It was odd, the sense of deja vu, as he drove towards downtown and the Magic Box.

Of course it was familiar -- he'd been taking this same route for a year, after all. Nor was it that different from the path to the high school -- just a left turn a few streets further up, instead of a right. But this was more than just the casual familiarity of a town in which he'd spent the last five years living and working, driving and walking, on the streets and in the sewers. It was an immediate sense of 'I've made this same trip before. *This* trip.'

The trip to the shop, with his heart annoyingly lodged in his mouth, for all he was trying to pretend that he was calm and clearheaded. The trip he'd made yesterday, rehearsing in his mind how he was going to tell the others that he was planning to stay, and trying not to let the blanket-wrapped Spike in the back seat realize how nervous he was. The feeling was the same, even with the top down, the radio on to give him some pale approximation of company, something to stop his thoughts from spinning a mile a minute, and no vampire in the car at all.

Said vampire was blanket-wrapped again, but the back seat was empty. Spike was, judging from his protesting noises when Giles had asked if he was coming along, still curled up in the bed upstairs in Giles' flat. Giles had laughed this morning, despite his misgivings about the day's plan, to see Spike instinctively grab at the duvet when Giles stood up. He'd spun himself a blue flannel chrysalis, with not even a wisp of whitish hair sticking out at the top. Just a silent human-shaped lump in his bed, that Giles was close to wishing was here with him instead, because the radio was doing nothing to distract him from the familiar heart-in-throat effect.

If Spike had been cowering in the back seat avoiding the direct sunlight, he might at least have laughed at Giles, for being afraid to speak with Anya yet again. The circumstances were different this time at least. Instead of trying to figure out how to impart information, he had to figure out how to get information out of her. Which, given Anya's propensity to speak her mind no matter what the subject, shouldn't be all that difficult.

It wasn't the act so much as what he might find out that had his heart in his throat.

"Tell her you're worried about Red," Spike had advised last night, sometime between sex and sleep, or possibly sex and sex; it had taken quite a while to work the edge off his thoughts so that he could even try to sleep. "Think she's getting in over her head."

"I am. I do," he'd replied.

"Yeah, but let on you know something's up, and you don't trust Willow," Spike had insisted, leaning on one arm, looking at him as if the complexities of ferreting information out of people were something one only picked up once one passed one's century mark. "That way Anya thinks you trust her more, and she's never been all that keen on Red anyhow."

"Or I could just ask her, and leave the Machiavelli to you." Spike was to put the bite, as it were, on Willow, somewhat later in the day. He had some idea that she was feeling guilty about the Bot's programming problems, and might be willing to talk to him if he pressed the right buttons.

As Giles pulled into his usual parking spot at the Magic Box, though, the direct approach began to seem more and more intimidating. Not that he planned on playing Spike's sort of mind games with Anya, but to simply ask her what was going on? It had him standing outside the door to his own shop like a nervous schoolboy working up the gumption to walk in and buy his first packet of condoms. Or in the case of this shop, his first guaranteed no fail or your money back from the home office in Bangladesh, love philtre and spot remover.

Perhaps easing into the conversation instead of an out and out question would be a better course of action, he thought as he forced himself to step inside. Braving the lion in its den. Or at least the ex-demon behind her cash register.

"Good morning," he said as stepped through the door, forcing a chipper tone into his voice.

Anya looked up at him, surprise turning to false smile, then to perplexed frown. She stared at him for a moment, squinting.

Eventually, his grin faltered a bit, under the weight of her scrutiny. "Is something the matter?"

She continued to look at him, tapping her finger on the glass countertop thoughtfully. Quite irritating, but that was hardly new.

"What?"

Anya pointed that finger accusingly at him. "You had sex."

"I--" What? "What?" He looked quickly around the shop, and was somewhat relived to see that they were alone. As relieved as a completely discombobulated person can be. "What?"

"You think I can't tell when somebody's been having that knock the lamps off the tables, rug burns on your elbows, think you'll have to call in sick but you manage to stumble into work anyway just so you can show off that smile you can't get off your face, sex? This is wrong. Very wrong. You shouldn't have that smile."

Amazingly, Giles managed to frown at her. "I'm not smiling, now." Had his smile really been *that* one? It had certainly been forced, but he couldn't very well deny having worn the real version, somewhere around four o' clock in the morning, when Spike had finally dropped off to sleep. God help him if that was the only one he could come up with now, even when trying for fake good morning cheer.

Anya was still frowning at him. "Your eyes still are. Stop it. Are you trying to make trouble?"

His eyes? Giles set his face into as disapproving a frown as he could manage, only hoping that would carry to his apparently overly expressive eyes. "I have no idea what you're talking about," he stated gruffly.

"You're trying to make me crazy. Upset the status quo. Then I'll do something stupid because I'm too worried about what weird thing will happen next, or I'll get into an argument with Xander about accusing people of having had sex, and you'll point at me and say Ha! I knew Anya couldn't handle this place on her own."

"You think I slept with someone just to unnerve you?" The frightening part was that he was almost able to follow her reasoning, which meant that he knew her far too well, and perhaps he should go back to the flat and hide in the bed for a few more hours.

"So you don't deny it?"

Giles looked at her in disbelief. "Anya, I can safely assure you that whatever might or might not happen in my bedroom has absolutely nothing to do with you." The conversation was definitely getting away from him -- if it had ever been in his control in the first place. One good thing -- it made confronting her about what was going on last night seem like a pleasant prospect, compared to continuing the current line of conversation. "I did want to speak with you, though, if you have a moment."

