Deb, you can link if it's a long piece.

And then again, a lot of us don't link long stuff; we just paste it here, in as many posts as it takes. Easier for people to comment that way.

Consuela suggested the other lit thread, but I'm totally easy.

OK. I'll post the first chunk of "The Pensioner" here. It's an alternate ending to the events leading up to "The Gift."

• * *

THE PENSIONER

(part 1)

I broke some rules recently. And there are some rules you aren't supposed to break.

For instance, you don't turn your back on a vampire. You don't let teeth near your throat, not a lover's teeth, not the teeth of an evil thing. Most importantly, there's the rule I never thought I'd have the opportunity to even bend: you don't sleep with ex-lovers. All of these rules, my rigid adherence to them and my policy of staying uninvolved with a world that has gone out of its way to damage me, have helped me stay alive.

I've spent thirty years cut off from the world, uninvolved. That ended, thanks to that choice I made, those rules I broke.

A few days ago, I came home from a wander in the hills to find my housekeeper lying in wait.

"Madame?" It was breathed, nearly whispered, and I raised an eyebrow. Hilde isn't usually shy; Teutons don't tend that way. "There's a girl in there. To see you, she said."

The second eyebrow joined the first at my hairline. Hilde doesn't usually let strangers into my inner sanctum, either. We see few creatures of any sort, and humans are the rarest visitors of all. "A girl, to see me. Did she give a name?"

"Yes." It came out flat. "But there was no need for it. I knew her; you would know her. She is the Slayer."

I went very still. The ancient feline skill, blending motionlessly into the woodwork before the death strike, was something I would hopefully never lose.

"The Slayer, current version. Buffy Summers, that would be." My own voice sounded thin. "Are you sure?"

"Sure, yes." Hilde was watching me. "She wants you."

"Then she'll have me." I moved for the door, and at the thin edge of my remaining vision, I saw Hilde cringe back. She should have known better; Hilde is vital to my life and my comfort, as well as being my eyes in the world. I could no sooner offer her harm than I could turn back time and heal myself. "It's all right, I'm not angry. Bring some coffee, would you? And a jug of cream."

I opened the door and walked into my library.

Had I found my uninvited guest touching anything, browsing, giving any indication that she thought she had a right to be there, I might well have killed her, or made it necessary for her to kill me. But she was sitting in the window seat, my own favorite place. Her hands were tranquil, folded one over the other in her lap. Her back was straight, her eyes as calm as lake water. Her hearing was phenomenal; I move nearly silently, but her head was turned and her eyes focussed on the left side of my face before I had the door closed.

Moreover, my cats were calm. Had she been out of place, a wrong thing growing in my garden, Isis and Anubis would have driven her out, or given me warning. But the two sealpoint Siamese crouched calmly, flanking her at either side, watching me through blue enigmatic eyes, telling me she was no danger to me. I trusted their instincts. This is what familiars are supposed to do.

"Ms. Summers, I believe." My voice was polite, but not cordial. "A pleasure, though a rather surprising one." She got up, slowly and carefully, keeping a wary eye on my left side. I suppose her Watcher, whoever was Watcher for this unusual model of Slayer, had warned her about me, about the damaged right side, about the brutally fast reflexes, about the scar tissue, about the two small Siamese familiars and why I had a right to call them familiars in the first place. Her Watcher couldn't have told her everything. There were only two men who could have done that, and at least one of them was dead.

"I know. I mean, I'm not surprised you're surprised." She was being careful, but she wasn't intimidated, not by my presence nor, apparently, by my reputation. I spoke softly to Isis and Anubis, and they came to sit, one on each of my shoulders, springing in unison from window seat to me. That surprised a short laugh out the Slayer, the two cats as sleek as seals flying through the air. It broke the ice.

"Ah - here's Hilde with coffee. Thanks." I poured a cup and passed it to the girl. "If you don't mind, I think we'll dispense with the traditional niceties. I'm assuming you need something, since I can't imagine how you would even know about my existence, much less have come this high into the hills to find me. This house - it isn't easy to find, not at any time."

