Tara's concerned voice managed to penetrate Willow's concentration, and the red-haired witch looked up with a start from the scattered tomes in front of her, her eyes falling on the nearby clock. Her eyes widened as she realized just how long she had been working and she turned a weary and apologetic smile on her lover.
"Yeah - all work and no food makes Willow a woozy wiccan." She frowned. "Involuntary alliteration - definite sign of nutrient deprivation."
"And sleep deprivation..."
"Nah, involuntary sibilance is sleep deprivation, I'm still good to go," Willow protested. Her declaration was somewhat compromised by the enormous yawn that followed it, and she flushed.
Tara paused, taking the time to choose her words carefully before she spoke again. With Buffy's death, Willow had emerged as the de facto leader of the remaining Scooby gang, and she had managed that role with her customary success. While Willow's ability came as no surprise to Tara, the blonde witch worried about the single-minded intensity her lover devoted to the job, and the toll it exacted of her. That intensity was becoming unhealthy, and was only increasing as the summer wore on - exponentially, since they had finally found the spell they had been searching for...
"You've been running yourself down," Tara said gently. "I know how important this is to you - it's just as important to me. Not only because I miss her too, and want to see her safe, but because I can see how this whole... situation hurts you. If you don't stop and recharge every now and then, ultimately things will take longer anyway - you need to take a break."
"I know... but every time I try, I just think of all the times I told Buffy the same thing," Willow said, her gaze haunted. "She never listened, and somehow she always came through for us - always. I need to come through for her. I don't want to waste any more time..."
"You aren't wasting time, baby," Tara said, taking the other witch into her arms before Willow could break into tears, soothing her. "You're doing what you have to do. Buffy always ran out and confronted things head-on, but there were actual things for her to confront. A spell isn't like some demon that you can fight. You don't fight magic, you have to work with it. And that's exactly what we're doing. It just takes time."
"Time Buffy may not have..."
"Time Buffy might never have unless we make sure we've got things right!" Tara broke the hug, but still clasped Willow's shoulders and looked deep into her eyes. "You have to think of the positive stuff, how far we've come. Just knowing there's a ritual that'll work - really work, and not bring back a thing that only looks like her - is miles ahead of where we were before, let alone where we are now."
"Yeah," Willow agreed with a small smile. "Who would have thought that one day I'd be thankful to have Anya around?"
Tara gave her a reproving look. Although Willow and the former demon had reached an accommodation of sorts, they would never be friends. The best they could hope for was to have a reasonable amount of respect between them. Anya's brainstorm about the troll hammer before the fight with Glory, coupled with her recollection of the existence of the Protocols of Osiris had done a lot to bring that about on Willow's side...
"I knew it!" Anya squealed triumphantly, as she finished reading through the ancient parchment before her. "I just knew I'd heard about about it somewhere!"
Every head at the research table turned toward the former vengeance demon.
"What is it?" Willow asked tersely.
"Back in 1182 I was dating this Kazykk demon, Hazar, and he'd mentioned there was a ritual using Osiris that could resurrect the dead. He even claimed he'd seen it done once! He was always a bit of a blowhard, though - it was one of the reasons I broke it off with him - so I didn't pay any attention to it at the time. Well, last session I remembered Hazar, and ordered in some of the scrolls he might be mentioned in, just in case - and here it is!"
Eagerly, Willow and Tara crowded in to look at the parchment while Anya received a celebratory kiss and public display of affection from Xander, which he quietly promised would lead to a private display of affection once they got home.
"'By exercising the Protocols of Osiris,'" Willow read, "'the dead may be fully restored to life and soul joined to body, if the petitioner proves worthy. Yet let all who would attempt this feat beware: to channel the power bestowed to Osiris from its source is to breach the boundary of the Sunless Lands, from whence few return, and fewer still return unchanged...' Goddess," she breathed. "This is it! I know it! Anya, I could kiss you! In a non-gay way," the witch hastily amended, but at Anya's hurt look, she continued. "I mean, because I know you're not gay, so you'd be uncomfortable and anyway, Xander might be upset - not that you're aren't attractive."
