Playback's a Witch
by Rob Morris

LATE MAY, 2002, SUNNYDALE

Tara McClay was dead, as was her murderer. The world was saved from a witch's righteous, hideous rage by a simple carpenter using only the power of unremitting love. There was a lot more to it than that. There always was. But that is what it all boiled down to.

Now, Tara's loved ones sat around and tried to remember only her, and the good feelings she elicited. Memory is rarely that selective.

Buffy nodded. "I decided to let the state inform her family. If those jerks had said anything remotely like *Good Riddance* to me, I was going to find them and harm them."

Xander explained an absence. "Anya says she's okay dealing with me again, on a limited basis. But she was afraid of saying something like she did with Joyce, and just asked me to say she's grieving too. Truth is, I don't see her quite stumbling that way again, but who knows? I'll probably stumble for both of us."

Giles tried to keep the focus practical. The man who had taken axe and molotov in hand to destroy Angelus could not find it in him to lecture Willow for her reaction. At least not yet. "I made certain that the police know that Jonathan and the other young fool are not themselves murderers. Hopefully, their stellar courage will keep them from once again approaching Sunnydale anytime soon. No one has yet filed a missing person's report for Warren. No one is likely to. His mother died when he was twelve. His stepfather disappeared sometime in 1997. Unsurprisingly, the entire Mears clan had some suspicious connections."

Dawn brought it back to where it would have likely ended up, anyway. "I still expect to see her. I still expect to turn some stupid problem of mine over to her, and have her laugh and make it all right again. I want to see her, just one last time, and tell her in some embarrassing voice that I will miss her more than anyone else could ever know."

Perhaps Willow was too far into grieving. Perhaps she was too much into trying to comprehend her recent actions. Perhaps she was wondering if the trip to England could really help her, as Giles said. Whatever the case, Willow seemed to take Dawn's words as a challenge. "I'll know. And for the record, I will miss her more than anyone else. Period."

Up until this moment, Dawn had done something very mature. She had traded the mental phrase, *Willow tried to kill me*, for *Willow just lost Tara*. She was even proud of herself, and to the extent the others present recognized this, so were they. The mature thing was not necessarily her thing, she knew. When she made the right choice, it felt a lot like walking in a darkened, electrified maze for the first time without getting char-broiled. So Dawn at first chose not to meet Willow's challenge, recognizing it as being born of total exhaustion. "Of course you'll miss her most, Willow. But she meant something really special to me, too."

Buffy breathed a mistaken sigh of relief. Dawn still had her problems dealing, but she wasn't showing it then and there. So the Slayer simply backed up her little sister. "To all of us. How you can know a person for two short years and have them come to mean what Tara meant to us? I left Dawn with her how many times? Not once did I even remotely regret it. And when we lost Mom, and when I needed a read on my condition--there she was. Not even a peep. Just there. That's a friend."

Giles looked at Xander, indicating that his turn should be taken up. The one true compliment he had for Tara other than her obvious charm was her restrained and wise use of magic. Not a subject the Watcher wished to broach right then. So Harris smiled lightly, and began. "Each time I'd do a repair, she'd ask me to show her how it was done, so she wouldn't have to bother me again. She never bothered me. I don't think she knew how to bother someone."

Confident that she now knew how to negotiate Willow's feelings, Dawn tried her own Tara story. "I so acted like divorce-kid when Tara left. But she saw it, and took time to tell me the duh-obvious that somehow I couldn't get. It wasn't about me."

The confidence was sorely misplaced, but this was not Dawn's fault, as Willow now showed. "Well, ya know, not everything is about you, Dawn."

Rage replaced love, in a pattern Willow herself knew of all too well. But where Rosenberg had sought to use mere witchcraft, the younger Summers made use of the far more potent teenage barb. "Tired of hearing my voice, Willow?"

Before the other adults could fully catch the drift of the exchange, Willow responded. "Well, yeah. When you don't have any clue as to what it is you're talking about. Like now. Like a lot of times."

Of all present, only Buffy knew what was driving this. She didn't like it one bit, and yet she felt no resolve to stop it, just yet. No spell or entity was present, save perhaps anger, and a Slayer was not called for. Dawn was doing fine on her own. 'Well, that's too bad. Because you are going to have to hear my whiny voice a lot, and I hope you hear it in your nightmares, as I plead not to be turned back into formless energy!"

