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I Would Still Have Loved You by slaymesoftly
 
Chapter Twenty-two
 
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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
 
Buffy was up earlier than she wanted to be, the sound of trash trucks in the alley having waked her.  Spike had his pillow over his head and clearly had no plans to wake up at what was close to a vampire’s bedtime. She showered, got dressed, had some dry cereal, made a mental note to buy milk, and left to see if she could catch Willow at the dorm. She patted her pocket to make sure she had both her phone and Willow’s letter.
 
She took her time strolling to the campus, knowing there were no classes until the following week. The official explanation for classes being cancelled was a machinery malfunction that had made it necessary to keep the classroom areas unoccupied until repairs could be made and until any signs of the explosion and fire had been cleaned up.
 
When she reached their floor of the dorm, she found Willow just coming back from the bathrooms.
 
“Hey.” Willow seemed happier to see her than Buffy had expected. “You didn’t make it back last night, huh?”
 
“Uh, no. I was gonna tell you but with Tara there….”
 
“Yeah. I… I… um… really like her.” She paused and stared at Buffy. “But you already knew that, didn’t you?”
 
Buffy couldn’t tell if there was an edge to Willow’s voice or not as she acknowledged Buffy’s superior knowledge about her future.
 
“Well, you did in our time, but since things are different now I wasn’t sure. I mean, you weren’t likely to not like her, ‘cause she’s Tara and everybody does, but I’m glad you two hit it off.” Buffy gave her a smile as they entered their room. “And I have something for you.” Buffy held out the envelope.
 
“What’s this?” Willow frowned at it. “Is that my handwriting?  Is this from me?”
 
“Yes. Winston had two letters—one for you from future you, and one for Giles from future Giles.”
 
“Why didn’t future me and Giles just give them to you?” Willow eyed it with suspicion.
 
“Something that changed right away—when Spike and I first got here—changed the timeline enough for Winston to be at the Council and be sent back with the letters. He wasn’t there when I got sent back.”
 
“Do you trust him?” Willow asked as she opened the envelope and pulled out the folded paper as if it might bite her.
 
Buffy shrugged. “As much as I trust anybody I just met and never heard of before.”
 
“Seems like a lot of trouble to go to just so Giles and I could send letters to ourselves.”
 
“I think there might be other reasons he’s here. Some of them related to helping us with Glory, and something else that Spike and I have to do that we don’t know about yet.”
 
Willow sank down on her bed and began to read her letter. Unlike the few paragraphs Giles had sent to himself, Willow’s missive was two typed pages on computer paper.  While Willow was reading, Buffy went to her drawers and tried to decide what clothes to keep where.
 
“Here, the apartment, the crypt and mom’s – I’m not sure I own that many outfits,” she muttered to herself. Deciding that she was ultimately more likely to be on campus or at her mom’s often enough to change clothes or grab more, she pulled out just enough to be sure she had one pair of jeans, one or two clean shirts and underwear and socks at both the apartment and the crypt.  As she was looking around for a bag of some sort in which to put them, she noticed Willow had stopped reading and was staring at her.
 
“What?”
 
“Why didn’t you just tell me this?” Willow said, waving the paper around. “Did you think I wouldn’t listen?” Her voice was shrill.
 
Buffy bit her tongue to keep from reminding Willow that she hadn’t wanted to hear any advice from any of them.
 
“I don’t know what ‘this’ is, Willow.  The you who wrote that isn’t the future you I know. She’s had a different life in some way or ways. I don’t have any idea what that letter says because I wasn’t there when it was written and I don’t know what happened. All I know is, something changed after we got here.”  She waited for a few seconds and when Willow didn’t respond, she put the clothes down and walked over to sit on the bed. She frowned at the expression on Willow’s face.
 
“Are you all right?  What does it say?”
 
“Gefilte Fish”
 
Buffy flinched away, her frown deepening. “Wills?”
 
Staring at Buffy, Willow said “The My Will Be Done Spell is over. I end it. Now I end it. No more Willow’s willing from this girl. Nope. Done. Over.”
 
“Wow. Is that it? Can you tell if it’s over?”
 
“Gefilte Fish” Willow looked around the room and said, “Your bed is gone.” Buffy yelped, then relaxed as her bed and the clothes on it remained fixed to the floor.
 
“That must have been some letter….”
 
Willow ignored Buffy’s strong hint to share with her, just falling back on her bed and clutching the letter to her chest. “I need to talk to Winston.”
 
Buffy blinked her surprise, then said, “I don’t know how to find him, but Giles probably does. Maybe he stayed there last night. They looked pretty settled in with their booze and Council talk.”
 
“I need to find him,” Willow repeated. She fixed Buffy with a sad gaze. “Just so you know, if you and Spike screw up and you die next year, I’m not bringing you back. You’re going to have to stay dead.”
 
