Willow followed Giles across the beach to the spell casting circle they'd laid out earlier. "What do I do?"
"Mostly observe," he said as he knelt to uncap the vial of quicksilver and pour it across the surface of the mirror. "I'll tell you if I need your help at any point. And uh -- use your discretion. If there's an implosion of any sort it's probably a safe call that I need your help."
"Implosion?" Xander said.
"Not to worry," Giles said. "If it happens it will be very localized. Willow, if you would close the circle now?"
She hesitated, looking at him anxiously.
"Willow," Xander said, "if you're not sure about this, maybe we should --"
"No." She drew a shaky breath. "I'm okay." She picked up the driftwood and completed the circle about Giles. "Just be careful."
He smiled at her, then carefully sat down on the damp ground. Willow settled in a cross-legged sit just outside the circle, facing him.
Giles lit the candles with a match. "Here we go then." He shut his eyes, sitting for a moment in silence. Willow shut her eyes too. A slight breeze drifted over them.
"Four quarters to where I Am. . ." he began.
Willow repeated the litany under her breath, watching him intently as he made the ritual sacrifices of the hairs from Buffy's brush. He moved through the ritual with an proficiency that she knew she'd never match. The brilliant light of the full moon infused his smallest gesture with significance. She leaned forward, intent on the casting.
A hand clasped her shoulder and pulled her back. "The circle, Willow," Xander said urgently.
She blinked up at him, then realized that she'd been on the brink of leaning into the spell casting circle. She grasped Xander's hand and straightened.
The mirror on the ground had taken on a dark liquid luminosity that shifted with pale uneasy shapes. Sweat beaded Giles' brow as he focused intently on the surface of the mirror. The images coalesced, then broke apart again. He frowned, then repeated the litany.
"Come on!" Willow whispered, glaring down at the mirror.
"What?" Xander craned forward, trying to get a glimpse of what the mirror was showing.
"I don't know, but the images aren't coming together," she said unhappily.
Giles held a hand over the mirror and the shifting patterns of light froze and held. He took several steadying breaths and wiped at his forehead with a handkerchief. "I don't think we're going to manage it tonight, Willow," he panted.
"What's wrong? You think maybe I --?"
He shook his head. "Buffy isn't receptive to contact right now. More than likely she's asleep."
"Oh, great," Xander said. "What a time for her to turn into a morning person."
Giles shook his head. "I can't force her awake. I can hold the spell open for a bit and hope she senses that I'm knocking on the door; but if she doesn't . . . Well, we've got one more night."
"Wait," Willow said. "You can't force her awake, but maybe you could connect with her through her dreams?"
Giles drew another long steadying breath. "Connecting with her subconscious is a dicier proposition than connecting with her on a conscious level. She's far more internally fixated in her sleep. I'd need a much greater degree of focus on her mind than I have now."
"But -- you're knocking on the door now, right?" she prompted. "If you could knock a little louder, maybe she'd hear."
He nodded, somewhat painfully. "Maybe. Connecting is not simply a matter of knocking louder, however. We need a symbolic interface, a key to her dreams. This spell doesn't allow for precision. And without precision, I have no way of finding an interface."
Willow thought furiously. "We could triangulate maybe? That would focus the spell better, wouldn't it?"
"Yes," he said, still straining to hold the spell open and to think. "But that would require a second circle --"
"Hold onto the connection!" she said excitedly, and grabbed the driftwood to trace out another circle in the sand tangent to the first. "I've got extra candles, and we can use Cordelia's mirror and the mineral water!"
Still intent on holding the connection open, Giles said nothing.
"Willow!" Xander grabbed her arm as she started to lay out a second casting circle. "You guys promised me you wouldn't try any new stuff."
"Xander, come on," she said impatiently. "We're just focusing the spell a bit better."
"And what happened to no moon casting for you tonight?" he insisted. "Giles, you said she couldn't do it this time of month!"
Willow glared at him rebelliously. "I won't be casting, just giving Giles a boost so he can complete the connection with Buffy. We're almost there, Xander."
"Willow," Giles said, his voice stressed, but underlaid with iron. "Stop it. He is the Watcher tonight. He has the final decision in this."
Xander looked at him in astonishment.
She shook him. "Xander, please. We can do this. All we need is a few minutes."