Maybe this should have slapped Willow back to the reality of her very recent actions. It did not. "God, you know that I was under the influence of the magic. I didn't mean to try and hurt you, Dawnie. But that's totally separate from the way you go on sometimes."

Dawn knew well one of the rules of being a teenager. The instant she raised her voice, the other person's wrong would be forgotten somehow. So she strained to keep an even tone, although she did point. "You didn't try to just hurt me. You taunted me, scared the hell out of me, and tried to kill me. And the only totally separate thing is your bipolar brain problem. I get stupid, I steal. Buffy gets stupid, she goes with Spike and mopes. Xander gets stupid, he leaves Anya to twist in the wind. All stupid things that hurt. But only you get to do a stupid thing that nearly ends the whole world. I have to pay Anya back. Xander has to deal with her hurt feelings. Buffy nearly got raped! But when Willow does her stupid--let's all forget! Oh, wait--we did that during the last big stupid."

Willow's gaze narrowed. "I just lost the one who meant so much to me, I had to tell the one I loved before her it was done and mean it. I just lost like ninety percent of what kept my heart beating! So how about some compassion?"

Dawn folded her arms. "I tried that. You tossed it back in my face."

Willow took her ginger ale glass and threw its contents at Dawn. "Gee, you mean like that?"

Instead of grabbing or shouting, Dawn merely increased the potency of her barbs. "You love this forcefield business, don't you? I mean the social forcefield. If I try and get you in any way but words, Buffy and Xander and Giles won't just stand there nervously. They'll keep me back. I know I wasn't really there, but I remember how Buffy came back, after that summer. You coward. You stood there, tattling to my Mom, inciting Xander to hit Buffy, who you knew couldn't use her full strength in public or against someone normal. You had her, just like you've got me. Well congratulations, and may I say, screw you hard, Willow Rosenberg. Buffy, may I clean myself up, please?"

When the Slayer nodded, she was relieved to see Dawn trying her best to deal, language aside. But it wasn't done with. The teened girl was still a teened girl, and she was smarting from the fight. One last unneeded jibe was understandable, if in no ways a good thing. Her back turned, Dawn lit the match as she walked upstairs. "Tara deserved better."

It could have meant any number of things, but really, it only meant exactly what Willow thought it meant. This time grabbing the pitcher of soda, she prepared to escalate. But one grip of steel locked on her throwing hand, and the other on her mouth. When the door to the upstairs bathroom closed, the Slayer said simple stunning words, her looks drained of all sympathy for her dear friend.

"Willow, pack your things and get out of my house."

Xander walked into his apartment bearing the third trunk of clothes that Willow would not be taking with her to England at week's end. Willow was out of the shower and drying her hair. Xander noted that despite his request, she was wearing one of his robes, not one of Anya's. Perhaps, he thought silently, Oz had been right all along. Tara and Anya aside, the two of them might never quite be done with one another. "This is the last of them. Sorry about the shampoo."

She turned and he saw that she looked relieved, perhaps that he was not someone else. Other friends, whose love now seemed conditional. He hoped that this was not the case. For now, though, her smile simply grew ever broader. "S'okay. I like watering down the bottom of the bottle. It rinses out way easier. Plus I used a teensy bit of lemon juice. Gets certain smells off me. Certain… ya know ..smells."

When he had brought her over from Buffy's place, she had been crying once again, incredulous that the Slayer would ever throw her best female friend out on her ear. Xander had said absolutely nothing, and had just held her, there as on the hillside. Harris had thought his greatest problem would be that of a young man once very much attracted to the vulnerable young woman he held tightly and dearly. After all, her responding to him was not impossible, just highly unlikely, and stupid on both their parts. Yet that is not what occurred. "I didn't know. I never realized it carried so far. I didn't mean to blurt it out like that."

