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.

"Amanda?"

His voice was at my left shoulder. I turned my head, disturbed that I hadn't heard him come up behind me. If my left side ceased to function at its usual level, I might as well be a dead woman.

"I'm sorry, beloved. I should have trusted you, that day in Oxford. I had no reason not to, and heaven knows, I had every reason not to trust my father. I don't know why I reacted the way I did."

The pale shroud that I had drawn over the memory filmed and became translucent. For a moment, I was back in the Watcher's sanctum behind the bookshop in the Woodstock Road. I heard my Watcher's voice, the voice of the man who was supposed to protect me, to cover my back, chanting out a curse as evil and ancient as anything the Watcher's son would ever be likely to find in his volumes of wisdom and silliness. I remembered feeling the malison hit, the deep bite and binding pain in stomach and bowel. I remembered the fire-spell, designed to repel, not to hurt, a wall of towering heat that would give me the precious moments I needed to escape. And I remembered my lover, the final excuse the Council of Watchers needed to dispose of a Slayer, the like of whom they'd never seen...

"I should have trusted you." Pain came from him in waves, shocking and raw. "Amanda - why did it happen that way?"

I closed my eyes, not against the memory, but so that I might better sharpen its edges. My own voice coming high and wild, summoning the witchfire, the wall behind which shelter I could escape to safety. I remebered the chant: flamme de mon coeur, flamme de mon oeil, repoussement mon ennemi! Venez entre nous! Couvre-moi! Couvre-moi! Couvre-moi!

Three times, to wind up the spell, to control it. But the crucial third time had never come. Rupert, shouldering open the door to his father's sanctum, seeing me calling the fire, not trusting me enough...

"Your command," I told him quietly. "My spell was specific, yours was not. Do you remember what you said? "Flamme de la sorcière, retours?" You broke in before I had control of it. I was trying to erect a wall, so I could run. He had a malison, an ancient Scots spell to destroy a witch. You never specified where the flame was to return to. So it went both ways, and took us both." A smile, small but genuine, twisted my face. "You always did think faster in Latin than you did in French."

The huge searing ball of witchfire, flaring like sunspots in both directions. I was younger than the Watcher, and faster; I came out technically dead for less than a minute, heart stopped, but I was in the end injured, not destroyed. I had mind, I had power, even the right side of my body was left scarred and worthless. The Watcher died, blind and burned, and his sanctum with him.

And Rupert had pulled him out, and left me there, believing me dead.

"Amanda..."

"No." I patted him lightly. How odd this was, that I, spoiled and destroyed, should be consoling him. "It's past. And he was your father, Rupert, with everything that implies. I've not been unhappy, you know. I have my house, Le Perdu. Someday..." My voice spiralled down, when I realised what was coming, tomorrow, the day after, much too soon. "Someday I want you to see it."

"You called your house The Lost?" His hands slid down my shoulders. I saw his cheekbones gleam in the nacreous light; outside the magic shop, the moon hung in gibbous enormity, nearly at the full. "Ironic."

"Not ironic at all. Literal. Eventually you'll know why, perhaps." His hands were producing reactions in me, things long buried. Even the dead side seemed, somehow, to be tingling. The hands travelled up, travelled down. I arched my back; the response was uncontrollable. "Rupert, what are you doing?"

"Apologising. Seducing you. Possibly both. Does it matter? Do you mind?"

"No," I said, and reached for him in the last warm place we might ever share.

The coupling was a fire unto itself; thirty years of everything unresolved between us made for a heady release. I made him cry, once, and then let him lose himself in me, the woman trying to remember, the man trying desperately to forget. He made me cry twice, once from the shattering of my belief that I would never again feel anything worth feeling. I licked salt from his collarbones, and he touched every inch of what he had ruined so long ago. I think he found it beautiful; he said he did. Later, much later, we slept, surrounded by crystal balls and massive books and all the paraphenalia of the sorcerer.

