Faith felt agitated, and not even her evil-funded Playstation could distract her from it. The closer the sun dipped towards the horizon, the worse it became. Finally, she couldn't take it any longer. Standing abruptly, she tossed the controller aside and left her expensive new studio apartment.

Willow's house wasn't hard to find. Willow didn't often accompany Faith on patrol; usually she and Xander stuck with Buffy while Faith did her own thing, but there had been the occasional night when Faith joined the group, so she'd been to Willow's neighborhood once or twice, and knew which one of the houses was hers.

Having reached the front door, Faith raised a hand to knock. After a moment's hesitation, she rapped her knuckles sharply against the smooth surface, then stepped back and waited. A few seconds later, the door was opened by an auburn-haired woman whose mouth looked like it was stuck in a permanent frown. Willow's mom, Faith guessed. "Hello?" she asked, her frown deepening as she regarded Faith with a critical eye.

"Uh, hi," said Faith, shoving her hands deeply into her pockets and shifting her weight from one foot to the other. "Mrs., uh, Rosenberg, right? Is Willow home?"

"Who are you?" asked Mrs. Rosenberg with a tight smile that wasn't any more encouraging than the frown.

"I'm Faith."

"Do you know Willow from school?"

"Uh, yeah." The truth wouldn't work here anyway, thought Faith, and school was an easy enough lie. "I need to talk to Willow about this project we've got."

Mrs. Rosenberg's gaze lingered on Faith for a few more uncomfortable seconds before she moved farther inside the house.

[o]

"Willow, dear, one of your friends from school is here to see you," Willow heard her mom call from downstairs. A friend from school? Friends from school never just showed up at her house. Buffy and Xander usually called beforehand, and the only other school friend she really had was Amy, who was currently preoccupied with losing her latest race against gravity on the wheel in her cage. Could it be Percy, coming to dump the homework for the rest of his classes on her for good measure? That was probably it. After all, she was "Old Reliable", she thought grumpily.

"Okay, I'm coming," she shouted back. With a heavy sigh of reluctance, she got up from her textbook-strewn bed and walked to her bedroom door. Unable to force a smile at the prospect of yet more academic indentured servitude, she dragged her feet on the way down the stairs and towards the front of the house with an upset grimace etched across her features. This expression turned instantly to one of complete surprise, however, the moment she caught sight of her visitor. "Faith?" she blurted incredulously. "What are you doing here?" Her mother looked quizzically from one girl to the other.

"I thought we could work on that project," said Faith pointedly. "For school," she added, when Willow only stared with her mouth open.

"O-oh," said Willow a couple of seconds late. "Yeah, we should do that. Mom, we'll just, uh, be in my room."

"All right," said Sheila, looking marginally less forbidding now that Faith's story had checked out. "Will you be staying for dinner?" she asked as Willow turned and Faith moved inside to follow her to her room.

Faith looked around, exchanging a glance with Willow as she did so. "Oh, um, no thanks. I don't think it'll take that long." Sheila nodded and closed the front door, and Willow led Faith upstairs.

Once they were in her room with the door shut behind them, Willow rounded on Faith, her shock once again written across her face. "Okay, there obviously isn't a project," she said. "So, what are you doing here?" She tried to sound as non-confrontational as possible; no matter what issues she had with her, Faith was a Slayer, and it probably wouldn't be wise to get in her face, especially considering the events of the past month.

"It's just, um," said Faith, who was finding this much more awkward than she had anticipated. "The Mayor."

"What about him?" asked Willow, confused and apprehensive.

"He knows you've been trying to hack into his files."

"What? How? Did he tell you that?"

"I don't—know how he found out," said Faith. This lie had come out with a little more difficulty than the one about the nonexistent school project, but she disregarded it. She was here to make sure nothing worse happened. As long as she could pull that off, Willow didn't need to find out that she was the one who had ratted her out to the Mayor. "Point is, he knows."

"I-is that a bad thing?" asked Willow. She wasn't used to being one-on-one with Faith—those few minutes in the library earlier that day had hardly counted—, and she wasn't sure how to handle it. Normally, she was quietly the in the background while Faith drew all of the attention of everyone else around, whether it was for good or bad reasons. But now Faith was here, and somehow she was managing to make Willow feel like she didn't have the home field advantage in her own bedroom.

"He ordered a vampire attack on you," said Faith. "So I'd say it's pretty bad."

Willow's eyes widened, and she sank unsteadily onto her desk chair. "What am I gonna do?" she asked. This was insane. It had never been her before. The bad guys were always trying to end the world or cause general chaos. Buffy, Angel, and Faith were the ones who fought them, sometimes with help from her and the others. The whole Malcolm/Moloch incident aside, this was the first time she, shy little wallflower Willow Rosenberg, was being targeted specifically. After sunset, vampires would be sent to attack her. The fear was almost paralyzing her already, and it wasn't even dark yet.

