Chapter 2: Goings and Comings

Buffy turned just in time to catch the box Dawn had been holding, which was now halfway to the ground. She caught the edge of it and gently placed it on the ground, then looked up to a shame-faced Dawn.

"I told you it was too heavy for you," Buffy said in her motherly scolding tone.

Dawn's mouth opened in an immediate retort. "I was just trying to help, like you told me to do. It's not my fault all the smaller boxes had already been carried to the porch."

Buffy sighed, noting the way Dawn had said Buffy had more ordered her to help out that asking her. "Dawn, you know we have to get this stuff out sort of quickly. Willow is moving to a new place, and she asked us to help her."

"She didn't ask us to do it all for her while she was gone. It is hers, she could help just a little." Dawn sighed in exasperation, and what Buffy knew wasn't just laziness, and sat down on the box she'd been carting.

Buffy put her hand on Dawn's arm, kneeling in front of her. "Now you want to tell me what's really wrong?"

Dawn glanced up at her sister, then back at her hands, which were nervously fidgeting in her lap. "I just…I don't understand why she wants to leave."

Buffy sighed, knowing that this had been coming. She had felt the same way when Willow had come home from England and announced the news. "She wants to try and make it on her own for a while. She's had someone with her since she was born, her parents, then Oz, then she lived with me at the dorm. After she got with Tara she hadn't been alone since then. She just…wants to prove to herself she can make it by herself."

Dawn threw her hands up in defeat. "Can't she be by herself here?"

Buffy put her arm around Dawn's shoulder, trying to calm her, even when Buffy herself needed the calming. "We have to let her do this. Not only because she's and adult and has the right to do and go where she wants, but also….also because we love her, and need to let her find herself."

Dawn looked up at Buffy, tears in her eyes. "I'll still miss her."

Buffy smiled slightly. "I know, sweetie, I will too. But its not like she's disappearing. She's moving to the apartments just down the street, and we'll see her everyday like we do now.

Dawn looked back down at her hands. "But it won't be the same. She won't be here when I get home anymore."

Buffy stood up slowly, realizing Dawn's down mood was slowly bringing her down as well. "Well, we can't cry over it forever. She's made up her mind, and as her friends we have to respect that. And it's not like I won't be here when you come home."

Dawn looked up and smiled for the first time since Willow had announced her news. "Yeah, that's just what I want, big sister looking over my shoulder the second I walk through the door." She stood up and grabbed one side of the box as Buffy took the other.

"Well, what am I here for besides to torture you?" They carried the box out to the porch and placed it with all the others, and Buffy slowly looked them over. " I guess that's the last one."

"Yeah, guess so." Dawn turned and walked back into the house, and went upstairs to where Xander was busily building the secret gift they had all decided on for Willow. It was a desk made out of willow and it had the imprint of a cat burned into the side of it.

Xander looked up at their approach. "It's coming along. It would come faster if I wasn't building alone, and knew more what I was doing, but, coming it is."

Buffy smiled at Xander's modesty. Over the years he had spent in construction, he had really become great at it. " It looks beautiful. I'm sure Willow will love it."

"Yeah, she will. Especially with the cat on the side." Dawn grinned widely since that cat had been her idea.

"Dawn, don't you have homework?" Buffy said, finally remembering what she had dragged her sister away from to help with the lifting.

Dawn sighed. "How can we get homework on the second day of school? Those teachers really should be talked too. We shouldn't get work at least until the end of the year." Dawn raised her hands in defense at Buffy's harsh stare. "I'm going, I'm going," and before she disappeared into her room, she yelled over her shoulder, " I was just saying!"

Buffy smiled in spite of herself as Dawn shut her door. Xander stood up with a groan after being down on the floor for an hour. " Yeah, I felt that way too, when I was her age. Learning in school, its barbaric."

"Well, hopefully she'll discover her great potential as a genius, and grow to make lots of money to support her old and weathered sister after all her hard years of demon-killing." Just then Dawn let out a screech and there were a couple of loud thuds.

"I'm fine!" she yelled from her room. " Just fell off the bed!"

Xander looked at Buffy. " Let's not shoot too high."

Buffy made a face. "Just what I was thinking."

The two of them made their way downstairs and into the kitchen, where Buffy got them each a glass of water. After gulping the whole thing down, and waiting for his glass to be refilled by Buffy, Xander looked up at her seriously. "Should we be worried about her?"

"Oh, no. Dawn is resilient. She just fell off the bed. It can hurt, I know, but its not like she fell off a king sized."

Xander nodded. "Yes, true, but I was more talking about Willow."

Buffy's eyes widened, and then she looked down into her glass of water. "Oh."

"Well, she was barely back for an hour before she told us she wanted to move; and she already had a place picked out, and she was going to be asking Anya for a job. Don't you think she's moving a little fast?"

Buffy shook her head. " I don't think so. It would be too fast for me, but Willow seems to need this. Independence. After Tara….and then after what Willow did…Giles probably talked to her, which is what lead to this."

"We still don't know what he said to her. She isn't saying."

"Well, its private, its not like we need to know." They both look up at each other, knowing how much the other was dying to know what had gone on in Giles' flat up in London. " The point is Willow is a grown-up, and she's making decisions and choices with her life; she's moving on when we thought she wouldn't make it at all." Buffy looked back at her water. " That was so scary."

