Willow had chores. And it wasn't that she didn't like them. Indeed, in the early days she found the menial tasks hard to focus on, but now she welcomed that they took her mind off of all that was happening inside of it. And it was the least she could do, the coven putting so much aside to train and house her.

But she was never allowed to use her powers to help her with her errands. And at first it had frustrated her immensely—the horses in the stable had been downright terrified when, annoyed at the trouble her muscles (aching from her physical workouts, which she'd also hated) had shoveling animal excrement, Willow's anger manifested itself as supernatural lightning which by some miracle didn't strike any of the animals. The horses had freaked, and then when she could see and feel their distress, Willow, distressed in turn, then caused hay to swirl around the stable in a chaotic storm. That hadn't been fun, and when Giles and Miss Harkness found her covered in straw, surrounded by scorched wood and horses running berserk, it had been even less fun. She'd been berated, after a thorough binding, about controlling her emotions, separating them from her magicks. Not fun.

But she'd come to appreciate her chores. Being forced to do them without her powers helped her learn control, and she liked helping out at the coven. She enjoyed caring for the animals they kept, could feel their contentment—they weren't filled with grief and anger like all of the humans were. Giles even taught her to ride horses, but she was pretty awful at it.

Now she was working in the garden, where the witches grew herbs and flowers that they used in their spells. It was hard for her, being around the plants, some rare and some powerful, her mind endlessly considering the potions she could create and charms she could cast with each of them.

She could feel them all, their roots in the Earth, their distinct powers. She went back to work, trying to distract herself. Blocking her knowledge of the individual plants from her mind, she moved on to the next one in the long bed of dirt and mindlessly cleared some weeds from around it. But when her finger brushed against its leaf and she recognized its power, she glanced up at it, recognition sending her stumbling violently back, landing awkwardly on her bottom.

Lethe's Bramble, she realized, its blush pink head taunting her. She was overcome with guilt, self-hatred, and fought to keep power in that was trying to escape. She felt panic at the reminder of her treachery.

What if, she thought, she could make herself forget? Forget that any of it happened. Forget Tara, because it hurt too much to remember. She could forget how to cast, everything since she re-ensouled Angel. Then no one would have to fear her.

But that whisper in her head told her that was idiotic, dangerous. And not worth it. So Willow forgot the thought, but didn't take her eyes off of the Bramble, watching it as though it would grow legs and attack her should she look away.

"Willow!"

She heard the voice before she saw its owner, and she was so startled that she felt some power shoot from her fingertips into the ground below her. Some of the younger plants grew, stood straighter. And the Lethe's Bramble withered and died before her eyes. She hoped he hadn't noticed.

"Willow," Giles said again, jogging up to meet her as she turned to face him, "You missed your training."

"I'm doing chores."

"Now, Willow," said Giles, "You can't get lax about any of this."

"I don't feel good."

"Willow…"

"Later."

Giles sighed at that, his mouth a thin line. Willow stood, then, leaving her trowel and her spade in the dirt and walking off. Giles noted the wilted flowers she left behind, and he strode quickly to catch up with her. "I spoke with Miss Harkness," he said.

Willow didn't answer. She looked to the ground but kept her pace.

"The seers haven't seen anything in Sunnydale. Not yet. So either, what you saw was in your imagination…"

"I'm nuts," Willow said.

"...or your powers are even greater than those of the coven's seers."

"I can't tell the future," Willow said, "Whatever it was—it's right now. Deep, deep in the Earth. Getting ready to bubble to the surface."

They walked in silence for a bit, "Do you miss it? Sunnydale?"

"No," Willow said, "I mean, I miss the old days. And the gang. Buffy, and Xander. And…" She felt it bubble to the surface, her own darkness, and she took a calming breath, "Well, there's nothing left for me there."

"Your friends are still there," said Giles.

"They're not my friends anymore. How could they be?"

"They still care about you."

"They shouldn't," said Willow, "You shouldn't. Not after what I did to you."

"We aren't going to abandon you just because of your darkness," said Giles, "Look at all the darkness Sunnydale has in it. You could have left, it wasn't your destiny like it was Buffy's. You could have gone to college anywhere in the world, right here in England. Everything that happened in the next few years, when Buffy died, you could have left. But you stayed."

"Because that's where I had power." Nostalgic images of Sunnydale made their ways into her mind, the Bronze and the Espresso Pump, the college and Buffy's home.