"Just, stay inside tonight," said Faith. "I'll hang around and take care of any vamps that come this way." She punched her right fist into her left palm in a businesslike fashion.

"Shouldn't we tell Buffy and Giles?" said Willow in a slightly higher voice than usual.

Faith shook her head. "If they know, it could get back to the Mayor, and it might blow my cover. We can't risk it."

Willow's eyes widened, and a little of her fear left her as something clicked together in her mind. "Those must be some important files, for the Mayor to go to this much trouble to try and make sure I don't get to them," she said.

"You're not seriously still thinking of hacking into them," said Faith in disbelief.

"Why would he want me dead unless there was something in there he wanted to hide?" said Willow, growing more and more excited. "Just like the deputy mayor's files. Buffy said they were all gone when you guys got to them. It's got to be the same stuff in his computer files. Maybe more. I've got to get in!" She faltered, staring at Faith. "What's wrong?" she asked, for the other girl's expression seemed to have darkened.

"Nothing," said Faith quickly. "You're right. It's just—be careful."

"I will," said Willow emphatically.

"Good," said Faith. She moved towards the door. "I'll be around. Holler if you see any vamps outside."

"Okay," said Willow.

Faith pulled the door open and stepped out.

"Wait!" cried Willow. Faith looked around at her from the hall. "Thanks."

"Yeah," said Faith grudgingly. "No problem."

[o]

Night fell, and Willow was still trying to concentrate on homework, but whether it was her own homework or that of a certain lazy, arrogant basketball player before her, she couldn't get herself to focus on it—not even when she thought of the wrath she would incur in Principal Snyder if he decided she wasn't trying hard enough to help Percy pass his history class.

She was just too curious about what the Mayor was hiding in those files. She was convinced that whatever it was had to be of vital importance. It just wouldn't make sense otherwise. And if the Mayor was trying to have her killed, he probably wasn't planning to delete his files like he had gotten rid of the deputy mayor's. At least, not until the attempt to have her killed failed (and she refused to consider the possibility that it would succeed). Deleting the files was probably Plan B, which meant that she needed to get to them as soon as possible.

All in all, Willow was practically itching to get back to her hacking, but her laptop was currently at the store getting a couple of broken pixels in the screen fixed. Her parents' computer was off-limits, and it was probably too old to handle the tasks she would need it for anyway. That left the computer in the library.

She walked to the window and nervously pulled the curtains aside to look at the dark street. For one heart-stopping second, she thought she saw a something lurking in the bushes next to the fence, but then it moved, and she realized that it was only the next-door neighbor's dog, which had been using their backyard as its hiding place for everything from dead rodents to small toys it had taken from other neighbors' yards for the past six years.

Willow watched small clods of dirt fly into the air as the dog dug the hole where its next chewed-up treasure would be laid to rest. She bit her lip. The school was only a couple of blocks away. On her bike, she could get there within minutes. Giles was sure to be there, and Faith had the neighborhood covered. Was that enough for her to risk making the trip?

Suddenly, her famous resolve face surfaced. This was her chance to prove that she really wasn't just some doormat person, but a force to be reckoned with. She was going to go to the library, and she was going to access the Mayor's files.

[o]

Resolve face notwithstanding, the journey to the school was an extremely nerve-wracking experience. Willow wondered if Faith had been busy fighting a vampire at the other end of the street or something when she left, because she didn't see her anywhere. Walking into the school building, she felt an overwhelming sense of relief. Even after everything that had happened in this place, it was still comforting to be inside the familiar institution of learning.

When Willow entered the library at last, she was surprised to see not only Giles, but Buffy and Xander there as well. "Hey," she said cheerfully. They all looked up at her from where they sat together on the short flight of steps leading to the bookshelves. "What's going on?" she asked.

Only then did she register their stricken expressions. "Gee, who died?" she said dryly, trying to lighten the mood. When her words had no effect whatsoever, except perhaps to make them look fearful as well as devastated, all of her plans for a late-night hacking session were forgotten. "Oh, God, who died?"

So, basically, the canon episode has been going on "offscreen" from this chapter, which means that Vamp Willow is currently at the Bronze with all of those vampires the Mayor sent after our Willow, thus making the big scare she and Faith had about getting vamp attacked was pretty much for nothing. But, of course, neither of them would have had any way of knowing that, and here in that last bit, my version intersects with canon, so it seemed like a good place to leave off.