“But something’s wrong!”

    D’Hoffryn looked down at Anya. “You were one of my best vengeance demons for over eleven hundred years,” he said. “And then you failed me. I have only now taken you again into my good graces. And now you tell me you’re unhappy?”

    “No,” Anya said. “I mean, yes. I mean, thank you, oh, mighty D’Hoffryn. But something feels wrong. It’s like there’s some... twist that isn’t right. Like I’ve been....”

    “Caught in your own wish?” D’Hoffryn said. Anya looked up. A wicked gleam was in his eye.

    “Yeah...” Anya stared at him. “Do you know something? Do you know what’s happened?”

    “Anyanka, you were an excellent vengeance demon, but you need to learn how to control your emotions. You failed at casting vengeance on the boy when you were summoned to the aid of his former cast-off lover. You allowed your vengeful fixation to morph and mold into affection, and even love. The target of the vengeance was still marked for punishment. Someone had to suffer.”

    “But me?” Anya asked. “I cast vengeance on him, and I still ended up dropped at the altar? It wasn’t supposed to go this way! Not this time. I know it.”

    “Hm...” D’Hoffryn seemed to search the inside of his eyelids. “I do not see this as vengeance against the boy. It is some other wrong, some other vengeance. Though your anger is laced through the whole of it.” He opened his eyes. “Besides, you cannot cast vengeance for yourself. You can only grant another’s wish, not your own. You already know this, Anyanka.”

    Anya rolled her eyes. “But still... it doesn’t seem right. Even when I was still human, none of it seemed right.”

    “As the timelines converge closer to the time when you originally granted the wish, your memory may become clearer. As it is, you can only observe. You must have had a reason. Perhaps things are better now than they were before.”

    “They’re not,” Anya said after D’Hoffryn left. “I already know, they’re not.”
 

***

 

    Buffy carefully pulled things out of Dawn’s closet. She had a trash can, and three large boxes – STORAGE, DONATE, and one labeled DAWN’S.

    Almost all of the stuff from Dawn’s room was going into the storage or donate bins. She wasn’t allowed much of anything in juvie, and Buffy couldn’t keep her things when she wasn’t even keeping most of her own. The house had found a buyer, and she was going to move in with Xander. He had a small room – he said he knew it looked like a closet, but it could be a room in a pinch. He needed help adjusting to life in a wheelchair. Buffy thought it was the least she could do... and she needed somewhere to live.

    An entire life, packed up and, for the most part, thrown out. The stuff going into storage was mostly going to be sold slowly on e-bay. Buffy couldn’t carry Joyce’s life around with her. The only thing from Dawn’s room that she was keeping were her stuffed toys and her journals and her artwork – sentimental things. Dawn’s clothes – hell, she’d have grown out of them by the time she got out of juvie. And lots of them looked suspiciously stolen, now that Buffy had a chance to examine them.

    She dumped another handful of clothes into the “DONATE” box and reached for the back of the closet.

    Her hand met with soft leather, and Buffy rolled her eyes as she pulled the garment out. More shoplifting. Like Dawn could have afforded a leather coat....

    No. She couldn’t possibly have afforded this one. Buffy felt like she’d been slapped. This was Spike’s.

    Buffy held the decades old worn leather in her hands, and found herself shaking. The scent of him wafted up from the neck of the coat, old leather and cigarettes and hair gel and Spike. The tangy spice of demonic essence – almost an incense – with a subtle musk of male, and something distinctly him. A scent that Buffy had learned almost without realizing from the times when he’d fought with her, or held her, and that moment just as they left her house on her last night alive, when he... didn’t kiss her, but got so damn close she almost wanted him to.

    She’d been told Dawn had found ash on Buffy’s grave. Had Spike left the coat there, too? Had Dawn stolen it from his crypt, before or after he’d gone? Had he left it here, for Dawn? Any of them were possible. Dawn had to know it was there, but she hadn’t told Buffy about it. She’d kept the coat a secret, as she’d kept her friendship with Spike as secret as she could.

