boxes with as many books as he could. Willow watched as he touched a leather-bound volume almost reverentially, before placing it regretfully back on the shelf. “No room for you, old friend,” he murmured sadly, seeming to forget Willow’s presence for a moment.

“Where will you go?” she asked.

Giles seemed to hesitate. “I will be meeting with a couple of Potentials who no longer have Watchers. After explaining the situation to them, I hope to convince them to come with me somewhere so that I can keep an eye on them.”

Closing up the boxes, Giles took one last look at his beloved library, before turning back to Willow. “I suppose I shall go back to Sunnydale. It seems the logical place to make our stand.”

It made sense, Willow agreed. Although meeting evil on the playing field of the hellmouth seemed like a tricky proposition. They would need some help.

“I’ll meet you there,” she told him. “I can catch a plane and be there by morning.” When he opened his mouth to speak, she rushed on without giving him a chance to object. “The Council is gone. There’s no reason for me to hide anymore. Let me come back to Sunnydale, where I can do some good.”

Giles considered the idea, but finally shook his head. “I think it’s better to leave you out of it for now. You can be our ace in the hole.” He was quiet for a moment, sensing her need to fight him on this, and unsure how to say what he needed to without hurting her feelings. But speed was paramount, and he didn’t have time to worry about bruised sensibilities.

“Willow, I don’t know if you’re truly ready to face Sunnydale again. The pressure will be horrendous. The hellmouth and The First will try to tempt and distract you at every turn. Or, if they can, seduce you away to their side. The First can even—I’m sorry, but it can clothe itself in the illusion of any dead person.”

She looked confused, as if she didn’t understand his warning.

“Even Tara,” he added, watching as understanding flowed into her eyes.

“You don’t think I can face it,” she said sadly. She wanted to be angry with him, to accuse him of a lack of faith in her, but she knew that he was acting in her best interests. In all of their best interests.

She sighed, knowing that she would accede to his wishes, because he was Giles, and Giles always knew best. “Okay, I’ll stay away. For now. But I want regular progress reports. And the minute you think you need me, you’d better say so. I mean it,” she told him sternly. “I don’t want to hear that you’ve gone and gotten yourself killed, just because you were too stubborn to call me.”

Giles smiled, although it did nothing to dispel the weariness in his eyes. “I consider myself warned,” he told her. “Shall we have our next meeting a week from today, in Sunnydale? In Buffy’s living room?”

She chewed on a fingernail as she thought it over. Facing her friends again would be difficult. But sooner or later she would need to do it. She could look at it as a dry run for her eventual return home.

“Okay,” she agreed. Then a thought struck her. “There’s probably nobody looking for me now, right?”

He considered her question for a moment before nodding his agreement. “I suspect that any Watchers that are left alive are probably fighting for their own survival. They will be much too busy to bother with you.”

Her smile was tinged with regret. “Then I can leave where we’re staying, and go somewhere with a phone. I‘ll call you at Buffy’s in a couple of days, and set up our next meeting then, okay? I don’t want to be out of communication for a whole week, now that there’s no reason for it. You should be able to pick up the phone and call me, if you need me.”

“And Spike?”

The question caught her by surprise. “Spike?”

“Yes. Will Spike go with you?”

She turned the idea over in her mind, trying to decide how she felt about it. Spike was annoying, and being with him was a constant battle. But Spike was also a sort of security blanket. He kept her safe. And dealing with his taunts and jibes kept her from getting mired in depression and self-pity. That alone was worth all of the petty annoyances of dealing with him on a day-to-day basis.

“I don’t know,” she finally answered. “I suppose he could, if he wanted to.”

“I think it would be best. Not that I think you’re in any danger, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt.”

Willow smiled a bit wistfully. If Giles only knew.

The magic began to tug her back to Busca, and she knew that her time was short. “Giles, I’ve got to go now. I’m…the magic is pulling me. Good luck.”

She felt the same pull as before, and suddenly she was floating again, flying through the darkness until she was thrust unceremoniously back into her body. Sitting up on her bed, in her room lit only by flickering candles, Willow considered everything that had happened during her time with Giles.

He would be heading back to Sunnydale almost immediately. In the silence of her room, she said a quick prayer that he would make it there safely. Once he was there, it would be Buffy’s job to take care of him. And Willow knew that her friend was up to the task.

A sudden chill raced down her spine, and she could feel the evil that was in the air. Somehow she knew that this apocalypse would be the big one. And afterwards, nothing would ever be the same again.


Chapter Twelve: The Moving Finger

Willow sat on her bed, watching the lights of the flickering candles as they cast monstrous shadows on the bedroom walls, contemplating the turn her life had taken in the last couple of hours.

First she had found out that Giles was leaving England in order to round up the Potentials and keep them safe. Then there had been the terrible news about the loss of the Watchers Council. And now, Giles was going to Sunnydale. Without her. Such major changes had left her feeling as if she was on the edge of a cliff, and the slightest touch would send her spiraling over the edge and into oblivion. Her mood alternated between confused, frightened, and angry. There had simply been too many changes in too short a period of time for her to make any sort of adjustment.

On the plus side, however, she was so very glad to be able to travel freely again. Sure, this was a comfortable enough place, for a prison. But to someone like Willow, who was used to being on her own, and making her own choices, it had been terribly restricting.

The big question mark that hung over her head, of course, was Spike. Would he come with her, or would he consider his promise to Giles to be fulfilled, and head off to parts unknown?

And, just as importantly, how would she feel if he decided to do just that?

When she really thought about it, she had to admit that she would miss him if he left. Oh, sure, he was a pain in the ass when he wanted to be, but at other times he had kept her amused and entertained much more than she had any right to expect. Some of the fonder memories she had of this place involved Spike: watching TV with him, arguing over who was going to clean up the kitchen, or just talking quietly.

But it went deeper than that, she realized. It came down to comfort and familiarity.

In a world that was unpredictable, and a future that was uncertain, Spike was someone she could count on. It wasn’t so much that she trusted him to keep her safe; it was more that she had spent enough time with him now that when Spike was presented with certain options, she could usually predict which one he would choose. That sort of certainty was something she craved.

She just wished that this was one of those times she could guess what he would want to do.

The sound of voices interrupted her thoughts. Instinct told her to hide; this was someone from the Council, coming to bring her back dead or alive. But then intellect kicked in, reminding her that the Council was no more. Still, something odd was going on, and it was best to be wary.

She listened carefully to the sounds, her ears straining for something familiar, but without any luck. The timber of the voices suggested a man and a woman, but she couldn’t identify either of them. Had Spike picked up a couple in the bar, and decided to take them home for a snack? Or…sex?

She wasn’t sure which scenario bothered her more.

Perhaps it wasn’t Spike at all, she thought. Maybe someone was lost, and had stumbled upon their house quite by accident. Or perhaps the property’s actual owner—the one who kept the chains in the basement—had returned from wherever he had gone.

That thought made her level of nervousness flare even higher; she wasn’t really sure if they had permission from the owner to be here, or whether Spike had just known the place was empty, and taken the opportunity to move in. Knowing Spike, it was probably the latter.

All the possibilities raced around inside her head as she scrambled for her shoes, sliding her feet into the sandals as she heard the knock on the door.

The knock pretty much killed her idea that this was a rogue member of the Council who had not yet heard about the tragedy that had decimated their numbers. It also rather ruled out the possibility that this was Spike bringing home a “date.”

Which left…what? Well, she wasn’t going to find anything out by standing there, was she?

Willow quickly chanted the words to an invisibility spell, and then peeked her head outside her bedroom door. When nothing terrible happened, she moved into the living room and cast a glance at the front door. It looked completely unharmed. Whoever was outside was not attempting to gain entry in any way.

The murmur of voices could be heard from the other side, a man and a woman, talking softly in Italian. Willow stood on tiptoe, leaning against the door as she peered through the peephole.

It took her a moment to recognize Mario and Gina through the distorted lens of the peephole. The couple held Spike propped up between them, looking rather the worse for wear.

He had at least one black eye; the other was in shadow, so she couldn’t tell what state it was in at the moment. There was a small cut on his right cheek, and a trail of dried blood ran from the corner of his mouth. “Spike,” she sighed forlornly, about to open the door.

She stopped herself just in time. The invisibility spell was still in effect, and she suspected that a door that just flew open on its own might bring about the wrong kind of attention.

Not only did she need to cancel the invisibility spell, she realized, but she also needed to cast her glamour again. The only time Mario and Gina had seen her, her hair had been shorter and darker, not to mention the fact that she had been taller.

It took her a minute to cancel the invisibility spell and then cast the glamour, but when it was all finally done, she opened the door, doing her best to look like someone who had just been roused from a good night’s sleep.

“Spike?” she asked, taking a closer look at him as Gina and Mario brought him in. Sadly, things didn’t look any better now that she could see him clearly. As she suspected, there were two black eyes, and another cut on his forehead. The pale skin was already beginning to bruise, and he would have quite the colorful face for a while.

Then she remembered who she was thinking about. By the following evening, he’d probably look just the same as he always did.

Grabbing him around the waist, she helped her visitors as they half-dragged him to the sofa, setting him down gently. “What happened?” she inquired, fearful of the answer. Still, the question needed to be asked.

Gina burst into speech, rapid-fire Italian words that shot straight out of her mouth like bullets. Mario added his own comments in a slower, calmer drawl. But although Willow made out a word here and there, she wasn’t coming up with anything, other than the beginnings of a headache.

Shaking her head in frustration, Willow looked to Spike, who was sprawled on the couch, his eyes closed. “Spike? What happened?”

He opened an eye to look at her, and she was relieved to see a twinkle of amusement shining in it. Not nearly as hurt as they thought, he was playing for the crowd, letting Gina and Mario think he was much worse off than he actually was. She was relieved, but also a little annoyed. She had been worried about him, damn it!

His eye closed again, and he groaned dramatically. Willow wanted to smack him, but knew that Gina and Mario would not approve. Instead, she waited patiently. Sooner or later he would have to speak. Wouldn’t he?

“Heard a noise in the back. Got out there and a guy was trying to…rob Gina.”

He paused for a moment, opening his eyes and watching as Willow read between the lines. “Vampire?” She mouthed the word, knowing that Spike would understand, but the others wouldn’t.

His slight nod confirmed it.

Still, judging from the way Spike looked, it must have been one hell of a fight. Willow had seen him take on vampires and demons of all shapes and sizes before, but rarely had one done such damage.

Willow caught Mario looking towards the door, and remembered how late it was. “Grazie,” she said, looking them both in the eye as she took first Gina’s hand in hers, and then Mario’s. “Grazie.” She didn’t know much Italian, but at least she knew that much. Judging by the smiles and ‘grazies’ she got in return, she knew they’d understood.

With a final grateful look to Spike, the couple left. And as soon as the door closed behind them, she whirled around and stalked back to the couch, staring down at Spike.

A mixture of relief and confusion raced through her, and she stared down helplessly at him, unsure of what to say.

In a strange reversal, Spike looked up at her and asked, “You okay?”

She looked at him for a moment, then shook her head. “Shouldn’t I be the one asking that?”

He smiled, and then shrugged. Wincing as he raised himself to sit on the couch, he patted the cushion next to him, beckoning her to join him.

“C’mon,” he insisted, when she seemed inclined to remain standing. “I’m gettin’ a crick in my neck from starin’ up at you.”

It took her a moment, but she relented. “Okay. But I want details. I have a feeling that there’s a lot more to the story than you and Gina and a vampire.”

“Just a bit,” he agreed. “Get me a glass of water first, would you? And maybe a little something to help me clean up?” He knew that his cuts and bruises would heal quickly, especially after a quick snack, but watching her play nursemaid had a certain amount of appeal.

She did as he requested without argument. Which, in and of itself, was a bit unusual. There was something off about her tonight, he realized. A certain amount of nervous excitement surrounded her, more than was warranted by the little drama he had had at the bar tonight. He would have to drag the details out of her later, once he had fed.

Sitting down on the arm of the sofa, Willow handed him a glass of water and a couple of aspirin. He hadn’t asked for them, but figured they couldn’t hurt. He took them, swallowing them down without comment as he drained the glass. Then, as she dabbed a damp washcloth at the cut on his cheek, he explained what had happened.

“Like I said, I heard a noise in the back. Probably Gina, trying to scream. Don’t really remember. Was just moving on instinct. You know?”

At her nod, he continued. “Slipped outside, snuck around to the back, and there was a vamp, about to make a meal out of her. So we fought. Couldn’t just stake him, though, or Gina would have seen it. And that probably would have gotten the Council down here, sooner or later.” He saw something flicker in her eyes at the mention of the Council, and curiosity bubbled inside him. Whatever it was that was bothering her, the Council was smack dab in the middle of it.

“So, we traded some punches. I actually let a couple of his land, trying to slow him down. I told her to get Mario, and then the minute her back was turned, I ripped his head off. No trouble at all. Of course, by the time she got back with Mario, I was playing the part of the injured good Samaritan. I grimaced and motioned off into the distance, and they assumed that the other guy had gotten the better of me and run off.”

Willow had finished cleaning his cuts, and moved on to the trail of blood that ran from the corner of his mouth. Her fingers were butterfly soft against his skin, and he leaned into her touch as she gently wiped the blood away.

“They insisted on taking me home,” he continued. “I took quite a beating, as far as they were concerned. I figured that just straightening up and walking away from it might raise some eyebrows, so I let them.”

“That was really nice, Spike.”

She didn’t quite sound surprised by his actions; it was more like she was giving him—what was that phrase he’d heard? Positive reinforcement. Yeah, that was it. He had to stifle a smile at that. His actions had been entirely selfish: if something happened to Gina, Mario would have been upset. And who knew how long it would have been before the bar was open again? Busca without alcohol was unthinkable.

Thirst of another sort entirely reared its head, and he glanced longingly at her neck. “Could a hero get a snack, do you think?” Might as well trade in on her good mood, while it lasted.

She hesitated for a moment, and then nodded. “We do need to talk, though. Some things happened tonight that…well, it changes a lot of stuff.”

“Eat first, talk later. Okay?” He licked his lips, itching to taste her, reasonably certain that whatever it was she had to say could wait.

She nodded, a trifle reluctantly. “Where?”

“Here’s good,” he said. “Don’t really fancy having to move. Think I may have cracked a rib. Maybe you could straddle my hips? Facing me?”

The position he suggested made her feel a little uncomfortable, but he *had* just been injured. Willow figured that the least she could do was help him out. So, casting her inhibitions aside with more than a little trepidation, she climbed onto his lap and straddled him. Then she tilted her head to the side and stared over his left shoulder, trying not to look him directly in the eye. This position just seemed so much more…intimate than the others.

Spike didn’t waste any time; within seconds she felt his fangs in her neck, and she clenched her eyes shut at the pain.

Time passed slowly as he drank from her. She wasn’t sure whether to chalk it up to her eagerness to tell him her news, or whether he really was drinking more slowly than usual.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, she felt his fangs withdraw. She sighed as his tongue ran lightly across her skin, teasing the site where he had fed just seconds before. Pleasure rippled through her and she shivered, eyes closed, as he continued to tease her skin.

His arms circled her, his hands resting lightly on her back. When she made no move to break away from him, his hands slid under her shirt, coming to rest on her shoulder blades.

Gentle pressure on her back pressed her forward. Try as she might, she couldn’t keep from looking at him now. His eyes were full of yearning, desire too long repressed, and she suspected that he could see something similar in her own eyes.

He was going to kiss her; she knew it with a certainty that she could feel deep in her bones. And she was equally certain that she was going to let him. Even though every brain cell she had left in her head was telling her to push him away, she just couldn’t do it. The truth was, she didn’t want to.

Perhaps everything she had experienced tonight had left her unable to find a good reason to resist him. Or maybe it was the only way she could find to regain her hold on something—anything—that was comfortable and familiar.

When his soft lips touched hers, still flavored slightly with the metallic tang of her blood, she didn’t pull away. Instead, she opened her mouth to his gentle assault and kissed him back.

The kiss was just the beginning. In seconds he had her on the floor, her sweat pants around her ankles, and his pants on the floor. She didn’t stop to figure out how he had managed to do all that without his lips ever leaving hers, even for a second. Instead, she set forth to explore every inch of his skin that she could.

His body was cool, but not cold. It was warmer where they touched, as if his body was leaching the heat from hers.

The play of muscles along his back felt like the dip and sway of the ocean beneath her fingers, and she let her hands rest there for a moment, enjoying the sensation. But other places beckoned, so she trailed her fingertips down his back, brushing lower, until they rested on the curve of his hips.

His hands were busy as well, tearing away his clothes and hers, until they were both naked.

“Last chance,” he warned her, although both wondered if he really could stop, were she to ask him.

“I’m still here,” she said, licking her lips nervously. There were dozens of reasons why this was not one of her smarter decisions, but right now Willow didn’t want to think of even one of them. Spike’s hands were running over her shoulders, down to her breasts, and she resolved to lose herself in the pleasure those talented hands were giving her.

She could worry about the consequences of her actions tomorrow.

He plunged into her, fast and hard and deep, and she gasped at the unexpected sensation. Fingers and tongues felt so different; it had been a very long time since something had made her feel so full, and so stretched.

Her legs came up to circle his hips, urging him further inside, and it was all the encouragement he needed. His thrusts were fast and deep, and once she caught the rhythm, she rocked her hips up to meet him.

“That’s it, Red,” he muttered, his head at her breast as his tongue swirled around the nipple. Teeth that were not entirely human latched onto the bud, scraping lightly against the sensitive skin.

Her back arched at the sensation, the small amount of pain only enhancing her pleasure. “More,” she begged, running her fingernails down his back in an effort to give him a similar thrill.

He growled at her, and she felt the vibrations deep in his chest; his eyes were flecked with gold as they bored into hers. She tried to look away, but found herself hypnotized by the glimpse of his demon.

Her body began to hum with energy as she raced towards her orgasm. Each thrust brought her closer to the edge, until suddenly she was spiraling out of control, her body pulsing as pleasure overcame everything else.

“Spike!” she cried out, recognizing the smile she saw on his face as one of masculine pride. He was still thrusting into her, his body moving effortlessly, as if he could maintain his pace for hours. Which, she realized, he probably could.

She could feel her desire beginning to build again, her body tensing in anticipation of another orgasm. Suddenly Spike’s teeth were against her neck, sinking in deep as his cock continued to pound into her, and then she finally understood what Angel had meant about vampires being able to make their bite pleasurable.

He just hadn’t given her the whole story, that’s all.

The feel of his lips at her neck, pulling the blood from her veins, caused a chain reaction inside her, sending her body straight into another orgasm, this one more intense than the first.

Her wordless cry of satisfaction was echoed by Spike as he came, giving one last thrust as he shot his release deep inside her.

“Wow,” she whispered, as she waited for her breathing to return to normal. She felt Spike retract his fangs, his tongue laving her neck for a moment. With each swipe of his tongue, little tingles of pleasure shot through her.

The floor seemed like a perfectly good place to rest, for now, so she just relaxed, throwing her arms out to the sides and closing her eyes.

“Wow is right,” Spike agreed, sitting next to her and enjoying the flush of red that colored her body. She was giving off an amazing amount of heat; it was almost as if he were sitting next to a small fire.

“You’re pretty good at that,” she said, opening her eyes. She felt a sudden need to see the expression on his face, but couldn’t quite figure out why.

His answering chuckle was pleased, but subdued. “You’re not so bad, yourself,” he replied, attempting to match her casual tone. It was true, he acknowledged. What she lacked in experience, she more than made up for with her enthusiasm and inventiveness.

Willow could feel their fluids between her legs, and knew she would need to take a shower. “I’m kind of…” icky would probably be the wrong word to use, she figured, and quickly found a substitute, “messy. I’m gonna take a shower.” A wave of shyness rolled through her, and she looked away from him as she scrambled to her feet.

Spike nodded. “Want a sandwich?”

She nodded, pleased, but still finding it a little difficult to meet his eyes. “Stick around. I still need to tell you what happened tonight, okay?”

---

Half an hour later Willow emerged from her room, looking and feeling much more composed than when she’d entered it. She still hadn’t figured out exactly how she felt about what they’d just done, but at least she wasn’t sticky anymore.

