Terra Firma by Tulipp

Disclaimer: All characters and an occasional bit of dialogue are borrowed from Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. No copyright infringement intended.

Summary: When Tara returns three months after Grave, Willow and the Scoobies must learn how she came back...and why.

And there were daughters older than the mothers who had borne them,
Being older in their wisdom, which is older than the earth;
And they were going forward only farther into darkness….
—Edwin Arlington Robinson, "Valley of the Shadow"

Something had happened. The very air was charged. If he held his head right, tilted his ear to the breeze, the air crackled. Perhaps the wind had changed, and his Mary Poppins had flown into town on her umbrella after all.

Because there was a new energy in Sunnydale, one that hadn't been there yesterday. And certainly not before the spell.

Resurrections were tricky; everyone knew that. Even a powerful sorcerer had to face the fact that a resurrection would work…more or less. How many times, after all, had he given this caution to young widows and parents and sisters and….daughters?

He had done everything correctly, but he went through the evidence again. The sacrifice of the blood of witnesses to bring her forth. The chanting to conjure her essence. The doorway through which she would pass. The rope to bind her to this reality. And the gift of milk…a gift for a God.

Yes, the elements had all been there. It was just possible, of course, that the spell itself had been incomplete, but he had spent countless hours attempting to cross-reference the ingredients, perfecting the Latin of the chant.

A University education was such a gift. Doc smiled. And the transformation to half-demon had been value added. He had so much to be grateful for. A father who had brought him up with a classical training and paid for his studies. And an adopted mother who had taken him under her wing, compelled him with darkness, showed him the lap of a God.

But now, perhaps, the son would become the father. And the mother would become the daughter.

It was so simple, really; he should have realized it much sooner. He'd been expecting Glory's essence to return at the tower because he'd assumed that's where she had left this reality. Not having her appear there…well, it only meant she had appeared somewhere else. Which meant she had left somewhere else.

It had to be, Buffy thought, stirring milk into her coffee. A miracle. How else could she explain the fact that Tara had walked through the door the previous evening, picked the pieces of Willow up off the floor, and with a simple touch, put her family back together again?

Buffy wanted nothing more than to hug Willow and tell her that everything was going to be just fine. To assure Dawn that all her sisters were here for good. To keep everyone safe. But under the thin skin of her relief, her Slayer-sense bubbled up and boiled over. Events-good or bad-always had causes. Often deliberate causes. And motivations.

This uneasy knowledge tugged at the edges of her contentment. They had to figure out who…or what…had brought Tara back, and why. They had to remove the threat. And then they could celebrate. Go on.

She looked up to see Tara pausing in the kitchen doorway. The familiar half-smile felt like a hug to Buffy. "Tara," she said, getting up to get her a cup. "How….

Buffy smiled. The world had just turned upside-down-again-but some things didn't change. "No. Tara, how are you?" She poured coffee and set the cup in front of Tara.

"Oh." Tara smiled ruefully. "I'm fine, Buffy. I mean, I'm confused, and I can't really get my mind around what's happened…well, you know…but last night, being with Willow…it was so right, so…." She broke off, her cheeks flushing. "Sorry."

"It's okay," Buffy said, putting a hand on Tara's arm. "Tara, it is so okay." She bent her head to look into Tara's eyes.

"Tara…" Buffy spoke into her cup. "Did Willow talk to you yet about…what happened?"

Tara gave her a sharp look. "No, not yet," she said. "I mean, I had a feeling that there was something to tell, but… I thought it could wait until today. Last night…we didn't really talk. Buffy, she just…she needed me."

"Of course," Buffy agreed quickly. "Waiting was totally the right thing to do." She frowned at her coffee. "It's just that….Willow, well, Dawn can tell you more, since she's the one who spent most of the summer with her, but she hasn't really been talking that much at all, and so…."

"Willow," Tara said softly. Buffy glanced from Tara's face, flushed pink again, to Willow, standing in the doorway and twisting Tara's blue shirt in her hands. Her lips were pressed tightly together, her knuckles white. Buffy slid off her stool and crossed the room in a few strides.

"Willow," she said gently. "Let me wash that for you." She reached for the shirt. Willow looked down at the fabric, surprised, as if she hadn't realized she was holding it. She unclenched her fingers, and the fabric slid out of her grasp.

"Buffy, I…." Willow hesitated. "I have to talk to Tara." She glanced at Tara again but didn't move.

"I know, Will," she said. "But it will be okay. I promise." She hugged Willow, a brief, hard hug, feeling the rigid shoulders under her arms.

Willow nodded and held her hand out to Tara. "Will you…come outside?" Their fingers trembled when they touched, and Buffy's chest ached. Willow had Tara back, and that was the best gift in the world, but the conversation they were about to have would not be easy. Maybe she could….

"Hey," she said suddenly, and they turned back. She searched her mind for a strategy, a way to just tell Tara about Willow's rage and get it over with. Or to tell Willow to wait, to delay this confession until later, when they knew more about Tara's return, when things felt more secure. Or to take the blame herself, somehow, so that Tara wouldn't have to know.

"Just…just come have some breakfast after you talk," she said finally, lamely. Tara nodded. Willow's smile did not reach her eyes.

Buffy sighed and went to pour herself another cup of coffee. Caffeine would help. She couldn't carry this burden for Willow, no matter how much she ached to. And no matter how much she wanted to, she couldn't take the pain of hearing it from Tara. She'd once thought she could protect her friends from their biggest demons, but this was a monster they had to face for themselves.

And it was necessary. She knew that. No, it wouldn't be easy. But it would be right.

"They've been out there a long time," Dawn complained. " I want to see Tara. And I'm getting hungry." She crossed her arms on the counter. "Can't I at least have a piece of toast?"

"Have some more juice," Buffy said flatly. She heard the front door open and voices in the hallway. "We're not eating until they come back. This is our first meal together, Dawn. It's important. Anyway, juice has calories. It's like toast, only…it's in a glass, and…it has less butter."

"Great," Dawn said, rolling her eyes. "Like you'd ever put butter on your toast anyway," she added under her breath. She welcomed the distraction of Anya and Giles, who pushed into the kitchen with arms full of brown paper bags.

"So then," Anya was saying, "I said, 'Xander, what more do you want? They don't make bags of chips any bigger than that.' You should have seen his face." Anya set down her bags on the counter with a flourish.

"Ah, how clever," Giles said, smiling sideways at Buffy. "The vengeance demon at home. Kind of a busman's holiday, isn't it, Anya?"

Anya tilted her head at him for a moment. Then she turned to Dawn and Buffy and beamed. Giles looked around with raised eyebrows, but Buffy only gave him a blank look, and Dawn didn't really get it either.

"Wait until you see what we got," Anya said proudly. She began to remove items from the bags. "First, we found some of that tea she used to like, and this notebook with kittens on it." She passed the notebook to Dawn.

Giles stepped forward and started rummaging. "Oh yes, look at this," he said. "It's a-what do you call them-a barrette…for her hair. I thought…."

"And this," Anya interrupted excitedly. "This is the best one." She presented Dawn with a small paperback book.

"The Big Book of Insect Reflection Jokes and Other Hellmouth Hilarity." Dawn read the title out loud. She wrinkled her nose.

"You know, in case she feels depressed or something, like when Buffy came back," Anya said. "This could cheer her up. Cheer us all up. God knows we could use a little old-fashioned insect humor now that Tara is here to explain it to us."

"So where are Snow White and Prince Charming, anyway," Xander asked, coming through the door with two more bags. "And no, I'm not going to say who's who. You'll never get it out of me. So don't even try."

"Outside, and no one's trying," Buffy said drily. "Jeez, Xander, did you buy the whole store?" She unloaded eggs and bacon and bread and bagels and fruit and doughnuts onto the counter.

"We didn't know what she'd want to eat, so we thought we'd get everything. I mean, who knows what kind of appetite you work up when you've just been kind of hanging out for three months, right? And we thought maybe we could tempt Willow-the-wisp with variety. Buff," Xander's voice dropped. "Did she eat a single thing yesterday?"

"Her herbal drink," Dawn said, vaguely, over her shoulder, wandering to the window. But she forgot all about breakfast when she realized she had a clear view of Willow and Tara, standing close together near the bench in the back yard.

"They're talking," she announced from the kitchen window. "It looks like they're talking."

"Dawn," Buffy said reprovingly. "Don't spy on them. You shouldn't be looking at them." She set down the barrette she'd been turning over in her hands. "It's not a nice thing to do. It's very not nice. It's wrong." Buffy joined Dawn at the window. "You can see them?"

Willow was speaking, her hands wrapped around herself. And Tara was listening. As they watched, Willow's head dropped, and Tara touched a finger to her chin and lifted her face back up. Willow spoke again.

Tara's face changed. Her hand fell, and she stumbled backward across the grass. She turned and gripped the back of the bench, doubling over. Her shoulders heaved. Slowly, her hand tight on the bench, she pulled herself upright. She stood there for a long time, her back to Willow. It looked like she might be crying. Willow didn't move.

The kitchen was absolutely silent. Dawn felt like she might throw up herself. The moment seemed to last forever.

But then Tara turned, slowly. Dawn could see, even at a distance, that her cheeks were wet. Wiping her mouth on her sleeve, she tilted her head at Willow, seemed to study her. And then, without pausing again, without another second of hesitation, Tara closed the distance between them, wrapped her arms tight around Willow, leaned into her.

From behind her, Dawn heard Xander's whisper of relief and Anya's contented sigh. "Okay, that's enough," Buffy said sternly, putting one hand on Dawn's shoulder and the other on Xander's. "Anya, come on." She pulled them forcibly from the window. But she was smiling.

Willow's hands slid to her shoulders and gently pushed back. "Tara," she said quietly. "It's okay if you need…time. You're alive. That's all that matters." Tara heard her voice as if from far away.

Tara reached for her hand. The fingers looked the same as they always had, small and on the bony side. Tender. But these fingers had soaked up currents of black magick. They had crushed metal and split the air and bloodied friends. They had…killed. Tara had prepared herself for pain, for revenge even, but she honestly hadn't been expecting that. Not cruelty.

The image of this Willow-so driven by fury, so vengeful, raging-she felt it as a wound, a gash. It stung to think of Willow so desperately alone that she would threaten Dawn. So lost that she would give herself over to a nightmare rather than face a day without…her.

It hurt more to think that Willow had lived inside the knowledge of what she had done for three months. Without hope.

At least she'd had something to hope for the first time Tara had left her. The hope of a reunion. And she'd never really doubted it, had she? Even after Dawn's arm, Tara knew that it was her own absence that really fueled Willow's resolve.

"I forgave her," Dawn had said one afternoon while she and Tara were shopping for new gym shoes. "I finally did. But if you do, then why won't you come back? It's been like a month. Isn't that enough time?"

