Chapter 14: The Fall

In the first second she only felt the satisfaction. The slide of steel through meat. The hot, wet copper that rose above the smells sweat and death. The breathless gasp of surprise. It was only in that following second, the one where she tightened her wrist to twist the blade upwards into the chest that she realized what she had done.

Faith staggered backwards, staring dumbly down at the knife embedded in her stomach. Blood seeped out around the blade, coating the shredded remnants of her shirt in an ever-widening stain of red so deep it was almost black. She collapsed to her knees before Buffy could even understand what had happened.

"Oh my god," she breathed, skidding to her own knees to hold Faith up before she fell on the knife. "Oh god, no, no, no. Faith, I, why did, you can't," she stammered, her arms shaking violently as she lowered Faith to the dirt. Faith stared up at the cage, her unseeing eyes still frozen in glassy shock. When she coughed blood bubbled thickly out of her mouth.

Buffy leaned over the wound, trying desperately to remember what measures to take for such an injury. A shredding flash of homesickness joined the fear and self-loathing pounding in her arms. "God, Will, what do I do, what do I do," she whimpered over and over again. At last resolving on an action, she ripped off her own shirt and wrapped a hand around the hilt of the knife. She yanked it out with a sharp jerk, tossing it aside and pressing down on the cut with her balled-up shirt. Faith let out a wet, grating sound, her eyes sliding into focus and rolling down to look at Buffy.

"Had to." she said slowly, deliberately. "Good run." Her breath hitched. For a terrifying moment Buffy feared that it had stopped all together. The sounds of the crowd filtered through the pounding in her ears, chanting, roaring. For her. Somewhere in the wall of sound she thought she heard her name, her real name, the one Faith used to whisper when she thought she was asleep, but everything else cut away when Faith finally drew another heaving breath. Then something hard bounced off her head.

She looked around wildly, scanning the crowd looming above the cage for her attacker. Unbelievably, she picked out Jonathan's pale face. He was screaming something, motioning hysterically at the ground next to her. When she looked down she saw a single stimpack.

Raw, manic hope surged through her. She grabbed the device and tore the needle cover off with her teeth. Peeling away her blood-soaked shirt, she jabbed as near to the torn skin as she could manage and depressed the release mechanism. Buffy watched with horrified fascination as the blood seeping from the wound began to slow and clot, the jagged edges of skin almost vibrating as they started to knit themselves back together. Faith groaned aloud at the pain of her body being forced to heal. Buffy tore herself away at the sound and felt for Faith's pulse, racking her memory for the places Willow had shown her in another lifetime.

She looked into Faith's eyes. They were heavy with exhaustion and bright with pain, but deep within them she saw the tell-tale glimmer of focus. She was still here. At last, at last her fingers rolled over a vein and the pulse she found there was weak. Faith's chin was still wet with blood, her teeth pink with it as she tried to choke out a few more words. The effort fell short, and her bruised, battered face at last went slack.

Buffy could no longer feel the feeble throb of life beneath her fingers.

She fell back on her heels, covering her mouth with her own bloodstained hands. The loudspeaker boomed above her.

"Worker Summers is the victor. By order of our Lord Quentin Travers, she is hereby released from her duties in the Mills and invited to an audience in the Haven. She will be granted one request before being escorted uptown." The crowd fell into a tense, murmuring silence as they waited for her words. She struggled to form them around the rising bile.

"I want Jonathan, I mean, Worker Levinson to have the b-" she stopped sharply, retching. The very air tasted hot and sour and she pulled in a steadying breath. "The body." Her voice broke in the middle of the word, causing a wave of confusion and discontent to roll through mob.

"Granted," the announcer rumbled. The gates ground open and Buffy could do nothing but watch helplessly as the last person that she would ever have dared to love was dragged across the dirt, trailing a wide, red smear. Her mind flew instantly to another stain, thick, bright blood dripping unevenly down a glass door, and she wanted to die.

Someone hauled her to her roughly feet. An armored raider who kept his wide hand wrapped firmly around her bicep as he lead the way out of the arena and up the winding stairwell to the factory floor. With her sight blurred by exhaustion and grief, it seemed as if they were entering the mouth of hell itself. She could perceive nothing more than the hot, liquid orange of molten steel, the mechanical screaming of grinding gears, and the stench of sweat and burning hair. An industrial tableau of human suffering that overwhelmed her senses long after they had passed back into the ruined town.