A peanut butter and jelly sandwich was sitting on a plate at the table, a glass of orange juice next to it. She sat down at the table, not even bothering to taste the orange juice before digging into the sandwich.

For a moment, Willow felt a little sorry for Spike. She was always hungry after sex. Not that she’d been having much sex lately, but still. And eating a sandwich or a cookie—or whatever—was easy enough to do. But for Spike it was a little more complicated. He’d already fed from her twice tonight; he wasn’t going to be having any more snacks for several hours.

“So, what’s the big news?” he asked as he joined her, setting a bottle of beer on the table in front of him.

Willow watched without comment as Spike pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, setting it down next to his beer. Well, he might not be able to eat after sex, but he could still smoke, she realized. She knew better than to try to talk him out of it; he was going to do what he wanted to do, no matter what she had to say.

For a moment, she imagined herself back in Giles’ library again, watching as he chose which of his books would stay, and which would go with him. It had seemed so sad at the time, and even more so now. “When I was with Giles, he got a phone call. There was an explosion at the Watchers Council. It’s gone.”

He frowned, not sure that he’d heard her correctly. “Gone?” He repeated the word back to her, as if he felt it required elaboration.

Much to his surprise, she simply nodded solemnly. No crappy punch line, no backpedaling. She was serious. And although a part of him was rejoicing at the death of a particularly pesky enemy, there was a smarter, more calculating part of him that was trying to figure out who had done it, and what it really meant for him.

“They know who did it?” Now that he was giving the matter some thought, he had to wonder if this was part of the reason she had fallen into his arms so easily earlier. Not that he wasn’t a charming bloke. But she had displayed a disturbing amount of will power up until tonight.

“The First Evil.”

At his blank expression, she spilled all the information that Giles had told her earlier, ending her recitation with the news that the Watcher was heading to Sunnydale.

“Which leaves you free to travel,” Spike finished. “Where are you off to?”

The use of ‘you’ instead of ‘us’ or ‘we’ did not escape Willow. He had no interest in going with her, from the sound of it, and that made her more than a little disappointed. Suddenly the world seemed a rather large and menacing place. And a part of her had hoped that after tonight, he might be willing to stay with her. At least for a little while.

“I dunno. Paris, maybe? Giles doesn’t want me to go back to Sunnydale just yet.” She watched as he lit up a cigarette, his eyes hidden momentarily behind the haze of the smoke.

“Lots of vamps in Paris, you know.”

“I can take care of myself,” she insisted, slightly stung that all he could come up with was a vague warning about vampires. She looked down at the remains of her sandwich, her fingers picking it apart relentlessly. With a look of disgust at her sticky fingers, she grabbed a napkin from the holder and proceeded to clean them.

“Didn’t say that you couldn’t,” Spike replied, his voice deceptively bland. “Just thought you could use some company. Just in case.”

He watched as her eyes lit up, excitement shining in their depths.

“You want to come with me? To Paris?” she asked, and he could hear the relief in her voice. He felt puffed up and slightly aroused by her reaction, but he managed to play it cool.

”Nothing better to do.”

“I’m glad.” They were only two simple words, but they seemed to say a lot.

“We’re leavin’ tomorrow at sunset, then. Don’t be late, or I’ll go without you.”


Chapter Thirteen: Death in the Air

Paris was everything Willow had expected, but so much more, as well. The city was full of magic, and older than anything she could imagine. The restaurants, churches, museums, cemeteries, they all thrummed with an ancient, yet somehow familiar, power that she could almost touch. In a sense, it felt like she was coming home, to a place that she had never seen before.

She fell in love with Paris.

It was late afternoon, and she was sitting at the desk in the small apartment they had rented, trying to work up the nerve to pick up the phone and call Giles. They had been in Paris for almost a week, but Willow was having a hard time making the call. She knew she needed to, but there was a part of her that wasn’t ready to face them yet. What if Buffy answered the phone? Or Dawn? What would she say to them? How would they get over the awkwardness that hung between them? Or did the awkwardness exist only in Willow’s head?

But, she reminded herself, what if something was going on in Sunnydale, something big, and they needed her? Even though she didn’t want to go home just yet, she knew that if they asked her to, she’d be on the next plane. And that was why it was important to talk to Giles.

Spike wandered in wearing only his boxers—a concession he unwillingly made to her ever-present modesty. It wasn’t so much that he cared about her opinion; mostly he was tired of listening to her make snide remarks in that pinched tone of voice that reminded him of Buffy. He frowned at her as he idly scratched his belly.

It was only late afternoon, and as the sun was still up, Willow knew he wasn’t going to be heading outside for a while. Which meant that he was hungry. He usually was when he first woke.

They had fallen into a routine of sorts. Willow would sightsee during the day; in the late afternoon Spike would feed from her, and then in the evening they would sometimes go out together. Or else Spike would head out by himself and Willow would stay at home and stare at the phone, trying to convince herself to pick it up and call Giles.

On those nights, she knew better than to ask what Spike was up to.

“Wish you’d just pick up that thing and make the call,” he growled, heading into the kitchen and grabbing a beer. She heard the clink of the bottle cap as he tossed it onto the counter.

She stared at the phone again, trying to steel herself to pick up the handset, but without any luck. “I can’t,” she mumbled, staring at the thick red drapes that covered the living room windows. They were renting a ground-floor apartment, but the heavy drapes kept the place dark and dreary all the time. Sometimes Willow wished she could open all the curtains and windows and just let the light in.

But then she’d have to clean up the little pile of dust that would be all that remained of her roommate, and that just wouldn’t do.

“Why not?”

Spike sat down on the couch, watching her with an intensity that made her more than a little nervous. She stared down at her hands, her fingers twisting uneasily as she tried to put into words the things that she didn’t even like to think about.

“I don’t know what to say to them,” she admitted. “They’re going to hate me. Or, at the very least, they’ll be disappointed.”

“Because of me? You don’t owe them any explanations. Hell, you don’t even have to tell them. I’m used to being a dirty little secret.” There was a hint of bitterness in his voice, but not as much as there would have been a year ago.

Willow’s eyebrows rose, and her mouth opened slightly in surprise. “No! That’s not what this is about. It’s about...what I did.”

“Yeah?” His guarded tone told her that he didn’t quite believe her.

“I tried to kill them, Spike.”

“Well, technically speaking, you tried to take me out, too. Everybody in the world, right? And I’m in the world. More or less.”

The smile she offered him was bittersweet, but he figured that it was a start.

“Yeah, I tried to end the world. But more than that, I tried to kill them. Personally. Specifically. I had Buffy and Dawn trapped in this...pit. These creatures were in there with them, and they were fighting for their lives.” She shuddered at the thought of it, frightened all over again at how close she’d come to killing them. “And Xander, when he tried to stop me. I cut him up pretty bad. It was—it was awful.”

All the chocolate-chip cookies in the world wouldn’t assuage her guilt over what she had done. Nor would they be enough to earn her forgiveness from those she had called friends; those she had failed so badly. “They must hate me,” she whispered.

“So?”

Willow sighed, and then threw him a glance tinged with annoyance. “Could you at least pretend to care?”

Smirking, Spike shook his head. “Nope,” he said cheerfully. “They’re not my bloody friends, and with any luck I’ll never see the bunch of them again.”

“Fine, whatever,” Willow muttered. She gave the phone one last glance, and then got up and went into the kitchen.

Spike followed behind her, catching her as she leaned against the counter, his body pressing lightly against her as he placed his hands palm-down on the counter on either side of her. “Could use a snack,” he said, grinning amiably when she rolled her eyes.

“Why am I not surprised?’

“Because you’re an intelligent woman?” he asked playfully, reaching out to pull at the collar of her shirt.

“Sure, now you’re nice. But only ‘cuz you want something.”

Spike shrugged, and then let his human mask melt away until she saw the face of the demon. Ridges and fangs made his amiable smile turn dark, as if clouds had eclipsed the sun, and she shivered in response.

The hand that tugged at her collar pulled it completely aside, and she bared her neck for him, waiting for him to strike.

His fangs slid in smoothly, and she stood patiently as he fed from her. Strong hands gripped her shoulders, running lightly down her arms, and she relaxed just a bit, listening to the sound of her heart as she watched the top of his head.

His hair was starting to get longer, finally growing out of that horrid cut he’d given himself in order to change his appearance while they were hiding from the council. He hadn’t dyed it again, seeming to be satisfied with keeping it the way it was for now.

Willow still wasn’t sure how to explain the fact that his hair continued to grow, long after the rest of his body was dead. But the evidence before her eyes proved that it could, so there was really no point questioning it.

Her hands slid into his hair, running through it as she instinctively pressed his face against her neck. It was all over in less than a minute, and she sighed as she felt his tongue run lightly over his mark.

He placed sticky kisses against her neck and throat, and she tried not to think about what her neck looked like as he did it. Then his lips were on hers, still tasting of something harshly metallic, and she pushed all thoughts of the cause out of her mind.

His tongue was greedy and insistent, and she opened her mouth and replied in kind, plunging into his mouth and exploring the depths. She felt hands in her hair, tangling in the locks as he used it to turn her face up towards him.

“So good,” Spike murmured, grinding himself into her.

Willow still wasn’t completely comfortable with the idea of casual sex, much less the practice of it, but it was getting easier. She told herself that this wasn’t something she would do with anyone else. Just with Spike. He was different. Sometimes she felt like this was the price for his company, and for now it was a price she was willing to pay.

She didn’t love him. And he didn’t love her. But they found a certain measure of comfort in each other that they didn’t feel when they were alone. And that made it okay. Or so she was working hard to convince herself.

They fumbled their way through the kitchen and into the living room without breaking their embrace, and Spike pushed her towards the couch, laughing low in his chest when she stumbled and fell onto the couch on her back. “Just the way I like you,” he told her, grinning at her when she glared at him.

He watched as she shimmied her way out of her pants and pulled her shirt over her head, then dropped his boxers, joining her on the couch and straddling her waist.

“I don’t love you,” she told him, looking very serious in spite of the fact that she was naked, with lips that were puffy and red from kissing.

The look he gave her was slightly incredulous, as if he were questioning not the comment itself, but merely her timing. “Don’t love you, either,” he answered with a touch of amused tolerance in his voice. “Just like shagging you.”

Willow nodded, reassured that this didn’t mean anything more to him than it did to her. A phrase that Anya had said once came to mind. Something about bodies that interlocked together nicely, or something like that.

She had tried to kill Anya too, but for some reason she wasn’t worried about whether or not Anya would forgive her. Maybe it was because she was pretty sure Anya had done things that were just as bad. Although probably on a smaller scale.

The fact that they had both slept with Spike gave her a minor case of the wiggins. First Xander and then Spike. Not that she had slept with Xander—but she might have, if things had happened differently. It was somewhat disturbing to realize that she and Anya shared similar taste in men, along with a bent towards the supernatural.

A sharp burst of pain brought her attention back to Spike. He pinched her nipple again, for emphasis, and she sucked in a deep breath, the pain causing something between her legs to pulse with pleasure.

“If I wanted to do this alone, I’d be in the bedroom with the door locked. Where were you?”

He reached down and kissed her nipple, running his tongue along the peak and flicking his tongue against it. The slight pain she’d felt quickly faded, replaced by something that made her stomach clench.

“Anya,” she said without thinking, cursing herself when he stopped what he was doing and sat up, staring down at her with a look of bemusement.

“Anya? You trying to tell me something?”

Willow giggled at him and shook her head. “I was just thinking about her and Xander. And you and her, and you and me, and me and Xander. It’s like some demented parallelogram.”

The thought of Xander and Anya brought another question to mind, and one she had never really gotten a straight answer on. “Why didn’t you kill them?”

“Huh?”

“When you were in Sunnydale. Why didn’t you kill them?”

Spike had asked himself the same question recently, on more than one occasion. Somehow he had ended up somewhere completely different than where he had been headed; that was something that happened to him fairly often of late. Often enough that he had finally learned not to question it too much.

Instead of answering her question, he slid between her legs and pushed into her, watching her expression as she took him in. Face flushed, eyes closed, she threw her head back and let out a soft groan as he filled her.

He set up a languid pace, thrusting into her deep but slow, and considered her question. “I’ll tell you, but it’ll cost you something,” he said at last, watching with amusement as her eyes opened and settled on his face.

“Yeah?” she panted, her hands reaching for his shoulders, running slowly up and down his arms. “What?”

Good question, he thought. He hadn’t anything in particular in mind when he’d made the offer. Mostly he just hated to give something away without getting something else in return. Something better, if at all possible.

“I’ll think about it. It’ll be like one of those ‘player to be named later’ trades they do in sports.”

She looked a little uncertain about the deal. “But...what if I don’t like what you choose?”

“Then you whip out the mojo and kick my arse,” he told her, smiling at her surprised expression. It amused him to no end exactly how often she forgot the extent of her powers.

“I guess I could,” she said, although she didn’t sound terribly sure about it.

Spike took that as an agreement. It was probably as good as he would get, coming from her. His mind began to wander as he considered likely scenarios. Just how much would she be willing to give to him before he pushed her too far?

With fantasies of a redhead in chains fueling his desire, he sped up his thrusts as he felt his orgasm approaching. Ever the considerate lover, he reached between their bodies, his fingers gently flicking her clit. He watched for the telltale precursors of her orgasm: her pounding heartbeat, tensing muscles, and the way that her eyes rolled back in her head as she released the breath she’d been holding.

When she came, he let himself go as well, slamming into her as he exploded. After a few more thrusts, he pulled out of her and nudged her towards the edge of the couch before spooning in behind her.

His arm curved over her body in a gesture that was faintly possessive, and he reached out to play with a nipple, cupping the breast in his hand. She relaxed against him, sighing a little as her arousal began building again.

“You wanna get some dinner? Maybe catch a show?” he asked.

Willow groaned, pulled his hand away from her breast, and sat up. “Easy for you to say. I feel like I just got hit by a truck.”

She stood up and stretched her tired muscles, and then looked down at him, noticing the way he pushed his lower lip out in a slight pout. “A very sexy truck,” she added, and was rewarded by a smug grin.

“Give me a couple of hours. I’m going to take a nap, and have a shower. We could eat a late dinner. The Chinese place in Montmartre?” She liked the food there, and Spike had a thing for their Sweet and Sour chicken. Most places, he told her—looking far too much like one of her teachers as he lectured her—had Sweet and Sour sauce that was all sweet and very little sour. But apparently this place had just the perfect mixture. Or so Spike claimed.

“Deal,” he said, sitting up. He gave her a slap on her butt to get her moving, and her squeal, along with the renewed scent of her arousal, had him smiling long after she left the room.

---

“So, I believe you owe me a story,” Willow said, looking at Spike over the top of her menu. The restaurant was busy, even at this hour. Locals crowded around tables far too small for them, along with the occasional tourist who was lucky enough to find their way to this place. Willow had already decided to try the Poulet Ivre, which her somewhat limited French translated as “Drunk Chicken.” Still, it sounded interesting.

She knew that Spike would order his usual Sweet and Sour chicken, so she didn’t think it was rude to bug him while he was still perusing his menu. And besides, she was curious.

“It’s not much of a story,” he backpedaled. “It’ll probably be quite the disappointment.”

She frowned, staring at him as if she suspected him of holding out on her. “If I’m trading this story for some sort of deed that I may or may not care for, you’d better come up with something better than ‘it’s not much of a story,’” she insisted.

“Or what?” he asked silkily, annoyed by the implied threat behind her words. “We have a deal, witch. You can’t try to weasel out of it now, just because you might not like what you get.”

Willow hid behind her menu, concealing her smile from him. It was fun to tweak him, and on the rare occasions that she was able to achieve her goal and managed to annoy him, she couldn’t help but feel a little triumphant.

Their battle was interrupted by the arrival of their waiter, who took their orders with polite disinterest. Once he was gone and they were alone again, she turned her attention back to her companion. “I won’t know whether I’m disappointed or not if you don’t tell me what happened.”

“Fine, fine,” he grumbled, pulling his thoughts together. She wanted a tale of excitement and mayhem? The old adage of ‘be careful what you wish for’ crossed his mind.

“I got the chip out in Africa, right? Headed straight to Sunnydale in order to kill you all.” He watched her expectant smile turn downwards into a slight frown, and couldn’t help but grin. “Killed a bloke at the port and stole his car, headed to Sunnydale, and swaggered into the Magic Box.”

Willow was beginning to wonder if this had really been such a great idea. Then again, it *had* been her idea, so the least she could do was listen. And try not to flinch noticeably during his casual mention of murder.

“That was where all my plans went to shit,” Spike groused. “Anya and the moron were there. They made vague threats about what would happen if I tried to see Buffy, and gave me the short version of what happened while I was gone.”

“Did they—what did they say?” Her expression was conflicted and her voice wavered; he didn’t think she knew if she really wanted an answer or not.

“Just the bare bones. You killed Warren after he killed Tara, and then you tried to end the world. Xander stopped you.” He made a face as he said the last bit, which earned him a reluctant smile from Willow.

He gave her a look that was faintly accusing. “I had this whole plan, you know. And you just came along and screwed it up,” he said, with more than a little bit of a whine in his voice.

“What plan?” She frowned. “Or do I really want to know?”

His smile was predatory as he watched the unease build in her eyes. “First Xander, then Anya, Giles, you and Tara; I’d save Buffy for last.”

Willow had to close her eyes as she felt a wave of queasiness roll through her. He had listed off their names so calmly, but with an undertone of glee, and it left her feeling nauseous. The fact that he could still kill them all, should he wish to, was a fact that thus far she had been able to ignore. Such a blatant reminder was a wake-up call that she should have heeded much sooner.

“What about Dawn?” she asked, the name conspicuous in its absence.

He shrugged, his expression suddenly a bit uneasy. “Was gonna play that by ear,” he admitted.

Her accusing glare was not much of a surprise.

“You did ask,” he reminded her. “Can’t complain now if you don’t like what you hear.”

“Haven’t you ever heard of sugar-coating?” she grumbled.

The waiter returned with their meals, interrupting the uncomfortable stand-off. Willow tried to ignore Spike, digging into her dish with perhaps a bit more enthusiasm than she really felt.

But Spike wasn’t willing to let it go quite so easily. He took a bite of his chicken, smiling beatifically as the taste hit his tongue. “I would’ve turned you, if that makes you feel any better. You humans do seem to have a problem thinking about your own death.”

Willow closed her eyes, her fork stuck in the air halfway to her mouth. “No,” she said, letting loose a sigh, “that doesn’t make me feel any better. In fact, it makes me question my own judgment about our current living arrangements.”

Spike waved his hand in the air in a gesture that said she was making too big a deal about the whole thing. Unfortunately, he waved the hand he was holding his fork in, causing a piece of Sweet and Sour chicken to go flying. “S’not like I’m going to do anything now. My plans have changed.”

“And why is that, exactly?”

Spearing another piece of chicken, Spike hesitated for a moment. “Okay, so it’s not like I exactly have a plan,” he acknowledged reluctantly. “More like, I’m just hanging around to see what happens next.”

She took some comfort in that admission, but couldn’t help but push for more. “Promise me you’ll never turn me,” she demanded. “Or...or kill me. Or my friends.”

“You know what your problem is?” he asked, pointing at her with his fork to emphasize the point. “You spend too much time worrying. About what didn’t happen in Sunnydale, and what might happen in the future. About whether I’ll kill you or whether it’ll be a random drive-by that finally gets you. I’ve never seen anyone who worries so much.”

Willow stuck a piece of chicken in her mouth and chewed it viciously before swallowing it down. “People like *you* are the reason why I worry so much,” she told him. “You’re unpredictable, unstable, and—oh, did I mention—evil?”

Instead of the wounded expression she was hoping for, Spike merely grinned at her. “You do say the sweetest things, Red.”

“I give up,” she declared, exasperated. “You’re never going to change, and neither am I.”

“Exactly,” Spike agreed happily. “Just let go and let things take their course. Look how well it’s worked so far. We’re in Paris, having the time of our lives,” he looked around the room, as if seeking inspiration, “and eating some damn fine Chinese food. Later on, we can take a walk—hey, let’s go to the cemetery. You can pick up a little sandwich and feed the cats, okay?”

