18.
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This had been such a lovely way to start another lovely day. Not that sleep had been enough of a thing to even blunt the edges of the bone-deep weariness Buffy felt. Not that the day was even starting here…or there, for that matter. Here, it actually seemed to be ending, which was weird. It had been like mid-afternoon, last time she looked. The sun wasn't quite overhead…in another world. In this one, the western sky had started to take on that pinkish cast that meant nighttime wasn't far off.

'Kay, so…that was interesting.

Buffy glanced down. She really was naked, not that she could tell with the icky case of teeth-gritting, spine-tingling heebie-jeebies she'd picked up during the other Willow's latest shenanigans. The current Willow had tipped her off to her condition—what with her own glaring lack of attire and wandering attention. Buffy blew that last part off. She could've gone through the tired 'my eyes are up here' routine, but—

It's all good.

Really not. 'I'm naked' and 'that feels funny' aren't things that go well together. Not this kind of funny. Her skin was still crawling and her core temp was flashing from hot to cold with the manic tedium of a strobe lamp. She felt sick.

Suddenly conscious that she might be gripping it too hard, she let Willow's hand fall from hers. The way Willow's expression drooped after Buffy let go told a totally different story. Buffy curled the right corner of her mouth in a weak half smile as if to show sympathy.

Actually, this kind of funny—with the nakedness, the publicness and the poofiness, not to mention the abruptness—I think I deserve at least a day between each weirdness, preferably a week, and some warning.

She rocked forward, shoved off and sprang to her feet, extending a hand down. She slipped her hand free once Willow was up. Being touched when she felt this bad was just too much. She hoped Willow would understand.

They were in the front yard of their home in another world—hopefully the right world—a few feet, a few stairs and a doorway away from solitude. Solitude went much better with nudity. Buffy strode across the blacktopped driveway—which was unpleasantly warm against her bare feet—to the porch, not quite running, glancing over her shoulder to ask, "You coming?" She turned away as Willow took her first step.

Buffy slipped around the corner, down the stairs, and through the postern door, well aware that she was, 'oh, joy,' on camera. There was nothing to be done about it, just go through the biometric checks. Be grateful that biometrics were a thing. Not that long ago they weren't. Breaking the unbreakable door had gotten her better goodies, which she rushed through, relieved there wasn't a keycard to hamper her progress anymore.

Willow made it into the small, stone-walled foyer just in time to slip through the inner door behind her. Buffy was happy to be out of the foyer. The damn thing always made her nervous. It was a basically a claustrophobic cell with the charming added function of a killing jar. Fail the checks, screw up bad enough, and the house would bite back.

The place seemed painfully empty, which Buffy supposed was preferable to the alternative. They might've landed in yet another world where they were both duplicated again and something was deeply wrong with one or both of their alts. That seemed to be the running theme. Being home was a relief. Things were pretty messed up here too, but they were a more manageable, less gut-wrenching brand of crazy. The trouble was she couldn't allow herself to feel any comfort or sense of closure. There was just too much else—too much unsettled, too much askew, too much weirdness.

She focused on the emptiness. The generous space made the impression worse. Their home was reminiscent of a penthouse suite with an open floor plan that could've been located in any major city. That was the inside. The smooth plaster walls, pale hardwood floors and sparse, yet modish furnishings didn't hint at the outside, which was more 'fortress' than 'luxury high-rise.' With thick stone walls and battlements, it looked like a guard tower to complement the castle on the hill.

The views out the 'windows' were incongruent in an unexpected—totally expected way. Most were massive video screens, displaying static, directionally apposite views of the surrounding forest. The forest was the thing that was off. No high-rise had a view like this one, except maybe the one at the back wall, which was one of the few actual, real windows. The land behind the house dropped off into a valley, making the view from this part of the room mostly of the horizon, which fit.

It also made a massively slab of bulletproof glass less of a strategic problem to what was obviously intended to be the biggest panic room ever. It was arguably a pretty prison, depending on how you looked at it. Buffy didn't like to think about that. Those thoughts were up there with the killing jar in her foyer. She had a home of her own that she shared with the person she loved. She would try to be happy if it killed her.