Tara handed her a pair with purple laces. "It's just…she has to know she can do it," she said finally, reluctantly. "If I come back now, after only a month, w...what happens the next time something goes wrong? The next time she's tempted to use dark magick? She has to be sure."

Dawn glared at her. "You mean you have to be sure," she said angrily. "This isn't about Willow. It's about you . You say you love her, but you don't come home." Her shoulders sagged as her anger drained away suddenly, and her lower lip trembled. "You never come home."

Tara tucked Dawn's hair behind her ear. "Dawn, I do love her. I love her more than anything. And that's why I have to stay away for a little while longer. If I stand beside her right now, she'll never learn to stand on her own. Without me. Without the magick. And she h... has to. She just has to."

Tara heard the note of desperation in her own voice. She knew Dawn heard it, too, because Dawn looked at her hard, and then without saying another word, she bent to pull on the next pair of shoes.

The conversation flashed through Tara's mind, and she thought briefly how surreal it all was. She had come back from the dead, her lover had just told her she'd drained a powerful sorcerer and killed a human, and all she could think about was buying Dawn shoes. With purple laces.

Well, she'd had to, all right. Look what had happened. Yes, she'd killed out of revenge and rage, and that was…God, it was unimaginable. But after that, with Tara dead, on the edge of her own despair, Willow had-somehow-stepped back from the cliff. She had put one foot in front of the other and walked herself through three months of empty, endless days. She had done that. And that was something, wasn't it?

"Willow," she said finally. "I'm not saying it's all going to be fine. I don't know." Willow's grip loosened instantly, and Tara clutched at her hands to keep her there, to keep her close.

"Willow, don't," Tara said. "Just don't." She looked into the wretched green canyons of Willow's eyes. "There's nothing you can say now, nothing, that's going to make me leave." She watched the hollow in Willow's throat deepen, but Willow did not speak.

Tara gripped Willow's fingers and pulled their clasped hands to her own chest, pressing Willow's fingers to the bone between her breasts. She felt the blood pulsing, the heart contracting and releasing under her skin.

"You feel that?" Tara asked hoarsely. Willow swallowed hard. "Well, that belongs to you. And I'm not going to take it away from you. Never again. No matter how hard it is. No matter what." Willow swayed back, made a little sound.

Tara moved their joined fingers to the scooped neck of Willow's shirt. She slipped her thumb under the fabric until she could feel the pulse of Willow's heart. "And this…?" Willow nodded mutely. Tara swallowed over the tight ache in her throat. "This belongs to me. And I'm going to take care of it now."

Willow lifted her eyes then, and Tara was flooded with green. Still holding Willow's fingers tight, she slipped her other hand around the back of her neck, pulled her close. She pressed her lips to red hair, to pale forehead, to eyelids and ears.

"Willow, baby," she whispered. "I'm going to take care of what's mine." She held Willow tight, and when she finally felt the thankful arm wrap around her back, felt the heat of the palm through her shirt and the breath on her neck, her tears came again.

She had heard everything. Willow had just showed her the darkest side of herself, the shadow Willow that she had always tried so hard not to see. And that Willow lived in a dark place, darker than she had known.

But Tara was no stranger to dark places. And now, with the darkest corners exposed to light, with the hardest confessions out in the open, with no secrets left to tell, they would find a way out. A way home.

"They're crying again," Dawn said slowly, from the window. "That's good, right? Crying is good? Or is crying bad?"

Buffy came to the window and looked out. Maybe, after all, she thought, they didn't have to wait to celebrate. Maybe there was a simple explanation for Tara's return, A simple as the sight of two women clinging to each other in the middle of the backyard, lost in a private and long overdue reunion. As simple as need meeting need. As simple as forgiveness.

Buffy put her arm around Dawn's shoulders and pulled her close. "It's good," she said softly, hugging Dawn to her. "This kind of crying is very, very good."

And, after all, they did eat together, although it was more lunch than breakfast. Willow and Tara sat close, their shoulders touching. Willow obediently drained the glass of orange murk that Buffy set in front of her, but she mostly watched Tara eat, reaching to refill her coffee cup or to slide another piece of toast onto her plate. The others ate ravenously, scarfing down eggs and bagels like it was their last meal. Or their first.

Buffy waited until Dawn had popped the last bite of bacon into her mouth before she rested her forearms on the table and caught Giles' eye. He nodded and dabbed at his lips with a napkin.

"Tara," he started to say, but Anya stood suddenly, scraping her chair back and glancing at the screen on a tiny black box she pulled from her skirt pocket.

Anya glanced around, saw the curious looks. She shrugged, holding up the black box. "It pulses. Like Xander used to." Dawn made a face while Xander sunk down in his chair.

She turned to Tara. "I'm really sorry," she said. "But duty calls. I'll be back later." And she was gone.

Xander shrugged. "Anyanka just happened," he said. "Big Daddy D'Hoffryn calls, and she goes running. She's a good girl." Tara heard bitterness in his voice. She shook her head.

Willow squeezed her hand. "Oh yeah," she said. "I guess with…everything…I forgot to mention that…."

Tara's forehead wrinkled. "Vengeance demons have beepers now?" she asked. Xander just rolled his eyes, but Buffy and Dawn giggled.

Giles cleared his throat. "Tara," he said. "Before we talk about your, well, your resurrection, have you thought about calling your father? I…I'm not sure what you'd tell him, but perhaps your family should know that you're alive."

Tara looked around the table. She reached out and ruffled Dawn's hair, and then she pulled Willow to her and kissed the top of her head. To Buffy, it looked like a protective kiss, shielding and possessive and infinitely tender.

Curious, here behold my resurrection, after slumber,
The revolving cycles, in their wide sweep, have brought me again.
—Walt Whitman, "To the Garden, the World"

Tara walked, a borrowed sweater wrapped tightly around her, although the afternoon was warm.

Bits of the breakfast table conversation clung to her like crumbs. She hadn't had to hear much about the evidence of the resurrection ritual held at the tower to understand what it meant. Giles was too knowledgeable not to be able to read the signs. He had been too kind to spring it on her right away, had let her find some peace with Willow first, but it had had to be said. Blood sacrifice. A doorway into this reality. Rope to bind whatever crossed that threshold. The gift of milk to welcome a God.

Someone-or something-had tried to resurrect Glory, and Tara had come back instead. At least, that was the good alternative. Her coming back from the dead was some kind of magickal…accident.

The other alternatives weren't so harmless. Glory could be using her as a host body, the way she'd used Ben, who had died and therefore ceased to function. Or Glory had somehow punctured her mind again, growing Tara a new body to house her own essence.

Or-and this was the one that had stuck in Tara's throat, the one that had raised a chill on her arms that she hadn't been able to shake since-or some part of Glory had been in her all along. Willow's reversal spell hadn't entirely worked, or it had worked too well, and some echo of Glory had been reverberating in Tara's brain since that night. Glory was immortal, after all. She had to have been somewhere.

"She was so weak," Buffy had said slowly. "Glory, I mean. She had a hard time fighting me. I thought it was the troll hammer and the orb, but maybe it was her. Maybe she wasn't all there." Tara hadn't been able to read the look in Buffy's eyes.

When Tara had left the house, refusing company and insisting that she be given some time alone to process this possibility, to walk through the autumn afternoon and clear her head, to meet the others at the Magic Box later, Willow had kissed her hands and understood with her eyes. Tara needed time to think, and as long as she stood next to Willow, she would be utterly focused on Willow. They both knew it. And just at first, Tara needed to be alone.

Now, she touched the place where Willow's lips had warmed her palm. She couldn't leave Willow again. She wouldn't. Not after so much had happened. Not now.

But she was scared for herself, too. For what might happen to her. Did that make her a terrible person?

The thought that she was still connected to Glory was…it seeped into her and clung. Tara had never spoken of the muddy terror that had swamped in her veins after Glory had taken her sanity. A thick sludge of fear around what she knew was true, what she knew was real. And she couldn't wade through it.

At first, Buffy's death had eclipsed the memories. Tara had been too busy comforting Willow and Dawn to think about herself. And once Buffy was back, well, she hadn't really wanted to remember.

It had mostly been just as Glory promised it would be: darkness and small spaces, crawling flesh and quicksand shame, words and images she hadn't understood pressing in on her. Mice. Doors to be opened. Men who killed. But a few times-only a few-it had been more real than that. And those times were worse. It was during one of those times that she had hit Willow, had actually struck her. Hard. Tara remembered the way it had felt.

The clammy skin, the damp grip of sickly sweet darkness. Darkness that that oozed, that seeped into her skin and then leaked back out. No separation between the darkness and herself. They were the same. Dark. Bad. Unchanging. And then.…

Approaching from the horizon, a pale shape, a face. Blurry but angular. Twisted in anger. The face sneered this at her. The face would make her behave, would control her. It was veined. It had dark hair. It loomed, it leered. It was a nightmare face.

Was it her father? Was it Donny? Tara tried to find one firm place to stand in the mire of her marshy brain. These were the only faces that made sense, the faces that punished and controlled. These were the dark faces she knew, the features that she had seen contorted in rage and looming. The face came into focus: A sharp widow's peak. Liquid black eyes. It menaced.

But no, it was Willow. Red hair and green eyes and magick. For a moment, Tara could almost move. It was only Willow. It was always Willow.

But then Willow smiled, and as she smiled, her red hair went black, and her green eyes went black, and the smile twisted bitter and cruel and Tara had to protect herself from this nightmare creature who wasn't her Willow and she struck out against the vision, struck as hard as she could to beat it away. "Bitch," she cried out in protection.

And, oh, it was Willow after all who turned brimming green eyes to her, and Willow's cheek was red where she had hit her. She deserved all the nightmares because she had hurt her. She wanted to apologize, but the words that clawed out of her were about figures, and the mud spread over her mind again, reminded her that she had things to do. A tower. And bricks.

Later, as fingers pierced her mind a second time, confusing and unfamiliar images had flooded her mind, a life flashing before her eyes. Dawn, rigid with fear as an old man smeared blood onto her forehead. The contorted faces of short creatures in brown robes. Willow, floating across the floor with outstretched arms and deeply black eyes. Deeply black anger. Deeply black magick.

After she had been thrown and lay sprawled amidst the rubble-able to move again, able to think-hands lifted her. They were Willow's hands, and it was Willow's familiar face, and Tara let herself be found.

But she hadn't forgotten the memories…were they Glory's or her own?…of that other Willow.

In the grieving time that followed, she had convinced herself that it had been guilt, an echo of that last conversation with Willow before Glory found her on the park bench. Or maybe a trick, like that false and haunting image of Giles killing an innocent person.

That was what it had felt like to have Glory take her mind, to have Glory in her. The best thing she knew twisted into a nightmare shape and turning on her. Having to protect herself from the person she loved above everything. When she had learned of the spell Willow had used to tamper with her memory, the memory of that other Willow had risen like bile in her throat. It had come true, that vision. It had been real. Realer than she could have imagined.