She continued to look at him suspiciously, but after straightening up the pile of receipts near the register, came out from behind the counter and followed him to the table. He gestured for her to sit down, but remained standing himself, having the feeling he might need every little iota of psychological advantage he could get.

Giles also didn't speak right away, letting the silence stretch forebodingly before he broke it. When he did, he kept his tone pleasant and conversational. "How was your night off?"

She looked confused for a second, then pasted on a cheery smile that did *not* look like lamp-knocking, elbow-burning sex had been involved in its development. Thank god. "Wonderful. Xander and I had a great time."

He continued to watch her, and when she volunteered nothing further, said, "That's all?"

"What do you mean, that's all?"

"Just that you're usually more effusive about such things."

"Well, if you want details-"

"Actually," Giles interrupted, taking the opening, "I do want details. About--"

Anya's eyes grew wide, and she cut him off. "You *want* details? About *my* sex life? You're not going to polish your glasses and pretend you can't hear me?"

"No, I'm not," he said shortly, somewhat taken aback, somewhat annoyed. "And anyway, when I do that, I'm pretending I can't see you."

"Oh. What do you do when you're pretending you can't hear me?" she asked with what appeared to be actual interest.

"There is unfortunately no dignified way of doing that, short of carrying my guitar about and bursting into impromptu musical interludes."

Anya looked at him suspiciously again. "You *are* trying to make me crazy. You obviously *don't* want to hear details, so why--"

Giles was about to interrupt her, when the bell over the door did it for him. He sighed, resigning himself to trying the conversation again later, this time hopefully without accusations of having shagged someone, however accurate they might be-- and looked up to see the Buffybot standing in the doorway.

"Willow says I'm supposed to train with you," she told Giles. "I had an accident last night. She says she thinks I'm all better, but she wants to make sure she didn't screw anything up."

The Bot frowned, not an unfamiliar sight on Buffy's face, but the innocent confusion of it was never quite right. Even when Buffy hadn't understood something, there was always the ready ghost of a joke about her lack of comprehension, hovering around the edges of her frown. The Bot had no such self-awareness, and aside from the knock knock jokes, all of her humour was accidental.

"I'm sure I don't have any screws in me, though. All of my panels are attached with wingnuts."

Giles smiled sadly, feeling his heart break just a little bit more as it always did when faced with the Bot. "Of course," he said, stepping forward. There was no use continuing questioning Anya right now; she was already standing up, walking over to tidy behind the counter. Scanning out the shop window for potential customers, one of whom seemed to be heading towards the door.

Giles shook his head, and followed the Bot to the training room.

In the room that he had outfitted for Buffy, that Xander had filled with pieces of homemade equipment, and Riley had supplemented with military surplus whose origin none of them had wanted to question -- Giles had been teaching the Buffybot things that he'd taught Buffy in high school. No, things she'd already known in high school, that he'd pretended he needed to teach.

The physical moves, the robot had down. This boy, Warren, had indeed been an amazing craftsman. An amazing observer, to pull together so much information about the way she looked, the way she fought... Not, of course, the way she talked, but that was down more to Spike's now-regretted specifications than the designer's ability to imitate a walking, talking, breathing woman.

That was it, though - part of it. "Remember your breathing," he told her now as she aimed dead-on kicks and punches at his padded hands.

She...it...looked confused again, then nodded, and took a deep, long, completely unnatural breath. Blew it out as she punched his open palm again.

"Yes, that's it, but you want it to look more natural. Think of the breath as chi, as a life force, moving through your body."

Cocked head. Almost. So close to the real thing. "But I don't require oxygen to live."

"But you must be able to act, and fight, as if you do, in order to look like the real Buffy."

More confusion. She pointed to her hair, her face. "But I do look like Buffy. I *am* Buffy."

The dichotomy made him blink, and ache, and pull the glovelike pads from his hands. It knew it was a robot. It could talk about wingnuts and subroutines, knew that Willow was a programmer, that she'd been made by Warren, for Spike. She even knew, understood, that there had been another Buffy, before her, who wasn't here anymore, and yet...

And yet, at the most basic level, no matter how much Willow tried to tweak her programming to make her understand, she still believed herself to be Buffy. To be, in some sense, real. Even he couldn't stop thinking of it as she, so why was it surprising to see the Bot itself with the same confusion?

No wonder it tore Spike up when she still professed to love him, or find him attractive, or whatever it was that had set him off last night; not only did it remind him of his mistakes, but it was so close... Giles sat down on the sofa near the wall, feeling the weight of more years than just his own.

The Bot came over and sat beside him, head cocked as she looked at him curiously. "Why do you do that?" she asked.

"Why do I do what?" he asked, rather afraid he was being drawn into one of her apparently unerasable riddle routines.

"Want me to act like her. And when I do you get all frowny." The Bot wore a childlike expression of puzzlement that once again fell short of being Buffy's.

Part of him wanted to lash out at her -- at it -- verbally. Say that it was a private matter. A human thing, that it could never understand. Another part, no matter how well he knew that the Bot was a machine, saw a young woman before him who wanted to know something very simple, and very complex. Who was trying to understand, and what was he meant to be, if not a teacher?

"We need you to be like her," he explained slowly. "Because there are bad things that could happen if other people, or demons, knew that you're a machine. But at the same time, it hurts us to see you, because you look like her. Hurts us to see you act like her, even more."

"Why?"

"Because it reminds us that she -- the other Buffy -- isn't coming back. And we loved her."

