"Oh God…"

With a sickening lurch Willow stumbles, shivering, alone in the bedroom she hasn't been in for weeks.

The house at Revello Drive is silent around her; all the ghosts returned to her head.

Except for one.

She slumps down on the bed, cupping her swollen lip where Spike's fist had crushed it against her teeth, eyes stinging.

"You said we'd fix it," she mutters thickly through her hand. "You promised, I can't keep feeling like this, I can't do this, it's too hard—"

I miss her so much.

So much, so much, so much—

God, and it never gets easier… people say it's supposed to get easier…

Willow chokes, sobs racking her shoulders. She bites her lip to try to stifle them, forgetting briefly the painful lump her lip has swelled into. Her sob is interrupted by a pitiful moan.

No matter what anyone told her…No matter how much time she took…

Her heart just wasn't built to hold heartbreak. It had been created too small to house those deep wells of misery.

Not before, after Oz, and not now, with Tara was she ever able to tamp down the pain that seemed to pour out like blood from a severed artery. How long before she was empty of it? It seemed endless, and all she could do was watch herself spiraling from a place far above, observing silently as things went from bad to worse—

A hand reaches down and squeezes her shoulder.

"It's okay."

Willow glances up at the apparition of herself, smiling kindly like it has all the answers. "We can fix it, right?"

Willow wipes her nose on her sleeve, suppressing another sob, brushing her lip as she does, wincing at the fresh sting of pain. The snot comes away pink from blood clogging her nose.

"Can we?" she asks in a hoarse whisper. A plea for confirmation, and a prayer to fix it now. Now, now, now. No more waiting.

"Yeah," Herself says, nodding eagerly, her shoulder brushing the fronds of red hair in a carefree shrug. "Easy. Way easy peasy. We just gotta go somewhere first."

"Go somewhere?" Willow asks, her eyebrows crease slightly as she sags.

Herself nods again, smiling enough that the black in her eyes actually seems to have some warmth. "For a spell. A fun one. Poof, and everything will be the way we want it, right?"

Willow nods wearily and Herself cocks her head. "You're tired," she says, with sympathetic decisiveness. "Get some sleep."

"Sleep?" Willow murmurs, sinking sideways and letting exhaustion take her the rest of the way down. "And then fix us?"

"Yes," Herself confirms, fading into the dark shadows of the bedroom as Willow's eyes shut without further persuasion, becoming two watchful black holes against the wallpaper.

It's 9:07 AM when Giles hangs up the call with Buffy. He is more than aware of that fact as he checks his watch constantly, whilst frantically heaping clothes into a suitcase. The earliest flight he could get departs Exeter to California in three hours, the taxi to take him to the airport will arrive in twenty-three minutes, and every second of those minutes is being distractedly monitored.

He attempts to pack essentials, striding back and forth as he tries to focus on which essentials are essential before the doorbell to his rented cottage chimes.

No, no, no, he thinks, manically checking his watch again, that can't be the taxi—

He flings an armful of shirts into his suitcase and rushes for the stairs, nearly tripping over discarded laundry on his way. The doorbell sounds again, impatiently.

"Coming! I'm coming!" he bellows, taking the stairs too fast and almost slipping. "You're early, I'm not—"

He cuts off as he opens the door.

"Ah, not the taxi," he observes as a delivery man turns with a box in his hands and a clipboard tucked under an arm.

"Package for Rupert Giles?" he asks, holding out the box.

"Y-yes, uh… yes." Giles nods numbly as he takes the box. "Thank you."

"Sign here," the delivery man instructs, holding out the clipboard.

"Yes, right." He moves the box underneath an arm and scrawls an eligible version of his name into the indicated box.

"Have a good day," says the delivery man over his shoulder as he turns to leave, not knowing how impossible that command is to grant. It's irrelevant, however, since Giles doesn't hear it.

The books—! Almost left without them!

Talk about divine intervention…

He strides through to the kitchen, fumbling in a drawer for a knife. Despite the adrenaline making his hands tremble he's careful to only let the tip of the knife touch the tape, just enough to sever it. He pulls the flaps apart and lifts out the volumes.

They're all there;

Horis's Verba Mortis and Wakeman's Verba Vitae

Rituals and Summonings Part VIII - Oceanus-Osiris

Black Magicks; A Compendium.

Bright's Prophecies and Predictions; Common Text

Giles opens the first one in the pile; Bright's Prophecies. Even just a cursory glance is enough to tell him there's nothing relevant. It had been a long shot anyway.

Horis's Verba Mortis and Wakeman's Verba Vitae could be promising, at least for the mechanics of what Willow did. There's potential to reverse engineer whatever portal was opened to bring Buffy back through. It still seems incredible… There should've been side effects and yet there was none. Buffy was healthy, physically at least. There was no denying the trauma would linger, for how long he couldn't possibly predict.

Perhaps something else had skewed the wrong way instead…

Black Magicks; A Compendium in contrast to Bright's holds too much, the crumbling, black volume spilling over with too much information to reasonably sift through, intricate details of summonings and their histories dating back millennia, it's impossible to pinpoint what's important.

Rituals and Summonings—

It's there. Right there in the first paragraph of the second chapter; the answer. So clear it takes his breath away.

Oh God—

The doorbell buzzes a second time and Giles checks his watch. 9:31.

Hell!

With his arm loaded with books he dashes upstairs, bundles them into a satchel, and zips his poorly packed suitcase closed before hurling himself back downstairs and into the back of the taxi.

