Author's apologetic note: I'm sorry this update has taken so long, I honestly didn't think anyone was reading this! Then I check back on a whim and whammo, there's reviews waiting and people wanting more, which is amazing. Here's the next part and now that I know the updates will come much more thick and fast.

PART TWO - SLEEPWALKER

The first thing she thinks when she wakes up is dear goddess, it was only a dream. Her pillow is damp as if she has been crying - or else sweating - in the night, and her face is pressed half-suffocatingly into it. It smells like Kennedy still, but Kennedy is gone for now, of course - a Slayer must slay, after all.

Willow drags herself upright in a swoon and swipes her hair from her face with one clumsy hand, the knuckles smashing a little disjointedly into her left eyebrow as she does so. Could it have been a dream? How could she dream something like that, so . . . so damn vivid? What would that say about her state of mind?

It means you haven't done paying yet, that's what. You should be in jail for what you did but you get this instead. You get to go on night after night without a moment's peace, with this person inside you, this person you killed.

But it's never been so intense before, and that worries her. If she didn't know herself better then she would swear she had dreamt the thing because she was actually plannng to do it, one night. But she wouldn't - she has played with those forces before and although now she knows what she would be getting into, it doesn't make it any less dangerous. Not really. She would be irresponsible, wicked even, to disturb that greater balance again simply to make her guilt go away. She had refused to listen at the time but Giles had been right - she had been, and wished she still could be, a rank, arrogant amateur.

The time for that has passed. There is nothing of magic she has not felt, seen, been. An amateur's role looks more attractive to her than the possibilty of Tara returning to her - almost. But she can never have that again. She can't go back.

She leaves her bed in a twisted mess behind her and heads to the kitchen. She should shower first, should wash the last vestiges of that dream away, but her head is too muggy for that. She feels, inexplicably, as if power has recently left her in a monstrous surge. She needs coffee more than she needs a shower, just now.

She swings into the lounge with her aching head cradled in one hand, and stops dead as she bumps into something. She knows the room inside-out, could walk it with her eyes closed, but here there is something that doesn't belong - something solid and tall enough to bump against her nose.

"Oww!" she protests, and takes the hand away . . . and sees two brown eyes staring at her. They are distorted only faintly by the sphere of energy between them.

"Thought of a better way to get rid of me?" he says, flatly. Nothing else.

Willow shakes her head and keeps going, ploughing past him into the kitchen, letting the door swing shut with a clap behind her. Now both hands cover her face and her head is hurting worse than before.

"No," she moans, and reaches out one hand blindly to twist the cold water on. "I didn't. I didn't. I couldn't."

But she already knows that she could. She did. It is coming back like the advent of spring, a chill wind chasing the edges of summer. In her lounge is a killer, twice over. In her lounge is also a victim. Hers. She swallows, and breaks the flow of water with both hands, catching its coldness and splashing it up into her face. It shocks her memories back with horrible clarity. She could. She did.

An amateur, no . . . but still, she was arrogant. Still she broke the flow of the universe whenever she felt like it. And for what? For someone she hates with every particle of her soul.

With the hair at her scalp still damp on her brow, she turns and flicks on the coffee maker. Coffee, that was what she came down for. Damn it if she wasn't going to go at this one thing at a time.

She doesn't go out until the coffee is made, and poured; she only rests against the worktop with its cold edge cutting her spine in two, gnawing at her nails as the coffee percolates. Then she goes about finding mugs, cream, sugar, and places them on a tray she finds stuffed in one of the sideboards. When she ventures out, two mugs of fresh black coffee standing alongside the cream and sugar, her hands make the tray shudder like a bucking bronco at the rodeo.

He hasn't moved, and only his eyes follow her movements as she mutters a single word under her breath and passes harmlessly through the barrier. It zings back into place behind her like water finding its own level. They are fixed on her as she sets the tray down on the little coffee table Kennedy found in a flea market two months ago, and they slide down with her as she kneels, primly, on its opposite side. Whether she is expected to speak or not - whether he is capable of understanding her or not - she doesn't know. Maybe the accusation was a fluke; a single moment of sanity like an island in the sea. Or maybe he has only been playing stupid the whole time.

"Warren?" she ventures, at last - when the silence seems more suffocating than that pillow had, ten minutes before. "How do you take coffee? Assuming you even drink coffee, that is."

He doesn't answer. There is no surliness to it; he simply seems out of time with her, as if he might wait an hour, two, three, before understanding that a question has been asked.

"Well, maybe you don't," she stumbles, and begins to pour cream into her own, breaking it over the back of a teaspoon as her grandmother taught her to do. "Maybe it makes you feel kinda sick. My dad was like that. He said that coffee was the devil's work." She stirs her coffee, hesitates, then as an afterthought dumps two spoonfuls of sugar into the mug. After a beat, during which she studies the table so as not to look at him, she adds a third. "But then, I guess you'd know about that, too."

She couldn't resist that final dig - at least she had had the excuse of grief, the possession of dark forces outside her own, to account for her behaviour. Warren had never been anything but human.