On her second day in Paris, Willow had discovered the Montmartre Cemetery on one of her walks through town. A cold winter sun had been shining, and as she wandered through the silent lanes filled with sarcophagi, mausoleums, and ancient statuary, she had seen dozens of cats lying on the sun-warmed cement.

It was strange, but even knowing what sort of danger lurked in cemeteries at night, she couldn’t help but feel at peace as she wandered between the headstones during the day.

She knew his suggestion was meant as an attempt to mollify her. Lucky for him, it worked. “Okay, I guess that would be fun.”

They finished their meal and paid the bill, and before long they were wandering through the cemetery, side by side, down one of the long lanes. Willow had purchased a ham sandwich at a small café and was tearing it into little pieces, while Spike searched the darkness until he saw a pair of small eyes glinting in the moonlight. His arm shot out and grabbed her elbow, and he pulled her to the right, pointing towards a small gap between two large tombstones.

“Right in there,” he whispered.

Willow put a chunk of sandwich on the grass and then backed away, watching in the weak moonlight as something moved in the darkness. As it got closer she could make out more detail, and watched expectantly as the cat sniffed the proffered offering. Deciding that it was indeed worthy, the feline snapped it up and then scurried back to its hiding place.

The performance was repeated at a dozen points along their walk, until at last she had nothing left to offer. Giving the place one last wistful glance, Willow let Spike guide her to the exit and back out onto the street.

“Thanks,” Willow offered quietly. She knew that this was nowhere near what he would like to be doing, but appreciated the fact that he’d made the effort.

Spike merely shrugged, putting an arm around her waist and steering her back towards their apartment. It was well past midnight now, and he knew that even with her nap, she’d be ready to head to bed before too long. And once she was asleep, he could go out and indulge in some Parisian nightlife in a way that he was pretty sure she would not approve of.

He was still a vampire, after all.


Chapter Fourteen: The Burden

Willow was sitting in her usual seat at her desk, staring at the phone. Again. Last night Spike had told her to ‘just pick up that thing and make the call.’ Well, okay, it had been more of an angry growl, but that wasn’t really the point. And the point was, as much as she hated to admit it, that Spike was correct. And just how weird did it feel to know that *that* was true?

It was five in the afternoon, and as she did the calculations, she realized that it was eight in the morning in California. Surely that was too early to call, wasn’t it? She’d hate to wake someone up.

Spike wandered into the living room, giving her an annoyed glance as he took in her position and expression. “Bloody well do it now, or I’ll do it for you,” he muttered, then disappeared into the kitchen.

Willow wasn’t certain about much in life anymore, but one thing she knew for sure was that she did *not* want Spike to make this call. Another thing she was reasonably sure of was that Spike did not make idle threats. If he said he’d call them, he meant it. She wasn’t sure if he knew Buffy’s phone number, but he probably wasn’t above going through her possessions in order to find her address book.

All of these thoughts lead her to one inescapable conclusion. She was going to have to call Giles. And she was going to have to do it now.

“I suppose asking for a little bit of privacy is out of the question?” she yelled into the kitchen.

An amused snort of laughter was her reply. Spike reappeared, beer bottle in hand, and sat down on the couch. “I paid the price of admission. I’m damn well going to enjoy the show. Now dial.”

Shooting him a glance that left him in no doubt of her annoyance, she picked up the phone and began to dial. The line hummed and clicked as the connection was made, and Willow frowned when the phone was answered by a voice that was completely unfamiliar.

“Uh, I think I might have the wrong number,” Willow muttered, fumbling for her address book. She had dialed the number from memory, but it had been long enough since she had called it that it was within the realm of possibility that she had made a mistake.

“Who are you looking for?” The voice was young; as young as she was, maybe even younger. And the accent belied the east coast roots of the speaker. She mentally rolled her eyes when the girl popped her gum in Willow’s ear.

“Well, either Rupert Giles or Buffy Summers.”

“Buffy!”

The volume of the yell startled her, and she yanked the phone away from her ear, but it was too late by then. Spike’s raised eyebrows and the quirk of his lips expressed his amusement. She realized that with his enhanced hearing, he could probably hear every word either of them said. Of course the yelling girl probably hadn’t hurt, either.

It wasn’t until a moment or two later that she realized that the stranger had called for Buffy, not Giles. The implications of that fact had her stomach doing somersaults. Another glance at Spike told her nothing; his expression was carefully neutral. Obviously he had figured it out, too. And just as obviously, he was not going to leave the room so that she could have her conversation with Buffy in private.

She wondered how much of his decision to stay was based on idle curiosity, and how much was based on some lingering feelings he might have for Buffy. The thought that it might be the latter that motivated him bothered her more than she really wanted to admit.

“Hello?” To her critical ear, Buffy sounded tired, and a little out of breath. She wondered what sort of activity her phone call had interrupted.

“Hi, Buffy. It’s Willow.” Her own voice sounded shaky and foreign, and she wondered if Buffy thought so as well.

“Willow?” There was a momentary pause, and then, “Hi. Uh, how are you? Giles said you’d be calling.”

Willow heard the discomfort in her friend’s voice and swallowed hard. ‘I knew this was going to be difficult,’ she reminded herself, before trying to inject a little bit of the old Willow into her voice. “I’m good. I’m in Paris—in case Giles didn’t tell you that. It’s amazing here, Buffy. It’s old, and the buildings are cool, and the food...the food is delicious. I feel like I’ve gained ten pounds since I got here.”

She heard a snort from Spike’s direction, so she turned and glared at him. Sadly, that seemed to have little effect on him.

“That’s great, Willow. And, um, I’m glad you’re getting the opportunity to do that.”

There was something wistful and a little jealous in Buffy’s voice, but Willow couldn’t blame her for that. “How are things going there? Is everyone okay? I know I probably should have called sooner, but...” she let her voice trail off uncertainly. “The timing just wasn’t right,” she finished awkwardly.

“Yeah, Giles was starting to get a little concerned that he hadn’t heard from you yet. He’ll be glad you called.”

The fact that she said ‘Giles’ was concerned and ‘he’ would be glad didn’t pass by unnoticed. Willow felt herself drifting farther and farther away from Buffy, only it wasn’t a drifting of distance, but of emotion. “Is Giles okay? He got there with the Potentials all right?”

“Yeah, he showed up here with half a dozen girls, and a few more show up every day. It’s pretty wild. I’ve got ‘em sleeping on the living room floor, and in the basement, and even three or four to a bedroom. They’re being really good about it,” she admitted, her voice softening slightly with pride. “And I know they’re scared, but they just keep plugging along with the training and the fighting. It’s—it’s kind of rough right now,” she admitted.

“I’m sorry, Buffy. And if you and Giles think I should come home, I’ll be on a plane tomorrow. I mean it.”

There was silence for a moment, and then Buffy spoke, her voice almost a whisper. “I—Giles said you were living with...Spike. Are you—is he—how are you getting along?”

Willow knew that that wasn’t the question Buffy really wanted to ask. But it was the one she did ask, so it was the one that Willow answered. “We’re getting along okay, actually. We’re kind of like the Odd Couple, I suppose.” She was hoping for a laugh, but silence was her only response.

“Don’t trust him, Willow. He can be charming and sweet, but underneath all of that he’s still a demon. If it wasn’t for the chip, you’d already be dead.”

Willow didn’t really know what to say to Buffy. The fact that she was still living and breathing was proof enough that Buffy was wrong. But she knew that it wasn’t as simple as that.

“Buffy, I know that you two have a history—”

“It’s complicated,” Buffy interrupted, her voice suddenly harsh with anger.

Willow wanted to look at Spike, to see what reaction he was having to Buffy’s words, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. In some ways it just seemed too personal. And at the same time, she was afraid of what she would see in his eyes.

She heard someone call Buffy’s name; it sounded like the same person who had answered the phone earlier. “Yeah, I’ll be there in a second, Kennedy,” she called to the other girl, and then, “I’ve got to go, Willow. Let me get your phone number so I can give it to Giles. He’ll call you back when he gets in.”

Feeling a little like she had been dismissed, Willow reeled off the number to Buffy. They said their good-byes, and then Willow hung up the phone.

She sat there for a minute or two, trying to digest what had just happened between her and one of her best friends. The conversation hadn’t gone as badly as she had dreamed in her nightmares, but it certainly couldn’t be described as an unqualified success, either.

On a scale of one to ten, with one being ‘oh my god, she’s never going to speak to me again,’ and ten being, ‘everything is forgiven,’ this was about a four or a five. ‘Time heals all wounds,’ she reminded herself, wondering what dumbass had thought that one up.

“Spike?” she asked, turning to look at him. “Tonight I want to get really, really drunk.”

She caught a glimpse of surprise on Spike’s face, quickly replaced by a slick smile.

“I know just the place.”

---

Willow was a lightweight. This came as no surprise to Spike, since he knew from his time living with her that she didn’t drink much, and had therefore built up little resistance to alcohol. As often happened with one who was unused to consuming massive amounts of alcoholic beverages, she drank too much, too quickly. And because she was stubborn, she was still refusing to believe that she could possibly be as drunk as he knew she was.

“I am not inoc-ti—I mean—I’m not innoxi. No.” She frowned, and then gave him the funniest look—she was probably doing her best to look as sober and respectable as possible, but mostly she just looked pink and flustered and a little stupid. “In-tox-i-cated. Something I most definitely am not!” Intoxicated came out as four separate words, and the rest was slurred together until it was almost unintelligible. Spike couldn’t help but give her points for the attempt, though.

“Sure you’re not,” Spike placated. He sensed that she was upset enough to become one of those angry, rude drunks, and was hoping to head that off before she became a public spectacle. While that would no doubt be amusing as hell, he was reasonably sure that she would blame him personally for any ridiculous things she did that she managed to remember the next day.

“You wanna talk about it?” He’d made this offer before, but she’d been sober enough to wave it away, preferring an alcoholic solution instead. Now that drink had lowered her inhibitions, he thought he might try again.

“No—yes. Sure! I’ll talk about it.”

She slumped back in her chair and looked at Spike, as if they were playing badminton, and it was his turn to serve.

“So, uh, how do you feel now that you’ve talked to Buffy?” He was more than a little annoyed; playing therapist and asking leading questions wasn’t really his deal, but there wasn’t much else to do at the moment, and she really did look like she needed someone to talk to. He had become that someone by default, and really wasn’t sure just how he felt about that.

“Bad.” Just the one word. Her eyes were closed; apparently that was all the answer she planned on giving.

‘Oh, yeah, this is going to be fun,’ he thought. The bar was full of people dressed in their pre-Christmas finery, all of them filled with rich, delicious blood—except for that really pale bloke in the corner. Spike was reasonably sure he was a vampire. But back on topic—instead of enjoying the all-you-can-drink buffet, he was stuck here with Little Miss Monosyllable.

The idea crossed his mind that if she drank one or two more drinks she might just pass out on her own, and he could take her home and let her sleep it off.

“I just, I want to be mad at her because things aren’t the way they used to be between us. You know? But it’s not her fault. It’s mine. So I can’t be mad at her. I have to be mad at me. And I don’t want to be mad at me, because that makes me feel bad. But I don’t know how to make things right with her, either. So now I don’t know what to do. And I thought that drinking would help me forget, but it just distorts things and makes them even ickier, and more complicated. And what if Xander hates me too?”

The storm of words bombarded him, her sudden verbosity taking him by surprise. As often happened, once she started speaking, she seemed unable to stop. He let her wind herself down, knowing that this was the only way she’d be able to work it all out of her system.

“Pet, I don’t think Buffy hates you,” he said quietly. ‘Although she obviously still hates me,’ he thought, but that wasn’t really the point.

Willow sniffled into her napkin. “Maybe she does and maybe she doesn’t. But...she sure didn’t sound happy to talk to me. I barely even got to say ‘hi’ before she was all, ‘I have to go now. Giles will call you.’”

Spike shrugged. “Probably a lot going on there. Sounded like she had her hands full, with all those Potentials running around.” The idea of being stuck with so many young girls without being able to eat them sounded like hell on earth to him. But he thought that there was a part of Buffy that might get off on being leader and teacher to a bunch of young, impressionable girls.

Willow’s expression shifted from angry to guilty, and he sensed that the waterworks were not too far away. “I should be there,” she whispered. “They need help, but they’re afraid to ask me, because they think I’ll fall apart.” Taking a look at the glass in her hand, and then widening her gaze to encompass the entire bar, she added, “Maybe they’re right.”

“You’re just trying to find a way to cope, same as everybody else. Tonight’s just a little blip on your ‘good girl’ radar, but by tomorrow your white hat will be firmly in place. If it makes you feel better, you can ask Giles what they’re up against, and then do some research here and figure out what they need to do. Kind of like a long-distance help desk.”

Her frown brightened slightly at his suggestion. Pushing the half-full glass away from her, she fixed her gaze on Spike. “Thanks. That’s...a good idea. Can we go home now?”

---

“Why did you let me drink so much last night?”

There was a hint of an accusation in her words, and Spike grinned at her in reply. They both knew that when it came to ill-advised undertakings, she didn’t do anything she didn’t want to.

“Hell, if I knew I had that kind of control over you, we’d have been robbing banks and killing royalty for the last three months.”

That merely earned him a glare in passing as she shuffled from her bedroom door into the kitchen. He heard the sound of toast being made, and figured she couldn’t be feeling too awful if she was thinking about food. Five minutes later she was sitting next to him on the couch, watching one of the American news channels they were fortunate enough to get with their satellite TV package.

Christmas seemed to be the focus of the report they were watching. Dozens of children stood in front of a huge pine tree, butchering the Christmas classics and looking cherubic as they did it, aside from the occasional nose-picker. Willow watched wistfully as they turned the Christmas tree lights on.

The picture they presented reminded Willow that Christmas Eve was tomorrow. She had been trying hard to ignore the decorations that seemed to adorn every building in town, and with a fair amount of success. But now that it was down to the wire, homesickness was beginning to creep in around the edges of her consciousness, and thoughts of family and friends were adding a certain amount of melancholy to her mood.

Spike had already made it clear that if she bought him a present, she would wake up in chains the next morning, so Willow had quickly discarded that idea. But it just felt wrong not to have some recognition of the holiday. Sure, she hadn’t grown up Christian, but she was no longer Jewish, either. It left her in a religious no-man’s-land that made her feel lonely and neglected.

The shrill ringing of the phone shattered her thoughts, and she jumped up to answer it. Since she hadn’t given their phone number to anyone except Buffy, she knew the call had to be from Sunnydale. Hippopotamuses tap-danced in her stomach as she grabbed the phone, and her voice was a nervous whisper.

“Hello?”

“Willow? It’s Giles. Buffy said you’d called, and I just wanted to see how you were getting along.”

He sounded tired, and she wondered if he was getting enough sleep. If he was staying in Buffy’s full house, then the answer was ‘probably not.’

“Hi, Giles. Everything is fine here. I’m sorry I didn’t call earlier.” She didn’t give him any further explanation, and she suspected he knew the reasons for her hesitancy. Giles had always understood her better than most people.

“You were able to get settled in all right, then? You’re in Paris? Did Spike accompany you?”

“Yep. I’m in Paris. Spike too. I love it here, Giles. It’s just...the coolest place I’ve ever been. Like Disneyland for witches. The energy here is fantastic.”

“I had a similar reaction my first time there,” he admitted, and she could hear the smile in his voice. “There’s something very magical about it. Have you seen Sacre Coeur and taken a boat ride on the Seine?”

“Oh! I haven’t done the boat thing. Spike!” She looked over at Spike, who was rolling his eyes. “Okay, maybe I won’t do the boat thing with Spike. But I’ll definitely do it this week. Thanks for the suggestion.”

“I am always happy to be of assistance.”

His words reminded her of something that Spike had mentioned the night before. “Speaking of assistance, I wanted to know if there was something I could do for you guys. Because even though I’m not there, it doesn’t mean that I can’t research for you, and help you long-distance, right?”

“That is—actually, that is a very good idea. Do you have a computer?”

“Yep, I got one a couple of days ago. If you want to email me anything—oh, what am I saying—you’d eat lead before you logged onto a computer. But if someone else wants to send me an email, maybe with some things you want looked into, then I’d be happy to help out. Just send it to my Yahoo account—Buffy and Xander both have the address. Does that sound okay?”

“That sounds wonderful, Willow. Thank you.”

“No, Giles, it’s my pleasure. I feel kind of useless here, and anything I can do to help will make me feel a little better.”

“Well then, I suppose we can both consider this an early Christmas present.”

His tone was almost jovial, and it reminded Willow again of just how far away she was from those she loved. “Giles, tell them all—tell them Merry Christmas from me, okay? And if they, well, if they want to call, I’d love to talk to them.”

Giles cleared his throat, and when he spoke again, his voice sounded a little strangled. Or maybe it was just the overseas connection. “I’ll do that, Willow. And you—enjoy yourself. Do something special.”

“Thanks, Giles. You too.”

“I’ll talk to you soon.”

She held the phone to her ear long after he hung up, reluctant to break the tenuous connection to home. Finally the insistent squawk of the phone convinced her to replace it in its cradle, and she sat silently, trying hard not to feel sorry for herself.

Looking up, she saw Spike’s eyes on her.

“I don’t care what you say, I’m not taking you out to get drunk,” he insisted.

It was a joke, and she laughed heartily, covering up her sadness with a shiny veneer of good humor.


Chapter Fifteen: Murder for Christmas

Willow was awakened the next morning by the shrill ring of the phone and struggled to consciousness with a fair amount of disappointment. Sleep had become a valuable commodity lately. Between her anxiety over what was happening in Sunnydale and her fears over talking to her friends again, it had become as elusive as a warm summer breeze, leaving her tired upon waking most mornings. Of course, her unconventional sleeping schedule didn’t help. It seemed to be at odds with her internal body clock, which made things even worse.

With a sigh of regret for sleep not slept, she reached for the phone on the nightstand next to her bed.

Her room was small, and the large queen-sized bed didn’t make it feel any larger, but when she had seen the bed with its tall posts and intricately carved headboard, she just couldn’t resist it. It reminded her of something she had read about once in a fairy-tale, and seeing it in reality had spurred her to buy it, regardless of its practicality.

Other than the bed, the only pieces of furniture in her room were the dresser and the tiny nightstand. Her growing collection of books was now housed in the large bookcase in the living room, alongside Spike’s ratty old paperbacks and shiny new CDs.

Fumbling slightly, she grabbed the phone, dropped it, and then picked it up again. “Oops, sorry. Hello?” she murmured, a residue of sleep still coating her words. A quick look at her alarm clock told her that it was just barely seven in the morning. Her sleepy brain automatically did the translation: ten in the evening in Sunnydale.

“Hey, Will. I just thought I’d call and, uh, wish you a Merry Christmas. Or a Happy Chanukah. Whichever, you know, might be more appropriate.”

Xander’s cheery voice brought an instant smile to her face, and she felt the tension of the previous days dissipate. “Hi, Xan. How’s the weather?”

“Oh, you know, lots of sunshine, not a cloud in the sky. Perfect weather for an apocalypse.” The words were said jokingly, but there was a thread of nervousness that ran through his voice, and she wondered if things were worse there than Giles and Buffy had let on. One of the things she could depend on when it came to Xander was that he wouldn’t sugarcoat the situation for her like the others would. If she asked him how things were, he’d tell her.

A part of her wanted to continue living in the dark, unaware of whatever terrible things had been going on at home. But the more rational side of her, the one that had friends, and parents, and a home in Sunnydale, *had* to know just how bad it was. Because otherwise she would never be able to help them effectively.

“How bad is it, Xander? And what can I do to help? Giles doesn’t want me to come home yet, but I can do research here, and then email the results to you. I just have to know what you’re facing.”

Xander sighed, and then told her what she needed to know. “It’s pretty bad, Will. And it’s not going to get better anytime soon. There’s this ubervamp—old, old vampire. It kicked Buffy’s ass. Giles called it a Turok-Han, and said that they were supposed to be extinct. Lucky us...apparently they’re not.”

