A/N: Thanks to my wonderful beta, Eowyn315!!! :)



Jenny froze in the doorway to the apartment, her breath catching in her throat. Her heart pounded as a wave of overwhelming emotions washed over her at the sight that met her eyes beyond the door. She had expected Giles’ apartment to look similar to the way it had the last time she had seen it – years earlier, the night he had died there, when she had held his broken body in her arms and the largest part of her heart had died. She had expected it to look similar enough that it would be difficult for her just being there.

She had not expected for absolutely nothing to have changed.

She forced her trembling legs to carry her past the doorway into the living room, blinking back tears that blurred her vision as she took in the painfully familiar furnishings, the books spread out across every available surface, the trunks full of all manner of mysterious artifacts, and Giles’ overcoat hung neatly on the coat rack to the left of the door…just as if he had never left it. As if he had been living there only moments earlier.

And according to Buffy, in this house, he had been…and would be again, if she could complete the spell and return things to the way they should have been.

That startling thought brought Jenny back to the reality of the moment, and she swallowed hard, blinking her tears away as she hurried to the middle of the living room and began pulling her supplies out of her bag with trembling hands, arranging them around her. She picked up the globe containing the trapped version of the town and sat cross-legged in the center of the circle, holding the globe in both hands.

She lit the candles around her, scattered the appropriate combination of herbs in the circle, and began to speak the Latin words to the spell, her voice low and hoarse, barely above a whisper with her suppressed tears. Within a few short minutes, everything would be restored, and the pain she felt in this moment, the grief that had followed her for five long years, would vanish away.

Suddenly, the front door to the apartment slammed open with a bang, and her eyes flew open, startled as she looked up to see Willow standing in the doorway, her hands on her hips. Her eyes were black as night and her dark hair whipped around her face in an unnatural wind as she entered the room, advancing on Jenny and her magical circle.

“Tag,” the witch said with false cheer, a playful sparkle in her dark, malevolent eyes. “You’re it.”

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

“I…I don’t understand.” Buffy’s voice trembled as she shook her head, trying to make sense of what Spike was telling her through the tumultuous emotions that clouded her thoughts. “Are you telling me that…I mean…you didn’t kill him…but…?”

“No,” Spike insisted, his voice rising with his need to make her understand, his arms straining toward her against his bonds. He longed to touch her, to make her face him so that he could read the look in her eyes, somehow guess at what she was thinking, how she was taking his revelation. “No, Buffy…I swear it, love…I didn’t. I didn’t kill him; I’d never have done that to you! Held out as long as I could, love…tried to fight it…”

“But in the end…you bit him,” Buffy whispered, her head lowered, tears streaming from her closed eyes. “You…you *drank* him. If…if he hadn’t died just then…you *would* have killed him.”

Spike swallowed back the bitter taste of shame in the back of his throat, trembling as a cold knot of guilt formed in the pit of his stomach. “He was…was already gone, love. And it’d been…weeks, since…since they’d let me…” He shook his head, his voice breaking off as he struggled to control his own emotions. “I couldn’t…I couldn’t help…”

“Does it really make a difference?” Buffy whispered, her voice trembling with confusion and heartache.

The question hung between them, the unknown answer holding the direction of their relationship within its grasp.

A heavy silence descended between them, as Buffy tried to make sense of what had happened, and Spike tried to find the words to explain his actions. In the end, all he could bring himself to offer was a desperate, whispered plea.

“Buffy…don’t hate me…please…don’t hate me…”

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

“This is really…cute.”

Willow smirked as she sauntered nearer to Jenny’s circle, taking her time, clearly in no hurry to stop her ritual…though at this point the adept techno-pagan was in a definite hurry to finish it. She kept chanting quietly under her breath, her words coming faster as the witch advanced.

“Nice try, Jenny, really. You found the ritual. And in another, oh…” Willow glanced speculatively at the supplies around Jenny, listening to her whispered chant for a few moments before crouching in front of her and concluding in a soft, menacing voice, “…five minutes, you’d have had it finished. So close, huh? Must be really disappointing to know that I’m gonna kill you before you get the chance to get it done.”

Jenny ignored her, just continued chanting the words to the spell, not even looking up at Willow, though her shoulders were tense with fear, her voice strained, painfully aware that at any moment the witch might attack her and all would be lost. Until the spell was finished, Willow’s power was far greater than any that Jenny could wield herself.

*If she’ll just keep gloating for another…four minutes…*

“Did you really think you could beat me?” Willow continued, giving Jenny every indication that she just might give her enough time after all. “After all these years of staying at least a step behind me, you think that for some reason, *now* you’ll be able to defeat me? Nice thought,” she sneered, rising to her feet, towering over the seated woman. “Now, why don’t you think of another nice thought? Make it a really good one, because it’s gonna be the last one you ever have.”

Jenny braced herself for the attack as Willow raised her hands in preparation for a magical strike. She knew her only chance – the only chance for all of them – was for the spell to be completed, and although she was almost sure Willow was not going to let her do it, she could do nothing but keep trying until she was no longer able to try.