The raider was talking as they walked, more at her than to her. He was practically jovial, having won a great deal of money by betting on her. Full of promises to help her adjust to her new role above the chattel that worked the steel. How easy it would be to twist away from his hold, wrench the submachine gun tucked into his waistband up and blow apart his spine. From visual confirmation alone she could tell the weapon was fully loaded; if she was careful she could take out ten more people before the ammunition failed. She clenched her hands and willed the instinct forward one last time.

The appearance of Haven jerked her back towards reality. Even beneath the layers of soot and rot that painted every surface in the forsaken settlement, it was no less than palatial. A fortress standing darkly against the dull red sky, guarded by a crude, towering rendition of a man chained to the concrete. She hesitated, stumbling forward as her guard continued on obliviously. The one thing she had left to finish, the noble reason that mired her so deeply in suffering gazed down at her impassively as they crossed the courtyard. For the sacrifices that had left her alive and for the miserable lives of every person trapped in the Pitt, Buffy swallowed hard and gripped fast to her sanity. She could still get the cure.

The guard released his hold when they arrived at a sparsely appointed office on the second floor. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him bow at the waist and back towards the door, closing it slowly after he crossed back into the hallway. Behind a grand wooden desk stood a man in terrifying power armor, facing away from her. The armor bore the scars of countless battles. Little more than force of will kept the metal bound to the stained animal bones that made up a lost pauldron.

"Worker Summers, is it?" the man asked, his voice colored with a familiar edge of intelligence and disinterest that settled heavily in the pit of Buffy's stomach. "Congratulations on your victory. My lieutenants would have me believe that you are a devastatingly impressive fighter, though I find myself skeptical in your presence." He sighed to himself, adjusting something on the table before him without turning around. "Though, to be honest, the strategic prowess it must have taken to bring you this far would be more useful than brute strength, especially given recent developments. Tell me, in your time among the people, did you ever encounter a woman named Gwendolyn Post?"

"No, sir," Buffy bit out, dread swelling beneath her skin. He turned around then, cradling a bundle of cloth to his armored chest. "In the last three hours she has incited a riot that will lead to the deaths of hundreds of slaves. Filling their heads with lies about a cure to the plague. I should have seen it coming; her charisma almost cost me my holding once. It was only a matter of time before she found the means to strike again." Buffy watched numbly as the bundle began to squirm with a thin, unmistakable wail rising up to fill the room. The man's expression softened as he edged back a corner of fabric to reveal a small, unhappy infant girl.

"Shh, darling," he cooed, walking around the desk while jogging his arm slightly to soothe the child. When he looked up at Buffy, his eyes were jarringly sharp and suspicious. "You surely know by now that I am Quentin Travers, Lord of the Pitt. This child is six months old and in perfect health, something that is completely unheard of in this land. As she grows we will be able to determine what keeps her well in the face of squalor and plague, and with careful study we will pass that on to all my people, worker and soldier alike. She will save us all. My daughter, my Marie will be our cure."

In a move that felt more like an opening gambit than an extension of goodwill, Travers passed the child into Buffy's arms. She was warm. So small and fragile.

"I will ask you once more, Miss Summers. Do you know Gwendolyn Post?"

"Yes, sir," she growled, a rage of unimagined magnitude swelling to a roar in her ears as the child drifted back into slumber against her breast.

Willow sat numbly in the rickety chair beside the bed, watching the shallow rise and fall of Tara's chest. She turned a pistol over in her hand, the one she built from scrap on their journey from the Wasteland. The one she meant to give to Tara for extra protection. The one she forgot about in her selfish rage.

The metal was slightly rough under her fingers, the wood stock smooth and worn. It should have been cold to the touch, but she had held it long enough to pass a weak, eerie warmth to the weapon. It was almost inviting. The safety clicked softly as she turned it off.

Tara would be gone soon. She could not be naïve enough to believe anything different. There was so much blood billowing in the muddy water. Too much. It should have been a miracle that she survived this long, but the word felt hollow and untrue when Willow remembered the wet, grey flesh clutched in the murderer's dying grip. The gunmetal felt rougher against the underside of her chin.

"You were it for me," she said to the room. "The only one I ever loved. The only one who didn't leave me." She exhaled, cocking the hammer back with her thumb. "I have no interest in a life without you. I don't even deserve it. No one does." The thought clung to her mind like a bramble as her finger found the trigger. She hesitated. She thought harder.

"No one deserves to live," she murmured. For a single breath, the screaming weight of grief eased. The murderer was dead, she had seen to it with her own hands, but there were other that had put them on this path. The wild men. The ghoul. She could dispatch them once and for all in these empty moments where she waited for her life to end. She could still right the scale.