Maybe it was just an accident, after all, she thought desperately. Maybe she was just herself, only herself, and she could stay with Willow. Maybe Willow's spell had worked, maybe she had mapped their essences correctly and reversed the spell without going too far. There had to be some way to find out, some way to know for sure. Or to fix it.

Once, she thought, clutching her sweater around herself, the answer would have been magick. The Scoobies had all depended on Willow to solve problems with magick, even before Buffy died. Tara included. She hadn't always liked it, but she hadn't always stopped it, either. It had been an answer.

And the questions weren't clear, either. Everything had changed. Some of the changes were for the better. At breakfast, she had seen that the Scoobies sat a little closer together, touched one another more. Dawn was stronger, more mature. Giles was gentler. Buffy was more at peace. And Anya and Xander…little touches of shoulder to shoulder, and sidelong looks, gave them away; something was going on there.

But…. But Anya was a vengeance demon again. Xander's face was scarred with thin red welts that slashed across his left cheek, and Tara had noticed that Willow bit her lip whenever she looked at them. Spike's name hadn't even come up. And Willow….

Would Willow ever be the same? Tara stopped walking for a moment, heartsick at the thought of what Willow had gone through. What Willow had done. She could not, she would not let Willow get that lost again.

She had come back for a reason, she felt that. Accident or not, Glory or not…it didn't matter. Willow had burned out…burned up with rage and grief. And Tara had come back to gather the ashes and let the phoenix out, to see the red feathers in full flight again.

But there wasn't an answer in sight that didn't involve magick. Magick and Willow.

Willow's mind had been in hyperdrive for the last hour. She was turning pages furiously, three or four books at a time open in front of her. She'd nearly forgotten what that felt like. And it was a relief, really, because her skin had started to itch again, and she was trying to ignore it.

Her mind had always worked like a computer, making lightning-fast and sometimes arbitrary connections she could not stop from spilling out into her speech. It sounded like babbling, she knew, but if she didn't talk through the rapid-fire thoughts in her head sometimes, she'd burst.

But these last months, she hadn't babbled. She hadn't talked much at all, mostly to Dawn and the Guides at the coven. She'd had to slow her mind down, to short circuit it to avoid the pain of facing-again and again and again-the inevitable chain of association that always led her to a bullet. Nothing had been safe. No thought. No word. No action.

It could be anything. Honey on her toast at breakfast came from a honeycomb. Combs made her think of brushes, which made her try to remember whether she'd brushed her teeth that morning, which made her wonder where the expression "gritting teeth" came from, if it was the sandy kind of grit or the food kind, like they ate in the South, which was the setting of "Gone With the Wind," where home was Tara. Deliberate memories she could handle, sort of, but not the ambush reminders that waylaid her at unexpected moments, that doubled her over so she couldn't eat or sleep.

So she had stopped. She had slowed her mind down to avoid the connections. And once the connections were gone, there was no need to talk to let them out. No babbling. She had simply put her mind to sleep.

And then Tara had come back, and the nightmare had changed into a dream. Her only dream-to have Tara alive, here, with her. She could stay in the world of that dream forever, the touch of Tara's fingers on her skin and in her hair.

But Willow knew that now it was time to wake up from the dream and face her life again. Her real life. And oh, thank God, her real life with Tara.

Her body had awakened first, the skin coming back to life under the trail of Tara's fingernails, her cold flesh rousing under the press of Tara's hands. And then her heart, stirring under Tara's thumb, under Tara's eyes.

It was time for her mind to wake up, too. She would fix this. She would take care of Tara. She had set off her mental alarms, pulled back the covers on the connectors in her mind. Told them to get out of bed. She skimmed through spells and ran her fingers through indexes and tried not to think about Tara, walking through Sunnydale alone and frightened.

Tara hadn't wanted Willow to go with her. And Willow knew that was because this was her fault. If Glory was still in Tara somehow, it was all her fault. Willow had put her there. With magick. The very thought sickened her.

She rubbed her arms furiously, trying to rub away the tickle, the flesh-prick urge of magick. Because there was a way. She had known it the moment Giles had finished presenting his evidence and Tara had said, suddenly, "Glory. It's Glory." Tara had had to explain to the others-to remind them of the reversal spell Willow had performed-but Willow had known instantly.

What she had done once, she could do again. Chart Tara's essence. Look into her mind. See if Glory was really there. But it would take magick. And she couldn't use magick. Could she? No, she couldn't. She couldn't.

And so Willow hadn't said a word, had flattened herself against her chair. She had breathed deeply against the nauseating skin-rush that she felt at the thought of using magic again. And then she had slipped out of her chair and gone to the bathroom to be quietly sick.

She had pressed her cheek against the cool of the wall tile and breathed-in and out, in and out-as the magical itch pulsed and twitched just under her skin. It wouldn't go away.

Now, seated at the research table, she still felt flushed and ill. She knew that even if she wanted to do the spell-even if-she might not be strong enough. Strong enough to do the magick. Or strong enough to come back from it. The last time it had almost killed her. She had wanted it to.

Willow shook her head. This wasn't helping; this was why she had put her brain to sleep in the first place. She let go of the pages she was turning to press the heels of her hands against her eyes. Then she closed the left-hand book and reached for a larger one to take its place. Her mind raced, and her flesh crawled. She inhaled and exhaled slowly to stay calm and focused, but she knew one thing for certain.

She could survive without Tara. She could get through each endless moment by waiting for the next one to arrive. She could hold her breath against the loneliness and the pain. She could shut down her mind and meditate and get through longer than long days. If that was survival, then the past months had taught her she could do it. But she couldn't live.

The bell to the Magic Box jangled, and Willow looked up to see Tara walking toward the table, her arms crossed over her chest. Tara paused for a moment in the middle of the shop, locking eyes with her. Willow was stunned all over again by the still-fresh sight of Tara standing in front of her, the manuscripts in front of her forgotten.

Xander glanced up from his book. "Whoa, did anyone just have a serious déjà vu moment?" he asked. "Tara walking in the door?"

Willow pushed back her chair as Tara moved again and met her halfway, leaning into her. "Hey," Tara murmured, hugging Willow tight, both hands in Willow's hair. Willow pressed her face against Tara's rough sweater, feeling the arms around her shoulders. They were Tara's arms, weren't they? Only Tara's arms.

Willow felt Tara's lips on her hair, the rim of her ear, and she felt a current pass between them, a gentle understanding. And then Tara spoke into her ear. "I'm back," she said. Willow felt rather than heard the words.

"I know," she said into Tara's sweater. "I was waiting for you." And Tara's arms tightened around her.

"Tara," Xander said behind Willow. "Willow's been hitting the books since you left, but I'm still working on the fact that the big bad Got Milk."

"Xander, if you say that one more time, I think I might have a minor stroke," Giles said, walking through the training room door with an armful of books and a basket of charms.

"Where are the others?" Tara asked over Willow's shoulder. She half-turned in Tara's arms to watch Xander slide off the counter, but she didn't let go; her arms gripped Tara's waist. She had no intention of letting go. Neither, apparently, did Tara.

"Buffy and Dawn went to do an early sweep of the campus," Xander said. "Rumors of a new guy in town. They call him the Poet. Very threatening, if you ask me: give me your wallet, or I'll recite a limerick. Ooh, please scare me."

Willow wasn't listening. Just touching Tara, just standing next to her-she felt it as a balm, calming her irritated skin. It soothed her; it almost took away the itch. Almost.

"I've been thinking," Giles said now, leaning against the counter and regarding Tara. "There might be a way to find out, if not how precisely how to fix the problem, then at least what the problem is." He paused, glancing at Willow. "If Willow is willing to try."

Willow only heard the words after she registered that there had been a pause, a beat of silence. She looked at Giles sharply, and then, seeing the wariness in his face, she understood what he was saying. And her stomach roiled.

"No," she said, her voice hoarse. "I won't do it. Look what happened the last time I did this spell. Tara was okay…at least, we thought she was okay…but Ben died. He died." Her voice was hoarse, but it didn't waver. "I will not stand by and let that happen to you. Not again. Not ever again."

"Wait a second," Xander said, holding his hands up. "What does Ben have to do with this? Do Ben and Tara have some kind of connection?"

"I can't do it." Willow turned to Tara again, lifting a hand to her face. "Every time I use magick, I destroy something. Or someone. I can't. Not you." Her fingers trembled against Tara's cheeks.

Tara's forehead wrinkled. She looked at Giles for a long moment and seemed to come to a decision. She reached for Willow's hand. She held it to her own face and closed her eyes, standing perfectly still. Willow felt Tara's cheeks cool beneath her hot fingers. When Tara opened her eyes again, they were clear and calm and very blue.

"Tara," Giles said quietly, urgently. "You know what this means?" Willow watched in confusion as Tara nodded slowly. And then Giles turned to her.

We're just a couple of sorcerers,
And the night is still our time:
A time of magick.
—Ethan Rayne

"I don't understand," Willow said slowly. "Giles, why didn't you tell me before?" She tried to look away, but her eyes kept shifting back to him. To his face, his arms. Were his hands a little larger than she'd remembered, the veins standing out more boldly blue against his skin? Did his eyes glint more gray than she'd once noticed? Was the line of his jaw harder, tauter?

No. He was the same Giles he had always been. It was just this new disclosure, this sudden revelation, that colored him darker, more brutal, in her eyes. He had killed Ben, had pinched his nose and covered his mouth and watched the life snuff out inside him. Giles had killed, too.

She felt the familiar stab of nausea, the dizzy reminder, but this time, it wasn't because she had remembered. It was because she had forgotten. And for a second, someone else had been the villain. And it had been a relief. She had been the bad guy for so long. So, so long. She clutched her stomach with one hand.

"Ah," Giles said. He removed his glasses with one hand and pinched the bridge of his nose. "After Buffy died, well, I didn't think it mattered. I think I was very wrong about that."

"Willow," Giles said now. He sighed. "I'm afraid that's just the beginning of what I have to tell you." He stood. "The rest of it…well, I…." He turned, sinking his hands into his pockets. He took a few steps toward the back wall and stood for a long moment. Then he straightened his shoulders and turned to face them.

Willow nodded. "The costume shop," she said. "And the band candy, and the mark of Eyghon, and…Buffy's mom on the car…."

"Buffy and I talk, you know," she said, the corners of her mouth lifting. "At least we used to."

"At any rate," Giles continued. "I take full responsibility for everything that happened later, but in the beginning….well, in the beginning, I was seduced. Ethan seduced me."

"Ah," Giles said again. "Yes, well, um. That." He looked over her head at the knife rack on the wall, suddenly appearing very interested in the weapons hanging there. Willow watched him uncertainly.

Giles sighed. "This may come as a shock to you," he said. "But, well, it wasn't… precisely metaphorical."

