Buffy?” Tara sighed and hammered on the shut door. “Please, honey, I just want to check in with you before I head out.” She tapped on the door again and then laid her hand over it. “Please, Buffy. I want to say goodbye.” Tara strained her ears and heard a shuffling noise. Buffy had become even more of a ghostly presence in the house since they had dragged Dawn crying from her arms. Tara’s stomach tightened at the memory of the sobbing sisters clinging to each other and begging for a few more moments. But their father had been adamant about getting back on the road, so Dawn had been torn from the only real family she knew and bundled into the car. Buffy had stood with her skinny hands plastered to the window, weeping as Dawn placed her hands against them from the inside.

“Buffy, please…I really need to see you.” Tara rattled the door handle, hoping it would turn. Her head shot up as she heard a muffled thump. “Buffy?” She wrung her hands, hating this sadness that permeated the entire house.

Spike’s death had been the catalyst and she was terrified it was going to get worse for them all. Tara ran her hands through her fair hair and tried to work out how she could help Buffy heal. She knew that the Slayer was devastated; even Xander had accepted that his best friend was crushed by the vampire’s death. But she had no idea what to say or do – it seemed like Xander or Anya were also at a loss. Anya had also revealed to Tara in a theatrical whisper that Willow had moved into her parents and had holed herself up with grimoires and spell books that could make a saint sin.

“Tara, its okay. Go on your field trip, I’ll be fine.” Buffy’s voice sounded muffled and tired. She had been holed up in her room for so long that she had lost track of time. She had hidden herself in Spike’s journals again, obsessively reading all her favourite bits over and over. Trying to glean some happiness from them, but instead, all she could hear was Dawn crying and pleading to stay with her. Buffy shivered and pulled the covers over her head, wishing Tara would just leave already.

“Buffy, please don’t make me kick in this door! You know I will.” Tara tried not to smile at her empty threat. She had a fleeting mental image of her breaking her foot on the door and Buffy having to take her to the ER.

There was a pregnant silence and then a small giggle.

“Was that a giggle I heard?” Tara teased, hoping that maybe she could coax Buffy into a better mindset.

There was a thump and a pad of bare feet on carpet and finally a click. The door swung open, a waft of jasmine from the candles burning in Buffy’s bedroom. Tara slipped in through the door and blinked. Instead of the mess she’d expected, the room was filled with soft candlelight and leather bound books lay all over the floor. She looked over at the Buffy shaped lump under the covers and tiptoed around the journals to get to her.

She curled up next to Buffy’s huddled form, the two of them nose to nose. Buffy’s red-rimmed eyes were massive in her thin face; Tara reached over and wrapped an arm around her and hugged her. “It’ll be okay.” She smoothed the tangled hair off her friend’s face and rocked her as best she could. “I hate that this has all happened. I am so sorry, honey. I know it’ll get better…”

“Will it?” Buffy whispered hoarsely. All she could hear was the disappointment in her dad’s voice. When he had finally spoken to her, all he had said was that she had let him down again. Even The Kroger Monster had been shocked by his attitude. She had even tried to diffuse the tension by mentioning that Dawn was a minor and his responsibility and not her older sibling’s, and Buffy had barely managed not to hug the woman for saying what she had wondered so many times. The social worker had then ripped into him about lack of financial support for the two girls since their mother’s death and that there would be a deeper review into his finances. This threat made the errant Mr Summers blanche and his hands tighten into fists.

Then to Buffy’s utter shock, the woman had winked at her and calmly reminded him that the mortgage needed paying off on the house and that from their minor audits of his finances they had discovered that he could well afford it and that they expected a speedy resolution to that. She had muttered under her breath about how this was the least she could do for the sisters. Buffy had just stared in shock at the plump woman until Dawn burst into tears.

“The goddess will guide us, I know it. Buffy, I wish I could turn back time and change things, but I can’t. All we can do is be here for each other.” Tara smiled lopsidedly at her.

The gentle wiccan spoke, but all Buffy could hear over and over was ‘turn back time and change things’, stuck on repeat in her exhausted mind. She wondered if it could be done. Pasting a weak smile on her face, she tried to focus on Tara’s gentle mothering instead of giving into the impulse of sobbing her brains out. Her Mom was gone, heaven was gone, Dawn was gone, Daddy didn’t want her and Spike…oh god, Spike.

“You still in there?” Tara waved a hand in front of Buffy’s unfocused gaze.

“Yeah…Sorry,” Buffy sighed.

“I’ll be gone until Sunday night. I’ve left food in the fridge. Buffy, please eat, you’re getting real skinny,” Tara begged gently as she prodded Buffy’s empty stomach with an insistent finger.

“I’ll try.” Buffy returned Tara’s hug and then let her eyelashes flutter shut.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Willow, honey, your father and I are very disappointed in you.”

Willow looked up from the grimoire she was reading in surprise; her mom was home and talking with her? She shifted on the couch and curled her legs up under her and marked the page with her finger.