"I came to ask for help." Straight warmly-coloured eyes met mine, wavered, then focussed. I didn't hold that momentary shying away against her: there's something about a frozen wide-open eye that throws the fully sighted, particularly a Slayer. There but for the grace of god...

"You want my help? Interesting." I waved her back towards the window seat. "Sit down, child. Before we go any further, I want to know how you knew about my existence. Not many do, any more. In fact, having spent a few bad minutes being legally dead, I allowed most of the world to believe I'd stayed that way."

She sat, balancing the coffee on one knee. I dipped fingertips into the small jug of heavy cream and let the familiars touch their tongues to me. The silence stretched out, until I judged it time to push a bit. "I'm waiting."

"My Watcher told us about you. Not a lot - just, well, that you existed, and that you'd been powerful." She was suddenly having trouble framing her words. "I wasn't really sure you were real, but - he - well, he doesn't know I'm here. I have the feeling he's going to be seriously pissed off when he finds out. Too damned bad. I need your help."

I threw my head back and laughed, startling the cats; they aren't used to that noise, not coming from me. "Good for you, Ms. Summers. That's a healthy attitude. Watch

(damn. OK, I now know how long a post can be....)

(continued)

I threw my head back and laughed, startling the cats; they aren't used to that noise, not coming from me. "Good for you, Ms. Summers. That's a healthy attitude. Watchers can be - a hindrance sometimes. How can I help you?"

"It's my best friend who needs the help, not me. I'm fine, she's so very not fine. And she's going to be even more seriously pissed than Giles when she finds- "

"Giles?"

The name came out as a whip-crack. Still on my shoulders, Isis and Anubis went long and low, bristlng.

She looked puzzled. "Yes - Rupert Giles. He's my Watcher. What is it? What's the matter? Do you know him?"

"Do I know him?" I began to shake, and then the shaking became laughter, and the laughter became tears. The tears were catastrophic, or could have been; if you have only one functional eye, you can't afford to drown it. "Biblically, child. Every nook and cranny. Did he happen to mention that I killed his father?"She was staring at me, her mouth slightly open. Something was moving inside me somwehere, something I'd thought buried for good. A floodgate opened, and sharp dark words came tumbling out.

"He didn't think to mention that? Goodness. Yes indeed, Ripper and I had a high old time. Once we even shagged behind a prickly bush in the Woodstock Road, hard by the gates to Oriel College. We were undergrads at the time - Daddy's Little Watcher, and Slayer in Training. His father didn't approve."

Her mouth had thinned out. She took a breath. "What business was it of his father's, anyway?"

"Oh, it was his business, make no mistake. His father was my Watcher. He had a say. He used his say, repeatedly. Eventually, he used it to the Council." Oh, to hell with it. "Very muddy water under many stone bridges, child. And in any case, 'that was in another country and besides, the wench is dead.'" I saw her puzzlement. "Not a literature major? No, I suppose not. Who is this friend of yours, and why does she need help?"

"Her name is Willow. She's a witch, a very powerful one. But something's wrong."

I sipped coffee. "Tell me."

The story that followed was confused, but certainly not boring. A lesbian witch, her lover in trouble, had attempted a rescue out of said trouble by the ill-advised use of a first dip into what this pleasant child kept referring to as "dark magick." I found myself rather exasperated.

"All right. So your friend Willow is a practicing witch. So is her lover. The lover got snatched up by a hellbitch god. Willow took some spells she'd much better have let alone, out of a volume of darkness. Probably the Malleus. Little fool. I sympathise, but really, what a little fool."