She began showering then, and every four hours thereafter like clockwork. Why the smell was kicking up was beyond them all. Stopping by but never speaking directly to Willow, Anya had in her special way made the connection. Warren had bought into a lot of dark magic before Willow ever caught up with him. In effect, his burnt skin smelled infinitely worse than most other people's burnt skin, and it lingered. Before Xander had guided her outside, the very plainspoken ex-ex-demon-ex had also pointed out that in her deepest darkest phase, and dandruff or dead skin from Willow herself would have burned off in a similar fashion. The thought that any part of her essence mixed with that of Tara's killer made it hard for Willow to keep food down. "Hey, Xander. Its good. I mean, ya know what they say about trying to smell your own smells. She say anything when you got the stuff?"

Xander put the trunk in the walk-in. This duty was among the most painful he'd ever had to perform, and that included burying friends, a few twice again. He had already decided he would not bury a friendship, and the thought of choosing between Willow and Buffy was one he could not comprehend without grabbing at his head, the pain so great he for once sympathized with Spike. But how he would rescue it all, or at least not be in the way of its healing, was for then and there quite beyond him. "She wasn't there. Nobody was. Daw--someone needs to go to Summer School. I have a key. Had one since Joyce gave me one, back when Bu--when things went bad over there. She wanted me to bring her daughter right home, if she should come to me. She trusted me right from the start."

For just a moment, Willow looked a lot like a tripwire had been hit, or was near to being hit. In fact, the one she had in mind was still a month away. Willow acted in her own way to finally hit another, less long-term tripwire. "Maybe you reminded her of somebody she used to know. Kind of like I used to know Buffy."

Xander breathed, though whether in relief or exasperation, he honestly could not have said. But what he could say was just as telling. "You're gonna make me do it, right?"

She began brushing her hair, not checking her mostly secure robe against the gaze of the one who knew her when the differences between boys and girls were mostly mere labels. "You can't do your artful dance here, Xander. This isn't our little flirting, Anya or your life's direction. Buffy wronged me. I mean, she really, really totally wronged me. So you gather up your guts and choose. Now."

But Xander kept himself together. Unlike Dawn perhaps even unlike Buffy, he knew the creature before him, and loved it in darkness and in light, in grace and in utter petulance. That she had no clue of this most times insulted him in ways no jock ever thought to, and tasked him in ways the vapid Snyder could never hope to. "You couldn't scare me when you held the world's life in your hands. You think you scare me now?"

Neither backing down nor ratcheting things up any further, Willow let him off the hook partway. "Fine, then don't be scared of me. But at least tell me that you were just as pissed off by that sorry line of crap Dawn was handing me."

Harris knew well that no one was better at getting one to agree with her than his first playmate. Whatever his brain's true capacity, he also knew he had to keep his attention up or be drawn in. "Was this before or after her ginger-ale facial?"

She put down the brush. "Okay, so I didn't need to do that. But don't you get tired of her attitude?"

One small chink in her argument's armor was all he ever needed. The trick was getting her to make the opening herself, without ever realizing she'd done so. She had just done so. "Hey, you're talking to a guy with acid scars from during the big chase sequence. Her still mooning over Spike, til I told her the big bad truth. Her telling me to stop whining, needed but not in that manner. Hearing her moan about how my ex was riding her for paying back what she stole? Not owed, mind you--but stole. I still have claustrophobic flashbacks from her little Hallie-wish."

She looked at him, and suddenly he wondered how Tara could have ever left those eyes, even out of love and concern. "Then you know why I got so angry, right? Why I had to stick it back to her, somehow? This 'I'm Two, Baby Me--No, I'm Sixteen, Treat Me Like A Grown-Up' garbage has got to go the way of the wind. Especially that stuff about when Buffy came back after running away? I mean, she wasn't even there!"

As he expected, he again understood why Tara had chosen so harsh a course. "No, Will, I don't know why you got so angry. Not the way you did. She checked her Dawn-ness at the door. Until you started, she didn't. And she is both two and sixteen, prone to both wonderful extremes of behavior. And--she conceded that the memories of that event were an implant."

It took him a moment to catch her next pattern, but catch it he did. For Tara, he would not permit himself to lose her in this or any darkness. "So it wasn't like she said, right? We had every right to be upset at Buffy, for making us worry like that. We weren't these arch-fiends, right?"

