The next morning, the Scooby clan, minus Spike who was sleeping, returned to the manor as planned. They found the Halliwells eating breakfast.

"Hey guys, there's coffee in the kitchen. Leaded and not, in honor of Prue." Piper said warmly, smiling at her older sister.

"Thanks. So we thought we should go shopping today, since Tara doesn't have any clothes. We didn't know what Prue's situation was…" Buffy trailed off. Prue looked better than last night, sure, but she still looked pretty shook up. She was holding a cup of coffee between her palms, one knee up on the chair.

"Oh…probably a good idea. She could do okay with our clothes, and we kept a lot of hers anyway…" Phoebe explained.

Prue cracked a smile. "You always did like my clothes better. And it's okay to say it, you know. I do know that I died."

Piper winced slightly. "I know, Prue…it's just that it was hard enough for me to talk about it before yesterday, and with you standing there…well it just seems silly to say it."

The rest of the group nodded their agreement.

Willow cleared her throat. "Also, we're going to have to figure out the er…legal type things. I can hack into some places on the web and see what I can do…but there's lots of things we thought about last night. We decided it would be easiest just to erase the evidence of their…deaths." She forced herself to say the word. "We can figure something out to explain where they've been. And we'll have to come up with a way to explain things to anyone who knew them personally. Tara…shouldn't be that hard. The only people I could think of were the people in LA who we can tell the truth to, and your, um, family. But we didn't know about Prue."

"Whoa, Wills, calm down, breathe." Xander told his best friend. She was going into nerd babble mode and the Halliwells looked a little overwhelmed.

"We don't have to tell them." Tara said quietly, looking at Willow.

"Who?"

"My family." She said quietly. "Did they even come to my f-funeral?"

Willow looked at Buffy before quietly shaking her head no.

"It's okay, I didn't think they would have. So we don't have to worry about them." Willow grasped Tara's hand and squeezed it comfortingly.

The Halliwells looked horrified that this girl's family wouldn't even have come to her funeral. Piper decided to change the topic.

"Well, it shouldn't be that bad for us either, we can tell Morris…he'll be so happy. I can't think of anyone else that we'll need to worry about."

"Can you really make it seem like we never died?" Prue asked, interested.

Willow paused. "I'll see what I can do. The police records shouldn't be much trouble, I've hacked into the Sunnydale ones loads of times, and San Fran shouldn't be much worse…maybe some newspaper records…insurance, drivers licences, stuff like that. Tara's college records…oh, and what about cemeteries? The uh, Sunnydale one is obviously blown to bits, but you'll have to get rid of the headstone here…."

"She was actually buried in a mausoleum…." Piper trailed off. "But I guess we can get rid of the plaque."

The group sat in silence for a minute. "Wow." Tara murmured.

"Oh don't worry, I know that sounds tough but it shouldn't be. And I know, it's not exactly legal, but the legal system wouldn't know what to do with you two. So, uh, want to go clothes shopping?" Willow smiled brightly.

"Hey Prue, why don't we go sit out on that bench and wait for them to finish?" Buffy asked tentatively. They were in a small store that sold clothes more Tara's style than Prue's. Prue looked at her sisters, who shrugged, so she followed Buffy aimiably out into the main part of the mall.

"Listen, I know you probably don't want to talk about it right now, but I just wanted to say I know what you're going through."

"How exactly is that?"

"Well, almost three years ago, I died. Three months after that my friends raised me from the dead."

"So, you think you know what I'm going through because you had sort of a similar experience."

"Pretty much, yes."

"What do you think I'm going through?" Prue said crabbily.

"I don't know all about metal physics or whatever, but I figure you guys were in the same place I was. And it was nice, okay? All warm, and soft, no fighting. I always knew I was going to die young, and going to heaven was like my reward. Then all of a sudden bam I'm back here and it's like hell compared to where I was."

Prue had gotten temporarily confused by Buffy's bungled attempt at the word metaphysics, but she got back on track.

"So basically, you wanted to stay dead."

"Um, yeah."

"Well, I didn't always think I was going to die young. Even after we got our powers, it was scary, but I thought I could protect myself and my sisters. Well, it turns out I couldn't protect myself, and they didn't need protecting anyway. I had a good life here, even with the demon attacks. I didn't want to die and I didn't want to stay dead. So you don't know anything about me." Prue got up and walked away.

Buffy sat in amazement for a moment. It had never occurred to her that her experience had been different because she was the slayer. But neither Prue or Tara seemed to be too upset that they had been yanked out of heaven. Prue clearly had other issues, but maybe that wasn't one of them. The slayer sighed, feeling as though she'd just lost her one way of helping her friends in this situation.

Xander and Leo opted out on the mall trip, so they spent the day watching Wyatt and doing what they could to bring Prue and Tara back to life: stealing the plaque and creepy empty coffin from the mauseleum, visiting Morris and explaining the saga to him, calling Wolfram and Hart to tell Angel and the gang, and making extensive lists of everything they could think of that might need altering by the hacker.

Shopping for two women who didn't own anything took nearly the whole day. Prue had calmed down by the time Buffy and the others had caught up with her, but she was still acting strangely. Willow and Tara spent most of the time holding hands, as if they were afraid to let go of each other. Finally, exhausted and carrying pounds of clothing, the group returned to the Manor. They found Leo and Xander laughing and comparing stories of repair projects from demon attacks.

"Hey, don't knock yourselves out working." Piper teased her husband.

"As if you had no fun at the mall." He teased right back.

Willow grinned at the joking as she opened up her laptop. Tara sat down next to her, content to just sit in the presence of her girlfriend as she started the process of making her exist again. It was strange, Tara thought. Already she felt as if it had just been a dream, that she had never left her friends.

Prue wasn't doing as well. She sat gingerly down on the couch, trying to block out the noise around her as the day started to catch up with her.

Phoebe watched her older sister, still half amazed that she was there, but worried about her state of mind. Suddenly she had a brainstorm.

"Paige, Piper, kitchen." She stood up with a grin on her face.