The gun made a muted thunk as she dropped it carelessly on the nightstand. She pulled herself to her feet, gathering her tools before walking back beside the bed. Tara was pale. Calm. Still. "Please try to wait," Willow whispered into her cool skin as she kissed her forehead. "I don't want to send you on alone. I'll be home again soon."

The journey to Marcella's was nothing. An empty, grey stretch of time. She entered the tent after knocking twice.

"Willow, dear, what," Marcella started, trailing off with a look of horror as her eyes came to rest on Willow's shirt. She leapt into action, closing the distance between them and taking Willow's face into her hands, looking for injuries. "What happened? Are you alright?"

"Yes," Willow lied, her voice toneless. "But Tara isn't. The ferryman attacked her. I've done everything I can. Please go to her." She pulled the crudely fashioned key from her pocket and pressed it into Marcella's hand. "I'll be there soon." There were more questions, frantic pleas for understanding that Willow did not have the time to hear. She left without another word.

The path that led to the old stone church that overlooked the dead ocean was steep. Slick from the constant dampness. The sun was setting by the time she reached the gate. She was not surprised when she was turned away.

She jammed the button on the intercom further into the device and talked as she worked. Smooth, indulgent words of promise she had heard Buffy use to draw the trust of strangers in a lifetime long ago. If her calculations were correct, it would take less than an eighth of her supply to accomplish her task.

They trickled out one by one, drawn by her persistence. Six of them came to linger by the iron gate, letting slip that the remainder of the tribe was once again engaged in combat with the ghoul. Something akin to pleasure throbbed in Willow's chest. The universe approved of her plan.

When she pulled back they watched her with curiosity, pressing themselves to the wall now spotted with wire-linked patches of off-white clay. As she passed the threshold, she turned to face them and depressed the detonator.

The world filled with heat and force and she was enveloped by the roar. It danced across her skin, seething and alive. She expected the feeling to pass back into numbness in the rushing, crumbling silence that settled after, but it did not. It sank into her bones, billowed through her blood, filled her with a thrumming sense of electricity and she knew it for what it was. Moving forward among the bloodied, blackened stonework, she was no longer a weak, broken, hollow shell. She alone owned the right of life and the justice of death. She was a god.

One of the wild men had survived, his body mangled beyond hope. "What are you?" he asked in a hoarse scream. Willow thought for a moment as she surveyed her work.

"Vengeance," she answered simply, turning her back to his suffering and continuing on towards her final goal.

The night closed in around her, making it childishly easy to lay out the remainder of the explosives around the base of the mansion. Screams and gunfire seeped out through the cracks in the old walls, bursts of light and violence that brought a thin, sharp smile to her face. This moment called out for a denouement, for an answer, for a reason, but the deepest part of her was content with not knowing why. It was inconsequential. In the end nothing was ever more than an exchange. Pain for pain. Life for life. Simple. Clean. Precise.

She started out towards the threshold, looking over her shoulder when the main door was thrown open with a guttural roar. "What the holy fuck?" Rack swore as he stumbled out into the night, freezing in place when he spotted Willow. "Strawberry, get your ass over here! You and your little swamp girl really fucked this one up, but we can save this ship yet. Give me a fucking hand with this door!"

Willow looked back at him impassively, raising her arm with deliberate slowness so he could see the detonator in her hand. She pressed down even as he began to run towards her. "No, no you didn't, you little…"

The explosion that interrupted him was impossible. He was swallowed up by a wall of fire worthy of the end of days. The void of pressure pulled the air from Willow's lungs as she was propelled off her feet, crashing hard into the sodden ground behind her. Her charges should have produced an event barely half that size, she thought idly as the edges of her vision began to grow black. The ghoul must have had a failsafe rigged in the cellar. It was as if it was always meant to be this way.

She wasn't sure if she was pleased or disappointed when she regained her breath in an ashy gasp. The air was filled with smoking wood and burning meat. When she pulled herself up to sitting, she was the deep, smoldering crater that was all that remained of the Calvert Mansion. There was nothing left but stillness and beautiful inevitability of death.

It was done. It was time to go home.

That became her mantra as she covered the distance back to the ruins of the motel, compelling her forward as the fire of revenge flickered and dimmed in the absence of fuel. It's done. Finish it. Finish it, now.

The room was not as she had left it. An electric lamp burned on the table, warm and yellow, unsettling in the memory of the cold, grey misery she had left behind. An unfamiliar blanket was spread across the bed, a clean and colorful patchwork of fabric that had visibly seen years of use. Marcella's eyes were wide with surprise and shining with hope.

