Her first instinct is for Willow, sitting hunched and dejected at the table, looking akin to a very small kicked puppy.
"Hey," Buffy says sharply to Willow, but her intent is gentle. "You didn't do anything wrong," she reminds firmly.
Willow's face crumples, "But—"
"That was then," Buffy interjects, stopping the protest. The year between them spanned lifetimes; lessons scarred over in blood, but still pink and healing. Buffy sends a silent 'Are we good?' Willow's lips form a firm line and she nods back determinedly. Satisfied, Buffy turns her attention to Tara, who looks both gutted and sympathetic as only she can. "You ok?"
Tara nods, albeit a bit distractedly. "I'm just gonna…" She indicates the direction Xander left a moment earlier, and follows, but not before wordlessly checking on Willow.
"I'm okay, guys. I promise." Willow squares her shoulders as she pulls one of the books toward her. "Now shoo," she waves, attention already focused towards research.
Buffy's heart contracts. Tara kisses Willow's head before following Xander and Buffy gives Will's shoulder a squeeze and heads up to check on Spike.
"'Bout time," he greets impatiently a minute later after she gets upstairs. "I can almost get my wrist out."
"Oh come on," Buffy scoffs, "If you could've gotten out, you would have by now. God knows you were unsupervised long enough."
Despite her comments, Buffy begins inspecting the ropes anyway. "Figure anything out yet?" Spike inquires, interest piqued.
"More questions, but at least we know who to ask them to this time."
Despite the limited freedom of movement, Spike manages to crane his neck towards where Buffy is on the floor checking the knots near his feet. "Oh yeah?"
"Yeah," Buffy responds tersely. "Osiris."
He lets out a low whistle. "Hearda him. Big muscle, much too serious for my taste. No sense of humor. Hey!" Spike yelps in pain. "Would you watch it? Might not have any circulation, but I'd still like to feel my limbs."
Showing no signs of hearing , Buffy busies herself with retying the ropes. "Hello, are you listening? Be careful—" Buffy looks at him pointedly and yanks them tighter. "Alright," Spike finally barks out, annoyed, "What is it this time, Buffy?" Each word dripping in sarcasm. "What did I do to so piss you off this time you're going after my life and limb, eh? What could I have possibly done sitting in this stupid chair, bored out of my skull, not saying a word."
"'Not saying a word,' Funny you should say that, Spike. It seems like 'not saying a word' is your specialty lately."
He scowls, "What on earth are you on about?"
"How could you keep it from me?" she snaps. Anger and betrayal make the edges of her voice sharp and Spike sobers instantly at the hurt shimmering in her eyes. "How, Spike? How could you not tell me about her?"
The terrible stomach twisting shame and guilt has been a constant companion since Africa, but the freshness of this deed still cleaves deeply.
"It's my job to protect this family, this world, and after everything we've been through, you couldn't even do me the decency of a heads up?" she accuses. "'Hi Buffy, thought you should know I've been seeing dead people and oh! By the way, the one that lived in your house, raised your sister, and dated your best friend is one of them.' Did you even stop for a minute and think that it could have all been a lie? That maybe you were being manipulated by some unknown evil? Willow almost ended the world when Tara died and you thought what, just having her show up out of the blue would have been totally fine and not at all a huge risk? To Willow? To me? To Dawn, to the world?" The anger spirals into guilt and back again, into a panicked sort of ramble.
"Buffy-"
"I almost killed her, Spike. Right when she came back. I saw her outside my house standing next to Dawn with Willow falling apart again and if something hadn't- if I hadn't…" She breaks off, pursing her lips against months of hurt. Tears brim but don't fall; collecting sadness is something Buffy is good at. "I needed to know. I need to know these kinds of things. If I don't, it's my fault all over again. I can't…" She stands away from him in a defeated posture, deflated.
"I'm sorry," he apologies genuinely. "It wasn't my place to say. I was going to, for what it's worth, if it didn't work. I didn't think-"
"That's right, you didn't think." The anger evaporates but the hurt remains, slowly softening with compassion. Next she speaks, it's with the weight of a parent firmly chastising a child. "You don't get to make decisions for me anymore. We clear?"
He nods. She exhales loudly, running her hands through her hair, and tiredly plops down in a nearby chair. There's a bit of an awkward silence, but after eyeing Spike for the better part of a minute, Buffy softens. "How's the uh…?" making a face and gesturing to her teeth.
"Better," he confirms. "Packets been helping. Haven't gone rabid since she brought 'em back. Feeling more like myself again. For all that's worth," he mutters as an aside, "Hasn't cured the crazy, I'm afraid."