There was another weirdness that barely rated in the shadow of all the other weirdnesses: the floor beneath her feet felt solid in a way that a high-rise building would never be able to pull off. It was all an illusion. Everything. The trick was to allow herself to be dazzled just enough.

She quickly assessed the room, taking it all in. Nothing had changed. Even the mugs they'd been drinking from the night before Team Vengeance decided to play musical Buffys rested on the coffee table undisturbed, and—what with the cream—probably more than a little bit gross.

She veered right, toward the wooden spiral staircase that always reminded her of a giant whirligig. Fittingly enough. Fun had definitely had been had in the bedroom loft. The joke was cute. They'd laughed about it in a past. That was like the furthest thing from her mind today. She was all funned out. She wanted something boring: her robe. From there, she wasn't even sure. She had no idea what she was doing. The robe was a good start.

Upstairs the bedding was rumpled. It was heartbreaking, like everything had frozen when she left. She went to her wardrobe, took down her frumpy, white terrycloth bathrobe and put it on. When she returned to the railing to look down into the living area, she saw that Willow hadn't moved. This was the first look Buffy'd had at the whole tattoo. She thought it was striking before from the part she'd seen, but she really hadn't gotten the full picture. It was so much more—umm…huge than she'd concluded. Seeing it in all of its glory bowled her over. It was pretty. She wasn't sure about the lack of pubic hair. The path of the tattoo was different too. It was like a conspicuously inconspicuous sign that this wasn't her Willow. There was just no way…

Willow tried to meet her eyes as Buffy turned away. It wasn't meant to be a snub. Buffy just figured that Willow wouldn't want to be naked any more than she had and that she was probably feeling completely out of her element. Buffy went to the other wardrobe to get Willow's robe and took it to her.

She noted that only the tattoo had made it through the transition. After handing off the robe, she reached up to touch her ears. It made sense that if Willow's piercings had been stripped of their jewelry, her earrings would be gone too. They were right where they should be. It made no sense. Buffy's brow tensed. Why had her clothing vanished? It seemed like it'd be all or nothing. And that what happened to one of them should've happened to both of them. She quickly decided that what it really made was no real difference at all. A few pieces of jewelry meant nothing, except maybe to her. She liked her earrings. She was glad to still have them.

She grumbled, "I need coffee." Or a cranial avulsion. Every bit of the discomfort had decided to migrate to her head. At least the hot flashes and creepy-crawlies were over. What was left was just a bad headache.

She turned to make her way to the coffee table, collect the mugs, and carry them into the kitchen. Once they were rinsed and all the ickiness was down the drain, she moved on to playing with the coffee maker. Or at least, that was how Willow had always seen it. Buffy had been fairly certain that a coffee maker should be a simple thing that you added a filter and grounds to, poured water in, and 'presto,' it made funny gurgling noises, wonderful smells and yummy, life-giving, caffeinated beverages.

Apparently she'd been mistaken. Willow had located a coffee maker at N.A.S.A. It had to be them. The thing had more widgets and gadgets than a space shuttle. It was like a chemistry set with a boiler. It had always given Buffy headaches—sometimes literally—which pretty much defeated one of the purposes of making coffee.

She glanced over her shoulder. Willow still hadn't moved. At least she was wearing her robe. The instant nudity had been more than a little bit awkward. Not that Buffy was body conscious. This was just a ticklish sitch. Getting to pick the first time this Willow saw her naked had been a given that had—big surprise—been taken by a surreal set of circumstances. It was nice to get to choose, which is probably why that hadn't happened.

Buffy gestured for Willow to come, directing her to, "Have a seat." Instead, Willow took mercy on her. It might've had something to do with the shower of powdered coffee beans that had just covered the countertop and part of the floor. Buffy had only tamped the cocoa-like coffee down like Willow had shown her. It had gone badly. The clattering and grumbling even earned her a look. Buffy took a seat at the breakfast bar outside the kitchen warzone, stationing herself to see if this Willow could handle the evil coffee maker too. That'd be a major bonus.