It was nearly full daylight when I woke. Rupert slept, spooned against me. But he opened his eyes at my first motion to rise.

"Amanda, before you go - there are things you ought to know, about what's coming."

I shook my head. "I know it all. I saw it, in the chaos dimension. I have a part to play in this, but that part isn't here. You likely won't know about it unless I fail. If I succeed, it may be a long time before you know that, either." I had broken a rule I had never thought to break, more than one rule. I regretted nothing, not one moment of it. But something, a chilly moment of realisation, moved over me, and for a moment I tasted my own mortality. How many more rules would I have to break, to see this thing through?

"You're talking in riddles." He sat up, naked and shivering. "And you're unnerving me, rather badly. You can't possibly know all of it."

"I know enough. Except - Rupert, there's a young girl I saw. She was tied to a tower, a high metal object. Not a building; it looked thrown-together, like a steel altar. Probably about fifty, sixty feet tall." I buttoned my shirt. "All I really need to know is, who is the young girl I saw? Thirteen or fourteen, prettyish, long brown hair, frightened half out of her wits?"

"Dawn. Buffy's sister." Even with the glasses in place, his face was pinched, drawn. "You saw her bound? On a tower?"

"Bound and bleeding. And she's nobody's sister. She's the Key. Glorificus will get to her, Rupert; you can't stop that. It's in the future. But Buffy will be able to stop the worst of the damage. And I may be able to do something more."

He said nothing. His eyes were on me. I zipped up my boots, and looked directly into his face.

"But this time, Rupert, you're going to have to trust me."

• * *

This time, when I let myself into Le Perdu and saw Hilde waiting for me, I knew what she was going to say.

"Madame?"

"Is the Slayer in the library? Good. Have you brought her anything?"

"She asked for tea. I brought her fruit scones and jam, to go with." Hilde's moments of unguarded humanity were rare, but endearing. "She's a skinny little bit, that girl."

She was in the window seat, with Isis and Anubis on her lap. Isis was stretched up adoringly, her sable-tipped paws resting on the girl's shoulders, searching her face. Anubis was curled on her thighs, making bread with his claws. Buffy didn't seem to notice the claws.

"You're here. Good. Did you have any trouble finding me?"

"A bit. I started at first light. The house - it's different, isn't it? From yesterday, I mean. It's gone all shadowy and...I don't know. Indistinct." She met my eyes. "Ms. Lisle, what is this house?"

So, she had seen. Le Perdu had moved, its outlines shifting and blurring. Something was getting ready to happen, something huge, and the consciousness of Le Perdu was shifting to accommodate itself. The Beast was close.

"Le Perdu? It's just a house, Buffy. It's the space within the walls that's something different." I saw her tension, and smiled to reassure her. "I'm not being deliberately mysterious, you know. There honestly isn't a name for what I've made here. The best way to describe it would be kind of ship."

"A ship." She mulled this over for a few moments. "Ships go places."

"So does Le Perdu. It moves through time, a bit; it moves through dimensional walls, rather a lot. I can steer it, mostly. Sometimes, I simply have to follow where it leads. And that's why I wanted you to come." I moved quickly, standing over her. I'm a tall woman, and she was quite small. "But first I want to know something. You said Rupert told you about me. That was a lie, wasn't it? He thought I was dead, and in fact he was right; for a few moments, I was dead. It may be hard to believe, but the very fact that you exist at all proves it."

"It's not hard to believe." There was the glimmer of a smile. "I was dead too, once. Drowned. Heart stopped, no breath, blah blah, the whole deal."

"Then how did you know about me, and where to find me?"

"He did tell me about you; he just didn't know he was doing it." She cleared her throat, and finished the dregs of her tea. "It was Tara. She was tossing and moaning, the way she's done ever since Glory got to her. Giles was there, we were helping Willow sedate her. And Tara said something - a spell or something, I guess. Something in French, anyway. And then she made a noise and looked at Giles. I remember what she said - she said, you should have trusted me, beloved, and instead you left me to burn."

