Thanks to my amazing beta, Eowyn315!!!




Willow’s dark, chilling laugh filled the room, and Buffy suppressed a shudder, forcing herself to take a challenging step nearer to her former friend. The witch raised a single brow at the gesture, crossing her arms over her chest, her laughter fading into a smirk under humorless eyes as she realized that Buffy was serious.

“I just showed you what happened, Buffy,” she stated flatly. “You saw it for yourself. You want me to describe it in graphic detail, too?” She glanced pointedly past Buffy at the still-visible scene of carnage behind her before meeting the Slayer’s eyes with malicious pleasure. “’Cause I thought it was all pretty obvious.”

Buffy flinched slightly, but managed to hold her ground, even taking another step toward the witch. “All that’s obvious is what you *want* me to see. You’re pretty powerful, Will. You could show me anything…couldn’t you?”

Willow’s pride got the better of her, as she shrugged with false modesty, admitting, “Yeah. Guess I could.”

“So how am I supposed to just accept what you show me?” Buffy demanded, moving another step forward. She was only a few steps from Willow now, and closer to her than Willow was to Spike. “Sorry, but you’re gonna have to do a lot better than that.”

At that moment, Willow unfortunately noticed the narrowed distance between Buffy and herself. With a swift gesture behind her in Spike’s direction, the vampire was instantly at her side, his wrists now pinned behind his back, on his knees. Fortunately, his mouth had been returned in the midst of Willow’s latest spell – but Buffy barely had time to register the relief of that.

She gasped and froze as Willow snapped her fingers, and with a brief flash of magical fire, the fingernails of her right hand became long, tapered spears of wood, curling slightly before ending in sharp, vicious points.

Willow smirked as she trailed her hand over the vampire’s chest, barely covered by his tattered black shirt, finally resting the piercing shards of wood directly over his heart. Her eyes never left Buffy’s, smiling coldly when the Slayer looked back up to meet her gaze in shock.

“That’s right, Buffy. That’s close enough.”

**************************************

“Okay…okay…” Jenny muttered as the pages containing the instructions for the counter-spell issued slowly from the printer. “Come on…come on…”

She snatched the sheets of paper up before the last one had even fallen into the tray, scanning them quickly, reading aloud under her breath as she hurried about the room, gathering up the items she knew she would need to perform the spell and tossing them into an empty duffel bag.

Once she had the necessary supplies to break Willow’s spell, she rifled through the journals she had kept over the past few years, seeking one particular volume, the one in which she knew she would find the latest in a long series of binding spells she had devised.

Over the years, it had seemed that whenever Jenny managed to come up with a spell powerful enough to bind the witch-vampiress’s powers, Willow had been a step or two ahead of her in increasing her power, making herself invulnerable to Jenny’s attempts at magic at the last possible moment.

*But…if I can take the most powerful binding spell back to the time this Buffy came from…it should be strong enough…*

Finding the book she needed, Jenny scrolled through it until she found the spell, relieved to find that the ingredients were all in her possession. Swiftly gathering them in trembling hands, she loaded them into the duffel, tossing the books and papers in behind them and zipping it closed.

She took a deep breath, pausing at her front door, staring dubiously up at the various charms and talismans she had put up to protect her from detection by Willow and her magic. It had been literally months since she had left the safety of her hidden haven outside of town, where she kept herself secreted away, working and researching in a never-ending search for a way to stop the powerful vampiress and put things right.

*Not that I could ever put things right…not after…*

She shuddered, forcing that thought from her mind before it could fully form. After all, it wasn’t exactly a helpful thought, considering her destination. It was difficult enough to make herself leave at all, and even harder when faced with the painful reality of her destination, and the agony of the memories she knew she would face when she reached it.

Giles’ home.

*Except…not anymore,* she reminded herself, blinking back tears. *Buffy’s now. He’s…he’s…*

She could not finish the thought, not even after so much time had passed, and she stepped purposefully through the doorway on trembling legs, striding swiftly toward her car and starting the drive across town.

As unwilling as she was to revisit the home of so many of her memories, good and bad, Jenny knew that in a practical sense, Giles’ apartment was the best and safest place – indeed, the *only* place – to complete the magic she knew she had to do. According to Buffy, his house was the only place in Sunnydale unaffected by Willow’s world-altering spells.

If she did the spell anywhere else, there was a good chance that she would end up wherever she had been in the original world, with no memory of the magic needed to bind Willow for good, no memory of anything that had happened at all. She would not have the strength or knowledge to stop the witch, and everything would happen as it already had, all over again.

Jenny sighed, shaking her head as she pressed harder on the accelerator.

*Getting confusing…gotta stop thinking so much…*

**************************************

“Willow…don’t…” Buffy barely heard her own whispered words, was hardly aware she had spoken aloud at all. She shook her head slowly, taking an instinctive step closer to her former friend, who now held Spike hostage. “Don’t do this…”

“You know, Buffy,” Willow sneered, one hand gripping Spike’s hair and jerking his head back hard as the other trailed sharp, unsettling wooden fingernails across his flesh, pushing aside the tattered remains of his shirt to expose the vulnerable skin beneath. “I think you’re just a little bit too concerned about what happens to him. He’s a vampire, after all. You’re supposed to slay him…right? So why do you care if I just save you the trouble?”

Buffy hesitated, unsure of the answer to Willow’s question, only certain of one thing.

She *did* care what happened to Spike.