"And now the magic has some kind of grip on her, and it won't let go. First, it was headaches. They started coming faster and harder. But now, something's really wrong, and none of us know what to do." Rather shockingly, the Slayer's mouth trembled. A Slayer with friends, with people she loved? I'd had one, someone I'd loved, and look where it had left me. "We - she disappeared for a few seconds. We were sitting at her kitchen table and she just flickered and went out, like an old lightbulb. When she faded back to us, she fainted. That was this morning. I need help, damn it."

I laid the tip of one finger on the Slayer's cheek, surprising myself in the process; I'm not one for touching. "You love this witch and want to help her. And the inimitable Rupert can't find anything, of course."

"Why do you say 'of course' like that?" Her eyes were suddenly angry. "Giles can find stuff almost always. He's an incredible researcher!"

"He can't find anything because this isn't Watcher business, and it isn't Slayer business. It's witchcraft. I know exactly where your friend Willow went. I've been there myself. It's no fun at all. And you're quite right - she needs my help, and very soon, too."

Pensioner, part3

• * *

Let me welcome you to Le Perdu.

Buffy Summers had found my house in the desert hills outside Sunnydale, and this was no small feat. My house is not what it seems; my house is many houses in many places and many times. There are no magic wards to protect me. Wards are the solution and the final resort of the frightened and the amateurish. I am neither, and my sanctuary is called as it is for a reason. The Slayer had, in fact, been lucky in her quest for me, because at any given moment, Le Perdu may not be visible to the eyes of the world, or even in this world.

Le Perdu, my home, my refuge, my quiet floating isle of Gramarye. Here is where I keep my bed, my weaponry, my witch's garden, my music, all my passions and all passion spent. Here is where I keep my damaged flesh and what remains of my angry restless spirit. Here, too, is where I keep spells that no one could touch but me, and books that my ex-lover would kill to get, if killing was his way. Despite the old nickname, Ripper, killing hadn't been his way when I'd known him, except as a last resort.

The Slayer watched me as I meditated. She said nothing at all, merely waiting for me; this was a wise child, if she could regnognise those rare moments when passivity was her ally.

I sighed, knowing what was wrong with the young witch, knowing where she'd gone, knowing what was pulling her back to a place she should never have been in the first place. The help was mine to give, and it would mean a few things that weren't going to make me happy, foremost being a trip into the living world. First, though, I had to confirm what I believed.

I went to the door, the cats watching me with the same blue straight gaze as the Slayer. "Hilde!"

"Madame?" She was outside the library door, and it was obvious she'd been there since leaving the coffee tray. Hilde was never happy when someone new breached the quiet sanctuary of Le Perdu. "What do you need?"

"Tea, Hilde. Black tea, in a wide white dish, a shallow dish. Make sure it's leaves - this isn't for drinking. And some cured catnip, and asphodel, and sweet alyssum - I need it fresh, from the garden. As quickly as you can, please. Also three flowers, white campion. It's the stuff growing near the lavender. Make the tea first, and let it cool while you gather the plants. And hurry - this must happen before the sun is over the yardarm. All right?"

She turned and went. I turned my good eye back to my beloved library, and found the Slayer smiling.

"Wow," she said, with no special emphasis. "You're - decisive."

"I know what I'm doing, you mean? Yes. I do." I sat down in the window seat, letting the last of the afternoon sun touch the ruined tissue on my right jaw and cheekbone. I could still feel warmth, even if I could feel little else. "Hilde will come back with what's needed soon. In the meantime, I need to know where your friend is now."

"Willow? Well, I'm not positive, but she's pretty much always at home with Tara these days. She's too disoriented to deal with much, and Tara needs her anyway." She reached for her purse. "I could call."

"Don't bother; that thing won't work here. It won't even turn on, much less give you a signal. This - this is not an ordinary house. Besides, it isn't needed. I can find her without a phone." I glanced out the window and saw Hilde, carefully putting a sprig of alyssum into her gardening basket. She was almost ready. I took a deep breathe, and faced the Slayer. "Listen to me. I'm going to show you something, and I might as well tell you not to bother trying to do it, or interfere, no matter what you see, or think you see. This is my spell; no one can do it but me. I want a promise you'll only watch, and touch nothing unless I tell you. Anything else could be dangerous. Understood?"

