The dream began with familiar steps, but it didn't help to know she was dreaming. And by the time she opened the front door of her house, she forgot she was.

The door is my door, and when I open it as I always do, I don't need a key. And I drop my jacket and say, Hey, mom. Walk into the living room, and mom is there on the couch, tired, looking at me. Dying. Her skirt up in that familiar way, her legs crooked, eyes wide and blank, like a doll's. But she sees me. Spike kneels next to her saying, Joyce, Joyce!, holding her hand in rough desperation, while Angel stands awkwardly off in the corner, hands in pockets, watching.

We form a triangle: Angel watching Spike and my mother, my mother watching me, me watching everything. I walk to the kitchen to call 911 so they can help Angel get rid of the body. Once I get there, though, I realize how pointless it is to call. I go to the Bronze instead, with Spike. But when we dance, I'm Drusilla, my arms long and white, winding around his neck. I can't see my own face, but I know this is who I am, and then I catch fractured sight of myself in the mirrors to confirm it: Drusilla and Buffy, Buffy and Drusilla, with Faith laughing at me from somewhere.

Bitch, I think.

And I leave, go outside to get a drink in the cool air and to kill something that needs killing. It's always night here and as I catch up to the figure striding away and touch its shoulder, it whirls and Willow is a vampire. We talk and I'm terrified, ready to slay her if she attacks, but she doesn't. I sense that she's sad. She misses school.

"What do you have against Spike?" I ask flatly.

"Nothing," she says. "He's a good guy."

I tell her to stop being ironic, even though she wasn't.

"It's going to snow," Willow says.

And I look up. And feel the imminence of snow.

Buffy's eyes snapped open, and she rolled to look at the clock, thinking in the muddled way of dreams that it would tell her the weather. She was expecting snow. But the sun shone brightly through the windows, and when she sat up and looked outside, the tree branches were bare. Like unmelted snowflakes, pieces of her dream still clung to her mind.

Not with the prophetic previews again, she thought. But she'd come to recognize the difference between the reheated leftovers of her psyche and the really important stuff. A different flavor, if you wanted to call it that. This had the flavor of badness. She pulled her diary from her bedside drawer, its pages unbroken for months, and jotted down her dream. When her pen stopped moving several minutes later, she re-read her words slowly, but couldn't make any sense of the dream's significance. Except that she needed to ask Willow what her current gripe against Spike was. That part was nicely literal.

Buffy closed the diary and held it in her lap as waking thoughts stirred in with sleep thoughts, of how she missed her mom, of how she'd have to get up today and find something to wear, fix her face in the mirror, and then go to the Magic Box, where the retail hours would drag, measured by the movement of shadows across the floor, until late afternoon, when Spike would come and they'd train together. Evenings were more comfortable, and nights--dinner, Dawn, and demons. The three D's. And night brought the chance to relax sometimes, to hang with friends and see Spike in a way that didn't involve bloodshed. Much. She understood the world after the sun went down. Fit into that world, and even ruled it. Days though, when Willow and Tara and Dawn did their school thing, and Xander and Anya worked at jobs they actually, weirdly enjoyed--days, Buffy could do without.

A small, mean part of her looked at the hours ahead and sighed and grumbled: it's too much. It was the part of her that wanted to be taken care of. And if her life wasn't going to be normal--which by now almost seemed a silly girl's wish--then why couldn't it at least be arranged for her convenience? She was the chosen one, the slayer. Why didn't the Watchers Council house her, feed her, clothe her? Hell, pay her? If her work was slaying, and it was oh so important, then why did she have a crap job shelving and selling dried rodents to New Age warlock wannabes? In a fair world, she shouldn't have to do anything but fight, and sleep well, and fight again. Until it was time for the nice retirement home.

But in her bank account was money from Giles that couldn't be called rightfully hers, and Buffy felt her grievances dissipate, leaving the unfair but more complex world of reality and what she knew to be her bedrock ingratitude. God, she missed Giles. Almost as much as her mom. There had been times during the last few years she'd felt so distant from him, it was like they'd never been close at all. But other times she'd look at her life, realize that the only people in sight were a handful of peers just recently legal, a kid sister, and a vampire who pre-dated the automobile but had no more moral sense than a Lost Boy, and she'd find herself longing for Giles--stable, adult, paternal--so keenly she thought it might tear her heart out.

I'm over my rebellious teen phase, Buffy promised, winging her thoughts out to him through the ether. You can come back now, okay?

And she stared out her window restlessly, at a bright California day without snow.

Coming down the stairs, Buffy could hear voices from the kitchen, high-pitched, threaded with teen laughter. A dish clattered.

"Ed thinks he's the ship 'cause he's got his own place," she heard. The ship? Oh, wait. "But he's just a pissant with a future in polyester. He'll still be wearing a Doublemeat cow on his head when he's forty."

Buffy raised her brows as she headed toward the kitchen. This prediction struck her as remarkably arrogant coming from someone whose own employment skills were suitable to hooking, topless dancing, and...well, hooking came to mind again.

"Good morning," Buffy said, and at her entrance Kerry twirled lazily on her stool and smirked a greeting.

"Morning, big sistah."

I'm not your sister, Buffy thought. But if I were I'd rip that bolt right out of your tongue, and wash your skanky hair, and good God, what--

"What happened to your cheek? Were you in an accident?" She flashed a sharp look at Dawn, who was dumping cereal into a bowl. Trying to curb her suspicions was difficult, but there was no flinch, and no guilt on Dawn's thankfully unmarked face.

Kerry shifted on her stool, legs wrapping around the rungs, big knees poking through black tights which laddered down to incongruously expensive shoes. "Stitched," she said, fingering the fluorescent orange lacing in her cheek with a look of dope-eyed satisfaction. Her nails were tipped in red, just the tips. "It's all the fury right now. Very Frankenstein, isn't it?"

Wow, that was disgusting. "For lack of another word I can't say aloud right now." Aware she was being fuddy and perhaps duddy, Buffy still heard herself ask: "Aren't you worried about scars?"

The girl laughed and Buffy couldn't look away as her pink, gold-studded tongue flashed behind white teeth. Her red-shadowed eyes crinkled, her hair snarled, and the rest of her young, lanky body seemed to be laughing too as it twisted energetically on the stool. And oh hey, look, Buffy thought, spotting cigarettes in Kerry's open bag; what a great peer model for Dawn.

Of course, when it came to role models, what did she have to offer? A twice-dead slayer sister, check. Unsouled vampire, check. Lesbian witches, check. And an ex-vengeance demon, who at least had a strong work ethic and a heart for fidelity.

It occurred to Buffy that she really should invite Xander over more often.

"Let's motor," Kerry said to Dawn, drawing her bag shut and pulling it onto her shoulders. She hopped to her feet. Not a tall girl, not as tough as her exterior would make you think. But Dawn said she knew some judo and carried pepper spray, so she could probably take care of herself pretty well; and in this town, survival skills were everything. Maybe not such a bad peer model, after all, Buffy allowed. Even if she did dress like a crack-alley ho.

"Did you both eat?" She looked at the cereal bowl, still dry of milk, from which Dawn had been picking. "I could make some eggs."

"I'm full," said Dawn, pulling on her own backpack. Her long hair swung forward as she ducked her head, and for a moment Buffy's gaze settled on her with aching tenderness. Kerry was already at the door, Dawn moving to follow with a casual, "See ya." Not so different from any other morning, but on the Hellmouth, any day could be the last.

"Dawn, hold on." Buffy moved to her sister's side, ignoring her tightly wound impatience and Kerry's brazen-eyed regard. "She'll be out in a minute," she told Kerry. When they were alone, she stroked back Dawn's hair. A gesture of habit meeting affection.

"What?" said Dawn, and Buffy could hear her edginess now and maybe even the guilt she'd searched for earlier. Teens always had guilt, though. This scene mirrored a thousand she'd played out with mom, in both her pre and post-slayer days. She could imagine endless secrets lurking behind her sister's clear, smooth face, and those guileless eyes. But paranoia is a silent killer, she reminded herself. Almost as bad for your heart as premature vampage.

Almost.

"I just wanted one of those sister moments."

"Can we have it tonight?" Dawn gripped the straps of her backpack. "We're running late and I want to study for a quiz before school starts."

"Actually--not tonight, but this weekend--how do you feel about a shopping spree?"

Dawn hesitated, thoughts visibly working, as if she had more than one option to weigh. "Well, I usually feel pretty good about spending money," she admitted at last.

Buffy nodded. Blood of my blood. "I've been thinking it's time to remodel our rooms. Out with the old, in the with new. Wallpaper, furniture, the works. We can get Xander to help with all the non-chick stuff."

Interest lit Dawn's face, like sun behind a drawn curtain. "Yeah? All right. You're really old-fangled, though. You know that, right? There's no such thing as non-chick stuff. And you the slayer."

"I cling to my femininity," said Buffy, drawing herself up slightly. "Wood. Hammers. Things of the men. But you're right, there's no such thing as non-chick stuff. You could be anything you want to be." A pang gripped her unexpectedly and she echoed her sister's words: "You know that, right?"

"Duh."

A car horn honked, and Dawn's hand moved to push open the door.

"Dawn."

"What?" Impatience was back fiercer than ever, caught in the curve of her sister's head and in her opaque eyes. A jittering freeze-frame.

"I just." She took a breath, let it out. "Nothing. Except--" Her sister halted again, groaning, and Buffy spoke in a rush: "Don't get your tongue pierced or your cheek stitched or start smoking. And good luck on your quiz."

Dawn, who'd frozen briefly in place to stare at her, broke to nod. "If I have time to study," she retorted pointedly.

"Go."

With that permission, Dawn fled. And Buffy stepped up to the kitchen door and watched her dash down the steps, around the yard, to wherever the waiting car idled. Out of sight.

She sighed.

Kids of my own, she thought, imagining toddlers, little girls with lunchboxes and pigtails.

Funny. She still wanted them.

"Kids?" said Xander, looking over at Anya as he drove. He knew he sounded like the typical male, startled as a rabbit--no, not rabbit--startled as a deer in headlights, and wait, what did a startled deer sound like, scratch that, and hell, he was panicking, yes, yes, yes.

The streets rolled by, morning sunlight pouring into the truck like butter melting in the air. Anya was serenely staring out the front window, eyelids still heavily furled from sleep or sex, curls soft and tousled, skin gold in the brilliant sunlight, as if kissed by god; and god, she was beautiful, roses and sunlight and sunlight again. Not her normal wide-eyed self, though, not this morning. Bright eyes, but no bushy tail. Bushy tail. Pretty dirty phrase when you stopped to think about it, and Xander did, desperate to divert himself as she continued talking. But wait, he had to track this with care. Pay attention. Far too dangerous to let her drive the conversation alone. She might read his silence as consent. He'd learned that lesson too well before. What the hell was she saying?

"...time in our lives when we need to think about making a family. We're twenty-three now, and when we're forty-six--each of us, I mean, not together--our child would be twenty-three. More or less. We'd have someone to take care of us in our dotage."

