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Author's Chapter Notes:
I'm hoping there's still interest in this story! You just gotta review to let me know you want me to keep writing it =P.
The remaining three people consoled Willow until she had calmed down. Buffy felt terrible for having gotten so angry at Willow again over being taken out of heaven. There was only so many times you could get mad at someone for the same issue, the bottom line was that Willow had done it. There was no going back now and Buffy just had to forgive her, or else they only risked losing their once solid friendship. She resolved to try and let go of her anger towards her best friend. Buffy knew she had only done it because she had thought her to be trapped in a hell dimension. But hello, how many times had she saved the world, as if she’d be sentenced to a lifetime in hell! Deluded much?

“Ok, so, Buffy, Spike, Tara and Willow are obviously under the thrall,” Anya suddenly stated, quick to get back into research mode. “Do you feel different at all? ‘Cause I don’t feel any different.”

Everyone’s eyes shifted to her, as they all openly stared.

“What?” she asked defensively.

“Well sweety, you always call ’em as you see ’em anyway.”

Anya’s eyes narrowed at her fiancé.

“Never mind, Ahn,” Xander went on quickly. “Ask me something I would normally lie about.”

“Um… what size jeans are you wearing nowadays? ’Cause I know it’s not a 32 anymore.”

Xander’s face reddened for the second time that evening, but he was quick to appreciate that he had gotten off lightly. She could have made him reveal their still-secret engagement. Still, it wasn’t nice to have your fiancé imply that you were getting fat. He sighed in resignation.

“A 38 Ahn.”

“Ok, Xander’s under the spell too,” Anya reported.

Buffy looked up from the consoling of Willow at this news.

“Ok, so that’s all of us. We need to ask Dawn something too. Then we can find out what kind of Big Bad we are dealing with here and I can go kill it.”

Willow looked up at her three friends, her face streaked with tears.

“Guys, I’m really not in research mode right now, I promise I’ll help tomorrow but… right now I just need to be alone, get some sleep, y’know?”

Buffy nodded at her supportively.

“Of course Wil, take all the time you need. We’ll fill you in on whatever we find tomorrow, ok?”

“Thanks Buffy. Night guys,” Willow sighed sadly as she got up from the couch and headed up the stairs forlornly.

* * *

A couple of hours later, when the remaining three had failed to make any headway with the issue, Buffy sent the other two home (much to Anya’s delight, who was quick to comment on resuming her and Xander’s sex capades. When Xander had rolled his eyes, she had pointed out that several of her special ‘work outs’ would more than likely take him back down to size 32 jeans. He’d been quick to push her out the door after that).

Buffy climbed the stairs and quietly opened Dawn’s bedroom door to check on her. Dawn wasn’t in her room and the window was open.

“Damn it, Dawn!” She moaned, taking Dawn’s shortcut out the window to go and find her. “Why does she do this all the time; can’t she just get a punching bag?”

Buffy sprinted down the street, deciding to check if Dawn had wound up at Janice’s house. She hadn’t. Buffy could think of only one other place she would go, the same place she always seemed to turn up in when she ran away. She headed towards Restfield cemetery.

Maintaining her speed until she reached the outskirts of the cemetery, Buffy slowed down as she made her way to Spike’s crypt, walking amongst the headstones.

* * *

Tears were still falling down Willow’s face as she ran through the woods. She had allowed herself some alone time to cry for all the mistakes she had made with Tara and for the price she was now paying, but the urgency she felt to fix the spell she had somehow screwed up could not be ignored. What would the scoobies do if they discovered that she had caused this? What would they think of her? She’d just lost Tara, she couldn’t bear to lose her closest friends as well. It was all too much. Between Tara, the spell and the scoobies, Willow knew, deep down, that Tara had been right. She was using too much magic. And she didn’t know how to stop. The raw power of it was too primal, too fierce for her to fight. She couldn’t control it and she didn’t want to. She was addicted to it.

Finally coming into the clearing, Willow ran to where the remains of the candles still lay. She bent down and kneeled in the grass, picking through the wax and the tiny pieces of ash and paper that were now scattered all over the place. She picked up a small piece of the paper, frowning as she turned it over. It was tiny, but there was something drawn faintly on it. It wasn’t a piece of a photograph, but Willow knew she hadn’t burned anything else. She squinted at it more closely. It looked like part of some kind of grid, with a greenish background. She could make out some smallish letters and winding lines. Her eyes widened. She gasped. It was the Sunnydale map!

“But how?” She thought aloud.

When had she dropped it and why hadn’t she even noticed? And beyond that, how does a map substitute a photograph? And if the whole map of Sunnydale had burned, didn’t that mean -

“Oh, nooo! No, no, no, not happening! The whole town? Under a truth spell? Ohhh, this is bad, this is very, very bad. Willow, you suck! Think. What to do, what to do? The spell has to run it’s course. Oh this is so much with the badness…”

Willow was pacing back and forth in blind panic. She had no way to reverse the spell and no one she could turn to for help: she was screwed.

* * *

Approaching the door to Spike’s crypt as stealthily as a pissed off slayer is capable of, Buffy stood there for several seconds, her fist raised to knock, but never striking the hard surface. Her eyes narrowed when she heard a sound which could only be identified as a the giggle of a teenaged girl - Dawn, followed by a cockney British accent bellowing “oi!” - Spike.