"Why thank you, Willow," Anya beamed. "If I was a lesbian, I would want to have sex with you too..."
"Not that I want to break up the bondy-moment here," Xander said, desperately trying not to focus on the mental image Anya's words presented, "but the next order of business should be finding the actual Protocols of Whatsis - where do we look?"
Tara remembered that time fondly. Armed with their discovery, the group had redoubled their research, working together seamlessly - and it had only taken about a week more before they located the ritual itself, though they had to wait an agonizing extra week until the precious text it was stored in could be sent to them. Once they received it, the witches and the ex-demon had immediately fallen to the business of translation and analysis, doing all they could to verify that the spell would actually do what it promised. And with every bit they translated, they became more and more convinced that it would - though the powers invoked would turn on the caster in an eyeblink if anything went wrong.
Tara couldn't help but wish that the spell wasn't so perilous - but magic of this calibre always was. The danger involved in any magical ritual was invariably in direct proportion to the magnitude of what the magic was intended to accomplish. It was hard to conceive of a magnitude greater than resurrecting the dead, and the potential consequences of failing this spell didn't bear thinking about. Still, if that was the risk they had to take...
The blonde shuddered. She didn't even want to imagine what it must be like in Glory's dimension - the creatures that had appeared once the portal opened were enough to give her nightmares. She only hoped that Buffy's soul was still intact. They simply couldn't leave any part of her to suffer in that awful place...
"My God," Xander whispered. "You really think so?"
Willow nodded faintly.
"I didn't want to believe it," she said. "But I got to thinking about what we know about portals from Cordelia's wish, and stuff Anya's told us. And it makes sense. Buffy jumped into it to save us, and her body's here - but we don't know where she ended up."
"You have a point," Anya mused. "It's actually happened before, too. Some portals have been known to actually separate a mortal soul from its body, though to be honest those are really rare - the only ones I've ever heard of were back in 79 and 1883, and they really didn't end well - and we don't know what type of portal Glory was opening. But given it was an end-of-the-world thing, there's a fair chance you're right, and that Buffy - her soul, anyway - is wherever Glory wanted to go."
"Y-you mean... her soul might be trapped there, after everything she did for us, for everybody?" Tara asked, appalled. "That's..."
"That's something so far beyond badness only dogs can hear it," Xander said, his fists clenching. "After all the crap she had to go through in her life, I liked to think that she was at least in a good place now..."
"It's not right," Tara said, shaking her head. "We've got to be able to appeal to the Powers or something..."
"Or something," Willow said. "If the Powers ever gave a hoot about Buffy, apart from making sure she died when the Master bit her to fulfil their stupid prophecy, they've never shown it. They won't help, so it's up to us."
"But what can we do?" Xander asked.
Willow stood, resolve-face on.
"We're going to bring her back."
They had decided to shield Dawn from their planning for obvious reasons - with all she had already been through, she didn't need to know that the sister who had died for her was in all likelihood still suffering. On top of that, they didn't want to get the teen's hopes up in case they met with failure.
Giles had been excluded for much the same reason - Buffy's death had been almost more than the man could bear. They had all noticed the tumbler of scotch that seemed to be surgically attached to Giles' hand in the days after his Slayer's demise, but none of them had been able to confront him about it. Thankfully, his drinking had ceased to be a problem, and they had decided not to take a chance and change that. At least now that Giles was back in England, they no longer had to worry about what discovering their plans might do to him. And as for Spike...
Tara had felt he could be trusted, but Willow hadn't wanted to take the risk. The redhead had argued that given his obsession with Buffy, they had no way of knowing how Spike might react to either success or failure, and the others had agreed with her. Tara herself still had serious reservations about what they proposed to do, but she couldn't see any other way to accomplish their goal. Leaving Buffy's soul to the tender mercies of a Hell dimension was simply unacceptable - that was the only reason she was going along with Willow's plan. After all, once you rescued a soul, what else could you do with it but give it a body?