"Tell me about it. When I thought she was done for…it was like I couldn't breathe. She's been with me since we were kids. I don't know what I'd do if she wasn't there."

Buffy nodded. " That's probably the way Willow thought when Tara was killed. Like she couldn't go on." Buffy smiled half-heartedly. " But now she is. She's moving on with her life. She took that step forward, and bringing her down with our worries would be like tripping her before she's out the door. So we'll just smile and tell her we support her." Buffy's face turned glum once more. " Then when she's gone we'll go to our rooms and cry our eyes out."

" Now, none of that," Xander said, his voice chipper. " We'll keep with the stiff lips and dry eyes. Being the strong man that I am, I will be happy to offer any shoulders that need to be leaned on." He smiled that goofy grin
that always made her grin back at him.

"Okay. No crying. My lip will stay firm and my eyes will not water. Giles is coming back soon, we want to be all with the welcome when he arrives."

"Yeah, Giles back. Things seem so much simpler when he is here. I've really missed him. He's like our surrogate mother hen."

"I hope he stays for awhile. With Willow's room open now, maybe he'll just get too comfortable to leave. I still think it was that lumpy couch that drove him away the last time."

Xander grinned. " Probably. But, speaking or people returning, you have heard Anya's suspicions, haven't you?"

"What? About the bunnies forming underground operations to take over the world? Xander, even you should know not to believe her by now."

"Well, again, my mind was going with something else. That of a certain Billy Idol-haired, chain-smoking member of the undead being back in town."

Buffy looked at him sharply and then sighed leaning her elbow on the counter and burying her face in her hand. " Yes, I've heard. I still think that lighter in the bushes could have been anyone's."

"You think it could, or you're just hoping it could?"

"The latter, but I don't know. There are things I wanted to say to him. He just left so suddenly before."

"Yes, he ran off like the cowardly duck that he is before he could get a sound staking from the lot of us."

"That's not what I was thinking, Xander. Though now that you mention it, it doesn't sound like the worst plan." Buffy clasped her cup in her hands, looking into the clear liquid. " I was thinking more of a banishment. Telling him that he was free to stay in town without a dusting if he didn't come to me, and in turn I'd stay away from him. He did care for Dawn, and helped us out a lot of times, I guess that entitles him to something."

Xander looked stricken, like his ears were playing tricks on him. " What it entitles to, Buffy, is a quick death. Minimal pain. He tried to do something awful to you."

Buffy looked up quickly. " I know. I was there, remember? I'm just saying, Xander, you don't know what went on when we were….when we were together. You can't understand it completely, and your hatred of him stems back for a long time. My hatred is something new."

"I don't get, aren't you angry at him?"

"Of course I am. I've been so angry at times I thought I'd scream until my lungs burst, or just hit something until it had the consistency of soup, but I can't waste my time on him. He's a monster that was hiding behind a mask I didn't notice. I was just surprised when he finally took it off." Buffy sighed and closed her eyes. " It's funny, for awhile I thought it was his real face."

"I know what you mean," Xander said, causing Buffy to look up at him. " I thought I knew Anya, then she went and…." Xander made a face that looked so disgusted Buffy would have thought someone was torturing kittens in front of him.

"Slept with the same man that I did," Buffy finished for him.

"Yeah, but its different. You were in pain over things that were out of your control. You were just looking for comfort in the wrong places…"

"Sort of like a loving bride who had been left at the altar and then reverted back to her demon roots." Xander looked up at Buffy, slightly shocked. " You did hurt her, Xander. You hurt her a lot. Just like the pain I was feeling, she was feeling a world of her own." She looked Xander deep in his eyes. " She was just deceived by the same mask I was fooled by."

Xander looked at Buffy as if it was the first time he was seeing her. " You know, I thought that Anya went to him…just to…"

"No, Xander. You got it wrong. We all seemed to get everything so wrong last year." Buffy looked down into her glass. " Maybe it was something in the water." She got up and dumped the contents of the glass down the sink, then walked back over to Xander, who looked like he has just been given all his Christmas presents a day early.

"Then….maybe she still does…want me. Like I want her so badly." Xander looked up at Buffy then with more truth in his eyes than she had ever seen there before. "I did love her, so much. I was just scared that one day that
love would be shadowed by things that couldn't be fought. And I panicked, and let my fear take me over. But afterwards…I realized that all I wanted was to be with her. In one form or another, I just wanted her with me."

"I know what you mean. And I still believe that she doesn't want anything less. She loves you, Xander, the two of you are just on the wrong page. You need to sort it out, and I'm sure you'll be able too. Someone just has to take the first step."

Just then there was a knock at the door, and Xander and Buffy looked at each other puzzled before getting up and walking to it. Xander reached for the knob, and pulled back the big wooden door to see to people standing there. One was the woman they had just been speaking of. She was smiling expectantly and brightly, looking at him with eyes full of hope.

But it was the second one that draw Buffy's attention. He looked different, and yet so much unchanged. His hair was still that florescent white and his eyes were still so piercingly blue. He still dressed all in black, but yet
his face looked like it has lost some of that edge it used to have. Now he just looked sort of tired. But his eyes had something she recognized as seeing there so many times before. They were all a mixture of pleading and
love, and she found herself having to speak before she got lost in them. "Spike."

And just as she said this, Xander also said a word. "Anya."

Anya smiled brightly and waved a bit, like she was on a ship about to depart from the harbor. "Can we come in?"