I stared at her, frozen. "That's impossible. I said that to him nearly thirty years ago. It was after I woke up in that burning room, after I died, after I came back. And he couldn't have heard me; he was already gone. Impossible!"

"Well, Tara said it. If you think I'm a liar, why am I here?"

Our eyes locked. I saw the truth of what she was saying. "All right. I'm sorry, I wasn't calling you a liar. I'm just - never mind. I still want to know how you found me."

"Oh, that was Willow. Giles freaked, and he said some things, and Willow did a finding spell when he went back to the Magic Box, and she said to look for this house. So here I am, I mean, was. I'm here now because you told me to come, didn't you?"

"Yes. This will take awhile, and you won't like any of it and possibly you won't believe a word of it, but I can help you. I can help you save your sister, and I can possibly help you save yourself. But I need coffee. I - had a long night." I limped to the door; unaccustomed muscles were aching. "Hilde! Espresso for me, please. Black, strong. And some bread. What are you grinning at, Buffy?"

"An interdimensional witch's ship with an espresso machine. I like this place." The smile was short-lived. "You said you could help me save Dawn. How do I keep Glory from getting to her?"

"You don't. You can't. I saw that, when I went in to get Willow. She was in the chaos dimension that leads to Glory's world, and one of its functions is as a mirror to past and future. Glory's going to take your sister. You can't stop that. No - don't waste time protesting. I didn't say you couldn't save her, I said you couldn't prevent the capture. Now listen to me. Are you ready to listen?"

Her lips were trembling. "Tell me what I have to do."

"The portal is going to open, Slayer. Either you or the Key must die to reverse it. It won't be the Key; you'll give her back her life, as a love-gift." My mouth twisted into wryness. "A thing I perfectly understand, I assure you. But there's death, and then there's death. Ah - thank you, Hilde. It smells wonderful."

"More than one kind of death?" Her face was stony, but her eyes held hope. "Well - I've seen a couple of kinds myself. Could you be a bit more specific?"

"I intend to. In fact, I'm going to be very specific indeed, and I warned you, you won't like it." I took a breath. "You're going to jump from the top of the altar to which Glory's wretched little trolls have tied Dawn. Your body, the body they know as Buffy Summers, is going to land at the bottom, with the effects of the portal over and done. They're going to bury that body; they're going to believe they're burying Buffy Summers. They're going to mourn you. You won't be dead. It won't be you that hits the earth."

I had jolted her. "What - what-"

"Listen to me, Slayer. I know more about what goes on in the cold windy spaces between dimensions than most anyone or anything living, anywhere. You won't be falling through air. You'll be falling through layers of dimensional reality. And that strips the essential you away, leaving the shell." I see bewilderment on her face. "There are demons in the spaces, Buffy. They take your soul and leave your shell. But I can put Le Perdu into those spaces as well. I can steer it there. And I can catch you - not your shell, but you, the essential you, the part of you that remains you - while you fall. Do you want that?"

She said nothing. Her eyes were blind. I laid my hand on her cheek and spoke gently.

"You may have to stay with me awhile, you know, until you regenerate. It sounds rather reptillian, and it is. But I can catch you. You'll be shadow for awhile, I don't know how long, but you'll be you. You can come back again. Your - sister, your friends, everyone you love. They won't know you're alive."

"You could tell them," She had come suddenly alive; I could feel it under my touch. "Dawn will be grieving. I hate that, her not knowing I'm okay. Couldn't you tell them?"

"We might not be here; once I take my hand off the tiller, so to speak, Le Perdu will drift. And I need to take my hands off to do the spell that catches you safe. It may take a bit of time to get back here, to this place. But we will get back. Le Perdu is anchored to this spot, even if the anchoring chain is a few dimensions long."

"What do I do?" She was on her feet. "Tell me what I have to do!"