    The world seemed to close in around Buffy. She dropped the coat on Dawn’s bed and tried to rub her face, dragged her fingers through her hair, tugged on it in an attempt to yank what she was feeling out of her head. In a world too full of torment, why the hell couldn’t he have been there?

    He promised he was going to be there!

    She found herself rolling and sobbing on Dawn’s bed, clutching the worn leather, the scent of the vampire, the symbol of the slain slayer.

    When Xander and Tara showed up – Tara acting as temporary nurse while Buffy was loading the U-Haul – Xander blinked. “Isn’t that...?”

    “Shut up,” Buffy said, hitching the too-large coat around her shoulders. She packed another box into the moving van.
 

***

    Willow could barely see the real world for all the auras surrounding her. She was drunk on the power. She hadn’t been ‘sober’ since before the wedding. “Xander, you’re my best friend,” she said. “And she–” she pointed at Buffy standing in his living room. “She never really loved you. She breaks you, and now you’re with her?”

    “We’re not together, Willow,” Buffy said. “I’m just homeless, and he’s helpless.”

    “Yeah, thanks, Buff,” Xander said sardonically.

    Buffy shrugged. Their cohabitation was awkward as ass, but the practicality of it was undeniable. Neither of them were carrying illusions about what had happened between them, either before or after what had started to be referred to as “the accident.” Xander was still on outpatient status, had to go back to the hospital regularly to see how he was healing and for physical therapy, and Buffy helped with the day to day stuff. He’d lost his job, but was hoping to take up carpentry, do small things from home. This was the first time he’d seen Willow since the wedding. She’d been told he was hurt, but she’d been too far gone to come by before.

    Now he kinda wished she hadn’t.

    “It’s okay now, Xander,” Willow said, pointedly ignoring Buffy. She staggered as she knelt down. Xander couldn’t help but flinch at the blackness in her eyes. He hadn’t seen her at her worst, unlike Buffy. He hadn’t really believed how bad it had gotten. Willow’s hair kept moving as if stirred by wind, or hot air, but there was no reason for it beyond the power charging through her. “It took me too long to realize... I don’t need to fix you. None of the spells do that... like I couldn’t fix Joyce. I can’t remake your spine. I made Osiris remake Buffy, and I called her soul back. But if I just open a dimension, I can take another body. Like the vampire one that crossed over, mine. But... but I found you a human one, okay? I got the right dimension this time and everything. I’ll call over the new body, and I can just move your soul. That’s easy. The spell’s already set, half cast already. I just need some of your blood–”

    “No!”

    Tara stood behind Willow. Willow stood up and blinked at her former lover. “Excuse me?”

    “No, Willow. I’m not going to let you do this.”

    “What are you doing here?” Willow asked. “How did you get here?”

    “I had a divination on you, in case you were going to do something really dangerous.”

    “You set a divination on me?” Willow looked angry. “After bitching about memory spells, you set a watchward on me?”

    “It was to make sure you didn’t try to do something like this,” Tara said. “Shunting around souls, opening dimensions. I shouldn’t have let you do it to Buffy.”

    “Let me? You helped me!”

    “And look what it did to you,” Tara said. “I can’t let you do it again, honey. I can’t.”

    “You don’t get to stop me.”

    “Yes. I do. I have to.”

    “Forget it!” Willow snapped. She looked at the magics surrounding her and found the odd thread among them. “There’s your watchward. I say that to your watchward!” She grabbed the thread and pulled it out.

    She could have just cut it off her, like any other witch would have, but she was angry. Instead she yanked, dragging the magic that empowered it out of Tara.

    It wasn’t until after she’d sucked it in that she realized what she’d done. Tara wasn’t as powerful as Willow, not by a long chalk. The only way she could power a spell on a witch as strong as Willow was by using her own life force.

    Tara went white, gasped once, and without another word, the young witch fell like a stone.