“Turok-Han—check,” Willow said, getting up and grabbing her laptop from on top of her dresser and booting it up. Once the start-up sequence was complete, she opened a Word document and began typing. “Okay, so I’ll start looking into this Turok-Han and email you with everything I find out. What else is going on?”

“Well, if you can find out anything about the Seal of Danthazar, that’d be helpful.”

“Check out the Seal of Danthazar. Got it.” It felt good to have a purpose that didn’t involve keeping Spike fed or entertained, and Willow felt a familiar eagerness that had been absent in her life for the last several months. Research, while not everyone’s cup of tea, was something that she had always gotten a thrill out of. It was going to be fun to use her ‘research muscles’ again. “So, what is it? Something demons use to seal their envelopes?”

Xander gave a weak attempt at a chuckle, but she could tell that his heart wasn’t really in it. “Nope, it’s this huge seal in the basement floor of the new high school. Which was built on the grounds of the old one. Which, as we all know, was *so* not a good idea. But anyway,” he paused for a moment, taking in a deep breath, “if you find anything about this Seal of Danthazar, we need to know exactly what happens when it’s been bled on. A lot.”

“Like, with human blood? Or are we talking about demon blood? And a lot of blood, or just a little bit? Or frog blood? Please tell me we’re talking about frog blood, ‘cuz that wouldn’t bother me at all.”

Silence for a moment, and then the reluctant admission: “Human blood. Jonathan’s blood. He's--well, he's dead.”

“Jonathan? As in evil, geeky Jonathan? But I thought he and his little boyfriend fled to Mexico. How did...” She trailed off, trying to decide how she felt about the fact that Jonathan was dead. Less than a year ago she had torn a building apart in her frenzy to punish him for Tara’s death. Hearing that he was dead left her feeling conflicted. While a part of her was glad he was gone, and regretted not being the instrument of his death, the rest of her felt a little sad. Jonathan had always reminded her of a pathetic little boy. When he wasn’t trying to kill people, of course.

“He and Andrew came back, apparently. You know that the First can appear in the form of any dead person, right?”

“Yeah. Giles told me.”

“Well, the First appeared as Warren to Andrew, and told him that he needed to kill Jonathan. So, Andrew did.”

Willow flinched at the cold, matter-of-fact tone of Xander’s tale. Just this once, a little sugarcoating might have been nice. While she had always felt a certain amount of pity for Jonathan, Andrew—on the other hand—had reminded her of a slippery toad, willing to kill his own grandmother for a Star Wars action figure and then blame it on someone else when he was caught.

“Were you able to prove it to the cops? Is he in jail?”

Silence stretched between them, and Willow was beginning to wonder if the connection had been lost. Finally, she heard Xander take in a deep breath. “Andrew is here, uh, at Buffy’s house.”

Willow replayed the words over in her head, trying to understand them. “He’s what?” she asked sharply.

“He’s helping us. Sort of.” Xander sounded a bit doubtful, but plunged on ahead. “Mostly he just whines and demands we feed him. But Buffy thinks he could be useful, so we’ve got him tied up in the living room.”

She couldn’t stop the roaring in her ears as she listened to Xander explain Buffy’s decision to let that—that killer help them. “I don’t understand,” she said finally, her quiet words laced with confusion. “He nearly killed Buffy and he did kill his own friend. Why do you think he’ll help you?”

“Well, he says he wants redemption.”

Willow gave a bitter laugh. “I’m sure he’d tell you that the moon was purple if he thought it would save his hide.”

“Maybe he does want to redeem himself. And we kind of need all the allies we can get right now,” Xander explained. “So, we’re going to give him a chance.”

She bit her lip in an effort to keep silent, to keep from saying something she would regret later. The smell of blood, and the feel of something wet and sticky in her mouth, told her that she was biting too hard. “I can’t believe you’re going to trust him,” she finally said, although it was only the smallest portion of what she wanted to say to him.

“Considering who you’re living with, I don’t think you should be throwing stones.” Xander’s tone had turned defensive, and she grimaced as the words struck home.

“Spike saved my life, Xander. Without his help, the Council would have killed me. He’s proved himself to me. So, yeah, I feel like I can trust him.”

But Xander wasn’t going to give up that easily. “He helped you because Giles paid him. He’s not your knight in shining armor, Willow. Thinking that will just get you in trouble. Look at what he did to Buffy when *she* trusted him. And don’t forget that the minute his chip stops working, he’ll kill you. All that trust you’ve placed in him? It won’t mean a damn thing to him.”

“I know he’s no white knight, Xander. But I’m not a damsel in distress, either. My eyes are open. Wide open. Spike and I...we just...well, we get along. Without making any demands on each other.” Willow knew she couldn’t tell him the truth—couldn’t tell him that the chip had been a non-issue for quite some time—but she wanted to. She wanted to prove him wrong so badly that it was almost physically painful.

Instead, she merely sat very still, took several deep breaths, and after she felt her anger dissipate, she spoke in a quiet, calm voice. “Xander, you have no idea how much I’ve been through, and how much Spike has helped me. There are things about my situation now that you don’t understand, and probably never will.”

Xander didn’t say anything, but she thought she could hear his teeth grinding on the other end of the connection. Or maybe it was just her imagination. “I’ll email you with any information I find. Merry Christmas.” And with that, she hung up the phone.

---

Instead of brooding, which was what she felt like doing, Willow decided to lie down on the couch with her laptop and start researching. She stretched out, thankful that she had plunked down the extra money for the wireless internet connection, and began surfing the web.

She started with the mainstream search engines, not terribly surprised when she found little of interest. From there she moved on to some of her favorite mystical sites. They were less organized, and harder to search, but the time spent there often paid off in information not found elsewhere. Unfortunately, today that wasn’t the case.

Oh, she found plenty of references to the Turok-Han. But all they said was that they were ancient vampires, the pre-cursors of the modern-day vampires, and that they no longer existed.

“How come everything that ‘no longer exists’ has to pick Sunnydale to not exist in?” she grumbled, shifting on the couch. Her back cracked in protest, and she began to roll her shoulders to ease the tension. A quick glance at her watch told her that she’d been at it for over five hours, and with little to show for her efforts. The pain was a matter of adding insult to injury—if she had found some information, at least she could have felt like the pain had been worth it.

“That makes no sense, even for you.”

Spike’s voice startled her, and she jerked her head up to look at him, wincing as the movement tugged on her protesting muscles yet again.

Willow glared at him, her eyes narrowing to slits. “Sneaking up on me's not nice,” she said, her hand reaching back to knead her neck. She added a head roll and closed her eyes.

“I know, and yet it never gets old.” She could hear the smug laughter in his voice.

“Poor thing,” he added, his words kind, but his tone mocking.

She tried to reach up and smack him as he loomed over her, but her balance was off, and she nearly fell off the couch. In the end, she had to settle for sitting up and glaring at him impotently.

“So, you’re looking up what the moron told you about?”

Her glare intensified. “You were listening?”

He rolled his eyes. “Not like I had much choice. Vampire hearing. I was *trying* to sleep.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sorry.” She thought about her and Xander’s conversation, trying to remember exactly what she had said about Spike, and whether she ought to apologize for Xander.

Spike shrugged, and then sat down next to her, watching as she set the laptop on the coffee table, and then yawned into her hand.

“Tired?”

“Yeah, I guess. I was up late, and then Xander called early. And you know me; I’m a sucker for research. So I couldn’t go back to bed. Had to see what I could find out.”

Spike raised his eyebrows, his expression curious.

“Not a damn thing,” she replied. “I suppose you’re hungry?”

He shrugged, getting to his feet and then frowning as he watched her try to hide another yawn. “I could eat,” he allowed, licking his lips at the thought of her blood.

Her eyes closed briefly, and he took a moment to really look at her; he saw red-rimmed eyes with dark circles underneath them. He frowned, wondering why he hadn’t noticed it earlier. “You haven’t been sleeping well for a while, have you?”

She opened her eyes and glanced around the room, her gaze taking a circuitous path, firm in its determination not to meet his. “Sometimes I don’t do so well,” she admitted, her answer just as evasive as her gaze.

When he didn’t say anything, Willow elaborated. “I’ve always had trouble sleeping, ever since I was a kid. This is nothing different. I’ll have trouble for a little while, and then I won’t.” It had bothered her when she was younger, having something she couldn’t reason away that disrupted her sleep schedule. But over time she had learned to live with her periodic bouts of insomnia, reminding herself that they would be over soon enough, and then everything would be back to normal. Or at least as normal as things in her life ever were.

“And all the drama going on in Sunnydale doesn’t help, either, I’ll bet,” he muttered.

“My life is a lot easier than theirs is right now,” she countered, rising to the defense of her friends, although she wasn’t really sure if they were being attacked.

“Not saying it isn’t. I’m just...” In point of fact, Spike wasn’t sure *what* he was saying. “Never mind. Just go to your room and lie down. I’ll feed, and you can take a nap. Maybe tonight we can get some Chinese, or see a movie.”

Willow didn’t think she would be getting much sleep, and considered mentioning the fact that it was hard to relax when someone was slicing into your neck with their teeth, but in the end she decided that it was just easier to humor Spike.

She lay down on the bed, shifting her body until she was on her side. When Spike joined her, sitting on the mattress and looking down at her, she gave him a slightly apprehensive look, and then forced herself to relax.

It wasn’t that she was afraid of him; that was something she had given up long ago. When she examined the emotion, she decided that she was afraid that he would think she was silly for being unable to sleep. For being weird. Different.

That was a fear that never seemed to lose its potency. Even when she told herself that it didn’t matter to her what other people—or Spike in particular—thought of her, she knew that it did.

When he leaned in to bite her, she tensed in expectation of it. The feel of his cool tongue tracing a lazy path along her neck surprised her, and she relaxed in spite of herself. “Mmm,” she said, sighing softly. His hands brushed her hair back from her neck, tangling in the long tresses as he used his lips and tongue to relax her.

He did that for several minutes, and Willow felt her body turn to mush beneath him. When he finally bit her, his fangs slid in smoothly, the pain barely registering. His hands continued to run through her hair, one hand abandoning it occasionally to run lightly over her cheekbones. And as hard as it was to believe, she could feel herself slipping into a twilight world between awake and asleep.

At long last she felt him withdraw his fangs and move away from her, and within seconds she was fast asleep.

---

Several hours later Willow awoke, not at all surprised when she glanced at the clock and saw that she had been out for a good five hours. The sleep had done its work, though; she felt more awake and refreshed than she had for several days.

Feeling guilty about the length of her afternoon nap, she planned a course of action for the evening. She had yet to find out anything meaningful about the Turok-Han, and she hadn’t even started looking into the Seal of Danthazar. Even though she knew Giles had other resources, she didn’t want to let him down. Anxiety began to creep back into her body, and she groaned as the muscles that had finally begun to relax started to tense again.

“Fuck, can’t you ever let go of your misguided sense of responsibility?”

Willow started at the voice, coming from directly behind her. Sudden understanding flooded her, and she realized why the space behind her had seemed sort of...cold. She was surprised that he was still on her bed; they had separate bedrooms, and they always used them.

“They need me,” she said softly, feeling like she was abandoning them.

“And what about me?” he asked silkily, lightly running his fingers up and down the length of her arm.

She snorted in surprise. “You? You don’t need anything or anyone,” she said, believing every word of it.

“What about this?” he inquired, his fingers brushing teasingly over his mark on her neck.

The light touches sent bolts of desire crashing through her body, but Willow did her best to ignore them. “I’m a convenience. Like hot and cold running water. But you don’t really need me, and we both know it.”

Spike remained silent, letting his fingers do the talking for him.

“I’m going to need to invest in a serious amount of turtlenecks when I get home,” she said, reeling off a random thought in an attempt not to turn around and face him. She was reasonably sure that that would result in her tearing his clothes off, quickly followed by another round of frenzied coupling. While she wasn’t really against that on principle, she wasn’t sure that now was quite the time to do it. He was trying to distract her from more serious subjects by seducing her, and as tempting as that sounded, this time she was going to stand strong. Well, lay strong.

“Turtlenecks?” he prompted.

“Yeah. So, you know, nobody can see the mark.” His fingers stopped, and she thought that perhaps he was a little insulted by her comment, so she hurried to reassure him. “Not that it’s not a very nice mark. It is. And I appreciate the way that you always use the same spot, so I don’t look like a pincushion, or a needle junkie. It’s just that if I show up in Sunnydale with a mark, then Buffy and Giles will jump to conclusions. And the fact that their conclusions will be perfectly correct won’t make matters any better.”

“I can take them,” he answered, and something in his voice told her that he was already choreographing Buffy’s death behind those cold, blue eyes.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she agreed softly. “So, turtlenecks it is. Or,” she added, as something occurred to her, “I could do a glamour.”

“No. Turtleneck.”

“Why? With a glamour nobody’ll ever see it, and I won’t have to worry about it popping up accidentally, if my clothing got ripped.” She thought for a minute, snuggling against him when his arm circled around her stomach and pulled her back towards him. “Unless this is some sort of weird vampire possessiveness thing.”

“Not a possessiveness thing, but a protection thing. Another vamp sees the mark, or maybe smells it, and they know to leave you alone. Won’t always work; depends on the age of the vampire and his sense of self-preservation. But someday it might come in handy.”

She digested that for a moment, pleased that she meant enough to him that he bothered to mention it. “What about a Turok-Han?” she asked. “Would he sense your bite?”

“Yeah, but he wouldn’t care. He’d tear you from limb to limb, no matter what. Turok-Han are vampires, but they’re unlike anything you’ve ever encountered.” He was silent for a moment, as if composing an essay or a carefully worded history lesson.

“Vampires like me—and really there aren’t any, because I’m one of a kind—but, you know, vampires like you’ve encountered before, they used to be human. So no matter what their demon is like, no matter how strong it is, there’s *some* residual humanity there. Probably not much, but there’s something. The Turok-Han, on the other hand, were never human. They’ve always been pure demon. They don’t think like humans, they can’t physically look like humans, and they’ll never act like humans. They’re task-oriented, I guess you could say. And they’ll do whatever they need to do to achieve their goal.”

Willow was silent for a moment, trying to imagine these super-vamps, and how it would feel to go up against one of them. Poor Buffy. “Have you ever seen one?”

“Just once. In Russia. I was less than a decade old, and Angelus and I were out hunting. The pickings were slim. I can’t remember why. Probably a plague or a war, or something like that. Anyway, we found an old man out on the street, apparently drunk, and we were heading in for the kill. But before we could take a step, this—this thing—he came out of nowhere, faster than even I could see. He picked up the man—our dinner—and drained him in less than five seconds.

“I was young, stupid and curious, a dangerous combination under any circumstance. I wanted to go out and challenge this bizarre creature who drank blood like a vampire, but didn’t look like any vampire I had ever seen. But Angelus pulled me back into the shadows and slapped a hand over my mouth, promising all sorts of dire punishments if I didn’t keep my stinkin’ mouth shut.”

“Angelus backed down?”

“Yeah, can you imagine that? The fact that Angelus was scared of this creature was the only thing that kept me from going out there and getting myself killed. Because even that early on, I knew Angelus didn’t fear a whole hell of a lot.”

“So, what else do you know about them? Do you know how to kill them?”

Spike laughed softly. “Even now you’re thinking about your little friends, aren’t you? Here I thought we were indulging in innocent pillow talk, but really you’re pumping me for information, aren’t you?”

Willow smiled at his teasing tone. “I’ll let you pump me later,” she offered, her voice heavy with promise.

He groaned, and pulled her body back against his again. She could feel the beginning of an erection forming against her buttocks and knew she’d have to work fast. “So, how do you kill them?”

“All the usual stuff: decapitation, sunlight, stake through the heart. Only, they have this extremely thick natural protection around their chest. Kind of like armor. So going for heart is a waste of time, unless you’ve managed to puncture the armor somehow. I’d stick with decapitation, whenever possible. It’s the sure bet.”

“What about holy water?”

“Don’t waste the time. If they get it on their chest or arms, their armor is going to make it useless. If you get it on their face it might do some damage, although it’s more likely that it’ll just piss ‘em off. They don’t feel pain like we do. Or maybe they feel it, but are able to ignore it. I don’t really know.”

“Any other advice?”

He was silent for a moment, and then, “Other than, ‘stay the hell away from them,’ I think that’s pretty much all I’ve got.”

Willow nodded, already mentally preparing the email she would send to Giles and the others. The feel of a cold hand cupping her breast, the thumb rubbing against the nipple through her cotton shirt, reminded her of the promise she’d made to Spike. She rolled onto her back, her lips giving him a come-hither smile, laughing softly as he leaned over and kissed her.


Chapter Sixteen: Go Back For Murder

The next couple of months passed in a pleasant buzz of activity. Willow researched faithfully, sending daily emails of her progress to her friends in Sunnydale. In return, Xander would email back, letting her know how they were doing, and in what way her information had helped them.

When Buffy killed the Turok-Han, Willow celebrated by sending them an e-card. Then, when the First tried to convince Andrew to kill all the Potentials, Willow was the one who suggested they play along, just to see what happened.

And when Willow discovered that there was a way to close the Seal of Danthazar for good, she decided to call Xander immediately, regardless of the hour, because she knew it was *that* important.

---

“So, four in the afternoon here means seven in the morning there, right?” she thought aloud, double-checking the math. It had only taken her a moment to cross-check her information, mostly because there was nothing solid to cross-check it against. “And seven isn’t really *that* early,” she continued, even though she knew that was a lie. When someone stayed up until all hours fighting evil, then seven in the morning could come around pretty dang early. Experience had taught her that over the years.

“Too bad,” she said, continuing her dialog. “Because this is big, and I’m not going to risk putting it off, just so Xander can get his beauty sleep.” Nodding her head as if that solved everything, Willow picked up the phone and dialed.

“Yeah?” a sleepy voice answered, followed slowly by, “Oh, Summers residence.”

“Hi. Is Xander there?”

“Uh, yeah...” and the rest of the sentence turned into a stream of muttered phrases. Willow heard the phone drop to the floor, and then after a few minutes’ wait, she heard her friend's sleepy voice.

Without any preamble Xander started to speak. “I was having this really hot dream where I had to choose between Britney Spears and Angelina Jolie, so whoever you are, I hope you’ve got a good reason for waking me up at this ungodly hour.”

Willow smiled, deciding to have some fun. “So which one were you going to choose? And what would you have done if I had been your mother? Or Anya?”

“Will.” The word was more of a groan than anything. “So, what brings you to my world at such an early hour? You do know that we were up all night, right? Fighting demons, killing evil spawn, that sort of stuff.”

“Dating ex-demons—and current demons, and getting bled over an ancient seal. Yeah, I know all about your late-night activities, Xander Harris. But this is important, so listen up. I think I’ve found a way to close that seal of yours for good.”

“Say again?”

She laughed. “Which part didn’t you understand?” she teased. “I looked into that language you mentioned—Tarawick? And from there I found more info on the seal, although it’s called something different. But I think—and here’s the good part—that the tears of the person who shed the original blood will be able to close the seal for good. And since Andrew is the one who shed the original blood, his tears will do the job.”

Xander was silent for a moment. “Huh, I guess Buffy was right. Andrew’s not completely useless after all.”

Although she hadn’t thought about it in quite that way, Willow had to admit that Xander had a point. “I guess it’s a good thing that you kept him around,” she agreed reluctantly.

“It hasn’t been too bad. Except when he whines about the food. Which is just about all the time. But now that he’s been untied, at least he can get it for himself.”

“So, he’s...free-range Andrew, then?” She still hated to think about it, about how Tara was dead and Andrew was free, but there wasn’t much she could do about it, and wallowing in bitterness wasn’t going to help even a little bit—no matter how good it felt. So, instead, she was doing her best to keep her mouth shut.

“Yeah.”

They were dancing around the issue, neither willing to admit that the other had a point. Willow would always despise Andrew, just as Xander would always dislike Spike. There was a sort of symmetry to it, if nothing else, she supposed.