It was a good story, Willow thought. Or, well, it would have been under different circumstances. Now, it was…disturbing. In more ways than one.

Buffy had told her, years ago, about the group of friends with whom Giles had called forth Eyghon, the tattoos on their arms a reminder that he-and his friends-had to pay a terrible price for tampering with the forces of black magick. They had killed their friend. And later, all of them-except Giles and Ethan Rayne-had been killed, too.

It called to mind an England of fog and cobblestones, an England Willow had read about in the gothic novels she'd read on summer nights before Buffy had moved to town. Mist and murder. Magick. She knew she was romanticizing it, but she couldn't help it.

Giles had left the others behind, had slipped out of Ethan's bed one gray morning, taking with him a leather jacket and memories of black magick. Willow imagined Giles paused at the doorway, his hand gripping the tattoo to draw out the pain. She imagined his eyes traveling the perimeter of the room, memorizing the dirty handprints on the wall above the mattress, the rusty electric tea kettle, the crumpled trousers on the floor. She imagined his mind tucking away the sex and the lust with the squalor, packaging it tidily away. She imagined him squaring his shoulders as he left the room and not looking back.

A few months later-he did not say what he had done during that time-Giles showed up on Quentin Travers' doorstep.

The Watchers' Council welcomed him, of course. They'd expected him long before, and they looked at him speculatively, but they took him in. To learn. To train. To carry on his family heritage.

But there were surprises. The Council had, traditionally, trained one Watcher at a time. That was their way. But it was the seventies, and in the wake of England's faddish educational experimentation, the Council had decided, at the urging of Professor Berlin-one of their most respected demonology experts-to accept a second candidate. It was a gamble, but the Council felt buoyed by Professor Berlin's enthusiasm. Perhaps it was time to expand. And as it happened, Professor Berlin had just the right candidate, a rogue magician from the streets.

And so it was that when Giles walked into a dank basement library one morning, the air thick with the mildew of ancient texts and the heavy smoke of unfiltered cigarettes, he found Professor Berlin waiting for him, eyes bright and lips pinched in the smile that Giles would later come to associate with plans. Dark plans. And Professor Berlin wasn't alone.

"It was Ethan, of course," Giles had said. "He'd already begun worshiping Chaos by that time, but I was too blind to see it."

He hadn't gone into much detail about the year that followed, but Willow's imagination had supplied atmosphere and description to fill in the gaps. The tension between the two men: the abandoned lover and the deserting loved.

The years of intense study and magickal practice that followed, Giles reading into the small hours with Ethan across the table and Professor Berlin smiling down at them from his stool near the stacks.

"He hummed incessantly, the Professor," Giles had recalled. "Stravinsky, I think it was. It used to drive me quite mad until I realized that I could use it to my advantage. Focus. Block out both of them and really be in the texts."

In the end, Giles said, it was the focus that was his undoing. It allowed him not to see the long gazes that passed between Professor Berlin and Ethan, the empty hours when they had slipped out, and he was left alone with a cooling mug of tea and a pile of books. It allowed him not to question the instructions the Professor gave him, instructions that increasingly-as the months wore on-became more intricate.

They practiced incantations. They performed spells. They experimented with harnessing darkness and communicating with demons and casting runes. Some mornings Giles would wake with itchy skin and a pounding head and not be able to remember the details of the night before through the insect-screen of magick that clouded his thinking.

"Nothing had changed," Giles said. "I thought I had left that life behind me, but I hadn't. I was the same. I was tempted. I was ready to be seduced all over again. The only difference was that I told myself the Council had approved it. And if they had approved it, it must have been all right. And…."

Giles sighed. "And Ethan had moved on. I didn't want to see it, but he'd set his sights on the Professor. No, the seduction this time was all magick. Somehow, that made it…makes it…worse."

"You were tricked," Willow said. She pressed her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around her legs, pulled into herself, into the corner of the sofa.

Giles smiled sadly. "No," he said. "No, I wanted to be tricked. Don't you see…I wanted the black magick, the darkness. I wanted the power. I wanted it all. But I didn't want…."

"The responsibility," Willow interrupted softly. Giles looked at her for a long moment, his eyes hooded. And then he took a breath and continued.

The Council had assigned Giles and Ethan a joint project. A fledgling Slayer, a young girl from South London whose African parents had been honored when they'd learned of their daughter's sacred duty. And who had cried when they'd learned she was to be sent to New York.

They had traveled with the girl to the States, Ethan and Giles and Professor Berlin. They had established themselves in a fifth-floor walk up and set to work. And for awhile, things had gone well. Too well. Ethan was studious and docile. The Professor was unexacting and supportive. He made hot drinks for the four of them after late patrols.

"I thought we were learning our trade," Giles said. "Practicing. Becoming better. Becoming Watchers. Under the guidance of the Professor, you see. If he was there, then we couldn't do any harm. We had a calling. We were going to transform the art of Watching with magick.

"I didn't see that Ethan had gotten to him. That he had almost gotten to me…."

Ethan and the Professor had suggested a spell. A three-way trance that would call on a primal dimensional shifter, a protective force that would enhance the Slayer's essence. Augment her strength. Protect her. They had studied the spell for months, the three of them, immersing themselves in Sumerian texts. They had so immersed themselves that they hadn't noticed the Slayer pulling back, retreating from their tight circle. They didn't notice that she grew more distant, less focused.

In the days just prior to the trance, Giles had realized that he hadn't seen the Slayer for some time…days, perhaps? But he had ignored the warning of her absence, pushed back the uncertainty he'd felt, the suspicion that perhaps…. But no. The Professor would guide him. And Ethan had changed. They had both changed. And if they could harness this force, well, they could do anything.

"Thank God it didn't work," Giles said. "At least there was that." Slightly before entering the trance, he'd had a pang of misgiving. He had glanced over and seen Ethan's slow smile at the Professor, seen a look pass between the two men that he hadn't understood.

He hadn't registered the glance until they'd been trancing for a day and a night. His muscles rigid, his head thrown back in concentration, he had felt recognition coming from a faraway place in his gut. But he knew. Perhaps it was an effect of the force they were trying to harness, a primal wisdom settling in and clarifying something he should have seen long before. Ethan and the Professor had other plans. He felt the bite and sting of magick and knew that it wasn't for the Slayer. It was for themselves.

"When we came out," Giles' voice had gone dead quiet. "There was a note on the floor. It had been slipped under the door." He stood, wiped his palm across his face. "It was from her. I knew before I'd even picked it up. I just knew."

Willow imagined, with a sense of foreboding, that she'd knocked, the Slayer. She had banged on the reinforced steel door. She imagined the girl's knocking eventually slowing, stopping. The Slayer slumping, her fist still balled up. Maybe she had leaned against the door for a moment, pressed her cheek against the cool metal. Maybe she had been tired. Tired of fighting. Tired of it being so hard. Maybe she had been carrying that note around for awhile in case she changed her mind. But standing there, deflated, her fist unclenching, she had made a decision.

The note, he continued, had been dated the day before. It had asked for a sign. From either Watcher, a sign that would give her the will to go on. To slay.

"She wanted meaning," Giles said now. "She wanted to know that there was a reason to go on, a reason to keep fighting. Just a word, she said. A word to tell her that her fight was not futile, that there was a higher purpose. She could keep going with that word."

She had never gotten a reply, of course, never heard that word. And she had given up. On a subway underneath Manhattan the night before, she had given up her fight.

"That's not all," Giles said now. He turned to face them, meeting Willow's wary gaze directly. She shook her head.

"There was a massacre that night," Giles said slowly, as if he hadn't heard her. "In Greenwich Village. One subway stop away from the station where they found her body in the train, where her neck had been snapped." Willow's mouth opened, but she didn't speak.

"Vampires killed thirty-nine people that night," Giles said. "In a disco. Thirty-nine lives lost. Thirty-nine plus one."

Willow's palms felt clammy. She rubbed her hands on her jeans, trying to wipe it off, the sick feeling, the knowledge. She stared at Giles, wordless. His eyes rested on a spot on the wall just over her head.

"The Council reacted," he said. "They fired the Professor, and they sent Ethan down on the spot. But not me…. I was very lucky. I got probation. I came from a solid family, you see, a family that had been in the Council for generations. They said that I had made an honest mistake. They took me back, and I trained again. I trained for nearly twenty years, until Buffy was called."

Willow's shoulder sagged. It was too much, information overload. She was out of practice. She leaned back against the sofa, realizing as she did so that she had been sitting on the edge of her seat the whole time. Her muscles felt stiff and unused. But there was something….

"But Giles," Willow could hardly get the words out. "Buffy….I always thought she was your first Slayer."

Giles pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose with a finger and looked at Willow. He smiled, the first genuine smile Willow had seen all day. It softened his eyes.

Willow clutched her arms around herself, trying to squeeze away the uncertainty that had settled into her chest, her arms. She didn't know what to think. What in all that Giles had told her was the important information?

"Giles," she said suddenly. Her voice was louder than she'd intended it, more urgent. She took a breath, concentrated on the feel of the rough cotton of the shirt clutched in her fingers, and she started again.

"I've spent my whole life trying to right the wrongs I've done," he said finally. "To atone. For the terrible things I did as a boy. As a young man. Things I should have known not to do." He paused. "Things I knew not to do. And I still…." His voice trailed off.

"Is it enough?" Willow asked finally, her voice like gravel. Images she had forced out of her consciousness for months peeled themselves out of the corners of her mind. Black thread on lips and naked fear and exposed membrane. And underneath all that, the memory of her own hatred. It pulsed under her skin.

Giles lowered himself back onto the sofa, next to her. She wasn't sure she would be able to meet his eyes through the images that had skinned the top layer of calm from her mind, so she focused on his cotton trousers. The fabric was worn at the knee, the white threads showing.

She felt panic rise in her throat at his nearness. If she could just relax, breathe deeply…. If she could just concentrate on those white threads, just let go of the moment and relax into that white place, it would be okay. She could make it go away. She could be calm there.

But Giles put a hand on her knee, and the touch shocked her. "It has to be enough," he said. "It's all there is."

Willow felt the warmth of his hand on her knee, the finger shapes of sense and solace and…. And then she knew. It was sense, and solace, and understanding. Giles understood. She raised her eyes to his.

"It doesn't disappear, Willow," he said. "The regret. The fear. It never goes away. But the magick doesn't go away either. I made a choice in 1977. I knew then that I was capable of darkness, of killing. That I had been responsible for the deaths of a great many innocent people. But I knew…."

Willow felt weak. "What?" she asked. The training room receded until it was only herself and Giles. Two faces. And the video clips of pain that played restlessly on the back wall of her mind. "What did you know?"

"I knew that if I just stopped, if I ignored the magick, if I ignored my knowledge…that more innocent people would die. I had a responsibility, Willow. I couldn't undo what was done; I could never make it right. But I could spend the rest of my life trying."