"Giles?" Xander said. "I don't know what to do."
"It's your decision," Giles reiterated. "But make it quickly. I can't hold this connection open indefinitely."
"But what's the right decision? What'll happen if the spell goes wrong?"
"Dimensional flux," Giles said tightly. "The Second Circle is a standard trick for focusing scrying spells, but it doesn't always work as predicted. And we'd be using it in an unusual capacity. Willow will only be acting as a secondary focus, so I can shield her if the spell goes out of control."
"It's okay, Xander," Willow insisted. "It'll work. I know it will."
"I'm fairly certain we can pull it off," Giles said.
Xander swallowed. "Do it then," he said.
Willow kissed him, then moved into her circle and closed it.
"Gods, Cordy. What if I'm wrong?" Xander said.
Cordelia stepped closer to him and took his arm.
Willow sat down and lit her candles with a match, cupping her hand to shelter the small spark from the breeze. "What do I do?"
"Here." He held out his right hand over the point where their circles intersected. "Put your left hand against mine."
She obeyed, relishing the heat of contact where their palms touched.
"This is important. You can't co-cast with me tonight without extra precautions that we don't have time to make, so you're going to reinforce instead. That means you musn't try anything independent of what I'm doing. My life could depend on it. Do you understand?"
She nodded.
"We're going to repeat the first four lines of the litany, after which I'll finish on my own. I'm not certain how powerful the boost is likely to be -- hopefully it'll be sufficient for us to find the means to connect with Buffy's subconscious mind."
Willow nodded again.
"All right then. Here we go." Giles shut his eyes for a moment, then opened them and launched into the litany. She parroted him, keeping her eyes on his. There was a light in his eyes that burned almost too painfully bright for her to meet. Still, she met his gaze and chanted, stopped four verses in and waited, her palm pressed tightly against his.
He spoke the final verse of the litany and fell silent, still looking into her eyes. The breeze ruffled the hair on his forehead. The ocean behind her rumbled distantly in her ears. Between them, the mirror continued its enigmatic shiftings. A spark of pure silver shot across the surface, pulsed once and faded. Willow blinked. And opened her mouth to speak.
The world began to drop away from them. The moonlit darkness morphed into an unbearably brilliant light.
Giles' eyes widened, and she felt his fingers curl, lacing through hers. She could sense his controlled panic as they dropped into sync once more. Willow sobbed deep down in her throat, but struggled to maintain her calm, to try to help channel the tremendous surge of magical power she felt building between them.
He hadn't been expecting anything close to the magnitude of this reinforcing energy, she realized. She sensed him faltering in dismay at what they'd created.
Giles, she tried to think to him, it's not different it's just bigger. We can control it.
He nodded curtly -- still too tightly focused on the casting to send her a coherent thought -- and struggled to gain a rein over the power they were sitting on. Sensing that he needed her as an anchor, Willow tried to bring herself as close to a meditative calm as she dared. The unbearably bright light began to cohere and flow around them, until it seemed as if they were sitting at the eye of a slow hurricane of luminescence that spun about the mirror's surface. The glass had turned a glittering black; the blackness seeming only a reflection now. . .
They looked as one up towards the top of the whirlwind of light. An expanse of profound darkness hovered at the apex. Abruptly vertical became horizontal, and the light began to rush towards the dark eye of the storm. They found themselves standing at the center of the tempest, hands still clasped. Willow leaned heavily onto Giles, fighting for equilibrium. He wrapped his free arm around her and rested the side of his head against hers.
The unbearable roaring eased, and the flood of light became a steady stream flowing towards the dark eye. Giles lifted his head to look at it. "Well," he said, his voice shaking, "that was certainly a new experience."
"What happened?" Willow whispered. "Did we get sucked in?"
"No, no," he reassured her. "We're in control of this gateway. We've managed to manifest a physical interface to the non-tangible dream reality. I was only aiming for a psychic connection."
"We're actually in Buffy's dreams?" Willow said.
"No. We're at a gateway to her subconscious mind. But physically -- yes we are here."
She stared with a fearful fascination at the darkness ahead. "Should we cancel the spell?"
"Probably," he said, looking ahead with the same fascination.
They looked at each other. "Don't let go of my hand," Giles cautioned her. "The gateway is our work. It will remain in place only as long as we continue to give it our combined energy."
