Slayerless

"Are you sure you’ll be alright? I can… stay, if you want?"
Willow shook her head quickly. Things were too complicated already without re-awakening that particular problem. "No, I’ll be fine." He looked a little hurt at that and she wondered if her tone had been too sharp. She smiled softly, "Sorry, it’s just… well… look, I’m fine. I just really need to get some sleep. See you in the morning?"

He studied her for a long moment until, apparently satisfied that she really would be fine, he shrugged and grinned.
"Cool, maybe we can look for that Dawn girl? She was pretty good with that axe, even if it was almost as tall as her!"
Willow nodded sleepily; right now she didn’t want to think about finding anyone or anything except possibly her bed and a few hours uninterrupted sleep. She yawned widely and instantly held her hand up to her face in horror. Xander just smiled at her, "And that would be my cue to leave." He held up his hand to forestall her half-hearted protest. "No arguments. Bed. Now." He pointed up the stairs and she smiled gratefully at him.
Ripping off a perfect military salute she barked "Yes, sah!" before adding, "she’ll wake up tomorrow. You wait and see."
"Sure she will, there’s no keeping the Buffster down for long.," he replied. It had become a mantra with them, a ritual they had to perform at the end of every day in the hope that one time it would be the truth.

She watched as he made his way down the path and out into the street. When he turned left she frowned a little, his house was off to the right, then she realised he was heading back to Giles’ place. Things must be really bad at home. She felt a little guilty about not letting him stay over but she wasn’t really sure they were ready for that yet.

Things with Oz were good now, the fluke with Xander had been just that – a fluke – but she was still a little unsure how Oz would react if he found out Xander had stayed over while he was on tour with the Dingoes.

Xander made it to the end of the street safely but then she lost sight of him as he turned the corner. Gently she shut the door, making sure to double-lock it and put the chain across – not all bad guys needed an invite to get into your house after all.

Wearily, she tiptoed upstairs, her parents weren’t home so there was no real need to be quiet, but old habits die hard. She vaguely remembered her mother saying something about a conference on the increase of occult-based television programming and it’s affect on the teenage psyche. A wry smile worked its way across Willow’s face, she’d never been all that interested in shows like Charmed and the X Files – she saw enough of the occult just walking down Main Street, she didn’t need to go looking for it on cable.

The house felt a little chilly – no doubt a by-product of the lack of anyone home to heat it during the day– so she quickly changed into her cosy tartan flannel pyjamas and sat down at her tiny desk to check her emails. Having recently joined a few occult email groups that Miss Calendar… Jenny… had book-marked, she’d learned the hard way that if she didn’t check them on a daily basis her inbox got really cluttered.

She grabbed a hairbrush and began gently working out the knots in her hair as she watched the emails flooding in. Scanning the subject lines, she watched for anything urgent. Along with the huge number of WannaBlessedBes, there were actually a large number of genuine seers in a lot of these groups. Once she’d joined, she’d spent a good deal of time just trawling through the archived messages and discovered that people had posted warnings that could have helped them out in a lot of their fights over the past three years.

She spent a moment wondering if she would have actually been able to spot these warnings for what they were at the time, after all, they could be quite vague and often downright confusing most of the time! For instance, the last time the Hellmouth had opened, there had been alerts on most of the groups and most of them warned about an additional threat – the dead shall rise to bake a cake.

That made no sense at all to Willow, but she remembered that when she’d told Xander about it he’d gone very quiet. Pondering that for a while, she wondered if maybe Xander knew more than he was letting on about the events of that night. But no, he hadn’t been there, he couldn’t know, could he? And besides, the dead didn’t rise unless you counted Angel regaining consciousness – that must have been what the group members meant. As for the baking a cake thing? Well, Angel did have a bit of a sweet tooth after all, or maybe that should be a sweet fang? She giggled at that thought.

Her musings were interrupted as on screen one particular subject line caught her attention. The incoming messages pushed it down-screen too fast for her to read so she carefully put down the brush and leaned forward.

Slowly she scrolled down the page looking for the message that had caught her eye – there it was!

[COCoven] For WiccaWill – important!

WiccaWill was the name she’d chosen when she’d started signing up for these groups, not the most original when compared to the other members, but it served its purpose. Frowning, she tried to remember the last time she’d posted to this particular group but couldn’t. She tended to just post an introduction and then sit back and read what everyone else had to say. Never before had anyone sent an email to any of the groups just for her. Feeling a little wary, and a teeny bit excited, she opened the email and read it carefully. It was short and to the point but she found herself reading it over and over again.

[COCoven] For WiccaWill – important!

Willow checked the sender, someone calling herself "ThespiasDaughter". The return email address was hidden and the girl’s profile was depressingly blank, but Willow knew from experience it would take only seconds to break the coding the group imposed to mask identities.

Something stopped her from doing just that though; instinctively she felt she could trust this "T", this ThespiasDaughter. It was odd, but she felt a connection to this stranger, almost as if she knew her.

Willow knew she’d need to show this message to the others soon, but she was determined to find out as much as she could before she shared it with them. "Your friend, you must wake her." That had to mean Buffy, but it was her injuries that were keeping her from waking, all the doctors said so, it was a miracle she was still alive after all. Sitting back for a second, she wondered just what she could do. After all, she was no doctor.

She re-read the next part a few times with a growing sense of dread; "All will be lost if she sleeps. Forces are gathering." Did the demonic community know the Slayer was out of commission? Were they planning something? Without a Slayer to guard it, the Hellmouth was a pretty attractive playground for all the petty demons who wouldn’t dream of showing up if it was known that Buffy was on her feet.

Sure, they’d all taken their turn patrolling, even Cordy until the call of superstardom had gotten too much for her and she’d headed off to LA, but none of them were a match for an active Slayer and they all knew it.

"Forces are gathering," That was definitely something she should tell Giles about, he might be able to narrow down the threat somewhat. If they what they were up against then maybe they could find some way to stop it before things got too out of control.

On impulse she hit "Reply" and carefully typed out her answer: 

Making sure her own ID was masked in ways the group’s server probably hadn’t even heard of, she hit send and watched as the progress screen showed the email on its way to the group and to "T".

Looking at the time the original message had been sent, Willow knew it might be tomorrow before she got an answer so she reluctantly switched off the laptop and crawled into bed.

As she drifted off to sleep, she took time to wonder at the effect the last line of the message had had on her. A warmth had spread through her body, starting with a tight knot in the pit of her stomach and working it’s way to the tips of her fingers and toes, even to the ends of her hair, leaving her tingling.