Buffy nodded. “We know that. So far, since I’ve been around to be sent back in both my time and Winston’s, that hasn’t changed.  But if it does… I don’t want you to bring me back.”
 
“And Spike will try to stop me if I try….”
 
Buffy nodded. “He will.”  She walked over to Willow’s bed and sat beside her, stroking the hair off her face. “Thank you for breaking that spell.”
 
Willow grimaced. “Well, there’s nothing like having my future self tell me, in impressively scary detail, how much trouble I’ve caused by having it in place to make it sound like the worst idea ever.” She raised damp eyes to Buffy and sat up. “I never meant to hurt anybody.”
 
Buffy put her arms around Willow and hugged her tightly. “I know that, Wills. We all know that. You were hurting and we weren’t there for you the way we should have been. It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t know—”
 
“That I was pulling power from the hellmouth?” Willow gave Buffy a wry smile as they separated. “You’re right. I didn’t know. But I didn’t care where it was coming from, either, I thought it was all me. Something Tara said when she was explaining earth magic last night kinda…. Well, it made me think about where magic comes from a little more. But this…” She waved the paper around, “…this explains just exactly how badly it could go. Or did go, I guess.” She shuddered, still clutching her letter.
 
“So, can I call Giles and tell him the spell isn’t in effect anymore and he can relax? And I’ll ask him where Winston is.”
 
“Yeah, yeah. Tell everybody Willow’s safe to be around again.” She set her face in stern lines. “But I’m not giving up magic!” she said firmly. “I’m just going to learn to do it safely.”
 
“That’s all anybody wants from you,” Buffy said, beaming at her. “I know I don’t want to have to do without your magic. You help me a lot next year.”
 
“Okay. Make your phone calls. I’m going to get dressed and meet Tara for brunch.”  She glanced at Buffy’s expression and said, “Quit smirking, missy. I already told you I really like her.”
 
“Not saying a word,” Buffy laughed as she pulled out her new cell phone.
 
XXXXX
 
When Buffy had assured Giles that the spell was gone, and that Willow wanted to talk with Winston, she put the phone away and picked up her small pile of extra clothes.
 
“Giles says he doesn’t know exactly where Winston is right now, but he’ll try to find him. If nothing else, you can see him at tonight’s Scooby meeting and set up a time to talk.”
 
“Okay. At some point, I may want to bring Tara along to Scooby meetings. I mean she knows a lot of… stuff. Not just magic, but she knows about vamps and demons, and I told her a little bit about you. But I don’t want to bring her around everybody until I know her a little better and she’s had a chance to absorb more about us.”
 
“That’s probably a good plan. Take your time and get to know each other. With Adam gone, I’m hoping for a fairly quiet rest of the year. I’ll have to watch out for Faith, and Giles will be looking for Ethan, but as soon as I’ve taken care of the Gentlemen…. Oh!”  Buffy’s eyes got big.
 
“Oh?” 
 
“It’s probably nothing. It’s just that that’s when you actually started getting to know Tara. I think the two of you worked together to do some magic on a coke machine or something when you were hiding from the Gentlemen or their minions.  I don’t think it matters that you’ve started being friends a little earlier, but….”
 
“But if it took two of us to stay safe, we might be in danger alone.”
 
Buffy nodded. “It happens when Olivia gets here to stay with Giles, so maybe by then Tara will trust you enough to believe you when you say you need to stay together for a few nights.”
 
“Yeah, I guess I don’t want to tell her I know because you’re from the future.” She sighed. “What are you going to do about Xander… and Anya?”
 
Buffy shook her head. “I don’t know. I didn’t want to tell anybody, but then I had to tell Giles, and then I had to tell you and Mom…. I guess I’ll just have to see how hard it gets to be, keeping it a secret and coming up with explanations for things. Like Spike. How the hell am I going to explain Spike? I don’t even have your spell where we thought we were getting married to blame it on.”
 
“Yeah. Good luck with that.” Willow made a face. “On the other hand, it’ll soften him up for when I introduce Tara as my….”
 
“Already?”
 
“No. No. Of course not. We’re just getting to know each other. But future me told me about her, so sooner or later, I guess….”  Willow shrugged. “I’m still getting used to the idea, but I can see why I might….”
 
“Well don’t push it just because you know it happened in other time lines.”
 
Willow nodded. “Yeah. I’m not in a hurry. Still seems like it will be weird, you know?”
 
Buffy nodded and they walked out of the building together – going off in different directions.
 
XXXXXXX
 
As they rode toward Giles’s apartment, Buffy was uncharacteristically quiet. Before she opened her door to get out, Spike reached over and touched her arm.
 
“What are you worried about, pet?”
 