"Our what?"

"Our old age. When we're no longer wage-earners. Assuming we raise the child well and provide for it, it would have to take care of us. It wouldn't just leave us on the hillside to die. That's just not done anymore."

"Anya. Do you mind not calling our unborn child 'it'? Assign it a gender. Use your imagination. Otherwise I use mine and come up with...." He trailed off, unable to complete the thought, but she completed it for him.

"I'm genetically human," she said. "I've told you that. It's not like you have to worry about horns or hooves."

"I only worry about horns and hooves when you say 'horns and hooves,'" he noted. Otherwise, he just worried about strange spots and spikes and tails.

"Anyway, I never had hooves."

Xander stopped at a light, hands tight on the steering wheel. Sun. Bright.

"I'd be a good mother, I think." She paused. "I've been reading books." He closed his eyes. No. Not the books. "Mister Spock, for instance, says not to be overawed by experts--to trust your instincts. I have those. Instincts."

He turned his head, cocked it assertively. "I think you mean Doctor Spock," he said, latching immediately onto geekish pedantry. "Doctor, not Mister. Mister Spock is from Star Trek, the original series, and you're winding me up, aren't you." Amazement struck him, buoyed his voice. How far she had come.

She smiled, gazing out the window, not even looking at him, content in her inner world. "I like to wind you up. You make such a pleasant humming noise."

Oh man, thought Xander. Man, oh man, I love her. And maybe it wasn't normal to love a pin-up girl with too much history, with precise speech and a purse full of dingbat notions, but he did, because she made everything predictable fresh and surprising, even herself. It was craziness. Big craziness and horns honking at him. Xander put the truck into gear, drove again, his thoughts whirling. "Anya. I know it's the done thing, the mammal thing. Having a kid. But--"

"You're going to say you're not ready," she interrupted without ire. Where was all her ire? Some heat would be reassuring, some sound and fury. Not this strange calm. "You're a man. Settling down isn't in your biology."

"I was ready to settle down," he reminded her, almost sharply. "I'm not the one who called off the wedding."

"I can't marry you under a curse, Xander."

He pulled in front of the Magic Box, turned off the truck. And shit, he thought, looking over at Anya; he'd hurt her, upset her. That trembling edge in her voice was matched by a frown. "I know that," he reassured her. "I didn't mean--"

"Our child would be illegitimate. But I'm willing to risk any stigma. Because it--he--would be ours. Something we'd made. You and I, both adding ingredients. Like a casserole, but better. A living casserole, with little fingers and tiny toes." She turned in the seat, eyes widened to normal intensity, piercing him through.

"And that's...beautiful, Anya," he said, meaning it. He took her hand. "But, you know, forty-six isn't old. Not in this shiny new millennium. And we have at least seven more years to make a baby in a normal way, no risks, and--"

"And you could die tomorrow."

Xander managed a laugh. "Die? Me? Me no die." Her hand was cool and slim in his, a soft little girl paw. And looking at her, he was with her, one hundred percent. A man and his mate, star and starlet, the two of them made for the big screen. He liked her secret sense of humor, which she entrusted only to him. Liked that trust, and everything else. Her legs. Her wicked eyes. The things she did for him and with him. How she sat on the bed, naked, eating cookies, with perfect composure. Her dismissive contempt for things everyone commonly treasured: puppies, kites, pretty blue lakes; and her adoration of things no one else in his world appreciated: capped beer steins, frilly aprons with pockets, the genius of Bruce Campbell. They matched like a salt and a pepper shaker, a novelty item, despite every natural law that said they shouldn't. She was a squirrelly, lovely woman in twenty-three year old genes; and he was a guy who still wasn't used to feeling happy.

"You promise me that," she said. "But you can't really. Promise me that."
 
Death. They were talking about death. Even here in the sunshine, parked on a public street as a new day began, the shadow of mortality lay over them. Welcome to Sunnydale.

"I can try." It was an attempt at a joke, almost. A lame one.

Anya gazed at him, face unmoving, reproachful. But even more sad than reproachful. And the sadness was harder for Xander to bear.

"Anya."

"I have to prepare the store now."

"Anya--"

"You have a good day, honey."

"An!"

But the truck door had closed behind her, and she was moving away across the sidewalk. Sidewalk to shopfront, her hand twisting the key in the lock before she disappeared inside, and then that door closed too. It was the moment when the girl leaves the guy as he's calling after her, when something has gone wrong between them, when you shove more popcorn in your mouth and try to stay awake, feeling jaded and unmoved. Because you know things will turn out okay by the end of the flick. The crazy kids always make up, problems solved in kisses and decisions.

Except this was the life of Xander Harris. It never seemed to proceed according to formula; it wasn't a crowd pleaser. And he wasn't sure how it ended.

Hell, he wasn't even sure of the next scene.

As the truck pulled away into traffic, the sidewalk was left deserted. Cars passed each other on the street, and across the street, a woman window-shopped in the early morning. In the window were chic dresses, worn by mannequins whose fingers had frozen in gestures of alarm. Over the red-tiled roof of the store, across the tree-tops, the sun rose, shining down on a nearby park in which children played, their mothers and nannies gathering on benches to watch for injuries and perverts and anything that might blot the serene landscape. Children swung dizzily on the swings and slid on the slides, while slender au pairs laughed and a dog raced to catch a frisbee, thrown by a young man in blue jeans and a UC Sunnydale sweat shirt.

Buffy walked along the street, past the park, her gaze dropping from the blue sky to the scrolled fence behind which children played safely. Their shrieks of laughter echoed and rang in her ears, bouncing off the jungle gyms and snake slides as their bodies did. She smiled, pace slowing. She didn't have to get to work yet, and there was a little boy behind the fence up ahead. Short little guy, stocky as his dad must be, soft brown hair. His back was to her, and he was playing with a ball. Squatting to pick it up, tossing it once, then placing it back on the ground. Repeat. Buffy's lips quirked in indulgence at the childish logic behind the game.

She didn't see any sign of mom around, and the women on the benches were yards away and watching in the other direction. It kind of bothered her, even though there was a fair stretch of fence and no real danger to the kid.

"Hey," she called. The boy put the ball down, straightened, then squatted again to pick it up in his chubby hands. "Where's your mom?"

The boy tossed the ball, caught it, set it carefully back down.

"Hey," Buffy said, stopping at the fence, her hands closing around the bars. She could only see the back of his head and fine straight hair, some strands messily overlapping others. "You all alone? Where's your doggie? I can't see her."

The child held the ball in his hands and turned, his golden eyes flaring vacantly at her, his grey, bumpy face set in a monster's stiff regard. Buffy, he said.

Buffy. His mouth moved again, strange and wide.

"Buffy!"

Buffy jerked awake, heart lurching. "No," she said. Her eyes slowly focused on Anya. "What?" She looked around the shop, confused.

"You fell asleep." Anya's voice was marble-hard and irritated. "You're drooling on the invoices."

Buffy straightened and wiped the wrinkled papers off, embarrassed. "Sorry." Her hands felt big and clumsy, her dream an encasing skin of strangeness that hadn't yet thawed.

"I asked you to watch the shop while I was downstairs. You said you would. A gang of ruffians could have walked in while you were asleep and carted off half the store." She waved a hand, sweeping it like a display model's to encompass the nearby Meadowe Arts rack. Buffy pictured hard-core gangbangers sneaking in to steal the potpourri sachets and filigree earrings.

"Why are you smiling?" asked Anya, even more sharply. "You think that would be funny? Some of this month's merchandise hasn't even been paid for yet."

Anya's anger wasn't misplaced, Buffy reminded herself. "I'm sorry," she said. "I wasn't smiling at--I won't fall asleep again. Look." She made her eyes big. "Very awake. A few cups of high-test and I'll be charged and good for the rest of the shift."

"I should really do a full inventory." Anya stared at the shelves, rigid with anxiety. "Who knows what's missing. Anyone could have been here."

Buffy was beginning to feel defensive. "I think I would have heard the door."

"Oh yes. Slayer reflexes. Like a dog at a bell, you'd scent danger, right? You'd salivate? That's what you were doing on my invoices. Salivating." Her voice was growing tighter, higher, a spring coiling and ready to snap.

"Anya!" Annoyed and faintly alarmed, Buffy felt her guilt evaporating. "Chill, okay?"

Anya didn't press her attack. Her shoulders suddenly drooped, and she rested her hands on the counter. "I'm sorry," she said more quietly.

"Are you okay?" Buffy leaned forward. She and Anya weren't best buds, but working together, while stressful, did form a bond. She liked and respected Anya, even when they were annoying each other. If their lives hadn't been interwoven together in other ways, it was true that Buffy probably would never have worked at the Magic Box, or made any effort at friendship with someone so different and difficult. But their lives were entwined, like family. The challenging kind of family, where you couldn't simply fall back on blood, but had to choose and then stand by your choices.

"No, I'm not okay. I want--" And then Anya hesitated, gaze dropping in a frown, lips parted on soft silence as if she were rethinking her words. That didn't happen very often. She met Buffy's eyes and gave a tight smile. "I want a lot of things. But I don't want to talk about them now. Finish up those invoices." She used her boss voice, casual and direct, then added a punctilious "Please," before looking away; withdrawing into herself. "I'm going to check yesterday's delivery to make sure they didn't short us on the Thavardian crystals again."

"Okay." Buffy watched her walk away, feeling unsettled without knowing quite why. Except that Anya should be forever Anya, a natural law, immutable. Moody, yes. At a loss for words, no. It was like seeing a river run dry. A clock run backwards.

Wrongness. Like a child hiding a monster. She pushed her hair back off her face, disquieted as she remembered her dream. In her mind's eye she saw the boy at the fence turning to her, skin a mottled mask, eyes drained of humanity. The ventilation in the shop switched on and hummed to life, and Buffy looked up, across the empty floor. She felt as if someone were about to walk in, but no one jingled the bell. Alone with her worries, she began re-totaling the invoices, burying herself in the job until the phone on the counter rang.

"Magic Box," she said.

"Buffy."

She straightened, the afternoon brightening as if the angle of the sun had just changed, breaking through a window. "Giles! I was just thinking of you this morning in bed."

There was an acute, very British pause.

"Actually," said Buffy, "we could probably just leave 'in bed' off that particular fortune cookie."

"Quite." Giles cleared his throat. "How are you?" The question was like the opening chord of a well-known song.

"I'm--" Living the lie, confused, dreaming, morally adrift, missing you like crazy, twenty-two and living on the Hellmouth and so incredibly tired. "I'm me." So very, very me.

"So you are. That's good to hear. And not merely as a rhetorical statement, either."

"Why?" Buffy frowned. "Who else would I be?"

"Oh," said Giles. "No. I simply meant that, er, considering the source. And really, Buffy, you should be glad to be you. Who you, you are. I mean, well--the ordinary can be quite blessedly ordinary at times, and normalcy a boon--"

"Giles, are you okay?" Buffy asked, interrupting his blithering.