If he were to physically slap her himself, what followed could have been no more painful. "We had every right to be upset with Buffy. That is to say, we had the right to be upset. We just didn't have the right to go at it the way we did. It was a long way from being our proudest moment, Willow. Buffy and I had this out not long after Drac attacked, just before she left for Korea. When Joyce cried out that Mommy isn't perfect for laying down an ultimatum, Buffy took that to mean that somehow she was supposed to be. When you found her packing, she says she really wasn't. That she was just going through the motions. When I challenged her in front of that crowd, she told me that she felt trapped, unable to do anything without looking even worse."

In this one instance, Xander was shocked that he had anticipated her words almost exactly. "So I'm out on my ear because of a four-year old argument that she hasn't gotten over yet? I mean, how petty can anyone be?"

No more artful dancing. She had said so herself. "No, she threw you out because you tried to kill her. She threw you out because you tried to kill her little sister. She threw you out because while they recognized why all this happened, you have yet to really apologize. You talk about the magic's influence, and about missing Tara. You haven't said a hell of a lot about Willow Rosenberg, and why she went this way."

Maybe artful dancing wasn't done for, just yet, as Willow now showed him. "I know that I killed. I know that I tried to kill. I'm gonna have to deal with and live with that."

If she didn't feel like keeping to the agreement, he felt like keeping her to it. "Yah. You'll have to deal with it. And Giles. And Anya. And Dawn. And Buffy. And Me. As for those three losers, they remind me way too much of what I could have been for me to even give a damn."

Now she looked hurt. Badly hurt. "What do you mean 'And Me'? Xander, my lightning-thingies barely scratched you. I didn't try to kill you."

His gaze narrowed. Purposefully, he allowed the slightest hint of anger, rage and hate to seep through, though only just. He said two words. "Cemetery. Fireball."

As surely as the dark, loathsome Willow had faded, blindly grieving Willow began the long vanishing too. She sat down, and held her head. "What do you want me to do? Am I allowed to be upset that she threw me out?"

He sat down beside her. There was hope. "We're all allowed to be upset, Will. That's just it. Anya is allowed to hate me for running out on her. We were allowed to be angry at Buffy for running away. Anya was not right to wish me dead, or to try and get you guys to do it. We were not right to drop an emotional nuke on Buffy when she was already nuked. But it's not so much what happened. It's how the upset was handled. Not rightly. Just how it's was handled. So other than her neo-demon-ness, I'm not gonna hold Anya's wanting me dead against her. Buffy knows we were upset, so she's mostly let that day go. Willow, this throwing you out is Buffy's bad way of handling this--and don't bring up the asylum bug-juice demon-illusion. You don't have to like it, any more than I like the thought of my intestinal tracks being spread out. But take the word of someone who's a lot guiltier on that day four years back than you were--you better understand why it happened, and get past it before you go to England. If your friendship is frozen in this while you're gone, you may never get it back."

She looked at him again. "Can I at least call Dawnie out on her distorted POV about that day?"

He shook his head, rather nervously. "I wouldn't. Because just whose POV do you think Dawnie's was derived from?"

Willow threw up her arms. "Then forget it. If she's holding grudges like that, how am I supposed to get a fair hearing?"

Xander hid his gulp. "You can't get a fair hearing. But I will get you *a* hearing. What happens after that is between you two."

-----------

Buffy closed the refrigerator. "It's not about me forgiving Willow. I owe her too much not to give an automatic pass."

Xander sipped his ginger ale, still trying to shake off the saturated smell of vodka that permeated his parents' house on his earlier visit. He had hidden their car keys, and prayed that this would be enough to keep up their five-year roadless record. "So do you often throw out people you've forgiven?"

Buffy turned to face him. She looked hurt. "You're taking her side?"

Xander rolled his eyes. "No. I'm trying to get you two on the same page. So if you've forgiven her, then where's the problem?"

Buffy sat down and shook her head. "Forgiving is not a problem. Forgetting is. Xander, she didn't just try and kill me and Dawn. She laid down a whole laundry list of reasons why just maybe the world wouldn't miss us all that much. Now, I have been cruel. God knows when I came back after the Master's death, I was no treasure. But I apologized, and that was after I was slapped back to reality by what the Anointed One pulled on us. You couldn't stop apologizing for the love-spell, and that was after it nearly got you pincushioned."