Trying to return things to more stable ground, Willow brought her thoughts back to Andrew. “The tears should probably be of the sincere variety, if you can manage it. The whole ‘I’m crying because I’m a sissy-boy loser’ thing probably wouldn’t work.”

“I’ll let Buffy deal with that. Shouldn’t be too difficult. Andrew’s pretty weepy to begin with, so all she should have to do is look at him a little funny and he’ll probably burst. In fact, that might be kind of fun to watch. Maybe I can even make some extra money selling tickets to the event, although Buffy would probably frown on that. She’s on this whole ‘do as I say or you’re gonna die’ thing, which isn’t really conducive to the funny side of the force these days.”

Willow frowned, thinking how much unlike her friend that sounded. Buffy had always maintained her sense of humor in the face of adversity. Making light of an apocalypse was pretty much standard operating procedure for her. She might fall apart completely after the danger was over, but during the worst of times, she was full of witty comebacks and pithy phrases. “Is it really that bad, Xan? Or has Buffy just changed that much?”

She waited for Xander’s answer, wishing she could see his face. It often told her more than his words did, and she missed having that extra insight. “It’s a bit of both, I guess. She’s got all these girls looking up to her now, and their lives are in her hands. That’s a lot more direct responsibility than she’s used to.”

“But what about Giles?”

“He helps as much as he can. But you’ve got to admit, he’s not much of a hands-on kind of guy. He’s more research-watcher-guy. So, not so good with the girls.”

It was true, she had to admit. Giles was very good at what he did, but when it came to dealing with dozens of teenaged girls, he was probably feeling pretty out of his league.

The sound of a door opening, and then the shower running in Spike’s room told her that she should probably cut the conversation short. “I’d better get going,” she said.

“Plans with your roommate?” Xander asked, and she could hear the disapproval ringing in his tone.

“Yes,” she said, unwilling to let her voice betray any weakness or apology. “We’re going out to dinner, and then...I don’t know. We’ll find something to do.”

“Willow—”

“Don’t,” she said firmly, cutting him off before he said anything that would lead to another round of her defending Spike, while Xander tried to alternately cut him down and question her sanity. “Just don’t. We’re never going to see eye-to-eye on the Spike issue, so let’s just stop now, okay?”

“I just...okay. You’re right. I won’t say another word.” The reluctance in his voice told her that this was not a victory, merely a postponement of a discussion that they would have again later.

She smiled, willing to let things stand as they were. “Thanks. Gotta go. Let me know how it works out with the Seal, and I’ll talk to you soon.”

Little did Willow know exactly how soon she’d talk to him again.

---

Giles’ call came early one evening a few days later. Spike was out doing whatever unsouled and unchipped vampires did, and Willow was playing on the computer, wondering if she could convince herself that playing Riven was almost exactly the same as researching. They were both tedious, and both required hours of time at the computer, but sadly, as good as her skills at rationalization were, they were not *that* good.

“Hi, Giles. What’s up?”

“Willow. How are you?” Ever the polite Englishman, Willow noted.

She hadn’t talked to Giles in almost a month, and was a bit surprised to be hearing from him now. Most of her contact had been with Xander, who was their designated computer go-between. And since she had talked to him by phone less than a week ago, giving him the information on how to close the Seal of Danthazar, Willow had hoped that things would quiet down in Sunnydale for a while.

But apparently that wasn’t the case.

“I’m fine. How are things at home? Any changes? Any new evil that needs to be researched to death?” Her tone was chipper, and when Giles didn’t answer in kind, she realized that something big was up.

“Willow, we’ve been thinking, and—due to some situations that have cropped up here, we think it’s time for you to come home.”

And just like that, the comfortable little world she had built for herself came crashing down around her.

Giles misinterpreted her silence, and hurried on to add, “If you feel you are ready, that is. Do you think you are? I just assumed that you felt comfortable with the idea...”

“It’s okay, Giles, really. I mean, I knew this time would come eventually, but it’s still a bit of a shock. But I’m totally ready. Seriously.”

“I’m glad to hear that. I also have to ask whether you might be able to cast the curse for Angel again. I just received a call from—”

“You’re joking, right? About the curse. Please tell me you’re joking, and that Angelus isn’t running around out there, all evil and soulless.”

The sound of the front door slamming shut surprised her, and she jumped to her feet, phone in hand, as if afraid that Angelus had already managed to make it to Paris, intent on doing her harm. When she saw Spike’s familiar face she relaxed, sitting back down on the couch and concentrating on the sound of Giles’ voice, trying to pick up the thread of the conversation once again.

“Angelus is back?” Spike asked, regardless of the fact that she was on the phone. She nodded, trying to concentrate on Giles, and waved him away. “I’ll tell you in a second,” she whispered, knowing he would hear her.

“...so if you are quite sure that you’re comfortable with the idea of returning, I can book you on a flight right now. United flight 2359 should work. Let’s see, you would depart at ten tomorrow morning. Wesley will meet you at the airport, and take you to where they’re holding Angelus. Once you’re done there, you can rent a car and drive to Sunnydale. Where we can definitely use your help.”

Willow took a moment to digest everything Giles had told her, although she was reasonably sure that even if she’d had a decade, it wouldn’t have been long enough. All of the easy-going happiness she had felt since she’d arrived in Paris had been ripped away from her, leaving her cold and scared. Soon she would be back in Sunnydale, and the pressure there would push at her relentlessly, forcing her back into the life that, she realized now, had not made her happy.

But on the other hand, she would get to see her friends again, and that helped her feel a bit better. If only the circumstances had been different...

Spike was hovering over her, waiting for her to hang up, and his expression was grim. If she didn’t tell him what was going on soon, she had no doubt that he would grab the phone out of her hand and terminate the call for her, in his own special way.

“That sounds fine, Giles. I’ll see you in a couple of days. I guess I’d better go and pack. Bye.”

Giles’ answering good-bye was still ringing in her ear when Spike pulled the phone from her hand and put it in its cradle.

“You’re not going back,” he stated calmly, but there was something in the depths of his eyes that belied his unruffled demeanor.

She shook her head, staring at him and standing her ground. “Yes, I am. We both knew that this was coming. And that when they needed me, I’d go back to Sunnydale. You can’t go around acting like it’s a big surprise now.”

“Maybe,” he conceded, his voice still eerily calm, “but a side-trip to Los Angeles to visit my insane grandsire was not something we discussed. That’s a whole other level of evil. The minute he smells my scent on you, he’ll go in for the kill. *Your* kill.”

Fear crawled through her veins as she considered his words. Angelus. Killer of fish. Taker of lives. He who had tried to send the world into hell. But instead of backing down, those things only made her resolve stronger. “He’s loose, Spike. And as long as he’s out and about, I’m in danger. I’m the one who crammed his soul down his throat the last time, and sooner or later he’s going to remember that and come after me, regardless of where I am.” Her voice rose a bit as she let the reality of that thought hit home.

“So? That doesn’t mean you have to deliver yourself on a silver platter. Stay here, where I can protect you.”

“I’m not going to hide behind you and let you battle him for me. I’d spend my entire life looking over my shoulder, waiting for him to pounce.” She looked at him, trying to convince him with her voice and her eyes. “The only way I will ever feel free is if Angel has his soul. And I’m pretty much the best person to do that.”

Spike watched her, trying to figure out when the mousy, nearly suicidal waif he had encountered in England had turned into the confident, strong woman before him. And why the hell hadn’t he noticed it?

For half a moment he thought about offering to go with her, but quickly shelved the notion. Going to Los Angeles was a bad idea, and returning to Sunnydale was even worse. She could stay here with him, and be perfectly safe. The fact that she was throwing Paris away to return to that place was insanity, but it was her choice. She wouldn’t allow him to make it for her; she had already made that quite clear.

“Sunnydale will suck the life out of you,” he warned, his eyes turning hard, as if he had already accepted her imminent departure and was now trying to cut their emotional ties.

“I’ll be back. As soon as we’ve defeated the First, I’ll come back, and we can—”

“Get real, Red,” he snapped, his voice sharp and angry. “You know as well as I do that there will be another apocalypse after this one. And then another. There’ll always be another one. And they’ll always say that they can’t do it without you. Is that what you really want out of life? To always be just one step away from the end of the world?”

Willow threw up her hands, exasperated. “What do you want me to do, Spike? Tell them that I’m having too much fun in Paris to help them save the world?” She mimed picking up a telephone, “Sorry, Xander, I’m at the Louvre. You’ll have to save civilization all by yourself. Could you maybe just schedule the next apocalypse for a more convenient time? I can squeeze it in next Sunday, a little after eleven. Is that good for you?”

Spike glared at her. She might be a strong, confident woman, but she could still be a ridiculously stubborn child as well. “Fine," he yelled. "Do what you bloody well want. I’m washing my hands of the whole lot of you.”

“Fine,” she shot back, slamming her hands on her hips for emphasis, “I will.” And with that, she turned around and stomped into her bedroom, shutting the door behind her with enough force to rattle the windows.

---

Willow fumed as she pulled out a large black suitcase and began filling it with clothes. How dare Spike try to dictate how she lived her life? It wasn’t like they were married or in some sort of relationship. They were just...what?

What did you call someone who had shared some of your darkest moments, and watched while you pulled yourself together again? A friend?

She didn’t think they were exactly friends; what they shared was something more, and something less, than true friendship.

In some societies it was said that when one person saved another’s life, that life was theirs, to use as they wished. Willow had never believed in such a thing, but the idea was a little unsettling to think about now. Was that why Spike was so upset about this? Did he feel like he had an added stake in what she did, and how she lived her life? If so, he was going to be severely disappointed.

As she continued to shove her possessions into her suitcase, Willow came to an unpleasant realization. Her suitcase, which had barely been large enough to haul all of her possessions from Italy to Paris, was nowhere near large enough to hold everything she had now. While living in the city for a couple of months, she had managed to accumulate all sorts of stuff. Stuff that she did not want to leave behind. But there was no way she was going to cram three months of her life into such a small compartment.

She was going to need another suitcase. Which meant going out and buying one tonight. Giles had instructed her to be at the airport by eight in the morning; what with traffic and all, there was no way she would have the time to shop and then pack in the morning.

She would have to go out. Tonight. And that meant going through the living room. Where Spike waited, no doubt thinking feverishly to come up with new reason why she shouldn’t go home.

Grabbing her purse from the corner of her bed, she glanced at her watch, making sure that Printemps was still open. The large department store seemed like the smartest place to go for luggage, and she could catch the metro and get there with a minimal amount of fuss.

Sure enough, when Willow ventured into the living room, Spike was sitting on the couch, his eyes resolutely fixed on the TV. He gave her a glare when she walked by, and she glared back as she made her way to the door.

“Where you off to?” he demanded.

“Luggage,” she replied succinctly, slamming the door behind her.

---

Two hours later Willow was back, the proud owner of a huge blue suitcase. The airline would probably charge her extra to get it home, but since she didn’t know what Spike’s long-term plans for the apartment were, she didn’t want to leave anything behind. He might abandon the place tomorrow, consigning whatever she had left to oblivion.

It was late now, and the packing was nearly done. The sound of the living room TV had disappeared an hour ago, and Willow could only guess that Spike had gone out to hunt. That left the house to her, which was a bit of a relief.

Only a few items remained, and she debated whether she really wanted to pay extra money to ship her small collection of computer books back to America. On one hand, she had paid good money for them, and it would be nice to have them all with her when she returned. But on the other hand, she could probably replace them when she got back home, once she was settled.

She had a brief flashback to Giles, in England, trying to decide which books to take with him, and which would have to stay, sure to be destroyed by minions of the First. More than ever, she could commiserate with his dilemma.

In the end she decided that things would probably be pretty hectic when she got home, and it would be impossible to guess when she might have the time to indulge in the simple pleasure of bookstore browsing, so she might as well bring the books with her.

“Hi, sweetie.”

The quiet words, spoken in a voice that she would never forget, hit her like a lightning bolt. She whirled around, taking in the vision that appeared before her, her eyes shining with excitement, even though her mind urged caution.

“Tara?” she asked, her mind still refusing to believe what her eyes were telling it. Her heart, already miles ahead of her mind, was rejoicing.

“How are you doing?” Tara asked.

Willow reached in for a hug, but her arms found nothing but air. Her eyes clouded in confusion, the confusion turning to sadness when she saw the sad smile on Tara’s face.

“You can’t touch me. I wish you could. But they wouldn’t let me have solid form, and I can only stay with you for a few minutes.” Her voice was apologetic, but firm.

“What’s happening?” Willow asked. “Why are you here? Not that I’m not glad to see you,” she added. “I just...”

“I know. You’re surprised. And I know that this is a busy time for you. But The Powers That Be needed me to give you a message.”

“A—a message? What message?”

Tara’s lips curved down into a frown, and a touch of sadness appeared in her eyes. “You can’t go home yet, Willow. You’re not ready. I’ve—I know what you did. With the dark magic. And if you go home now, you’ll succumb to it again. It’s bad, baby. I—I’ve seen it. What would happen, what you would do—it’s terrible.”

Willow stepped back as if she’d been burned. Her mind quickly filled with doubt and dismay. Tara’s words unlocked her deepest-buried fears. But something else surfaced as well; she remembered Giles’ words of warning about the ability that the First had to appear as any being no longer on the living plane.

“Are you sure? I mean, how do you know? It could be a trick of the First, just letting you believe that you were seeing the future.” She infused hope into her voice, her heart breaking as her mind raced to think of ways to prove whether this was Tara.

A flare of annoyance shone in Tara’s eyes, quickly tamped down, and Willow’s suspicions flared. “Trust me, Willow. This was real.” The sincerity in her voice was hard to ignore, but things just didn’t seem to add up.

“But I wouldn’t go evil again. Really. I’ve given it up. Like—like late night slasher flicks and caffeine.” She nodded emphatically.

Tara frowned. “But you’re living with evil, Will. Spike is already influencing you to do things that you normally wouldn’t. With that much of a toehold, the First will be able to turn you around easily.” The words weren’t said accusingly. Tara’s tone was merely matter-of-fact, and maybe a little concerned.

Willow blinked at the accusation, denying the words even as another part of her was wondering if they were true. “I’m...” Well, technically speaking, Tara had a point. Spike was evil, and she knew it. He was a vampire. He fed on other people. He killed, and robbed, and...and it bothered her. But those were his choices, and not hers. And that was the way she justified it to herself.

“Spike does what he does. That’s his choice. Not mine. I am not tainted by his decisions.” Her chin rose, as if issuing a challenge, and she tried to force the conviction she felt into her voice.

Sadness warmed the grey-green depths of Tara’s eyes. “Sweetie, you’re fooling yourself. You’re headed down a dangerous path; you may end up somewhere I can’t follow. I don’t want that for you.”

Willow was silent for a moment. The words sounded so much like Tara’s. The voice, the sentence structure, even the *heart* that she put into them. But there was still that niggling doubt...

Tara’s voice got quieter, softer, her tone almost pleading. “There’s another way, Willow. If you’re strong enough. If you want it badly enough. We could...be together. Forever. Just like we always wanted. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

Suicide. The word blew through Willow’s mind like a hurricane, leaving fear and confusion in its wake. “You want me to...” she whispered the words, as if saying them aloud would be tantamount to performing the deed.

“We could be together again, and everybody would be safe. It’s not bad, really. It’s just like falling asleep.” Tara put out her hand beseechingly, and Willow recoiled in disgust.

“Tara would never ask that of me,” she insisted, her mind beginning to clear. It had to be the First that stood before her, and not her lost love. Tara would want her to choose her own path and find her own redemption. “So you’re obviously not her.”

She could see by the look on the apparition’s face that she was right. What had previously been Tara’s body melted away to reveal Spike. “The suicide thing was too far, huh? Hmm. You seemed so ripe.”

Willow shivered, her body suddenly cold and clammy. Hearing the flippant words coming from Spike’s mouth, in Spike’s voice, threw her for a loop. While she knew that this was just another game from the First’s bag of tricks, she couldn’t help but feel disturbed by the fact that it was using Spike to do its dirty work.

But showing that anxiety would be telling the First that it had hit a weak spot, which was something that Willow did not want to do. So, instead, she took a deep, calming breath, and turned back to finish her packing. The First couldn’t touch her, so there seemed to be no harm in ignoring it.

Spike’s mocking laughter reached her ears, but she remained resolute. “I’ll see you in Sunnydale, pet. Looking forward to it. You’ll do evil proud.”

A soft rush of air followed the words, and when Willow turned around, she was alone again.

---

Six o’clock came around early the next morning, and Willow shut off her alarm reluctantly. By tomorrow at this time she’d be back in California, and the thought left her feeling dismayed and disappointed. Her life in Paris had been idyllic, for the most part, and it was going to be difficult to say good-bye to that. And, she had to admit, to Spike. Sure, he could be a pain in the ass at times, and even downright frightening at others, but he was someone she had come to care about, and someone she was comfortable with. Going from her peaceful life in Paris to the alarming uncertainty of Sunnydale was something she didn’t want to dwell on too much, for fear that she might not get on that plane.

But if her visit from the First had told her nothing else, it told her that she needed to go back. That her being in Sunnydale made a difference, and that it might be the thing that tipped the scale to their advantage.

She showered quickly and got dressed, grabbing a quick bite to eat before calling a cab in the silence of the empty living room. Spike’s door was closed, but she was sure he was inside. Probably awake. And probably aware that she was getting ready to leave.

‘But he isn’t coming out to say good-bye, now, is he?’ a malicious little voice inside her head whispered. Apparently Spike had made his opposition clear, and was not interested in having any further conversation on the matter.

Willow hovered outside his door for a moment, her hand inches from the knob. Indecision filled her, and she knew that if she left without saying anything to him, she would probably regret it. The honking cab made the decision for her, and she grabbed her suitcases and headed out the door, leaving her regrets behind her.


Chapter Seventeen: Murder in our Midst

Willow was less fresh than she had hoped to be when her plane touched down in Los Angeles. Intercontinental flights in coach were not nearly as comfortable as being on a chartered plane, which was how she had gotten to London in the first place. But Willow didn’t think she had any cause for complaint, considering that she hadn’t paid for the ticket in the first place. Nonetheless, she was tired and cranky, and—she feared—a little stinky, when she got off the plane.

Wesley met her at the baggage carousel, and they exchanged appraising glances, each checking out the differences that time brought about in the other.

“I like that whole ‘Marlboro Man’ thing you’ve got going, Wesley. It looks good on you.” She smiled, letting him know that she was teasing. At least in part. The new look *did* look good on him, though.

“And look at you, Willow. You’ve grown up to be quite a fetching young lady. Why, it seems like just yesterday we were in Sunnydale, facing off against evil. Me, a Watcher in good standing, and you—”

“Jeez, man, get a room.”

Willow turned and smiled at the handsome man behind Wes. “Hi. You must be Gunn.”

“I must be,” he agreed solemnly, his seriousness dispelled by the glint of humor in his eyes.

“I suppose we should find Willow’s suitcase and head back to the hotel,” Wes said. “I confess that I feel a bit uneasy about leaving Angelus there, even if he is...contained. And then there’s the additional concern about Connor...”

“Connor?” Willow asked, picking up on the nervousness in Wes’ voice. She had heard about the people that Angel worked with in a ‘through the grapevine’ sort of way, which was how she had figured out who Gunn was, but she was reasonably sure she hadn’t heard that name before. “Oh, those are mine,” she added, as her suitcases went by on the carousel.

“Man, have I got a story for you,” Gunn told her as he hefted one of her suitcases from the carousel. “It’ll make the trip through L.A.—damn, what the hell you got in these?” he asked, interrupting himself. “Books or rocks. Better be books.”

Willow smiled a little sheepishly and then shrugged. “What can I say? You can take the girl out of the library, but you can’t take the library out of the girl.” She was silent for a moment. “Huh, that sounds dumb, does it? It sounded much better in my head.”

Gunn just shook his head ruefully and grabbed the suitcases. “Where’s a Slayer when you need one?” he muttered.

---

On the way to the hotel they brought Willow up to speed on the cast of characters at Angel Investigations, and gave her a quick rundown on the problem that they had with Angel’s soul. Or, more precisely, the absence of the jar containing his soul.