‘And screw the politeness that is knocking,’ Buffy thought angrily.

She kicked the door open and barged into the candle lit crypt. Dawn and Spike, sitting face to face on the mausoleum, spun around guiltily from their game of thumb war.

“Up, now!” Buffy barked, before either of them could say a word.

Spike held up a hand in his defence.

“Hey, I didn’t know the Bit wa-”

“Save it for someone who actually has the time, or the patience, to sit here and listen to your crap, Spike. Because I don’t.”

“Don’t get mad at Spike, I was the one who came-”

Buffy cut her sister off abruptly.

“I don’t wanna hear it, Dawnie, just get your things and let’s go.”

“Now hang on just a minute Slayer, you don’t just come bargin’ in here, all high and mighty and-”

“Don’t you dare tell me how I should and shouldn’t act! I came into Dawn’s room and found her gone, I was looking all over town for her, freaking out by the way, and the whole time she’s sitting here with you, playing goddamn thumb wars! And what’s worse is that you were letting her,” Buffy raged at the peroxided vamp, who had pulled himself up from the mausoleum and was now up in her face.

Dawn was getting her bag from the chair that was perched directly in front of the television, her head bent in embarrassment. She felt awful for Spike, he hadn’t done anything wrong. She couldn’t stop her attempts to uphold his plight for innocence in her half baked run-away-from-home plan.

“Buffy, it’s not Spike’s fault, I was here when he got home and I refused to leave!”

“Spike is the so-called ‘grown up’ in this situation Dawn, he should have brought you home!”

“Bloody hell Buffy, what did you want me to do, drag her there?! Yeah, there’s a right idea, or I coulda sent her out alone, into the night, where all the big bads are lurkin‘, jus’ waiting to take a chunk out of a tasty, young chit like her! She might be your sister Buffy, but I care about the soddin’ Bit jus’ as much as you do. Only reason she’s still here is for her own safety.”

Spike was holding Buffy’s arms firmly, looking her directly in the face and speaking to her as though she were a very small child. A very slow, small child. There was a moment between them, as both tried to read the undercurrents below the surface of the other, before she shrugged out of his grip and turned towards the door, where Dawn was hovering in humiliation.

“Just stay away from us.”

Buffy’s voice came out a shaky whisper, before she joined her sister at the still open doorway, and ushered her through it. As the two of them trudged through the cemetery and onto the street, leaving Spike standing dejectedly in his crypt, Buffy ruefully wished she had come off sounding as threatening as she had intended to.

* * *

“God Dawn, what were you thinking?!”

“I don’t know, I was mad at you,” a second voice grumbled. “And why did you take it out on Spike? He didn’t deserve that.”

“You’re right he didn’t deserve that. What he does deserve is a nice, slow staking,” voice number one went on.

Willow didn’t have time to hide before she realised Buffy and Dawn had come directly onto her path and now stood before her in surprise. She couldn’t let the questions start. If they did, she’d be in big trouble. Well, bigger trouble.

“Hey Buffy, Dawn. I gotta go, really need to be alone right now.”

Willow’s ramble was laced with sadness and she dashed off in the other direction, before either of the girls could ask her what she was doing out and about in the streets by herself, at night. She took the long route back to the Summer’s home, trying and failing to come up with a way around the gigantic mess she had created. When she got home, the house was still empty. Climbing beneath the sheets on her bed, Willow sighed and resolved to fix things in the morning, after some much needed rest and hopefully with a clearer head.

* * *

“That was weird,” Buffy muttered as Willow loped off down the street away from them.

Dawn was looking even more puzzled than her sister.

“Uh yeah, majorly weird. What’s up with her?”

Buffy sighed. She was too tired for anymore drama tonight.

“Tara broke things off with her, after you made your exit.”

There was no subtle way to put it and it wasn‘t like she could lie.

Dawn stopped in her tracks, her mouth hanging open in shock.

“What?! Why? What happened?”

“It’s a long story, Dawnie. Basically, Tara thinks she’s using too much magic,” Buffy loosely explained.

“That’s it? But… they’re so in love and… and…” Dawn trailed off.

“I know, but sometimes no matter how much people love each other, they find that they just can’t make it work.”

“Oh.”

Buffy put her arm around her younger sister reassuringly.

“I’m still mad at you for running away like that. There are gonna be consequences, Dawn,” she was sure to remind the teenager.

“That’s fine, I’m still mad at you,” Dawn quipped in reply.

Buffy took a sidelong glance at this girl who reminded her so much of herself at that age in many ways (and in many ways not) and raised an eyebrow.

Dawn was looking thoughtful.

“So what’s going to happen? Will Tara… move out?”

“I don’t know yet sweetie, they might work it out, who knows? Everything’s a little up in the air right now,” Buffy replied.

Dawn’s thoughtful expression re-emerged and she stared hard at her sister as she asked:

“Do you think Willow’s using too much magic?”

Buffy wished she had more concrete answers to give, but the fact was, she didn’t.

“She doesn’t use it for evil - at least, not intentionally - and that’s gotta count for something… I don’t know, I guess I’ve been a little caught up in my own… stuff. I’ll start paying more attention,” she promised.

A nod was Dawn’s only reply and the two sisters approached their house in silence.





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