Authors Note: Short but... well I was going to say sweet but that would be a lie. grins evilly

Chapter Fifteen

Heaven or Hell?

"Willow?" The one friend who was probably held closest to my heart smiled at me in that knowing little way. "Oh my God…. Willow…" I ran up to her and threw my arms around her, a laugh bubbling up out of her at the gesture.

"Heard you needed a little help."

I pulled away from her but still kept my hands on her shoulders. "Couldn't hurt." I just starred at her. She looked exactly the same from the last time I had actually seen her. Her hair was still cut short and fiery red and she still held that spunk in her eyes that was hidden behind the awkwardness that she was slowly growing out of. "You have no idea how much I missed you."

"You don't remember do you?" She kept her smile but it was one filled with more curiosity then anything else.

"What do you mean?"

"You just saw me seven months ago." I raised an eyebrow at her. "I'll explain later. Right now I'm thinking we need to get to work before Leon figures out who you are."

"To late."

She stopped and looked at me. "He…? When?"

"A couple hours ago. Some vamps jumped Angel and I. There were to many of them so I kind of distracted them with my name and then ran."

Willow nodded quickly. "Then we have less time then I thought."

"Wait…? How do you know all this?"

Willow laughed. "Sorry, my minds running all over the place. I've been watching you." She said as if this was a simple enough explanation.

"Can I just say that's kind of creepy."

"It is a little bit. I probably know things that neither of you really want me too." She gave a pointed look at Angel causing him to fidget under her scrutiny. "Hi Angel." She spoke to him though as brightly as ever.

"Willow." He nodded his head once and turned to me. "I'll be in the other room."

I starred at his retreating form, he had been uncharacteristically… well I guess it is his character to stay quiet, but I thought he'd at least stay and see what Willow had to offer. "Don't worry about him. He'll be fine." Willow said comfortingly, but something about her words made me worry. The look she had given Angel didn't sit with me right but I couldn't think of a single thing that would solve the answer to that question. "How you holding up?"

Turning my gaze away from the door Angel had just exited through I shrugged. "Same old same old I guess."

"Buffy…"

"Willow, really. I'm better then I have been." I motioned for her to sit down on the vacated sofa. "So who is it I'm actually talking to here? The Willow from my reality or the Willow from the other reality?"

"Our… You're reality."

I crossed my legs beneath me getting a little bit more comfortable. It was so weird to see her. Not to long ago I would have given anything to have my Willow back, the one who had lived through my death, the one I was best friends with. But now to have her sitting in front of me looking exactly how I last remembered her by was weird. I good weird, but weird. "How'd you know to come down here then? I mean, that spell Giles gave me, did I like open a portal for you or something?"

"Spell?"

"Yeah, you know, the spell." She just gave me a blank look. "You have no idea what I'm talking about?"

"Buffy, you sure you're okay?"

"You know, I'm starting to get really sick of people asking me that question. I thought you said you had been watching me, you should know what I'm talking about."

Willow leaned back and cleared her throat. "I haven't been watching you the last couple of days. It takes a while to transfer from one plane to the next plane. Last thing I saw of you, you were in some sort of coma."

"So I'm guessing you can only watch one reality then." Willow just looked at me and sat back for what she knew was going to be a long and hopefully detailed explanation. Biting my lip I began to tell the story I had been living out for the past couple days. The look on her face was just growing more concerned with each word coming out of my mouth though. Then as I got to the part about the letter I had written to Giles asking for any sort of help her face just grew pale. "When I got back Angel said the spell and then you appeared. Willow, that has to be the reason why you showed up. There's no other explanation to it."

"Buffy, I showed up because they sent me down here. Not because of a spell."

I stared at her. "Then what did the spell bring?"

Willow shook her head. "Don't start thinking that way Buffy." She knew me to well, the slight widening of my eyes told her exactly what thoughts were racing through my head. "If what you say really happened, if Giles managed to get a message to you, it would only bring good."

"Will, what if I just led Leon here? What if I conjured up something that….?"

"Buffy no. Stop it. It's from Giles. Giles would never purposely do something like that." She said quickly. "You don't know Buffy. Maybe the spell didn't even work. I don't even really feel any magic in this house. I'd know if something had happened here, I would easily be able to feel it."