"Oh, Willow, it's a miracle, truly a miracle," she said as she wrapped her arms around unyielding shoulders. "The bleeding stopped. Her heart has steadied and her breath growing stronger. She's fighting."

Willow shrugged Marcella off without ceremony, whispers of panic ghosting across her skin. Tara's face had color again, faint but certain. Her chest rose and fell with slow, deep regularity. The heartbeat that lulled Willow to sleep every night was steady and strong beneath her ear. She reached out a shaking hand and pinched the skin of Tara's arm sharply. The muscles of her arm and wrist tightened almost imperceptibly. Willow did it again to be certain, but against all reason she knew it happened.

A response.

"Oh my god," she whispered, her chest tightening painfully under the suffocating vortex of joy and shame and dawning horror at her own actions. She heard Marcella's voice as if from a great distance, felt the hands on her shoulders as pressure against the spreading numbness.

"Come along, child. You'll be no good to her like this. Clean yourself up and rest. I can barely recognize you as you are now." Willow pushed herself to her feet and stumbled into the bathroom, an absent sort of curiosity prickling beneath the chaos of her mind. The girl who looked back at her in the mirror was cold and confused, an unstoppable force that was left abruptly without direction. Soot was caked across her arms and face in lines that branched like veins.

Her hair was black with it.

"Anya!" Xander called out through the wall of noise, coughing violently as acrid smoke singed his lungs. He covered his mouth with his hand and pressed forward through the debris towards what he hoped was the source of the clamor. As he stumbled into a clear room off the hallway he leaned himself against the wall and took a moment to gasp for breath. To say he was disoriented was a gross understatement; the shift from weightlessness to gravity, from absolute silence to living chaos had left his stomach roiling.

He looked up sharply at the sound of footsteps pounding against the metal, freezing when one of the alien creatures sighted him from the other side of the room. His whole world narrowed down to the rifle in the monster's hands, to the tightening of one long, tentacle-like finger around the trigger. Before he could think to react there were three smoky, percussive cracks.

The alien fell, limply carried forward by its own momentum. Behind him stood a tall, grizzled man in a wide-brimmed hat, blowing away the last tendril of black smoke from the barrel of a heavy caliber revolver. "Get movin', boy," he growled as he turned on his heel and headed back the way he came. "We got a situation." Xander shook his head to clear it and followed quickly.

"You're telling me, Paulson! There's another one of these things heading straight towards us. What's happening in here? Is the transporter thing working now? Where's Anya?"

"Critters must know the cavalry's close, they started hammerin' on us as soon as we locked you out," Paulson said darkly as he reloaded his weapon. "Boss Lady went through the doodad with the doc and the girl; I figured someone needed to look after the womenfolk. That crazy oriental fucker's around here somewhere, screamin' like a banshee but taken 'em down all the same." At the edge of his hearing, just below the metallic echo of the alarms, Xander could indeed hear an incomprehensible war cry.

"We'll have to leave him for now," Xander swallowed, trying to mask the quaver in his voice. "He doesn't understand us when we're not staving off an apocalypse, and I really don't feel like getting chopped in half on top of everything else today." Paulson grunted in approval and took off down a nearby hall at a steady jog.

They reached the transported without any further encounters. Fear of the unknown clenched tightly around Xander's chest, slowing his advance towards the glowing platform. Paulson pressed on, walking into the light without hesitation. He vanished into a crackling cloud of electric mist. "Oh, wow, do I hope this works," Xander whispered to himself, rolling his shoulders and completing the last few steps to the transporter.

The sensation that enveloped him was not quite painful, more a feeling of being driven head first into a pool of water that managed to be boiling without heat. For the barest second he felt complete nothingness, no heart to beat, no lungs to gasp, no mind with which to perceive existence. Then his real feet hit a real floor, and he opened his eyes.

"X-man, down!" a male voice called out. Months of instinct snapped into action and Xander dropped to the floor without a second thought. A light flashed over his head, and the section of wall that was recently behind his head melted into a jagged hole dripping a hot, glowing ooze. He looked up to see the thawed army doctor, Elliot, and Paulson crouched under cover to reload their weapons. Alien corpses littered the area around them, and a sizeable force of the living seemed to be pinning them down under near constant fire.