“Okay, I know it sounds tricky,” Willow said, “but I think I’ve got an idea.”

Wes was driving, while Gunn rode shotgun, wincing or rolling his eyes every block or two. At Willow’s pronouncement, Gunn’s attention shifted to the back seat, where Willow was excitedly explaining her plan.

“Instead of trying to find the Muo-Ping, why don’t we just break it? Then the soul is floating free again, ready to be called into the Orb and then sent back into Angel.”

Silence met her suggestion, and then, “Damn, she’s good.” Willow was warmed by the respect in Gunn’s voice, but was careful not to let it show.

“I told you she could figure this out,” Wes said smugly. “Not only does she have a fresh mind, but she’s incredibly intelligent.”

“Just imagine what I could do with a good night’s sleep under my belt,” Willow added cheerfully, blithely ignoring the fact that they were talking about her as if she wasn’t even there.

“So, Willow. Any idea how we could break the Muo-Ping?” Wes’ tone was all business now. As a former Watcher, his mind was busy trying to come up with ideas of his own.

“Well...” she was silent for several moments, her eyes closed, but then they popped open. “Delothrian’s Arrow,” she said, smiling proudly.

“And for those of us who aren’t up on that big magic stuff?” Gunn asked.

“Of course,” Wes agreed. “It’s perfect.” He took a corner on two wheels, accelerating wildly in his excitement. “It doesn’t even need to know where the target is.”

---

Once Willow had figured out the ‘how,’ the rest of it was quite easy. As soon as they arrived at the hotel, she got to work.

Fred circled the lobby, carrying a candle and ringing a bell. The sound reverberated inside Willow’s body, and magic muscles that had mostly lain dormant these last several months began to flex and stretch. It felt good, and she couldn’t help her satisfied smile.

“OK, now all I gotta do is contact the spirit world, harness the Delothrian ebb, and focus it through my little marble of doom here,” she showed them the small metal ball she held loosely in her hand, “and we'll restore the Muo-Ping's entropic equilibrium.”

Gunn, who seemed a bit unnerved by it all, wanted confirmation in a language he could understand. “The jar goes smash?”

“Smash-o-crash,” she confirmed, grinning.

He nodded, heading for the door leading downstairs. “All I need to know. I'll be downstairs in case the Prince of Darkness wakes up.”

“You ready?” Wes asked Willow, his gaze eager but his tone cautious.

“Yep.”

Willow’s eyes widened as an orange bolt of energy shot through the room, sending her sliding across the floor. She hit the far wall with a thud that reverberated through her body, leaving her wincing in pain and momentarily short of breath.

“Stay your hand, witch! You will not interfere with what must come to pass.”

The words came from nowhere and everywhere, echoing through her head and sending the hairs on the back of her neck straight up. Willow tried to appear unconcerned, but even she had to admit that something in that voice frightened her.

Getting slowly to her feet, fighting fear and pain every inch of the way, Willow mumbled, “Invadoria disparu!”

“You think to banish me?” the voice replied, sounding annoyed and incredulous.

Willow turned to Wes. “There’s somebody in my head.”

“As long as the soul is under my protection, it will never be freed,” the voice vowed.

Throwing her head to the sky, Willow replied, “Vetsche invadoria disparu!” She could feel the power as it surged through her in waves, looking for its target.

“He's enormously powerful,” Wes told her, drawing her attention back to the here and now. “It's the dead Beast's master. He contacted Angelus the same way.” His voice sounded like the softest whisper in comparison to the booming tones of the Beast’s master, and Willow had to concentrate to make out the words over the din in her head.

“He wants to stop us from getting the soul,” Fred agreed, struggling to keep up with her part in the ritual.

Willow could feel the changes in her body, and knew that if she possessed a mirror, it would show a woman with eyes of ebony. Magic flowed through her freely, filling the empty places inside of her and making her feel whole again. For a moment she listened to the little voice inside of her that warned her of the darkness in her soul, but in her heart she knew that this magic was not dark; it was pure and light and *good*.

Filled with a new sense of certainty, she held out her hand, watching as the small sphere she held began to float and glow. “Open the window. Fill this stone. Inside, outside. Two made one,” she chanted.

Another blast of energy knocked her to her knees. She heard people around her, talking about her, inquiring about her welfare, but she ignored it all, concentrating on the energy within her. “Alesh ashtoreth!” she commanded, smiling as the ground began to shake.

Suddenly an apparition appeared above them, a demonic head that growled and shrieked, its voice sending chills straight down their spines. They exchanged glances, their eyes returning to Willow when nothing else happened.

“Ignore it,” she told them, disregarding the vision howling over their heads as if it didn’t exist. “Find your target. Leave my side,” she instructed, watching with satisfaction as the small sphere in her hand zipped away for parts unknown. And then, with emphasis, “Geth na haroth castellum tol.”

Silence greeted her. “Break the glass,” she called out, hoping for a sign that this was working.

Nothing.

“Let loose the soul!”

And it was done. No big bells tolled, no flashes of lightning split the sky, but Willow could *feel* his soul out there in the ether, just waiting to be captured and returned to its rightful owner.

“So,” Fred asked, a trifle uncertainly, “now Angel's soul is just floating around out there?”

Willow nodded, her mind already leaping nimbly to the next part of their plan. “Yeah, until I can channel it into the Orb of Thessulah.”

“Well let’s get that sucker back where it belongs,” Fred urged, casting an uneasy eye around the lobby, as if expecting Armageddon to rain down on them. Again.

“Ready when you are,” Willow agreed, taking the other woman’s hands. A brief flash of the past reared its head; Tara’s hands were different from Fred’s--softer, with longer fingers. It had been quite a while since she’d held another woman’s hands. She thrust the thought aside, labeling it unimportant and distracting.

Fred looked down at the book and began to read the words. “Quod perditum est invenietur...”

“Nisi mort. Nisi al finitei. Te invoc, spirit al trecerii...” Willow replied, feeling the magic inside her begin to build again as she spoke the familiar phrases.

The words continued, flowing easily and without effort as if she’d said them a hundred times before. Her concentration was so complete that she knew nothing of what went on around her until she heard the shouts from downstairs.

She finished chanting, and then she had that moment that seemed like forever, when she felt Angel’s soul pass through hers, as it raced towards his body.

With a sense of profound relief, Willow finally began to relax. She knew that the curse had been successful. Angel’s soul was once again where it belonged, and the demon was locked up tight in its little cage, never to be set free again. Or so she hoped. She would have to have a talk with Wes about that. The next time they decided that it was a good idea to let Angelus loose, they’d sure as hell better warn the rest of the world first!

---

Willow felt like she could sleep for a week. Between the long plane ride, the confrontation with the Beast’s master as she re-souled Angelus, and then the big dramatic fight scene between Faith and Connor—who was really asking for it, she had to admit—Willow was counting the minutes until they left for Sunnydale. Faith had already made it clear that she planned on doing the driving, and Willow was more than happy to let her.

They gathered in the lobby to say their good-byes. Willow’s luggage was already packed into the trunk of the rental car, although getting it there had resulted in her being the target of some good-natured ribbing. Now all that remained was for them to say good-bye.

Smothering a smile, she watched as Faith looked longingly at the door. Seemed the Slayer wasn’t any fonder of long good-byes than she was. The subject of good-byes sent her mind on a Spike-shaped tangent, and for a moment she lost herself in feelings of regret.

“Time goes by, Will,” Faith prompted her, foot tapping and eyes fixed hopefully on the door.

“Okay. Good. Wagons west. See you guys,” she said, sweeping the room with her gaze.

“Willow...”

Her eyes were brought back to Angel’s haunted face. Now that his soul was restored, she knew that her worries were over. But for him, the torment was just beginning. Again. It would probably be quite some time before the memories of what Angelus had done faded, and the accompanying pain lessened to a dull ache.

“He's going to tell you how much he owes you,” Faith explained, smirking.

Faith and Angel seemed to have a sort of rapport that had caught Willow by surprise. Because of the history between herself and Faith, she was treading lightly. Sure, everybody said Faith was reformed, and Willow was the last person to throw stones at someone who was trying to make progress along the path to redemption, but she still couldn’t forget the times that Faith had tried to kill her.

“Aw, don't mention it. I got a Slayer out of the deal, so we're even-steven,” she replied, adding, “I'll tell Buffy you said hi.”

Angel moved forward for an awkward hug, and then tensed in her arms. Willow was surprised to hear something that sounded like a growl. Before she had a chance to think about it, he released her and dragged her unceremoniously into an office, slamming the door behind him.

The office probably belonged to Angel, she surmised. Dark leather furniture with dark wood bookcases gave the room a depressing air, but Willow didn’t have long to study it before Angel whipped her around to face him, his hands biting into the flesh of her upper arms as he shook her.

“Explain yourself,” he growled, searching her eyes for something, although she had no idea what.

“Huh?”

“Spike. You’ve been with him. Explain.” Barely contained fury danced in his eyes and in the cold, hard lines of his face.

Spike. Of course, Willow thought. Spike had mentioned earlier that Angel would be able to smell him on her. In the excitement of the day, she had forgotten about that completely. Taking a step back and shrugging out of Angel’s grip, she stared back at him.

“I was living with Spike. In Paris. He helped to keep me safe when the Council wanted me dead. After I, uh, tried to end the world.”

Angel expressed no surprise at her confession of attempted world-endage, so she assumed that someone had filled him in at some point. “But the Council has been gone for months. Why didn’t you come home? Why did you stay with *him*?”

Willow shrugged. “Giles wanted me to stay away until he really needed me, I guess. And I really didn’t have anywhere else to go. Spike and I get along, so...we just sort of stayed together.”

“He can be very charming,” Angel allowed, although the words sounded like an insult instead of a compliment as they dripped off his tongue. “Don’t let him fool you. If the chip was gone, he’d drain you in an instant and leave your body on Buffy’s doorstep.”

“Yes, he can be charming. He can also be a royal pain and a complete asshole,” she shot back, noting his surprised expression with satisfaction. “I lived with him for over three months, Angel. Even the best of liars can’t hide their nature for *that* long. Give me a little credit.”

“And yet you let him seduce you,” he accused, his eyes dark with fury. “I can smell him all over you, so don’t try to deny it.”

“I let him fuck me,” she corrected. “It was sex. We’re not star-crossed lovers separated by tragic circumstances, Angel. I knew what I was doing, and I went into it with my eyes open. I’m not some starry-eyed simpleton who believes every word a handsome man says to me.” She stared at him with an anger that matched his own. “God, just how naïve do you think I am?”

Angel stared at her for a moment before leaning in close and hissing angrily in her ear. “Naïve enough to disable his chip,” he said, his hands reaching out again to grab her arms and pull her closer.

There would be bruises tomorrow, she knew. His grip was tight and relentless, fueled by his anger. She stiffened as he slowly ran his nose along the skin of her neck, his hand releasing her shoulder and pulling down the collar of her shirt.

“He’s fed from you. Dozens of times. Hundreds, maybe.” His voice was soft and distracted, as if he had forgotten she was even in the room. “Why did you do it, Willow? And even more important, why are you still alive?”

She wrenched herself back, letting a little bit of her magic loose when he seemed disinclined to let go. Suddenly she was free, holding her arms around herself and staring at him from the corner of the office. His eyes were hooded, and he watched her as if she were prey. “I didn’t do anything,” she insisted, shaking her head and staring at him.

“Don’t lie to me, child,” he snarled, closing in on her fast.

Anger shone in his eyes, and the gold that flecked them told her that this was Angelus she was dealing with now.

“I didn’t do it,” she insisted, forcing herself to remain calm against his fury. “When Giles sent me away with him, it was already gone.”

“You let him fuck you, and feed from you, and yet you stand here before me without a bruise on your body. What magic did you use to ensnare him?” He towered over her, his hands careful not to touch her. Lesson learned, she thought, a little smugly.

She was struck by the strangeness of his question. Why hadn’t Spike killed her? She had no real answer to the question. “I don’t know. He just didn’t at the beginning, and then, later, I was able to defend myself well enough that he couldn’t; not that he tried.”

“I don’t understand,” he muttered, looking away from her as the gold in his eyes began to fade, giving way to a deep brown.

“He’s not the same person you used to know,” she told him, holding up her hand when she sensed he was about to protest. “I’m not saying he’s a knight in shining armor. He’s still...” she hated to say it, but knew she needed to be honest, “he’s still evil, I suppose. But he’s not the same sadistic killer he used to be. He’s...he’s mellowed, I suppose you could say. Not much, but a little bit.”

Angel appeared dubious, but faced with the fact that Willow was obviously still alive and well, and appeared to have her eyes wide open, he wasn’t sure what else he could say.

But Willow couldn’t leave it there. She had to know what he intended to do with the information he now possessed. “Are you going to tell Buffy?” she asked softly.

Shrugging his shoulders, Angel remained silent.

“If you do, Buffy will be distracted, thinking about Spike when she should be concentrating on what’s going on in Sunnydale. Or even worse, she’ll go after him. And he’ll kill her. He’s mellowed, but he’s not an idiot.”

“What if he comes after her?” Angel couldn’t help but ask.

“He won’t.”

“But if he did?” Angel pressed. “Where would your loyalties lie?”

She stared at him as if he’d hit her. “With Buffy, of course. I’d—I’d never do anything to hurt her, and I’d never let Spike hurt her either. Not if there was anything I could do about it. God, Angel, I can’t believe you even have to ask that!”

Instead of looking uncomfortable, Angel merely stared coolly at her. “I don’t feel like I know you anymore, Willow. I just want to make sure that I understand where your head is.”

“It’s the same place it’s always been, Angel. You can believe me or not.” Having said that, she headed for the door, breathing a sigh of relief when she realized he wasn’t going to stop her.

The whole gang was still gathered in the lobby, eyeing them both a bit curiously as they exited. “Okay, next stop Sunnydale?” she asked hopefully, looking at Faith.

“Sounds like a plan to me,” the Slayer agreed. “I’m driving.”

Willow swallowed hard as she followed Faith out the door. Facing an angry Angel had been scary. Driving with Faith? So much worse.


Chapter Eighteen: Easy To Kill

Willow stared out the car window as sign after sign flashed by, briefly illuminated by their headlights, and then gone in a flash. Sunnydale 80 miles. Sunnydale 68 miles. Sunnydale 53 miles. She tried not to think about where they were going, or what waited for her there.

The car was silent, except for the click, click, click of Faith’s fingernail as she tapped onto the steering wheel the beat of a song that only she could hear. Every so often she’d stop entirely, and her hand would inch towards the radio, but then she would change her mind and the clicking would start all over again.

Her nails were long and gracefully curved, and her polish was blood red and flawless. Willow wondered if they had manicurists in jail, or whether Faith had taken care of them herself. She thought about asking, but then decided it might be considered impolite to ask Faith anything about her time in jail.

“Bygones?”

The word broke the silence that had hung awkwardly between them since they left Los Angeles, and Willow was surprised to find Faith watching her, her expression a little mocking. But something about the way she held herself made Willow feel like maybe Faith took this seriously.

So she gave it some thought as well, studying the woman sitting next to her. She looked tired. And far older than the twenty-odd years that Willow knew she had lived. Years filled with lies, betrayals, and pain. Could someone who had been through that much actually be capable of change? She hoped so, for all their sakes.

“Sure, I tried to kill you,” Faith continued, when Willow remained silent, “but you tried to end the world, and you don’t see me holding a grudge. Neither one of us managed to pull it off, so why not call it even?”

Faith had a point. It wasn’t like Willow had any right to throw stones. “Sure,” she agreed, attempting to emulate Faith’s casual tone. She wondered if she should offer to shake on it or something, but decided that that might seem silly. “Um, as long as you don’t try to kill me again, we’re good.”

Her companion nodded once, and Willow took that as a promise and nodded back. Faith turned her eyes back to the road and before long the clicking noise started up again.

“Nervous?” Willow asked, taking a chance that their tentative truce gave her some sort of right to ask the question. “Because I really am.”

Faith gave her a sidelong glance that told her nothing, and for a moment Willow was afraid that she would receive no answer to her question.

“Just don’t know how it’ll be when I get back,” Faith answered tersely.

The reply was brief, but at least her nail had stopped its nervous clicking. That was progress of a sort, or so Willow hoped.

“Me either,” she admitted.

Faith snorted, giving Willow a full eye-roll. “You’re one of the gang. Sure, you made a mistake, shit happens. They’ll welcome you back with open arms.”

As much as she wanted to believe that it really could be that simple, Willow knew it wouldn’t be. “It’s not just the world-endage. I mean, sure, that’s a biggie. But what really bothers them is the ‘Spike’ thing.”

“Spike?” Faith’s curiosity was piqued; she sat up straighter and shot a sly smile at the redhead. “The euro-trash blond, evil vampire? That Spike?”

Willow frowned at the sudden interest and the curious appraisal in Faith’s eyes as they re-evaluated her. “Uh, yeah. But not so much with the evil these days. He had a chip put in his head by this government agency, and it kept him from killing. So, he helped us out, instead.” She carefully omitted the ending of Spike’s tale of Good Samaritan-ship, leaving Faith to draw her own conclusions, erroneous as they were, since the Slayer didn’t have all the facts. “Anyway, he took care of me after the Council went after me. And then, when they were destroyed, we just sort of stayed in Paris.”

A confused frown wrinkled Faith’s forehead. “So, if Spike’s one of the good guys now—relatively speaking—then why would your little friends have a problem with you two living together?”

Sighing, Willow turned in her seat and faced Faith. She wasn’t sure she wanted to tell this to her. But she had started the discussion, and it seemed unfair to say, ‘I trust you this much, but not that much.’

“Spike and Buffy were...dating.” She frowned. “I suppose you could call it that.”

Faith smirked. “The kind of dates that only happen in places with beds?” she asked slyly.

“Uh, not always with the bed,” Willow admitted, thinking back to something Buffy had mentioned about a time at the Doublemeat Palace.

The smile on Faith’s face got bigger and nastier. “First Angel and now Spike. One vampire is ‘true love,’ but two? Where I come from, they call that a fetish.”

Willow choked back a giggle, feeling a little disloyal to Buffy, but unable to deny the truth in Faith’s statement.

“So, what happened between Buffy doin’ the undead, and you ending up with him in Paris? Must be a story to tell there.”

“Yeah. But, uh, it’s kind of complicated.” Willow turned away from Faith, her thoughts returning to Spike. Now that the excitement of Los Angeles was over and done with, she was starting to think about him again. Starting to miss him, damn it. The strength of the longing took her by surprise, and she quickly shoved it somewhere far away where she could safely ignore it for now.

“Well, we’ve got,” Faith hesitated for a moment, her eyes watching a sign as it rolled past, “41 more miles until we reach Sunnydale. Should be just enough time for a complicated story.”

Knowing she was caught, Willow sat back in her seat and began to tell the tale.

---

“So, you brought Buffy back from the dead as an abusive bitch? Does that mean I’m the good Slayer now? That’s pretty wild.” Faith seemed amused, more than anything, after listening to Willow’s story about everything that had happened over the last couple of years.

Willow had to wince at the description of Buffy’s behavior. “It wasn’t her fault. I—I ripped her out of heaven. Can you even imagine how terrible that must’ve been?” she shot back, defensiveness making her tone sharp. “And then we all just expected her to act like she was her same old self. None of us knew that all this stuff was going on inside her. Only Spike figured out just how messed up she was.”

“Spike. And he used that info to...what? Seduce her?”

“He had feelings for Buffy,” Willow allowed, no longer feeling quite as comfortable with the conversation they were having. “He wanted her to feel the same way, and he thought—I don’t know. I don’t know what he thought. Maybe he was so desperate that he was willing to accept whatever she could give him.”

Faith was silent for a moment. “If he was so in love with her, then why didn’t he come back with you?”

Willow shifted in her seat, refusing to look at Faith. There was a certain amount of detachment in her voice, as if she was trying not to think too much about the subject. “Spike feels things deeply. He does. And even the strongest love can turn to hate. I think that’s what happened with Spike. He finally accepted that she would never allow herself to feel the same way that he did, and—his love turned to something darker.”

