Music flowed through Willow's dreams: one of Mozart's rich, vibrant violin concertos, maybe; an old, old recording in which the violin had still been real wood--spruce, maple, ebony--so rare now in her world as to be more precious than gold--instead of virtual sound created by electrically stimulated brain cells. Or perhaps Yanni's "The End of August" with all its gentle nostalgia, which she'd loved before Oz, before he had taught her to love a new kind of music and then made it so painful to listen to that she'd avoided all music for a while. Oz... How long had it been since she'd last thought of him? Decades? She'd told the vampire Harth that only time was stronger than love. Only time...

She'd had lovers after him, of course--after her beloved Tara, after Kennedy. Women, men, a few demons of indeterminate or multiple sexes. After a while they'd stopped being lovers at all--more a mechanical response to her body's mechanical urges. And then, when her body had surpassed its biological limits and become something closer to a magical construct, she'd stopped seeking contact at all. It had been a relief.

Time. She'd given up counting the years, decades, centuries after Dawn's children died and their children had begun to look at her with all the suspicion of a rabidly technology-addicted society. And well they should have, for she'd been a witch in a magickless world: perpetually yearning, starved, adrift. The few who had chanced upon her through curiosity or desperation or pure bad luck had called her mad, and she'd wished it were so. If only she had not had to see or understand the world's inexorable fate as it rotted from the inside and turned upon itself like a ravenous wolf in an inescapable trap.

If only she could forget the fact that she it was who had condemned it to that fate...

Willow opened her eyes as the memories came flooding back and her heart began to race painfully. She was parched, hungry, and still incapacitated by her wound. The sound of moving water was still there, too distant to be of any use to her in her present state. Nothing else stirred the silence. She waited a long time, mind numbed with horror, for the scavengers, the devourers of the dead to find her again. But eventually her hurting body could hold the tension no longer, and she relaxed bit by bit into the hard ground.

She began to register the fact that she could see--very, very faintly, but the darkness around her was no longer total. Perhaps it was day outside, and sunlight had found its way through cracks in the cave walls. She looked around, moving her head carefully. There were two large still lumps within arm's length of her, and she shuddered at the faint acrid stench of charred flesh.

Magic! Her heart leapt as she recalled the bright searing flood coursing through her. The very air was alive with it, caressing her skin like warm silk on a cool autumn day; like the light of dawn after a howling thunderstorm, when the world was fresh and sparkling new; like the first spring breeze after a long hard winter. She opened herself to it instinctively--and recoiled sharply when the lightning flickers of power danced across the exposed nerve endings of her mind.

All the magic she could ever hope for, and she couldn't touch any of it. Willow croaked a bitter laugh. The gods had a cruel sense of humor. But she already knew that, didn't she?

She closed her eyes and panted until her mind stopped screaming with pain. First she had to give her body something it could use to heal itself. And to do that, she needed sustenance.

She peered again at the grayish mass of scorched protein lying in front of her. "Crispy fried cockroach," she said grimly. "Yum."



William gave up on sleep as the first pearl-gray light of dawn peeked beneath his bedroom curtains. He dressed slowly and carefully, making sure the sleeves of his shirt and jacket covered the bandage around his right wrist and his collar concealed his neck before casting a glance at himself in the mirror. A white, somewhat haggard face peered back at him. But the blue eyes were steady; the trembling had left his hands. He nodded once, satisfied, and left the room.

Two and a half hours later he joined his mother in the breakfast room, a cheerful, airy space with full French windows facing east. "William!" she exclaimed at the sight of him. "Oh my dear, are you unwell? I have never seen you so pale."

He smiled and gently took her hand. "I fear the excitement of last night was too much for me; I do not believe I slept a wink the entire night."

"Then should not you go back to bed?" his mother asked with concern.

"Not at all!" William answered gaily. "In fact, I have never felt so well. Listen, Mother, I have been thinking. I am ashamed to say upon reflection that I have been sadly lax in my duties; I have allowed too many of them to fall upon your shoulders. Do forgive me, I beg. I will apply myself to them directly. There is the matter of delinquent rents, I believe, and the illegal grazing in the west woods; rounds to be made to the farms and cottages, repairs to be applied to the stables before the winter, Mrs. Dale's request for a new cast iron oven and range... And I saw the most interesting advertisement from a Thomas Crapper and Company for a 'Valveless Water Waste Preventer' this morning: a water closet with a siphonic flush. Would you not agree it would make a wonderful improvement to our current situation?"

Anne's eyebrows rose slightly. "May I ask, William, if this sudden enthusiasm has anything to do with the young lady who is staying here as your guest?"

William ducked his head. "Indirectly...perhaps," he responded. "Miss Summers has merely shown me how much we may accomplish, if we but had the courage to set ourselves to do so."

Anne studied her son's face, the faint sense of foreboding again rising within her at the sight of the soft, almost wistful smile there as he spoke that odd young woman's name.

