Chapter IV: The First Gates

A/N. (Wheee! 2nd chapter in a short number of days! Well, when you consider my first chapter as updating Starlight II… hey, I'm proud, knowing my awful record : )

Now, I know that this story has mostly been Spuffy centric so far, but it's going to need to broaden out to the other characters soon too. Which is a good thing, yeah? I hope you enjoy this, as confusing and mixed as it may be. And yeah, I used a lot of the original dialogue in the last part. But I loved that scene so much I wanted to recreate it here.

I hope you all enjoy, and please review! Your wonderful, wonderful previous reviews have helped me to keep writing this story. First, I planned to end it on the first chapter. Then, I was seriously considering ending it at the last chapter (hey, I thought it would make an okay ending). But because I've been looking at your reviews, I've decided to keep going. Not only for me, but for you. So thank you.)

8 8 8

"Just a few more steps… if I can get to her…"

Xander wanted to scream. Cry. Pray. Most of all, he wanted to curl up in a ball and never look up again. Never see what he was seeing, or see what he had seen.

Xander wished he could be blind.

But he wasn't, and so he could see with utmost clarity the drawn, haggard look on Tara's face. And while he wanted to shout at her that it was only a few more steps over the hill, over to the sight that he didn't want to see. Only a few more steps to stopping Willow ending the world.

"No."

"No?" Tara's stricken look burned into his eyes. "This is my fault! If, if I…"

It had been a tough week. He was so incredibly tired. The sand stung his eyes and scoured his skin. Weariness clogged every bone. He wasn't even sure if he could hold himself up at the moment, let alone Tara.

And yet he was.

Xander cleared his head and curled his supporting arm tighter around the blonde Wiccan. "Yeah," he answered roughly. "It was really your fault that Warren decided to shoot you, honest."

"But…"

He looked at her. Looked. His eyes were watering and tired, but he looked now anyway. The bloody hole in her chest was starting to ooze again, and he wanted to choke. "Look, whoever she was didn't heal you enough. Stay here."

He unslung her from around his shoulders and laid her gently on the sand, before running up and over the hill. To what he hadn't wanted to see in the first place.

Willow.

8 8 8

"You."

Spike knew he looked like a corpse under the hospital lights. They were bright, razing, sharp… he couldn't understand how people could stand it. But that was a question that only occupied a small, irrational part of his mind. The rest of it was fixated on the teenager right in front of him.

"You!" Dawn hissed, looking from Spike to Buffy and then back again. "I can't believe you brought him here!"

"Dawn…" Buffy started.

"What?" the Key rounded on her, blue eyes blazing furiously. "What can you possibly say that can explain you bringing that… rapist here?"

Spike sucked in his breath, but Buffy beat him to the quick. "He didn't. He's not that and you know it," she told her sister crisply. "Now keep your voice down or the staff will realise we're all here and kick us out."

Dawn subsided at that, but with a murderous glare she stalked off to throw herself down besides Giles again. He was still unconscious, his eyelids flickering as if he were dreaming. Buffy found it slightly wiggy, but of course she had more important things to concentrate on.

She turned again, and saw the drawn, pained look on his face. The face that she'd dreamed of so often. Touched in caring, punched in hate. The night had been almost too much for him. His fingers twitched nervelessly, and it looked like he was only just managing to restrain himself from lighting up another cigarette.

Stepping closer, until she knew no-one else could hear, she whispered. "Are you alright?"

It was an empty question after everything else that had gone down that night. He tensed. "She's right, y'know."

Buffy thinned her lips. "She doesn't understand everything. Heck, I didn't even understand everything until a few hours ago."

He looked at her with dead eyes. She shivered. "It's still true, innit? Extenuatin' circumstances don't really count when it all boils down. I did somethin' I swore I'd never do, and I not only bollocksed it up right well with you, I lost NIbblet."

She restrained the urge to slap him. Who the hell was this? Spike never gave up! "I did my share of the mucking things up," she said firmly. "And count on it, when we tell Dawn everything, she'll be pounding on me, not you."

He couldn't help it. A smile quirked his lips as he pictured it. But then he realised the rest of her words, and incredulity slipped over his face. "Wait… you're goin' to tell her?"

She looked at him inscrutably. "I'm going to tell everyone, Spike."

Spike sucked in breath. The two of them were almost nose to nose in their intensity now. Dawn glared them, knowing they probably wouldn't have noticed her if she'd screamed at them. Her shoulders were sharp, tight with grief and tiredness. Fighting those earth golems had been painless until the adrenaline wore off.

Now, a deeper pain was aching in her. God… it had been unbelievable when Xander had… she still didn't want to believe it. But that… that bastard that she'd once considered her older brother hadn't denied it. Just looked away with shame in his eyes. How could it be that he could do that? How could it be that he would hurt Buffy like that, when it was the same guy who could always make her laugh when she was feeling low about her Keyness and all the other horrors teenage life could bestow, the same person who'd made her a completely unhealthy breakfast when she was late for school… the same man who'd held her all those nights they'd cried together for the Slayer they loved.