Xander thought he saw where this was going. "Buffy, Willow did apologize for the car accident, and Dawn's hand. She even got used domestic-wise for her trouble."

The Slayer wasn't ready to give in, just yet. "Then where is her apology for the cemetery? Where is her apology for playing sorcerous psychoanalyst on my time with Spike? I'm sorry, but I don't want to hear about what I did, or what Giles did, in the same situation. If I'm a hypocrite, then so be it! But my hypocrisy is mine, and mine alone. It's not an excuse for hers. If I fail to meet my own standards, that's wrong and bad and I will pay for it. Grief, dark magic--uh-uh. I want to know why Willow Rosenberg hasn't apologized for trying to kill me, and my little sister."

Xander had, that he could recall, physically challenged the woman before him on two occasions, both born of desperate rage. Even then, he had known full well who would win. So it was that his challenges to her were not fist and foot. "I want to know if Buffy Summers has thanked the woman who restored her to life."

She sat down, her anger somewhat spent. "I will. I will thank her, and I will mean it. And I won't regard the funk I've been in as an excuse for the delay. But I'm not a good forgetter, Xander. I know I should be. On occasion, memories of my Mom will shift for no reason and I'll see the night of the zombies again, and then the Hansel and Gretel burnings right after, Joyce with torch in hand out of a twisted concern. She was just angry the one time, and she was under a spell the next. I know these things. I mean, why am I not ever angry with you about Dracula? You were under a spell, and I don't dredge it up against you."

Harris continued to play it as it needed to be played. "Well, in Joyce's case, she had lots of friends and chloroform at the ready. I on the other hand, was totally ineffectual. That's why you really keep me around, you know. Short of being vamped, I suck at being evil worse than Harmony."

She laughed, and they smiled, and he hoped that what he said wasn't too true, though he suspected it was. She kneaded her forehead. "What sort of dope lives in a loop like I do, Xander? And how do I get out while keeping the friend we love but letting her know she made me feel like crap?"

He moved in for the kill. "You're talking to the wrong person. But I can change that."

With Dawn staying at a friend's for the night, Buffy followed him to his place. Two friends on the edge said some necessary words.

"I'm sorry I tried to kill you."

"Thank you for giving me back my life."

But as the embrace was about to begin, it was stopped in its tracks--by the peacemaker himself.

"Now, this is usually the part where we all say, 'Hey, you were in a bad way, and it's forgotten'. No. Because its become a little obvious even to the court jester that no one's forgetting anything, and no one's letting anything go. That ends here, it ends now."

Willow sort-of shuddered. "Look, not to quote Warren, but haven't we all talked enough about our feelings?"

Buffy nodded. "We have peace. Can't we let it go at that?"

Xander made his case quickly. "Just how much time have we all spent in the last twenty-four hours discussing September of 1998? This isn't a clearing the air kind of thing I'm talking about. This is about clearing the bowels before we explode at age fifty."

Rather than commenting on the choice of imagery, Willow conceded the direction of his logic. "So all three of us just dredge up every little thing from before forever?"

Xander held up an opened palm. "Nope. Maybe someday, we'll need to do just that. But time and urgency tells me to keep this between you two. I'll clear out, but you'll do it here in my place, with my stuff I hope you two powerful people hold nearly as dear as you do me. And keep it to the big stuff. That's my advice."

He then looked at Buffy. "You're the angrier right now. I say you get the first shot. But make it fair, Buffy. I can't tell you what to say. But I'm asking you to make it useful, and make it count."

Buffy closed her eyes. "Go on. We can handle it from here without you. And thanks."

Xander nodded, folded up his Near-Mint Mego Enterprise Bridge Playset confiscated from one of the nerd lairs, put it away, and walked out. Willow looked at the walls. "He didn't put away the carded action figures. He really trusts us."

Buffy opened her eyes. "I have it. Are you ready?"

"No. Not really and truly ready. But do it anyway."

The Slayer began not with an attack, but a declaration meant to counter a recent attack, and some skewed perceptions of a trauma she and they all had undergone. "That imaginary insane asylum was NOT my ideal reality."