Willow nodded and tightened her grip.
They walked through the tunnel of light towards the darkness. As they approached the gateway it grew larger, but still remained dim and amorphous. A bitter coldness wrapped around them, and Willow began to shiver. Giles moved to take off his jacket for her, then looked down at their joined hands and grimaced.
"Never mind," Willow said. "I can stand it." They halted before a wall of shimmering darkness. Pale shadows shifted uneasily beyond the interface. "What is it?"
"A physical link," Giles said with awe in his voice. "To Buffy's subconscious. If she were awake we wouldn't have been able to get this far."
"How do we reach in?"
"I don't know. She has to let us in. But we can't very well knock. . ."
Willow reached out her free hand and ran it up and down the interface to Buffy's dreams. The surface felt fuzzy like static and cold. "How physical is this? Is it real the same way were are?"
Giles quirked a smile at her. "And just how real are we?" The smile disappeared. "Any physicality here, besides ourselves, is a product of our casting." He stepped forward to gently touch the gateway. "She's in pain," he said.
Willow looked at him. "How can you tell?"
"I know," he said simply. "She's going to be hard to reach. She doesn't want us here."
"You're talking to her now?"
He stepped back. "There's a certain empathy between Watcher and Slayer. It's somewhat stronger here. But it's never more than vague at best. And it's not going to help us now, because she's rejecting it."
Willow heard a world of desolation in his voice. At that moment, she would have gladly slapped Buffy.
Giles reacted to her moment of anger with a defensive anger of his own. "It's not her fault. I can't communicate to her that we need her. She's been hurt."
"She can't hide forever," Willow said. She looked up at the gateway again. It had darkened, grown colder and more distant. "Buffy," she said despairingly. "Don't shut us out like this. At least let us in, talk to us."
The hazy images beyond the gate continued to shift in slow indecipherable patterns.
Is she dreaming? Willow thought.
Nightmares, Giles replied.
Willow put her hand up to the gateway. "Giles, what did the door to the mansion look like? Do you remember?"
His breath caught in his throat. "Yes," he said finally, and moved his broken hand to rest on the gateway next to hers.
The shimmering blackness dimmed, shrank and solidified, until it became a heavy metallic door, barred like the door to a prison cell. Willow pushed at the handle, but the door remained shut.
"Here," said Giles, and reached to push at the handle himself. "You weren't a part of this particular nightmare."
The door swung easily in under his touch.
The interior of the mansion was freezing cold, shadow- filled interspersed with harsh wall lights that filled only small patches of space along the central hallway. Willow drew instinctively closer to Giles, seeking out his warmth. She wondered if the real mansion had seemed this barren of life.
Giles stood very still next to her. She could feel his pulse racing. He'd expected to die here, she realized. This place wasn't foreign to his own nightmares. That was probably why they'd gotten in. She was beginning to regret this whole idea.
"It's all right, Willow. This is only Buffy's dream," he said softly. "I can cope." He looked around, then stepped off down the hallway. "The courtyard, I believe. Acathla."
Willow fell in step beside him. She tightened her grip on his hand, acutely aware of that lifelink between them.
An ominous rumble, at first just above the threshold of hearing, grew in volume as they walked. It finally gained a masculine voice; Willow could barely make out scraps of phases of Latin. A summoning, she thought with a shudder, Memories of herself performing the Rite of Restoration, of Oz and Cordelia by her bedside, of some frighteningly alien power seizing control of her mind.
"Oz," Willow whispered and shut her eyes, lost to a moment of fear and a need for reassurance and comfort.
"Jenny!"
She froze in confusion, then realized that the hand clutching hers was trying to pull away. "No!" Willow opened her eyes and tightened her grip. "Giles, hold onto my hand!"
He was looking frantically down a branch of the hall, on the verge of pulling away from her. "Jenny. She's here somewhere," he said. "We've got to get her out of here, before he --"
"Oh no," Willow whimpered. She grabbed his wrist with her other hand, bracing her heels to tug back on his arm. "Giles, this is supposed to be Buffy's nightmare." What had he said about Watcher/Slayer empathy? Why hadn't she made him explain that? "Giles, look at me. We're in this together. You've got to stay with me, or we're both going to get lost in here."
