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[A/N – The title comes from Sir Walter Scott, the quotes are as attributed. ] Standard disclaimers apply.

Previously on Buffy (huh, does that really apply?), Buffy’s gone, Giles gave Angel part of the verbal tongue-lashing he deserves, Dawn’s grieving, and Spike is shattered; but what about our favorite redhead?


Two – Tangled Webs


It may be possible to deceive men, but one cannot deceive the gods. Chinese proverb

We are so used to dissembling with others that in time we come to deceive and dissemble with ourselves. Francois, Duc de la Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)



Willow Rosenberg was thinking. Well, she knew she was always thinking, but at this moment she was thinking about how things were bad. Okay, so things weren’t so bad, but they weren’t good either. Willow looked around at the Magic Box, noting the new (and expensive) things Anya had placed on display. Shaking her head, Willow knew she was mentally babbling, while outwardly trying to keep calm and away from Giles’ knowing gaze. In fact, she was trying to be invisible to almost everyone.

Looking around quickly, she ducked her head back into the book. The litany of thoughts looped around her brain again, circling endlessly. She tried to hum something softly under her breath, but nothing would come to mind. Her thoughts were stuck. Giles is gonna kill me. Gotta hide this stuff. Can’t let anyone see. Tara won’t like this. Buffy’s dead. Where is she? Has to be something I can do. Giles is gonna kill me . . . And on until she couldn’t focus, until it was only names. Giles, Buffy, Tara, Dawn, Giles, Buffy, Tara, Dawn.

She never heard the bell ring, never heard the footsteps behind her, didn’t hear Xander call her name in greeting, in fact was so lost in her own thoughts of hiding what she was doing, that when Xander touched her shoulder, her terrified shriek echoed loudly against the walls. Xander flew back, as startled as Willow was. His answering shriek rivaled hers for volume and was, in fact, a higher pitch than hers.

Gasping for air, Willow turned to look at him. “Xander don’t do that. You scared me.” At the same time he was saying, “geez Will, what the hell was that for?”

Using Xander’s presence as a distraction, she slammed the book closed and shoved it into her backpack, all the while mumbling about people that sneak up on other people wrecking their concentration and distracting them from research.

Their combined shrieks had disturbed everyone, drawing Giles out from his office and focusing Anya’s attentions away from the few customers to the two of them. Realizing that it was only the break in Willow’s concentration and nothing more dangerous than that, Giles muttered “really you two, must you make such noise?”

Neither one responded, since it was obvious that it was merely one of Giles’ rhetorical questions, and to answer would only put the two of them at a disadvantage. Shaking his head, Giles retreated back to his office, ignoring the group at the front of the store.

Willow, nerves inexplicably calmer, got herself back together, continuing to put books into her backpack. Dawn was scheduled to be home shortly, and Spike would be pacing the floors if she didn’t arrive on time. They’d kept the girl in school, so that life would appear as normal as possible. So far, they’d managed to keep it hidden that Buffy was gone, using their connections within Sunnydale to ensure that none of the authorities governing Dawn’s life got wind of her being alone. Spike had put the screws to the morgue officials, Giles had rigged the death certificate, so no official report of her death existed. The caretaker of Restfield had graciously, freely given a plot, having been rescued by both Buffy and Spike on more than one occasion, and even gotten the headstone free of charge. And, if necessary, they had the bot to cover for them. Not that any of them really wanted the bot around, Spike in particular.

That struck Willow as odd. Spike didn’t want the bot around, in fact every time it was activated, Spike left the room, or made himself scarce. It was odd, since technically, the damn bot was his. In a moment of insight into the vampire, Willow figured it was because of his feelings for the real Buffy. Well, she thought, might not have to worry about that too much longer. The thought was so strong that for a second, Willow thought she’d said it aloud. But no, glancing around, she realized she hadn’t said a word. Okay, that was it, she needed to get out of the Magic Box and do it now. Needed to stop thinking about what she was doing.

Everyone in the shop was busy doing their own things, and Willow took that opportunity to slip out and head toward Revello. The walk home should calm her nerves, should help her gather her scattered thoughts. For some reason, the need for secrecy seemed paramount. None of them would understand why she had this compulsion to fix the situation. And, she was suddenly sure, probably all of them would try to stop her. She couldn’t trust any of them with this, the idea she had swirling about in her head. I’m going to find a way. I’m going to do it. Can’t let her stay wherever she is, have to save her for all the times she’d saved me.

It was not going to be a walk in the park, and she’d probably have to do some oogly things, things she didn’t want to really think too hard about until it came time to do them, but she would do it. No matter what she had to do, she would do it. So far, all the methods of retrieval involved dark magics and blood. And eeeww, she so didn’t want to do that, but it was beginning to look like she didn’t have any choice. There were Gods and Goddesses she could invoke, but every single deity required a sacrifice. Some required more than one. Another eeewwww for that. Just the whole thing was eewww and ooogly and not something she really wanted to think about, and hello, this was a retrieval, not a resurrection anyway. Coz Buffy really wasn’t de . . gone, she was just trapped someplace else.