(continued: here comes the ending, finally)

"I need something of yours, something that is essentially and completely you. I need to fasten you to Le Perdu and I need to summon Le Perdu to you and for that, I need an anchor. Not a lock of your hair, or anything like that. Something you treasure. Something all compact of your life."

She reached into her blouse and pulled out a chain. Dangling, safe hidden from the world between her breasts, were two things: a cross, and a ring. I touched the cross, and felt a nice warmth from it. It wouldn't work, though. Buffy's sense of connection to it wasn't strong enough. I moved on and touched the ring.

Pictures, vivid and colorful. Here it was, the strongest personal talisman I had ever come across. I saw a beautiful man's image, a double connection; this love had been forged in the fires of time and hell itself. Both had lived; both had died.

"This is it. This is our anchor. There's a ritual we must do, now, before you go back out into the world. We have to seal this." I took her hand and cupped the ring in her open palm. "Keep your hand open. I need to cover it."

She obeyed me without a word. Her hand upward, the ring, my hand - something wasn't right.

"Wait - this is wrong. We have to reverse. I must be beneath, to meet you as you fall. Turn your palm upside down, and cover the ring with your thumb. It mustn't fall. Now, then."

I began the anchoring spell. "L'amorçage et le brin de la vie, venus ensemble, tissent ensemble, se joignent, deviennent en tant qu'un."

The pressure of her thumb eased above my hand. I could feel it. Yet the ring did not move.

"Apportez-son sans risque à la maison moi!"

We felt the spell settle gently into place. I could see it in her face. She had seen witchcraft, and magic done before her. She had never felt it happen to her. I saw calm and resolution sweep over her, misting her features like easy rain.

The Slayer was ready.

• * *

In the end, it was easy.

My preparations were simple enough, easily made. I had little to say goodbye to, after all. Hilde and I spent hours together, leaning over my witchball, watching the end of the world open like the devil's rose petals.

We saw Glorificus find them, and Tara's unknowing betrayal of Dawn. We saw them flee; Hilde, to my amusement, developed a middle-aged crush on the band's unlikely ally, a bleach-haired vampire. We saw the Knights of Byzantium find them as well. I stayed silent and did nothing, even when Rupert was injured, perhaps to death; at least, I think I stayed silent, but Hilde turned and stared at me for a long moment, so perhaps she saw and understood. She did shake her head in sorrow at the worst mistake of all, letting the enemy into their sanctum, the young doctor who could save Rupert for me, housing the Beast.

We saw it all. They unfolded like clockwork, those events, exactly as I had seen them. At the first sight of Dawn on her altar, I left the witchball and set Le Perdu in motion. And the house I call The Lost became the Slayer's safety net and salvation. None of her essential self was lost in the dimensional transition. The demons that soul-snatch in those chilly interstices could not touch her through the walls of Le Perdu. I caught her, without so much as a psychic bruise.

I won't share those spells, or repeat them. To do so would be to risk destroying what I managed to accomplish, because they aren't yet complete. The Slayer is here, with me, a pale flamelike wraith. Her new human form is a mirror of the one they buried, and wept over. She visits them in dreams, with my magic to guide her. It's the closest we can get right now to letting them know that she isn't lost, because as I thought, Le Perdu took a tremendous jolt, and we're adrift.

In the end, we will spiral back to Sunnydale, like a needle finding true north. Hilde will be pleased to get back. At the moment, she's using all that obsessive energy to tend to the Slayer, bringing her body back to its former state with, as she says, a little bit more meat on those bones.

As for me, I understand about patience. In the end, Rupert will be there, waiting. This was something that was promised. And although I broke my own rules, I believe this promise will be kept.

• * *

(whew. sore fingers from all the posting...)

Woo-- that is long.

deborah, email me with the story, and I'll HTML it and upload it so people (like me) who can't read long things in-board can read it properly. Plus, final link.

Heh. When I said 70K? I wasn't kidding. My fingers hurt.

And it won't fit in email either. You want a PDF attachment, or a Word doc?

Word doc, ma'am.

Your email is the WX one - that the optimum?