I knew that her logic was right. I still couldn't shake the feeling that I just did something completely stupid out of my head. I had been so certain that we were finally out of the woods, that just possibly we could turn this whole thing around and kill Leon. But what if I had been wrong? It just seemed to easy. The paper, the simple words and the coincidence that it was in a language Angel had been born into. We should have taken more caution. I shook my head trying to get the offending thoughts out of my mind. "Let's just hope you're right. What about you? How's death been treating you?"

Willow turned towards me, the color slowly coming back to her face. I knew that she too was worried about what that spell might have brought. "Do you know how good it is to finally after all these years not have to worry about demons and vampires and the fate of the world?"

"No."

"Yeah, neither do I." I looked at her strangely as a huge sigh came out of her mouth. "You know how we used to think that when we died we'd finally get to rest? It's not like that. You're constantly looking down on the people you love, watching them and seeing the pain they're going through and not being able to help them. You're in the land of eternal happiness and yet you keep wishing to be alive again and suffer with them."

"I thought Heaven was supposed to be paradise?"

"It is. It just so happens though I keep bringing this pain onto myself. When you got sent back down here Buffy I couldn't just sit by no matter what you had told me. I had to watch over you."

"What I told you? Will, try to remember here that I need a back story to everything you're saying?"

"Buffy," She laughed. "Seven months ago you were dead. You were with me. Xander, Giles, Dawn, you, me, everyone we've ever known was together."

I took a moment to let that soak in. I knew I was a good person and that if a God did exist, Heaven would ultimately be were I ended up, but to think of me having that ever longing happiness and then getting plunged back into this world. Part of me was pretty pissed that I couldn't remember what heaven was like, and then the other part of me was glad. If I had that memory of perfect happiness with me at all times, what would the world look to me when I came back down. "I'm guessing that explains the whole confusion on why you were surprised I didn't remember you, huh?"

"I watched when you first came here and everything. I saw how disorientated you were. I just thought that it would wear off I guess." She smiled at me sadly. "When you got sent back down here, before you left you told all of us that we weren't allowed to watch you because you knew that would be all we'd do, thus taking pieces of our happiness away. You made us all swear that we'd go on living out our eternal lives like we had been for the past hundred years or so. Happy and carefree. You always told us that we all needed a break. That we had to go through the hell of earth to get where we were today and that nothing, not anything, should ever lead us back to here to our damnation."

"Sounds like you should have listened to me then."

"You've had plenty of dumb plans in your life… and you're after life Buffy. This was one of them. You shouldn't have come down here. You should have listened to your own words."

"Willow, look around you. This world has gone to hell." I gestured to the open windows where the sun hadn't hit for far too long.

"Yeah it has. But you didn't come down here to help the world you came down here because of Angel." I could tell that she wasn't very happy with my decision.

"Well I was right. Have you seen him Will? He was practically falling apart before I got here."

"Buffy," She sighed. "I didn't come here to fight with you. We've already had this argument before you left."

"Then why'd you come here?"

"To help. You're in over your head right now and the people up stairs aren't very happy about how your handling it. They say you're too emotional for this job."

"Excuse me." I gritted out angrily. "You've got to be kidding me."

"They're words, not mine."

"Too emotional? What are they thinking? Of course I'm going to be a little emotional here. I unlike you got sent down here without the memories of heaven in me. I had no idea that I had even died and suddenly I woke up in a world where everything had changed on me!"

"I told them that. But most of them haven't been alive for billions of years. They don't really understand human emotions any more."

"So they sent you down here to what, reign in these emotions?"

Willow looked down sadly. "Buffy…"

"You said you were here to help with Leon Willow."

"No, I said we needed to get to work before Leon found out who you were. Meaning, I'm here to make sure that Leon doesn't get a hold of the most powerful slayer in history. I want to help all these people Buffy, more then anything. But I can't. It's not my place to do any of this anymore. I died trying to get rid of Leon so I know how it feels to want him dead, to want the sun back. But I can't interfere with people's lives like that anymore. It's part of the rules."

"So you're telling me that whoever's in charge is just going to let this world go to hell? They're not going to do anything?"

"They're doing something Buffy. They're making sure that you don't fall into Leon's hands." She said this so quietly and slowly, causing the realization that something was painfully wrong to fall on my shoulders. I wanted to run to Angel, to not hear anything she was about to tell me, but I knew it couldn't be done.

"What did they send you here to do?" I held my breath, not wanting to hear the words that I subconsciously knew was coming.

"To take you back."

Authors Note- That was for all the people who check every day for a new chapter. Luv ya!