Willow was confused, to say the least. "So? The asylum wasn't your ideal place. You were all messed up, from the bug-juice, anyway. Tried to kill us. Accused your parents of locking you away in real life. All of which you get a pass on."

Buffy was ready for this battle, and her target was fully acquired. This needed to be done. "The killing? Yeah. Because my moral compass was ripped out, along with my sense of reality. I get a pass on those attempts, as far as a pass can be given. So do you."

Willow's face now fully showed her confusion. "Then why are we here? If I've got my pass, how come you threw me out?"

Buffy gently but deliberately held Willow's wrist, and shook it once before releasing it. "The trying to kill us was the grief, and the evil magic. That I understand. None of us are moral exemplars when it comes to all that."

Willow chuckled. "You must be pissed. I don't really ever hear you use words like 'exemplars'."

The trap had been sprung. The prey had been cut to pieces inside it without ever realizing it had entered. Now, like Willow before her, Buffy would stand over the corpse and summon back her dearest friend. "Well, words are your gift."

The statement was simple enough, yet it seemed to crawl right under Willow's skin, through her bones and straight into her brain. "I have a decently-sized vocabulary."

Buffy took a moment to respond. Had Willow sensed her trap, or was she actually this oblivious to the simple truth of it all? "Oh, its a lot more than that. Long before you had wiccan magic, you made magic with words. Good magic. Bad magic."

Before Willow's response could come, Buffy made her next strike. "And that, Willow, is why I told you to get out."

Willow's wiccan power was still largely drained from the explosion of her grieving, nearly world-consuming rage. Similarly, Buffy's strength and stamina were not yet anywhere near their best. Yet these things were dog-and-pony shows. Their true power did not lay in punching or throwing energy-bolts, anymore than Xander's lay in a jester's robes. Guided by the supposed fool, the unsure queen and her unsteady caster now let loose with what could only be called true power.

"You put me out on the street because I have a better vocabulary than you? That's pathetic, Buffy."

"It's also not what I said. You could have a billion-word vocabulary, and I wouldn't care. It's how you use it. Words are your gift, Willow. Like Death is mine. They've helped you with your magic. But like the magic until just recently, you've never really seen how it can be misused."

Buffy felt in her gut what Willow might try next, or at least the pattern of attack she might use. The witch had blindsided her last time, no doubt. But even Angelus, who held her heart in his hand, only ever surprised her once. Because this was where battles were truly won. "Ya know, you've been known to go all harsh on the wording. Want me to name a few?"

Target struck. Decoy countermeasures operational. "Nope. I'll just plead guilty as charged, and move back to the subject. Which is you. Oh, and harsh-word-wise? The reason I'm not too concerned about my words is that I have all the subtlety of Xander in the Playboy Mansion near the sunken grotto--during a Playmate reunion. When I'm on a tear, it's so waaay obvious that I'm wrong it really is pathetic. People know that when I scream how they're useless, I'm talking about me. My words hurt, when I want them to hurt. But somehow everyone always knows how to shut me down. Because words are not my gift."

Repeated fire weakening the same spot on the other side. Expect a feint. "Ho-kay. This is all about that day Dawnie brought up, right? The day you came back after running off, making us all crazy? The day we SETTLED the next morning?"

Buffy smiled. Even if Willow knew of the cul-de-sac she was now deep inside, she was not getting out of it with a cutesy remark or a well-placed barb. "You're enjoying this whole moral superiority thing, aren't you?"

Willow froze. She was now perhaps beginning to get a sense of the ground on which she stood. While Buffy's words were not precisely those she spoke after the zombie invasion of the Summers' home, what she was now really saying had an almost lethal clarity. "You were still angry about the party. You lied to me. You lied to me to my face. To my face, Buffy!"

The Slayer seemed much less proud about her next words. "I had to. It was either lie to your face, or rip that face off. Did you really expect to gut me when I was that heartsick and just have me take an amnesia pill about the whole thing?"

Willow looked over at her, certain she had the words to set Buffy back. "You took off, no notice, no caring about anyone but yourself. You had that coming."