At least this ritual was nowhere near as... ugly... as the only other one they knew of that might do the job. Anya had brought up the Scroll of Aberjian a couple of weeks before they discovered the Protocols, but even her still-more-demonic-than-human morality recognized that spell went far, far beyond merely being 'wrong'.
"We're almost done the translations now," Tara said at last. "After that, it'll just be a matter of getting the ingredients together, and double-checking our work to make sure we've got the accents and everything down. Don't want to end up like the wizard Baruffio," she teased.
Willow nodded, her smile more genuine, though she recognized the warning in her lover's jest as well.
"Yeah," she agreed wryly. "Ending up on the floor with a buffalo on your chest is pretty darned pleasant compared to what could happen if we screw this up. And honestly, I'm so not looking forward to getting some of the ingredients..."
"The blood sacrifice?" Tara asked.
Willow nodded unhappily. "I keep on going over that part of the spell, hoping I got the translation wrong after all. I know I didn't, and I know you and Anya didn't, and I know it's not like my looking at it a few billion times is going to change the words - but I really don't like that part of it..."
"Good," Tara said firmly. Willow looked at her in confusion, and the blonde explained. "Blood magic - any blood magic - is serious stuff. Blood is life. The day you're able to take that for granted is the day you've become something you've spent your life fighting."
"'Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. For when you stare persistently into an abyss, the abyss also stares into you'," Willow quoted somberly. "I think I really get that now... at least I've got some time to work myself up for it. Mercury won't be retrograde for weeks yet."
"I could do it, if you'd rather..." Tara began, but Willow cut her off with a wave.
"No," Willow said, determined. "This whole thing is my idea. If there's dirty work to be done, I should be the one to do it. But," she said, her voice softening, "I really, really want to thank you for offering."
Tara leaned forward, bringing her lips to Willow's in a sweet kiss.
"You're welcome - and if you really want to thank me, you can come on downstairs and eat something."
"I could have a little something up here," Willow said mischievously, but Tara only brushed her hands away with a laugh.
"Something that actually has nutritional value - I still have some of my famous pancake batter ready, and there's blueberries."
"Funny shapes?"
"Funny shapes," Tara smiled, holding out her hand to help the redhead to her feet. They were halfway down the stairs when Tara stopped.
"Oh! The books..."
They had been careful to conceal the texts they were using for researching and translating the Protocols in the Magic Box safe - no worries about break-ins there, as only a fool attempted to get between a still-very-well-connected ex-vengeance demon and her money - but there was still a lot of niggling detail work to be done. And as the date approached for the constellations to be in the correct alignment for the ritual, they were anxious to make sure that everything was not only finished, but double and triple-checked well in advance. To that end, the witches had started to bring some of their work home with them, always taking the precaution to bring all the spell material with them whenever they left the house, and making certain none of their notes was ever left where Dawn or Spike might see.
"Not to worry," Willow reassured. "I placed a glamour on them. To anyone who isn't us, it'll just look like we've been having a college-related study-fest, instead of a magic-related one. I'm an only child, but I remember Buffy complaining about how Dawn used to go through her stuff, and although she isn't stealing anymore, I figure there's a still a good chance she might not be above some snoopage, in what I understand is grand little sister tradition..."
"Or daughter," Tara smiled wistfully, continuing on down the stairs and making her way to the kitchen. "I used to borrow Mom's sweaters that way. Dawn probably wouldn't go after our clothes, but you're right - if there was some magic stuff around, she'd 'just happen' to find it. Kinda like a certain redhead I know," she said, playfully poking Willow in the ribs.
"Can I help it if I'm naturally inquisitive? I just want to be a better witch..."
"I know you do - but there's more to it than just knowing stuff," Tara said seriously, as she started rummaging through the refrigerator. "That's like, the easy part - especially for someone with a memory like yours. You're way better at absorbing information than I'll ever be, and you have a gift for seeing how everything links together. You can figure things out by theory alone better than anyone I know. But there's a difference between theory and practice..."