"What? Ah, yes." The sound of Giles catching himself. "I'm fine, thank you."

"Uh-huh." Skepticism infused her voice.

"I simply forget," he said more gently, like a breath of warmth in her ear; and she could picture his smile, the crinkling of his face. Wanted to picture the room behind him: books on the shelves, a decanter, a jacket slung over the back of a chair. Couldn't quite do it, though. She'd only ever seen his apartment here; that snapshot was permanent, no matter where he lived now.

"Forget what?"

"Oh," he said, a rich, rolling sound, backed with something almost a laugh. "That our lives have diverged. That my...adventures aren't yours. We've never truly shared a common language, and now we lack even the context to make translations."

The blunt, casual words shocked Buffy, and hurt; she thought of how she'd wished this morning for Giles to be back in her life, the token adult, a voice of sanity. But was this how adults talked to each other? Was it supposed to be sophisticated, this unvarnished truth? She imagined Giles at British cocktail parties, where everyone was over thirty and truth was passed around like dry, crisp crackers or a bitter wine. For one moment his reticence had fallen, and the slip made her see how carefully he must guard his words with her the rest of the time. She supposed it proved his point.

"Buffy, are you there?"

"I'm here," she said quietly, her hand clenched around the phone so tight she heard the plastic creak. She forced herself to relax. If she broke the phone, Anya would make her pay for it.

"Ah." A pause, as if he were reassessing the conversation. "Well, I called to find out whether any progress had been made on the Naciran prophecy. I haven't heard from Willow in quite some time--she hasn't replied to my e-mails. I would have been worried, if Anya hadn't assured me that you were all in good health."

"She hasn't written?" Puzzled, Buffy picked up a pencil and tapped it against the counter fast and hard. "I thought she was consulting you on this." She tried to remember what Willow had said, the exact words used whenever Buffy had asked how it was going.

"Me? No. I haven't been in contact since sending the additional texts she requested. That was weeks ago. Perhaps I should have followed up sooner but things have been, er...busy here."

"Adventures?" Buffy half-smiled, hearing the irony in his choice of words.

"Quite."

"We're supposed to have a war meeting this evening," she said. "Brainstorm, round table, that kind of thing. Oh, did she--well, I guess she didn't tell you, but we have a notebook."

"A notebook?" Giles's voice was politely confused.

"Yeah, we took it off this lurky guy who'd been following me. At least, he kept showing up in the same places I did. It's in some demon language, probably a code."

"I--I'm sorry. What does this have to do with--"

Buffy grimaced and bounced on her stool, impatient at herself: "Wait, I can tell this better. So this prophecy: darkness rising, right? Well, these strange guys in fedoras are running around town--demons and humans." She waved a hand he couldn't see. "Dogs and cats, living together, yadda yadda. And they're planning something with the town water supply, and talking about a 'New Reich', which you have to admit sounds pretty nasty. We've been testing the water--I mean, in a literal sense--but so far nothing. I grabbed one of these guys and got his notebook, and we were going to question him, but then he met up with a demon and after that he wasn't saying anything."

She thought about sharing the dreams, but didn't. No reason to. He couldn't tell her anything she didn't already know.

"I see. Except for the part about dogs and cats." A pause. "'New Reich', you say." She could see his glasses being drawn off in dim lamplight, imagine him squinting across the room at his bookshelves. "That's a phrase I've never heard before. I wonder...."

"This guy Foss--the dead one--we searched his apartment but came up empty. And we went back to the office where we'd found him, but it had been cleared out." And hadn't that been a kick in the teeth, showing up the next night for a little self-congratulatory Watergating only to find out they were too late.

"Pity." Shifting sounds traveled to Buffy from his end of the line. "I'll ask around, see if I can find out anything about this 'New Reich.' Certainly if anyone has heard such a phrase, it would tend to stick in the mind."

"Good," said Buffy. "Let's hope it's sticky."

"Yes...any other news?"

What could she say to that. Weeks of her so-called life blurred through her mind like scenes from a music video, sped up, fragments impossible to stitch together into a coherent narrative. It was either tell him everything, or nothing at all. "No common language," she murmured.

"Pardon?"

"Nothing. The usual. Demons, vamps, wild partying."

"Speaking of vampires...how is Spike?"

"How is he?" Buffy boggled, deliberately moved the phone away from her ear, shook it like a recalcitrant ball-point and moved it back. "Say that again?"

"I was just wondering if he's been bothering you."

"Oh. Right."

"Because if he is, Buffy, you mustn't hesitate to tell me. I can be on the next plane. I know you and he share a history--well, we all share a history with Spike. But my own is less colored by sentiment. Or, forgive me, gratitude might be a better word. And you have every reason to be grateful. I don't deny his past usefulness. But I have no compunction against dealing with Spike in a permanent way, should it become necessary."

Her throat worked, oddly tight. "He's not bothering me."

Giles treated her to his very special brand of silence--a silence made significant by reflective glass and hard, blue eyes and a set mouth, all conjured merely in her memory--before saying, "Very well."

"Giles...I...I miss you." The words stumbled out, half-choked and unexpected.

"And I you." The phone line was so preternaturally clear that she could hear him swallowing, a click of throat. "I'm always here for you, Buffy. Always." A momentary harshness of emotion sent shivers down her spine. "You know that, don't you?"

Buffy nodded. Another gesture he couldn't see, an expression he couldn't read. He was wrong, though. They did share a language, even if it had no words. If she could see his face captured in memory, so easily it was as if he stood in front of her...surely he could see hers.

"I know," she said.

When Buffy began descending into the basement, she moved instinctively to flick on the lights, then realized it was unnecessary. Somewhere down there a lamp was already on, casting its glow across the display stands and tumbled cartons. She stepped carefully down the treads, empty boxes in hand, and dropped them with a sigh at the foot of the stairs.

"What have we here," came a soft voice from the corner. "A pretty young shopgirl, about on her errands." A footstep snapped with precision across the cement floor, then another. His familiar tread, boot-heavy, deliberately breaking the silence and solitude. "Innocent as sunshine. Sun the color of her fair, fine braids." And his white hand ghosted her hair, then crossed her face, fingers curling outward like the legs of a dead spider as he brushed the back of his hand down her cheek. Innocent? No. She was not at all innocent in wanting him.

"You know Anya doesn't like you smoking down here." She could barely hear her own voice, it was so soft. His cigarette smoke was swirling around them, acrid and grey.

He leaned in, head tilting as if to feed, and it was...it was almost humiliating, her flood of desire as she opened her mouth to his greeting kiss. His own mouth bitter, soft. He tasted of blood, had been drinking recently. She'd fought him many times; in the waxed, dark hallway of her high school she'd first met him in battle, and now here he was kissing her as if they'd always been fated for this. He was dropping his cigarette, grabbing her. The leather of his coat crunched as he pulled her close, and his belt grazed her belly as he lifted her against his body with one strong hand. Embarrassing. And still not natural.

Buffy pulled away. One side of his face was burning gold from the lamp in the corner, his hair white. Everything else was dark: the shadows around his eyes, his lashes, his black pupils. His lips were parted, and he looked down at her as if he needed...he just needed. Spike.

She'd said his name, and he responded as he always did, with a faintly amazed, dawning smile. As if it were her first word to him. And men--men were supposed to grow jaded, take women for granted. All the more wrong then, that Spike's eyes still brightened after all this time. He had loved Drusilla a hundred years. How long would he love her?

Spike drew his lower lip between his teeth, glanced up at the basement door. "Got time for a tumble?" Voice low and rude, that smile, his head dipping for her neck.

"No!" Buffy wrestled herself away, feeling rumpled and excited but feigning annoyance.

"Oh, come on. Appetizer before dinner."

"I haven't even had lunch."

"Not good," he said, suddenly quite serious. He pulled away with a frown, backed up a step, panned his gaze up and down her body in a way not at all lascivious. "How're you gonna get a good work-out if you're all weak and spongy?"

"Spongy?"

"You know." He waved a hand. "Floppy. Like a rag doll."

"Hey! I'm ready to throw down, don't worry." Buffy folded her arms. "Just because I skip a meal doesn't mean I can't take your bony white ass."

"Oh, really?" One sharp brow raised in exaggerated remark. "Well, we'll see, won't we?"

"Yes, we will."

They smiled at each other anticipatorily, and there was something predictable about this little exchange, about him, but it wasn't a bad thing at that moment. It made Buffy think: I know him.

Through time and attrition, with proof after proof between them, Spike had become someone to depend on. She might not trust him as she had Angel, or Riley--with her heart. But if heart and mind had their doubts, her instincts didn't. When she acted without thinking, it was to give him her trust.

Yet even now as his dark eyes flashed in regard, cool and round and steady as a snake's, Buffy felt part of herself step aside and ask: When will he hurt me?

He was still a killer.

And so was she.

Evening had fallen in the world outside the Magic Box, and cars swished along the street on their way home to network television and chicken dinners and the safety of dead-bolts. Drivers focused on getting to their front doors before it was much darker, mentally counting the paces between car and porch, wishing they'd moved away from Sunnydale after high school, all those years ago.

Inside the Magic Box, behind its own locked door, a meeting stirred to life.

"It's a big decision," complained Buffy.

"Your call," Xander said firmly.

"I think you should choose."

"Nope. You're the slayer. It's tradition."

"Oh, for the love of--" said Spike in disgust, leaving the object of his affection unvoiced.

Buffy peered into the box Xander was holding. "If you'd gotten more than one of each," she began plaintively. "Where's the tradition of three jelly, three chocolate--the tradition of threes?"

"Well, okay. I thought I'd try something new. Don't you think it lends a sharp edge of excitement to the opening ceremonies?"

"No," she said emphatically, frowning. "Some things shouldn't change." Committing herself, she pulled out a cream-filled doughnut. "Barvarian," she announced with a sense of accomplishment. Her decision evoked a tiny squeak from Willow, and Buffy's eyes widened. "Oh, no, wait. Will, why don't you--"

"My god!" said Spike. "Just eat the sodding doughnut!" He grabbed the box from Xander, flung it to the center of the table, pointed a finger at it. "Pick, all of you! On with it! I can feel my bloody bones crumbling to dust as I sit here!"

Everyone quickly grabbed a pastry, while Spike glared. And Buffy wondered if their obedience was simply a parody of good manners, or some weird acknowledgment of authority where none existed. Or maybe it was just that her friends were fair-minded, in a way that Sunnydale bred to its inhabitants, and could recognize their own dorkiness even while hating Spike; like her, were capable of feeling embarrassed in front of vampires. Strangeness of this kind was endemic to the town. At times, Buffy suspected she lived in a reality so different from the rest of the world that she could never move anywhere else without making a freak of herself.

"I hereby call the meeting to order," Buffy said gamely, then bit deep into her doughnut, hoping someone else would take charge. Because this time she didn't want to be the one to ask Willow how the translations were going.
 