"No. You stayed because of the good in it. And because you could do good in it. It's where you met your dearest friends. It's where you met…—"

With no warning, Willow's vision turned black again. She felt herself fall and braced for a collision with the ground. But it never came, and those teeth were back. She was swept away in a sea of evil, agony behind her eyes. It was stronger this time, much stronger. Shadows moved in the darkness—how could there be shadows if there was no light? Something told her they were demons, that whisper again. And it was that whisper that pulled her back into reality, and she opened her eyes with a terrified gasp.

"Just breath," she heard, and she did, her eyes staring dazedly ahead of her.

"Giles?" she gasped, "I… I can't. Oh, Goddess…" He rubbed her shoulders, and she realized she was in his arms.

"Just breath."

"What happened?"

"What do you remember?" Giles asked as Willow moved from his support to sit on her own.

"We were talking and I felt…" She lifted her hands from the ground, fearful, "I felt the Earth. It's all connected, it is, but it's not all pure and rootsy. There's deep, deep black. There's… I saw the Earth, Giles. I saw its teeth."

"The Hellmouth."

"It's gonna open. It's gonna swallow us all."

"You felt that?"

"Just by…" Willow tried to catch her breath, "I didn't even need to touch something. The connection is already there. Just thinking about Sunnydale… I could feel it, Giles. All of it. It's bad. It's dark. And I don't think it's something Buffy can stop."


The rest of the day passed without another incident, but Willow felt unease in her chest through all of her lessons and all of her trainings. In fact, the darkness felt so near to her that she was surprised at her own control. To Miss Harkness and the coven, who seemed particularly impressed by her restraint today, she displayed the utmost discipline over her abilities. But Willow felt like she was going to snap at any moment, and the thing that frightened her the most was that the snap never seemed to come. She felt like she was watching a horror movie, waiting for a serial killer to jump out of the shadows.

She thought that Miss Harkness might mention what Giles had told her about her blackouts, her visions, but her teacher seemed adamant that Willow focus on the "here and now" and not on Sunnydale or on the past, so she didn't bring it up. It made Willow feel frustrated—she'd felt so much darkness—she'd felt like she was losing it. Why didn't anybody care?

Even Giles' concern felt disproportionately shallow to Willow. He seemed, to her, far more worried about whatever the danger was that she'd felt than about whether it might bring her own darkness to the surface again.

Now, in the late afternoon, she was on his couch with a cup of tea, a kind Giles always insisted would calm her through only the power of leaves and no magick at all. She wasn't sure if it actually worked, but her trust in Giles meant the tea really did make her feel better. Maybe it was a placebo, or maybe it was the mellow Englishness of it all, but the cup in her hands warmed her body and each sip helped to wrap her distressed thoughts in a far-away fuzz.

Tea with Giles had become a staple of her time with the coven. In the beginning, when she was erratic and confused, the tea was some sort of homebase, a reset button. Something so removed from Sunnydale, where she was so often jittery with the Espresso Pump's caffeine in her veins, and yet that still reminded her Giles was close. When the witches would bind her, and she would shudder in disoriented pain, left to panic in her room alone, Giles still would bring her the tea still, and sit with her until Miss Harkness deemed her safe to free.

So the ritual of the tea remained, even when days were good and Willow babbled about all she'd learned at her lessons. But today she let her tea go untouched. It sat in her hands even as the steam started to dissipate and the drink turned cold, and even as Giles finished his own.

"Aren't you going to drink?" Giles asked, "It will calm you."

"I feel like…" Willow shifted the cup in her hands, "I don't think I should be calm. I feel like if I get calm, if I stop thinking about holding it in, it's gonna come out."

Giles cocked his head at her.

"The magicks. Not… no bodily fluids, okay?"

"Willow, I know that what happened earlier and last night frightened you," Giles said, "But the coven and I all think that you are doing wonderfully, better than expected. What you sensed—that wasn't your darkness, we don't think. It was Sunnydale's. You may not feel like you have control, but you do. We can all see it. We see how hard you are working, too."

"But what about—?"

"—the flowers?" Giles guessed.

"Oh. You saw that?" Willow bit her lip guiltily.

"Everyone makes mistakes." Giles said, "Willow, I know this is hard to hear. But you may never have full, one-hundred percent control over your powers at every moment of every day. But it's far better for you to make harmless mistakes like that than to send lightning from the heavens to smite the garden. That's how you learn."