“Oh… I don’t know. Everything? Xander’s going to go ape shit when he realizes we’re living together, and there’s really no way to explain it without telling him what I really don’t think anybody else needs to know. And he hasn’t even been around for all the Adam stuff, so he doesn’t know about Willow’s spell or why she decided to break it. There’s just going to be all this stuff we need to talk about, and we can’t do it in front of Xander and Anya, and—”
 
“And we’ll deal with it if and when we need to. Old Rupert’s pretty quick on his feet, and so, I’m guessing is Winnie the Warlock. Let them take the lead and see what they come up with.”
 
“Have I mentioned how much I hate it when you make sense?” She opened her door and got out.
 
He was laughing as he got out of his side. “Doesn’t happen all that often, does it, love?”
 
“Fortunately, no.”
 
They were both laughing as they entered the apartment, sending Xander scampering behind the couch and holding up a cross.  “Holy Batman, Giles. The bleached bloodsucker is loose!”
 
“It’s fine, Xander, remember he’s harmless now.” Buffy tried to seem only appropriately unconcerned about the vampire she could feel right behind her.
 
“Then why is he here? And why is he standing so close to you? Did you tell him he has to stay within staking distance?”
 
Buffy sighed and shook her head. She glanced at Giles. “Help?”
 
He shrugged and said, “I’ll see what I can do.”  Turning to Xander, he said, “Spike has agreed to help us with… with whatever else comes up this year. He and Buffy have formed another truce, as they did some time ago when he assisted her against Angelus.”
 
“Help? We’re her help. You, me, Willow… we’re the Scoobies. We don’t need another bloodsucker in the gang. Look what happened last time.”
 
Buffy was spared having to respond when Willow entered, followed by Winston. She raised her eyebrows, but Willow shook her head.
 
“We just happened to be walking up to the door at the same time, but we’re going to talk later.”
 
“Oh. Okay, well good.” Buffy glanced at Winston. “Did she tell you—” 
 
“Rupert shared it with me. I’ve already told her I think she’s made an excellent decision.”
 
Xander waved his hand around, ignoring Anya who was tugging on his arm and telling him to sit down.
 
“What decision?  And who are you? Have I landed in some alternate dimension where everybody’s talking about things I don’t understand, and vampires are allowed to be Scoobies, and now some strange British guy is telling my best friend she’s made a good decision and I have no idea what he’s talking about?”
 
Giles sighed and glared at Xander.
 
“Winston, this over-excited young man is Buffy and Willow’s friend Xander. The young lady with him is Anya, a former vengeance demon but now one of our little group of fighters against evil.”  Ignoring Anya’s gasp, he waited for that information to sink in before continuing. “Xander and Anya, this is Winston…Smyth. Winston is from the coven that assists the Council from time to time. He was here to supervise the authorities’ takeover of the Initiative and to assist Buffy if she needed it.”
 
Anya gave Winston a suspicious glare and a wave. “Giles, why did you tell him what I was?  I’m just a normal human woman now. That wasn’t necessary!”
 
“I felt that with Winston’s knowledge of the supernatural and his possible stay in Sunnydale for some time, there was no reason for him not to know as much as possible about the people with whom he may be working.”
 
Winston went over to Anya and gazed into her still-suspicious eyes. He smiled and said, “I am so pleased to meet you. I’ve been looking forward to it for some time.”
 
Anya simpered and seemed to completely forget that she didn’t trust him. Nor did she question how someone new to Sunnydale could have been looking forward to meeting her. She held out her hand and Winston took it in both of his. “I am hoping we will be great friends,” he said.
 
“Enough with the smarmy British charm,” Xander said, pulling Anya back to his side.
 
“Of course,” Winston said smoothly. “I hope we will be great friends also, Mr. Harris. I’m quite interested in hearing more about the exploits of Xander Harris, ordinary human who fights at the Slayer’s side and whose best friend is a powerful witch. I’m sure you have exciting stories to tell.”
 
Xander blinked at him in surprise, his belligerent posture relaxing immediately. He flushed as he mumbled something about, “just helping out my friend Buffy.” 
 
“Wow,” Buffy whispered to Giles. “Did you know he could do that?”
 
“Do what? Behave like a proper English gentleman? Why wouldn’t he?”
 
“Bollocks,” Spike added in a quieter tone. “I was a proper English gentleman, and on my best day I could never finesse a situation like that.”
 
Giles shot Spike an astonished glance, but before he could follow up on the English gentleman comment, Willow joined them and added her assessment.
 
“Gentleman, shmentleman, that’s magic at work.”
 
“It may seem so, but trust me, it’s what good manners and a non-confrontational attitude can do.” Giles gave Buffy and Spike a look that managed to seem casual and very pointed at the same time.
 
Buffy rolled her eyes, but Spike just grinned. “We don’t do non-confrontational, do we, pet?”
 
“Speak for yourself, Spike,” Buffy huffed, but she was smiling.
 