There was silence. A painful, stretchy sort of silence, accompanied by busy chewing and busily flickering eyes as glances passed from Xander to Buffy, Buffy to Willow, Tara to Buffy, Xander to Willow. Spike sat back in his chair, head swiveling to take them all in, brows drawn together as if he couldn't quite fathom their lameness. He'd sat in on plenty of Scooby meetings, but he still seemed to marvel at them.

"Okay," Buffy sighed, when it became clear they could sit there all night. "I guess we should--"

A knock came on the shop door, and everyone looked at each other, startled and counting heads. But they were all there.

"Probably just someone who can't read the big closed sign," said Anya, standing. "Illiteracy in America is on the rise again."

Buffy glanced across the table. "Spike." He caught her eye, realized she wanted him to shadow Anya for muscle, and obeyed routinely. Xander paused mid-chew as if just noticing that his own opportunity for protective chivalry had been lost.

"So, to the agenda," Buffy began again. Having the vague idea that organizational props would help deter conflict, she'd brought to the meeting a pencil and a pad of paper; the top sheet of the pad was blank except for the word 'agenda.' She carefully underlined this now and made a neat bullet point underneath, next to which, if she was lucky, a word would soon appear. "I guess the first topic of discussion is--Dawn." She blinked up at her tall little sister, while Anya and Spike retook their seats.

"Hey, guys." Dawn aimed a quick smile in the direction of the table, which dropped away as she turned and said businesslike to Buffy: "I need money."

"You've had your allowance," she said. And she hated to hear herself saying that in such a momlike way in front of the others, but in the back of her mind lately had been the novel and ungenerous thought that if Dawn wanted more of the foldy-spendy, maybe it was time to start earning, like so many other perfectly normal non-slayer kids did.

"And it's gone. I had to get a new gym-shirt."

"Because your old one was...?"

"Stolen. Maybe used to line a nest." Dawn tossed her hair back, pulled a knowing face. "I think there's some kind of gym-clothes-taking monster lurking in the school basement. Stuff has been vanishing for a few weeks now."

"God, Dawn! Why didn't you tell me and if you're making this up you are so grounded." I am not a pushover, thought Buffy.

Am I?

"Well, it could just be Amber Tennison," Dawn admitted. "She's got velcro for fingers."

"Uh huh." And Buffy couldn't help but remember that the fingers of Dawn Summers had once been velcro too, before a certain talk, but Dawn was limpid-eyed, brow untroubled, and if this was misdirection Buffy knew she was dealing with a pro. "Well, I'll have to give it to you tomorrow. I don't have any money on me."

Thunderclouds lowered on the horizon. Buffy knew that look. She hated that look, that ugly little scowl. "You could borrow it from petty cash."

"The money is in the safe for the evening," said Anya, in a tone that conveyed it was staying there.

Dawn cast her appeal across the crowd, expression morphing into a hopeful plea as she played on their good natures. Hands began reaching for bags and wallets. "Hey!" Buffy said sharply. "Don't look to them for money. They aren't your personal ATMs." Everyone stopped reaching except Spike, who--oblivious to the collective discomfort--yanked out a cash roll and peeled off bills whose denominations Buffy couldn't make out. "Do not give her that," Buffy warned.

Her snap made him look up, then around. She could see him picking up the vibe at last, but he seemed genuinely bemused and a bit irritated. "Why not? If I've got it, she can have it."

Dawn grinned brilliantly and began tripping around the table. "Stop!" Buffy pointed her finger and her sister froze in her tracks, daring to pout. Greedy pig, she thought.

"Look, 's not a big deal," Spike said, money in hand. "Stolen anyway. Might as well do some good and enfranchise the Niblet here."

Buffy stared at him in appalled wonder, unable to fathom where in those statements he thought logic lurked.

"Plausible deniability," she said, exasperated. "Is that too much to ask? And no," she added, head swiveling to Dawn, who'd started creeping forward again, "you can't have the ill-gotten gains of Velcro Fingers here."

"Thieving's an old and honest profession," said Spike, his scowl matching Dawn's. God, it was like having two teenagers. "Well, all right, dishonest. But it takes craft and cunning and clever hands." Buffy threatened to cripple him with her glare, but he only seemed to grow perversely more irked. "And damn it, you've found it a useful talent to have on call plenty of times, Slayer, and don't say you haven't. It all springs from the same source, so give that royal glower a rest, why don't you." She raised a brow, but its power failed. Spike dashed off a sharp laugh, and something in its tenor charged the air, made her skin prickle. The money roll was still balanced in his left hand, bills caught between the fingers of his right. "Oh, what? It's okay when you're saving the universe, but wrong if it puts blood on the table? Come down from Cloud Cuckoo-Land. Survival's about more than bashin' demon skulls. While you're traipsin' around with your heroic slayage, the rest of the world scrounges just to hang onto a ten foot patch."

It was a ridiculously unfair accusation, but it stung, if only from fear that the others might agree. "I hang on by my fingernails every day," she said roughly, thinking of her go-nowhere job in the very shop that enclosed them now in its shadows, and the bills stacked on her rolltop desk. Didn't she pull double duty in life when most people her age were out there having fun, getting drunk, seeing the world?

"Yeah? Well the rest of us do, too," Spike retorted. "Food, a roof over our heads, dosh for a bottle now and then--we all have the same basic needs." His voice was harsh and low. "Not just the privilege of humans, this desire for existence."

Buffy felt herself flushing, incensed and embarrassed at what felt like a flank attack. "And I never said it was. Can we talk about this later?" They stared each other down in mute anger under the sharp lamp-light, while everyone else looked pointedly otherwhere. Where was this sudden mood, this insurgence, coming from, she wondered. His face was so white, so hard. He was a vampire, a thing without a soul, but was that the reason--was this ordinary rage, or was every rage extraordinary with someone like him?

"Fine," he said, and she could see him roll the word in his mouth like a cold marble. But he was not giving in. "But I give my money where I like." Staring at Buffy, he held out the cash to Dawn, who looked nervously her way, then tentatively took it.

Buffy wanted to hit him, punish him for his infraction. It made her furious. But as he stared at her with his blue eyes, she had one of those problematic moments, where she knew she held him to different standards. She wouldn't have felt this same unholy rage at Xander if he'd given Dawn money, even with her authority undermined. Double standard wasn't quite right--Xander would never have stolen it in the first place, or railed against her so unreasonably--but her friends were her friends, and Spike was Spike, and Spike sensed the divide she'd made and hated it, in some important way she couldn't quite deal with yet.

It was just as unfair that he should put her in this position, though, especially when he had the moral low ground. But she said nothing as Dawn folded the bills and tucked them away, then quietly slunk out. A few words of farewell tossed at the table, Anya following to lock the door behind her. Doughnuts sitting with bite-marks on the table top. Coffees cooling. Spike leaned back again, shoulders tense with upset under the weight of black leather. Xander's mouth tight. Willow's eyes unsure, watchful. Tara's face concerned.

This was their round table, thought Buffy, staring at her notepad on which no word had yet been written. This was Camelot.

Anya came back, stood with her hands clasped together. "The big dramatic scene has created lingering tension." When no one spoke, she sat down. "Money is very exciting that way. It stirs up passions. Those thick wads rolling in your hands. The individual bills, some crisp, some soft." Her eyes went dreamy.

"Moving into soft-core there, An." Xander's voice was gentle and dry, and though he spoke to Anya he looked at Buffy, drawing her attention.

She gathered herself at his subtle cue, turning the burner under her temper down to a low boil. "Speaking of moving. On. I wanted to get everyone together, so we can decide how to tackle this whole prophecy thing. I don't want to be caught twiddling our thumbs the way we were with Glinda. Something serious is coming." She measured tone to words. "So what have we got?" she asked, looking at them and ready to take stock. "A scroll with some vague warnings about 'darkness rising', a notebook we can't read--"

"A dead guy with rented furniture and a suspiciously clean paper trail," said Xander, picking up the thread.

"Demons and humans working together," Tara kicked in.

Buffy nodded, her gratitude building at the contributions. "References to the water supply."

"And the 'New Reich'." Xander again. "Whatever that means."

"New order coming," said Spike matter of factly. He was sprawled back, one shoulder higher than the other. "Master race, rise to power. Humans turning into demons."

"What?" said Buffy, alarmed, as everyone turned his way, mouths agape. "Where did you hear all that?"

A distracted look passed across Spike's face as if he were just remembering something left on the stove. "Er, didn't I mention?"

"Er, no," said Xander sharply.

"Foss, when he was chained up--fellow had a go at recruiting me. Gave the usual sales pitch, something about the righteous reclaiming this plane. Humans bowing down and all that. Heard it a hundred times before."

Willow frowned. "Humans transforming into demons, you said."

"Yeah. Apparently Old Patchy Face was goin' through the change himself."

"It happens more often than you think," Anya said to the table at large. "There's a big market out there for disaffected souls. D'Hoffryn tried to recruit you once, didn't he?" She directed the question to Willow in an oddly professional tone, like one actor to another, mentioning an audition.

"Uh, yeah." Willow glanced around with an expression of guilt. "When I was young and stupid. He probably wouldn't want me now that I'm...older."

"Oh, he'd probably still want you." Anya smiled in reassurance. "He's very selective."

"Thanks," Willow said dryly, while Tara directed a faintly irritated look Anya's way. "Nice to know I have a fallback career."

"Especially in today's job market," agreed Anya. Her face was smooth, the edge of her voice blunted--but was that a glint in her eye? Buffy couldn't tell. It was hard to know anymore how much of Anya's blind spot for sarcasm remained. If she was retaliating, she was far too skillful to be caught.

Buffy added 'humans --> demons?' to her bulleted list. "Okay," she said, studying the notes she'd made. "So what does all this add up to?" There was a pause for collective thought, but no evidence that thought was actually occurring. Eventually she made herself look at Willow. "Will, not to push, but...anything?"

Willow's shoulders stiffened, collarbones sharpening at the movement. Impossible not to notice the anxiety, but Buffy wasn't sure how much longer she could overlook a lack of results for that reason. "The notebook's definitely in a demon code of some kind," Willow said. "Not Naciran. But Foss did write a few words in English." She flipped pages: "'Cottler' and 'DeKorne'." She met Buffy's eyes. "When I was researching the water angle, I found out there's a DeKorne Filtration Plant in town, where imported water is treated for contaminants. Cottler is an engineer there."

Nearly giddy with relief at this unexpected sign of progress, Buffy beamed and said, "That's great! A lead. We have a lead."  She noted it on her list, the looked up again. "What else?"

"That's about it," Willow said in a low voice, as if she were bracing for Buffy's disappointment. She turned the notebook around in her hands, fingers tense, rubbing at the faux leather.

"Oh." She paused, then said, "I talked to Giles today." She had to look square at Willow for this. There was no other way. "He said he hadn't heard from you in a while...but you know," her voice quickened, "I think he'd be really glad to help. With the translations. With anything."

"Yeah," said Willow slowly. "I should write him." An awkward moment hung, in which Buffy expected more--explanations, apologies, but all Willow said was, "I've been pretty busy."