"But Giles," Willow said, her shoulders sagging again. She wanted to believe him. She wanted to be comforted, to be bolstered by his words. She wanted it desperately. "I'm addicted, remember? As in I'm an addict. I can't handle it." Her mouth twisted in disgust.

Giles rubbed the back of his neck. "It seemed so, didn't it?" he mused. "When Buffy told me that you had quit the magicks altogether, I agreed that it seemed like the right thing. And certainly, when you ingest pure magick as you did…it's like a drug. But Willow…it's like a drug. it isn't a drug. It's still magick."

Willow swallowed hard. "Then why," she started to ask, but she couldn't ask the question. Even asking it would let herself off the hook. She sank back against the cushions and squeezed her eyes shut.

"Witches sometimes experience what we think of as addiction," Giles said. "But the idea of addiction, well, it's…it's a framework. A lens, if you like. And it doesn't fit in your case. It's too easy an answer." Willow cast her eyes about the room, looking for something to focus on, something solid and familiar.

"Tara understands this," he said. "I talked to her a few days before she died…did you know? No, I don't suppose you did."

Willow felt dizzy. Her body seemed to itch from within, and the room spun without. It had only been a day since she'd got Tara back. Was every moment…every single moment from now on…going to be the moment her world shifted, the moment everything changed?

"I've made so many mistakes," Giles said, and she forced herself to look at him. "I should have seen it in you years ago. The signs were there all along…even at the beginning, when your spells went wrong, it was so clear. But I didn't want to see it. I saw you heading down the same path I'd traveled, and I thought if I just turned my ahead away, I could make it stop. And by the time I realized, well…."

"It's not a gift, Willow," he said softly. "It's a struggle. I'm not going to lie to you. You have to be stronger than you ever thought you could be. Every day you walk the line between dark and light. Every day you make the choice to use magick the right way, to resist the easy answers. The darkness. Every day, you…you remember. And"-his voice had grown quiet, and Willow strained to hear him-"and it's bloody hard."

Willow couldn't read Giles' expression. It was tender, but his eyes were gray with regret, and his mouth turned down at the corners.

"We're the same, you and I," he went on. "And sometimes we have to do the things that others won't do. That others can't do. The things that are too hard. I can try to bury it in research, and you can try to hide it with addiction, but it doesn't work."

He smiled at her, and the smile was sad and hopeful and knowing. "You and I, Willow," he said. "We're sorcerers."

The first step towards vice is to shroud innocent actions
in mystery, and whoever likes to conceal something
sooner or later has reason to conceal it.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau

When Dawn and Buffy returned to the Magic Box, having turned up little more than an easily-slain Ssoj demon and a gathering cloud of rumors about the Poet, they found Xander and Tara tense at the research table, silently flipping through a massive pile of books. Anya leaned against the counter, her arms crossed over her chest. She looked up when the bell over the door rang.

"Yeah, and we washed our hands first," Buffy added lightly. "No monster slime toppings this time."

"I still don't see what the big deal was," Anya said crisply, moving to open the top box. "That was a perfectly good pizza that I paid for with hard-earned money. Anyway, it tasted sort of like chicken. You know, if you closed your eyes and ate really quickly."

"No," Buffy said firmly. Dawn saw her sister glance at the closed door of the training room, and then at Tara and Xander, who had hardly looked up from the table when they had come in. They were talking now, and Dawn eased a little closer to hear.

"…trust Giles on this," Tara was saying, her voice pleading. "I've been thinking a lot about everything, and…and it's not as clear cut as I used to think it was. It's complicated. It's…."

Xander closed his book. "Right," he said, his voice tight. "And you've been doing all this thinking exactly when? You've been alive again for, what, 24 hours?"

"Dawnie," Tara said; her eyes cut back to Xander, who pushed back his chair and headed for the pizza. Tara watched him go and then looked down at the table for a moment. Her fingers traced the raised letters on a leather-bound book. "Dawnie," she finally said again, looking up at her. "I've hardly seen you. Come sit with me." She patted the seat next to her. "No Glory action, I promise." She smiled, sort of. "What's this about headaches?"

Dawn shrugged and took the paper plate of pizza that Buffy handed her. "It's funny," she said, "but I haven't had one since you've been back. I mean, I know it's only been like a day, but it's a whole day. And the last couple of weeks, I was having them all the time. More and more, in fact. Maybe I was allergic to England."

Tara leaned forward. "I'm sorry you were going through that," she said. "We have to get you to a doctor, see what's causing them."

Dawn shook her hair back before blowing on her pizza and taking a bite. "It wasn't that bad," she said through a mouthful of cheese. "They never lasted very long, and Willow always took care of me."

Tara smiled. "You know, Dawnie, Willow said the same thing about you." Dawn flushed with pleasure. She had done that, hadn't she? Even with the headaches. It all seemed so long ago, so far away, the distortions of sound and sight. The voices pitched high and the crowded white on white images. The headaches that made her rigid with pain.

"It's all blurry now, anyway," Dawn continued. "I mean, whenever I had them, Willow was always there. Like, every time. I don't remember that much, but I remember that one thing. Willow was always there. I kind of think that.…"

Dawn looked sideways at Tara, wondering if she should tell her the other part, the part she hadn't even told Willow. She wasn't even sure it even meant anything, the missing time.

But Tara wasn't really listening to her. Not really. Her eyes kept darting to the closed door of the training room, and more than once Dawn thought she was going to just get up and walk over. Finally, Dawn shrugged and took another bite of her pizza.

"Aren't you going to eat?" She gestured to the other paper plate on the table. Tara nodded and pulled the plate toward her, smiling quickly. But Dawn had had a lot of practice at reading faces that summer. Well, one face anyway. And she could see now that Tara's quick smile was a cover. That all she was thinking about was Willow.

Tara watched Xander eat three slices of pizza without pausing before he wiped his mouth with his sleeve and took a breath. He'd eaten standing up, and now he shifted from foot to foot.

She understood where he was coming from. She really did. She had been there herself, weeks ago. Well, months ago now, but it felt like weeks. Weeks that stretched endlessly backward in her memory because they felt like whole years that she had spent without Willow.

But everything was different now. Maybe she should be wary, too, but it just wasn't in her anymore. Not after today. Not after the previous night. She knew Xander was thinking of the Willow who bruised others, but even after all that Tara had heard that day, she could only see the bruised Willow, the Willow who was black and blue inside and needed her. The Willow she had finally—oh God, finally—found again.

Tara's cheeks burned with the sense-memory of Willow's hot tears on her face. She had tasted Willow on her tongue, and she had worn Willow on her skin. There wasn't a shower in the world that could have washed that away. And no magick would ever, could ever take that away again. She felt that now, deep as muscle and bone.

"Are you okay? You look upset," Dawn said now, and Tara realized that her cheeks really had flushed red. She pushed her chair back.

"Xander," Tara said, trying to think of something that would convince him, that would make him see. "She's going to take it slow. We'll all help her." She lifted her chin. "I'll help her."

But Xander slammed his fist onto the counter. The pizza boxes moved, and Tara flinched. "You weren't here, Tara," he said. "You didn't see this place. She destroyed it. I just put it back together again." His voice rose. " She was insane. She was scary as hell. She was…."

Tara's jaw tightened against his words. "She was wrong, Xander." She squeezed her eyes shut for a second. "She knows that. But it's different now." She hoped that Willow would keep talking to Giles for a few more minutes. She willed it. "I'm going to see her through this. I'm not going anywhere again."

"Great," Xander threw his hands up. "That should do it then, since you're perfectly safe. No Glory anywhere. You're in no danger. I feel really reassured." He scrubbed at the sides of his heads with his fists.

Tara's breath came out in a shudder. She couldn't put what she knew to be true into words. She looked helplessly at Buffy, who seemed to understand and stepped in, moving toward Xander, one arm outstretched.

" You talked," he said, jabbing a finger at her. "Giles talked. I listened. But I didn't like."

In the taut pause that followed, Tara saw the door to the training room open, and Willow stopped in the doorway, her eyes restless until they settled on Tara.

"Sweetheart," Tara said, forgetting about Xander for a moment as her body sought out Willow. She felt the familiar pull as they moved toward each other. Which of them was the magnet? Tara wondered. She slid her arms around Willow's shoulders and felt the body, stiff with tension, soften against hers. One of Willow's fists was clutched to her chest, but Tara felt the other on her own neck, felt the damp palm under her hair.

Still grasping Tara's neck, Willow turned to look at the others. Tara could sense the anxiety coming off her in waves, could feel the rapid pulse through the palm on her neck.

"Xander?" Willow asked. Her voice was tight and thin. He looked down, flexed his fingers. "Xander, please talk to me."

"I want to talk to you," he said tersely. The steel in his voice stabbed at Tara, and she gripped Willow's shoulder more tightly.

"Jesus, Willow, that's just it. I want to talk to you every day. I want to see you every day. The real you, not some scary witch who could lose it at any second." He took a step toward them, and Tara felt Willow shrink against her. She held on.

"Okay, Xander, you need to cool off," Buffy said, stepping in again and putting a hand on his sleeve. He shook off her arm and walked away.

"Right," he said. "Cause I'm the one you should be scared of." He laughed, a short, terse laugh. "That's rich, Buff. She tries to the end the world, and you're scared that I might hurt her?"

"Of course I don't think that," Buffy said quietly. "But I think you're upset, and I think you're scared. And I don't think Willow needs to hear this right now."

Xander met her gaze for a long moment, and then he shook his head. "I'm sorry; I am." he said. "I wish I could be Mr. Supporto here, but I don't know how."

"Would you like to know what I think?" Anya spoke. Tara started. The world had shrunk for a minute to the strained triangle of Willow and Xander and Buffy, and she had forgotten that the others were still there.

"I think you like her this way," Anya continued, her voice cold but calm. "Weak and needy."

"She needs you," Anya said, her heels clicking onto the floor as she slid off the counter where she'd been sitting. "And you like it. You get to keep on being the hero this way."

Xander stared at her. "No," he said. "No. It's just…." He deflated suddenly, and Tara could almost see the anger as it left him, the huge puff of it leaving him smaller. He was just a boy.

"Willow," he said, and his voice drooped with defeat. "I saw you smile this morning for the first time in months. I don't want to lose that."

Tara felt the pull as Willow broke the protective circle of her arms and took a step toward Xander, reaching toward him. But he held his palms out against her.

"I understand what they're saying, but the magick…it takes you away, Will," he said, tilting his head. "And I don't want you to go. Not anymore." Sliding his keys off the end of the counter, Xander turned and walked away, up the stairs to the door. And he closed it, very quietly, behind him.

They all stared at the closed door for a moment. Tara half-expected it to open again, half-thought that Xander would come back in, apologize, pull Willow into a hug and tell her he was sorry, that he would support her no matter what. But he didn't. The door stayed closed. Xander stayed gone.