"Harmless mistakes turn into way not-harmless mistakes. They turn into bad, evil, naughty mistakes." Willow said. "Trust me, I know."

"You're trying. You're not giving in. That's what matters. You are doing far better than you think you are, Willow."

"They're still afraid of me."

Even now that she had learned to mostly restrain her powers, she could feel the alertness rise in the witches when she entered a room. The looks, the whispers—they made her feel like she was back in high school. There was a silence, and Willow finally took a small sip of tea.

"Now," Giles cleared his throat and pulled out one of his endless dusty ancient books, "I was wondering if you could tell me anything else about your, erm, episode earlier."

Willow pouted, "'Episode'? Goddess, it's not gonna keep happening, is it? Episode implies a series. I don't think I can get through one season of that. I barely got through the pilot."

"I don't think there's a way we can know right now. It seems to be that whatever is happening on the Hellmouth, when you focus on it, it overwhelms your senses. You unconsciously grasped that connection when you held the crystal, and then again when we discussed Sunnydale."

Willow winced at the name of her home, afraid that the mere thought of it would send her back into her mind's hell-place.

"We don't know what precisely is going to happen. Or when, how long we have…" said Giles, "Are you certain it wasn't just the darkness inherent in the Hellmouth that you sensed?"

"Giles," said Willow, "I lived in Sunnydale for twenty-two years. I lived there as a normal kid and I lived there as an all-powerful witch. This is something way darker, way scarier than I've ever felt."

"Hmm," Giles cleaned his glasses, as he often did when he was confounded, "If only we had some—"

And then the phone rang. It made Willow jump and she spilled her tea a bit, instinctively evaporating the fallen droplets into the air before they could touch her trousers. She cursed inwardly at herself for that. Using magick again, as though without a thought.

If Giles noticed, he didn't show it, and instead went for the phone. "Hello? Oh, Buffy— hold on, calm down." He glanced at Willow, "One moment, I'm going to take the call in the other room."

Willow frowned and placed her tea down on the table. She did speak with Buffy on the phone sometimes, but it was always about little things, casual, small talk, like they hadn't recently tried to kill each other. She knew that Giles talked with Buffy and the others in Sunnydale often about more serious matters—about her, she assumed, and as Giles left the phone off the hook and picked up the receiver in the bedroom, she felt like secrets were being kept from her.

"You're certain?" she overheard Giles say, and then he lowered his voice. Willow eyed the receiver that Giles had left and wondered if it would be all that bad if she eavesdropped. She knew it would be morally wrong, though, and even without her magicks doing it would feed her darkness. So she sat back with a huff.

"It's Willow," Giles muttered, his whisper panicked enough that his voice rose to an audible level, "...No, no. She's fine. But she had… a vision of sorts. She seems to think something is rising in Sunnydale. She said the Hellmouth is opening. What you've told me, it's all but confirmation—... I know... ...I think you're right. Will you be…—? …Yes, I know… …I'll talk to her."

The one-sided conversation only added to Willow's stress, and she rocked nervously in her seat when Giles hung up the phone and returned to the sitting room to join her.

"How's Buffy?" Willow asked when Giles didn't say anything.

"Hm? Oh. She's fine." He grabbed his hat and made for the door, "Willow, why don't you go train? I'm, um… I must go speak with Miss Harkness."

Willow wanted to shout at him for so clearly keeping something from her, but she supposed she'd lost the right to be in the loop three months ago. Giles shut the door behind him, and Willow was left pouting on the couch.

Giles had told her to train, but the thought of using her powers made her stomach turn. So instead she waited until Giles was certainly gone and then she left herself, walking briskly across the grass as the sun began to set.

She wasn't sure where she was going, so she took off her shoes as though the Earth might tell her. The night was peaceful. The grass that seemed to breath between her toes felt nothing like the terror and chaos that she still felt remnants of in Sunnydale.

Her feet took her to the stables. She put her shoes back on and entered (for fear of stepping in something icky), picking up a brush and stroking one of the horses.

"Tara loved animals," Willow said, though the horse couldn't understand her. "I don't know, my fish got killed a few years ago. And then Miss Kitty. Maybe I'm not supposed to have pets."

The horse made a horse-sound and bowed its head as if in mourning.

"Aww." She pressed her lips together, "You must be cooped up. I get why I'm in a cage sometimes…" She fiddled with her bracelet, the one that the witches had once used to help bind her, "…But not you. Wanna go for a walk?"

