Light beat against Buffy's eyelids searing into her throbbing skull. She shielded her face and groaned. "What happened?"

Giles helped her sit up. "Spike and Drusilla are invulnerable. They walked out with Willow, and Angelus disappeared into the electrical tunnels."

"Is everyone OK?"

"Xander has a couple broken ribs, it looks like Oz and Cordelia have concussions."

"The curse?" Buffy asked as she got to her feet.

"We don't know."

She beat some dust off her pants. "Get the others to the hospital, I'm going to look around here for clues. Wait, the cops are probably on their way."

"Unlikely. We've been here for hours and I haven't heard a single siren." Giles stood up. "Find what clues you can then come home. If you Spike or Dru or especially both of them, don't engage. We need to make them vulnerable again first."

"Got it." Buffy winced as she stretched her neck and arms.

Giles walked out of the debris and into the setting sun. The others joined him climbing the stairs out of the garden. Buffy turned and walked down the hall. The entertainment room was sparse, but she found the ottoman full of pictures of Willow, in different stages of undress and injury. Buffy was halfway through the pile when she found a video tape. She put it in the player when she found the electricity still working. She hit play and couldn't take her eyes off the screen.

Angelus was beating Willow with a some kind of club. In an hour she was black with bruises and blood seeped from her nose and mouth. Her screams were deafening even with the volume low. When he pulled out a knife and tore it through her thigh, Buffy winced but still couldn't tear her eyes away. He cut her face asking her if she wanted him to finish the job and cut it off, but Willow passed out and went limp in her chains.

"It's no fun if they can't scream." Angelus threw the recorder into a wall and the video bled to black and then snow.

"Oh my God." Buffy's hand covered her mouth.

"How about some ice cream?" Spike asked trying to get Willow to smile. "You can have as many scoops as you want."

"Ice cream won't make me better, Spike. You hurt my friends when you didn't have to. I'm not going to be OK with that." Willow hugged her knees to her chest.

"The friends that took over a month to even find out where you were? This town for all its attractions isn't that big. You shouldn't have been that hard to find." Spike sat on the picnic table next to Willow and wrapped an arm around her.

"It's still not OK. If anyone should beat them up, it's me."

"Oh my lovely Cherrywise." Dru pulled Willow's head to her shoulder running her fingers through the silky red hair. "Smile for me please. Smile in me. Be in me."

Willow's eyes fluttered shut, and she lost herself in Drusilla, playing as Rose and Grandmum through fields of flowers, laughing in the sun and spinning in dizzying circles until they fell to the ground to gaze at the spinning sky. But there was still a niggle in the back of her brain telling her that it wasn't all fun and games, breaking Drusilla's hold on her mind. "Let me go home."

"We'll take you home, deary. But we'll always be there if you need us. All you have to do is think hard and we'll be there as soon as we can." Drusilla let Willow lift her head. "Shall we walk you?"

"Please."

Spike sighed. "You live on Oak?"

"Yes."

He stood up, picked her up off the table and set her on her feet. "Let's see to it you get there safe and sound."

Willow hugged Spike. "I wouldn't have survived without you and Dru. Thank you." She reached out and took Drusilla's hand. "Both of you."

"You're my granddaughter."

They walked home with Willow changing who she was leaning on every block.

It was dusk when they reached her house, and someone just turned on the living room light. "What am I going to tell my parents?"

"I'm sure you'll think of something." Spike kissed the top of her head.

Willow turned to Dru, hugged and kissed her. "I will miss you."

"We'll be round too much for you to a miss a thing. You're ours now and always. When you figure that out we'll be inseparable like a diamond doll chain." She kissed Willow again. "I know you'll ask."

Spike messed up Willow's hair. "Now off with you before I take that choice away."

She hugged him again quick and then rushed up her sidewalk, and into the house. "Mom! Dad!"

"Willow what are you wearing?" Sheila asked as she came out of the study.

"Oh, hush, she looks nice," Ira said coming out of the living room with the paper in his hand.

"Ira! She's wearing a corset and leather pants. And her hair is bright red. Willow why would you do this to yourself?"

Not hearing the condemnation in her mother's tone, Willow hugged her, and then her father. "I missed you."

"How's Buffy? We got home and found out you were staying with her because her mother died."

"She's doing a little better, so I came home for a night." Willow had forgotten that Angelus drained Joyce and then set the house on fire so Buffy would never see her mother's face again.

Ira was on Willow's left and his eyes narrowed. "When did you get that scar?"

"Dad, don't you remember? I fell through Buffy's patio door and cut my face?" They wouldn't know Buffy didn't have a patio door. They'd never bothered to meet Buffy or Joyce.

"Huh. You'd think I'd remember that."

"You were in the Camans that month."

"I'm just glad we got to see you before we had to go to China for a two weeks," Sheila said. "I'm ordered Chinese for dinner. It should be here any minute. Why don't you get cleaned up and changed into something appropriate for dinner."

"Sure thing, Mom."

From under the tree in the back yard, Angelus watched the Rosenbergs eat dinner. Willow looked happy and smiled easy. It made him sick. That bitch would pay.