She frowned. "But that's not true." He looked at her, wondering what she could possibly mean. That they hadn't loved her? Or simply that she didn't, couldn't, built for mindless adoration as she was, understand the concept of love. Then she surprised him. "She is coming back. The other Buffy. Tonight."

Giles froze -- could swear his heart actually paused in its beating. "What?"

If not for last night, he would have simply assumed she'd misunderstood something. That he was only thinking the worst because, these days, it was far too likely for the worst to be true. But there *was* last night.

"What do you mean?" he asked more slowly, more gently. Trying to calm his own irrational surge if fear, as much as anything.

"Willow said she was coming back tonight. If she comes back, then will people stop frowning at me? Will Spike like me again?"

"Willow told you that Buffy's coming back?" His voice sounded strained even to himself. He couldn't believe that they would be so foolish to even think -- but it did fit everything he'd found out.

The Bot looked...guilty? What could it have to feel guilty about? How could it even *feel* guilt? The ludicrous questions spun in his head, taking up the space of the ones he couldn't even begin to consider. "She didn't *say* I couldn't tell anybody, but I don't think she knew I heard her."

"When was this?" Last night? Longer ago than that? How long had they been planning this, without saying a word to him, just waiting for him to finally leave?

"When I was in my recharge mode, after she fixed me last night. She put me in my bed, and I think she thought I was asleep." The Bot shook her head. "I don't sleep. I'm never asleep. Sometimes I'm turned off, but I'm never asleep."

In Buffy's bed, she meant. Giles had seen her in recharge mode, staring lifelessly at the ceiling. He, too, had assumed that her -- sensors? -- were switched off.

"She leaned over and touched my face. I didn't know why she did that - she'd already covered up the hole where I was broken. And Willow said, 'It'll be okay. Everything'll be okay after tomorrow night. We'll get Buffy back, and we'll all be okay.'" The Bot cocked her head the other direction. "Aren't we all okay now? Why do we have to wait for the other Buffy to come back?"

He stared at her, unable to find words to answer. They weren't okay -- they were even more not okay than he had thought if Willow was actually planning.... To bring her back. It hadn't really sunk in yet, Giles knew, because when it did, he would be feeling something more than this dismay and muted horror. Nothing would be muted, or soft, or quiet; he could feel it in the way his stomach was already roiling and clenching.

She couldn't possibly think... But, he realized, Willow could. His reasoning last night had been sound. Willow -- all of them in their way -- had reached the end of their fear. It was still there, but possible to overcome, by the knowledge that the worst thing they could imagine had already happened.

Willow knew the risks -- they all must have known the risks, since Buffy had told all of them what Dawn had tried to do with Joyce. But Joyce was one woman, lost to natural causes, and Buffy was the Slayer, lost to something that seemed so senseless and tragic, so world-toppling, that they thought it was different, somehow.

It wasn't different; there was still a body in the ground. And if they were trying to bring her back with means more sophisticated than Dawn had used, trying to bring back something that might actually be Buffy, not just a shambling horror, then they were playing with forces that they had no concept of. All the possible outcomes of such a spell ran through his mind, each worse than the one before.

He couldn't let that happen, for all their sakes. Giles thought of walking out to speak to Anya, now. Confront her, beg her to tell him he was wrong. He thought of it, and pictured the child he'd imagined, grown into a woman he thought he'd trusted, turning her face away from him as she spoke. Because... if they'd been willing to hide this from him, to plot behind his back, why *wouldn't* they be willing to lie? Had he never lied to a friend, when he thought he was doing the right thing?

As he stared at the woman who wasn't a woman, wasn't his Slayer, wasn't anything but a pile of wires and circuits with the face of someone he loved... Giles saw an artificial worry there that almost matched his own. He swallowed the feeling that he was somehow lying to a friend again, or at least manipulating one -- then caught and held her eyes. "I need you to do something for me."

*******

He found Spike in the kitchen.

He'd been expecting the vampire to still be curled up in bed, sleeping the day away, trying to get back into something like his natural rhythm after two nights of acting like a human. Well, like a vampire keeping time with a human.

Giles thought of Anya's accusation this morning and almost allowed himself a moment to worry about small, silly concerns like what the others would think if they knew about what was happening between himself and Spike. Almost. Except it wasn't worth thinking about now. What the others thought might not even be an issue if they did something so stupid tonight that they didn't survive.

Spike rose from behind the counter as Giles made his way across the room. The fingers of one hand ran through mussed blond curls; the other hand held...a toaster?

"Er. Snuck out for some blood, thought I'd heat it up, and figured out you'd not unpacked the kitchen yet. No microwave. Once I got started..." Spike shrugged. "If I'm gonna be cadging food off you properly, need to be able to find the good silver, yeah?"

Normally that would've pulled at least a smile from Giles, but not now, not with the knowledge that was weighing on his mind. "I found out what they're planning."

Spike set the toaster on the counter with a clunk. "You look like the canary that got et by the cat. What could be so bad, after bringing down the odd end of the world or two?"

"That's exactly what *they're* thinking. Don't you start too." Giles shook his head, and found the words almost impossible to get out.

It suddenly occurred to him that he had no idea how Spike would react. His drive home had been filled with the swirl of denial, worry, anger, desire to turn the car around and talk to Anya after all -- his only thought of Spike had been to get back and *tell* him. Share it with someone who'd see the danger for what it was.

"They're going to try to bring Buffy back."

Once he said it, once the words were there in the room between them, the thought hit him with the force of a sledgehammer. Who said Spike would be on his side? Spike might have been the old one, the thoughtfully nodding one, last night, but now it was about Buffy. About the chance, however slim, of having her back among them. Giles knew what was right -- and he was almost certain that the vampire did as well -- but since when was Spike *concerned* with what was right?

