Buffy continued to gaze at him, and Spike sighed deeply. Time for some truth.

"Buffy…the girl I love, the girl I became part human for…is you."

Buffy jaw was practically scraping the ground, until she snapped it shut and said, "That's impossible. I only met you like week and a half ago."

"Well, that may be true for you, but it's different for me. Buffy, when I saw the demon in Africa, he didn't only make me part human. He sent me back in time."

Buffy continued to look stunned for a moment, and then burst out laughing. "Yeah, nice try Spike. Very funny."

Spike looked taken aback and wounded. "Buffy, I'm not joking."

Buffy looked into Spike's eyes and tried desperately to see the lie there. She couldn't. "Oh my god. Oh my god." She looked as if she was about to sink to the floor in shock. "So us sleeping together…that happens?"

Spike nodded, then snorted. "Yeah. Cause you do eventually get over Angel." As soon as the words left his mouth, Spike knew he'd said the wrong thing. Buffy's eyes filled with hurt, and she walked off. As Spike called her name, Buffy started to run, tears squirting from her eyes.

Spike started to chase after her as she ran back towards the library, then thought the better of it. He would only say the wrong thing again.

"Peaches!" he screamed, slamming his fist into a nearby tree trunk, the shatter of bones almost satisfying to his ears. Almost.

In front of the doors leading to the library, Buffy wiped her eyes. She didn't want Giles and Xander knowing she'd been crying, although she might share it with Willow later. Once she'd determined that her eyes were dry, Buffy pushed the doors open to see Willow excitedly rip a sheet from the printer.

"I found Tara!" she shouted happily.

Giles hurried over. "Who is she?"

Willow read the bio aloud- a seventeen-year-old girl living with her father in some other state. She felt uneasy. She shouldn't be reading this at all- Willow now felt sure that her Tabula Rasa spell had something to do with all this weirdness.

"Hmmm," Giles pondered, "seems relatively normal. Do you think we should contact her?"

"No!"

Everyone looked at Willow strangely.

"I mean, I don't think that would be a very good idea. I don't think we should interfere in what could be our futures."

Xander raised an eyebrow. "What harm could it do, Will?"

"What if we meet earlier than we were supposed to, and then she joins us in some life threatening situation and dies? The entire world will be different! It could really screw things up."

"Yeah," Buffy piped in, "like in Back to the Future."

Giles scratched his head, stumped by the pop culture reference. "Um, I don't know what text you're referring to. But Willow, I suppose your theory could have some merit. Maybe we should leave these memories alone, and act as if they weren't there."

"Yeah. I think that's a good idea. And I don't reckon we're going to find any more information about the memory tampering for the time being. If you guys don't mind, I think I might head home now." Willow slipped the fax into her pocket and walked out the door, to a chorus of 'bye'.

When she got home, Willow laid the fax onto the floor next to the pile of ingredients from last night's Tabula Rasa spell. Sprinkling some red sand over the top, Willow muttered an incantation and set the bundle alight. The phone number and Tara's photo curled at the edges, charred and then disintegrated into ash. At that moment, Buffy, Giles, Xander and Willow all collapsed onto the floor again.