Finally, a little numb with the shock of it, Tara pulled her eyes from the door to look at Willow. One hand was still clutched to her chest; the other held stiff a few inches from her thigh, reaching toward where Xander had been standing the moment before. Tears had beaded on her chin.

The road to the Magic Box was paved with good distractions. Doc smiled to himself. The Poet, indeed. Give a man a Norton anthology and a few tae bo lessons, and he thought he could take on the powers of darkness. He looked familiar, and Doc had almost stopped for a better look, but there were more important issues at hand.

Doc knew better. Fighting was all well and good, but if you didn't have the proper tools, jabs and punches didn't get you very far. Look at the Slayers….they were an endangered species. Always the last of their kind. He'd learned that lesson many years ago, and he'd stopped wasting his energy on them.

No. Far better to have education than to fight. Book learning. The classics: Latin, Demonology, Sumerian, Celtic Runes and Artifacts. A really long tongue and a tail didn't hurt, either.

The Key…now there was a tool he'd have liked to have added to his repertoire. Too bad they'd missed that once-in-a-lifetime chance. The Key would never open that particular door again. Not that one.

But there were other doors. He wondered idly if she was aware of them, that little girl.

And he was headed for one of them right now. To see an old friend. To get some answers. And to find his Glory.

Tara rubbed her hand over the small of Willow's back, pressing gently. Willow had been breathing slowly since Xander had left, just sitting and listening to the others talk—or not talk—and trying to be calm. She had been almost ready to try the magic, Tara thought, but Xander had scared her.

So Giles and Anya were poring over the books, looking one last time for a way to chart essences without using magic. Dawn was helping, casting worried looks at Willow from time to time. Buffy was leaning against the bookshelf, her eyes on the front door to the shop.

Tara turned back to Willow. It would all be fine. It had to be. Maybe they were making something out of nothing. She felt normal. She didn't feel any connection to Glory. Nothing at all. And she would talk to Xander herself. She would make him understand.

Willow still held one hand to her chest. Tara had thought it was the clenched fist of anxiety, but now she looked more closely and saw a glint of metal near the base of Willow's thumb. She took Willow's fist in hers and unfolded the fingers to see a small pewter object on a chain in her palm.

Tara turned the inch-long pendulum over in her hand. She held it up to the light so she could see it better. "What did he say it's for?" Her voice had slowed, but Willow didn't seem to notice.

"It was his grandmother's," she said. "It's supposed to be a reminder of balance. Walking the line."

Tara fingered the pendulum for a long moment before handing it back to Willow, whose hand closed around it tightly again. And then she looked at Giles thoughtfully.

"I think," she started to say. The symbol was familiar, and she thought that it meant something else, something important.

Tara glanced at Giles again, and then at Willow's green and trusting eyes. "Nothing," she said. "It's lovely." She smiled at Willow, pulled her close, and kissed her forehead. "And I'm sure Xander will feel differently soon," she said softly against Willow's ear.

But over Willow's shoulder, she looked at Giles, and the wisps of a thought gathered. And took shape. And clouded her eyes.

Something's bound to begin.
It's going to happen,
Happen sometime,
Maybe this time….
—Kander and Ebb, "Maybe This Time," Cabaret

It all happened so fast. That's what Willow would remember later, when she was alone with Tara in the darkness, with Tara's sleeping head in her lap, Tara's sweat drying on her skin, Tara's arms just holding on. There was no time for fear, or panic, or suspense.

When she thought back, she would wonder if there had been a sense of it all coming, the featherweight noise of a drum roll heard from the very last row of the second balcony, a tension building out of nothing into a slow thunder. But no, that was just her mind inventing drama. There had been the moment of knowing what to do and the moment of doing it. And then everything changed again.

It had been like watching a floor show, only she was supposed to sing, and she didn't know any of her lines, didn't even know the plot or the kind of music that would be played or the theme. That seemed familiar, somehow, but she couldn't think about why.

She had waited for Xander to come back. Or Anya, who had gone after him. She was sure he would come back, and she was equally sure he wouldn't. She didn't blame him, after all, for being angry. He had been a friend when she had least deserved one. Would it make a difference if she told Xander that she was terrified? If she told him that she knew she deserved punishment for the destruction that she had caused, for the scars that she had left? And she could handle punishment; she could handle anything now.

But was there a choice here? With the books spread in front of them, with Tara's hand warm on her knee, with the screaming awareness of Tara that stood between her and logical thinking, she knew there was no choice. She would do whatever it took to keep Tara alive, and if that meant that someone got destroyed in the process, well, she'd just make sure that she was the first in line.

Willow was dimly aware of Buffy and Dawn leaving; they were going back to the house to get some book Giles had left there. Buffy talked with Tara in a low voice, she squeezed Willow's shoulder.

Willow felt overheated with thought; she couldn't soothe the burn of excess in her mind. Giles' talk and his pendulum, now cool against the hollow of her throat. Xander. Dawn's headaches. She had hardly talked to Buffy yet; they had hugged before lunch, a long, hard hug that anchored them to each other and to the kitchen floor, but they hadn't really talked. And Glory might be in Tara.

Tara who was alive. Tara who was flesh and blood and not a memory. Tara whose fingers had touched her almost constantly today, who had, with the exceptions of her own necessary walk alone and that necessary talk with Giles, kept her hands on Willow. Tara who seemed to understand her, to understand everything. Willow didn't know what she had done to deserve that, to deserve a love so powerful it came back to forgive and enfold her.

She only knew that there was always a price, always a trade. She had saved Tara and lost Buffy. Brought Buffy back and lost Tara. With Tara back, someone else would leave. Someone always did. This time…this time it was Xander.

Into these thoughts came the ping of the bell, and the door to the shop swung open, and things started to happen.

The Slayer had gone. Wasn't that lucky? It just made everything so much simpler.

The lights of the magic shop burned, and the door handle turned easily. Doc paused anyway, reflecting that this was a moment when everything might change. A threshold moment. He was about to open a door. He might find his Glory here, the Glory who had once been a kind of mother to him and whom he now had tried to midwife back into this reality.

He stepped into the shop and carefully pulled the door shut behind him. He had never been in the Magic Box; by the time he'd come to Sunnydale, Rupert had already taken it over, and Doc had thought it best to stay out of the way. And it had become a habit, solitude. Receding into the shadows.

Standing at the top of the few steps leading into the shop, Doc smiled at the two girls who looked up at him from their seats at a table across the room. The two faces rested on his. One face-the redhead's-fell. The other-the blonde-looked quickly at her.

Doc allowed a pleasant smile to lift the corners of his lips, stilled his tail. "I think you can," he said. "I'm looking for someone." Rupert would be able to help him; he knew things about Sunnydale, about the pulse of its non-human life. He would have felt the new energy, too. He would be able to identify it. He might not want to, but with the Slayer gone, there were ways of compelling him to talk. "Rupert Giles. I understand you may…."

And then it hit him. The reason the girl looked so familiar to him. The same thing that must have drawn him to Rupert now, after nearly two years of being practically neighbors, if only one of them had known it. Oh, but he was good. He was better than he knew.

"You," he said aloud, delighted. "You died." He could have sung. He wanted to dance. He'd been looking for a resurrection. And it looked like he had just found one.

Was this his Glory? Was the essence he had worked so hard to restore right in front of him? He wanted to sense the energy, to taste the essence. He wanted to catch its scent on the air. He lifted his nose and sniffed, but…nothing.

The other girl stood up quickly, grabbing her lover's arm and pulling her, not too gently, backward, stepping in front of her. "Will," he heard the blonde say.

"Get Giles," the redhead spoke quietly, but her voice was urgent, and her eyes sparked with protection. And menace. He glanced from the one to the other; their connection was palpable, a current that flickered between them. He could feel it from where he stood. Ah. So that's how it was with them.

As for Glory, there was only one way to find out. He flexed his fingers and without taking those last steps, without touching ground with one stride and then the next, was simply upon them.

Willow was trying to protect her; Tara saw that. She felt it. When Willow stood up and yanked her back, she gripped so hard that Tara knew her arm would bruise, would be marked with all the panic and resolve, all the fear and…and longing that pulsed in those gripping fingers.

The longing was the problem. In that half-second, Tara saw that this could go two ways. One way led to dark magicks and old habits and struggle. They would go the other way. Willow wanted to push her back, to keep her safe, but she had to take charge of this situation.

Tara didn't have time to think as the man glided toward them. Space seemed to contract; one moment, he was standing across the room; the next, he was directly in front of them, in front of Willow, who had pushed her back. Had he glided or somehow folded back the space and walked through it with one step? She wasn't sure, but she didn't have time to think about it.

He was next to them; he had moved past Willow and stood to the side, and as Willow turned back and Tara opened her mouth to call Giles, to force some word out of her suddenly dry mouth, she saw the arms coming, and she felt fingers push through her hair, and she saw fingers part Willow's hair. She sensed it coming, remembered the prick of fingertip touching scalp, that particular pain she had felt twice before, and she acted. This wouldn't happen. This would not happen. Not to her, not to Willow.

She needed no words. They had done this before; they could do it again. They only needed to be in the same place, to know the same thing, to think one thought. She closed her eyes for a brief second, drawing a blanket of calm over her roiling brain, and she reached for Willow's hand, and she pressed into her urgent finger-touch the knowledge of what to do and the memory of how to do it.

Willow's fingers closed over hers just at the moment the man's fingers pressed against scalp. Their fingers laced, from pinkie to thumb, and then they flattened their palms together, the force pushing out the space between their hands with a little "pfft" until there no distance left between hand and hand, between skin and skin.

Their eyes met for the briefest of brief moments, and then, with one movement, their heads both snapped to face the man. They had done this before, and it came back. A sudden puff of power, an exhalation of energy, a Siamese twin of breath and force.

And the man flew back across the room, hurled straight into the bookcase opposite. His back struck the edge of one shelf, and a bit of greenish skin showed-what on earth was that?-and he fell to the floor. A shower of books rained down on him.

Tara stared at their clasped hands, rigid with connection, white with power. The aftershocks traveled up the inside of her arms, of their arms. It was all so familiar. But there wasn't time to think; there was still work to do. Raising their hands to shoulder level, they flexed their joined hands back.

"We bind you," Tara said. Her own lips moved, but it was Willow's voice that echoed into the room, accompanied only by the soft shuffling of pages turning as the spell blew around the man and took hold.

Willow concentrated on the solid floor beneath her feet and the cool metal of the pendulum against her throat and the hot, damp skin of Tara's palm. She felt the press of Tara's fingers and understood-as if Tara had spoken the words into her mind-that Tara was bringing her down, was holding her. Willow took a deep shuddering breath, and she let it out slowly, slowly through her pursed lips.