They were only a couple of miles outside of Sunnydale now, just north of Jackson Woods, and Willow was beginning to feel more and more uneasy as each mile rolled past.

Time seemed to stand still as they saw the body being shoved out the passenger door of the truck in front of them, but Faith was the first to react, bringing the car to a screeching halt just a foot or two away from the bundle that lay still at the side of the road.

“What the fuck?”

Willow took a quick look at the pickup in front of them, watching to see if it would stop, but all she could see was rapidly dwindling taillights. They were already too far away to see the license plate.

Before Willow had a chance to warn her to be careful, Faith was out of the car and leaning over the victim. Willow opened her door slowly, her eyes cautiously combing the area, just in case.

The victim was a girl, she noticed, looking around Faith to get as good of a view as she could. Young, she thought; tall and lanky, but more than that she couldn’t really tell.

When Faith stood up again, Willow could see the blood on her hands and shirt. Lots of blood. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment. “Put her in the back. We’ve got to get her to a hospital. Quick.”

“Yep. Guess I’m back in Sunnydale,” Faith said to nobody in particular as she bundled the girl into the back, carefully laying her out on the seat.

Five minutes later they were in Sunnydale, just a block away from the hospital. To Willow’s surprise, Faith stopped the car in an empty parking lot about a block away and got out, leaving the car idling.

“Slide over. You’re driving the rest of the way. I’ll head to Buffy’s house from here.”

At Willow’s surprised expression, Faith reminded her of a couple of hard facts. “I’m a wanted woman, right? Wes broke me out of jail. The cops are going to want to talk to whoever brings her in,” she added, pointing towards the back seat, “and it can’t be me.”

Nodding her understanding, Willow slid across to the driver’s seat. “I’ll see you at Buffy’s. Be careful—I don’t know how safe it is at night anymore, even for a Slayer.”

“It’s five by five. See you there.”

---

The hospital was a blur of white and red and grey, and questions asked that Willow couldn’t answer. Thinking quickly, she concocted a story that was close enough to the truth, feeding it to the cop who yawned as he listened to her talk, and she wondered why he was even bothering to go through the motions. He’d never catch whoever had been driving that pickup truck, and they both knew it. The injured girl would become just another statistic in a long list of Sunnydale casualties. But protocol demanded that he ask her questions, so he asked. And she answered as best she could.

An hour later the cop was gone, and Willow was still waiting for answers. “How’s she doing?” she asked a nurse who rushed from the operating room, her weariness written clearly on her face. They had immediately taken the girl into surgery, and since then new information had become scarce. Willow was trying to be patient, but after almost an hour, there had to be someone who could tell her something. The fact that they were still in there operating meant that the girl was alive, but other than that, who knew?

The nurse turned and stared at her for a moment, looking as though she were having a little trouble changing mental gears. “Oh, you brought her in, right?”

Willow nodded. “I just felt like, well, like someone should be here with her. Since she doesn’t have anyone else.” As far as she was aware, no identification had been found, and no next of kin was on their way.

Nodding her understanding, the nurse gave her a sympathetic smile. “She’s holding her own, I can tell you that much. I think we’ve managed to stop the bleeding, and they’re closing her up. She should be out and resting fairly soon. You can go up and sit with her if you’d like. She probably won’t wake up for several hours, though.”

She took the nurse at her word, and a half an hour later when they wheeled the girl upstairs to a room, Willow followed behind, pulling up a chair and grabbing a magazine she had purchased from the gift shop. She flipped through the pages idly, not really caring who Brad Pitt was rumored to be sleeping with, merely using the printed words to distract her from her thoughts.

Before long, the magazine slid to the floor as Willow’s thoughts drifted. Why was she really here, she wondered? Was it really because she wanted to help the girl who had been thrust so unceremoniously into her life? Or was she just trying to avoid Buffy and the rest of her friends?

Faith had no doubt made it to Buffy’s house already, and had probably told everybody about their little adventure. Would any of them come down to the hospital to see how she was doing? Or would they just wait for her to show up at Buffy’s house when she was ready?

An hour passed quickly enough, and then another. At some point she must have dozed off, because when she roused herself, a soft, pleading voice reached her ears.

“No, please. Please...don’t hurt me. Buffy, help me...” The girl thrashed slightly, as if trying to evade or escape someone.

Willow jerked upright in her chair, the pieces finally falling into place. Her strange need to see that this person was all right; the way that she had been literally thrown in front of them; and even the strange way that she seemed familiar, even though Willow had never seen her before.

She was a Potential.

The girl had fallen silent, apparently sinking back into that twilight between slumber and wakefulness, so Willow quickly went looking for a phone. This obviously had something to do with Buffy, and the sooner her friend knew about it, the better. Besides, it might be a good idea to have some firepower around, just in case whoever did this came back to finish the job.

---

Willow waited nervously outside the door to the hospital room, her eyes shifting uneasily from one end of the corridor to the other. Now that she knew who the victim was, she had an uneasy feeling that something evil was watching over them, laughing at their every move. It was unsettling and made her feel even more on guard than before.

When Buffy and Xander finally arrived, they wasted little time on hellos. Xander gave her a smile and a quick hug, and Buffy gave her an uncertain nod, and then breezed past them into the hospital room.

“Yep, she looks like a Potential. Not that they have anything stamped on their foreheads or anything,” Xander said, “but there’s a type to them, I guess.”

Willow watched as Buffy sat down beside the girl, taking her hand and studying the steady rise and fall of her chest. “What did she say again?”

“Just something along the lines of, ‘Please don’t hurt me.’ And then she mentioned your name.”

Xander put a hand on Willow’s arm, trying to draw her out into the corridor. She took one last look at Buffy and the Potential and then followed him.

“You look tired, Will. And I know you still need to turn the rental car in. I’ll follow you to the lot, and then give you a lift back to Chez Summers, if you want.” A slightly embarrassed look crossed his face. “You’ll probably end up sharing with someone; spare rooms are packed three or four girls deep.”

“But what about Buffy? I don’t want to leave her...”

“I think Buffy’s okay. Maybe I’ll have one of the other Potentials come back and keep her company.” He gave her an appraising glance, taking in the circles under her eyes and the weary way that she moved. “When’s the last time you had any sleep?”

Willow thought back through all the drama since she’d arrived in the U.S., trying to figure out how many days it had been since her last full night’s sleep in Paris. Between the time changes and the days that blended together, she finally gave up. Sighing, she looked up to meet Xander’s eyes. “Sorry. I have absolutely no idea.”

He gave her a goofy smile and draped an arm around her shoulder, turning her towards the exit. “That’s what I thought. Let’s move your luggage into my car, and turn your car in. Then we can find you a bed, and let you get some sleep. Giles and Buffy have a whole ‘council of war’ thing planned tonight. Much fun will be had. And cookies,” he added with another grin.

Willow tried to give him an answering smile, but she was just too tired to make it believable. Now that things were in capable hands—hands that weren’t hers—her energy level seemed to have dropped down to nothing, and it was all she could do to drag her weary body to the car.

By the time she and Xander pulled into the driveway of Buffy’s house, Willow was out like a light.

---

Spike’s glowering gaze swept through the apartment, seeing little to brighten his mood. She was gone. Really gone. And she hadn’t even said good-bye

The fact that she’d left nothing of substance behind told him that she didn’t intend to come back, and for some unaccountable reason, that left him feeling angry, and—not that he’d ever admit it to anyone—a little hurt. After all, they’d been together for months. Roommates, lovers, maybe even friends sometimes. And she couldn’t even be bothered to say good-bye. The righteous indignation began to build as he thought about all the things he’d done for her, and all the times he’d talked himself out of killing her, even though it would have been pitifully easy.

And now here he was, left alone in Paris, bored out of his mind, and missing the taste of her scrumptious—and always easily accessible—blood. The thought of going out to hunt didn’t appeal at the moment. Right now, he wanted to taste *her* blood. To feel *her* arms pulling him tighter. To hear *her* moans of satisfaction. Some anonymous stranger just wasn’t going to do it for him.

The days stretched in front of him like an endless, empty void. Something was going to have to be done, he thought, as he left the apartment he still thought of as theirs, slamming the door shut behind him.

---

Redheads were plentiful in Paris if you knew where to look. Spike did. He also knew how to play them, charming them to the point that they would invite him into their homes without a second thought.

He killed a dozen of them over the next couple of days, always looking for one whose blood had just the right mixture of darkness and light, sweet and sour, fear and desire.

Sometimes they screamed when they saw his demon; sometimes they didn’t.

None of them tasted like her.


Chapter Nineteen: The Underdog

“Willow? Are you—could you wake up? Willow?”

Giles would have said that Willow was sleeping like the dead, but since Spike had always been quick to wake when he fell asleep during research gatherings, it wasn’t quite true. Seeing no change, he reached out and grabbed her shoulder, shaking her lightly in an attempt to rouse her.

“Jus—nothr—minmom,” she mumbled, waving her hands in front of her face. “Puppies,” she added quite distinctly, before turning away from him and falling back to sleep.

Well, at least he knew that she was still alive. Although, her periodic soft whimpers and snuffles could have told him that as well.

“I know you’re tired, Willow, but I need you to wake up.” Shaking her shoulder was beginning to accomplish what his words had not been able to. He heard her sigh softly, mumble something unintelligible, and then turn around to face him, her eyes opening slowly.

“Hi, Giles,” she murmured groggily. She was confused for a moment as she glanced around Dawn’s bedroom, but then things clicked into place. Running a hand across her face, she tucked some loose hair behind her ear and looked up at him. “How long was I asleep?” She was still quite tired, but Giles wouldn’t have woken her up without a good reason, so she did her best to shake the cobwebs out of her brain.

“I’m sorry, Willow. Only four or five hours, perhaps? But there have been...developments. I need your help.”

The expression on his face chilled her to the bone. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. “What is it, Giles? What happened?” Panic began to creep into her voice as she imagined dozens of scenarios that might have left one of her friends injured—or even worse—dead.

“It’s Xander,” he said quietly, looking decades older than he ever had before. “I’ll tell you the whole story in the car, but right now you need to get dressed so we can go to the hospital.”

As soon as he said the words, she was on her feet, the last vestiges of sleep frozen away by the cold hand of fear clenched around her heart. “How bad is it? Is he going to...to be okay?” Please, let him be okay, she thought, as she ripped through her suitcase, looking for something to wear, finally coming up with a mock turtleneck t-shirt and a pair of stretch pants.

She ducked into the bathroom, threw the clothes on, and splashed some water over her face, letting the cold water cool the panic that was spreading through her with every beat of her heart.

Giles’ voice reached her through the door. “He’ll be okay, but...” and by the small hitch in his voice, she knew the worst was yet to come, “there will be consequences. He...he lost an eye. The doctors are unable to do anything about that. He’ll have reduced vision for the rest of his life.”

Willow felt her back hit the bathroom wall, the towel rack cutting into her skin. She didn’t feel the pain, couldn’t feel it. There wasn’t any time for petty discomforts, not when Xander needed her.

‘I could fix him,’ that dark little voice inside reminded her. ‘I could make him better—so much better.’ But it was *wrong*, she reminded herself. She needed to remember that fate had its own plan for Xander, and he had to travel the road that he was destined to travel. Her ‘help,’ as well-meaning as it might be, would only hurt him in the long run, not help him.

The only thing she could do for him was to be there at his side while he recovered. But it just seemed so inadequate. Her eyes felt hot and wet, and soon silent tears coursed down her cheeks, until she reached up and quickly wiped them away.

Falling apart wasn’t going to help anyone, especially Xander, she reminded herself angrily. So instead, she ran a brush through her sleep-mussed hair and then threw the door open. Giles was there on the other side, looking worried.

“Are you—do you feel up to this?”

She smiled wearily, touched at his concern, but also determined to get on with it and get to the hospital. “I’m fine. I’m not going to do anything magick-y or anything. I’ve—well, I’ve learned that lesson.”

Some of Giles’ relief showed on his face, but before she had a chance to react to it, he was urging her down the stairs.

A dozen young girls were in the living room talking quietly, some attending to the minor cuts and scrapes of others. The girls watched them with big, curious eyes. They hadn’t been around when Willow had arrived earlier, and all the impression she was able to form now was that they were young. And scared. Fear lurked in their eyes, giving them the look of prey that had just barely escaped the predator’s clutches. Whatever had happened tonight must have been bad.

Giles cleared his throat, drawing the attention of the room. “Buffy will be back within the hour. Until then, Kennedy is in charge. Post guards,” he insisted, turning his attention to a tall girl with long, dark hair, and an arrogant attitude that Willow recognized immediately, even though she’d never spoken to the girl. “The rest of you...try and get some sleep. I’ll be back in a little while.”

---

Willow listened with growing horror as Giles told her what had happened that evening. “So, Buffy led them into a trap. And an obvious trap, at that.” She shook her head angrily, tears threatening to spill from her eyes. “Why didn’t you wake me up, Giles? I could have helped. I could have...I could have done something. I don’t know what, but maybe I could have helped in some way.”

Giles sighed as he guided the car through the empty streets of Sunnydale. It was late at night—morning, really—and the town had a deserted feel to it that Willow hadn’t noticed earlier.

“Hindsight always comes just a bit too late, Willow. Buffy thought—and I agreed—that you and I should stay at the house with some of the younger girls, just in case the trap was actually a distraction meant to leave us alone and unprotected. If that had happened, you and I could have held our own against whatever the First sent, until Buffy and the Potentials got back.”

Willow rested her forehead against the cool window, closing her eyes and trying to clear her mind. Giles was right, and she knew it. He and Buffy had done their best to cover all the bases. It was just that...they were the good guys. And the good guys always won. Sure, there were bumps in the road, scrapes and bruises suffered from time to time, but this was big. This was a wound they couldn’t dress, and then wait for time to heal. This was Xander, with limited vision, for the rest of his life.

“It’s not fair,” she thought, realizing too late that she had actually spoken aloud.

Giles’ bitter laughter made her flinch. “Life has never been fair. I don’t know why you children keep thinking it should be.”

Willow couldn’t help but feel that somehow this was her fault. Maybe if she had been at the meeting, she could have come up with something. Or suggested a better alternative. If only...

---

Second time here in as many days, she thought as she stood at the door to Xander’s room. The Potential—Shannon was her name, according to Giles—had been released, and Buffy was taking her home. It was evidence of fate’s sick sense of humor that Xander was now in the same room, albeit in a different bed. Several of the other Potentials were in the hospital as well, but Willow didn’t know them, and had no interest in seeing them; she was here for Xander.

He looked young, and incredibly innocent and helpless, as he lay there on the white, crisp hospital bedding. The subtle rise and fall of his chest was what gave her hope, but everything else was closing in, and fear and panic were making a comeback. If only he would open his eyes—eye—and tell her one of his feeble jokes. Maybe then she’d feel a bit better. Not that this was about her, she reminded herself. When Xander did wake up, he was going to need a lot of support. And she’d be there to help him, every step of the way.

Giles had left to find a doctor, so Willow took the chair at the head of the bed and grabbed Xander’s hand, holding it tightly, wishing she could offer more than just moral support. ‘It would be so easy,’ the seductive voice in her head reminded her, but she shook it away, concentrating instead on the planes and ridges of Xander’s face. Letting go of his hand, she ran her fingers lightly along his cheek, losing herself in her memories of him.

It almost broke her heart when he woke up, gazing around the room with a look of such confusion that she wanted to take him into her arms and hug him. “What happened?” he asked, his voice slurred from sleep and pain medication.

Willow was saved the necessity of answering by the arrival of Giles, along with a doctor and nurse, who kindly but firmly shooed her and Giles into the hall so that they could talk to Xander alone. While she hated the thought of leaving him, a part of her was glad that she had not had to explain what was happening. She didn’t know if she could have withstood the look on his face when he heard the news.

“Did the doctors tell you anything?” she asked Giles quietly, fighting the urge to peek around the door and listen to the conversation going on in Xander’s room.

Giles turned away from her, staring down the quiet hallway. “Yes. Xander is physically healthy, other than the missing eye. They will want to keep him tonight, and probably tomorrow night, but after that he is free to leave. If only there was somewhere else...”

Willow understood. “Somewhere safe he could go, instead of back to Buffy’s house. I know.” She placed her hand on his arm, wishing she could do something to help, and at the same time feeling incredibly useless because she couldn’t. “He would never agree to leave.”

“You’re right, of course. I just wish—”

But whatever else it was that he might have wished for, she would never know; the doctor and nurse were leaving Xander’s room, closing the door softly behind them.

“Can I go back in and see him?” she asked hopefully.

The two strangers exchanged a glance, a silent communication of some sort passing between them, and then the doctor nodded. “We increased his morphine, so he should be asleep soon. But you’re welcome to sit with him. Just try to keep him calm, and let him rest.”

Willow nodded solemnly and then pushed the door open, creeping quietly inside.

“I’m going to check on some of the other girls first,” Giles told her, so she let the door swing shut behind her.

Xander was awake, but she could tell from looking at him that his consciousness was becoming fuzzy around the edges as the increased medication did its work and sent him slipping towards sleep. He struggled to sit up when he saw her, regardless, but she shook her head at him. “Relax. Don’t get up on my account.”

He gave her a tentative smile and settled back, turning his head on the pillow so that he faced her when she sat down next to him. “Hey, Will. Sorry we had to cancel the Welcome Home party, but we can always do it tomorrow, right?”

Willow giggled softly, grabbing his hand and giving it a little squeeze. “You know me, I’m not big on parties. Remember Buffy’s last birthday? The one we were afraid was going to last forever?” She shook her head ruefully. “Besides, once we whip the First’s ass, we can have a big ol’ “We Kicked Demon Booty” party. Sound like a plan?” The enthusiasm in her voice was a trifle forced, but she hoped he wouldn’t notice.

“Deal,” he agreed, yawning.

She watched as he fought to stay awake, quickly losing the battle. “Goodnight, Xan,” she whispered, as his hand released hers and his face smoothed into the peaceful oblivion of sleep.

---

Willow dozed off at some point, her dreams filled with vampires, both good and bad. Spike was featured heavily on the ‘good’ side, although she was sure he would deny that designation to the end of time. Now that the initial craziness of her arrival had passed, her subconscious seemed to be taking the opportunity to remind her of what she had lost.

She missed him. Missed his charm, his belligerence, his kisses, even his jokes. She missed the way he called her on it when she sank into self-pity, and the way that he could trick her into smiling, no matter how much she didn’t want to.

If only things had turned out differently. But it was inevitable, really, that she should return home, and he should remain in Europe. After all, it wasn’t as if he had a soul, or even a chip. He was a vampire again, and the last thing he would want to do was spend his time hanging out with a goody-goody white-hat like her.

She came fully awake, sending her sleepy Spike-thoughts back to the land of fantasy where they belonged. Playing ‘what could have been’ was a fine game for children, but she was an adult now. Time to start acting like one.

Light poured in from the one window in the room, telling her that it was late morning. Xander was still sleeping, she was relieved to note, his face turned towards her the same as it had been last night. A lock of hair had fallen across his forehead, and her hand itched to brush it back, but instead she decided to let it be.

Movement off to her left caught her eye, and she was surprised to see Faith sitting in a chair by the door, quietly flipping through a magazine.

“Thought I’d come and sit for a while so you could get some rest, but you were already resting,” Faith whispered, her smile a bit tentative, as if unsure of her welcome. “How’s he doing?”

Willow shrugged, offering Faith an uneasy half-smile. “He’s been asleep almost since I got here. They put him on some heavy-duty pain medication, but they’re planning on easing up on it later today. He’ll probably be released by tomorrow morning.”

“What does a guy have to do to get some peace and quiet around here?” Xander grumbled sleepily.

Faith smirked at him, while the glance that Willow gave him was a bit more somber.

“If you’re looking for peace and quiet, I think we can find you a room down in the basement,” Faith offered.

“The basement?” Willow repeated, a little confused. “But that’s where the morgue—oh, I get it. Joke.” She bit her lip, unhappy about not getting the joke, but then lightened up and smiled a bit.

“And she’s the smart one of the gang?” Faith asked Xander, shaking her head in mock dismay.