"Bloody hell," Spike muttered, turning away, shoulders stiff with anger. "*Bloody* hell," he repeated, voice almost a growl, shaking with emotion.

Giles stood tense and silent, waiting to see if he had an ally or another opponent.

When Spike turned back around, his face was blank. *Blank*. Empty of all emotion, not even that sneering superiority that usually fell into place when he couldn't think of anything else to pretend to. Blank and white. Giles wondered for a moment, until Spike opened his mouth. Then, there was no wondering, because it was all there in his voice.

"What do they think they're doing?" Less a growl than... a plea, of some sort. Actually asking Giles to make sense of it. But it came out so tense, so controlled, so... If Giles were willing to walk across the room and touch him, he suspected that a single whisper of air across his skin would make Spike explode.

Giles stayed where he was and did his best to answer Spike's question. "They want to make everything...okay. The way it was before." He was a bit surprised at the bitterness in his own voice, the depth of his anger at the children's unthinking choices.. "They don't understand that there's no way things will be the same, even if they-"

"Okay? They want to make everything *okay*? They *can't*. Hell, even I know they can't, and I've--" He cut himself off, with a look that on anyone else Giles would have taken for guilt, then picked up again, looking away. "She's been dead too long. It'd be..." Spike laughed, low and painful. "It'd be a monster that looked like her. Don't we already have one of those?"

Giles had a brief urge to defend the Bot, which had been trying in its own limited way to understand and help, but he didn't think it would do much good. Plus it was rather beside the point at the moment. "We need to stop it," he said instead, a simple statement of the obvious.

Spike stalked around the corner of the kitchen and towards the door. "Right." He reached for his coat.

Giles stood where he was, and Spike looked back at him.

"You coming? A hell of a lot easier to get there by car, mate."

Considering it was barely one, Giles didn't doubt it; he was rather amazed Spike had managed to find enough shadows to lurk in to get to wherever he'd gotten his blood, and back. "Spike, if we confront them now..."

Spike stood with his coat half on, black leather hanging from one arm like a courtier's cape. "Yeah?"

"They'll just deny it."

A frown, and Giles could read the indecision in his body. Half there, half not, as Giles had been for so long, this summer. The wanting to *do* something, and realizing that there mightn't be anything to do, yet. Not knowing what he should do, anyway. "Yeah."

That Spike believed him so quickly, was that cynical, didn't surprise Giles; he was more surprised by his own heavy hearted knowledge that it was true. Confronted, the four of them -- he couldn't imagine Dawn was involved -- would most likely continue the half truths and outright lies they'd been giving him for however long they'd had this planned.

That was something he was going to have deal with -- after they dealt with the more serious crisis. "We'll have to catch them red-handed. Before they can do anything, but with the evidence." Giles took a deep breath. "At Buffy's grave."

"They'll want to be there. When she rises." Spike's voice was hard. Unrevealing.

Giles nodded. A moment, when he thought Spike might actually change his mind -- when he could see, like a ghostly reflection in Spike's eyes, the image of that lonely grave, of everything that it could mean, for it to be emptied.

Then it was gone, and Spike was nodding as well. "It'll have to be you. I'm on Niblet duty again tonight." He didn't look happy about it -- if there were degrees of unhappiness, at this point.

"Actually, I've made arrangements to take care of that. The Bot's going to double back after they've left and look after Dawn tonight." He couldn't quite bring himself to look at Spike as he said that, quite certain that collaboration with the Bot was not something that the vampire was going to easily accept.

Spike said only, "You think we can trust it?"

Giles gave himself credit for not looking at the floor, now. For not hesitating, as he met Spike's gaze. "I told her that you didn't wish her to say anything about it to the others."

Spike blinked. Seemed about to frown, then laughed shortly. "Nice."

"No, not particularly. She seemed to take it as a sacred duty."

"It's still a thing, you know." The tone was less harsh than Giles expected, after last night. The anger was still there, but it was muted.

"Perhaps," Giles allowed softly, studying his own hands as he remembered the earnest confusion and hurt on the Bot's face earlier, "but it is self-aware and who can say what it...she...feels."

"It doesn't--" Spike started, then shook his head, and slipped his coat off. Hung it back on the stand. "Of course it does. Why wouldn't it?" He laughed, and it sounded like rocks tumbling in his throat. "This whole thing is so fucking ridiculous. Here we are, using each other to make ourselves believe there's a point to being around here now she's gone, and plotting how to stop them from bringing her back. The bloody Bot's just one more bit of pie-in-the-face, to top off the rest of the farce."

Giles grimaced at that blunt recitation of his reality. "It's enough to drive a man to drink," he replied sarcastically, heartily wishing at that moment that it wasn't far too early for just that. He was on the verge of not caring.

Luckily, or so it would seem, Spike was well across the verge, and tumbling into the abyss. "Scotch or gin?" Giles heard as he sat down on the sofa. He frowned and shook his head. "Oh, come on," Spike said. "You might as well join me. It's that or shag."

Without looking up, he answered, "Gin. Scotch, I've found, tends to make the 'or shag' rather a moot point." There was a glass in his hand, far too quickly for Giles to wonder if anyone would care how early in the day it was, besides himself. He stared at the liquid for a moment. "I guess, considering the circumstances..." He raised it to his lips, then drained it in one smooth motion, grimacing again at the strong taste and welcome burn.