"I know that," Willow said, her voice turning sullen. "Give me credit for learning from my mistakes, at least."
"I do, and I know you have," Tara said, setting the berries and butter down by the stove. "Honey, I'm not trying to be critical. I'm trying to point out just how good you are - though I guess I'm not doing it too well - because I don't think you realize how good you really are."
"I am?"
"You are. But it's like you think you're some kind of failure whenever you come across something you don't know, and that's just not true. Nobody can know everything. It doesn't make you a failure, it makes you human. And humans make mistakes. It's nothing to be ashamed of."
"That depends on the mistake," Willow said, colouring. "The 'do my will' spell definitely falls under the shame category. Even now, whenever I think of it I still get the urge to bake cookies..."
"But you learned from it, right? There's only shame if you don't learn from your mistakes - not to say that any of them ever become less embarrassing. I did tell you about the time I pulled a Sorcerer's Apprentice when I was ten, right?"
Willow giggled. "Yeah - you had to clean the floor, and you got the idea after watching Fantasia..."
"And my Mom was this close to hexing the CEO of Disney," Tara smiled. "She might have even gone through with it, if her counter-charm hadn't worked."
She busied herself at the stove. "You came to magic late, and I think that kind of explains some of the mistakes you've made. By the time you started spellcasting, you already had a lot of power, and it probably tended to get away from you a bit. And when you have the amount of power you do, that 'bit' can do a lot of damage."
"Don't I know it," Willow winced.
"But the more experience you get, the less of a problem it'll become," Tara said as she poured batter into the pan, then took a handful of berries to sprinkle onto the forming pancake. "You'll get more familiar with the flow of your power, and the fine control will come. And once that's in place, I'd say that ball of sunshine spell is going to be the first in a long line of Willow original successes."
"You're wrong."
"I am?"
"Yup," the redhead smiled, stepping up behind the other witch and wrapping her arms around Tara's waist. "That's Willow and Tara original successes, thank you very much."
Willow kissed the back of Tara's neck. "I love you," she said.
"Love you," Tara replied, twisting within Willow's embrace to face her, and return her kiss.
One of Tara's kisses was never enough for Willow, and the redhead greedily set about stealing as many as she could. It wasn't really much of a theft anyway, she mused, not when Tara was aiding and abetting...
"Best not to start that kind of fire whilst you're already minding another kind, Glinda!"
Startled, the witches separated, blushing furiously, while Spike smirked from his position at the head of the basement stairs.
"That's how accidents happen, you know," he said sagely.
Tara squawked as she belatedly remembered the pan on the stove, and dove to rescue the pancake. Fortunately, it hadn't burned, though it would be a little well-done on one side. Sighing with relief, she expertly flipped the cake, then got a plate, while Willow and Spike sat at the kitchen table and started to discuss the patrolling schedule. In a minute or so, the first pancake was done, and she placed it before Willow with a grin.
The redhead looked down, and started to giggle uncontrollably. Tara had done quite a good job of pouring the batter so that the cake resembled Mickey Mouse - wearing a wizard's hat.
Spike, not being in on the joke, could only admire the effort it took to produce that kind of funny shape.
"Good work there, pet - don't suppose you've more of those pancakes to go 'round, do you?" he asked hopefully.
"Maybe," Tara said, "We'll see what's left after Willow's done. In the meantime, we have some blood in the 'fridge - help yourself."
"Ta, luv."
Finding his mug from the rack of dishes on the counter, he poured out a measure of blood, and microwaved it until it was steaming. Settling down at the table again, he watched as Willow ate a series of pancakes in ever stranger shapes which Tara prepared for her, and sipped his blood. He was on his second cup when the front door opened.
"I'm home!" Dawn called.
"Nibblet! Did you have a good day?" Spike asked, getting up to meet her in the living room.
"Yeah," she replied, dumping her book bag on the coffee table. "I got an A on that history essay about the Boxer Rebellion. It would've been an A+, but Mr. Davis took marks off for missing references, and it's not like he would've given them back if I'd footnoted 'William the Bloody', so I'm not complaining. I am starving, though - what's for dinner?"