"We'd be glad to help too," Buffy went on.

"How?" The one word was mild, posed as a genuine question but hiding a challenge.

"I don't know," Buffy said reflexively, then paced words to her running thoughts. "I mean, I could be action girl, head out the plant and shake down this guy Cottler, but I'd kinda like more information first." Her voice wavered a bit as she looked at Spike: "I don't want to drag anyone else in for questioning if we can figure this out for ourselves." She paused a moment, gaze briefly lowering as she thought about Foss. Foss's body. She didn't want to know, did she. She made herself refocus. No one was speaking. In frustrated hesitancy, she looked to the others, then to Willow. "What if...maybe we could each take a sheet from the notebook, see what we come up with?"

"Because you're all so skilled at demon languages," said Willow. The words were soft and she smiled gently when she said them, so maybe that had been ironical, thought Buffy, and not the small, mean sarcasm it seemed.

Tara looked sidelong at her friend, brow pinching in reproof. "You never know. Fresh eyes might help."

"Fresh eyes when we're sitting across from a jar of fresh eyes--did anyone else go to that place?" Xander asked, hand raised. "But on actual topic, count me in. I'd be willing to take a crack at some demon code. Hit the books, put pen to paper. Be like old times. I think I can still do that pen thing." He tilted his head consideringly and flexed his hand. "Yeah, yeah. I can feel it coming back to me."

"Okay, sure, why not," Willow said suddenly. "Let's give it a whirl. I'll make some photocopies." There was something in her smile Buffy didn't like, a little twist that suggested she was humoring them without any real confidence in their usefulness. And, okay, maybe they weren't the brains of the group, but hey--they might get lucky.

"Nuhhhhh," Buffy groaned, lifting her head from the pages of the book she'd bonked it on. She looked around. Hours had passed, and the table was covered with the signs of their effort. Lots of crumpled paper, open books, half-empty cups from the latte run, pizza crusts. Xander was frowning into a thick text, while Tara and Willow each had head bent to scribbling. Anya sat on the floor with her legs stretched out, back against the shelves, a heavy book resting in her hands. Spike was...Spike was actually working. It was bizarre to watch. He'd removed his duster and was hunched over his own little pile of papers and books, writing something with his left hand. Had she ever seen a pencil in his hand? She couldn't remember.

"Harris," he said abstractedly, "hand over that Growney Lexicon."

Xander roused himself just enough to find the book and pass it over before returning his attention to the page he read.

I am action girl, Buffy reminded herself with a forlorn sigh as she looked over her own stack of books. And not at all inadequate.

A few hours later, the atmosphere in the room had shifted. Xander's head was resting on his arms, Tara held a sheet of densely worded paper and stared at it glassy-eyed, Anya had taken refuge behind her cash register to read magazines, and Spike sprawled back in his chair, staring at the ceiling as if something was written there. Willow had opened her laptop and was the only one doing what could be called work.

"Tiphor, Syac, Grebuel," Spike said meditatively to the ceiling. He paused for thought, then decided: "No."

Buffy threw her pen down, landing it in the groove of the Most Annoying Book Ever, whatever it was. She couldn't remember. Something with words. Many words making many lines, running the wrong way down the pages. "Uncle," she said.

With a startled gaspy sound, Xander jerked upright and blinked around the room, still dream-dazed. "Uncle Rory?"

"So who's up for raiding a water treatment plant?" Buffy asked.

Spike raised one hand tiredly, followed by Tara and then Xander, who leaned forward to settle his arms on the table and added, "Thank god. And can there be hitting involved?" He shifted as Anya returned to the table and sat next to him. "Because right now I'd really like to find some bad people and hit them. With very heavy books."

"Yeah," said Spike. "Good plan."

Stale anger leftover from hours earlier reheated inside Buffy for a moment; she gave him a hard stare, then directed a guilty glance from under her lashes at Willow, who hadn't stopped typing. Her friend's face was tired and tense and pale in the artificial light. She looked far older than her years, and Buffy had a better inkling now of how it must be wearing on her; all this heavy mental lifting and nothing to show for it, when they all knew something terrible was coming at them like a train racing forward out of the darkness.

"How you doin', Will?" Willow didn't change expression and her fingers continued to fly over the keys; she might have been in a trance. "Will." Buffy reached out gently and touched her arm, and Willow twitched with a tiny breath. Typing ceased.

"What? What?" She shook free of her reverie and looked around, lower lip hanging open a little in an adorable way, the rest of her sagging with exhaustion.

Buffy smiled. "Just wanted to see how you were doing. I think we're going to call it a night."

"Doing?" Willow's voice cracked slightly, and Buffy realized the trance had been covering for a very deep level of freak-out. "Oh, I'm doing great. See, I have this cool thing going on where I can see a big demon invasion coming that will bring darkness to the world and pain to my friends, but I can't do anything to stop it. It's a new and different kind of fun. I'm thinking maybe next I'll peel off all my skin with a nail file."

"Nail file'd never work," Spike said seriously. "Can't really get a good edge on--"

He broke off at Buffy's look, and Willow turned her head sharply his way at the same moment. Her eyes were dark; not black-magic dark, but almost as scary. "Did I ask for a remark out of you?" she said, the question whipping and cold. "I don't think so. So shut the hell up."

Spike simply stared at her, lips parted in surprise, and then in delayed response his entire body stiffened, a movement of muscle under skin that once would have presaged attack. "I'm getting damn tired of your attitude, witch." His voice was effortfully level but fiercely wound. "And I'll say what I bloody well like--"

Buffy had a rebuke on her lips, but Willow was faster.

"Yeah, you do what you like, you say what you like. You lie and steal and use people up. And oh, hey, kill them and drink their blood. And as soon as you have the chance, you'll try to do the same to us. You think you're fooling anyone?" Her voice stabbed at him, yet Buffy couldn't make herself stop it. "We all know what's lurking behind that pretty face is garbage. Buffy keeps you on a leash as a laughing-stock, a lesson to vamps everywhere."

Tara made a sound, and Buffy heard herself gasping, "Will, no!" as Spike's face froze.

He looked down for one still and deliberate moment, then up at Buffy with terrible directness, eyes glittering, mouth a tight line before he forced out speech. "That right?"

Caught between her own half-lies and half-truths, Buffy didn't even know what she believed. Words dried up in her throat.

"Tell me," he said savagely, lurching to his feet and leaning on the table with his hands spread out flat, chair toppled over next to him. "You tell me now. Here. The truth."

"It was...it was a joke." She shot a look at Willow, whose anger was visible in her cheeks and glaring eyes. Buffy shook her head slightly. "A joke."

"That's not what it sounded like to me," Willow said.

Spike's mouth tightened, jaw twisting. "Now then. You tell them how you feel about me, Buffy. You tell me."

It was another order, and she didn't take orders well. She'd give him one, but not two. Not when she was still so angry, not when he was trying to pry her guts out here in front of all her friends, to make a messy spill of her feelings. She stared mutely back at him, stubborn in refusal, and the silence lengthened, no one else daring to break it. His eyes raged at her, and then finally wordlessly begged, but she said nothing and he reverted, as he always did, to wrath. A cold wrath this time, set to the temperature of the table.

"You want to hear a joke?" he asked, watching her, gauging her response for the moment of impact. "This relationship's a joke." She flinched at his softness. And he yanked his coat up off the floor and strode out, banging as he went, Anya wincing at each crash of merchandise in his path. He went out the front door--not through it, and that was something, but it slammed into the wall, probably kicked.

For a moment, they all simply sat there; and then Anya got up to lock the door.

"Will, my god." Tara stared at her lover, spots of color in her cheeks nearly matching Willow's own. "Why did you say those things?"

"Maybe because they're true?" Willow answered with edge.

"We agreed to let Buffy manage her own life." Tara's face was coalescing into something hard and unpleasant. "We agreed, all of us, not to tear each other down. Spike included."

"Uh, yeah." Willow cocked her head. "And then Buffy became run-off-at-the-mouth psycho girl, because repression is unhealthy, Tara."

"Politeness isn't," Tara snapped back.

"And we should always be polite to the dead," Xander put in sarcastically.

Anya glanced his way. "Well, that's not a terrible rule." She looked at Buffy and raised one shoulder. "You could slay them after all, and still be polite."

"Hey, slaying," said Willow. "Now there's an idea." But then something in her face altered as if she'd caught herself, and she made quick eye contact with Xander. "Except, no. Not while he's chipped. I, I wouldn't want that."

"Hey, I," began Xander, and fell silent, chin jerking as if he'd bitten off the words. Would, he'd been about to say. I would.

She felt at a great distance from them, their antagonism and babble breaking like waves on a far shore. But she was at sea, caught in the undertow. Buffy stared across the table, gaze level with the emptiness where he'd been sitting. How upset was she, what did she feel? She wasn't sure. She didn't know how she couldn't know, after all this time. Maybe her body was back on shore with the others, and this was her out in the deep blue sea, separated from it, adrift from herself.

"Tomorrow," she said. Everyone fell silent and looked her way. "Tomorrow night at nine we'll visit the filtration plant, see what we can find out."

Glances were exchanged; she could see them communicating with each other silently. Tip-toeing around the Buffy. What a joke that was. They stomped all over her, tap-danced on her feelings, kicked with their pointy shoes. And now they tip-toed.

She loved her friends, but she was tired.

The lights had all been turned off, except for the one lamp on the bedside table, which cast a subdued circular glow.

"Tonight didn't go so well," said Anya, shimmying out of her dress. "I've noticed that our group dynamic is extremely dysfunctional. There's a lot of hostility beneath the surface and, frankly, on the surface."

"And a lot of surface," Xander noted dryly, lacing his arms behind his head and watching her. The closet door was open, half shielding her from view, but he could see bits and pieces of her moving as she hung up her dress, unhooked her bra. She had such a beautiful back. Not to mention her satiny, satin-clad backside.

"I've been giving this some thought." Oh-oh, thought Xander. She closed the closet door and came to bed in the lacy green thing he liked so much. Within moments she'd curled up next to him, and he lowered one arm to embrace her. "I believe therapy might be useful."

"Therapy?" he parroted obligingly, smiling down at the top of her head.

"Yes. They have therapists who specialize in families, and we're like a family. You've said so."

"Well, true, but--"

"Willow would be able to deal with her addiction and codependency issues in a supportive group environment, and Buffy could work out her absent-father trauma. And you and Spike could deal with your repressed homoerotic tension--"

"Our dear god, what?" Xander yanked his arm away and sat up, covers falling to his waist. He backed into the corner of the bed and stared down at her in horror. "What are you talking about?"

"Oh, relax," scoffed Anya. "It's a perfectly normal social mechanism. Homoerotic impulses get sublimated into aggression and diverted into heterosexual relationships. I'm quite grateful for it, actually. You're a stallion under the--"

"Anya!" he yelped, putting his hands over his ears. "I'm not hearing this, not hearing this. La la la la la la la!"

And then she said something else that sounded to him like: "La la la (only brought it up) la la la (aggression is becoming) la la la (otherwise) la (happy) la la la (anything at all)."

