A/N: I know it's been a while since I updated this one but it suddenly came to me.

##########

Willow had once again fallen asleep upstairs in the room she shared with Dawn at the Halliwell house. Dawn had almost fallen asleep in Xander's arms before the Elders had summoned her back to their presence to continue her training. Xander and Cole sat outside talking about Willow and everything that had happened to her.

"You mean, Willow tried to raise the temple that was buried in Sunnydale?"

"Actually she had raised it. She tried to channel the power into it or something in order to destroy the world. She just couldn't handle the pain of feeling all the emotions in the world. If I hadn't stepped in front of her, taking uberdamage, she just might have succeeded. Then, we all would have been in trouble."

Cole was suitably impressed with the young man in front of him. Even though the boy held no special powers, it was obvious that, with or without his friends, he was a force to be reckoned with.

"Cole, are you --? Oh there you are. Hi, Xander." Paige had just come out of the house. "Willow's awake and wants to talk to you, Cole."

Cole stood up and turned to Xander. "Here we go. I hope she doesn't turn me into a toad. I hate toads." With a smile that didn't quite cover how nervous he was, he walked back into the house.

/////////////

"Cole." Willow was sitting on the couch alone in the living room. She wouldn't even look at him at first.

He let her steer the conversation. She needed to feel in control of something. "You wanted to see me, Willow?"

"I'm sorry. I really am. I shouldn't have gotten so angry. It's always been one of my worst faults. When I get upset, I start acting without thinking and that's never good. I really need to learn to control my temper. After all, it almost got me killed more than once."

Cole sat down next to her on the couch. "Why don't you tell me about some of them?"

"That's a long story. It all started seven years ago when I first met Buffy. She had just moved to Sunnydale and Xander and I found out about her being the Slayer and all this other stuff which just blew our minds. We had never once thought about all those things that went bump in the night. Now we were part of fighting them. It was confusing and at times absolutely frightening. We made it through everything though. The return of Angelus. The mayor's Ascension. College. High school." A small smile came to her lips as she remembered Oz's words as they sat together after the Ascension was all over.

FLASHBACK

They were all on the bench across from the school. Oz was just behind Willow and he had put his hands in his pockets. "Guys, take a moment to deal with this. We survived."

Xander nodded. Buffy came back with, "It was a hell of a battle."

Oz just quietly said, "Not the battle. High school." They all were quiet for a moment, just looking at the remains of the school. They could hear crickets chirping in the night.

END FLASHBACK

Willow shook her head and started from the beginning to tell Cole all about the past seven years and what had happened to bring her to the point where she would try to complete what the followers of Proserpexa couldn't accomplish.

It was rather dark when she finished and Cole took her hand. "Willow, you know that you've gone beyond being a normal human when you don't try to make weak excuses for your behavior. You have accepted the fact that you did wrong by trying to end the world. You aren't trying to excuse your behavior. That means that you really are quite the human." He was puzzled when she got tears in her eyes at that statement. "What did I say? What's wrong?"

"Oz said that I was quite the human too. Right after we found out about him being all wolfie. He tried to bite me but we stopped him and when I told him that I was kind of ok with him being in my way, he said that I was quite the human."

Cole just leaned in and wrapped his arms around the little redhead. She allowed him to hug her gently for a little bit before she pulled back from him. "You know, I'm really hungry. And I don't think anyone thought about saving us dinner."

"I don't know about that. I know that Piper lately tends to cook for an army. And even with Xander's appetite, I'm sure we'll be able to find something in the fridge if we look." Cole giggled. "Of course, if you want to go out to eat, we can do that. Let me just leave a note for the others so that they won't worry about us."

Willow smiled and nodded. Cole got up and went into the dining room where he left a note for the others that he had taken Willow out to eat.