"Get to the bridge," Elliot roared over the wall of noise. "The girls are on the other side of these fuckers, but we'll get to them. We need a kill switch, man, go find us one!" Xander nodded frantically and scrambled to his feet, taking off down a side hall behind the line of skirmish. Through an open doorway at the end, he could see wide glass windows looking out on the blackness of space. "This is it, this has to be it," he panted as he broke into a run. As he crossed over the threshold, the door hissed shut behind him and locked with a metallic snap.

"Oh, shit," he swore, whipping around the circular room in search of enemies, painfully aware of his complete lack of armament. He found himself alone and surrounded by alien computer consoles. As he inched closer to the wide bank of windows he noticed two things. A panel with two dials separated by a large button standing apart from the rest of the equipment, and the mirror image of the craft on which he stood sliding ominously into view.

"Oh, god," he breathed. "Oh, god; it's all up to me."

The enemy ship had now taken up the entirety of the space he could see through the windows, and had begun to glow in a single point towards the base. Fearing it to be some sort of weapon, Xander lurched towards the panel and wrenched the rightmost dial all the way to the right, praying silently that it would do something, anything to mitigate the inevitable attack. A translucent pattern lit up above the dial, a crude rendering of something surrounded by a bubble. The space above the leftmost dial began lit up as well, a much dimmer drawing of what could easily have been a gun.

The sound of a terrifying new klaxon drew Xander away from the pictures, bringing his sight up just in time to see the light from the enemy swell and churn and burst towards him in a wide, yellow beam. Paralyzed with fright, he could only watch helplessly as the light made contact with the ship and, unbelievably, dissipated harmless across a wide, curved line. "It's a shield," he said dumbly. "It made a shield." He leaned forward against the panel, knees weak from the unexpected gift of continued life. His palm landed on the button between the dials, and it depressed under his weight. The floor of the deck shuddered beneath his feet.

He yelped and staggered backwards, desperately trying to stay on his feet as a new light filled the bank of windows, a thin, yellow beam exploding towards the enemy ship. The light ran into an opposing shield, but crackled out silently against the black hull in weak arcs of lightning. The pieces clicked together in Xander's mind with iron certainty.

"One or the other, attack or defend," he muttered to himself, experimentally twisting the right dial to the left and the left dial to the right. The pictures switched intensities, the shield flickering dimly as the gun glowed bright. When the klaxon blared again he reset the dials, watching the light break harmlessly across the scope of his vision.

"How about you try some of your own medicine?" he growled as he wrenched the dials into the offensive position and depressed the button, holding on for dear life as the floor began quake uncontrollably.

Buffy barely noticed the choking smog that filled her lungs or the slow burn of irradiated blood drying on her skin. The Yard was still locked in the hellish darkness of smog and smelting cauldrons, and all but the most feral of the plagued had sense enough to stay out of her path. She had been waiting for the icy calm of death to settle over her rage, but it had yet to come. Everything was fire; every beat of her heart pumped kerosene through her veins, the knife handle throbbed with heat in her hand, the look in Faith's eyes seared deeper into the back of her mind.

She ascended the stairs to Post's hideout fast enough to carry the burning to her muscles and found herself centering around the fury. She had been used, a tool in the hands of someone who had been cruel enough to hold the promise of freedom over the heads of slaves in a desperate bid for power. Her last lifeline to the world was dead by her own hand. The crumpled map she had found hidden among Faith's things fell from her grip as she forced open the door.

"Post," she called out into the cave-like storeroom, tightening her grip on the knife as a rustling movement began on the second level. Post descended the stairs gracefully, the smug satisfaction spread across her features melting into confusion with every step. "Why…what are you doing here?" she asked slowly. "What have you done to Faith?" The question stung sharper than Buffy expected it to, making her hesitate as exactly what she had done flashed once again to the front of her mind. Post took the moment's pause to grab a pistol hidden under the stairs.

"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised," she sighed, dropping her arm to level the barrel with Buffy's head. "I knew her affections would ultimately undermine her resolve, but I had hoped she would reach the cure first. How terribly poetic that you were the one to kill her, in the end." She fired, the bullet burning against the skin of Buffy's arm as she dove for cover. "You used her, you bitch!" Buffy roared. "I don't know what the hell you did, but she was out of her fucking mind."

"I only foretold the truth to her, dear. That you were weak, that you made her weak, and that you would ultimately betray us all for your own selfish interests. And, lo and behold, I have been proven correct. Where is the cure?"

"You knew the cure was a child, you were going to kill a fucking baby!" Buffy kicked over a table to protect against another round of gunfire as she advanced through the room. "Of course I knew," Post scoffed as she reloaded, "Those who truly know how to lead know that sometimes sacrifices must be made for the greater good." A shot ripped through the table within a hairbreadth of Buffy's head.