"I don't think you're crazy, Spike," Buffy murmurs.
"Yeah, well," he mumbles, almost sheepishly, "We'll see."
Buffy sighs, rubbing her head before jerking her chin toward the ropes. "Do you feel up to giving it another shot?"
He shakes his head. "No. Let's give it another night. If I don't go all bumpy n' rabid, then maybe."
In seventh grade, Willow convinced him to steal a chemical from Uncle Rory's job so she could do a science experiment. It wasn't for school, because Willow had already gone through the high school textbooks and was moving onto college level material. And, it wasn't like Xander understood a lick of what she was doing anyway, but he was always game for things being lit on fire and going 'boom'. Plus, someone needed to keep watch to make sure no one would catch them.
"It's completely safe, Xander," she promised. And he believed her, because she was Willow. And Willow wouldn't lie to him.
It didn't stop his eyebrow from being singed off or stop his favorite shirt from catching on fire. He was able to stamp it out quickly with no other injuries, thankfully, but the thing he remembered most was how completely it took him by surprise. Willow said it would be fine, so when things ended up not fine, it didn't really compute.
She felt awful and apologized, guiltily bringing him small presents, like his favorite chocolate bars and comic books, the next few days to make up for it. But it still didn't stop her from blaming the materials instead of herself.
"The ingredients must have been on the shelf longer than we thought and became inert. It should have worked fine, Xander, I'm so sorry."
Willow was smart. Willow was his best friend. Willows didn't lie to Xanders. So he believed her.
He believed her, too, that night . . . Well, he wanted t— Desperate to believe, more like it. They were raising the dead, how could it be alright? How could it possibly turn out fine? But she was the most brilliant person he'd ever met, how could she be wrong?
No, he does not want to revisit that night. Anything about it. Not the way Willow's veins gashed open, nor the way she choked on the snake as it crawled out of her mouth. Not the way their hands shook as they held the candles, trembling in the knowledge of their transgression. Or the way the demon gang had turned Sunnydale into a living nightmare. Or the haunted, empty look on Buffy's face. And everything else that came after, during that awful, terrible year. How long had Willow been lying to him? Why didn't he ever let himself see it?
The cushion dips as someone slides in next to him on the couch. He's surprised to see Tara join him, her eyes sad and full like the ocean at night. "Hey," he greets emptily, already feeling his anger ebb.
The quiet way she says his name softens the rest of him immediately. She places a warm hand atop his. "I need to know."
He still needs to hear it; that there's a good enough reason to go through all this again. Somehow, in her Tara way, she recognizes this. "I need to know what happened to me," she finishes.
It's been a while since he's seen this Tara. The one with heavy, tender eyes who looked at him with a knowing understanding the day Joyce died and he didn't understand anything at all. And before that, the shy, quiet girl who made herself invisible and apologized for things she never needed to apologize for. It strikes him how terribly unfair it is, the things that have happened to her. He doesn't ever want to be the cause of a hurt she would try to take away and put inside herself.
"Sorry," he apologizes as he runs his fingers through his hair. "I just . . . " The words sit there between them, unfinished and heavy. "I don't want to lose her again."
Tara nods, as if troubled by the same burden, "It's different this time."
"How do you know?" he asks, haunted by memories of a broken and keening Willow rocking in his arms. He can't do this again.
Tara considers her words a moment. "Because she wants it to be."
That gives him pause. Xander thinks of the afternoons Willow spent tutoring him after school, despite knowing full well the odds of him listening or succeeding were slim to none. The endless times she helped him in class or wordlessly brought an extra lunch or Snack Pack because she knew he wouldn't have one.
He knew Willow used to do Buffy's homework to help keep her grades up, covering when Buff was busy out patrolling. The hours she spent in single-minded focus, hacking into town records and uncovering every last inch of information that would save them in the nick of time.
The endlessly patient and loving way she took care of Tara when Tara wasn't Tara. The way he knew Willow'd never leave her side, even if she never recovered. She'd've spent twenty years spooning applesauce and soothing outbursts while never giving up on finding a way to undo what Glory had done.
That if the resurrection spell hadn't worked, there's no doubt Willow would've kept fighting monsters in Buffy's place until it killed her too, resolutely accepting Buffy's vigil as her own.
Even now, peering into the dining room, he sees the nervous but determined way Willow purses her lips at the books in front of her, squaring her shoulders for what's to come.
This is Willow. Once her mind is made up, she can do anything.
Xander reaches down for Tara's hand and gives it a squeeze. "Alright. Let's go make one heck of a long-distance phone call."
The half-smile he gets in return is more than enough to keep him warm.