Archive of Our Own

Even all of Willow’s power wouldn’t have been able to get them here in time to do any good, by the time they had learned (part of) the truth. Her mouth quirks involuntarily. She’s a veteran of who knows how many potential world-ending scenarios, and is it possible that someone could have an apocalypse and not even call her? Underneath it all, though, there’s a tight, hot knot of anger.

You didn’t call me?

The New Council’s teams have been through the alley and reported that they have found only one casualty – a Charles Gunn, late of Wolfram and Hart’s legal division. (There’s a story there, one they might never understand. Did he betray his masters to be thrown to the wolves this way?) They claim that there’s no evidence that anyone else had been present.

They’re wrong, of course. They have to be.

She takes a deep breath and steps into the alley’s shadows. The air seems thicker here, as though the scorched walls are still reflecting the heat of the final conflagration. An actual dragon. She wonders, briefly, if it would have been more or less difficult than a giant snake, before reality intrudes again. Of course it was.

Still, she walks. Walks past bright yellow markers that make the alley look like a crime scene in one of those CSI shows – the ones Andrew loves for their geeky leads and Willow loves to mock for their improbable science – only these markers indicate the impacts of arcane mystical attacks instead of bullets. Speaking of such, she has her very own geek squad simply aching to study the effects of those impacts, but they’ve cleared the alley now, on her word. Because she said so, that’s why.

They think she doesn’t hear their whispered words of sympathy, or intercept their pitying glances. They lower their eyes whenever she looks their way, and think she hasn’t noticed.

There’s a smell in the air now, of burning, of smoke and ashes, that she convinces herself is like nothing she’s ever quite smelled before. It’s thickest here, where she reaches the

dead!

closed-off end of the alley, and it’s here that she knows she must begin.

The recovery teams had only partially cleared this area before her arrival; fire-scored bricks and broken stones still litter the ground. Slowly, methodically – because there’s no reason to hurry (panic), is there? – she sorts them into tidy stacks, clearing the ground down to the heat-cracked pavement.

There must be residual toxic gases in the air; it was stupid to not ask for a respirator, because someone has just replaced her knees with rubber and she folds slowly to the ground. Her eyes now, too, are stinging from the vapours, so that everything blurs before her.

Even this small movement stirs the air, causing the dust to eddy and swirl before her. She reaches out blindly, fingers spread wide to keep the dust from escaping, pressing her palms to the earth as though she can press the dust back into dear remembered forms.

Two men she has loved best in all the world. Once with all the innocence of her youth, back when anything seemed possible; again as a woman grown weary of the world, but no more wise. One couldn’t stay with her; the other wouldn’t believe her. Memories stir in her, much like the dust, and she is lost for some time.

She can’t say how long she’s been here, bent over on hands and knees like a supplicant at prayer, only that the turning of the shadows lets her know it has been no small amount of time. But whether they are patient about it or not, the others know better than to disturb her, here, however long it takes.

She sits back upright, blinking away sudden tears as the muscles of her lower back protest the movement. As her vision swims back into focus, the changed light reveals something she has missed – a gleam of light on metal, just there. She reaches, and her fingers close around the silver oblong. It’s a – the – his – lighter. It seems far hotter than it should, somehow, and too heavy for its size. She can picture it now: fire is a last-ditch weapon, and the lighter, silvered with rain, is tossed in a gleaming arc from one hand to another – a hand that is suddenly no longer there to receive it. Her own hand tightens convulsively around the lighter, its blunt edges driven into her palm to leave marks that will not fade for hours to come.

Somehow she makes it to her feet again. It’s clearly time to go, as the atmosphere here has not improved any; her throat has grown tight and aches from it.

As she leaves the alley mouth, letting the teams scurry back to their work like silvered ants in their protective clothing, she slips the lighter into the front pocket of her dirt-smudged jeans.

If he wants it back, he’ll damn well have to come and get it himself again.