Giles sighed his defeat, saying, “What do you say we bring Xander and Anya up to speed on what has happened recently—in terms of Willow’s brilliant idea for bringing down a potential danger and the success she had,” he added quickly.
 
“Right. We should do that.  Let’s do that.” Buffy nodded her head and, without thinking, sank onto the arm of the chair Spike had already settled into. When Giles cleared his throat, and Xander appeared about to choke, she remembered that none of the people in this room had ever seen the two of them cuddling in the big chair for hours.  She jumped up just as Spike started to slip his arm around her waist. “Oops! Silly me. I didn’t see Spike sitting there.”  She sent him a glare for his growl and an apologetic shrug as she pulled one of the side chairs up beside him.
 
When everyone was seated, Giles asked Willow, “Would you like to tell your story, or shall Buffy or I do it?”
 
“I… I think I can do it without…. Yeah, I’ll do it.” She smiled at Buffy. “You’ll stop me if I… uh… leave something out or maybe say too much?”
 
Buffy nodded. “It was your brilliant idea and you did it, so go for it. I trust you.”
 
Xander was again wearing the “I’ve got no idea what’s going on and I don’t like it” expression he’d had on ever since Buffy and Spike walked in the door. Anya, however, was gazing quietly at everyone, her eyes passing over each person in turn. Buffy could almost see the wheels turning in her head. She knew that despite human Anya’s apparent ignorance in many everyday situations, she was also a thousand years old and capable of being very shrewd when it came to judging people. It occurred to Buffy that time-travel might well be something a former vengeance demon would be quite knowledgeable about.
 
“Okay,” Willow began. “So, you know I was really unhappy about Oz being gone, and nobody really paying attention to how much I needed my friends to be there for me—right?”
 
Xander gave a guilty nod while Anya just rolled her eyes.
 
Willow glared at Anya, then continued.  “Well, I looked up this spell and….”
 
 
When Willow had finished her tale of how she used the spell’s power to destroy what they knew was a potentially dangerous cyborg, she paused and took a deep breath. Buffy smiled at her and Spike gave her a thumbs up for the way she’d managed not to dwell on exactly how Buffy knew what was going on under Lowell House, letting Xander assume it was something she’d learned from Riley.
 
“Wow,” Xander said. “All that happened just since Thanksgiving?” 
 
“Yep. We found out about a problem and fixed it, all in a couple of days.”
 
“Wow, Willow.  I’m impressed.”
 
“My Will Be Done spells can be very dangerous,” Anya said, staring not at Willow, but at Buffy. “Bad things can happen accidentally.”
 
Willow glared at Anya—making Buffy very grateful the spell had been broken—before saying through gritted teeth, “Of course they can. I knew that. That’s why I ended the spell as soon as I didn’t need it anymore.”
 
Before there could be anything more said, Winston stepped in. “That someone of Willow’s youth could work a spell like that, and know when it was time to end it, is most impressive. I’m looking forward to working with—getting to know her better in the future.”
 
“Oh right,” Xander said. “The G-man said you’re a whatchamacallem warlock?”
 
Winston smiled. “We don’t use that term. Just think of me as someone who has some magical experience and ability.”
 
Xander stared around the room. “Looks like you and me are the only regular humans here, Anya. And I still don’t get why the bloodsucker is here.”
 
“He’s here because I want him here, Xander. He’s going to help me.”
 
“Backup muscle, huh?” Xander studied the vampire who was sitting quietly, playing with his Zippo as he waited.  “I guess that makes sense.  With Deadboy gone to LA, I guess the Buffster could use another fangy helper sometimes.” He sneered at Spike. “At least she won’t fall in love with this one. Right, Buffy?”
 
Before anyone could fill the uncomfortable silence, the shrill ringing of the phone gave Giles an excuse to ask for quiet as he picked it up.  “Yes, yes, that will be fine. I’ll meet you at the airport.” He smiled. “As am I. It will be wonderful to see you again.”  He hung up and said to Buffy, “Olivia will be here late morning tomorrow.”
 
Buffy nodded. “Okay, so tomorrow night then.” She glanced at Xander and Anya, but decided against warning them as they’d been perfectly safe in her time. Willow nodded at Buffy and made the okay sign with her fingers.
 
Anya and Xander wore matching frowns as once again it seemed everyone except them was communicating about something.  He pulled Anya to her feet, saying, “If we’re all done being mysterious here, I think we’ll just take ourselves home where the only things we don’t know are which of my parents will pass out first.”
 
He stopped at the door. “Do you need a ride, Willow?”
 
“Oh, thanks, but no. I have stuff to talk to Winston about. Boring magical stuff. You guys go on without me.”
 
“Right. Boring magical stuff.” He yanked Anya out the door, ignoring her yelp of protest.
 
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