The one real problem with turning coffee into a spectator's sport was that now Buffy had nothing to do except guilt over what she wasn't doing. It was that or worry about Willow—the other Willow. Not that the two things weren't connected. The freakishly obsessive, massively compulsive, scary powerful witch was currently amped up on demon juice and running around in the world behind the mirror doing heaven knew what. It was like a recipe for unnatural disaster that Buffy didn't want to think about, which of course, meant she was. She was in love, wigged transference to her present situation aside. She should be worried as hell. Loving someone who was predisposed to detonate on crisis wasn't easy. Like she had any room to talk.

She'd planned on waiting to call the funny farm they called 'ops' until she had a cup in hand, but it was time to get moving before she drove herself nuts over the 'would've, should've, could've' factor. "I need to call Xander and let him know we're alright," she announced, hoping this Willow would have the good sense to offer her an excuse to stall.

She was in luck. As she wearily turned away from the counter, swiveling on her stool, Willow asked, "Did he really flip out over being saved by sushi?"

Buffy couldn't imagine where that had come from. It made no sense. The witchy summit hadn't lasted that long. Surely Willow squared would've had more important things to confer about. Buffy brushed the reaction off, giving in to the other: she laughed. It had been funny. Mostly. Too funny. "Yeah," she said. "He'd, umm…" Another weirdness caused her pause. She felt a desire to defend him. Her brow crinkled. She decided to go with it. "He'd been through a lot." A smile spread across her face as she gave in again. It was one of the single most absurd things that had ever happened to any of them. And that was saying a lot.

Go figure, the entire debacle had occurred as a result of Dawn's deflowering. There was a certain twisted symmetry to that. Massive public humiliation, buckets of angst and pain to everyone around was the going rate for intimacy in the Summers family.

'Indignant' only began to describe Xander's reaction. Not that he'd had a single thing to do with the thing that had caused the whole thing. He was one of those mostly innocent bystanders. The look on his face had been precious, frameable, a total Kodak moment, not that anyone had thought to take a picture or even had a camera.

They were covered. There were enough video cameras around H.Q. that if somebody really wanted a picture…

Buffy wondered how much Willow really knew. Did she know that Dawn had been cursed?

She'd have to. The other stuff wouldn't make any sense without that. She'd have to know that Halloween had come early last year and that Dawn had had the coolest costumes ever. She spent the summer doing the Monster Mash. She'd been a giant for almost a month. The logistical problems that had created were impossible to list. It had been a nightmare. Speeding things up to limit the damage was the best Willow could do, which had been a thousand times better than anyone else had done. Even that had been horrible.

The coup de grâce had come the final evening when Dawn changed from a centaur into a gorgon. No one had seen that coming. Satsu and Xander had both been reduced to collateral damage. Or just plain collateral. They made attractive lawn ornaments, except that one thingy.

Willow had come to the rescue again in a way that only someone with her esoteric background could have. She speculated by cross-referencing untold ancient texts that gorgon tears might be the solution. She was right. Dawn was carefully milked and Satsu was cured. But before they could get enough of the precious stuff to cure Xander, Dawn had disappeared.

They'd gotten her back. Buffy didn't even want to think about how that had gone. She'd ended up with some pretty personal, semi-permanent problems that were only now clearing up. But they'd fixed it. Or Satsu had. She took Dawn because only she could handle her. The cure had made her immune to the gorgon's stare, among other things. It was a truly twisted time. And Satsu had been brilliant. She fed gorgon Dawn sushi with lots of wasabi. As a solution, that sounded totally harebrained. It was actually really effective. They had a full vial of gorgon tears tucked away now just in case, like that would ever be a problem again. The last thing Buffy wanted to do was play gorgon tag.

