“Yeah,” I agreed. For probably the first time in our entire vampiric existence, our trip to bed began slowly, tenderly. She ran her hands over my chest and slid them below the shirt, gently pulling the white tee over my back and chest. She tugged it over my head and nestled her head against me, tentatively flicking her tongue over my skin. Strangely enough, her gentle eroticism stirred me more than her aggressive foreplay ever did. I returned the favor by slowly pulling her leather halter top down her arms and over her hips. Then we both unbuttoned the other’s jeans and slid them down each other’s legs. When we fell into bed our lovemaking was passionate, but tender and sweet. It was a strange feeling. Both of us had gone to our deaths virgins, so we didn’t know how slow, sensuous sex felt. All we knew was animalistic passion.

“Xander, I liked that,” Willow admitted shyly in the aftermath, her head resting on my chest and her hand resting lightly on my lower stomach. “I liked how it wasn’t angry and brutal.”

“Me too, Will,” I assured her, running my fingers through her hair. I pulled her into my arms, nestling her head against my shoulder, my arms around her protectively. I thought for the first time that had circumstances been slightly different, she would have shared her first time with a completely different person. We never would have shared what we did. I thought, again for the first time, of what we had done to our respective significant others with something other than cold-blooded glee. “Willow?” I began. She sensed the change in my mood.

“What, Xander?” she prompted gently, rubbing her hand over my chest. She did it lovingly, not intending to arouse me, but to be close to me in a way that we never had been before, despite our sexual intimacy.

“Will, do you ever regret what we did to Oz. . . and to Cordy?” I asked. She lowered her eyes and sighed.

“Xander, we are not responsible for what happened to them. Our demons understood that they were in the way. They were the ones responsible for us pulling away from each other. They had to be punished. No, I don’t regret that they died. I don’t regret anything I did as a vampire, because it was my nature. I just followed instinct. I’m going to change now, but that was what I was then. It wasn’t my fault, nor was it yours. We just have to live from now on knowing that we can’t ever do that again,” she said firmly.

“Do you think we should let Buffy and Giles know we murdered Cordelia?” I inquired softly. “They know we killed Oz, but they still think that Cordy is living somewhere in L.A.”

“No, let’s let them continue to believe that only Oz became to a victim to our demons,” she decided. “They’d only suffer needlessly, because they already think of Cordy as being gone. . . just not gone.” I acknowledged the intelligence in her decision and laid back, just letting my mind drift. Willow moved slightly, bringing me from my thoughts.

“Xander,” she began hesitantly. I looked down and saw her biting her lower lip. “Xander, do you regret that you let me turn you into a vampire?” she blurted out. She looked into my eyes, afraid that she would find recrimination in them.

“God, Willow, no,” I cried, pressing my lips to her forehead. She sighed against the touch and curled tighter into me. “If you hadn’t, I would have had to live my entire life without knowing how it feels to touch you, to hold you, and to know that you love me as much as I love you. I would have been alone. Will, I never would have been able to love anyone else as long as I had the perfect memory of you. I don’t regret a moment of the time we’ve spent together.”

She sniffled delicately, pressing her face into my chest. I held her close, rocking her, not knowing how to make sense of the bombardment of emotions I was experiencing.

“Willow, we’ve never talked about the nights that you and I were made into vampires,” I suddenly realized. “I never knew what happened to you, and I only have the vaguest recollection of what happened to me. Would you tell me now what happened?”

“If you really want to hear it,” she agreed. I nodded my head. “What do you remember?” she started.

“I remember walking with you in the park. We were talking about Oz and Cordy going away for the summer. I think it was after you restored Angel’s soul and he and Buffy were working through their “Angelus” issues. We were talking about how great it was that they were going to be able to be together, even if they couldn’t be together physically. You were saying that it was nice that Buffy had her true love back, and I asked you if you missed yours. You told me that you still didn’t think of Oz as your true love, but you did miss him and couldn’t wait for him to come home from that thing with his band. And I was saying how it was nice that Cordy could go and have fun, and hopefully she’d come back a little bit more human,” I recalled, smiling at the irony of thinking Cordy was the one that needed humanizing. Willow nodded, and I continued. “I know that we weren’t concerned about Spike and Dru, because we had thought they left, but I remember walking around the corner of that stone wall and coming face to face with him. I went to stake him but he must have cold-cocked me or something, and then the next thing I remember was being in a cold little prison somewhere in the mansion. Then you walked in, a vampire, and you made your offer. The rest, they say, is history,” I concluded. She took a deep breath and we both gave a sardonic smile at the reminder of our half-human state.

“All right, Xander, that’s a good part of it,” she allowed. “What happened to me really wasn’t all that important. It was just the turning point,” she demurred. I looked hard at her.

“Willow, tell me the rest,” I demanded.

“All right,” she sighed. She sat up, distancing herself from me, and I wanted to pull her back against my body, but I resisted. “Did you know beforehand that Buffy and Spike were lovers at one point?” she asked.

“No,” I denied, shaking my head. “It wasn’t until after the change that I found out.”

“That was the reason why it all happened, you know,” she admitted. “Buffy was angry about Angel losing his soul, and one night while she was patrolling she ran into Spike. He had just lost Drusilla, and the two of them sort of comforted each other. They ended up sleeping together to keep the memories of their respective lovers from haunting them. Afterwards, he got all pissed off that he had sex with a Slayer and went out to prove that he hadn’t gone soft. He was going to kill randomly, then realized that if he killed her best friends, that would be the greatest revenge of all. So he sought us out. He knew that Oz and Cordy were gone and figured we would be together where we weren’t with Buffy. When he found us, he clocked you, like you figured, and threatened to kill you right then and there if I didn’t go with him. I agreed, mostly because I couldn’t leave you. So, he took us back to the mansion that he, Dru, and Angelus had lived in, and stuck you in some cold little room. Then he took me upstairs and began his little talk. . .” Her eyes glazed over and I could see that she was drifting back in time. I sat back and prepared myself for what I was going to hear.