"Short drive, then, was it?" Spike asked with a laugh that was only a tiny bit less gravelly. Giles looked away from his empty glass in time to watch Spike drop easily onto the couch beside him, while managing to hold the open bottle in one hand and a full glass in the other, spilling neither. In another time and place, there would have been a part of him that secretly envied that natural grace, no matter the price one paid to receive it.

Now, it was just part of Spike, something neither frightening, nor entirely safe, and lifetimes away from the venerable, but untrustworthy books in which he'd first read about such things. "Drive?"

"To drink. You gave in quick enough."

Giles laughed, the sound as rough as the gin had been smooth. "You're a bad influence on me." It was rather comforting in a way to have a bad influence to blame. Someone who would share the destructive behavior with him.

"Well, there's something to make it all worthwhile, at least." When he looked up, Spike was holding out the bottle, ready to pour. "As long as you're under the influence anyway..."

"One would almost think you were trying to get me drunk for some nefarious purpose." Despite his words, he held out his glass for a refill.

Spike poured, and Giles drank. Spike poured, and Spike drank. When he'd finished swallowing, Spike set the bottle on the coffee table. "One would, yeah. But m'not." He laughed. "Pretty damn scary, if you ask me."

"What is?"

"That we're the force of right and good in the universe right now. Well, you, me, and the Bionic Slayer."

"Scary? That's bloody terrifying." He reached for the bottle, pouring them both another glass when he got it.

It *was* terrifying. But it was also...reassuring. To know it wasn't his responsibility alone. He caught Spike's eye, as he handed over the glass, and Spike nodded. "Yeah. Here's to the farce."

When their glasses touched, the ring of sound was almost hopeful -- though of course, he could have been imagining things, since he was, after all, fast approaching rather drunk. But at least he wasn't the only one.

*****
Part 6:

He was stone cold sober that night, standing in front of Buffy's grave. Waiting.

The air was so still, so silent, it felt as if he could reach out and take it in his hands, warm and summer-moist. The night before last -- had it only been that long? -- it had been cool. He'd pulled his jacket close around him as he'd looked down at the headstone to say his goodbyes. Here, now, though, it was damp and humid as a jungle, in the darkness beside her grave. Every breath a chore, struggling not to drown in the watery air.

Perhaps it was just him. Giles looked across to the shadows of the stone where Spike leaned, silent as the night air. Though he appeared at ease, Giles could sense the tension running through the vampire, a match to his own.

It was a cold whisper on the back of his neck, an itch at the base of his spine. The knowledge of why they were here, what they were waiting for, what they had to stop, loomed large in his mind, threatened to wrap him in knots if he dwelled on the why. He was deliberately not thinking about it, deliberately focusing on such inconsequentials as the weather, because thinking about it would be too much. He would deal with it when he had to; he would stop it.

Afterwards he would think about it. Afterwards he'd fall apart.

"I don't like it." Spike's voice was a shock of icewater on his skin, a cold slap. Enough to make him blink, squinting into the darkness to focus on two glittering eyes, and lips that Giles hadn't seen move, in the shadow.

"It's not midnight yet; they'll be here. Unless you chase them off by talking, of course." Perhaps he bit too hard, snapping out at his own nerves, his own fears, but Spike only shook his head, eyeglints disappearing and winking back into place.

"I mean leaving Dawn with the Bot."

Giles let his breath out in a controlled sigh, trying to let some of the tension go with it. When he answered he had managed to soften his tone a little. "I know you don't. But they'll be all right."

"I said I'd look after her. What if something happens and I'm not there?" It didn't take standing above the grown-over grass to hear that he wasn't only talking about Dawn.

Giles knew there was nothing he could say that would be assurance enough. "Go, if you can't stay. I'll handle this myself if I have to." He was sharper than he had meant to be, but the idea of facing this alone left him little extra energy to be civil.

"No. I'm not leaving *her*." And this time there was no doubt he wasn't talking about Dawn, when he pointed to the grave, white finger extending out of the rock's shadow,

Giles looked at him for a moment before turning back to the tombstone and the stark reality it represented. "Nor am I," he murmured, the words a promise to a memory. He and Spike were alike in this: determined not to fail her again even if all they could offer was letting her rest in peace.

He brought his watch close to his face, peering at the little glowpaint-tipped hands. Almost midnight. If they were coming -- if he was right, and how he hoped he wasn't, and feared he was -- it would be soon. They'd need her body, and any magical undertaking this large, this dark, would be best done as near the witching hour as possible.

"Can you--" Hear anything, he was about to ask, but Spike cut him off with a sharp upswing of his hand. Pointing. Towards the forest, from which Giles could hear nothing, for a few moments. Then, in the distance, breaking sticks, branches being shoved aside. Faint, familiar voices.

Giles closed his eyes for a brief moment, his stomach sinking as his suspicions were confirmed. For a moment he grieved for the loss of innocence -- his own, no less that that of these children -- and the hard truths they would have to face. Then he squared his shoulders and hardened his resolve, turning to face the entrance to the clearing where they would appear.

Louder, and closer. They were being what they'd think of as quiet, of course, but obviously not silent enough to avoid a vampire's hearing. Anya's voice, strident with nerves, even as she tried to whisper. "There's a bug on my shoulder. Xander, get the bug off my shoulder, before it makes me scream, and do unpleasant things to it."

"It's a leaf, Anya."

"Are you sure? It could be a bug pretending it's a leaf. A leaf bug."

"It's a leaf. See?"

"Oh. Well it could've been. Shouldn't we be there by now?"

"We are," Willow replied, sounding calm and assured, just as they stepped into the clearing.