"She does appear to be...most resourceful," Anne responded carefully. "William, will you allow me to put forth a proposal with regard to your guests' situations? I, too, have been thinking..."



Buffy awoke slowly, wreathed in the faint, delightful scent of late summer roses and luxuriously cocooned in the softest bed ever. She wondered sleepily if she could convince the shaman to send it back with her. After all, shouldn't she get some overtime pay for coming all the way back in time to deal with somebody else's apocalypse? William wouldn't mind, would he? What was one less bed in this ginormous place? He could convert the room into a boudoir or saloon. Or a Roman bath complete with a lions-head sprout.

She smiled and stretched. Not that she was all that impatient to get home, plumbing issues and giant bugs notwithstanding. If she knew anything about world-saveage, it was going to take more than a day or two. In the meantime, she got to stay at Hotel de Lord William on an all-expenses-paid vacation. Just thinking of the stories she'd be able to tell Willow and Xander and her mom and Giles--she bet he'd kill for a chance to live in a medieval castle in the 19th century, hah!--made her grin. Also, getting to procrastinate guilt-free on her first semester course selection and gathering enough blackmail material on Spike to keep him out of her hair for the next century? Major bonus.

For now, though, there was the wonderful prospect of sleeping in. She recalled the three-hour training session she'd had scheduled with Giles for today (often followed by a further one-hour session during which Giles claimed he was honing her knowledge in the various kinds of demons she might encounter in her Slaying while in actuality honing her skill at covert napping) with a certain amount of satisfaction. Her mother wasn't here to nag her about chores, Willow wasn't coming by to discuss the summer reading she'd assigned them both, and Xander...she missed Xander. If he'd been around, there would have been a summerful of action flicks, ice cream, and possibly water fights. But he was off on his road trip of self-discovery, and would probably only be back when he figured out that the only way to get to the Fiftieth State was not in his car. Invasion of Waikiki Beach or not.

She had already slipped halfway into a dream about Xander arriving at a beach on a bright blue-and-yellow striped water beetle and being hounded by a family of dolphins who insisted on a toll consisting of spicy tuna sushi rolls, when there came a knock from the door.

"My lady?" a female voice said tentatively on the other side. "Lady Wincott wishes to know if you will join her and Lord Wincott for breakfast this morning. I am to help you dress, if you wish. May I come in?"

...Was sleeping in a 20th century concept, too? "Yeah, sure, come in," she groaned into the pillow.



William looked up at the sound of footsteps approaching the breakfast room, his heart unaccountably beginning to race. Edith dipped in a curtsy at the door. "Miss Summers, my lord, my lady."

And then she was there, framed in the doorway in a flood of early morning light, breathtakingly real and vital and more lovely than even his memories had painted her. She belongs in sunlight, he thought dazedly: her golden skin caressed to warm radiance by its gentle rays; the innate grace of her bearing highlighted by a clarity that might have been cruel to a woman who was at all conscious of it. He longed to touch the tumble of her hair where it fell past her shoulders, that he might learn how those bright curls could glimmer like the most precious of metals and yet look so soft. She gave him a wide smile as she entered, her eyes a sparkling mischievous green above the verdant hues of her dress. "Miss--" her eyebrows rose a little in challenge, and he corrected himself quickly, "B-Buffy. Thank you for joining us."

"Good morning, William," she said politely, looking up at him as he came around to pull her chair back for her, laughter in her voice. To him alone, she whispered, "I think I need a translator in maid-speak. How do you say, 'I know how to brush my own hair, thanks?'"

He turned a little to hide his answering smile from his mother, sensing that worthy lady's disapproval. He knew very well how severe a breach of good manners such casualness between them was, and yet he could not find it in his heart to care. "Try 'I believe Mr. Morgan is ringing the bell for breakfast'. It has always worked for me," he murmured back.

She stifled a giggle as she sat. "Good morning, Mrs. Pratt," she greeted the older woman brightly, and William saw to his delight that even his mother was not immune to their guest's unaffected good cheer.

"Good morning, my dear. I hope you slept well?" his mother smiled.

"Really, really well," Buffy affirmed. "Thanks again for letting me stay. I had no idea when William invited me that he had a castle. 'Cause Spike always acts like...you know. Er, anyway, I would've been happy with a cot in the basement or something, so this is way, way...I'm mean, this place is way, way..." Her hands stretched horizontally, then vertically in an effort to convey the magnitude of the adjective that escaped her grasp.

"I am most happy to hear it," his mother replied, then paused, glancing up at the empty doorway, before continuing, "Indeed, I have had an idea about your situation that I hope will allow you to remain with us for as long as you wish without exciting undue commentary, and thus allow you the freedom of movement about society that I imagine you will need. What say you, Miss Summers, to becoming my ward?"

What Buffy said was, "Huh?"