She unlatched the gate and led the horse into the stable, and then out onto the grass. His head was still bowed, so she took it as an invitation. She awkwardly climbed onto his back and settled herself astride. He was white and brown, Giles' favorite of the steeds, a combination of dark and light. She held his reins delicately, like the animal was made of porcelain. But she felt no danger that her power might escape, now. As the horse trotted confidently across the pasture, Willow had no fear that she may accidentally smite him if he bucked or destroy him if he didn't obey her commands. And her inexperience with riding didn't deter her, either. It felt natural. She kicked her shoes off again and they fell forgotten somewhere in the grass where she might never find them. She idly considered that riding a horse barefoot wasn't the safest thing to do, but it felt necessary to her that she could feel the horse's energy and the Earth's with her toes against his smooth side.

The wind in her face tasted so clean, and she could feel the horse's contentment. The sun had set, and the fireflies had come out, and each time one of the bugs lit up something sparked in her brain and filled her with an electric excitement.

She could sense rabbits going to sleep and spiders spinning webs. Her head swam with wonder and her veins throbbed with energy. She could see, as if in slow-motion, a summer mosquito make its way to bite her. She held her hand up at it. She didn't cast, she was sure of it, but as if in understanding it spun around and went on its merry way.

She took a path into the woods and the old trees made her own twenty-two years seem longer somehow. She could feel the trees' roots connect, like they were holding hands. The crickets chirped in a glorious symphony that rang beautifully in her ears, accompanied by the owls and the wind. She could sense the plants; her fingers itched as she noted the poison ivy along the path, and her mouth tasted like the berries growing on the bushes. She was so tuned into the Earth that the small mushrooms growing underneath the shade of the trees brought mild hallucinations to her eyes merely by her proximity to them. The whispers in her mind were louder, clearer than ever before, and they felt like love. It was ecstasy, the power of the Earth running through her, the calm of a peaceful night that she never knew in the demon-infested Sunnydale. It felt invigorating. It felt magickal.

She shook her head, stopping her horse abruptly. No, this feeling wasn't right. It was too similar to how she'd felt when she'd gone to Rack. Was she using her magicks? By accident? Had she snapped, given in without even realizing? She licked her dry lips. She could taste the berries, the fruits of the forest. You taste like strawberries , she recalled in Rack's ugly voice, though there were no strawberries in this wood. She hopped off the horse and doubled over once her bare feet hit the ground, overwhelmed by the strength of her connection as the sounds of insects and the wind buzzed annoyingly in her ears. She stumbled in a direction, dazedly but confidently, the horse following her. She took herself to a stream, which though she'd never seen it before she'd known exactly where it was.

She hovered her face over the moonlit water, eyes shut for fear of what she might see when she opened them. She expected darkness to stare back at her, black eyes proving that the wondrous freedom she'd felt that night was a trick played on her by her own dark power. But her eyes were green. Confused and strangely vacant, but green. She knelt down and dipped her fingers in the water, quickly removing them when she felt the roar of a waterfall the stream connected to somewhere miles away. She breathed, and then submerged her hands again, sensing this time instead the calmness of the water before her and the fragile life-forces of the fish.

She scooped up some water and splashed it on her face. The wonder of the night had worn off, her connection wandering, unfocused. Had that all been the Earth? Was the Earth that beautiful? She felt dirty in comparison.

She got back on the horse, who waited patiently by the stream, and began riding slowly back the way she came. Riding was harder now; she was no longer so in-tune with the creature, and eventually she dismounted again and simply walked on aching, muddy feet instead because of it. She hadn't been paying attention when she was on her journey, so she tried to tap into her connection to find her way home. It was faint, now, that strand of the Earth having fallen temporarily from her grasp and her skills not honed enough to retrieve it, but eventually she made it back to the stables and locked the horse up with a quiet "thank you".

She trudged back to her home at the coven, wishing now that she hadn't lost her shoes as each step sent a migraine-inducing cacophony of stimuli to her senses. When she got to the dormitory, relieved to finally shut out the Earth, she climbed the rickety stairs and arrived at her room fully intent on collapsing directly into her bed and falling asleep.

But as soon as she pushed open the door, she knew that wasn't about to happen. For sitting at the edge of her bed was Giles, his face grave, concerned, half-investigating and half-fiddling nervously with the Doll's Eye Crystal that Willow had left at his cabin the night before.