"You were never doing this for the greater good. You don't give a damn about those people; you just want to fuck with Travers." She made a dive for an upturned desk, crying out when a stray shot punched through her boot. Knowing her mobility was all but compromised, she bit down against the pain and listened for approaching footsteps. Post chuckled darkly.

"So you know my terrible secret. It matters little, since I will be the sole survivor of this encounter. You've already taken care of my failed protégé, so it will only be a matter of time before I can strike again. Just think of the power you two will have as martyrs for the cause." Buffy listened to the approaching steps carefully, sucking in a deep breath at the penultimate clank and ripping her body around as the final step brought a foot into her field of vision. The knife sunk easily into Post's thigh; Buffy wrenched it hard against the bone.

Post fell backward with a scream. Buffy used the momentum to twist out the knife and haul her own body forward until Post was pinned beneath her, the knifepoint lined up over her heart.

"Do it," Post hissed. "Death is your gift, child. Everything you touch will die."

"Not everything," a ghost wheezed from the doorway. The look of shock was frozen on Post's face as Buffy brought the knife down with enough force to pierce the floor under the woman's back. She leaned her weight down on the handle, watching yet another life bubble out on to her hands as the villain's dying words rang in her mind. Those people out in the Pitt had believed in her and were being massacred for a cure she couldn't bring herself to take. Her father lay rotting on the stage of his life's work. She had abandoned what was left of her family to the wastes in a fit of grief and rage.

She did not fight when an arm reached down and curled under her chest. Faith had somehow survived, maybe only to put an end Buffy's terrible work. She had earned that right, Buffy thought as her body was pulled backward. Through her inaction, Buffy had betrayed those she had sworn to protect, just as she always had. It was high past time she forfeited her life to pay for it.

"S'ok, I gotchya." The voice was tired and pained, but warm in Buffy's ear as she fell back into Faith's lap. There was a sharp hiss of pain as she landed, but Faith only held her tighter to her uninjured side. Buffy was numb and mute with surprise as she looked up into Faith's exhausted, smiling eyes.

"Jonny told me everything when I came to. Not to mention I heard most of your showdown with Post. We've really gotta work on your shootout banter," Faith smirked at her, bringing an unsteady hand up to brush against Buffy's cheek. "Did she get you anywhere?"

"How can you even look at me?" Buffy breathed, disjointedly registering tears slicing through the grime on her face. "She was right. I betrayed you. I betray everyone I love and then I kill them. You should be dead."

"But I'm not, you beautiful idiot," Faith pressed her lips to Buffy's forehead. "Don't let her fool you, too. And, c'mon," a familiar, cocky grin spread weakly over Faith face, "Do you really think you could get the drop on me without me giving it to you? Please." Laughter crackled up Buffy's throat, but it left her mouth as a sob. The tight-wire tension of battle snapped into nothingness and she collapsed into Faith's embrace, drowning in relief and regret.

Willow nudged open the creaky storm door with her shoulder, scraping some of the muck from her boots off on the jamb as she entered the dim motel room. She smiled sadly over at the bed as she slid off her backpack. It had been a full month since the Calvert Mansion explosion and Tara had yet to show any signs of waking. Her head wound was healing nicely and her response to painful stimuli was increasing slowly, but steadily. Willow was careful to keep her as clean and comfortable as she was able, to work her muscles away from atrophy and move her regularly to prevent bedsores. There was reason to hope she would soon return to the world. However faint it may be, there was reason to hope.

"I'm back, sweetheart," she said quietly, bending to kiss Tara's cool forehead. "I found a lot of good stuff today. A whole dozen fission batteries, actually. Seems like they're under every rock I turn over here. When you wake up and we go home, we're gonna be rich." Her throat tightened painfully around those last, hopeful words. As much as she dreamed of it, as often as she schooled herself to hope for Tara's full recovery, she felt deep within herself that it would never happen. Tara would stay trapped forever by Willow's arrogance, and she would be alone until the end of her days.

She knelt by the bed, running a hand gently up and down Tara's arm. "I'll tell you more about my day later, baby. I should read to you for a little while, first." Without taking her eyes off of Tara's tranquil face, she reached over to the drawer of the bedside table and withdrew a thick, leather-bound bible. Marcella had left it for Tara on one of her early visits. She came by often to check on Tara's condition, overwhelming Willow with infinite forgiveness and relentless encouragement every time. It was she who suggested that familiar words might draw Tara back to the world of the living, and she had written a list of favorite passages inside the cover of the bible.