“Hey!” Willow objected, throwing herself into the spirit of their banter. “Sleep deprived girl, here. Not at my sharpest, intellectually-speaking. Cut me some slack, okay?”

They all laughed at her protestations, the sound of laughter making them feel like old friends for just a moment. Or maybe new friends. Stranger things had happened.

Xander was punching buttons on the remote control for his bed, trying to get into something resembling a sitting position. When things were adjusted to his satisfaction, he turned to Faith. “So, are you getting all settled in at Buffy’s? Everything, uh, working out?”

Willow suspected that what Xander was probably trying to ask, in his own not-so-subtle way, was whether she and Buffy were getting along. But Xander had always felt awkward around Faith. What was it with him and domineering women, she had to wonder.

Faith shrugged off the question. “Lots of chicks, not enough privacy. Reminds me of somewhere else I’ve been recently.”

“The Big House? What was that like?” he asked, displaying, yet again, his inability to understand the concept of subtlety.

Willow expected the response to be cutting and angry, or perhaps just silence. But Faith surprised her.

“You know how it is, hundreds of women locked up together.” She gave him a lewd grin, spreading her legs slightly in the chair, and watching with satisfaction when Xander’s eye followed her every move. “You wanna know what we did all night, just to pass the time?”

Xander gulped, his smile a little strained. “Mom and dad had Cinemax. I think I’ve seen enough soft-core porn to guess.”

Laughing, Faith stood up and dropped her magazine on the floor, slinking towards the bed in an almost predatory manner. She held her hand in front of him, wiggling her brightly tipped fingers in his face. “Manicures. I even learned a trade while I was away.”

The disappointment on Xander’s face had both girls laughing. “Oh, Xander,” Willow said, gasping between giggles, “the look on your face!”

“I could do you,” she told Xander, grinning at the double entendre. “Give you a nice clear coat.”

By then, neither woman was able to control herself. And the louder their laughter got, the deeper Xander scowled. “I thought you were supposed to be cheering me up,” he complained, his voice almost a whine.

Willow was immediately contrite, her laughter gone and her expression serious. “Sorry, Xan.”

Faith merely rolled her eyes at him. “I’m here for the peace and quiet. You know how noisy that place is? All those girls...and they never shut up, do they?”

Xander shook his head. “Nope, not really. Most guys would pay good money to be surrounded by so many females. Me? Well, it’s a case of ‘be careful what you wish for.’” He reached awkwardly for the glass of water on the table next to him and took a pull on the bright green straw. “What’s going on now, anyway? Everyone else okay? Did I miss anything? Anything interesting, I mean?”

Faith shook her head, sidestepping the question about everyone else. He would know who had been hurt and who hadn’t, soon enough. “You haven’t missed much. Giles and Dawn are trying to dig up dirt on the preacher-man. Caleb. I think they found something about a mission up in Gilroy. They sent Anya and Andrew up there to check it out.”

“Poor Anya,” Xander snickered. “Or maybe poor Andrew. I’m not sure which one I feel sorrier for.”

Faith arched an eyebrow. “I don’t know either of them very well, but I already hate Andrew. My sympathy is with Anya.”

Willow kept silent, unwilling to delve into the ‘Andrew’ issue with Xander. Instead, she reached into her bag and brought out the playing cards she had picked up at the gift store. “Anyone up for a game?”

“I’m outta here,” Faith replied. “Looks like you two have things under control. I’m gonna head back to home base and see what I can do to help. You’ll give someone a call when you’re ready to go home?” she asked, glancing at Willow.

“Sure,” Willow said, wincing when she turned her head and the muscles of her neck screamed in protest. She brought her hand up to knead the back of her neck. “I’m looking forward to sleeping in a bed tonight.”

“Good luck with that,” Faith told her, the comment reminding Willow that the competition for a bed was probably pretty fierce at the Summers house these days.

“Hell, I’d settle for a flat space of any sort,” Willow decided.

“That, I think we can manage,” Faith replied, giving Xander a wink as she headed out the door.

“Okay, what game are we playing?” At the look on Xander’s face, she felt it only fair to add a warning. “And if you say ‘strip poker,’ I’m going to hit you so hard that they’re going to keep you in here for a week.”

Xander gave her a goofy grin, his usual good humor almost completely restored, for the moment at least. Then he dropped the bomb on her. “Maybe it’s just me, but don’t you think redemption-seeking Faith is pretty damn hot?”

“Oh, god, Xander! Get a grip. I mean,” she paused for a moment, thinking it over, “yeah, okay, she’s kinda hot. But *so* not my type anymore—ever, I mean. And you’re in a hospital, for heaven’s sake. Try to keep it in your pants, okay?”

“But I’m not wearing any pants,” he reminded her with a smirk, barely managing to duck out of the way when she tried to pinch his cheek.

“I am *so* gonna kick your ass once you get out of that bed.”


Chapter Twenty: Three Act Tragedy

Willow watched in silence as Xander’s nurse did a final check of his paperwork, presenting it to him on a clipboard as he sat in his hospital bed, patiently signing form after form. It seemed odd that someone who looked just a few years older than they did could be a nurse and have her whole career figured out already, but the young woman had looked so competent when she checked Xander’s vital signs that Willow couldn’t help but be a little jealous that this person already had many of the question marks in life figured out.

In contrast, she and Xander seemed to drift through life these days without even a hint at how things would end up. It was a little unsettling, to say the least.

She had to admit that Xander was handling his new circumstances quite a bit better than she was. His customary good humor was re-asserting itself, and as he signed the papers he made a little joke, reassuring Willow that he was just fine.

The previous evening he had regaled Buffy and several of the Potentials with a highly embellished version of how he got his injury, with him playing the part of the dashing hero. It had been fun to listen to, even if, from what she had been told, it had very little to do with what had actually happened.

She knew that he was hurting inside, both physically and emotionally, but he seemed to be unwilling to own up to it, putting on a typical happy-go-lucky Xander face. She just hoped that when everything finally hit him she would be around to help him pick up the pieces.

Buffy had seemed uncharacteristically withdrawn last night, and Willow wondered what kind of thoughts were swirling around in her friend’s mind. Once Xander was settled in at Buffy’s house, she and Buffy would definitely be having a chat.

She glanced over at Xander, watching as the nurse retrieved the clipboard and left the room. Willow gave him a quick smile and slipped out as well.

Following the woman to the nurses’ station, Willow looked around in surprise at the deserted corridors. If she didn’t know any better, she might have guessed that they were the only people in the hospital. But surely that couldn’t be true.

“It sure is quiet here,” Willow remarked.

The nurse nodded, pulling off her lab coat and picking her purse up off the floor. “I guess you haven’t really noticed, since you’ve been with your friend the last couple of days. The town has pretty much cleared out.” She looked around, as if uncomfortable about what she was going to tell Willow. When she resumed speaking, her words were quieter, and tinged with a hint of desperation. “I’ve lived here for four years now, and I’ve seen some pretty weird stuff. But this? This is different. Something’s in the air. Something bad. Everyone is gone, and even the patients who shouldn’t be moved have been taken up to San Miguel General. That’s why it’s so quiet here. After you and your friend leave, I’m locking the doors behind us and leaving town.”

She gave one last look down the corridor, as if she was saying goodbye, before turning back to Willow. “If you’re smart, you’ll do the same.”

Willow looked into the concerned, friendly face of the nurse. She seemed so ordinary, but if *she* knew something bad was coming, then things were really bad. “I’ll call for a ride and we’ll be out of your hair,” she said quietly, wishing she could take the advice that was so freely offered, but knowing that she couldn’t. Right at this moment she’d give just about everything she owned to be back in Paris. With Spike. But that wasn’t the way you saved the world from evil.

She grabbed the phone on the nurse’s desk, punched in Buffy’s phone number, and waited for the ring. Instead of a ring, all she got was a busy signal. Frowning, she hung up, counted to twenty in her head, and tried again.

Still a busy signal. Willow sighed, rolling her eyes. “Teenagers,” she said, giving the nurse an apologetic look. “I’m sure they’ll be off the phone soon. Or, I suppose I could call a cab.”

“You’re not going to find a cab in town. Trust me.” She hesitated a moment, and then shook her head. “I’ll tell you what. Get your friend up and ready to go, and I’ll meet you in front of the main entrance. I’ll drop you off on the way out of town. Unless...you’d like to go with me?”

Willow wanted to—oh, how she wanted to—but that wasn’t really an option. “There are people waiting for us,” she said quietly, her eyes drifting over to Xander’s room. “Hopefully we won’t be far behind you. Thanks for the ride though—we really appreciate it.”

Taking her at her word, the other woman grabbed her purse and headed for the elevators. “I’ll meet you down in front of the main entrance, then. Five minutes.”

Willow nodded, watching the nurse as she got into the elevator, and then returned to Xander’s room.

---

The city was deserted, just like she had been told. Not that Willow had doubted it, but the ride through an empty Sunnydale was just this side of freaky. Traffic lights still worked, lights were still on in most buildings, and everything else looked as normal as Sunnydale had ever looked. But in the ten minutes it took them to get from the hospital to Buffy’s house, they never saw a soul.

Something settled into Willow’s stomach as she watched empty street after empty street roll by. It was a sense that things here would never be the same again. Something big was going to happen, and in its aftermath, Sunnydale would never again be what it had been. She shivered, scooting closer to Xander as if hoping that a physical presence could stop the onward march of time.

Xander slipped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her against him awkwardly. “You feel it too?” he asked quietly.

She nodded, fighting the tears that threatened to spill.

As weird as Sunnydale was, it would always be home to her. It was where she had been born; where she had grown up; where she and Xander had met. Now, she had to wonder, was it the place where they would all die?

After what felt like an hour, but in reality was significantly less time, the car reached its destination. Goodbyes were said, and the nurse—Erin, as she had asked them to call her—pulled away, leaving them in front of Buffy’s house.

Where all hell was apparently breaking loose.

They slipped in through the front door, eyes widening at the scene before them. The living room was filled with Potentials, many of them looking like they weren’t in much better shape than Xander. One girl had an arm in a sling; another had a face covered with bruises. Faith, Giles, and Dawn were there as well. And Buffy stood in the middle of them like a shining beacon, trying to talk above all the chatter.

“We've spent all this time worrying about the seal and the hellmouth,” Buffy said, once she had their attention, turning in a circle to make eye contact with everyone. “Why isn't Caleb guarding them? Why is he camped out at the vineyard? The bad guys always go where the power is, right?” She got a few tentative nods of agreement, but mostly she was met with stony silence.

But the lack of response didn’t deter her. “So, if the seal was so important to Caleb and the First, they would be there right now. Instead, they're protecting the vineyard or something at the vineyard. I say it's their power, and I say it's time we go in and take it away from them.”

Faith stared at Buffy from across the room, arms crossed defensively in front of her. “Or, in the alternative, how 'bout...we don't? I mean, it's a neat theory, B, but I'm not going back in that place, not without proof, and neither should you and neither should they.”

Willow and Xander kept to the hallway, closing the door quietly behind them. This certainly wasn’t the welcome home party either of them had envisioned.

As they continued to listen the noise level rose again, the girls talking amongst themselves and taking sides. She noticed, a little uneasily, that most of them seemed to be siding with Faith. Then again, she supposed that made a certain amount of sense. Self-preservation usually kicked in at some point; if dying was so much damned fun, everyone would be doing it.

Buffy must have sensed that she was losing the crowd. “I’m not saying it’s going to be easy,” she began, before her voice was lost again in the surrounding din.

Faith took a couple of steps into the middle of the circle, looking around at the faces of the girls in the room with them. “Maybe it ends OK the way you wanna play it, but maybe it doesn't. And right now, I don't think I want you playin' the odds.”

Willow was surprised to see that Buffy seemed to be losing her cool. But, once she thought about it, it did make a certain amount of sense. Her friend had always called the shots. Even when they’d had doubts, they had followed her instincts. And in the past it had generally worked out for the best. But this time...this time someone was suggesting an alternative, and Buffy wasn’t dealing with it very well.

Giles jumped into the fray, but instead of supporting Buffy, Willow was surprised to hear him accuse her of tilting at windmills. Just what in the world had happened while she had been gone?

“I—I don't understand this,” Buffy said, nervously scanning the room in search of a friendly face. “For seven years, I've kept us safe by doing this—exactly this, making the hard decisions. And now, what—suddenly you're all acting like you can't trust me?”

The argument continued, accusations being bandied about, words like obsession and recklessness being thrown in Buffy’s face. Willow and Xander stood away from it all, and Willow couldn’t help but feel sorry for Buffy. She had no idea exactly what was going on, or how things had gotten so bad, so quickly, but she knew that big changes were coming, and words were being said now that could never be taken back.

Willow looked over at Xander, wishing she had some idea of what he was thinking. Did he agree with the accusations against Buffy? Did he think that the charges were out of line? The carefully blank look on his face told her nothing.

Buffy was getting desperate now as—one by one—she lost the support of friends and allies alike. Willow could see the fear in her friend’s eyes, could hear it in her voice as she addressed the room and made concessions she never would have made before. “Look, I'm willing to talk strategy, OK, I'll hear suggestions on how to break this down, but this is the plan. We have to be together on this or we will fail again.”

Giles flicked his eyes across the room, taking in the expressions on the faces of the girls. “We are clearly demonstrating that we are not together on this.” His hard voice held a note of censure, as if he was accusing her of ignoring him and his wishes.

But Buffy wasn’t going to back down. She stared at him, her eyes hard and angry, and shiny with suppressed tears. “I can’t watch you just throw away everything.” Her eyes swept the room, noticing Willow and Xander for the first time. And then, in pure Buffy fashion, she tilted her chin up and issued an ultimatum. “I know I’m right about this,” she said calmly. “I just need a little—I can’t stay here and watch her—” she shot an angry glance towards Faith, who she seemed to blame for her current situation, “lead you into some disaster.”

Silence greeted her statement, blanketing the room like snow on an early December morning. Finally, Dawn got up and walked to Buffy, her face a show of sorrow and pain. “Then you can’t stay here, Buffy. I love you, but you were right.” She took a ragged breath and then continued. “We have to be together on this. You can’t be a part of it.”

Buffy blinked, incredulity quickly replaced by the tears beginning to form in her eyes.

But Dawn’s resolve never weakened. “I need you to leave. I’m sorry, but this is my house too.”

Silence again, as the room seemed to hold its breath as it waited for Buffy's reply. But instead of arguing, which seemed to be pointless, Buffy just headed for the door, passing Willow and Xander without a word on her way out.

Willow stood in shock, waiting for something—anything—to happen. Surely this was just a joke—a play or skit created for laughs. Maybe it was a joke on the First, something to convince it that their forces were scattered and leaderless. But the silence and ragged breathing continued, and the looks that the girls shared convinced her that this was deadly serious.

With one last look, Willow turned and opened the door, slipping quietly outside. Her eyes searched for any sign of Buffy, relieved when she saw the blonde sitting on the curb in front of the house.

Buffy looked up as Willow approached, turning away again and looking blankly around the neighborhood as Willow sat down beside her.

“Welcome home, Will,” her friend said, a hint of irony in her voice. “Not quite the welcome you expected, huh?”

Willow smiled softly, her fingers playing restlessly with the hem of her shirt. “I’ve learned to expect the unexpected when in Sunnydale, ya know? But yeah, I didn’t see this coming.”

Buffy shook her head ruefully. “Me either. I mean, I know things haven’t been perfect. I admit it. But we’re fighting big evil here—the biggest. And yeah, some blood is going to be spilled. We’re—it’s not like we’re in preschool anymore.” A hint of anger made its way back into her voice. “I know that they’re scared. Hell, I am too. It’s just—I know there’s something at that vineyard. If there wasn’t, there’d be no reason for him to make it his base of operation.”

Thinking it through, Willow couldn’t help but nod her head. “I suppose that makes sense. But—”

“But nothing,” Buffy cut her off angrily, pounding her hand on the pavement and then wincing. “We know there’s something there. We need to go and find out what.”

“But what if it isn’t something that’s going to help us?” Willow asked, trying to play devil’s advocate. “What if we go there, and some of us die there, and we find out that what he’s hiding is nothing more than another weapon he can use against us? Or—or what if he’s there because it’s easier to defend than anyplace else?”

Buffy shook her head. “You know that’s not true, Willow.”

“Buffy, don’t you see? That’s exactly it—I don’t know anything,” Willow reminded her. “Last week at this time I was in Paris, and all of this was just something that was happening to someone else. Now, it’s—I’m stuck smack dab in the middle of it, and I don’t know anything anymore. I’d like to believe you, but I just don’t know. And I don’t really feel like I know you right now,” she admitted, the last sentence almost a whisper.

“Because of the Spike thing?” Buffy wondered. When Willow remained silent, Buffy took it as agreement. “Are you two—together?” she asked finally, seeming to be afraid of the answer.

Willow shook her head. “It’s not like that. I won’t deny that we were...intimate.” She could feel her face heating up, the cool air brushing by it a blessed relief. “And he never said anything against you.” It was a lie, but little white lies never hurt anyone, and her friend seemed to need the comfort.

Buffy sighed. “It’s okay, Willow. I know that my thing with Spike was a...well, a mistake. Not just being with him, but the way I treated him. The way we treated each other. I was all screwed up, and being with him felt good, even if it made my problems worse. So I got more angry at myself, and mostly I took it out on him.”

Willow knew how difficult that admission had been for Buffy, and she couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. To always be so alone, and then have an offer for something more...well, who wouldn’t take it, even if it was all screwed up, and really just made things worse? “I think I understand, sort of.”

A companionable silence stretched between them, and Buffy seemed to be thinking things through before she said anything. Willow had a feeling that she wasn’t going to like what Buffy had to say.

“I don’t want you to think that I’m being a hypocrite, but I have to say something to you. Despite everything, you’re still my friend, and I care about you.” Buffy grabbed her hand, grasping it tightly as she continued. “It’s just that if the chip ever stops working, we don’t know what will happen. He might be the same person he has been for the last couple of years, but then again, he might not. And I don’t want you to get hurt, you know?”

The sunshine glinted off of Buffy’s hair, turning it almost white, and Willow watched the sparks fly as her friend moved her head slightly. “I understand why you’re concerned, Buffy,” she began slowly. “And I appreciate it. Really, I do. But I think I can handle it myself. After all,” she added, a little self-deprecatingly, “I nearly ended the world. If Spike really tried to hurt me, or anyone else I cared about, he’d be dust before he ever got the chance to do any damage.”

“It’s not just the physical pain I’m worried about, Will,” Buffy said, but she left it at that.

They sat quietly for a few minutes, trying to find a way to bridge the gap that seemed to separate them. Never before had they needed to work so hard to connect, and it bothered them both more than either of them wanted to admit.

Finally Willow broke the silence. “What are you going to do now?”

Buffy shrugged, all the fight seeming to drain out of her. “I’ll do what I always do, I guess. I’ll slay.” She pushed herself to her feet, holding out a hand and hauling Willow to her feet as well. They faced each other, and Willow saw the tears that Buffy was holding in only by sheer force of will.

“Be careful, okay?” Willow whispered. “Oh! And hold on, I’ll be right back.” She ran back towards the house and slipped in the front door, ignoring the curious looks she got. She grabbed the cell phone she had seen earlier sitting on the entryway table and headed back out the door, ignoring the outraged yelp that one of the Potentials gave her.

She handed the phone to Buffy. “Make sure you keep it charged. And don’t hesitate to use it if you’re in trouble, okay? I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

Buffy gave her a watery smile as she held the phone in her hand. She punched through the display, looking for the place where she would find the phone’s number. “Here, here’s the number. Write it down, and if you guys need me for anything, just call, okay? No hard feelings, no ‘I told you so,’ or anything.”

Willow looked at the display, committing the number to memory. She would go out tomorrow and get a phone of her own—it just made sense to have one, given the circumstances. Her mind went off on a tangent, wondering briefly if there were any stores that were open, or if she’d have to break into one. Probably the latter, she realized, with a sinking feeling.

They hugged, exchanged glances through eyes that were heavy with unshed tears, and then Willow watched Buffy leave, walking briskly towards the center of town.

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