"If you two are going to get any closer, you'd better get out," she said harshly. Her voice split the two apart. Broke them from their moment that she didn't understand, and the looks on their faces chilled her. She'd never seen Spike looking so… defeated. Not since…

Dawn didn't want to think about that. So as they stared at her, her chin tilted defiantly upwards. "You're making me sick."

She almost saw it coming when Buffy snapped. "Dawnie…"

But then, surprisingly, Spike's hand came across Buffy and curled gently around her wrist. "Easy now, Slayer." He sounded so tired that if Dawn hadn't been so pissed at him, she would have run to him to hold him up. To lead him to a bed. To let the demon sleep. But of course, she was angry. And the hatred and love warring inside her intestines was making heart pound.

Buffy looked like just an angry bigger sister for a second, and then she noticeably relaxed. Dawn watched, open-mouthed, as the Slayer's hand tentatively found Spike's cold ones and squeezed. There was a tenderness in there that she just couldn't understand.

The Key narrowed her eyes. There was something going on here that she hadn't been told.

"Buffy, how can you stand to even touch him?"

It was a good question, even though it tasted hot and awful in her mouth as she came out. Her sister didn't look surprised any more, but funnily enough, Spike's eyes held a question when they captured the Slayer's again. Dawn had a point. Everyone knew it. And all three of them wanted an answer.

Buffy sighed. "Dawn…" she sounded incredibly tired. "Are you going to make snarky comments the entire night?"

The teenager thinned her lips and lifted her chin. "Yeah-huh. Unless you tell me what's going on."

The vampire looked between the two, before turning towards the door. "I'll leave, then," he said tiredly. "Let the two of you have your heart-to-hearts," he directed a careful look at Buffy. "I'll… I'll be back at m' crypt if you need me."

His voice was so uncertain Buffy's fist clenched. "You're staying right here."

Ignoring Dawn's glare, she smiled slightly as his eyebrow arched. "Interferin' between you and the Bit?" he glanced towards Dawn. "After everythin' that's gone down tonight, I'm experiencing a strange feeling of self-preservation."

"Oh, don't worry, Spike," Dawn said, her voice dripping with sweetness. "I'll only set you on fire while you're asleep if I hear something I don't like."

His eyes glittered. "Had better invitations in m' time." He hesitated, and then collapsed into a chair. "Righto, then. Let's have at it."

8 8 8

Willow laughed, incredulously, but there was a hint of desperation in there too. "Is this the master plan? You're going to stop me by telling me you love me?"

Xander shrugged, trying to be as nonchalant as possible. How was he supposed to act in the face of his best friend ending the world right in front of him? "Well, I was going to walk you off a cliff and hand you an anvil, but ... it seemed kinda cartoony."

Not only that, Willow was not Wily Coyote. She was intelligent, she was powerful… and she was looking black and veiny.

It wasn't just the physical changes that scared him, though. In fact, they counted as relatively minor next to the great, whopping load of pain he could see in her eyes. Eyes that proved that she'd used to be the Willow he'd known. Eyes that reflected the twisting, writhing serpent-women above him. Eyes that seemed fathomless now in her darkness as she sneered, and shook her head. "Oh Xander… still making jokes."

He forced himself to see her, and not the statues. "I'm not joking. I know… I know you're in pain."

The words flowed out of his mouth, but in his head they were jumpy. Blurred. Words touched by the blackness in her eyes. God, her eyes were so dark. Glassy and fathomless… so deep that he couldn't find that unique glint in her eyes that made her Willow.

At that realisation, something in his chest pulled so hard he almost fell over.

"I… can't imagine the pain you're in," he said quietly. "And I know you're about to do something apocalyptically…evil and stupid, and hey…" he spread out his arms with a lopsided grin. "I still want to hang. You're Willow."

At the words, her jaw tightened. The elfin features he knew so well were stretched impossibly thin over her cheekbones, making her skin look parchment-thin in the blazing light. "Don't call me that."

Why not? He cried in the soundless reaches of his mind. His life had always, since he could remember, been shaped around a Willow-sized object that had dictated his days. Later, there'd be Buffy-sized objects and apocalypse-sized objects too… but Willow had always been a constant. Willow. Willow. The shattered woman in front of him now. The innocent, ridiculously brilliant schoolgirl she'd been in high school…

And then, his memories broke, and he smiled a smile of pure love at her.

"First day of kindergarten…" he shook his head and laughed as he remembered. "You cried because you broke the yellow crayon, and you were too afraid to tell anyone." He looked down, still smiling gently, and then raised his eyes squarely to meet hers.

"You've come pretty far, Willow. "Ending the world… not a terrific notion. But the thing is?"

He let the half-question sit in the air for a while as he searched her eyes. Where was it? That glint…

He took a deep, deep breath, and his words came, as if they'd been drawn up from the bottom of his soul. "Yeah. I love you."