She finally managed to catch his eye, to pull him around. "Rupert! You've had nightmares about the mansion too, right?"
He nodded, his eyes locked on hers. He was regaining some sense of control, Willow sensed with relief. She persisted. "Maybe you guys have been sharing some of the same nightmares? Maybe that's how you knew exactly what had happened to Angel?"
"Christ," he whispered. "Willow, we have to abort the spell."
"Hold on to me," she insisted. "It's not my nightmare -- at least not this part of it. And you should have some power over it, since you and Buffy are sharing it."
"Power yes -- but I have no perspective," he said.
"Then I'll be Perspective Girl. But you're going to have to trust me to do it."
Giles nodded, and took a deep breath. "Go ahead."
"Acathla," Willow said. "We have to reach him. That's where Buffy will be. Fighting the demon. Angelus."
She led him down the hall, trying not to think about his dependence on her right now. If she let herself think, she'd freeze. They passed a curtained doorway; and he half-turned, as if compelled. Willow pulled him on past the doorway. He resisted for a moment, then followed her without a word.
She glanced at him and felt a chill at the blankness in his face. His hand under hers was icy cold. "Rupert, stay with me," Willow pleaded. "I can't leave here without you."
That shook him out of his. He nodded, looked up, and stopped.
Willow moved closer to him. They'd come to the end of the hallway and now stood in front of a massive set of double doors that stood slightly ajar. She glanced at her companion, then stepped forward to push at the doors with one hand. They refused to budge. "Guess it's still your nightmare," she said.
Giles added his weight to hers. The doors opened effortlessly before them.
Willow had never actually been to the mansion, had never seen Acathla, but she was almost overwhelmed by a sense of deja vu as she took in the scene before them.
The room and its occupants were strangely monotonal, as if they'd been caught in the grey amber of an old silent movie. Acathla stood at center with an eery look of expectancy, the sword torn from his chest. Angelus, a harsh sword-wielding figure in black, savagely beat the Slayer back. Only the Slayer, fighting with a grim fury, had any color to her, but it was a lurid color with no life in it.
"Buffy!" Willow screamed and tried to run forward, but Giles pulled her back.
"Don't distract her," he snapped.
"It's a dream," she said, still trying to pull him forward. "We've got to stop her before she destroys him this time. Or she'll just run away again."
He shook his head vehemently. "We can't change what's happened."
"We can. Please listen to me, not to the nightmare," she insisted.
The Dream Buffy beat Angelus to his knees before Acathla and lifted her sword to deliver the final blow.
"No, wait!" Willow cried out.
Buffy faltered and the sword dropped a few inches. Angel looked up at her with tears in his eyes. "We did it! We stopped her from killing him!" Willow said happily and looked up at Giles.
His face was expressionless, but his unmistakable grief confused her. She looked back at Buffy and Angel embracing. And saw Acathla behind them, and his mouth dropping open. "Oh, no," she whispered.
"It's playing itself out in her dreams as it happened that night," Giles said in a dead voice. "We can't stop it from repeating. Only she can do that."
"What can we do?" Willow said as Buffy and Angel kissed.
"Try to talk to her."
Buffy stepped back, lifted the sword, and rammed it into Angel's chest. Angel looked at her in devastated bewilderment and reached out his hand to her. The vortex of light that was emerging from Acathla wrapped around him and sucked him back into the demon.
And everything was still.
Buffy turned and walked blindly towards them. Tears streamed down her face.
"Buffy, it's all my fault," Willow said, weeping now too. "I'm sorry."
Buffy halted before them, an expression of anger and pain and confusion on her face. "You don't belong here," she said leadenly. "I don't want you here. Leave me alone." She looked at the floor, refusing to acknowledge their presence in this dream.
"Buffy," Giles said. "We can help."
"You can't," she said matter-of-factedly. "You'll only get hurt. You're better off without me --"
"Buffy, at least let us try," Willow insisted, reaching out for her.
"-- and I'm better off without you," Buffy continued as if she hadn't heard. She walked past Willow's outstretched hand towards the doors.
"Giles do something," Willow said desperately. "We can't just let her go after all we've done to get here."
"Buffy," he said quietly.
She stopped, but didn't turn around.