"Stop talking!" He didn't take his hands down until her lips stopped moving, but he kept his distance, still tense and appalled. "Look. I'm going to forget you said that." His hands chopped the air, squaring a box to contain the conversation. Close the box, put it away. "And for the love of god, never say it again. To anyone, but especially to me. Because it's crazy talk. I hate Spike. He's an evil undead creature of the night and it makes me sick to think of him touching Buffy." She opened her mouth to say something, and he pointed a warning finger at her until she closed it. "He makes me sick, period. All vampires do. They're unnatural. Vampires shouldn't be having sex or relationships or a good night's rest. They should be killed."

Anya frowned and tilted her head on the pillow to regard him. "You're a vampi-phobe, you know."

"Yes. And strangely I'm okay with that."

She sighed and pulled him down next to her. They lay face to face on the pillows, Xander still unnerved, fearful of more blurted, horrible theories about his psyche. "You're a good man," she said, stroking his face. Her voice was soft, her eyes forgiving. "And I love you."

"But?" he asked warily. He could clearly hear the unsaid but, the qualifier. There always was one; he'd been raised on this home truth, seen it in the faces of his parents at every evening meal, every disappointing report card, every mediocre Little League game.

Anya smiled at him with her whole gentle face, her fingers sliding to touch his lips like a blessing. "But nothing at all."

His dream girl, his demon lover. His benediction. Xander felt something in his world shift at that moment.

"Let's do it," he said quietly, staring into her eyes. He was jumping off the cliff, and love was rushing up to meet him. He took a deep breath. "I'm ready. Let's make a baby."

It was a quiet neighborhood, one of the wealthier ones where the inhabitants could afford good alarm systems and fencing and their own private security patrols. Being here always felt odd to Willow; her own family had been well-off, but this was money, serious prelapsarian Cordelia-level money. That kind of money built a different landscape--a different view, literally, looking down from the hillside over the rooftops of the valley of Sunnydale, which lay like a quilt of scattered lights among larger pockets of darkness. You couldn't see the monsters from up here. You saw only what you wanted to see.

She closed the window on the sharp night air and turned toward the room. Tara had replicated the interior of her old dorm room as faithfully as possible, as if trying to create stability. A home. Or maybe it was just that her possessions stamped the room as uniquely hers, even though it was a dull, boxy mother-in-law suite above a rich couple's two-car garage.

Tara had changed into a gold nightgown and was removing her necklace. She caught Willow's eye; her face still troubled, aloof. Seeing that expression hurt. It made Willow ache to defend herself, to bury herself in Tara's arms and absolution and whisper: You don't understand. Our world is going to hell and Spike is going to turn on us.

"Still mad?" she asked tentatively, hoping she had on her cute face.

"I didn't like you tonight, Willow." Tara coolly dropped her pendant, Willow's birthday gift, onto the top of the bureau. She took it off every night to keep the chain from kinking, but tonight the gesture gave Willow an anguished pang as if it represented something broken, something lost. "It was unkind, what you said. And cruel. Not just to Spike, but to Buffy. What's with you? I thought you were dealing with him. Now all of a sudden you're different." She sat at the head of the bed, one leg drawn up, and gave Willow a more open, inviting look. "Something's upsetting you. What is it?"

Gratefully, Willow moved to sit with her. "I've just been thinking a lot lately, Tara. This thing they have--where's it going? Answer: nowhere. It's wrong. And it's icky." She shook her head. "I can't condone it. I have to keep trying to make her see--"

"By insulting him? Honey, that's never going to work and you know it." Willow was given hope by the endearment, and thought Tara might take her hand. But hands remained firmly in lap, and Tara tipped her head, long hair curtaining one shoulder. "You're only driving a wedge between yourself and Buffy."

"A wedge?" Shocked, she instinctively denied it. "No. No wedge. We're wedgeless." But she read the truth in Tara's eyes, and thought of the things she'd said that evening in the icy heat of the moment. Her face crumpled and she tried to stave off panic.

Tara did take her hand now. "You can't make people see what they don't want to see. Brute force--it breaks things. Not always in the way you hope."

Willow lowered her eyes. Tara held her conscience, and in her, brute force was bent to curvy goodwill and kindness. Sometimes she wished she could be more like Tara, who was a good person by nature, not by effort. Part of her was enthralled and moved by that nature, part of her impatient. Even resentful. She kept that part shoved down in the back of her mind.

"I don't want to break us," she said quietly, squeezing Tara's hand on the final word. "Not over this."

"We're not broken. But I'm always going to be honest with you, Willow. Tell you what I think. What I feel."

Willow looked up, smiling a tiny smile as she met her lover's eyes, feeling the sun peep around cloudbank to warm her bones. "I count on it," she said shyly, twining her fingers more strongly with Tara's and getting a crooked smile in response.

"You're not easy, you know."

"But I'm worth the effort though, right?" Willow pulled a face, comical and imploring, to hide her true anxiety. "A little elbow grease and I shine right--"

Tara leaned forward to kiss her, interruptive, delicious, the scent of gardenia coming off her skin. Willow murmured a small oh and returned the kiss as a tide of want rose. She cupped the back of Tara's neck to pull her in, mouth opening wider, and this was hunger, this was life. A kiss, a sigh.

"Don't be cruel," Tara pulled away to say, her lips brushing Willow's.

"Me? No." Willow breathed the words, dizzied.

"Be you. Be Willow. You have so much strength inside you--and love."

"I feel it." A soft and spinning orb, this world of love.

"You don't have to hide these things." Willow's eyes opened as a needle of fear pricked her, the moment welling like a drop of blood, poised to fall and stain the white bedspread on which they sat. But Tara was smiling, her eyes clear and unaccusatory. "All this fear," said Tara. "It doesn't have to rule you."

The globe of love tilted back on its axis and settled into its proper place to spin again. "I'm not afraid," Willow said, assuring herself along with Tara. And for that moment she wasn't. Because she had this. And if she had her way, nothing would change it.

Not even the end of the world.

All the fear has left me now. I'm not frightened anymore. It's my heart that pounds beneath my flesh; it's my mouth that pushes out this breath.

Buffy stared at the muted television as the stereo played, images of cheetahs unsynchronized to the music's slow beat. It was just her and Sarah McLachlan now in the shadowed living room, together again as they'd been so many times before. Inevitable, really. What else was there to do at a time like this but call on Saint Sarah, patron saint of moody girlfriends, to save her from the stormy swells that all relationships eventually hit. She knew these deeps; sometimes found herself pushed overboard as her ship sailed off. Kicking and sinking, not waving but drowning.

If she went to him now, he would take her in.

She shut off the television, cut off the music mid-lyric.

"I won't fear love," she said to herself, testing the thought out loud as she passed by the family pictures on the wall, her mother smiling; her younger, sunnier self staring out with the bright eyes of a girl who was not yet a slayer, whose parents were happily married. Her sister smiled too, a ghost in the camera. An invention of love.

Who was she kidding. It was too late in the day to be brave. Or, if you looked at the clock, too early.

Buffy went upstairs to bed.

The door was her door, and when she opened it, she didn't need a key. She dropped her jacket and called for her mother. In the living room, Joyce lay on the couch, smiling. Her skirt up in that embarrassing way, her legs crooked. Spike was sitting on the coffee table, stroking his hand up the inside of her thigh, holding a mug of cocoa in the other. The ambulance was coming; the wail of its siren rising. When she entered the room, Spike stood and she saw he that wore a strange uniform, its great-coat long and black like Angel's. She moved to him, and he took her in his arms to kiss her hello. Dawn came in to sit with her mom, to babysit so she and Spike could leave for their dinner date. "I killed Willow," she told him as they walked through town. "I have to live my life the way that's right for me."

He said something about the movie they were going to see, trying to explain its plot, which was a lot like the Discovery channel special she'd watched the night before. "And then this herd of gazelles is trying to reach Cuba," he told her. "But the lions have the U-boat and can't reach the shore. Too many waves. Rated 'R', I think, but they'll let you in with me."

"It's snowing," she noticed.

"I have a lot of lions," he said, offering this to her with a look of intense hope, his eyes wide and blue, full of wonder.

They stood at the crossroads in the center of town as cars drove by on either side of them. It wasn't snowing any longer but the street white in every direction, snowbanks piled high against the old-fashioned shopfronts. It was like being in Switzerland. Children hid in the houses, out of sight behind the shuttered windows. Laughing. Somewhere the armies were massed and about to attack, or maybe were on maneuvers. Something army-like and important. Soldiers milled in the street, on leave. A vampire ate a jelly doughnut.

"Companion to our demons," Spike said authoritatively, nodding at one of the soldier boys.

"You're bleeding." She stared at the place where Spike's heart wasn't, a gaping hole in his chest that had left his shirt nearly undamaged but edged with gore. It bled onto the snow, drops falling at her feet.

"Oh, yeah." He looked down, smiling as a man might. "All gone now."

"Did it hurt?"

But he didn't answer, and she could only stare at the orb embedded in his chest, a black marble thing heavy with his soul, boiling inside like a rough and captive sea. The skin had closed around the wound where the soldiers had fixed him, after she'd put her sword through him.

"We're going to miss the movie," she said, staring around the deserted streets, empty again of soldiers. "It's so late."

Spike opened his coat and it lifted behind him like a pair of enormous black wings. It was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen. As he smiled down at her, she was enfolded.

"Later than you think, love," he said, his lips unmoving.

When she bent and kissed the cold glass of his soul, she woke up.

Fourteen hours, three coffees, and a few thousand calories later, it was night again.

"Just us?" asked Buffy, looking from Willow to Xander. She shrugged into her jacket and pulled on a light scarf.

"Anya and Tara are having a, uh, girl's night out." Xander sounded weirdly grave about this, and Buffy couldn't decide if he was amused, or nervous about the discussion potential.

"They abstained," confirmed Willow with a quirk of lips. Her eyes flickered to Xander's and something unsaid passed between them.

"Their evening involves chocolate, margaritas, and a chick flick." Xander pushed his hands into his pockets. "Ours potentially involves demons, poisoned water, and head injuries." He gave a short, contemplative laugh.

"You could join them," Buffy said.

"Well, the chick flick kinda brings it into balance, so I'm thinking I'll stay with the original plan."

They stood there gathered in the foyer of Buffy's house for a long, uncomfortable moment before Willow said, "Buffy, about last night--"

"Forget about it."

"No, but I, I was just going to say--"

"I know."

Willow didn't look happy, and Buffy didn't feel happy. She'd wanted to have this conversation in some form, to find out what was on her friend's mind to make her so testy. Now she didn't want to hear it; she knew enough. And they had more important things to do tonight.

She let Xander drive the SUV to the plant, Willow directing them from her map. When they pulled up at its perimeter, the headlights flashed across a barbed-wire fence, on which hung a sign with 'DeKorne Filtration Plant, No. 2' printed in big black letters.

"Wire cutters in the back?" Xander asked, looking over his shoulder.