Willow paged through the musty book, tracing her fingers over the blue-black words that she knew would feel cold and hollow on her tongue. With a sigh, she shut the book again and laid it on the nightstand beside the long-forgotten pistol. "I'm sorry, I want to read but…it just…it hurts."

An absent smile lifted the corner of her mouth. "I can tell that this is where you learned to read. Not all the time, just every now and then I'll see it in a phrase, in a story. I can't remember if I've ever told you how much I love the way you speak. The sound of your voice. God, you always had such a way with words."

She leaned forward and rested her forehead on the edge of the mattress. "I know it was always hard for you to get started, but once you did you could move mountains with that beautiful voice. You held us all together, you know. We would have split up months before we did if not for you. Hell, Anya wouldn't even be alive if not for you." Tears began to sting at her eyes at the thought of the family she would never see again.

"You kept me grounded. Never let me get too angry, always helped me see what I needed to see. I always wanted so badly for you to need me like that, too. I tried and tried to show you I could be that, and then I lost my damn temper and pushed you away. And now we're here. Safe in the knowledge that in five minutes without you, I went off the fucking deep end."

"Jesus, Tara," she hissed into the blanket as a nauseating wave of grief and self-hatred rolled through her stomach. "I can't believe I did what I did. I murdered people, people who had never done anything to us. I killed them in the way that would cause the most pain I knew I could inflict, and I liked doing it. It made the screaming in my head stop, if only for a little while. I couldn't bring myself to put the gun back in my mouth until things were even."

She picked her head up, angrily wiping at her eyes. "I can't believe I didn't see it until now. I'm dangerous. I'm not safe to be around, and there's no way in hell I'm going to risk hurting you even more. I have to go get Marcella; she'll take good care of you. I have to go."

"Not so fast, Strawberry," a gravelly voice sneered behind her. Before the realization that Rack had not only survived the explosion, but had found their hideout and returned to exact vengeance for her betrayal could fully form in her head, a loud crack shattered the hollow silence that filled the room. There was a thick, wet sound as blood spattered all over the blanket covering Tara. Willow's shoulder erupted into fire.

"Not even your fancy explosives can take out old Rack, dearie," he chortled as Willow cried out in pain. She pushed unsteadily off the floor, managing to face him as she sat heavily on the side of the bed. Her own blood leaked out from under her fingers, hot and slick as it dripped onto the sandy floor. "Please, God, don't hurt her. Please, just take me, do whatever you want with me, just don't hurt her," she wheezed frantically as her chest unseen bands of iron tightened around her chest. Rack laughed menacingly. "No can do, Strawberry. Examples must be made, you see." He brought his pistol to the level of Willow's forehead. "Nobody crosses Rack."

Through the haze of pain as her consciousness began to slide away, Willow could only interpret what happened over the next several seconds as a miracle. Something moved on the bed behind her; stiff, jerky movements that rocked the sagging mattress. A long, shaking arm extended into her field of view, hand wrapping around the barrel of the handgun lying on the nightstand. With another lurching movement, the arm rose until it was braced atop her uninjured shoulder. A second arm wrapped around her waist as the gun went off next to her ear, the crack of the discharge loud enough to spark a deafening ringing. Rack's desiccated face was locked in an expression of pure disbelief as a large section of his skull disintegrated into a pulpy mist.

The arms around her were warm, the breath on the back of her neck hot against chill spreading quickly across her skin. She could not fight the darkness any longer, even when the miracle spoke to her in Tara's sleep-thickened voice.

"Wrong. Nobody messes with my girl."

Xander didn't know how long he had been staring out into the darkness when the door to the bridge was forced open with a very human grunt of exertion. He looked back over his shoulder to see Anya and the others tumble through the small gap, each of them singed and bruised, but otherwise unharmed. The door snapped shut again when Paulson lurched into the room. They all stared in disbelief as Xander turned to face them.

"Jesus Christ, boy," Paulson said gruffly as he moved closer to the windows, clapping Xander hard on the shoulder as he passed. "You sure took care of that whole mess, didntchya?" Xander tried to suppress the proud grin working its way across his face as everyone took in the sight of the alien ship suspended before them in massive hunks of jagged flotsam.

"What can I say," he quipped, feeling his spine straighten at the look of puzzlement and awe that Anya held him under. "If they wanted to come to the party, they should have RSVP'ed." Without speaking, Anya closed the distance between them.