She stared just in front of where her hand rested on the charcoal gray marble countertop, which was actually more of a pretty blue despite what the brochure said, wondering if gorgon tears had an expiration date. Other medications did. It seemed reasonable. And it was a much better thing to contemplate than how her right hand had been flayed nearly to the bone. Even if the hand in question was right there, giving her a visual prompt to make with the mulling.

Moments later Willow slid a cup in front of her, completely derailing her pointless mental rambling. It hit Buffy right then, like a bolt from the blue: She isn't coming back.

That had nothing to do with anything. She should've been asking this Willow what she knew. She should've been calling ops and telling them that they were okay, like that was even remotely true. She should've at least taken a sip of her coffee.

Instead, Buffy sat like a lump certain in the realization and petrified by it. Like some obscure logic puzzle, the pieces just fell into place. Willow—her Willow, the one she'd committed herself to—had wanted her to leave. She'd looked, acted, done everything she'd done just to press the point. The promises she'd made—

A kick in the teeth would've been easier to take than that. Buffy felt utterly defeated, drained, useless… Tears clouded her eyes, streamed down her cheeks. She couldn't even bring herself to wipe them away.

Her Willow had shared her memories with this Willow. Buffy wasn't even sure if that was possible, but it had to be. The story she'd just gone through in her head would take at least half an hour to tell to a stranger and make them understand. They'd ask questions. It'd be slow going. All told, the Willow squared confab hadn't lasted much longer than that. It was ridiculous to think that that was all they'd talked about.

The only way this Willow could possibly come up with such an obscure question would be if she knew the whole sordid tale. She'd brought it up to make Buffy feel better. She was trying to engage her. Take her mind off of things. Instead…

Buffy was sure that her Willow had set this Willow up to be the perfect replacement because she had no intention of returning. She didn't know why she felt so certain. She couldn't begin to figure it out. Her head felt stuffed full of cotton. Really warm cotton. It was hard to even breathe.

I'm overreacting. I have to be. That's what this is. This is the worst possible—I've snapped to the worst possible conclusion. I'm just tired. I need to sleep. I'll—

The replacement's hand rested on her shoulder. Buffy wanted to brush it away. She wanted to run away. She wanted—

Why am I wigging out?

Xander was seated in one of the best spots he knew: the garden courtyard that led into the Hyperion. He stared impassively at the fountain, the little bronze woman with her urn. It was a beautiful day, which was nothing new in Southern California. The spot was shady, cave-like, but with lots of nice indirect sunlight. Sprayer nozzles overhead misted the tropical plants in the beds surrounding the walkway and fountain, taking the edge off the heat and providing near perfect comfort. It was a great place to read a paper, which is what he'd been doing.

The only uncomfortable thing about the spot was the concrete bench. After a while, it got a bit rough on the backside. His butt teetered on the point between prickly nothingness and aching discomfort. He'd been ignoring it, choosing to enjoy the upside, which wasn't exactly peace and quiet. He was right out in the open. Cars and people passed by beyond the wrought iron gate. Anyone entering or exiting the Hyperion would see him. The funny thing was that they almost never did. He'd come back inside and they'd ask him where he'd been, assuming he'd gone somewhere. It was like the perfect spot to hide without hiding.

So far today had been a bad day for that. First Angel and now Willow. Worse, she'd known exactly where to find him. She sat beside him, for no good reason creeping him out. Not that she was there for no good reason. It was the creep-factor that made no sense. She was totally over her Snow Willow act. It was like he'd imagined the whole thing. He might've believed that his Willow had returned if it weren't for subtle differences, like the fact that she was actually engaging. She smiled. She laughed. She talked with enthusiasm, using her hands to demonstrate as she explained things. It was like some dormant something that made her who she was had been revived. She was suddenly back to her old self. It was spooky.

Of course, deep down, Xander knew better, but he couldn't help enjoying this blast from the past, which was basically over. She'd gotten down to business, asking him about the vengeance demon not that long ago, but a little too long. He'd squandered his reprieve gawking at the fountain, as blank in the brain as he was in the eyes. She cleared her throat to say something else, causing him to glance nervously.

