"So this gross demon thingy has latched onto Willow because she opened the bring-me-back door and didn't close it?" Buffy asks, resting forward on her forearms as Giles nods wearily. "And now it wants to open all the majorly bad doors because doors are like its whole deal?"

"A perfect summation, yes," he huffs as he downs his coffee, grimacing at the bitterness. The miles traveled and lack of sleep weigh heavily in bags under his eyes as he slumps back against the booth's flaking pleather padding.

"So we kill it and shut the door," Spike states, swallowing the last piece of bloody meat from his plate and pushing it away. "Fucking doddle."

Buffy raised an eyebrow. "Is that your highbrow British way of saying no biggy?"

He smiles back. "No biggy."

"Very intricate plan," she snarks and his grin widens.

"It's the old one-two, luv. Technical term," he retorts as she bestows a fondly unimpressed look.

"Though I appreciate the confidence, Spike, I worry it won't be that simple," Giles continues, removing his glasses to dig a thumb into his eyes, blinking back exhaustion. "Whatever we're up against has buried itself in Willow's mind and is using it as a weapon."

"Is it…" Buffy starts, her face visibly paling, lowering her voice as though hoping to bypass Tara's ears. "Giles, is it hurting her?"

"I expect that depends on the level of Willow's cooperation," Giles answers, rubbing his brow. "The visions of Tara are still persisting, so I expect it's still using the proverbial carrot rather than the stick. The outward projection of her memories, and the new development of the roses... It's keeping us at bay with everything it can before—"

He's cut off by a half-strangled sob, and heads turn to Tara, her face hidden by her hands and a curtain of hair still damp from her shower.

"Tara?" Buffy asks, reaching across to touch her arm. "It's going to be okay."

Tara shakes her head, another sob gulped down as she wipes her streaming eyes with her sleeve. "I-its… i-i-its—"

"Take a breath," Spike reminds her softly, and after a miserable whimper, Tara hauls in a long drag of air.

"I-its my fault," she manages, finally raising her eyes to Buffy.

Buffy's face hardens. "No, it is not your fault. You're not responsible for what—"

"Not that," Tara cuts in, shaking her head. "The roses. They're… mine." She twists in her seat and gingerly pulls out a t-shirt folded into a burrito shape around something long and thin. She lays it on the table between the plates and carefully unwraps it.

They stare at the perfect, slightly luminous rose presented like a relic.

"I think I'm going to need more of an explanation," says Giles after a weighted pause.

Tara swallows. "I d-didn't know what to do," she starts, silent tears tracking down her cheeks and she sniffs wetly. "I th-thought… I would try Light My Path, see if it would work—"

"Light my path?" Giles blurts out, and Tara swallows hard, her wobbly explanation stalled by tears that she hurriedly wipes off her cheeks.

"What's Light My Path?" Buffy asks moving a sleeve of the t-shirt away from the rose's petals with careful fingers.

"I didn't…" Tara continues without answering. "I didn't think anything would…A-and then it did and I… I…"

"You called on Theia?" Giles says breathlessly, eyes wide as an expression of barely suppressed awe raises his brow. "And she answered?"

"Can we back up briefly to the 'what's light my path' question?" Buffy persists and Giles nods.

"It's a charm for insight. Really more of a… well, a superstition at best. Laying an offering before a flame and Theia, the goddess of light, may choose to bestow guidance."

"Like, what, some mystic agony aunt?" says Spike.

Giles rolls his eyes at Spike's analogy. "One that hardly ever answers. I've never heard of it working before. This is unfathomable."

"Blimey," Spike mutters, leaning forward. "Glinda's got the heavyweights on her side, huh?"

"But the roses everywhere else," Tara mumbles thickly. "I didn't mean to… I must have done it wrong, I must have—?"

"No, I think you did it perfectly," Giles says quietly, flicking deftly back to the second chapter of Rituals and Summonings. "Willow called on dark forces to bring Buffy back through what should be an impenetrable barrier. From what you're saying… you've called on the forces of light. Literally and spiritually."

"So turning Sunnydale into Sleeping Beauty's castle is actually a good thing?" Buffy asks, unconvinced.

"It's not unprecedented," Giles replies, opening Black Magicks; A Compendium at the index, skimming the page before opening the book at its center. "Records state a castle in Scotland, a hellmouth site in the eleventh century, was surrounded by pines, their branches sharpened to a point, trapping the evil entities inside. It was considered a miracle."