"Yes." I was beginning to admire her; not one unnecessary word, no questions. The simple promise held force. I was beginning to understand some of the deeper strengths Rupert would no doubt have seen and honed. When I had last seen him, he'd held the promise of a superb Watcher in the making.

"Good. Then sit quietly and concentrate on your friend's safety. Just envision her well, and safe, and home. I can't do anything until Hilde comes back."

"I'm here, Madame." And she was, fast and efficient as always, with everything precisely as I had asked.

(continued)

The Slayer came and stood nearby, her arms folded against temptation. "Where do you want me?"

"Exactly where you are." I took the dish of tea and arranged it in the center of the tray. The asphodel and alyssum I left alone, the protective breaths of the spell itself; the catnip I put aside for my familiars. The campion was the heart of the spell. "Can you see the dish?"

She nodded, her eyes fixed. "Good," I told her. "Watch, now. And touch nothing."

I ran my fingers around the edge of the dish. Once, twice, a third time, and a soft plangent note twisted its way free of the dish. "Lumiere cassée," I sang. "Lumiere cassée, Willow domina, lumière cassée, lumière cassée, ombres perdues héritées."

The dish echoed, picked up my pitch, sang back to me. I swirled the leaves of black tea. One crushed campion blossom, two, fell lightly into the brew. "Arrivent, arrivent." I crushed the third, and held it over the dish, and let it fall. "Arrivent!"

The clear liquid grew murky. Light flickered along its planes and edges, and the spherical music sang.

There was a girl in the dish, a young fox-faced girl with campion flowers in her hair. This was my sister, the young witch. I knew her face. She was of my tribe. She was one of mine. And she was in agony.

Fire, moving tendrils of flame. They reached out of blackness behind her, twisted through her red hair, slid into her eyes, turned the blue veins in throat and cheekbone into angry scarlet vines, growing, covering her consciousness like the evil thorns in a fairy story about a cursed sleeping princess...

"Help me." The voice laced the music, a tiny distant wail from a faraway place, from the girl in the dish. "Help me help me oh please, please..."

"Willow? Will!"

But the spell was done, the liquid still, the music silenced. I had seen what I needed to see. it was no more than confirmation of what I'd expected.

I turned to the girl at my shoulder. Her teeth were sunk into her lower lip. There were tears pouring down her face, splashing unheeded to my library floor.

"Where is she?" The Slayer could barely speak. "Where - what was that?"

"She's where I thought she would be," I told her. "She crossed over. That was a dimension that exists in an anomaly. She started a spell from the Malleus. The problem is that she never exited properly, and now it's trying to pull her back in permanently."

"Help her." The plea came straight from the heart, and I felt something I hadn't felt in a long while, a kind of empathy with a human being. "Please. Can you help her?"

"Well, yes. I can." I smiled at her. How odd; it was probably my usual half-frozen death rictus, but it felt like a genuine warm smile. It tapered away into a grimace as I briefly contemplated what lay ahead. "I'm going to. But I'm not going to enjoy myself at all."

• * *

It had been a long time since I had left Le Perdu and its surrounding hills for the world of man. Tonight, I had no choice.

A college dormitory seemed an odd haven for two witches, one damaged, the other being eaten alive. Perhaps there was safety in hiding among many, or perhaps they had no place else to go. I didn't ask.

The Slayer led me through crowds of lounging students. I could have gone invisible, had I chosen, but invisibility takes energy, and I was going to need all the energy I could muster. So I kept my eyes on the Slayer and followed where she led, suffering the curious stares, the small undisguised shudders at my ruined profile.

We came to the witches' room, and the Slayer, after two short taps, let herself in.

"Willow?"

"Buffy - there you are."

I froze behind her. I knew that voice. For a long, desperate moment, I wished I had opted for invisibility after all.