For a moment, all was silent, and then Giles was there, bursting in from the training room. Willow stared at the man on the floor, bound to the wall with magick. It had worked, and she felt…okay. She breathed in, and the magicks hummed in her head and coursed through her fingers and stood the hairs on her arms on end, but she focused on remaining calm.

"I don't believe it," the man on the floor panted. He was held rigid against the bookcase, his left leg twisted under him and his scaly greenish tail pinned to the wall behind him. "All that work."

"What is go…." Giles stopped short, fixing first on Tara and Willow's joined hands and their blown-back hair and then seeing the man on the floor. "My God," he murmured, whipping off his glasses with one hand to stare.

"No, Rupert" the man said, smiling his thin smile as the binding spell settled in and held him without pain. "Your professor."

"Giles?" She heard her voice shaking when she spoke. "You know him? He…he wants Glory. Tara…he thought she was…."

"You're wrong," Willow spat out. She knew he couldn't move as long as her fingers twined with Tara's. He would stay bound. "There's no Glory in her…you couldn't do the spell."

Narrow lips stretched over pointed teeth in a delighted laugh. "In her? Gosh, for a powerful witch, you're a little slow. I guess you had kind of a rough summer, but still…have you really not figured it out by now?"

Tara's head snapped toward her, her hand clenching so hard that Willow thought a finger might snap, but that kept her from falling, kept her from staggering backward and severing their connection as a memory she had pushed down into the base of her skill flared up, flashed whole and complete into her mind. The night she had taken Glory into her mind for what she'd thought was only a moment.

Tara had walked ahead, plucking at the bandage on her arm, shuffling her feet as she walked, lifting her head to the night. Willow had trailed behind. She had been wearing ridiculously high-heeled boots, and her feet had ached, but it hadn't mattered. Already, by then, the pain that would keep her company for over a year-in one form or another-had settled in, taken root. Aching feet were nothing.

She followed Tara to the base of the tower, winced as Tara yanked the bandage from her wounded hand and hurled it off, hung back as Tara grew suddenly taller with purpose and wrapped her fingers around a brick. Willow had felt acid rage eating away at the lining of her stomach and her throat when she saw Glory approach, and from that moment on it had all been so easy.

Easy to glide soundlessly up behind Glory, her feet skimming the floor. Easy to come face to face with a Hell God. Easy to claim Tara as her own with three small words. The easiest thing in the world to send that rage down her arms and into her hands, to liquefy her fingers and melt through two heads of hair and two skulls, to feel the flesh of her fingers touch memory and thought and mind.

She had let herself-her mind, her thoughts, her self-recede, and she gripped Tara's mind with one set of fingers and Glory's presence with the other, and she reversed them through the empty channel of her arms and her black, black brain.

It should have hurt like hell. Her head should have split with pain. Her nose should have bled; her legs should have buckled.

But it had been so easy. And as two essences seeped through her and back into their own bodies, Glory to Glory and Tara to Tara, she had felt something-later she would decide it had been the magicks. There was discomfort at first, but then a fist of pleasure spread, hot and restless, through her mind. That was Glory.

She would forget, in the tornado of emotion that touched down after that, finding Tara and losing Buffy. She would forget that in that moment of uncertainty, after those days of fear and loneliness, that essence that coated her insides like sex. It was the first thing that had felt good in days. It wasn't the first time she had felt darkness pulsing through her, but it was the first time she had felt the black skin-itch of magick that had stayed with her ever since.

Had it been Glory? All this time…Glory? She couldn't move, couldn't take her eyes from the face of this stranger.

The Professor…was that what Giles had called him?…laughed again. "Well, gosh," he said. "I guess that threw you for a loop, didn't it? But relax; it's not even enough to extract. It's just a trace, like a smudge. You both have it. Frankly, I'm surprised you didn't feel it before now."

Willow stared. Her mouth was dry. She couldn't think. She saw Giles glance at her and Tara, who was also to stunned to speak. He peered at the Professor, and then he took over.

"It was you," he said slowly, evenly. "You did the spell. You opened the door to resurrect Glory, but Tara came back. Tara's connection to Glory," he paused, "and perhaps Willow's…responded to your spell."

The Professor winked. "You always were one of the brightest of watchers, Rupert." To Willow, he seemed strangely calm, unperturbed. Why was that?

"How could you do something so utterly stupid?" Giles bit out. "Do you have any idea of what could have happened to these girls if something went wrong?" Willow saw that Giles was shaking. She had only heard that fear in his voice when he spoke about Buffy.

"You have to understand the way I am, mein Herr," the Professor said. It had the ring of an old joke. "But, as much as I hate to disillusion you, it didn't work that way. Resurrections are a tricky business; they don't always turn out the way we want them to. I know that better than anyone."

Willow was having trouble following the conversation. She heard all the words, but she heard them through a cloud. Was it a cloud of Glory?

"Believe me," Doc continued. "I'm disappointed, but I'm a realist. There's only enough Glory in these girls to be a little bit interesting. A kind of thumbprint, if you like. An enhancement."

Giles looked at Willow and Tara again. He pulled his glasses off with one hand. "And why should I believe you?" he asked. "What reason have you ever given me to trust you?"

"No reason at all," the Professor said lightly. "Except that you know it's true. You know how extraction spells work. If Glory's essence were in there, I could have gotten it out. Once I had my fingers on their heads, if she were really in there, no little girl witch spell in the world could have stopped me."

Giles frowned. He thought for a moment, and then he nodded. "Willow, Tara, he's right."

"But, well, if his attempt to raise Glory didn't bring Tara back…" He raised his face to them. "What did?"

"Hey," Dawn bounced through the door, Buffy close behind. They were laughing at something, and in the moment that it took for them to burst into the shop, they didn't have time to notice the broken bookshelf, the figure magickally bound against the wall, Giles standing tall without his glasses, or Willow and Tara, side by side, hands clasped and arms rigid.

In that moment of not noticing, Dawn spoke. "We couldn't get into the house," she said. "We forgot the key."

It struck me every day
The lightning was as new
As if the cloud that instant slit
And let the fire through.
—Emily Dickinson, "Time and Eternity"

The laugh in Buffy's throat faded as soon as she stepped over the threshold to the Magic Box.

She and Dawn hadn't been laughing about anything in particular. Buffy had wanted to put Dawn at ease. Xander's outburst was fresh in her mind, and it had torn at her insides to see Willow's face fold in on itself with shame when he had left the Magic Box. Buffy didn't know herself if Willow should cast again, at least not so soon, but she thought she should trust Tara on this, and she knew she could trust Giles.

And, of course, underneath the tensions that had resurfaced in the last few hours, Buffy was still worried about the reason for Tara's return.

But circling all of that, pinching down that worry…Tara had come back to life, and Willow and Dawn had come back to Sunnydale. There might still be questions to answer, but it was enough to make her smile, to make her grab Dawn's hand and twirl her around in the middle of the street.

But there was nothing to laugh at in the Magic Box, where a cloud of tension hung thick in the room.

"We forgot the key," Dawn said, and then she stiffened and sucked in her breath, and Buffy took in the scene in front of her. Giles stood, glasses in one hand, his face hard as he looked at the man against the wall. A man whose leg twisted underneath him, whose green tail poked up behind, who sat as if paralyzed against the bookcase. Buffy recognized him immediately. He had tried to kill Dawn. Her lips thinned.

And then there were Willow and Tara, who stood by the research table, facing the man. Their hands were clasped tightly, knuckles white and arms rigid. They were both flushed and panting, and Willow's face, as the turned toward the door, had gone still in an expression that made Buffy uneasy. Was that guilt on Willow's face? Or was it…was it magick?

Buffy had the sense that they had all been here before, that they were playing out a drama that had started long ago. Maybe the scenery had changed, maybe their lines had been rewritten, but it was the same. Seeing him, the man whom she had sent spiraling off the tower with a single shove, brought it all back.

It had all gone wrong when she came into their lives. Dark magicks. Destruction. Death. They had all wanted to do the right thing. To fight evil and save the world. To protect Dawn. But they had lost their way, all of them, and the choices since then had only gotten harder, the punishments more brutal.

Buffy remembered talking to Giles after Glory had taken Dawn. Faced with killing her sister or ending everything, Buffy had said that she didn't know how to live in the world if these were the choices, if everything were stripped away. The words lived on her memory like a scar. Itching occasionally and there to stay.

But she had died, and she had come back, and she had stripped so much more away herself. She had peeled back the protective layer around her friendship with Willow. She had watched her friend, exposed and alone and gasping for breath, and she hadn't helped. She hadn't cared.

She could see at a glance that the man by the bookcase wasn't moving, so she dropped her arms to her sides and strode toward Willow and Tara. That look on Willow's face as she watched Buffy coming….

Tara glanced quickly from Willow's face to her own and back again. One palm gripped Willow's tightly, but she held out the other, beseeching.

She saw it all in that moment. That look on Willow's face, the quick apology of Tara's words-they were still wary of her, still afraid of her anger, or maybe of her coldness, of that righteousness she had pulled on like a wool sweater every morning after she'd come back. It was the only warmth she'd been able to find, that thread of morality that had allowed her to judge her friends, to judge Willow. To judge herself.

This knowledge settled into Buffy's stomach. Was that, in the end, the legacy that Glory had left them? That she and her friends would become distanced and alienated? That they would drift separate and alone? That they would see each one another hurting and do nothing to ease the pain? That they would hurt and fear one another?

Only months before, she and a grief-frozen and bitter Willow had faced off in this very place. They had said cruel things, both of them. But Willow's words had been cruel because she had spoken the truth, while Buffy's had been cruel because she had not, because even at what might have been the end of everything-the end of friendship and life and love and the world-Buffy had held back.

Could she have stopped it? If she had been able to say one word of comfort when she'd found out Tara had died, if she'd been able to reach for Willow and hold her instead of staring at her in dumb shock, to show her own grief instead of preaching at her…could she have stopped it all?

That had been Buffy's nightmare all summer, the thought she had awakened to every night for three months. That had been her cold sweat of regret: if she had acted differently, if she had just said the right words to Willow, if she had just…Christ, if she had just touched her….

No. She wasn't going to make that mistake again. What had been stripped away was hers to paint back.

Now, Buffy looked closely at Willow, whose usually pale face was flushed with fear and the tinge of magick. This was one of those moments, Buffy thought, one of those moments when you make a choice, and it matters, and you undo your mistakes, and it lasts. She could ask a question. She could ask what Willow had done, or what had happened, or if Willow had cast a spell, or if Willow had been careful, or why the man who had tried to kill Dawn on the tower was twisted against the bookcase.

But she knew the right question, the only question. There was no dilemma, no choice to make. She slipped her hand around the rigid line of Willow's neck and kissed her friend softly on the forehead, let her lips cool her friend's hot skin.