His eyes were still on hers, unflinchingly, even as lightning seemed to race across her dark orbs. "I loved crayon-breaky Willow and I love ... scary veiny Willow. So if I'm going out… it's here. If you wanna kill the world? Well, then start with me."

He drew her in. Captured her with his silent message, almost stronger than his voice. I love you, Willow. He spoke calmness in all of her rage and fury, and in his own panic, the calmness lulled him until the words coming out of his mouth were heavy with truth. "I've earned that."

Her eyes shifted. Her fingers trembled. "You think I won't?" she snarled.

Again, Xander softly smiled. It was the truest moment in the last few months that he'd felt, and it was liberating. In all of the chaos of Buffy's resurrection, his own awful, heartbreaking end with Anya, and Willow's descent… for the first time he felt as if he was in the right place, and the right time.

Doing the right thing.

"It doesn't matter. I'll still love you."

Faced with the calmness and love in his eyes, Willow snapped. "Shut up!" she screamed.

It was all in the one gesture. There was no flashing lights, no beautiful, dark torrential streams of magic. Xander just jerked back as if he'd been brutally hit, and blood slashed its way across his cheek. Willow panted.

Xander staggered, trying to regain his balance from the blow, and then looked up at her again.

"I love you," he said softly.

Willow brought her arm down sharply, and without even a cry, Xander doubled over and fell to his knees, panting. It felt strange, he decided. There was nothing there, and yet the pain was real enough. Nothing sliced through his shirt to leave the bloody gashes, and yet they were there anyway. The pain twisted his face, but he looked up again. Knowing. Just knowing.

"I ... love y-"

"Shut up!!" she screamed wildly. He watched, distantly, as she threw a blast of magic at him, but when the wave of agony came, he didn't fall. He wouldn't fall again.

She held out her hand, magic crackling around her fingers like a sharp aurora. And as she stared at it in fear, he moved towards her.

"I love you, Willow."

She shook her head violently. Her black hair slapped against her face. "Stop!" she shrieked, and Xander reeled back, but only slightly. His eyes were focused on her.

"Stop!!"

She blasted him again. He passed through it effortlessly. Her eyes began to burn, and he smiled. "I love you."

She broke.

Broke, and broke hard.

"Stop…" all that was left was just a plaintive cry, like the sigh of a wind, and then Willow wept. Xander caught her, the gentleness in him even as she beat her clenched fists against his chest. Wailed into his ear. He was indestructible. And he fell with her, when she fell. Knelt with her when she knelt. Cried with her when she cried.

And the blackness drained away from her hair, and the veins faded from her skin. It was Willow in his arms, and he pressed a kiss against her head. "I love you."

The words rang in his own head. I love you, Willow. Everything that's happened… I love you. I love you I love you I love you I love you. It didn't matter that it was no longer the innocent friend love, or the temporary gropey-kissy love they'd experience for such a short period of time. It wasn't the naïve love either. It wasn't the 'just friends' love. It was a love that transcended all of that. Xander knew that beneath her elfin face lay a darkness he was scared of. He'd just seen it, for God's sake! He'd been dealing with it for the last few days. He always knew that little Willow held more power than even she knew. But still, he loved the dark veiny side, born of grief and turmoil, simply because it was a part of her.

Her hair… her red, red hair lay on his shoulder. He wondered when to tell her, this young woman who he knew so well.

In this day of truths, this day of the death of who they'd been before…

He swallowed. "Willow… she's… she's alive."

Her head snapped up. "T-tara?" She's… alive?"

His face turned grim. "Barely," he admitted. "It was rough getting here."

She didn't seem to have heard the last part. "Oh, please…" she scrambled up, desperately. "I have to see her! I…"

She looked around wildly, and so Xander took her by her arm and led her over the hill, stepping on the hot sand like ice. As soon as she saw Tara lying on the ground, her eyes vacant and unseeing she shrieked and sprinted the last steps to fling herself down by Tara's side. "Oh… oh Goddess she's…"

Xander was there. "Blood loss… I think she's unconscious."

Willow looked around frantically, and then she started hyperventilating. "Oh… Oh Goddess… I used up all my magic trying to…"

It looked like she was about to start crying again. Xander wanted to cry for her. With her. Whatever. He wanted to cry, and it wasn't just from the pain and blood his childhood friend had dealt him. "We need to get her to a hospital."

Willow looked up at him with almost childlike eyes. "Can we get her there in time?"

Xander had gone too far today to lie. "Probably not."

He almost expected her eyes to grow black again, but instead they just burned fiercely. "I don't… wait… Xander, give me your hand!"

He knew he should have been wary about it. He knew that Willow had just gone off on a crazy magic spree, and it hadn't been pretty. He knew that she'd almost ended the world with it. But his speech earlier still rang in his ears, and so he put his hand in hers and watched.

Watched as Tara's body began to glow. Watched as Willow threw her head back and sweat dripped from her face.

Watched as the hole in Tara's chest closed up, until the skin was flawless and Tara opened her eyes. And then, there was nothing left for Willow to do except for collapse into her lover's arms, sobbing with relief.