(continued)

"Giles! What are you doing here? Did something happen?"

"Willow called me. When I got here, she was sleeping. It's not natural, Buffy. Her eyes are half open and she seems to be fading in and out. She's in the other room, curled up with Tara. I gave Tara a sedative - she was agitated, a bit violent. I thought I should..." The voice I remembered, that had once been an integral part of my emotional landscape, died away. He had seen me.

"Oh, dear god," he said quietly.

"Rupert." The dead side of my face was burning intolerably. It took a second to identify the source, the hot tears leaking, scalding my face. I swallowed hard, and tasted salt. "It's been awhile."

He was staring at me, something I couldn't read painting his face. Loathing, repulsion? Or perhaps nothing more than the unbearable weight of memory? "What are you doing here? How can you possibly be here? Buffy..."

"She asked for my help." Something in my own uncertainty steadied me. I stepped into the room, locking both eyes on Rupert's. Those damned glasses - they were such an effective shield against my reading him, and they always had been. "I can help, and I intend to."

"God, god, god." He shook his head. "You intend to help, do you? How? A nice fire spell?"

The words were cruel as only Rupert Giles knew how to be cruel. The scar tissue that laced the right side of my body bore his name, after all. A thread of white-hot anger warmed me. "This is a witch's business, not a Watcher's," I snapped. "The girl is one of mine. You can search your books but you won't find a damned thing. I know where she's been, and what to do. So why don't you take your animosity and your disgust at what you did to me outside, and let me help the child?"

"Stop it, Giles." The Slayer spoke to Rupert, but now she looked directly at me. She had turned her back on her Watcher. "I'm waiting outside, unless you need me in here?"

"No. Go. And don't worry. I'll bring her back." I kept my eyes on the man I had loved and lost, barely noticing the door closing behind her. "Why are you staying, Rupert? Do you think I'll do that girl some damage? Or are you just so enchanted with what you did to my face that your feet won't work?"

"Still have that hornet's backside for a tongue, I see." He was smiling at me. Something had changed in his face in the last few moments. "Do you know, I find that comforting? We're about to watch the world as we know it die, and you haven't changed one iota. Comforting. Amanda, my darling, my only one, I thought you were dead. Come here, beloved. Come here to me."

He had used the old words, a lover's words. For a moment lasting centuries, I gawked at him.

Then he took off his glasses, and lifted his face, and let me see the love still there. He held out his arms, and I collapsed against him.

"Damnation." Eons later, I was mumbling into his chest, my fingers clutching his sweater. "Hellfire and damnation. I thought you were completely gone, out of my life. I'd put you out of my mind."

"You've never been out of mine." He held me, one cheek against my dead one; we were much of a height. "How could you be? I thought I'd killed you. When I interrupted your spell - I thought you were murdering my father. I didn't know what the interruption would do to you." A remembered anguish colored his voice. "How could I have possibly known?"

"I wasn't trying to murder him, he was tryin to murder me. I was using a fire-spell to repel him. Self-defense; he was trying to kill me. He had the Council's blessing, and one of their nastiest weapons." We had never talked about it, but the memory was never completely out of my head: the angry Watcher, seething with malevolent impotent rage at his own inability to control me or stop the passion between his son and the girl he regarded as his property. He had come for me, armed with a malison from the Council's personal sorcerers. I had wanted to tell Rupert the truth of it for nearly thirty years, and all that time, he had believed me dead. Now he was here, and ready to listen. But this wasn't the time.

(continued - sorry, I did issue the warning about it being long....)

"This witch in trouble - Willow." I ran a finger along his cheekbone, and felt a nerve jump, and the arm resting at the small of my back slacken out. He had always responded to my touch that way. It was nice to see he still did. "Rupert, did you know she'd been playing with the Malleus?"

"What?" He blinked. So defenceless with those glasses off, so wise, so touched by time with tiny lines. He was absolutely beautiful. "That's very unlike Willow. Are you certain?"