"Everything alright, luv?" Spike asks as Buffy slips almost noiselessly into their motel room. He's taken off his duster and draped it over the back of the chair tucked in at the desk, boots off and bare feet as he reclines on the bed, but otherwise fully dressed.

"Yeah," Buffy replies as she shrugs out of her coat. "Giles is on his way back. He reckons Willow is somewhere in Sunnydale."

"Seems like it's all coming to a head," he remarks. "That time of year, and all."

"Tell me about it." She sinks down onto the bed with a huffof exhaustion. The motel room is warm, no aircon to cut through the humidity, and she can feel the heat starting to drain the energy out of her. She kicks her shoes off and crawls up the bed, into Spike's side, resting her head on his shoulder.

Her eyes are already closing as he brushes his lips over her forehead. "Night," he mumbles, and she nods in agreement before letting unconsciousness drag her down.

She dreams.

The first time in a while.

But she'd be forgiven for thinking she hadn't, as the dream is just darkness. A pitch-black place. Spike is with her. So is Tara… and Giles.

She turns her head trying to decipher more players in this scene. She can't see them, nor hear them, but their presence is nearby; Xander and Anya and Dawn... All gravitating towards a point; a deep black hole, that's blacker than the surrounder darkness.

"That's a pretty big mouth," says Anya, her words crisp in the expectant silence.

"Talk about the dentistry bills," mutters Xander.

"Xander," Giles groans in exasperation.

"From beneath you…" whispers Dawn.

Spike lets out a breath of disbelief. "It—

Buffy's eyes fly open, breathing shallowly. Sweat glistens on her forehead from the heat of the room and as she wipes her arm across her face to dispel it, the dream dissipates too.

She rolls onto her side, glancing at the cheap alarm clock glowing green on her bedside table. 4 AM. Giles is probably on his flight by now.

Her stomach growls loudly, begging for breakfast. She glances up at Spike; completely unconscious, his pale face illuminated by the neon lights breaking through a crack in the curtains, touching his blond locks and white skin with orange and blue tones, interrupted by the stark black of his eyebrows and eyelashes.

She decides to leave him sleeping whilst she hunts down food at the diner. Waffles sound amazing right about now.

Still dressed in the jeans and a sweater she'd donned before departing Spike's crypt, all she has to do is slip her shoes and coat back on. The parking lot is a bank of blue light as she strides across to the diner, night air soothing the fever from the motel room, before she slips inside the diner, greeted pleasantly by the smell of bacon and coffee.

Tara, to her surprise, is already up and nursing a tea at a booth near the back. Buffy waves at her and slides in opposite.

"Couldn't sleep?" she asks and Tara shakes her head.

"Too hot."

"Ugh, same. Thank God Spike's cold-blooded, or it'd be sweatsville." Buffy pauses as the waitress comes to take her order. "How are you holding up?" she asks once they're alone again, saying the words quietly as though a softer tone will cushion the question.

Tara shrugs. "Bad." Her gaze drifts to the parking lot outside the window. The rolling highway beyond it, the bright sparks of headlights gliding across every so often. All of it so lonely looking. "I…I w-wish-" Her lip trembles, and Buffy leans in so Tara's voice doesn't need to carry. "I wish I could go back, you know? Do things differently."

"What would you do differently?" Buffy asks as her coffee arrives.

Tara smiles sadly, still not meeting her gaze. "E-everything. I wouldn't… wouldn't take so long to figure out who I was. What I wanted. Wouldn't waste—" her voice cracks. "Wouldn't waste so much time caring what other people thought. I sp-spent so long hiding in plain sight. I th-think… I think after everything that happened last year… when it all nearly… I think people shouldn't hold back, you know? Shouldn't… waste time worrying about whether they're allowed to love someone or not. They should just… love them."

Buffy's blood feels like it's made of ice, cold self-reflection washing through her. She knows Tara's talking about her and Willow, about her past, about the misery she suffered at the hands of a family who took great pains to quash that spark of otherness out of her. Tried to anyway.

But it all hits a little too close to home.

"You still love her?" she asks once her breathing feels steady again, hope burning in her lungs. She needs to hear the confirmation. Needs the words so she can make space inside herself for similar ones. "After everything? All the… everything?"

A beat of silence stretches before Tara swallows. "I'll always love her. I was… I was built to love her."

Buffy nods, her throat tight. "Right." Her waffles arrive and she picks at them until the groan in her gut eases. "You're right. People shouldn't wait when they know…Especially not when they know." Her eyebrow creases a little as she tries to separate her thoughts from the babbling words spilling from her mouth. "If you know, you know."

She risks a glance up at Tara, but she's leaning her head against the glass, staring out into space.

Buffy joins her in quiet contemplation. It's still dark outside but a slight glimmer of blue highlights the horizon. Blue like the color of Spike's eyes and a desperate longing overtakes her, the diner is suddenly the last place she wants to be. "I'm… I'm gonna get some more sleep," she lies, downing her coffee.

Tara resurfaces out of her daze.

"Me too," she agrees and pulls on her coat.

The tinkling bell tolls their exit and Tara takes a deep breath of early morning air as they cross the lot to her room's door. The air is crushed out of her almost immediately as Buffy wraps her arms around her in a hug.

"Thank you," she mumbles, before dashing for her room, leaving Tara blinking in brief bewilderment before a knowing smile curves her lip.