She drinks her coffee in silence, expecting him to join her at some point - even a zombie, or, to be kinder about it, a shell-shocked child, would know when it was thirsty, or hungry, or tired. He doesn't move. Not an inch. She drains the last from the mug, and stands to take it through to the kitchen. She will rinse it out later, when she feels comfortable turning her back on him for a moment. Barrier or not, she won't risk that. His own knowledge of magic had been functional enough, in the end, to slow even her super-charged self down. If he is faking - and she can't be sure that he isn't, even now - then he may know of some way to counteract her spell. She must be on guard at all times.

She dumps the empty mug in the sink and returns, again uttering that single word that will allow her to pass. Nothing has changed except that the thin white steam rising from the coffee has dissipated, leaving the air clear.

Scratch that - this air, this air that separates them, will never be clear. She will never forget the axe in her own back, the bullet in Tara's. The swell of bloodied flesh under Buffy's blouse as the injury was thankfully healed. But she can't help but remember the many hours of work she once put in on the Buffybot, repairing Warren's work, and at the time, admiring it. The fact that he is a genius makes him even more dangerous. But it also makes her wonder if it was the genius that affected his mind.

"Not thirsty, huh?" she says, and she settles herself down again. She nods at the mug. "I'm not workin' the mojo again if you starve yourself." But then, she thinks, if he were to starve himself, he would be doing the world a favour. Her conscience would be forever absolved but the world would still be a safer place. A fairer place.

Go on then, she thinks. Take yourself out. Give me something to celebrate.

But even with her many reasons to hate him, she feels that this particular fantasy is beneath her. It is the sort of thing that Faith would think.

"Well, Mr. Chatty, if that's it for now I'm gonna go clean up. And I think you'd better follow my example after. Those clothes stink."

No response. She can't say that she expected any. Leaving the cold coffee in case he changes his mind, she strides off, closing the barrier neatly behind her.

She returns fully dressed - usually she would wander around for an hour or so after in a towel or her dressing gown, but she has no intention of doing that today. With a man watching. Xander or Giles, maybe - but no one else. The house is deathly quiet as she plods through to the lounge, her damp feet leaving dainty black imprints of a smudge and five toes in the carpet behind her. Warren is where she left him - sitting up on the sofa with the bedclothes still dented in his shape under him, the mug of coffee untouched on the table. The stubble has worsened since last night, but otherwise, he is static. If not for that stubble then she would be tempted to think it was his robot, and not the human version, sitting in her apartment.

"Your turn," she says, matter-of-factly. She imagines that she is talking to a child, or maybe a dog - it is easier than remembering, for a moment, that she is talking to a killer. "And I'm not takin' no for an answer, buddy-boy."

She frees the energy field, this time collapsing it completely, and marches across to the sofa. She tugs him to his feet with a yank of his elbow, not bothering to be gentle. She almost imagines that she sees a flash of indignation in his vacant eyes, something there and gone like a lightning-bolt from a clear sky . . . but she could have been mistaken. She is certainly jumpy enough, uncertain enough, to make that kind of mistake.

As if I haven't already made enough of a mistake, she thinks. It is enough to make her shove him the direction of the bathroom with even more force. But it is herself, and not him, that she is angry at this time. In the cold light of day, her decision to go through with this seems like the worst thing she could ever - has ever - done. But she can't ignore the relief of having him gone from the back of her mind.

As much as she misses Buffy and Dawn and the comfort of the Summers' house, she can't help but be grateful that she and Kennedy are renting a one-floor apartment these days. The difficulty of leading, shoving, and occasionally whacking him toward the bathroom is nothing compared to the difficulty she might have had in getting him up a flight of stairs. Her whole face seems to be straining away from the death-stench, her features attempting to crawl inside her head to escape it, but she focuses on the back of his wiry-haired, dark head, and consoles herself with the thought that this may be the last time she has to smell it. She nudges him into the bathroom, meaning to simply steer him in there and leave him to it, but hesitates, one hand curled on the edge of the open door, and doesn't close it. What are the odds, she wonders, that if she leaves him here and comes back in half an hour he will still be standing right where she left him, still filthy, still staring into the neverwhere like a plastic-eyed doll? Not just high. It is almost as good as a certainty.

Willow sighs, steps inside the bathroom, and clicks the door shut gently behind her.

"I'm just showing you the ropes, mister," she says, and is there a quaver in her voice, a tremble that had once belonged to it like her red hair belonged on her head? She thinks there is, and she bites down hard enough to make her teeth sing, angry at herself for her nerves. He - or at least, the Warren that she had killed, the Warren that had buried an axe in her back out of desperation and fear of her, would no doubt be thrilled to see her afraid of him now.

"I'm not, you know," she says, but aware, as she does so, that she is really talking to herself. "I'm not scared of you one bit, Mr Big Bad Wolf, so don't you think I am. All right? All right."

She turns - gingerly - to the shower, and twists it on hard. She slips a hand under the stream of water to test it, and steps back again.

"I don't care if you get in there fully clothed, Warren," she continued, her eyes darting over his lacklustre body, determining the best way to manhandle what must amount to a hundred and sixty pounds of young man across the bathroom. "In fact, I think I'd like it better that way."

She steps up closer and for a second her fingers twitch at empty air, psyching herself up to get a decent grip, and haul. She finds herself with her nose only inches from his and her eyes unwillingly finding that wide, plastic, doll-like stare. "But you are getting in there."

"Sure I am," he says, suddenly, and his fists flash outward and clamp around her elbows in the instant it takes for her to catch back her breath. "But I don't think you'll be getting out again."