The illusion she'd spun was dear to him. He couldn't even begin to explain why. He just knew he had to preserve it. She'd destroy it if he let her open her mouth. He knew that with unerring certainty too. He scrambled to say, "He was an old guy with the personality of a pit bull. Not the Petey type. More like Cujo, only a little less with the 'I'm going to eat your face off' vibe." His brow furrowed. What he'd just said was accurate, but absolutely inane. He'd effectively told her nothing. She knew that the vengeance demon was a crotchety old man now. Really helpful info.

Sighing, he went on, "Yeah, that simile sucked. My point is that he was totally surly and completely the opposite of any vengeance demon I've ever—" I'm repeating myself. She gets the point. I, uh…the point is… "I didn't know. I had no way of knowing. What I did was stupid. I know that, but I didn't mean for this to happen."

"It's okay, Xander. I understand," she replied, sounding for all the world like she meant it. It bowled him over so hard he almost missed her asking, "Where'd you meet him?

It was the same question she'd asked before reworded. A logical progression in baby steps for the tediously mentally challenged. He should've already answered it. "He tends bar at a place called Barnaby Rudge in Covina. I don't know what his hours are and I didn't catch his name. I'd know him if I saw him."

To his surprise Willow chirruped, "No big. I'll find him." She sounded confident. So that was that. It was over. She'd find the demon and put things back the way they were. There seemed little doubt of that.

Xander wasn't sure how he felt about that. On the one hand, he'd have his Willow back. That'd be good. Maybe he'd manage to get her to open up this time. Maybe he'd have the sense to try. On the other hand, he was pretty sure that Buffy wouldn't be locked up in their basement, Angel wouldn't be on the rebound and things would be pretty crappy again. It wasn't good news, but there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it either.

He was about to get up and leave when Willow asked, "Tell me what you know about Buffy. The one here, I mean. Besides the fact that she makes Angelus look like Mr. Rodgers."

At the mention of the name, a torrent of gruesome images rushed through Xander's mind, none of them pertinent to the question. He remembered the bodies. That's all he could remember. His throat felt tight. He coughed, quickly cupping his hand over his mouth. He needed something more, something to jog the morbid montage. He asked, "What do you want to know?" More like 'squeaked.' His voice cracked like he was having a second puberty.

If Willow noticed, she didn't let on. She just redirected. "Where does she hang out? Who does she hang out with? I'd ask her myself, but something tells me she'd be less than receptive. And while it might be fun to make her squeal…"

He had no idea how to answer. It wasn't like he was going to all of the hottest demon bars looking to spend quality time with any psychopaths. His tastes ran more to Cheers. He said as much, "I'm not sure," then quickly amended, "I don't think she hangs out with anyone." He could answer that with relative certainty. He imagined Buffy's date book to be a weird mix of facials, manicures and mayhem. Who are we going to mutilate today, Brain?

Willow wasn't going to give up. He could tell just by how her breath caught. The tensing of her posture he picked up with his peripheral senses. She turned the question again, "Well, I assume you try to avoid her. Where don't you go?"

"Nowhere."

It was an honest answer, but she responded by saying his name like she was truly annoyed, punctuating with a sigh.

"I swear, I'm not trying to be difficult," Xander said in tones just this side of pleading. "I don't go anywhere. Maybe to a neighborhood bar every once in a while, but—" He wasn't going to sidestep this. She'd keep at it until she got an answer. And that was if he got lucky. Who knew what this Willow would do if he didn't? He replied with the first thing that came to mind, "If I had to guess," and he really, really was, "I'd say she haunts Forest Lawn. I know that sounds crazy. It's like the one of the most renowned cemeteries in the world. It's also the closest. It makes a kind of twisted sense. I think it'd appeal to her to hang out in a cemetery that has daily tours. Do nightly performances of Singing in the Rain on Bogie's grave. She's just that full of herself."

"That was Gene Kelly."

"What?"