Buffy knew then that her fog had kept Willow from seeing all of the terrain around her. "I had something coming. You're right. Talking with my Mom and Xander made me see that. But I didn't have that coming. No one who hasn't thrill killed has coming to them what all of you did to me. Mom, shouting about how she wasn't perfect, while disallowing the fact that I'm not. Xander, getting all pumped up on physical threats when he knew I couldn't use my real strength in front of a crowd like that, let alone against him."

Willow showed a bit of hurt. "But them you made up with, while stewing about me? That is just like you, Buffy."

Buffy did not know whether her words were right, or even if she was. But she knew how she felt, and that it had to end. "You know why I didn't bring it up to you? It was pointless. I put out a thousand feelers, asking if you understood that maybe things had gone way too far. All I got was you forgiving me. I had to fight off laughter, Willow. All that had went down, and it was all that you could do to recognize my sins? I didn't bring it up to you because you were the worst one of all that night."

The blow had shattered the other bunker, perhaps forever. Willow looked badly dazed. "Lets say we did overreact. How in the hell do you get off placing me as being the worst?"

"Okay. Who didn't even bother seriously trying to rein in Xander, as he slammed me that whole day? When we were in my room, who could have told my Mom I just needed a breather--which I did--but instead blabbed out the words most likely to set her off? Who shouted down her own boyfriend's efforts to calm that mess? My God, Willow. The werewolf was less feral than you."

"HOW is all that any different than what you're doing right now? Where is the justice?"

Buffy shook her head. "This isn't about justice, anymore than its about that day. And for the record, we're not going to play 'You did it too' anymore today. End of that crap. This is about what happens when you hurt your friends. This is about the firestorm you kick up when you do. I walked through it, and trust me, justice was not an issue. I sort-of understand how you all felt, now, but if you'll notice, neither Xander nor your Mom nor anyone else is here, now. Unlike you, I have the courage to stand one-on-one when doing this."

Willow raised her arm as though to magically gesture. Whether she had any power at this point was largely mooted, though, by Buffy's stare at that very arm. "Do I need to quote Faith, or is that arm going back down on its own?"

Willow lowered the arm, and gulped. "That's how you solve everything, right? But who was kicking whose ass all over the magic shop?"

Buffy pointed at the front door. "You brag about that, ever again, and we really are done. Because bragging about how you were means you don't even regret how you were acting."

"I--wanted Tara's murderers!"

"Murderer. And you got him. No judgment. You got him. Jonathan helped me stop Warren at the armored car. The other one was worthless. And it wasn't even that you wanted them. It was what you were willing to do to get them."

Willow was on ever-more unsure footing. "What you were willing to do to protect Dawnie, at the cost of the world."

Buffy shook her head. "I had to find another way. And I did. Oh--and what part of not playing this game did you fail to hear? Now, back to the asylum."

Willow walked around in a circle, trying to fend off anything further. "Yeah, I know. Wasn't your ideal place."

The target was out in the open, being decimated at whim. "But everyone thought it was. No one ever bothered to think that just maybe the asylum was me fighting my way back to reality, and not quite making it."

Willow sat down. "So it was something we all did. Why am I the only one you're giving grief about it?"

Tired at last of the battle, Buffy unleashed the final salvo. "Because you're the only one who taunted me with it, because you thought you could. Because you're the only one who told me I was screwing the undead just to feel alive. Because you're the only one who told my sister about the horrors of listening to her whiny voice while trying to kill her. And it's always been this way, Willow. I have flaws and weaknesses and bad qualities, known to all. And now we know yours."

Willow looked up, plainly angry. "You're nuts. You're giving me a pass on attempted murder, but not on a few misspoken words?"

"I said it before. You tried to kill us because you were grieving over Tara. But the words, Willow? They came from you. The rage was you inverted. The contempt in the words, though? That came way too close to the kind of things you say normally."

The anger seemingly gave way to a realization far grimmer than any Buffy had touched upon. "And that's why you threw me out?"

"No. I threw you out to protect you. When I realized you didn't understand how what you had said cut into Dawn and me, I was so angry I was afraid of what I might do. I'm sorry I did it, and I'm sorry it came to that. You hurt me, Will. Until you were capable of realizing that, I had to get you out of my sight."

Willow eventually stood up. "So that's it? Its over and we're good again?"

Buffy nodded. "At least until I do the same thing, or Xander does."