"She opened a portal, and she never exited the spell properly. Bloody little idiot, messing about with things she had no business going near. I did a location spell - oh, don't look so horrified, nothing more than tea and campion. I even let your Slayer watch, she had no idea how much her concentration helped. That's a very powerful girl you've got there. But the point is, I found her friend. She's still partly in the portal, in a chaos dimension." I got a good look at his face, then, and drew a sharp breath. "And I'd like to know why the very word 'portal' just stopped your heart for a moment. Rupert, what's going on? It's something huge, isn't it?"

"Yes, love, it is. But let's help Willow first, shall we? I'll tell you then." He let go of me, and tilted my face up to his. "I've wanted to do this for thirty years," he said quietly. "If I'd dreamed you were still alive, even for one moment, I'd have found you and done it. You can always turn me into a toad when I'm done."

The kiss was long and deep, and very effective; it dissolved thirty years of buried bitterness out of my heart and washed all the starch out of my backbone. For a few minutes, I forgot the deadness under my flesh, the blood that no longer ran warm, the lost sensation. I forgot that this death of feeling was Rupert's doing, and concentrated instead on another kind of little death. I forgot everything but the moulded lips against me, the touch of tongue to tongue, the unsteady pulse of breath. When at length we moved apart, two things were different: his walls were breached, and I was alive again.

"Forgive me." He wasn't talking about the kiss, and we both knew it. "Tell me when you can, what really happened that day in Oxford when my father died, after you died, but please - tell me you forgive me?"

"I forgive you. And you know what?" The good half of my face smiled at him. "It feels damned good. But now I have a spell to do. Come and catch me if I fall."

• * *

(on and on and on)

• * *

I knew how deep Willow's trouble was as soon as I saw her.

She was spooned beside Tara, one hand thrown across the girl's hip. It should have been a charming picture, restful, but it was neither. Tara's sleep was the fever-sleep of the drugged or mad; her eyes opened occasionally, small incomprehensible sounds tore themselves free, and fragmented into the air.

And Willow, whom I had come to help, was fading before my eyes. I took a few precious moments, seeing her, trying to get her scent, should vision fail me in the dark place I was about to travel. She seemed, at one moment, to be a white corpse laced with indigo veins; at the next, she was almost transparent. Weakened by anger, led down a path she couldn't hope to map into the black wood of the Malleus, Willow was deep in the thrall of a devouring spell.

"It's getting worse." Rupert stood at my side, looking at the two girls with pain in his eyes. "It isn't just that I don't want to lose either of them, you know. We can't afford to, not now. It's critical that Willow be here, present, all of her. I can't tell you how important it is."

"Yes, you can, and you're going to tell me, assuming I get back safely." I watched Willow's hair, tumbled across the pillow, partially covering her face. Even as I looked, I saw it fade to a weaker color. "Rupert - I can't wait. I'm going in after her. Even if I can't get out myself once I've pulled her back -"

"I know." There were thirty lost years in the words. "I know, Amanda. I'll be here, no matter what."

"And I know that. So promise me you won't interfere this time and then kiss me once, by way of remembrance, will you?"

"Come back safely." When he took his mouth from mine, the words came so quiet I could barely hear. "Do you know which spell you have to break? All right, then. I'm here. I won't interfere. I swear."

As I turned towards the sleeping girls, the last of the day's light faded from the room. I could wait no longer. As I came to them, I pulled three strands of hair from the crown of my skull. They would be needed.

I lay down on the bed, between the two girls, separating them. Tara made an angry, confused noise, but quieted as I laid my back against her.

Willow lay motionless. I took her into my arms, and began to sing. There would be two songs: one to free us, one to let us pass and close the portal behind us.

"Á ce refuge, venez sans risque," I chanted, and pulled one strand of her red hair free. A quick roll of my fingers, and the strand entwined with my own hair. The girl moved slightly in my arms, and I tightened my hold.

