So, I had this big intro planned out for this story, but then I got lazy. So, I'll tell you it's an AU version of the Wishverse, and you should be able to get the rest.

The chair had remained empty for four weeks and five days. They'd barely touched the thing, as if doing so was performing some act of sacrilege. They all know it's pretty stupid; but they aren't even thinking of breaking the silent agreement they had about not placing anything in the chair; not books, not crosses, not stakes, not themselves. Nothing. Those things didn't belong there. Only she did.

It's almost as if they think that if they do this, maybe she'll return. Maybe they'll come in one day and she'll be sitting at that chair just like she always was, smiling and bubbly even in the midst of everything that was happening. She was the reason they were fighting to begin with. If not for her, they'd all be hiding in their houses from dusk til dawn just like the rest of the population.

Part of themselves wanted to hate her. She gets them mixed up in the vampire hunting business because her best friend was turned, and she goes and gets herself killed. By said best friend. They wanted to scream at her about how unfair it was for her to just leave them like that; she couldn't just do that. But it was useless. She couldn't hear them. They didn't mean it anyway.

They'd considered giving up. This was her big idea, after all. They could just walk away now, concentrate on their own survival, not any one else's. In the end, they knew they couldn't do it. She'd chosen them for a reason. Their sense of loyalty to those who couldn't help themselves was hard-wired into them. It wouldn't just go away. They'd die eventually, but at least this way they could go without a guilty conscience.

Well, almost.

They were part of the few that were still breathing in this town. Sunnydale. Sunnyhell. An idly given nickname that was a little too apt for anyone to really want to think about. It had been written over the "Welcome to Sunnydale" sign in a reddish substance that all who saw could only hope was paint. Wishful thinking.

One by one, the survivors would be picked off, but if they would return a couple days later, a bit paler and with a new set of teeth, no one could say until it happened. Most did; there's strength in numbers. Even vampires got that. And whatever was going down was apparently going to take a lot of strength.

So that's why, two days later, they saw her again, stalking after Xander, half smiling, dressed all in leather, a bit paler and with a new set of teeth. The innocent, sweet, pure Willow Rosenberg, no different from the rest of them. The ones they were going after. All because Willow had asked them to.

It was a rotten world they were living in. And no, the irony was really not lost on any of them.

That was another silent agreement they made. They'd never talk about what they'd do if they came face to face with her. The truth was that they didn't know. And they didn't want to think about the fact that she really wasn't on their side anymore. The best of them...not there anymore.

Not a one of them dared to touch the book that she had left open not long before she'd run off and Xander had turned her. It sat hastily closed, side hanging off the table just as it had the night she'd run in and hunted for it for hours only to scan almost every page obsessively, refusing to tell anyone what she was doing. And then she'd left, slamming the book closed and taking off before any of them could even ask a question. Never to return. They'd searched all night for her, but didn't find a trace. Not until two nights later.

So the book sat, undisturbed, in front of the chair. Her chair.

The chair that had remained empty for four weeks and five days.