As long as she put it in those terms, she could deal with it. To think otherwise, just. . . . she couldn’t do it. Buffy was only just on a vacation. Okay, so slayers never really took a vacation, but that was easier for her to deal with than the other. Because thinking that Buffy was gone, dead and never coming back was just not something she could do.

So she thought all the way back to the house on Revello, and thought more while helping Dawn with her homework, thought all through dinner, and continued that pattern for the next couple of days. Thinking and planning and researching everything she could find about retrievals, because, darn it, it wasn’t a resurrection she was doing.

Thankfully, neither Spike nor Tara caught onto what she was thinking about, which surprised her. Spike could sniff out any minute differences in body temperature and heart rate and a whole host of other weird things about humans, but for some reason, he wasn’t picking up anything different from her. She wondered about that, in the middle of the day, far away from the house, when she felt safest to think about those things and let down her guard. Willow couldn’t imagine why Spike wasn’t figuring out her intentions and calling her on it, but she was grateful just the same. Maybe, just maybe it was because he was so concerned about Dawn that he’d focused all his attention on her well-being. It was plausible. In fact, the more she contemplated that, she was sure she was right.

He was so worried about Dawn, that Spike was bordering on excessively over-protective. It would be funny if it hadn’t been for something Dawn had overheard, something said between Spike and Buffy after Joyce had died, and had told the others about in secret. Those overheard remarks and promises had led to Giles’ open disavowal of Angel and the others standing solidly in the ‘Spike belongs to us’ camp. After, it surprised Willow that it was not only just a speech. It was true. Somehow, during the battle with Glory, Spike had become one of them.

So it wasn’t Spike she was really worried about anyway. Willow was more concerned with Tara or Giles for that matter, figuring out what she was up too. It was getting harder and harder to keep her mouth shut around Tara. Up until now, there had been no secrets between them, they shared everything. But Willow was holding back, keeping something from Tara and it wasn’t what she was getting her for her birthday.

This was big - potentially dangerous, world-saving big, and Willow wasn’t sharing. It was never-wracking. It was definitely not of the good, keeping secrets from her girlfriend, but Willow knew without ever having to even sort of broach the subject, that Tara would shoot her down in a heartbeat. Faster than a heartbeat if necessary. She was finding herself biting her own tongue, swallowing words before they were born, trying to bury – no, not bury – hide what she was doing from Tara. Because Tara would see, she would know, sense the differences in her girlfriend as she delved deeper and deeper into magics she had no business dabbling in.

It was dark. It was blood magic. It was dangerous. It was everything Willow knew Tara was against. It went against the natural order. It was exactly, down to the letter, everything they had cautioned Dawn against doing after Joyce died. It was wrong then, and it was wrong now. But Willow no longer cared about wrong or right. She only cared about getting Buffy back.

******************************* **************************************

For a group of people who were, for the most part, gifted in ways other than normal, not one of those super-natural beings caught a whiff of what she was up to. Giles was wrapped up in trying to maintain to the Council and to the California authorities that Buffy was still alive, Spike was doing his best to take care of Dawn and patrol, Anya was wrapped up in controlling the store while Giles did his thing, and Tara was bogged down by trying to make up all the classes she’d missed while Glory had her brain, and play house-mom for the Revello Drive occupants.

It shouldn’t have been anything of a surprise then, when the one person who wasn’t other than normal picked up on her nervous habits and her stuttering and being avoidance girl. Shouldn’t have been a shock, when Xander, her oldest friend, confronted her one day when no one else was around. Shouldn’t have been, but it was.

“Wills, we need to talk.” He stood looking a bit more serious than he did years ago, like he seemed to look all the time now. Dark eyes held her gaze, not letting her avoid him, or push him away. “Wills, what’s going on?”

Okay, I can hide this from him, he won’t know. I can keep him occupied with lots of big words and terms he won’t understand. I can do this. Xander loves me, he won’t push this.
His next words blew all her thoughts of hiding from him out of the water. “What are you planning?”

She gaped up at him, her mouth opening and closing. “Drat” was the only coherent thought in her head as she took in his expression. This was serious. He knew something was up. They stood outside the Magic Box, frozen in time by his words.

Xander’s hand on her forearm pulled her away from the door, into the alley off to the side. “C’mon, we need to talk,.” was all he said.

He looked around, checking to see that the back door to the training room was closed, crossed his arms over his chest, lifted his chin, and said “spill.”

And before she could stop the flow of words from her mouth, Willow spilled it all out in minute detail. How she’d been looking for resurrection . . retrieval spells, incantations, Gods and Goddesses to invoke, dimensions to travel, anything and everything to get Buffy back. Until “. . I think I can do it. I know I can. You have to trust me on this.”

“Truth is, I do trust you Wills, but I don’t know if this is right. I can’t say that I understand everything you just said, but I know that some of that isn’t of the good. And how do you know Buff’s lost in some other place and not really dead-gone? “

Good question. Not one she had any intention of really answering, because she was darn certain Xander wasn’t going to like her response.





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