"Dans ce sanctuaire, vivez entièrement," I sang, and a second hair entwined, making the first two thirds of the spell-breaker. Shakespeare knew what he was doing: the spell was winding up. Willow began to writhe, and I clamped her with both knees, like a rider with a panicked horse. I mustn't let her slip from me, not now. With one hand free to finish the spell-cast, I completed the incantation song.

"De cet endroit foncé, vous êtes libèrès!"

The third strand of hair, the protecting knot complete. I held all three strands. They mustn't break, none of them, before the exit. If even one did, we would both be trapped. If all three broke, we would die where we lay.

A wailing of fetid air burst like a hurricane around us. The girl opened her eyes, unseeing and wide, and began to scream and thrash. I clung to her, fighting her, covering her, protecting her. Around us, the maelstrom that was this dimension of chaos sucked the strength from spirit and bone.

I screamed the first exiting command. "La porte, s'ouvrent entièrement!"

The portal opened. And at that moment, I nearly lost us both. I saw what Giles was going to tell me.

Somehow, I still held the three strands, unbroken. In shock, in terror, I cried out the second command: "Permettez le libre accês a tous ceux qui ne s'attarderaient pas ici!"

I saw it. I saw dimensions opening, creatures of fire and death, turning all life to dust. I saw the Beast, too old to be named, triumphant in her greed. I saw things incomprehensible to me: a young girl on a high tower, her blood falling in slow steady drops to the earth a hundred feet below. I saw the Slayer, triumphant, then dying.

I was falling myself, dying myself, spinning into the voids opening in the skies behind us. Somehow, I had held on to Willow. In the recesses of the mind that was my way home, there was something I had to do. There was something -

I remembered.

Three hairs snapped, torn in half. A final command. "La porte, fin!"

A soft rush of warm human breath. It tickled my one working eye. I opened it.

Willow clung to me. Her cheeks were rosy, a healthy normal glow. But her eyes were wide open.

"Thank you," she said quietly. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." I sat up, pulled myself off the bed. I'd scarcely gotten my head turned around before Rupert was there, holding a glass of brandy to my lips. His other arm had gone round my shoulders without my noticing. Buffy had come in, also without my noticing. She had her arms wrapped around Willow.

Over the Slayer's shoulder, the young witch stared at me. I saw recognition in her eyes, a knowledge of kind, a face in the mirror of what she was. She knew me. I was the grandmother of her tribe.

"Who are you?" The question, which Buffy hadn't asked, demanded an answer. "What are you?"

"Oh - sorry. Rude of me. I'm Amanda Lisle. I'm the world's only living retired Slayer, as least so far as I know. I'm also a rather decent witch."

• * *

I had to tell them.

Willow had been there, she had gone through the portal and felt the roar and shred of the chaos dimension, but she hadn't seen what I had seen. She couldn't know what I now knew: soon, very soon, a key would be set into a lock, and the doors that separated where we are from where we should never be would swing wide. And a hideous, devouring darkness would follow.

Willow hadn't watched the Slayer die. But I had, and I had to tell them.

The problem was, the image was blurred. Some things were clear: the girl who bled, whose blood opened the gateways to hell. That one I could have picked out of a crowd of thousands. The tower itself, a massive crooked structure. The Beast, an ancient evil whose new form hid nothing.

I stood by the dormitory window, looking out into the darkness, Rupert at my side. In the room beyond, Willow tended to Tara. The girl's sedative had worn off, and she was restless, hard to quiet. Buffy sat curled in an overstuffed chair, watching us, looking relaxed. I wasn't fooled. I had been a Slayer once, a brief tenure, it was true, but there are things a Slayer doesn't forget. I knew that one motion would bring her out of her chair and across the room. She was as tense as piano wire.

"What was it like in there?" Rupert's voice was pitched low, barely carrying. "You looked as though you'd seen a ghost."