Willow thrust her hands forward, muttering Latin in a dark, ominous voice as she took aim at Jenny, and electric blue sparks flew between the fingertips of her hands – but flew no farther, sparking weakly for just a few moments, then fizzling out completely. Willow frowned, staring at her hands as if looking for the cause of her spell’s failure, before glaring at Jenny and taking aim again.

Once again, the spell fell short, Willow’s magic unable to touch Jenny, even as a swirling vortex of shimmering silver light began to rise up and surround her and the now glowing orb in her hands. Willow’s eyes went wide with startled confusion, as Jenny hurried through the last few phrases of the spell, a wild hope beginning within her that she just might be able to finish after all.

And even as she uttered the last few words, and Willow looked on in helpless frustration, Jenny realized what had happened.

The wards she and Giles had set in place before Willow had changed everything had protected the area within the house not only from that particular spell of Willow’s, but from any other magic Willow might attempt to perform. By the same token, the wards had been set *only* to block Willow’s spells. Jenny and Giles or anyone else in their group still had the freedom to perform magic within these walls with success.

As the vortex surrounding her rose to a frightening intensity, the orb in Jenny’s hands suddenly shattered into countless shards of sparkling light, like glittering bits of glass. Before she even had time to be afraid of being cut, however, she realized that it had somehow imploded rather than exploded, hundreds of tiny, shimmering fragments closing in on themselves in the circle formed by her hands until there was nothing left at all. Finally, the vortex itself collapsed, leaving an eerie stillness and silence in its wake.

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

Buffy looked around her in bewilderment, feeling unsteady and disoriented, unsure of what had just happened. One moment she had been in Willow’s mansion, chained to the wall next to Spike, trying with all her broken, confused heart to figure out her own feelings about what Willow had shown her, and what Spike had confessed.

The next moment, she was…not.

She blinked as her eyes adjusted to the much brighter lighting and gradually came into focus. To her amazement and confusion – and then, gradually, relief – she found that she was back in Giles’ apartment, on the couch, where she had been asleep when everything had changed. Jenny and Giles were not in sight, but within moments it was obvious why, as the two adults hurried into the apartment from out on the porch.

Spike was nowhere to be found.

Each of them had been returned to exactly where they had been when Willow had cast her world-changing spell.

“It worked!” Jenny announced unnecessarily. “The spell worked! Things are back to normal!”

“Great.” Buffy nodded with a tight, anxious smile, because the battle was far from over. “Great job, Miss Calendar. Okay, first of all…does everybody remember? Everything?” She glanced around at the faces of the teacher and the Watcher, waiting until Jenny nodded, before rising to her feet and turning her attention toward her Watcher.

The instant her eyes met his, they welled with tears, obscuring her view of him. “Giles,” she whispered, crossing the room to him, without any thought for propriety or embarrassment, throwing her arms around him and embracing him, her head buried against his chest as her shoulders shook with sobs.

The Watcher just held her, only momentarily surprised by her reaction.

After all, he remembered everything, too…which was rather a strange state of mind to be in, all things considered.

“Hey, guys?” Jenny asked quietly, hesitant to break the powerfully emotional moment, but with concern in her voice. “Where’s Spike?”

Buffy froze, her heart lurching within her as she remembered where Spike had been when the spell had been cast – somewhere in Sunnydale, imprisoned by Willow, and judging by what she had seen of her former friend’s behavior, most likely tortured and in terrible pain.

*Can’t think about that right now…have to stop her…it’s the only way to help Spike, the only way to help any of us…*

Buffy quickly composed herself, pulling away from her Watcher and sniffling back tears as she gave him a brave smile.

“Willow’s got him. We’ve gotta hurry,” she reminded them both, glancing between them. “Or it’s gonna be too late for him, and too late for us, too. If we give her long enough, she’s just gonna…ruin everything again.” She turned toward Jenny, all business. “Have you got everything we need for the binding spell?”

Jenny nodded, turning and crouching in front of her open duffel bag to take out the remaining supplies inside. “This should do it, and this spell only takes a couple of minutes. Wherever Willow is right now, she’s nowhere near as powerful as she was a few minutes ago. If we can do this binding spell before she can get here and stop us…”

“Yeah…that’s the part that’s worrying me,” Buffy remarked dryly, glancing with anxious eyes toward the front door, still standing partially open. “’Cause she can get here pretty fast.”

“But that’s just it!” Jenny was smiling triumphantly, her eyes sparkling with excitement. “She can get here…but she can’t stop us. She can’t perform any magic inside this house.”

Buffy’s eyes widened as she remembered. “The wards.”

“Yeah. They stopped her, even as powerful as she was in the world she made. They’ll certainly hold her back now. She can’t use her magic to stop the spell.”

“That’s too bad.”

All three occupants of the room turned their attention toward the door, where a disheveled Willow stood, breathing hard though she did not need the oxygen, bracing herself on the doorjamb as she glared at them all in turn. Apparently, the trip from her own fantasy world back to reality had been a rather jarring one for her. As they all watched her in wary silence, she stared back at them, a defiant smirk rising to her lips.

“Oh, well. There’s always that standby, good old-fashioned violence.”