"That's what's happening now?" Spike asks, casting an eye out to the parking lot. It may be purely imagination but it seems like the shadows beyond the glass are changing ever so slightly.

"From my estimate, it's similar but more widespread. It could be a direct reaction to Willow's memory incarnations. Like white blood cells fighting an infection. Whatever the intended outcome might be, I don't doubt it's an incredible leveling of the playing field."

"It'll help us close the door?" Buffy asks, eyes bright with hope, body tensed, and halfway out of her seat.

Giles raised his head from the page, eyes fixing on the rose. "Close it… and maybe even destroy it."

Willow's feet feel like they're made of concrete. Her eyelids made of lead. Blood drips from the thorn's punctures in her hand, and the steady tap-tap-tap of the drops hitting the floor is the only sound between them as Herself smiles encouragingly.

But the look in her eyes has changed. No longer affable. Shark's eyes; deadly, calculating, black, and hard, and Willow can feel ice filling her veins as her heart hammers with terror.

She takes a ragged breath in, pushing light-headedness back. She can't lose focus now.

"What are you?" she croaks.

Herself's face softens again into a placid smile that is all the more horrifying for the way her eyes no longer blink. The way her mouth no longer smiles like a human mouth would. Every tooth somehow simultaneously on show.

"Keep going," she insists, but Willow shakes her head frantically, planting her feet, weak as they feel.

"No."

" Move."

"No!"

"Don't make me make you," says Herself in an infinitely unimpressed tone. "It'll hurt."

Willow steps back and loses her footing, falling to the side. She expects to hit thorns, to be wrapped in them as they cut into her skin.

But instead a sharp clang sounds, metal at her back and she cranes her head.

Lockers. She's fallen against lockers? Twisted and rusty, inside a partly demolished corridor, shattered concrete beneath her feet.

An agonized whimper escapes her throat.

The High School…

I've been walking to…

Oh, God, I've been walking towards—

"The hellmouth," she rasps, closing her eyes, her body shuddering uncontrollably.

"It'll devour you, Willow," Herself says, sounding almost sorry. "Swallow you whole. Unless you do as you're told."

"No!" Willow screams, panic breaking free of its chains.

Herself leans in, and Willow presses herself hard into the lockers, the twisted metal biting into her back as Herself's lips touch her ear.

"I'll feed it Tara, Willow. I'll make you watch. If you don't walk."

They head out of the diner, walking to Giles' car with wordless agreement.

"Where do we start?" Buffy asks, her voice feeling too loud for the early morning silence surrounding them.

Spike stops, falling behind.

"Bloody hell," he murmurs, and Buffy turns to see what he's seen.

Brambles have started to swallow the diner, and are winding with determination around the motel—slow but relentless—roses blooming as the vines thicken, sprouting thorns hooked like talons, reaching dizzying heights until the view of the highway is entirely eclipsed.

"Oh my God," Tara whispers.

"It seems our options are rather limited," says Giles, indicating the road out of the parking lot, which is beginning to be swallowed up, roses stretching across the concrete. "Go," he commands, and they run, sprinting for the car and piling in, Tara in the front passenger seat with the rewrapped rose in her lap.

"Theia, Lucina, Eos, Sol," Tara pleads in little more than a whisper as Giles starts the engine, her words swallowed by the squeal of tires. "I beg of thee…" She unwraps the rose from its bundle, closing her hand around it so tight the thorns along its stem pierce her palm. "Accept my offering—"

"Tara!" Spike shouts from the backseat, his hand closing around her shoulder as blood drips out of her closed fist down her arm.

"Show us the path," she finishes as Buffy's eyes widen, the thorns blocking the road pulling back with a slithering lurch as Giles' car speeds towards them, a wall of brambles hemming them in as they veer onto the highway heading downtown.

The roses break away from the railings hemming in the bypass, allowing a full view of Sunnydale below them. Nothing but thorns. Nothing but roses. Covering every house, every street, suffocating the streetlights. All except a single path cutting through like a river. Leading to one destination.

"Oh," Buffy says, as she kneels up on the seat to get a better view, hair whipping in the wind as she catches sight of their destination in the weak moonlight before Giles is forced to take the exit downtown by another wall of thorns. "Should've guessed."