Hey guys. So sorry for the disappearance - school got really messed up. Like, the kind of messed up where you lose a year of your life and tens of thousands of dollars and maybe need to get a lawyer. Anyway, here's a new chapter, please enjoy!

She probably shouldn't have done that spell.

She'd been drunk at the Bronze the night before, dancing wildly with boys she didn't know and pretending that the world around her didn't exist, something that she'd never really done before. She'd ended up saying things she wouldn't normally say, had hurt Xander's feelings and probably Buffy's too, and all of that, the cold, foreign feelings had hung on, refusing to go away even as she lay in her little dorm bed with Buffy sleeping across from her.

But Oz had sent for the rest of his things and made it pretty clear that he wasn't coming back anytime soon, if ever. He hadn't even sent a letter or a note or a word, nothing to tell her he was sorry or that he missed her or… anything. Devin had shrugged and looked sheepish when she'd asked after him, told her that he wasn't his best but that he was surviving, and that hadn't helped her feel better at all. She felt like she was breaking, like she'd been broken in half and half of her was missing.

And somehow worse than all of that was the fact that it seemed like no one else really cared. Her friends said over and over that they understood, that they felt for her, but none of them wanted to hear about it, none of them wanted to listen. It was just like she'd told Giles, when he'd come over all righteous and trying to placate her - they said they cared, but they certainly didn't act like it.

Yeah, yeah, sorry life sucks, but hush now.

Ugh.

It just made things that much more awful, because how did that help her? How did it matter that everyone felt this at some point, that eventually it would go away, when right now she just wanted it to stop? To end? When all she could think about was the pain and the melancholy that stuck to her like glue and followed her around like an obnoxious little ghost whispering reminders in her ears?

But maybe it would get a little better. She still felt bad, of course, maybe even a little worse since she'd hurt Xander's feelings and snapped at Giles. But Buffy had come back to the dorm and they were both here and had the whole rest of the night to hang out. She could get her brood on for a while, complain and cry, and then maybe by the time they fell asleep on front of a bad rom-com she would feel a little bit better.

But for that to happen, like most things, it had to get worse before it could get better.

So she confessed; confessed to knowing that she'd hurt Xander's feelings, to having snapped at Giles and pretty much sent him running from the room, and then confessed to perhaps the worst of it all - having done an ill-advised spell that hadn't even worked, contributing to her feelings of uselessness and not having been good enough, for anything or anyone.

"You're a good witch Willow," Buffy said in an attempt to console her.

"I'm a bad witch," she whimpered. "If I were a good witch, I could've made Oz stay."

"Willow," her friend murmured, moving over to sit beside her and put a warm, comforting hand on her shoulder. "You wouldn't have wanted that. What would it have meant if he'd stayed, but only because you made him?"

Willow cringed. There was a little judgment there, a little accusation, both of which made sense even through the hurt and both of which she thoroughly deserved, but she wasn't prepared to face up to that just yet, so she pushed back to the original topic.

"But I couldn't do the spell on Veruca," she objected, "And my 'Will be Done' spell went exactly nowhere."

"You're being too hard on yourself," Buffy protested quietly. "You…"

She didn't get to hear the rest of that statement, and boy had she needed to hear it. The slow and gentle build up from her best friend had only just begun to work - a tiny crack in the mask of suckage that was suffocating her - but the shrill, tinny ring of the phone on the bookshelf cut her off. Frowning, Buffy got to her feet and crossed the little room, picked up and hid her irritation with a forcedly cheerful tone.

"Buffy and Willow's!"

For a moment she was quiet and in that moment her frown came back full force, and Willow felt her stomach sink. That wasn't good, that was Slayer-face, which meant Buffy was going to have to…

"All right Giles, I'm on my way," she said.

Hanging up, she turned to the closet to dig out a coat slipping her arms into it as she spoke.

"Giles has heard from the Council," she said. "I need to get over there - they want to hear it from me about our little soldier problem."

"Oh, but, what's the rush?" she whined. "They're not going anywhere. And I figured since I'm kind grieve-y we could have a girls' night. You know, sundaes, Steel Magnolias, reassurance?"

Freezing as she crossed to her bedside table for a stake, Buffy turned to her with a pained, miserable face.

