"Aaaaaarghhh!"
"Woah!"
The tip of Buffy's sword stopped inches from Willow's nose. The redhead stood in front of the garbage can, pieces of a shattered glass in hand. Her eyes were wide, frightened pools of green.
"B-Buffy? Umm, sorry about the glass, was it, like, your f-favorite?" Willow squeaked.
Sighing, Buffy relaxed and let the sword fall to her side. "Sorry Wills, I heard the glass breaking and I thought, 'Bringers'," she explained. Willow nodded emphatically.
"Oh, that's okay. I'm all intact. A-and I know how stressed you are about this whole thing." Dumping the glass in the trash can, she gave the Slayer a sympathetic look. She knew how worried her best friend was when the Bringers had taken Spike right from under their noses. She even suspected that Buffy hadn't been sleeping since the unexpected abduction.
"Stressed? Who's stressed? Not me, nuh-uh, nope. I'm the image of non-stress," Buffy denied. She flicked her still wet hair over her shoulder and smoothed the creases in her robe. I'm not stressed, just…um…not stressed!
"Hey, I've got an idea! Why don't you go to bed, get some well-deserved rest, and let me take care of the house," Willow suggested.
"Can't, I've got to take care of Spike."
"I can take care of Spike! I'll stay up all night with him and watch for baddies and in the morning I can get breakfast ready -"
"Wills, you don't have to do that. He's my responsibility and this is my house and I'm the Slayer and -"
"Hey, don't give me the 'I've got the weight of the world on my shoulders' speech, 'cause I've heard that one already. Just, let me do this for you, alright? Besides, you need to rest so you can train the girls tomorrow."
Buffy sighed and looked at the witch. "Okay, I give. But if you hear anything suspicious, or if Spike wakes up, or if you get really sleepy and can't keep your eyes open -"
"I'll wake you up," Willow finished. "Don't worry, Buff, I can handle this." She turned the blond around and gave her a gentle push out the door. Buffy looked back over her shoulder as she walked away, an unreadable look on her face.
'Why doesn't she trust me?' the witch wondered. Oh yeah, maybe it has something to do with trying to kill her last May. With a sigh, Willow began the ritual of locking up the house for the night. She made sure all the windows were shut and the doors were locked and the lights were off before heading upstairs to her room. Or, rather, to the room she shared with Tar - Kennedy. I share the room with Kennedy now.
She slipped through the door and gathered up the things she would need to pull an all-nighter. Her pyjamas, a blanket, her fuzzy pink bunny slippers (that Anya vehemently insisted Willow not wear while she was anywhere near her) and her books. About to change her clothes, Willow's eyes fell on the sleeping form of the slayer in training sprawled in her bed.
Kennedy's long brown hair lay on the pillow, sweeping out from her face, and giving the illusion of a halo round her head. Her small mouth was worried into a pout, and Willow was drawn to it. She took a step forward, watching the other woman's chest rise and fall with every breath. Up, down, up, down… 'Stop it!' her head screamed.
She snatched up her bundle, pyjamas and all, and hurried out of the room. Tara's only been dead a few months and you're already imagining the lips of someone else?! Willow crossed the hall and paused outside Dawn's door. She could hear light snoring coming from somewhere inside the younger girl's room and peeked her head in.
Everyone had agreed that since Buffy's room was currently being occupied by an unconscious vampire, their other guests would sleep here with Dawn for the time being. But Willow was surprised to find that Buffy had crawled into bed with her sister, a protective arm across the teen's stomach. Why she hadn't found herself a nice spot on Willow's floor she couldn't say, but it was nice to see the Summers girls looking like sisters for a change.
Closing the door gently, she made her way down the hall to Buffy's room and let herself in. It was deathly quiet in the room, the only sound being Willow's steady breathing echoing in the silence. She put her belongings on the floor and spread out the blanket, making herself a nice comfy spot to lay on.
Casting a glance at Spike and ensuring that he was indeed unconscious, Willow stripped out of her day clothes and into her night ones. Slipping her bare feet into her slippers she plopped down on her make-shift bed and spread out her books.
Spectres and Ghouls (a 'complete guide' to otherworldly visitors), Vampyres (a history), The Codex Prophecies (a collection of prophecies gathered by the Watcher's Council regarding the rise of a powerful vampire army), and Anne of Green Gables…oh, that must be in the wrong pile…
Putting on her resolve face, Willow went to work on the first book, Spectres and Ghouls, and began searching for anything involving Dawn's visitor. The girl insisted that she hadn't been visited by the First and that it was in fact her mother bringing her a message from the grave.
Though she wouldn't relay the exact message, Dawn did admit that it had something to do with this apocalypse. And because she had used a spell to vanquish some kind of demony thing that was silencing Joyce's 'spirit', Willow felt it was important to find out exactly what it was that had happened, if only to appease the teen's concerns.
Finding nothing in the so-called 'complete' guide, she tossed it aside and dove into Vampyres. Willow didn't really expect to find anything regarding the Ubervamp and why the First wanted to release it from the seal, especially since this was a history book strictly on vampires, but it was worth a try.
Two hours later she had skimmed through the entire book and, aside from an interesting passage regarding a vampire who was forcibly en-souled by a clan of Romanian gypsies, the book was entirely useless. It was cast aside and Willow pulled the smallest book into her lap. The Codex Prophecies was only about one hundred pages and seemed much too small to be of any real help, but she figured she should cover all her bases.
She flipped through it quickly, skimming each prophecy for its mechanics. 'Upon the sacrifice of a small child, a portal will open' …no… 'On the second day of solstice, the sun shall be blotted out by the moon' … umm, really no… 'When the Warrior rises, the Prophet shall come, and together they will lead the forces of Light against the forces of Dark and the source of all evil…wait a minute, the source of all evil? Excited, Willow read the prophecy from beginning to end, putting the pieces together in her mind.