"Singing in the Rain."

"Oh, I thought it was Malcolm McDowell."

Xander cracked a lopsided grin when Willow turn to glance at him. Their quippy exchange had been good. Almost like old times. She looked amused and bemused both at once. It was funny.

Willow couldn't understand what had happened. Things had been going okay, or as okay as could be expected. It was a bad situation. That much was easy to work out, but something had changed. She'd opened her mouth and everything had fallen apart. She couldn't imagine how something so harmless—something so cute, light, funny—had caused the transformation she'd seen. It had been like night and day. All she'd done was call to mind an amusing anecdote that she'd hoped would lighten the mood and storm clouds had moved in.

Buffy was asleep now. Without a word, she'd gotten up, trudged upstairs and fallen into bed. As far as Willow could tell, she still had her robe on. At least, it wasn't anywhere that she could see. Buffy's coffee sat on the counter downstairs untouched. It was reasonable to infer that she'd been exhausted—that she hadn't been 'in her right mind,' so to speak. Not that she was insane—temporarily or otherwise—as the phrase implied, but she had been through a lot. She wasn't responsible for her actions.

Willow wanted so much to blame what had happened on that. She wanted to believe that she wasn't responsible either—snit happens—but as she leaned back against the rail in the dark, sipping her coffee and watching Buffy sleep, she couldn't help thinking that she'd said something wrong and screwed everything up. It was her fault. She'd been stupid. She'd ruined everything. Buffy would never want to speak to her again. She'd push her away. She'd finally see the truth: I'm a worthless, sorry excuse for a human being. Everything I touch turns to shit. If Buffy's smart, she'll distance herself before I infect her with this—

Tears flowed down Willow's cheeks. Her face felt sticky. The salt burned her skin. She mopped at the mess aggressively with the sleeve of her robe. She was making too much noise. She'd wake Buffy if she didn't stop. That'd be just one more reason—

There was really only one place in the house she could go to be alone. The video screens downstairs had dimmed when she turned out the lights. There was barely enough illumination to see by. Willow didn't really need any. She'd made the walk around the upstairs balcony to her office countless times, though she'd never been here before in her life. The glass rail glinted, refracting cold, muted colors picked up from the monitors as she followed it around to her sanctum, hidey hole, pit, whatever it was.

She was too snuffley to sense the musty smell of knowledge that should've all but knocked her down when she crossed the threshold. The room was packed floor to ceiling with bookshelves, all of them full. Some of them too full with smaller books stacked two deep. In other places books laid flat across the tops of books of mostly matching heights. It was bad for them. So was the mess on the research table. It was buried under more of the overflow, stacked nearly as high as she was tall in places. She felt bad about the books on the bottom. It was a horrible thing to do to them, like dog-earing pages or bending spines.

The room had a feel of barely controlled chaos that she really didn't like. There was just too much stuff. She needed two rooms this size to store it all. That didn't mean much to her right now, other than that a place where she should've been at ease, pricked at her fraying nerves.

She made her way to her desk, set her cup down and turned on the lamp before retracing her steps to shut the door. All of this was done in a haze. She scarcely remembered how she'd gotten there moments later when she returned to her desk to have a seat. She stared numbly through the fog at the blotter on her desktop with its days and dates mapped out, notes scribbled that she remembered, appointments made that she'd kept. But it hadn't been her.

Tears tickled as they trickled down her cheeks. It was weird—strange that something that hurt so much one way could be so irritating, niggling, like the tag in a shirt. The sensation made her spine crawl. Something vile, powerful, ugly…writhed inside of her. She wanted to scream. But of course she didn't dare.

Finally, when she just couldn't stand it anymore, she struck herself. First one cheek, then the other. Hard slaps that stung. She swung wildly. Her face throbbed. She knotted her fingers in her hair and pulled. Her scalp stung too. It stung until it was numb. One thing canceled the other. She felt nothing. From head to toe, her body was rigid, muscles tightened like rubber bands. She sobbed, shaking, letting out one tremulous wail after another. Each breath became a growl, rumbling deep in her chest. The noise lost its meaning. It had no meaning. None of this meant anything. She felt nothing. Rage churned up and out, pouring from her, boiling over, reduced to snot, hot air and tepid brine.