"Will, are you all right?" she asked, and she felt the stiffness go out of Willow's neck, and she saw the wariness in Willow's eyes give way to something else, a trust that shone green and parted her lips slightly. It was a look Buffy had not seen in a very long time. But she remembered what it looked like, and she knew how to recognize it. Before the relief of the last day, before the endless wintry mourning of summer, before the rage. Even before the guarded loneliness and careful, cautious hope of the months before.

It was love, pure and simple, and it beaded on Willow's lashes and spilled onto her cheeks.

"Thank you, Buffy," Willow whispered, leaning in so that her forehead touched Buffy's. They stood that way for a moment. Buffy felt the threat of tears feather the back of her own throat, but she swallowed against it. How had she missed it before, that all Willow had ever needed was forgiveness? Forgiveness for using the dark magicks. For starting with magick in the first place. For being herself. How had she missed it?

When Buffy lifted her head, she saw Tara smiling gratefully at her in the gentle and knowing way that only Tara smiled. Tara saw things that others didn't, Buffy knew. She saw things that happened beneath the surface of conversations, currents that other people missed. She seemed to understand, now, and she smiled.

"You okay, Tara?" Buffy asked, but she already knew the answer. Tara had Willow, and Willow was safe. And so Tara was okay.

Buffy nodded and shook herself. Time to figure out what had happened. And decide what was going to happen.

Dawn felt paralyzed. He had cut her, that man, had sliced into the flesh of her stomach. He had drawn her blood and watched it drop onto the cold metal grating of the tower.

But, from behind her vision, behind her logic and her thinking, she realized that she was unafraid. This man couldn't hurt her. This man could help. He knew things. She felt this as a whispered voice, that there were things to learn here. Important things.

Buffy had turned from Willow to look at the man. She had rested her hands on her hips, tilted her head slightly. Her face was still and composed and hard with intent.

But the man was looking only at Dawn, and Dawn felt drawn to him. She felt the pull of knowledge. She took a step toward him.

"You," she said. She wasn't afraid. He was here to tell her something important.

"Ah," he said. "The key." His eyes twinkled blackly at her. "Now this should be interesting."

"Um, repeat much?" Buffy rolled her eyes. "You said that last time. New confrontation, new one-liners?"

"I'm human now," Dawn said slowly, but the words didn't feel exactly right. They jarred with that whispered voice that was humming something else at her, something approaching from the distance of her mind. What was it? Still, she shook it away, crossed her arms over her chest. "I'm not the key anymore."

Doc laughed. "Ah, is that the pretty bedtime story they told you?" he crooned, glancing at where Giles stood, next to Buffy. "Rupert, I'm ashamed of you. I taught you better than that."

"I think maybe you've said enough," Giles said quietly. He slid his glasses back on.

"Oh, I'm just getting started," Doc continued, his eyes narrowing. "Did you tell this little girl anything, Rupert? Did you tell her about your research at Council Headquarters last spring? About the legacy of the key?"

Giles's head snapped up, his face registering surprise. Then he took a step forward. "How…how do you know about that?" he asked, and Dawn heard an iron note in his voice, but when she looked at him, she thought he looked ashamed. He dug both hands deep into the pockets of his trousers, but Dawn could still see the hard shapes of his fists.

Buffy looked at him sharply. "Giles?" she asked, her voice low. He didn't look at her.

"Did you really think you could just be a girl now, a teenager?" Doc asked Dawn. His body was held stiff and rigid, but his eyes flashed and sparked at Dawn. "Did you really think that you could just let it all go for slumber parties and make-overs?"

"Ask Rupert to tell you about the three locks," Doc said, a cold smile lifting the corners of his thin lips. "The three triggers that release your power. The key's power." His eyes shone at her, and Dawn felt compelled. She moved toward him.

"Dawn, stay back." She heard Buffy's warning, but she paid no attention. She couldn't take her eyes away from that pointy chin, from the knife angles of those cheekbones.

"Well, if Rupert won't tell you," Doc said with relish, "I guess I'll have to. Now, it's only a rough translation from the ancient Tnatum dimension text, so you'll have to forgive the doggerel." He cleared his throat and recited. "In killing with no weapon, in seeing a wish undone, in forgiving its greatest threat, the key is met."

Buffy raised her eyebrows. "So Dr. Seuss writes prophecies now?" she asked flatly.

"You can believe what you like," Doc said to her, and his eyes flashed black, but he turned back to Dawn, and eyes smoothed out again. Dawn couldn't stop looking at him, moving toward him.

"You've had the visions already, haven't you?" Doc's voice had dropped, but Dawn heard him clearly in the silent room. "The headaches? It's already begun."

She stared at him, uncomprehending, and then she took another step forward, raising her hand at him. Then she stopped, glancing at her arm, letting it fall shakily back to her side. Why had she done that? What had she been going to do?

He laughed, and for the first time, Dawn saw something gentle in those black, black eyes. "Glory can't touch you anymore," he said. "She had her chance, and she blew it. She has much left to do in this reality, but she can't touch the key."

"What, then?" Dawn watched her feet move forward, saw that she put one in front of the other until she was only inches from him. She could feel the shimmer of binding around him. Her voice had dropped to a whisper. It was the two of them. Him and herself.

In the moment before she felt the body behind her and the hand on her arm, the moment before Giles' fingers closed around her elbow and pulled her backward, Doc spoke, and his voice was so quiet that Dawn later thought maybe she had only read his lips. Or maybe she had only imagined it.

Willow felt herself weakening, growing tired, and when she glanced at Tara, she saw fatigue in her eyes, as well. They could only last for so long before their fingers loosened. She wanted to say this, to tell Buffy, but she couldn't make her mouth work. She swallowed.

"Buffy," she heard Tara say, the word hoarse and slow in Tara's mouth, and Willow saw the blur of Buffy's head turning to study them.

"Let him go," Buffy said, and Willow instantly released Tara's hand. Cool air hit her palm where the hot grip had been, and she flexed her fingers, feeling them crack with release. She took a dizzy, dazed step backward, then another, finding the wall with her back and sliding down it until she reached the floor. She hugged her knees to her chest. Tara had slumped into the nearest chair and leaned on the table, her head propped up with one hand. Her face mirrored the exhaustion Willow felt.

Willow closed her eyes, letting her head tip back to rest against the wall and listening to the others. Her mind felt foggy and dim, a nimbus of confusion settling in. She was tired. So tired.

"I am so going to kick your ass," she heard Buffy say, and there was shuffling and a shout and a spark, but when she opened her heavy eyelids again, the man was simply gone, and Giles stood, one hand still wrapped around Dawn's elbow, staring at the empty space where he had been.

Willow tried to keep her eyes open, to watch as Buffy walked around the shop, making sure that the man was gone, as Buffy returned to embrace Dawn, hugging her and holding the back of her head. She heard talking, and she tried to listen, but she couldn't really focus on the words.

"I…I don't think we need to worry about him coming back," Giles said through the fog. "Not yet. He'll be looking for Glory. He's always been rather single-minded, one task at a time."

Willow wondered if she'd fallen asleep for a minute. Surely she had missed something, a big fight or the revelation of secrets. The confrontation. Had she drifted off? They had been talking about Glory, and then Buffy had told her to let go, and then….and then what?

Glory had stayed in her mind, some part of her anyway, ever since the night she'd cast the reversal spell. Glory had been there when she'd telepathed to Spike and, later, to all the Scoobies. Glory had been there when she'd sacrificed that deer. Glory had been there when she'd cast spells for party decorations, and…. Oh, God.

Willow heard the mumble of conversation, and she thought she heard her name. Then there were hands on her knees, but they weren't Tara's hands, and she opened her eyes. Buffy had knelt down in front of her, was looking at her. "Hey, Will," she said softly. "You did good."

"Buffy," Willow's voice sounded tiny even to her own ears. "If Glory was in us all along, in me and Tara, then it wasn't our fault." She frowned, shook her head. "I mean, it was; we made choices, bad choices, but maybe it was like we couldn't see clearly, you know? Like there so many things to choose from, but the good ones were hidden behind a cloud?"

Buffy just looked at her, a tender look that Willow felt like she hadn't seen in years. When was the last time she had really seen Buffy? Buffy had taken care of her after Tara died, had bathed her and fed her and held her for days at a time, but Willow hadn't seen her. She hadn't seen anything then.

Buffy's fingers pressed on Willow's knees. "You listen to me, Willow Rosenberg," she said, her voice fierce and even. "We all make mistakes. We all pay. And you've paid more than your share. You don't have to be sorry anymore. Careful, yes, but not sorry."

It was forgiveness, and it hurt. "But Buffy," Willow heard her own voice leak out, pleading and high. She pressed the tip of her tongue against the back of her teeth, against the sob, as her tears spilled out again.

"No," Buffy said. "Willow, you started with the magicks to help us. And I pushed you to use the dark magicks to stop Glory; we all did. You had to do it all alone." Buffy pushed a lock of Willow's hair back, cupped Willow's cheek with the palm of her hand.

"So maybe you went too far, but who was helping you? You got into the dark magicks for us, and we repaid you by making you deal with it alone." Buffy's voice splintered on the last word, and she took a long shuddering breath. "And I'm sorry." Willow felt the hand on her face tremble. "Willow, I am so, so sorry."

Willow leaned into Buffy, and she felt Buffy's arms wrap around her like a pardon. Like absolution. But she wasn't sure, after all, who was forgiving whom. She felt Buffy's tears wet against her ear, and she felt Buffy's shoulders shake, and she held on to her friend.

Finally, she heard Giles clearing his throat, and she looked up to see Tara holding Dawn's hand but watching Willow carefully, and Giles standing protectively over them.

"Buffy, we need to talk about this," Giles said. "There are some, some new developments you need to know about." Buffy nodded.

"Tara, you want to trade?" Buffy squeezed Willow's shoulder one last time and went to Dawn, and Tara moved to pull Willow to her feet. Willow shivered when Tara's fingers closed around hers. Her heart was still full of Buffy, but Tara's fingers enfolded her, and when she looked up, Tara's eyes took her in.

"Okay, show's over," Buffy said, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. "It's late. I think we should go back to the house. Tara and Willow should get some rest, and the rest of us can talk."

Tara started to protest, but Buffy held up a hand. "We'll fill you in on everything in the morning," she said. "But look at you two; you can hardly stand up." Willow felt Tara nod, forced herself to nod.

"Giles," Dawn murmured. She sounded calm to Willow, and her voice…it didn't sound like Dawn's voice, but it was very familiar. Restful. Or maybe it was just that she was so tired, so very tired.

There were still more questions than answers, still more uncertainty than knowing, but tonight, just for one night, with Buffy's forgiveness on her skin and Tara's magick in her veins, Willow wanted to shut the door against Glory and keys and locks and all hard things. To take Tara to bed, and close the door behind them, and sleep.

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Terra Firma

By Tulipp

tulipp30@yahoo.com