"Ahn, are you ok? You look like you got knocked around a little." When she was close enough he reached out and touched her shoulder, sliding his hand upward toward a darkening bruise on her jaw. The contact produced a quiet thrum of something he could only describe as rightness. He smiled when he looked into her eyes. "I'm really glad you're alright. We should talk when we get a moment alo-" he started to say when Anya reached and pulled him into a long, hard kiss.

When they broke apart the room had slipped into a pleasant haze. "That sums it up fairly well, actually," he murmured, tucking a patch of sweat-damp hair behind her ear. She gave him a small, tight smile, her eyes still wide and dark with a frantic mix of fear and relief and unstoppable realization. Behind them, Sally squealed with excitement and clapped her hands together.

"It's just like the movies! I knew it would be just like the movies!" she declared triumphantly. "The hero always saves the day and gets the girl."

"I'm pretty sure Paulson and Elliot are the heroes," Xander protested. "They took care of all the bad guys here." Elliot tossed them an appreciative grin before disappearing down a ramp to another section of the bridge while Paulson snorted without looking up from the alien weapon he was examining.

"The other ship appears to be quite large, and it likely held a more expansive force than the one we encountered here," Anya supplied, nodding over at the floating wreckage. "You can see from here where they were housing the extra personnel. I suspect our ship is some sort of science or scouting vessel and that was slated to be an invasion force. It's quite likely that you saved the entire world."

"And no one was here to see me do it?" Xander gasped in mock-horror. "What a rip-off!" Sally giggled and skipped off after Elliot, at last leaving Xander and Anya alone with each other. Xander became very aware of the arms still looped around his neck, the swell of Anya's hips beneath his hands, the anxious vulnerability still clearly ingrained in her expression. He had little to no idea how he felt about what had just passed between them, let alone what it could have meant to Anya. Was she only compelled into action by a lingering burst of adrenaline? Was the buzzing in his chest the last remnants of the tension of battle, or the start of something else entirely?

"Anya," he started gently, moving a hand to tip her chin up enough to meet his eyes. Before he could continue, Elliot called out from the lower deck.

"Boss, I think I just found your ticket home!"

"Why do these things always happen when you least need them to?" Anya groused quietly before yelling back, "We'll be right there." She released Xander and took a small step back, giving him a very serious look as she asked, "Do you promise to talk to me later about this?"

"Cross my heart," Xander nodded, quickly correcting himself when faced with Anya's expression of complete bewilderment. "I mean yes, I promise." The answer seemed to satisfy her, if leave her wary, and they trundled down the ramp. Tucked into a narrow alcove they found Elliot and Sally standing around a replica of the transporter that had brought them to the bridge.

"From what I can tell, there's some kind of sensor attached to the wreckage you saw before you got sucked up here," Elliot explained, pointing to a specific section of a chart Xander found entirely unfathomable. "Looks like it's actually set to go both ways. If you hop in this one, you should wind up back down there, and if you ever want to come back all you have to do is get close to the crash site again."

"That's good," Anya said thoughtfully, looking around the cluttered space with a glint in her eye. "The weapons we've found alone will sell for thousands. We'll control the weapons market for the entire Capital Wasteland with multiple salvaging trips. Will you be leaving with us?"

Elliot shook his head. "I don't think so, ma'am. The world you talk about is so far from the one I left that I don't think I'd ever find my way back to my feet. Plus, it sure doesn't sound like a place for a kid." He cast an affectionate look over at Sally, who had wandered off to examine the contents of a nearby bank of shelves. "She reminds me so much of my baby sister," he sighed sadly, running a hand through his hair. "I think it's best that we stay up here. God only knows how big this place is, or what we could find. I can spot medical equipment, Paulson can gather up the guns, we can even process it for you, make the selling easier down there."

"Excellent," Anya declared, extending her hand jerkily. "I'll cut you all in at three percent of the take each, in case you change your minds. We'll be back." Elliot smiled and shook her hand awkwardly, patting Xander on the back as he turned to go follow Sally. Anya looked over at Xander, tentatively reaching across the short distance between them. She glanced at the transporter, then back into his eyes as she wrapped her hand around his.

"Are you ready?" she asked, an unspoken gravity radiating from the words. Xander gripped her hand and nodded resolutely, taking the first step towards the transporter. "Yes," he answered simply, pausing for a fraction of a second so his steps fell in line with hers. As they passed into the light he smiled and said the words he thought for so long he would never be able to say again.

"Let's go home."

Author's Note: Many thanks for your unending patience in waiting for updates. It would seem my pace has slid fully into glacial, and I deeply appreciate all of you who have stuck it out this far. Onward and forward, as they say somewhere!