Over the past few days – or years, depending on one’s perspective – they had been through a lot together, and she had seen a side of the vampire she had never expected to see. There was a torrent of confused, muddled feelings roiling around in her mind, and she could not even begin to make order of them, or even put names to all of them, at this moment.

All she knew was that it *did* matter to her whether or not Willow took his life…and if there was anything she could do about it, she would save him.

The problem was…it didn’t appear that there *was* anything she could do about it.

“Willow…just wait a second…”

Her voice trailed off, a puzzled frown on her face as she realized that Willow was no longer listening to her. The witch’s brow was creased in a troubled expression, and she appeared to be listening to something outside of Buffy’s range of hearing.

“Willow?” Buffy attempted again, hesitantly.

“Shut up!” Willow snarled, closing her eyes, her head tilted slightly as she tried to focus on whatever it was she was seeing, hearing, that Buffy was unaware of.

After a moment, she opened her eyes again, and Buffy’s blood ran cold at the black pools of malice that they had become. Willow smiled coldly at her as she released Spike and allowed him to collapse back to his knees on the floor, shaking and gasping with relief. As she spoke, the strange wooden nails she had given herself retracted back into their own human form.

“We’re gonna have to postpone this for a little while.”

The young vampiress waved her hand behind her and released a burst of magical power that lifted Spike off the ground and slammed him violently against the wall across the room. The moment his body connected with the wall, iron chains appeared on it, locking around his wrists and ankles and holding him there. Buffy stared in stunned horror, her throat going dry as she was reminded once more of just how powerful and dangerous Willow had become.

Her thoughts were cut off by a violent, painful impact as in the next moment, she found herself slammed against the wall beside Spike, hard enough to knock the breath from her body. Chains similar to his immediately bound her to the wall, and even as she struggled against them in an instinctive reaction, she found to her frustration that they would not yield.

“I’ll be back in a little while,” Willow informed her with a smile that was almost cheerful. “There’s something I have to take care of. And when I get back…I’ll finish this.” Her voice lowered, hardening over the last words in a way that left no doubt as to her meaning. Her tone lightened again as she added with a flippant shrug, “Don’t go anywhere.”

She turned her back and sauntered away from them as if she was going to leave the room in a normal manner, though after a few steps, she simply faded into nothingness. The moment she left, the illusion she had created for their benefit disappeared as well, leaving only the stark cold reality of Willow’s mansion, which was for all its foreboding still a blessed relief from the horror of Giles’ death scene.

Buffy was silent for a moment, unable to find words in the strange tension that fell between her and Spike in the absence of Willow’s immediate threat. His shame, so cruelly revealed to her eyes, was like a physical presence, overwhelming her with an uncomfortable feeling of mingled guilt and disgust and anger…though she wasn’t exactly sure at whom all those muddled feelings were directed.

“Okay,” she said finally, her voice low and carefully controlled. “This can’t be good.”

Spike was quiet for a moment, though his rapid, shallow breaths were clearly audible in the stillness between them. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and listless, hopeless.

“She’s goin’ after Jenny.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.” Buffy’s lips formed a tight, grim line as she gratefully focused on the problem at hand, anything to distract her from the other thoughts echoing on the borders of her mind, fighting for her attention. “Which means…she must have left the house, right? If Willow can tell what she’s doing?”

She glanced reluctantly at Spike, who nodded, his head bowed and turned slightly away from her.

“Which means she’s probably found the counter-spell…right?”

“I…I didn’t do it, Buffy.”

Spike’s anguished whisper sent her heart plummeting down to somewhere around her stomach, as she was forced to face the issue she had been trying to avoid. Yet at the same time, she felt a sense of relief at his words, which rang true for her in a way she could not quite explain. She just knew that they did not come as a surprise to her; some part of her had already believed that Spike could not be capable of such an act as Willow had shown her.

“I know,” she replied, after a moment’s hesitation. “I know you didn’t. You couldn’t.”

“I could’ve,” Spike corrected her, shaking his head in shame. “I…I almost did. I bit him.”

Buffy’s relief instantly faded into horror, and she pulled against the bonds that held her, instinctively pulling away from the bound vampire beside her. “No,” she whispered, shaking her head in denial. “I don’t wanna hear this…”

“They’d already…already done the damage,” Spike went on, seeming to need this confession as much as she needed to avoid it. “He was…covered in blood. Willow and Angel…they…they’d soddin’ torn him apart.”

“No,” Buffy whimpered, blinking back tears as she fought her bonds in an effort to escape his words.

“I…I hadn’t eaten in months. They…they kept me starved, on purpose, so that I’d…so it wouldn’t matter…but…but I didn’t want to, love…I didn’t want to…” There was a pleading note in Spike’s voice, and she could hear the sound of his tears in the trembling, sniffling sound.

Buffy broke down, too, unable to bring herself to speak as he went on.

“They locked me in with him. Couldn’t save him. Couldn’t do a bloody thing for him. They…didn’t think it would take me so long…but for hours, I…I held out. I didn’t want to…” Spike’s voice broke, and he trailed off, shaking his head in guilty despair. “He was dead…before I touched him, Buffy. I swear it. I knew when my fangs touched him…with the first taste of his blood…he was already gone. But…but it didn’t matter. I knew I…I wasn’t strong enough…”

The heavy silence descended around them for a few moments longer, as Buffy struggled to deal with the weight of the revelation Spike had made, and Spike struggled with the burden of his own guilt. Finally, he broke the silence in a strangled whisper of shattered despair.

“I…I failed you…I’m so sorry, Buffy…so sorry…”