"Bad. It was bad." I dropped my own tones to match his. "Rupert - what you said to me, about the world as we know it dying - is it Glorificus? The Beast?"

His head jerked painfully. "Is that what you saw?"

"Among other things. Dimensional gateways opening. I saw a chimera. I saw a girl on a tower, bleeding." I went nearly inaudible. "I saw your Slayer. This is bad, Rupert. It's going to be bad. The worst that could happen, for you. Maybe for all of us."

He said nothing, but I felt the tremor run through him. He understood what I was saying. I reached out my hand and took his, and squeezed it as hard as I could. Before that day at Oxford when my world ended, I could have crushed bone and sinew. Now the fingers curled limply, exerting only the faintest pressure. They were Slayer's hands no longer. But they were still a witch's hands, and a healer's hands. They still had power, even if they had little strength. Even if I couldn't crush, I could hold and I could catch...

An idea, faint, perhaps not even possible, began to form in my mind. Witch's hands, healer's hands. Hands that could manipulate, hands that could catch what fell...

"I'm going home." Buffy stood beside us; we'd neither of us heard her move. "I'm going to get Dawn - she's with Spike. I want her to sleep in her own bed. God only knows when she'll be able to do that again." She turned to go.

The idea came clearer. Was it possible? Even if not, surely it was worth trying. "Buffy."

She stopped in her tracks. I saw her awareness; some quality in my voice had triggered her spider-sense. I had to warn her, to let her know we needed to talk, yet I couldn't let Rupert know. This was not for him, not yet.

I spoke carefully, without emphasis. "My house - could you find it again at need? In daylight?"

"I'm pretty sure I can, if it's where you left it." She was very quick, was Buffy Summers. I caught the barest lift of an eyebrow and a tiny signalling nod, away from Rupert's eye. "If it was daytime."

"Good. That's a load off my mind. Be careful how you go, child. I'll hope to see you when the sun shines again."

She shot me a look, and I knew she had understood my instruction. Then she was out the door and gone.

Willow came out and joined us, closing the door quietly behind her.

"She's fallen asleep. Finally!" A travesty of a grin twisted her lips. "Now I know what the mother of a colicky baby must feel like. I'm ready to fall over, myself."

"We should let you get some rest," Rupert told her. "The next few days are likely to take all the energy we've got. Or would you rather we stayed, in case you need help? I'm perfectly willing -"

The red hair swung. "No. I can deal. If I can't find a way to bring Tara back, I'm going to have to deal with this 24/7 anyway." Her voice faltered. "For as long as we're both alive, anyway."

Rupert and I left the building, and went out together into the warm summer night. For a while we simply walked; we were both busy with out own thoughts, but I was intensely aware of him. We walked for a good long time, off the Sunnydale campus, down the dark streets. On the main drag near the college, people sipped espresso, looked in shop windows, went about their lives. Couples held hands and stopped in doorways to kiss.

I shook my head, like a swimmer coming clear of deep water. "It's bizarre, isn't it? So bloody normal."

"I know. Sometimes I feel like an extraterrestrial, Amanda. I walk these streets and no one ever seems to realise what's going on behind the curtain. And it's such a thin curtain, too."

The curtain was thinner than even Rupert could guess. I moved in the cold airy spaces between dimensions, I knew what there was. Rupert, who had always lived in the comfort of books, couldn't possibly know.

I realised we hadn't been walking aimlessly after all when Rupert's steps slowed. "Ah. Here we are. Let me get my keys."

"Oh, are we somewhere? Where is here, precisely?"

"My place of business, the Magic Box. This is my shop."

I would have known this place was Rupert's from the moment of entry. It smelled like him, it felt like him; the warm shadowy room, oversized but happily cluttered, bore the stamp of his scent and his personality. I stood still, absorbing it, as Rupert moved around, checking that all was well. Outside, there was danger, the four horsemen approaching us at the speed of cataclysm. The magic shop was still a sanctuary.