Giles could see their shadows moving through the trees now. He stood where he was. Waiting for one of them to look beyond their feet, beyond each other. Beyond the ground that they wanted to raise her from beneath.

Willow saw him first. The only one who looked ahead, hair a dusky red cloud around her sharp white face. Eyes nothing more than dark pits, at this distance, though he could see her outline as well as he could Spike's.

"Yes, you are," he agreed. He watched the shock of recognition run through them at the sound of his voice, the realization that he was there.

It was Xander who found his own voice first. "Giles! You're here. Why are you here?" High-pitched and nervous, it would've made Giles suspicious even if he hadn't already pieced together what they were up to.

"Hoping that you weren't going to come," he replied, then more softly, a prayer that had been denied, "hoping that I was wrong."

"You're supposed to be unpacking," Willow said. An accusation, that he was in the wrong place, not they. Then she blinked, and schooled her voice into a reasonable tone. "You told Anya you'd be home all night."

"It didn't take as long as I thought it would." Not with Spike having decimated the few boxes left, in his haphazard search for toasters and toiletries and god only knew what else, or what he'd put away where. "And you're supposed to be patrolling. But you're not."

"No, we're not," Willow agreed. For a second, he thought he saw her eyes clearly, though perhaps it was just the set of her chin, that told him. She knew, though she wouldn't say it. Knew they'd been found out, and she wasn't going to stop. "We have something more important to do." Willow seemed to draw herself up, trying to project assurance and confidence, Giles assumed. What he saw, though, was someone in the clutches of an obsession.

He shook his head. "No. This isn't going to happen."

Willow looked doubtful, for a second, then shook her head. "You don't know what we're doing, Giles."

"I do." This wasn't the time for games, for pretending between them, on his part any more than hers.

"No. You only think you do. I knew you wouldn't understand. That's why--"

"I do understand. Willow, it's you --it's all of you, who don't understand. Do any of you have a shred of an idea of how dangerous -- how *wrong* this is?" He looked out at four white faces, uncertainty plain on three of them, and on Willow...

Anger. Anger at him, for daring to tell her what to do. "*Wrong*? And the way things are now is *right*?" Voice full of indignation, Willow pointed at the tombstone. "Buffy being gone is *right*?"

"It's the way things are. It's not *good*, but it's what happened. Trying to bring her back, playing with the sorts of powers that could accomplish that -- even if you *could* do it, it's still not the answer, Willow."

"You think I can't do it? You think it's too *hard* for me?" Somewhere in her voice, behind the arrogant, angry young woman, he heard the bright, inquisitive child he'd known not so many years ago. Trying to please, trying to show that she could be just as smart, just as useful, as those with more physical skills than she possessed.

Was there a moment when he could have stopped this before it started? A moment when he could have -- instead of telling her that certain books were too dangerous, and locking them away -- taken the time to teach her *why* they were dangerous?

Willow wasn't his charge, he told himself as he stared at her. Wasn't his responsibility. He was there, had been there, to guide Buffy. That her friends had joined the fight was admirable, but it wasn't part of his task to teach and guide them, as well.

Except-- when he had allowed them into the circle he was supposed to be sharing alone with his Slayer, when he had accepted their help, given his own -- hadn't he taken responsibility? Once his Slayer's friends had become his own, wasn't it his duty to act like a friend? To use his own experience to protect the people he'd grown to care about? Wasn't it still his duty now, to try, and hope that he wasn't too late?

"It's too dangerous for anyone," he said, trying to get through to her. "And it's not only you who'd be at risk. I've never heard of a resurrection that's gone well -- for the caster...or the subject. I won't let you subject Buffy to that kind of...desecration."

"Won't *let* me?" She stepped closer, and he could see her eyes grow dark with rage and chained power.

"Will, maybe he's right." Xander spoke clearly, only a tiny jump in his voice. None of the high, nervous laughter that usually spilled out when he was frightened or off-balance.

"No. Xander!" The maelstrom in Willow's eyes died down, though Giles could still see it lurking beneath the surface as she turned her head away from him. "You agreed. You guys *all* agreed. We have to do this. We can't leave Buffy to suffer somewhere, if we can bring her back to us."

"But what if it's...not Buffy?" Xander stepped forward towards his friend. "Maybe we should at least let Giles see--"

"No! Xander, it's going to be her, we can do this, we can rescue her."

"Rescue her from what?" Spike moved out of the shadows. Towards Willow, towards Giles. For the first time since Spike had been ready to stalk blindly out the door into the sunlight, Giles saw doubt on his face again. He wondered if that same uncertainty showed on his own.

The others seemed to have been startled into speechlessness by the vampire's appearance. "Spike?" Anya finally said, breaking the silence sharply enough to make Xander jump, then grab her shoulder, though Giles couldn't tell if he was steadying her, or himself. "What are you doing here? Where's Dawn?"

"Safe," Giles answered for him. "The Buffybot is looking after her."

Spike spared him a quick, skeptical glance, then shook his head and repeated his question. "I said, rescue Buffy from what?"

"From wherever she is," Willow finally replied. "Who knows what kind of hell world she's trapped in?"

"Why would she be in hell?" Giles had watched Willow's face, as she said it. As he asked it. She seemed, for all her hubris, to really believe what she was saying. "Buffy died a hero's death."

"She died closing the portals to a thousand demon dimensions," Willow countered. "Her lifeforce passed *through* those portals. We don't know where it got trapped."

