It didn’t take much to tweak the past. Spike had been an inch away from suicide almost every day since Buffy’s death. One little twist to the timeline, and suddenly there was no more Spike. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, one less vampire in the world.

    It was going to be better. Anya was sure of it. Buffy wouldn’t have been so confused by the demon. She’d have been paying more attention to her friends. Maybe Tara wouldn’t die. Maybe Willow wouldn’t have gone down such a dark path. Maybe... maybe Xander wouldn’t have left Anya. Not that she’d keep him if suddenly they were happily married with a baby on the way or something. She’d divorce him right quick – and make him feel hurt, the way he’d made her hurt.

    But Anya hadn’t expected the wish to affect her. The last time she’d done this – made it so someone just wasn’t there – she walked around the vampire-haunted Sunnydale, observing the changes, and smiled at her work. This time, her own past was dragged into it, along with everyone else’s. She’d been human. She’d been part of this circle. Everything was different for Anya, too. At least, at first.

***

 

    Dawn picked up the phone in Giles’ room. “Hello?”

    “Dawn, it’s Willow. Everything still okay?”

    “Yeah, the hospital’s still on lockdown. No one’s let in or out. Are the demons still... demoning?”

    “Sort of,” Willow said. “They’re dispersing now. They were... were scared off. We’ll be joining you in about twenty minutes. Is Giles still okay?”

    “Yeah. They still say there’s still no swelling to the spinal cord or anything, so... I guess he can say a vampire broke his neck, and he survived unharmed.”

    “Unharmed is a bit of an overstatement,” Giles said from his bed, where he was, as he occasionally described it, “bound and gagged” with a stiff neck-brace keeping him almost immobile. He’d been there for the last week. Trying to hunt vampires with only a robot, two witches, and two base humans (though one was an ex-demon) was not the same as having a slayer, a trained alien-hunting commando, or a vampire of semi-good persuasion at your side. Giles had finally abandoned the idea of keeping up appearances. The Buffybot was almost unusable by this time, anyway – it kept glitching out and going to look for Spike. It was no good telling it Spike was dead. Whenever you did that, it shorted out entirely.

    “He’s going to heal without needing a wheelchair or anything,” Dawn said instead. “Eventually.”

    “Good. Um... Um, can you make it down to the Emergency Room, Dawn? We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

    “Oh, god, who’s hurt?” Dawn asked anxiously. “Tara? Xander?”

    “None of us, though... the Buffybot’s been destroyed,” Willow said.

    Dawn choked.

    “No, no, it’s okay. We don’t need it anymore. It’s just... someone fell off the tower... um... again.”

    “What?”

    “I don’t think she really knew where she was,” Willow said. “Or-or when she was. I think she tried to replay her last moments, but when she climbed up, the tower was unstable, and...”

    “What?” Dawn screeched into the phone.

    “Give me that,” Tara said distantly, and then her voice became louder as she took the phone from Willow. “Dawn, she shouldn’t have told you like that. I told her to just have you meet us at the Emergency Room. Willow performed a spell that brought Buffy back but... it went... um... a l-little wrong.”

    “It did not!” Willow called.

    “Only a little. Buffy’s back, she’s fine, but... but she’s hurt. She got hurt falling from the tower. She’ll be fine, she’s still a slayer. They heal quick.”

    Dawn was crying. “The hospital’s still on lockdown...” she sobbed.

    “Don’t worry about that,” Tara said. “Willow won’t let them keep the doors locked. Not on the slayer.”
 

***

    Buffy looked around the house. “It’s different,” she said. She’d been barely speaking, and even then mostly monosyllabically. She done little more than stare in numbed shock in the hospital. Finally she felt well enough to walk out – she didn’t check out – and she walked home. Dawn had been with her, and followed her, telling her to go back to the hospital, that there was paperwork, that they didn’t know if she was well enough, that Giles wanted to see her, and he couldn’t leave the hospital yet...

    Buffy hadn’t listened. She’d walked into the house, which was covered with crude graffiti. GOOD RIDDINCE SLAYER and WELCOM TO HELL. Before Willow had placed a general ward on the house, the Buffybot hadn’t been enough of a deterrent to those demons who could tell the difference between a robot and a slayer. The first few weeks, while Spike was still around, the knowledge that the house was under his protection had been enough to keep the vandals at bay. But once he wasn’t in the picture...

    “Yeah, Willow and Tara live here now,” Dawn said. “We... I gave them Mom’s room, ‘cause it was the biggest, really, and... and no one was in it.”

    “My room?” Buffy asked.

    “Yeah! Yeah, your room is still yours. We were keeping Buffy in... Buffybot. We kept her in there... when she... when it wasn’t supposed to be patrolling. Um... you... do you... um... do you want to get some clothes on?”

    Buffy was still in the open-backed hospital gown, which when tied properly actually wasn’t as revealing as comedies always pretended, but wasn’t flattering.

    Buffy didn’t seem to hear. She was staring at her bandaged hands. Dawn still didn’t know how they’d gotten injured. Buffy had been filthy, broken, bleeding, but those bruises on her hands didn’t match the rest of the impact wounds from the collapsing tower. “Can... I help you?” Dawn asked.

    Buffy didn’t answer. She went upstairs, into her room, and closed the door.
 

***
    
    Buffy walked through Restfield cemetery with her friends’ words echoing in her head. “So... we created a monster,” Xander said. “But Buffy killed it, right, so everything’s okay?”

    “No,” Tara said. “Buffy killed the demon. But... she’s not right. I don’t know what’s wrong with her, but...”

    She’d fled, desperate for peace and quiet. Everyone kept demanding her attention. She ached for someone to just sit and be quiet around. Even Giles kept demanding answers, wanting to know if she was okay, if her soul felt intact, if she had any strange impulses, and what did it matter? Nothing mattered. Nothing was real. It was just harsh violence and sharp and bright and white noise and... and hell. She was in hell.

    She opened the door to Spike’s crypt, and someone shouted at her. “Ah!”

    An unknown demon surged from Spike’s chair, sharp teeth bared, loose, flaccid skin flapping. At the sight of the slayer, stake newly in hand, the demon’s face melted. A half dozen snakes flared from the gaping maw his face had become, and Buffy knew her place. She was the slayer – this was a demon. She attacked with her stake, even though the demon was backing away from her, his hands raised defensively.

    A moment later she stepped away, the dog-eared demon decidedly dead on the floor, her hands stained with his blood. The snakes on his face hissed a few times, and then fell, sliding back beneath his skin like the feet of the Wicked Witch of the East. The demon looked peaceful in sleep, the lines on his withered face more laugh lines than anything evil.

    Buffy was past caring. She opened Spike’s fridge. There were several dead rats, but no blood. Spike didn’t live here anymore. She left the crypt, passing by a video-rental slip that declared Clement MacDonald had to return his videos by Tuesday, or he’d owe a fee. A single black ace slipped from a fold in the demon’s drying skin, and landed on the concrete floor.