Buffy nodded. "Next to the swords." She paused for reflection. "You know, it's a good thing I never get stopped by the cops."

"That would be awkward," Willow agreed, laughing. She sounded a bit over-eager, as if she wanted to bond in the old jokey-Scooby fashion.

And it could have been a bonding moment, but Buffy let it slide by, looking away from Willow's crestfallen face. They stood by the side of the truck enduring more awkwardness, while Xander tested the fence for a current and then cut the links for them to pass through.

They made it inside the plant within a few minutes, and snuck through the empty corridors, occasionally hugging the walls as they approached a corner, their flashlights playing across the ground. Very X-Filesy, Buffy thought, leading the way. If this were TV, a big mutant would jump out at them right about now, and...hold on. That wasn't TV. That was just her life.

"Where are we going?" she asked Willow, who was peering at a blueprint of the building as they walked.

"Um, take a left at corridor A-3, walk about half an inch, then take a right at the square boxy thing that isn't on the map legend." Buffy cast a dry look back at her, and kept on more or less according to the directions. "We want the labs on the second floor," said Willow. "Cottler has an office up there."

"You said they have a night shift?" asked Xander, panning his flashlight along the upper walls in search of cameras.

"Yeah, but if we're careful, we should be able to avoid them. Besides, it's just a skeleton crew."

Xander flashed his light briefly in her face. "Don't say skeleton crew."

"What's this?" Buffy wondered, as they began passing down a hall with set after set of broad windows. She stopped, cupping her face to peer through.

"That should be one of the reservoirs."

"Huh. Big," said Buffy, moving on dismissively. They reached the labs, most of which had doors standing open. "Trusting, aren't they." She entered the nearest one and began looking around.

"Yeah." Xander followed, pacing her down one of the counters and inspecting the equipment with puzzlement. "It doesn't really have that world-domination vibe, does it?"

"Well, it's probably not the staff themselves who are in on it," said Willow. "Except maybe this Cottler guy. And even he might just be a target of some kind."

"Here's his office," said Buffy, coming to a closed door with a plain name-plate next to it. She tried the knob. "Looks like he's down with the locking thing."

Willow folded up her map and tucked it in her pocket. "We should probably try to maintain a low profile with the B&E."

"Check. No breakage." She watched as Willow knelt and stuck a piece of twisted red paper in the lock. She lit the end on fire, blew it out quickly as it fizzed, and murmured a few Latiny words. A snicking sound later, and they were in.

"I never get tired of that trick," Willow said in satisfaction.

"You'd have made a great cat burglar," Xander agreed. "And hey, if it were the sixties, you could wear one of those skin-tight bodysuits, all black and slinky. I bet you'd have a groovy soundtrack too."

Buffy shot a glance their way, but they were happily investigating the office and saw no irony in talking up the glamour of a craft they all scorned when it was Spike.

"Would I get to rappel?" asked Willow, sitting at the desk and switching on the computer. "Because, you know. That's the coolest."

"You could rappel your little heart out."
 
Attention on the monitor, Willow bobbed her head from side to side and smiled, briefly happy in her cat burglar fantasy. Buffy pulled open the unlocked drawers of a file cabinet, top to bottom, rifling through the hanging folders. Nothing caught her eye, except--

"What's...'flocculation'?" she asked, reading from a label.

"It's a clarification process for removing sediment and other solids from water."

"Oh." Buffy put the file back. That didn't sound very promising.

"I've got something," said Willow, and Buffy moved to her side, abandoning the files with relief. Xander drew near on the other side, and together they looked over Willow's shoulders. "There are some e-mails here in his sent folder. I just don't get it. No one ever clears out their sent folder. You'd think if you were going to accept bribes and conspire to sabotage the town water supply, you might want to remove the evidence. But no."

"So it is sabotage," said Buffy. "Do we know what it is--what they're putting in the water?"

"Mmm. It doesn't say. They just keep calling it the 'compound.' Wait, here they call it the 'neutralizing compound'." Buffy and Xander exchanged a worried glance. Willow continued reading, silent for a moment, then said, "The e-mails really only discuss details of meetings and pick-ups. And there's some formula type stuff, about how many parts-per-million of the compound will be needed to...oh, wait, wait, wait."

"What, what, what?" asked Xander anxiously.

"It's a sedative."

"A sedative?" Buffy blinked, trying to work that one around in her mind. She'd thought poison for sure, or some kind of magical potion to make humans into demons.

"Yeah, there are some calculations here for dosage and concentration, and projections of how it will affect people depending on their body mass and method of intake. Like, whether they drink a glass of water straight, or get it through boiled noodles." She paused as if switching gears. "It's kind of weird."

Buffy raised her brows. "Kind of?"

"No. I mean, a sedative through the water supply." Willow looked up at her, frowning. "If you wanted to subdue a population, that's pretty hit or miss. There's no guaranteed dispersal pattern in the short-term. Now if they were trying to build up some kind of chronic effect over time, like a slow poison or something, I could understand using the water supply as a delivery system. But this...."

"If you want to sedate everyone," said Buffy slowly, thoughts falling into line, "you'd want to do it at a specific time, for a specific reason. Like an invasion."

"Right."

"Okay," Xander broke in, catching their attention. "So they're reaching. How is this any crazier than magical band candy?"

"Good point." Buffy never underestimated the wackiness of an enemy. Plots on the Hellmouth were rarely rational, and strategies were often so flawed that you could second-guess yourself to death if you weren't careful. "Besides. We don't even know what it is. It could be magical, this sedative--right?"

Willow shrugged one shoulder. "Sure. They're going about their calculations scientifically, but the compound could have magical properties."

"We've got to find this stuff," said Buffy. "Is there anything there that gives us a clue about where they're storing it?"

"Actually," Xander interrupted again, "more importantly? When are they putting it in the water." He looked from face to face. "If it's meant to take effect right away, that'll tell us when this whole invasion is going down."

"He's right," said Willow, something like horror washing across her expression. She slumped a little, and her hands slipped off the keyboard to rest below it, unmoving.

After a moment, Buffy shifted on her feet. "Will? You okay?"

"What? Oh, yeah." Willow blinked. "I'll, uh, keep searching here." She hunched, looking a bit uncomfortable at their looming presence by her shoulders. "Why don't you guys check out the files again. See if there's anything in there about this compound. It may be labeled as something else."

"Right," said Xander smartly, and came around the desk to join Buffy.

"No, wait!" Willow stood with an abrupt movement that sent the desk chair rolling back a few feet. Panic was written on her face.

Startled, Xander froze with his hands poised over a row of files. "What?" He and Buffy stared at her with wordless inquiry. Buffy thought Willow was beginning to look nearly sick.

"You feeling okay?" she asked, unsure how else to react.

"I, I thought I heard something." They all stood stock still in various attitudes of listening. After a minute, Willow cleared her throat quietly. "Guess I was wrong, but hey, I, I had another thought there in the, uh, listening moment. I think you guys should check out the feed system."

"The huh?" said Xander, cocking his head.

Willow passed over the map. "That's where they feed the chemicals into the water. It'll probably be in the pump room."

"You think it might already be set up with the compound?" Buffy asked, making the connection.

"I think there's a good chance," Willow replied, eyes widening in a weird kind of eagerness, her expression edged with something even stranger and harder to read. "So you should check that out. I'll just finish up here. And, uh, meet you there when I'm done."

"Okay," said Xander gamely. He moved shoulder to shoulder with Buffy out of the room, and pulled the door closed behind them. "So, hey," he said to her as they left the lab. "I'm thinking that if we all worked together, we could wean Will to decaf. You in?"

Buffy managed a smile, but felt a tug of sadness. "She's been working so hard. I think it's killing her not being able to nail this translation. First the scroll, now the notebook. She's used to being the can-do girl, and now she's can't-do. It's gotta be rough. I know if it were me, I'd be kicking down walls."

"I think I'd be building them," Xander said with a dry laugh.

She gave him a sidelong look. "Literally or figuratively?"

"Both, maybe. Power tools and denial. These things get me through the day."

"You're a manly man."

"Yes, I am," Xander said with a faint smile.

Buffy looped her arm through his in friendly fashion, an old, old fashion, from when they were teens and could do that sort of thing. She earned a surprised look but kept propelling him along. "So, listen," she said on a lilting note. "How do you feel about interior decoration?"

Left alone, Willow pressed her face into her hands for a moment and sighed shakily. It was hard deceiving friends, to keep constantly in mind the things they could and couldn't know. She'd come too close just now; Cottler's files might contain anything. They probably didn't; were probably just full of boring documents on plant management. But she couldn't take a chance. The judgment of how much information was too much lay entirely on her shoulders, and distinguishing between safe details and unsafe ones was getting harder every day. If Buffy found out enough to try and stop the invasion, she and the others--Xander, Tara, everyone Willow loved--would die.

But now she was facing up to reality; this wasn't just visions in her head anymore. This was the water supply; this was people; people who were going to get drugged and hurt; some of whom would certainly die when the demons took over and made Sunndyale their own. And the closer her friends got to the truth, the more complicit she became in their downfall. She was actively misleading them now, preventing their discovery of what was to come. Her only goal was to keep her friends alive and, if she was lucky, minimize any collateral damage. She'd made preparations, of course. She'd done what she could.

"What else can I do?" she said aloud in the empty office. Grimly resigned, she continued searching through the engineer's e-mail correspondence. It didn't tell her much more than she'd already learned. She began a keyword search for any relevant files, and started printing out copies of the most pertinent e-mails. The printer whirred to life and she went to stand next to it, watching the sheets as they chugged with mechanical, hypnotizing regularity into the tray.

When the printing was finished, she collected the sheets and turned with them in hand, and then gasped. Paper fell from her hands, fluttering and drifting across the tiles at her feet.

"Who are you?" asked the man in the doorway. "What are you doing in my office?" He was short and slim with a close, not unstylish haircut, and he was squinting at her from behind oblong glasses. Willow's gaze dropped immediately to what was in his hands, but it wasn't a gun. He was holding a...a banana?

"I, I'm, uh--" Her mind skittered wildly, seeking a plausible explanation. "The new secretary?" Even to her own voice that sounded lame.

"No you're not." He moved forward a step, not quite threateningly, but squarely blocking any exit she might try to make.

"No," Willow echoed, growing still as she weighed her options. "I'm not." And she felt herself gathering, the way a storm gathers above a field. A prickling, prescient sensation in the air; an electrical heaviness as the sky charged itself to strike. "You're Cottler?"

"I'm Terry Cottler."

She smiled. It wasn't her nice smile. "Hi, Terry."

He must have seen something in her face. The step he'd taken forward he took back, but she raised her hand casually and the door slammed behind him. She never grew tired of that trick. Or, really, any of the others.

"Don't go," she said, an icing of friendliness over her voice. "I've looked forward to our talk."

Cottler backed up into the corner. "What do you want?"