"I can't believe that. Buffy knew what she was doing -- the First Slayer told her that death was her gift, and so it was. This was meant to happen, no matter how terrible it is for us." It would help, probably, if he were as sure of the words coming out of his mouth as he hoped Willow would be. "I can't believe that Buffy is...anywhere that isn't a fitting reward for her sacrifice."

"Right. Because the good guys always get a fair shake in this town, when they die." The voice was dark and aching, and it didn't come from Willow. Spike took another step toward the little group gathered before the grave -- and shot Giles a look so unreadable, there was only one thing he could possibly read in it.

Giles closed his eyes for a second, and wondered, again. But this time, he was wondering why it had been so easy. Why he'd assumed. Why he felt so betrayed, the taste of it bitter in the back of his throat. He stiffened his spine, bracing himself as if for a physical confrontation. He wasn't going to let this happen, even if he was fighting alone. "Willow--" He opened his eyes to look at her.

"Angel had his soul back, and he still ended up in hell." She said it simply. Firmly. And somehow, pridefully, the credit unspoken for who had returned that soul to him, but there all the same.

"Soul or not, Angel had done many unspeakable things." Somewhere in the back of his mind an image flashed of roses, death and broken dreams. Jenny. "Buffy has always been a hero. She has done nothing to deserve that sort of punishment."

"If people got what they deserved," Spike said, and the step was made, five faces looking at him from the foot of the grave, and Giles alone at the head, "she wouldn't be dead at all, would she."

"There are worse things to be than dead," Giles countered.

Willow nodded. Smiled. It took him a moment to know what he'd said. "That's why. That's why we *have* to bring her back. Can't you see? What if she's someplace that's *worse* than dead?"

"If there's even a chance she could be suffering..." Tara echoed softly. There was the same uncertainty in her eyes that Giles had seen in Xander's, but she shook it away, looking at her girlfriend with a trust that no amount of pleading from Giles could ever break. "If anyone can bring her back, Willow can."

"There is far greater chance that doing this would cause more suffering. Have you done no research? Resurrections rarely work and when they do, the subject comes back changed. Wrong." He let his gaze linger on each of them in turn. "Would you condemn Buffy to that?"

Willow shook her head. "Not this time. This isn't some zombie dust and monster egg thing." Giles saw Spike wince, and look away. "This is the Urn of Osiris." Willow held up the bowl in her arms.

"That's...There aren't supposed to be any of those left." What she was holding was an artifact whose very existence was questioned by most of the magical practitioners Giles knew. Like phoenix feathers or hen's teeth, the Urn of Osiris was a scarcely believed fable.

"This is the last."

"I found it," Anya said proudly. "On E-Bay. I even got--"

"A free novelty item that you don't need to mention again because there are actually still people in the world who are unaware of the fact that I'm a complete dork." Xander looked around nervously, as if anyone knew or cared what sort of questionable toy Anya had bought him.

"I was going to say, I got excellent feedback for prompt payment."

Giles blinked, wondering why he felt any surprise at the conversation turning surreal and just a tad absurd. It happened more often than not after all. Even when it was Buffy's soul they were fighting for.

"What's it do, this wondrous mystical ashtray of yours," Spike asked Willow, stepping closer to her, and the sense of loss, acrid and hot, bit at Giles' throat again. As if, truly, he'd had anything with Spike except a temporary alliance against loneliness and the need to feel needed. What else could there have been, and what right did he have, after all, to expect anything else? To expect Spike to turn down the chance to have Buffy back in this world, no matter what the risk, when...

When even Giles was a hair's breadth away from turning his back, and letting it happen. To see her, warm and alive again, the currents of light and sorrow in her eyes that the Buffybot could never duplicate with a million years of tinkering and training. What if it *could* work? How could he blame Spike for crossing to join the others, when it took every ounce of courage in the soul of a tired, lost Watcher, not to follow -- and Spike didn't even have one of those?

"It's used to invoke Osiris," Willow said, answering Spike's question. "Once that's done, there's a ritual to let a departed soul come back." She glanced at Giles pointedly. "I have done my research."

Giles shook his head, feeling weary and old down to the bone. "You've done nothing. You've not taken into account anything but what you want to see. You never have." He recalled Willow spitting those words, almost exactly, into his face, after she'd done her infamous My Will Be Done spell. You don't see anything. And because of her magic, unintended as it was -- because of what *she* hadn't seen -- she'd been right. He'd been blinded, literally, by her words.

"*I* never do? Me? You never wanted to see, Giles. You always wanted to treat me like I was some little kid playing with things that were too big for her. Put away the books with the scary pictures, because Willow can't handle it. But I *can* handle it, Giles. Don't you see? I can do this."

"This isn't about whether you *can* do it, Willow. Christ, if you don't want me to treat you like a child, don't act like one!"

She stared at him. They *all* stared at him. Whether it was the language or the tone, he didn't know. Probably both. The sheer frustration and yes, anger at her, at all of them, at whatever passed for gods for putting them in this situation in the first place. He could feel it in his mouth, as if the words had scorched his tongue on their way out. And he didn't, couldn't, stop.

"Magic is not a toy. It is not a test of your skill. It can be a religion, but neither you nor I subscribe to it, for all that you mouth the words to please Tara. You see it as a tool, Willow, but it isn't. It's a hundred thousand separate forces, most with wills of their own, and minds so different from yours or mine that you couldn't even fathom what they're thinking. And you believe that because you've controlled one such force, said the right word, drawn the power to throw up walls or toss people across a room, that you can bargain with creatures of which you haven't the slightest concept, and control them as well. *Even* if you can. Even *if*..."