"I'm really sorry Willow," she murmured, stepping up to her to squeeze her hand. "I have to go. We need to get this thing figured out and taken care of ASAP." Biting her bottom lip, she shifted and rose from her crouch too fast, her eyes darting around shiftily. "We don't know what kinds of bad they're getting up to down there," she said, fishing around in a drawer and coming up with a pair of stakes, strapping them to her wrists. "And with Spike still running around…"

Willow frowned, irrationally irritated by the way Buffy's cheeks turned pink when she said the vampire's name. So what if she hadn't staked him yet - everybody knew how slippery the big jerk was. They weren't blaming her for the fact that he was sneaking around Sunnydale - that was no reason not to spend time with her! It wasn't fair, wasn't nice, and it made her feel hot and flushed and too excited, like a rubber-band stretched too far.

"I don't see the big," she complained as Buffy headed for the door. "You'll probably find him just standing out there, find him in two seconds! And the entrance to that stupid Initiative lab with him!"

"Woah," Buffy warbled, staggering on the wet lawn even though tonight she was wearing a pair of flats. The ground wasn't soft with rain, just damp, and a glance around told her that she was in a place she had no business being at this time of night, no reason to be stumbling and dizzy. A wave of nausea swept over her and she immediately spread her feet to steady herself, bent over to lean against her own knees for support and took a slow, deep breath.

"Slayer?"

Snapping upright again, she slapped her hand over her mouth and groaned as her stomach tried to climb out from between her teeth.

"What the soddin' hell's goin' on," a voice growled low in her ear, and then there were cool fingers wrapping around her wrist and pulling her hand away, grabbing her chin and tipping her face up to the light of a nearby security lamp.

"Spike?" Confusion swirled into the head rush and for a second she just leaned against his hold, letting him take a tiny bit of her weight as she gulped at the cool night air, breathed until she felt a little better. "What are you doing here?"

"Was hoping you could tell me," he rumbled, and from the lispy rasp in his tone and the way his eyes glinted gold she knew he was pissed. "Don't exactly remember heading this way."

"Me either," she confessed, straightening up and pulling away from him in the process.

"Well that's just… wait a minute."

"What?"

"Just… just wait," he urged, and then he was dancing away, his coat whirling around his ankles as he spun in wide circles across the lawn, eyes darting back and forth as he searched for something in the dark. Buffy followed at a slightly more sedate pace, watching him with more than a little apprehension. What was he…

"Here," he declared suddenly, jolting to a stop and staring down at the ground between his battered boots. "It was here."

"What was here?" she asked.

"The lab," he said, whirling on her suddenly, grabbing her wrist so tight that the point of her stake bit into her forearm. "The commando lab. Bollocks!"

"I don't think…"

Apparently it didn't matter what she thought, because the next thing she knew she was being dragged quickly away, hauled along at Spike's side as he practically shouldered her in an attempt to move a little faster, to get them well away and into the cover of a little copse of trees, pulling her down behind a scraggly little bush so that they were all but invisible in the dark.

"Spike, what the hell?" she hissed, but he just shushed her and shoved his hands into the bush, snapping branches to create a little hole for them to peer through.

"It was there," he said, his voice low and rough and insistent, sending a strange little shiver down Buffy's spine. "A hatch, a door in the ground. There's a gate, a ladder, and it drops down to their lab and Slayer I know this is the Hellmouth, but that door… it really is hell down there. I can't… the stuff that's down there…"

"Ok," she said, cutting him off and leaning forward, pressing in close to his side and putting her hand on his forearm. "Ok, I believe you. All right? I believe you Spike."

And she did.

But Spike was looking at her with something almost guarded on his face, something closer to innocent fear than she'd ever seen on his face and it cut at her soft insides. The need to make him some kind of promise surged up inside of her and it startled her, surprised her. But she couldn't just let it lie.

"I believe you," she said again, softer this time. "I know I don't have the greatest… track record when it comes to listening ok, but I… I think I'm starting to get it. Not all demons are bad, and hell if I haven't learned that not all humans are good. Giles called the Council, and as much as I can't stand those tweedy jerks I think they'll help. These commandoes, what they're doing down there… it's not right."

For a second silence hung between them, thick and heavy as they watched each other warily, distrustfully.

"No," he said finally, carefully, full of caution and uncertainty.

"No," she agreed. "They need to be shut down, but this isn't something we've ever seen before. This is organized, this is civilian involvement, and I… I need help. And right now, you're my best bet."

Spike was still, too still beside her where she was still pressed against him, her hand having slipped down to cover his where it rested on the ground between them.