"What about Anya and Dawn?"

"They're Anya and Dawn. It's kind of a given."

Buffy now braced herself. The air-clearing over, Willow would surely use her gift to deliver back every incident that made her point. Yet that isn't what happened. Her next words, as she sat back down, weren't even aimed at Buffy. "I'm turning into my mother."

Buffy sat down beside her. "How's that?"

Willow looked at her. "The person you're describing? Cutting with words, not bothering to comprehend how they hit? Sometimes not caring? Buffy, that's Sheila Rosenberg all over. All while I was growing up, it was a catchphrase to keep me on the homework, a psalm recitation if I forgot something Temple-related--and the shouting down by reminding me of everything that proved her point, and dismissing things that proved mine. I haven't even seen her in I don't know how long. I never had a chance to tell her about Tara--or about me! I'm a powerful witch. But I still don't have the power to make this absentee shrill voice stop pushing my buttons. Even-even how I blew up when I saw Tara die. Except for love, magic, gods and demons, that was my mother calling around in a snit when one of her self-help books got a bad review. I wish she'd just been more like Joyce, at least sometimes."

Buffy didn't hold her, just yet. "Mommy wasn't perfect, Willow. She and Dad really did lock me away. That wasn't the bug-juice talking. Your mother wanted an academically perfect kid. Mine wanted a perfectly normal one. Remember the speech at the burning? The only time I can recall she ever just flat-out admitted she was wrong was after Ted. We aren't perfect. But hopefully we have enough guts to say we were wrong, and not have that eaten up by pride."

Willow nodded. "And we all know what pride goeth before."

Buffy tried to recall the saying. "Good intentions?"

Willow looked at her. "Please read some books while I'm in England, kay?"

With their wounds not sealed but at least acknowledged, the two friends did lightly embrace. While time apart did not always have the healing power some claimed, it would prove so for these two, for the most part.

But not without a few twists.

EPILOGUE, THE SUMMERS HOME, SIX WEEKS LATER

Xander brought out the last three sandwiches. Dawn was actually enjoying summer school, being able to jaunt home and grab lunch, and being in a place where many of those who had thought her troubles were the stuff of high comedy were nowhere in sight. Buffy now had time to think, minus the Trio's plotting, and was finding the Palace less and less tolerable by turns. Xander spoke first. "I never thought I'd have this much of July off. Ahh, the joys of school construction budget constraints. Dawn--did I actually see a smile?"

Dawn bit into her sandwich. "I don't know anyone in that class. No one magically thinks that they've known me since the sixth grade, or knows anything about cut hands or legal guardians--its paradise!"

Buffy held up a letter. "Its from Willow. She says she's learning all about the differences between English English and American English. She also wants a ginger-ale treaty with Dawn."

Dawn shrugged. "We'll see."

But her continued smile belied that notion. Buffy looked oddly at Xander. "She doesn't even mention you and her on the hilltop. Not that we need to hear it again."

Xander grabbed a garlic pickle. "That's just Willow. She likes being the owed, hates being the one who owes. She's the same way with secrets. Likes to hold on..."

A knock on the door cut Xander off. Buffy looked at him once again, after answering it. "Its the police. For you."

Buffy and Dawn pulled back while they chatted. The police had asked and found out that Xander spent time at the Summers home. "Buffy, I don't like this. Half the episodes of 'Charmed' start just like this."

"Dawn--most of the episodes of 'Charmed' start like this."

Yet as a shaken Xander thanked the men in blue, they proved not to have been there to arrest or question him. Xander was helped to the couch, and the obvious question was asked. He grabbed his head.

"Its my folks. Despite the best efforts of just about everybody legal-wise, they were out driving. Loaded. It was quick. I'll have to make arrangements. And--figure out why I'm not crying, or something."

As they helped him to grieve the two most difficult people in his life, the path ahead took a turn flatly no one could have expected. Informed by telegram of the Harrises' passing in England, Rupert Giles immediately sent one back to Xander.

"Contact me immediately, and forgive me in advance, Xander—for you see, Mr. and Mrs. Harris were not your birth parents. They were your abductors. More to come."

One book of pain closed, and another opened, but such is life.

(It may be some time before I follow up on that one—Rob)