Shadows were lengthening in the room as in an over-exposed photograph, the contrast of dark and light sharpening, making the man's face stand out with an eerie white glow. It wasn't hard to open yourself up and let the darkness flood in, shadows splashing up against the walls, pouring from the ceiling, a tide rising. What they didn't want you to learn, the jealous writers of books and the watchers and the safe little Wiccans, was that power wanted to flow, even without incantations or offerings. If you made yourself a door, it would open you. Fill you. It flowed into her now, and the release made her giddy. She saw the banana drop from Cottler's hand as if in slow-motion, trailing shadows. Bananas. The funniest of fruits. She smiled a little more broadly.

Truth spells. Who needed truth spells?

"Tell me about the compound," she invited.

"I don't know what you--" And then he cried out, because fire hurt. She watched his face pull into a rictus of pain, break out in a sweat. He was a pale little man, and far too vulnerable to be playing games with her. She was a friend of darkness. He was merely its pawn.

"Tell me about the compound," she repeated, rolling her wrist and hand with sensual awareness, feeling the magic like a potent ache; ready to deliver a second blow.

"I don't know...don't..."

"Oh, come on." She strolled up to him, close enough to dance. Her eyes bored into his from an intimate distance. "Don't make this fun," she said softly. "You don't want me to have fun." She'd come a long way since high school, when pretending to be a vampire felt as disturbing as putting on someone else's skin. Now she knew how to change her own skin, shimmy off one to reveal another. Like a snake.

Cottler swallowed, and his gaze twitched behind his glasses, a little muscle beating at the corner of one eye. "N-no," he stuttered. "I...it's a sedative."

"I know that," she said impatiently.

"W-what do you want to know then?"

She touched his chin lightly and held his gaze. "When are you putting it in the water?"

"They won't tell me until it's time."

The e-mails had suggested that already, but Willow was still disappointed. She believed him. "And where are you keeping it until then?" she asked, stroking his cheek. Touching him was a grotesque affectation and it took all her will not to draw back her hand and wipe it down her shirt, but he looked even more distressed than she felt and that was what mattered. Cottler tried to turn his face away, but she grabbed his chin and jerked it back. "Tell me."

"It's over there," he whispered, moving only his eyes, directing her to the far wall of the office; she followed his gaze to a small, open set of shelves on which sat a coffee maker, mug, stirrers, non-dairy creamer. "Bottom shelf," he said. "Coffee can."

"You've got to be kidding me," she muttered, irritated at him and herself. "Very purloined letter of you, Terry." She released him, but cast a casual, flickering motion of fingers as she walked away. "Don't go anywhere." His shoulders and arms spasmed back against a bulletin board, paralyzed by her will; she paid no attention. The coffee can was big, economy-sized; but even so the stuff must be incredibly potent if they intended only this much to affect the entire town. She'd thought the formulas outlined in his e-mails might have been off or that she was reading them wrong, but this proved otherwise. It was shocking to see the fate of a town realized in something as modest and ordinary as a coffee can. The compound itself was flaky looking, like laundry detergent, and had no smell.

"Is this all of it?"

"Yes. It's very powerful."

"It would be bad, if you were lying to me," Willow said conversationally, without turning to look at him.

"I'm--I'm not."

Kneeling on the carpet, she thought about what to do. Absently she noticed a cardboard box still on the shelf; she pulled it out and found a second can, this one sealed. Stripping off the lid revealed five innocuous pounds of coffee. Willow shoved it back into place and went to him.

"It's not many people who can say they've sold out the entire human race," she observed, drawing on a cold, scathing tone, working herself up to what needed to be done. "Your mother must be very proud."

Cottler stiffened and his watery eyes suddenly burned at her. "She would be. My mother wasn't human. She was raped by one, though. The bastard probably didn't even know what she was, a Koul-lon-kham, but I've had to hide what I am my entire life. I'm sick of it. I can't wait to see your kind crawl for a change. You'll make great housepets."

His sneer and the utter loathing twisting his face wiped out the momentary pity Willow felt and before she could think to stop herself, she slapped him hard across one cheek. Her voice shook as she spoke. "You think I care about your demon-movie-of-the-week sob story? My friends could die because some creep like you has an identity crisis. Well, boo frickin' hoo. I'm sick of pretending monsters are anything but monsters." She paused to suck in a raw breath, and her holy anger refused to abate. "I should feed this stuff to you and dump you in your own reservoir. That would be poetic justice, don't you think?"
 
Her captive said nothing, but breathed harder through his nostrils. Willow stared him down, just looking for an excuse to hurt him in some new way. She trembled all over, power threatening to surge and blow her sky-high; what had been a familiar sweetness before was now beginning to make her feel sick. She swallowed once, hard, and made herself unclench her fists.

"You're lucky I've got a generous nature," she said, lifting her chin a notch. "I'm full of love and I'm strong. Stronger than you." She took a breath and raised her hands to each side of his face. She didn't look him in the eye anymore, but closed her own and reached out to the dark spirits who always awaited her call, even when she lacked tools or tokens. "Surasundari, Caligo, Umbria, hear me. I seek you in supplication. I offer my hands to you and my praise."

When they came, it was as if she'd called down lightning and she felt their ferocity and desire, how they'd missed her, like old lovers. Filled with their power, her eyes snapped open blackly and she spoke with flat, level force at the man she held: "Let your plots be played unwitting, the means destroyed in your forgetting; I take the gold and leave the grind, guised as needful in your mind. In sleep forget all intervention, erase this hour and my intention."

As darkness faded from Willow's eyes, Cottler slumped bonelessly against the wall, dragged down by sleep. She left him huddled on the carpet, head cushioned against the side of a chair, and staggered backwards until her hip bumped his desk. Above her, near the ceiling, swirled a knot of restless shadows, like an unkindness of ravens seeking her kiss. She felt around behind her, closed her hand around a pair of scissors, and then drew them out and the blades open.

"Hand to my hand, tool to your power, I give thanks for your gift." She sliced open her left palm, then her right, then let the scissors drop and raised her hands to the forceful lick of their presence. For a moment as they touched her she went rigid, pain her price, but when released her hands were healed and her debt filled. A ritual formality with the Dark Ones, no more.

After all, they liked her.

"Whoo," she breathed, as they dissipated and left her drained in the very mundane confines of Cottler's office, with a sleeping man and a mess of fallen papers. "Head rush." As quickly as she could manage she gathered up the print-outs and tidied any signs of her presence, then took the coffee can of sedative. At the door she paused to glance down at Cottler. She'd used a lot of force on him, but she'd had to. Easy enough to wipe memory; harder to implant a false one and make it reality. At least, harder if you can't afford to take any chances. And she couldn't, not when so much was at stake. But he'd be fine soon, would wake up and mistake coffee grounds for compound, and dump them into the water supply, and lives would be saved.

It was strange, how for a moment she felt so very ancient, like something beyond time trapped in the flesh of a child. But she couldn't regain innocence, and didn't want to. She'd grown up and out of fairy tales. Monsters weren't transformed by a kiss.

And sometimes the means did justify the end.

"Willow." Buffy's step quickened. "We were wondering what happened to you."

Willow smiled as she closed Cottler's office door behind her. "Hey, guys."

"My god," said Xander, staring at what she held. "What did I say about caffeine? Would you look at this?" He held out one hand in forthright amazement.

Buffy looked and raised her brows. "Okay, Will? Probably not a good idea to steal the man's coffee. Kinda ruins the whole low-profile thing you were going for."

She smiled at them, and Buffy thought she seemed a bit punchy. "Don't worry. It's okay, really. Guess what this is?"

Xander blinked, not catching on. "A tasty morning pick-me-up?"

"It's the compound," Willow said rather proudly.

"Whoa," said Buffy, spirits lifting further than they had in weeks even as she boggled. "He kept it in a coffee can?" Soon as I get home, I'm moving my money stash, she thought in alarm.

"Man," said Xander, sounding suitably wowed. "How in perdition did you figure that out?"

"Oh, you know." Willow waved a hand. "Logic. Intuition. A few choice clues. It all added up."

"What's this guy going to do when he finds it gone, though?" Xander looked at Buffy. "I mean, what if he just gets more?"

"I exercised a little mojo," Willow said. Buffy reassessed her pale, shadowed face with this new information in mind. "Put a glamour on his coffee. Now the residents of Sunnydale will suffer no more than a slight perkiness." Her smile renewed itself.

"You are da man," said Xander emphatically, shaking his head in admiration. "In a completely non-butch way, I mean."

"Thank you."

Buffy studied her friend, strangely disquieted but unsure why. A little search-and-seizure, a handy spell, and hey, they'd moved one step ahead of the enemy. It was all good. So why did she feel so...uncertain? Maybe because it seemed so surprisingly easy. "That's great, Will," she said, forcing down her doubts. "Score one for the home team. And for Wicca power."

Willow's smile might have soured a little, it was hard to tell, but Buffy definitely felt herself being read with closer attention. "Yeah," she said in a steady tone, holding Buffy's eyes. "Go us."

"I just wish we could have found out when this was all going down." Buffy shifted, put her hands in her back pockets.

"Hey," said Xander. "Maybe we could follow him? Except, no, because he's going to be inside the building when he makes his move. Damn." He frowned in thought.

"We can't expect everything to fall in our laps," said Willow a bit sharply, then took a visibly deep breath, shoulders moving. She stepped away from the door. "We should probably get out of here."

"Yeah." Xander glanced down the lab. "Good idea. Before the triumphant raiding party falls prey to guard dogs and golems."

"Golems?" asked Buffy, as they walked side by side out of the lab.

"It's late," said Xander by way of explanation.

Buffy's step almost faltered as memory closed a circuit. "Later than you think," she said automatically.

"What?" And she looked up to find Xander smiling, puzzled, and Willow looking her way with sharp, closed eyes that Buffy could no longer see behind.

"Nothing," she said. And the dream began with familiar steps, but somehow she thought this was becoming very real.
 
 

Previously on Buffy...there's a little bit of Willow backstory shuffled in this time, pretty much left unexplained, imagined to tie in with virtual eps in late season six, and in season seven.

This falls approximately around Oct 23, 2003.

Please do not archive; feel free to include links on rec pages, however. This is not beta-read. I love love love, in a respectful way, Joss and everyone at Mutant Enemy, and the brilliant BtVS actors, and would never try to poach their territory, except in the very non-money-making way that I'm doing now, which I hope they'd understand if they ever saw this, not to mention that I'd never ever sue if, you know, they wanted to steal things from me in friendly retaliation. Oh, and I'd work for large amounts of money too. And move to L.A. And sign my soul over in blood to some demonic guy named Skip or Ted or Bart. And...yeah. Just went to the fantasy place there for a minute. I'm back now.

Feel free to send feedback, excluding, you know, rants on how Spike/Buffy is evil. This is the fifth episode in an alternative season 8, with an unwritten AU season 7 in between; everything branches off from "Gone." The title is from "As Time Goes By."

There's a little backstory here and here on the season noir concept. It has a few broad, spoilery things for stories to come.

The main page for season noir is here.

My e-mail is eliade@drizzle.com.