Her hands went limp and dropped into her lap. She slumped. Her attention landed on a cloudy smear of blue ink on her blotter. It was so washed out it looked like watercolor. The number four was still legible. She thought it'd been part of a page number. Something she'd researched. The room was so full of those sorts of notes that she couldn't remember which one this was or what it pertained to. It didn't matter.

All that tension had turned to a warm, tingly nothing. Emptiness. Apathy. She felt wrung out, but she was drenched. She looked up, pulled two Kleenexes from the box by her laptop, and wiped her eyes. They barely made a dent. Soggy tissue stuck to her fingers. She shook it off and kept pulling, mopping her face, blowing her nose, wiping her hands until she lost track. Eventually, the mess cycled into the trashcan near her feet. It felt like deconstructing. She shed little bits of herself with each tissue. That was silly.

Her predicament was impossible. What would she do if Buffy decided that she was an inadequate substitute? The idea that she was a substitute at all was just ridiculous in this situation. It was ludicrous to consider replacing someone's lover, life partner, wife…whatever—especially someone as passionate as Buffy. If Willow's proposed role was to be something a little more traditional, serving a man to whom she was little more than a domestic serf with benefits, that'd be entirely different. But this? This was just—

How can I even compete?

Willow found herself staring at the phone. She was supposed to be Willow. The Willow she remembered in all those borrowed memories was together enough to at least check in. It wouldn't be unheard of for Buffy to collapse and not let them know she was okay. She was like that. Willow would handle it. That was how it went. She was the one who kept things together even when everything was falling apart. That was her job. She cleared her throat, picked up the phone and dialed Xander's extension.

The phone rang. This was another thing she'd done hundreds of times. She knew the number by heart, along with scores of other numbers belonging to people she thought of as 'friends' that she'd never met before in her life. This promised to be a running theme for a while, unless Buffy came to her senses and kicked the imposter to the curb.

And maybe even then. Maybe she could explain that she wasn't who they thought she was. That would go against everything that they'd decided—everything that had been decided for her. She was supposed to slip in, fit in, become someone she wasn't, infiltrate the slayer enterprise like some sort of secret agent.

Willow was just about to hang up when Xander came on the line. He said, "Hello," like a normal person.

She opened her mouth to speak. Her voice cracked. She cleared her throat and tried again. "We're home." She sounded like hammered crap. The rumbly, scratchy badness was getting old. She cupped her hand over the receiver this time when she cleared her throat. It hurt.

Xander was making the expected noises of concern. He asked, "What happened" and "Are you okay?" along with a few more platitudes she didn't catch. No doubt they were classics—tried and true in the realm human sympathy.

"We're fine. I'm fine. I'm just tired," she rattled off. That last thing was a lie. She couldn't sleep now if she tried, but it seemed a good excuse.

"Are you sure?" he asked. "You don't sound fine. Is there anything I can do?"

It was good to hear his voice. And it was his voice. The same vocal tics. The same inflections. This was Xander, even if her Xander was somewhere over the rainbow still in L.A. This Xander was worried about her too. Maybe there's something to this. Maybe I can get used to it. Maybe I'm wrong.

"Willow?"

A healthy dose of guilt was just the thing. Exactly what she needed. "I'm fine," she said. Scout's honor. Cross my heart and hope to die. Pinky swear. All that. Just great. Absolutely peachy. Walking on sunshine. Don't worry. Be happy. Of course, she'd tried too hard and overplayed the part. She could've sold Prozac with that voice.

Xander didn't buy it. "You sound like you could use some company. Want me to come down?"

The thought of seeing him looking any way other than the last way she'd seen him was too compelling. She answered, "Yes," without thinking. Maybe. I don't know.

It was too late. Like it or not, she was going to have company.