“Do you have anything to say about this?” The older Rosenberg held out a letter, waving it demandingly under her child’s nose.

“What is that?” Willow took the paper and frowned down at the contents of the letter. A flash of black shot through her eyes and she glanced up at her mom. “Why are you opening my mail?”

“It was re-directed here from your last place, and I thought it was for me. Willow, your father and I spend a lot of money on fees and you are not honouring the agreement. Remember?”

Willow frowned at the less than stellar grades and tapped the sheet with her fingers. It wasn’t as if it were all her fault, she’d been looking after brainsucky Tara – burying Buffy and then grieving for her. Finals had come and gone within a flash of an eye and Willow had barely made it to all of them. She had not studied and had relied on accumulated knowledge She had barely scraped through by the skin of her teeth.

“Willow? Remember we had a non-verbal agreement, we would fund your higher education and you would maintain an excellent GPA. We are so disappointed in you.” Her mother sounded so dissaprroving that Willow was transported back to the time when she’d tried to burn her at the stake for being a witch. ‘Little do you know, how powerful I am now, Mom…betcha would be book burning and tossing me on the pyre if you knew.’

“Willow really, I do think that it’s the same problem as before. That girl Bunny is just a bad influence on you and also this dabbling in being a lesbian. I may have supported your right to choose but now I have to say I am disappointed at the lack of application to your studies. Sex is something that is secondary to knowledge. You have let us both down so badly. You should be ashamed.”

Willow stared at her mother in disbelief; didn’t she know how upset she was? Tara had broken up with her; she’d been kicked out of Buffy’s and then Xander’s and had come in a humiliating circle back home to her parents.

“Willow, you will be respectful to your mother and I and engage in a viable discourse with us.” Mr Rosenberg sat down next to his wife, a united front of disapproval. “We had such high hopes for you, and you have not only let us down, you have let yourself and your tutors down. How are you planning to rectify this situation?” He placed a firm hand on his wife’s knee and stared at their silent daughter.

“Indeed, Willow, we are eager to discuss this with you. Now that you have returned to the nurturing environment of your home, I am sure we can all work together to achieve our mutual goals.” Willow’s mom smiled at her.

She stared at both of them, wondering if they were really her blood relations. The pseudo-psychobabble they used all her life had not been missed since she had moved out, and now she had to put up with again? ‘I think not…’

Willow stared accusingly at the grades on the crumpled sheet of paper clenched in her hand. Her eyes turned into black pools and as she whispered an incantation under her breath, the grades all switched to straight A’s. She then flickered her fingers at the morons who were staring at her and they shivered briefly.

“Now, where were we?” Willow’s mother blinked and leaned forward.

“Congratulating our daughter on her keeping her end of our educational bargain,” Willow’s father replied. They both focused on their daughter and smiled plastically.

“Much better,” Willow grumbled and returned their plastic fantastic smiles.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She was electric. All blonde hair and sassy-mouthed with an arse like a peach. She wriggled it all over the dance floor in that shithole of a club, getting the spotty gits all horny. She’s a corker, that one. Can’t wait to have a good fight with her.

Buffy giggled at the words. She wondered if Spike had any idea then that he would love her? She flipped onto another entry from the same year and ran her fingers over the writing.

Dru had sulked for hours when I got back from that first fight in the school. One of the sodding minions had whispered nasties in her lughole about her ‘Daddy’ being there – sent my girl into a frenzy. But for some reason, I wasn’t bothered. That Slayer had been a right tasty morsel and then her mother had brained me with an axe – got to respect a bint who knows her weapons!

But that Slayer – she was ruddy fast with the quips and her fists. Bit of alright for a mortal. Be a pity to drain her straight off. Might have a good dance or two first, then go for the kill.

Buffy rolled her eyes at the Spikey posturing as a faint smile lingered over his respect for her mom. Seemed like her axe to dumb hard-headed vampire had made a lasting impression. She flipped the page and carried on reading about his headache and how a lump the size of a baseball had popped up. Buffy frowned as a sudden tummy rumble interrupted her concentrated reading.

“Oh…food.” She reached over and pulled on the red shirt that had replaced her dressing gown. She rubbed her face on the collar and inhaled the scents of oak, tobacco and cologne. She padded out of her room and headed to the kitchen, hoping Tara had left something easy for her to heat. The house was dark and so quiet. Buffy sighed loudly, wishing that Dawn were still here. “Miss you so much, Dawnie.”

She sat eating her solitary meal and hating every moment of it. Once the house had been filled with voices and now, nothing. Spike and his explosive entries, smoke billowing out from under his blanket, Dawn and her teen hormones making her voice high pitched and excitable. Willow and Tara chattering away.

“Willow!” Buffy exclaimed and sat bolt upright. “Willow and the magic!” Buffy’s fork clattered on the floor as she leapt up and ran for the phone. “She can fix it – I know she can.”

“Willow? Hi…we need to talk. Can you come over?”