With the teenager's arrival, the four lapsed into their evening routine of dinner and homework, as they had done for more than a hundred days before - until Dawn offhandedly mentioned that she might need the vampire's help with a poetry-writing assignment that would be coming up in English class, and Spike nearly choked on his blood.
"Are you okay, Spike?" she asked anxiously, patting him on the back. "I know it's not like you need to breathe or anything, but..."
"...that's still bloody uncomfortable. I'm fine, Bit."
"Good," she said, wrinkling her nose. "Thanks for not spraying."
"Poetry's not all that bad, you know," Willow said.
"I know - even Buffy liked it," Dawn said with a small smile. "She said it was her favourite class."
"She did, eh?" Spike said softly.
"Yeah, she did," Willow said. "She seriously got into it when we started studying the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam - she said she could relate to it, because it was really 'seize the day' type stuff. And she was really touched when you gave her that first edition that you found on eBay, Dawn - she so wasn't expecting it. Which reminds me, thanks for letting me borrow it for my Comp Lit class - it helped bunches, and I appreciate it."
Dawn looked stricken, and her mouth worked, as if she was trying to find words, and the others looked at her in concern.
"Dawn? Pet, what's wrong?" Spike asked.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, near tears. "I stole so many things, I forgot..."
The vampire looked puzzled, but only briefly as he assimilated the facts. Bloody hell - so that's where it got to...
"You stole my book, pigeon?" he asked.
He heard Willow exclaim "You read poetry?!", but he paid her no mind, intent on the teenager who was nodding miserably in answer to his question.
"And you gave it to your sis?"
Another nod.
The vampire took a deep, unnecessary breath as he sorted through the mass of feelings that surged within him with the discovery of Dawn's betrayal - but when he finally spoke, his voice was gentle.
"It's all right, Nibblet," he forced a smile. "You got everyone else when you were at it. Come to think of it, seein' as your Artful Dodger phase was all to get attention from people you cared about, I would've been offended to find out you'd never nicked anything from me. Now, none of that," he said, wiping a tear from Dawn's cheek. "You've said you're sorry, an' I know you haven't ever nicked anythin' else since - that night. An' I'm glad... glad that she liked it."
"So you're not mad?" Dawn asked in a small voice.
"Mad, bad and dangerous to know," he said, his smile becoming more genuine, "but I'm not angry at you, luv. It'd be kind of pointless, seein' as you've already apologized, an' I've accepted your apology. So I'll just have my book back, and we'll hear no more of this, right?"
"Right," Dawn agreed.
"Good - now finish your dinner, an' then we can get to your schoolwork."
For the late Slayer's sister, loved ones and onetime greatest foe, the rest of the night passed much the same as all the others since her death.
Chores were done after supper.
Homework, both high school and collegiate, was completed, while the day's receipts were tallied at the Magic Box.
Spike gave Dawn self-defense lessons while the remaining Scoobies researched the latest evils plaguing Sunnydale.
The ex-demon, the carpenter, the two witches and the vampire arranged their schedule of patrolling and Dawn-watching.
After the night's slaying, Spike was sure to look in on Dawn, and retrieved his book from Willow before returning to his crypt before morning.
A book which had nestled between its aged, well-loved pages a neatly
folded sheet of scrap paper, one side of which was covered in arcane scribblings,
that an exhausted Willow had forgotten she had used as a bookmark.
Various Notes
Significance of the years noted by Anya: 79 - the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, resulting in the complete destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum; 1883 - the eruption and destruction of the island of Krakatoa, which affected planetary weather patterns for three years.
The wizard Baruffio is from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, by J.K. Rowling - Professor Flitwick cites him as a cautionary example to students to ensure they remember to pronounce magical words clearly and correctly.
Willow's quote about fighting monsters is from Friedrich Nietzsche.
Spike's comment about being "mad, bad and dangerous to know" is actually Lady Caroline Lamb's description of the poet George Gordon, Lord Byron.