"I know that you're hurting badly. But you have a responsibility --"
"Yadda, yadda," she said bitterly. "No. I don't. Not any more. I can't be the Slayer any more. I know I'm failing you, and I'm sorry. That's just how it is."
"You have a responsibility to your friends and to the people who care for you," he continued. "Who've risked their lives, and are continuing to risk their lives for you. If you run away, you're failing them. If you can't come back as the Slayer, then come back for them. Come back for yourself, because it will destroy you if any of them die because you weren't here to prevent it."
"And where were all my 'friends' when I was ramming a sword through Angel's guts?" Giles and Buffy stared at each other for a moment. He reached out a hand to brush a tear from her cheek, but she shoved it aside and walked.
"Buffy. . ." Willow whispered, as the door swung shut with all the finality of Death.
Beside her, Giles collapsed.
"No!" Willow grabbed at his wrist as his hand pulled from hers, and she was jerked to the floor with him. Across the room, Acathla smiled and belched.
The dream world burned away in a firestorm of light. She threw her arm around Giles and pulled him close to her, shielding his limp body from the inferno.
Light blew the world apart. . .
"Willow! Willow!"
She shuddered and reached out for something, then wailed in loss.
"Gods, Willow, what's wrong?!" Strong arms wrapped around her shoulders.
She couldn't see: light filled her brain beyond capacity. "Giles! Giles!" she shrieked. "I lost him!"
"Shhh, it's okay." A softer arm wrapped around Willow's shoulder. "He's here."
"Damn. Damn. Damn," Xander was saying. "I shouldn't have told them to go ahead with this. Willow, what's wrong!?"
"I can't see!" She turned frantically in Cordelia's arms, and groped about with her hand. "Where's Giles?"
"Right here." Xander was trying to hold her down. She finally hit him and lunged forward until her fingers clasped around a cold hand.
"Wow, pretty impressive right cross," Cordelia said.
Willow pressed Giles' hand between hers. His fingers moved slightly. She let out a shuddering breath and laid down beside him, still clutching his hand.
"Willow?" Xander was back again, stroking the hair back from her face. The light was leaching away from her vision; she could make out the reassuring darkness of his hair.
Somewhere close by a voice boomed out.
"Latin," Willow said fearfully.
"Listen, whatever it was you guys were doing there, it stirred up some weather," Xander was saying. "Come on, Willow. Pull yourself together, or we're all going to get drenched. Cordy, where's that brandy?"
"Here --"
"It's not for you, com'on give it here."
"Well, you didn't tell me what to do with it."
"Here." A flask was pressed to her lips, and Willow summoned the strength to drink. She coughed violently, and the remainder of the light fell from her eyes. She began to shake.
"Now we're getting somewhere," Xander smiled at her, but he looked badly shaken. "Can you stand?"
"Give me a minute --" she said.
Xander moved on to Giles, who was finally beginning to stir. "Com'on, G-man. You don't want to leave this brandy for us to finish."
Thunder boomed almost directly overhead. Willow flinched from it, then looked up at the masses of black clouds that had accumulated overhead. Streaks of lightning played among them. "What happened?"
"Well," Cordelia said, "All I can say is that the Fourth of July is going to look like bargain basement stuff this year. That was some light show you guys summoned up. It spread clear out to the horizon."
"Light show?" Giles said weakly.
"Light show, as in The Mothership has Landed," Xander said. "Look, if you don't care about getting soaked, maybe you'd at least like to leave before the Men in Black head out here to see what's going on? Because as dense as Sunnydale is about stuff, I don't think that anybody is going to over-look that display."
Giles only looked around in confusion.
Willow stood on wobbly legs, using Xander for support. "Okay," she said. "I'm standing. I can be walking."
"Get the spell casting stuff and the books, Cordy." Xander said. "We'll have to leave the picnic basket here." He stepped back from Willow, watching her warily. She smiled at him encouragingly, and he turned to reach an arm under Giles. "Giles, work with me here. None of us is strong enough to carry you."
"Buffy could," he said, blearily.
"Buffy's not --"
"Grab my hand," Willow said hurriedly, reaching down to him. "All you need is a little steadying."
He took her hand and staggered to his feet, almost falling as a rumble of thunder overhead distracted him. Willow grabbed at his coat and threw an arm around him. "It's all right," she said. "We'll help."