He broke off, seeing nothing in her face that looked like comprehension. Only anger, and hurt, and a desperation he knew all too well. The misplaced confidence, at least, was gone, but not the strength of her intent.

"Even if, what?"

"Just because you *can* do something, doesn't mean that you should. Have you never, in all this time, learned that?" But he could see in her face, in her eyes that she hadn't. He might as well have been speaking Fyarl for all the impact his words were having. The thought was utterly alien to her.

"But you can't tell me why. All you say is *should*. Shouldn't. That it's wrong." Willow was just as loud, as angry, as he'd been. "Buffy's gone, and that's wrong. Buffy could be hurting, and that's wronger. If I can bring her back to us, and I don't, you're telling me that I *shouldn't*? I can't believe that. I can't -- I won't let you stop me." She clenched the fist that wasn't holding the urn, and looked him squarely in the face -- not even glancing about her, to see if she still had the support of her friends. Their friends.

"Every action has consequences. If you fail in this. Even if you succeed. It's wrong because you can't predict what those consequences will be," Giles said, holding her eyes, looking for the flicker that would tell him she was about to lash out. "And yet you're willing to inflict them on Buffy. On us. You don't have that right -- and you will have to go through me to make it happen, because I won't let you do this while I still breathe."

"Giles, I don't want to hurt you. I won't let you *make* me hurt you." There. The darkness, rolling in like fog in the usually bright green eyes.

"Won't let me?" he echoed her words quietly, waiting for... something. For hell to break loose, as if he'd forgotten they were already there.

"You think you can stop me?" Her voice was rising again as Giles could feel the power gathering around her, like static electricity in the air. "You're wrong this time, Giles. Bringing Buffy back is the right thing to do. You'll see. I'll make you see."

So. Crackling of her hair, lifting on the wind that was magical, but real, lightly brushing around her, coming from nowhere but her own center of power.

The things he hadn't seen, Giles thought, were huge as Willow's own willful blindness. "Don't do this."

"Haven't we done this bit already?" Spike shoved his way forward, past Xander, who looked at him without recognition. It was Willow, really, that the boy wasn't recognizing, his best friend become something else, a creature of pride and determination and...hubris, though Giles doubted Xander would think to apply that word.

"What?" Willow turned to him, and her energy was barely held in check.

"It's pushing midnight. If you really think she's in hell, you gonna leave her there while you jaw back and forth with the voice of morality here?"

A surge of anger went through Giles at that, fueled by equal parts tension and hurt. It spurred him into action, even as some part if his mind called him a fool. He dove forward, intent on snatching the urn from Willow's hands while she was distracted by looking at Spike.

He didn't even make it halfway. Dark eyes were suddenly focused on him and then he was flying, landing hard against the ground, the starry sky seeming to spin above him, as his glasses flew off somewhere in the opposite direction. He heard laughter, breathless, ratchety, and realized it was his own. Another head wound for Rupert Giles, the walking skull-fracture gag. He closed his eyes and let his breath come and go as it wished.

Someone shouted his name, and someone shouted Willow's. Dizzy as he was, he was fairly sure that the first voice was Xander's; the second, he couldn't be certain about. Perhaps if he opened his eyes... It seemed to take him an extraordinarily long time to remember how. When he did he saw a blurry Willow rushing toward him, eyes wide but no longer clouded with darkness. He should do something, he thought -- find his glasses, at least -- and he would, as soon as he remembered how to move.

"Giles!" Willow again, and he felt her hands on him. On his shoulder, one against the side of his face. Cool, soft, small. You'd never think they could wield so much power. You'd never think, except hadn't he been trained, hadn't he existed, for the purpose of knowing how much power small hands could wield? "Oh, God, Giles, are you okay? I didn't mean..."

Giles opened his mouth to answer but before he could say anything, his attention was caught by a dark blur behind Willow. By the time his brain registered that it was Spike and that the vampire was going for the urn, Spike already had it, and was backing away again.

"Spike? Willow looked over her shoulder, her hands still on Giles, a strangely comforting weight, despite their lightness, despite them having dealt the blow in the first place. Giles shifted, trying to sit up, though the landscape blurred unpleasantly when he did so.

"Wouldn't want you losing this, would we." He held it up, held it carefully, and in the simple, earthenware bowl, Giles saw something.

A reflection? Not of Spike; it couldn't be. Perhaps he'd managed to earn himself another concussion, after all. Or his imagination, most likely, combined with wavering vision. But in the darkness of its concave center, he glimpsed the image of a tiny, falling, Slayer.

"No harm done. Watcher's got a hard head. He'll live to moralize another day." Spike stepped across the space between them, stood over Willow where she knelt next to Giles. He grinned, a slit of a grin, sharp and dangerous, and it was brighter than his eyes had been in the shadows of the rock, somehow. "Should've killed him, really. Long as he lives, he'll be trying to stop you from bringing her back. Maybe you should take another shot?"

"Spike, I wouldn't...that's disgusting!"

"Yeah. It is."

Giles had never thought in his life, in all the years he'd been taught to hate vampires, to fear them, to train one girl in how to rid the world of their evil, that he'd ever *hope* that a vampire would move faster than a human. But as Spike raised the urn, and Giles saw that grin again, saw it for what it was, he did more than hope.

"Incen--" Willow began, pointing a finger, and Spike brought the urn down. Crashed it against his knee, as Giles reached up, past the swirling in his head, and placed a hand over Willow's mouth.

It broke her concentration long enough for Spike to accomplish his objective. The urn shattered with nothing more ominous than the tinkle of broken pottery.

*****