"Guess we did work a truce once before," he admitted, his mouth twisted in contemplation that seemed a little faked.

"Twice," she corrected smugly, because in her book that was a win. "Come on, let's get back to my house. I need to call Giles, and then, god help us all, you need to help me come up with a plan."

Huffing loudly, Willow crossed her arms and paced across the concrete floor of the Harris basement. After an unsuccessful girl-talk with Buffy she'd decided to turn to her other best-friend for help, but that was going just about as well as the first attempt.

Ok, so maybe she should've apologized first, but Xander had taken one look at her face after opening up to her knock and pulled her into a soft, warm hug, and if that wasn't an invitation to spill her guts she didn't know what was.

Still, maybe if she'd apologized first he would be a little bit more sympathetic, cause she wasn't getting much of that right now.

"You know Will, it's not like she can just let Spike go," Xander said in a yucky, reasonable sort of tone. "And as much as I say we let 'em do their job, Buffy's apparently got a little demon-bee in her bonnet about this Initiative thing. Until she finds out what's up with those commandoes, I don't think we're gonna see all that much of her. Course, she did say they might be coming after her… which would be bad…"

Willow rolled her eyes.

"It's not just that," she huffed, trying once again to get her point across and still feeling like she was failing at it. "I mean, the Slayer stuff I understand, the sworn duty and all..."

"But?" he prompted gently.

"Oh, but!" she groaned, flopping down on the sofa-bed beside him and throwing an arm over her eyes. Why did it matter, but? The but made her feel whiny, ridiculous, and that wasn't fair. She was hurting here, ok? Why did she have to explain it? She needed their support right now, and she said so.

"It's not fair," she muttered petulantly. "She's never around anymore - always patrolling and looking for Spike, or hanging out with other people…"

"You mean Will? The guy from the golf course?"

Xander's voice was a little tight, a little alarmed, and something about that made her perversely feel better.

"And the soccer game," she confirmed, with only a little spite, dragging herself upright again. "Her new boyfriend."

"Boyfriend?" he yelped.

"I don't know," she shrugged. "When I asked where she's been she mentioned his name."

"So you don't know he's her boyfriend,"

"Well he's more important than me apparently," she sniffed, her insides going hot and shivery again, the electric feeling buzzing in her fingertips and the anger and the sadness making her insides feel stretched and tight. "I get it. Well fine, why doesn't she just go marry him?"

"I know it's hard to see it right now," Xander said, reaching over to put a hand on her knee, squeezing gently. "But this? All this. It's because of you and Oz. Not Buffy or me or anybody."

At the sound of her lost lover's name Willow flinched, jerked and pulled away from his touch. What he said, it hurt, like being slapped across the face, too painful and too close to the bone. He was looking at her a little sadly now, his eyes big and warm and kind, and she thought that might hurt even more.

"Eventually you'll find someone else," he murmured. "And it will be better."

"Because most relationships work out so great?" she mumbled, tears stinging and threatening to fall, right out of the blue. "I think we're all doomed to badness."

"You're not doomed Wills," he said, and her eyes narrowed because this time there was an easy smile on his face and a light chuckle in his tone. "None of us are. You've gotta look at the bright side. Oz was a werewolf. I mean, he was a cool guy, don't get me wrong, but that affected him, and it affected you."

Watching him slouch back onto the couch, reach for the remote to the little television in the corner, Willow felt something in her blood boil, something in her chest flare, a zing, a zap as anger leapt to the forefront once again, drowning out the sorrow like it had never even been there.

"Just like Buffy and Angel," Xander continued, eyes on the television as he flicked through the channels. "Angel was a vamp, and we all know how that worked out."

"Oh, enough about Buffy!" she snapped, leaping to her feet and towering over him, his face shocked and maybe even a little bit frightened. "And what exactly are you trying to say Xander, huh? That I deserved this because Oz was a werewolf and I picked him? That Buffy deserved what happened because she picked a vampire?"

Willow felt heat sweeping through her, a blaze so hot it could consume and something told her that she needed to pull it back, that whatever was happening wasn't quite right, wasn't quite safe, but she couldn't stop. "Well let's look at your track record. Insect lady, mummy girl, Anya. Face it Xander, you're a demon magnet. You're dating a demon! Don't you think it's time you got over this?"

Ignoring the way he shrank back from her, the quiet hurt ate at something deep inside her, she turned around and stomped toward the stairs, slamming the door behind her.