__The Slayer Dream And Angoraphobia__
By Beadtific



Willow found Buffy wedged in Giles' bed with her arms around his shoulders, much like she had been when the young witch had arrived. This time, however, when Willow entered the room, Buffy looked up and smiled wearily.

"Hey," she said, indicating Giles' stabilized readings, "The Power of the Lullaby strikes again."

"Great," Willow replied. "Do you think you're up to talking about that dream now?"

Buffy blinked. "Wow, Will, let's cut to the chase, huh?" The slayer peered at her friend a moment. "You're up to something."

It was Willow's turn to blink. "Me?" she said in a slightly high-pitched voice, "Naw, I'm just havin' some Willow thoughts, putting the ideas together and all. Not getting up to anything yet. Maybe making a little idea scaffold and all – but not crawling up it yet. No,sir. I'm getting all my facts together first."

Buffy smirked. "And that was supposed to convince me, how? Willowbabble, combined with 'I've got a theory' glow and your non-poker face, says to me you have something kinda firm to stand on."

Willow's shoulders slumped, and she opted for a direct approach. "Not yet, okay Buffy? I don't want to get our hopes up yet. I do have a theory, and I maybe even might have a teensy plan, but we both need to focus on what happened before we can move on to the fix. Okay? I'm saying ‘okay’ a lot, but okay?"

"Okay," her friend said with a bit of a mock huff. Willow was thrilled to see a more normal light in Buffy's eyes, but kept firmly to her resolve. Buffy carefully unwound herself from around Giles, and slipped out of the bed. She gave her lover a sad look and then met Willow's eyes.

"I'm not sure I want to talk about this with him right *there,* you know? In case he really can hear us."

"W-would you be willing to be on the porch where you could see him?""

Buffy measured the distance between the bed and the cottage door. "If we left the door open, maybe."

"We can do that." Willow opened the cottage door and looked out. "I can sit out here, and you can sit *in* the doorway if you want."

Buffy gave her a small smile. "Thanks."

Willow backed onto the porch and waited for her friend. She could hear Buffy whisper something to Giles and walk slowly over to the door. Her blond head peeked out, looking a little green. "Man, I think I'm getting angoraphobic."

The red head didn’t even pause at her friend's misuse of word, "We don't have to go out on the porch. I'll stay here, and you sit inside the room."

"Okay, thanks, this is about as far as I can go." She turned around and looked back at her lover. "Oh, if I can see him, it helps. I miss him so much. I have to seem him now to know if he's okay." Her eyes shone with unshed tears. "He asked me to marry him, Will." Willow gasped and grabbed her friends hand, looking for a ring. Buffy smiled sadly, "Haven't had time yet. He did give me these," she said, touching her earrings, "which he had bought before." We gotta get him back" Her voice hitched a little at the end, and Willow hugged her.

"Going to do my level best. Just promise no icky bridesmaid's dresses." Buffy snorted tearily in amusement.

"Just for that, pink and puce. And maybe some yellow."

"And will we be carrying easter eggs with that?

Buffy got a very sad look on her face, thinking of an earlier conversation she and Giles had where Easter eggs had been mentioned.

"Do you want to sit down?" Willow asked tentatively.

"Um, yeah." They sat, cross-legged, in the doorway, Buffy bracing her back on the door jamb and facing into the room so she could see Giles' face, Willow braced on the opposite side, facing out into the garden.

"So, you okay?"

"Yeah." Willow glanced back and caught Buffy's slightly embarrassed smile. "Don't worry about it Buff. Just tell me about the dream, from the beginning. I want to find out about the parts I missed."

The slayer took a deep breath and blew it out. "Okay. After Giles kissed me,I blacked out. And I 'woke up' for lack of a better word, in a dream. I knew right away where I was – the vision quest spot out in the desert from before the fight with Glory." Willow shifted a little uncomfortably, remembering the fight, and a night 147 days later. Buffy caught the motion. "Oh stop," she said gently, leaning over to give Willow's leg a swat. "I may not be having the best couple of days of my life, but I'm glad I'm not dead. Have been for a while. Quit beating yourself up for bringing me back."

The witch smiled weakly, "Geez, you're the second person to tell me to get over myself recently. Is it that obvious?"

"You were never a good liar, Will. And I mean it; if you hadn't brought me back, I would have missed having great sex with Giles." She grinned at her friend mischievously, and watched as Willow choked and turned six different shades of red. "Gotcha."

"You're awful!"

"The awfulest. So, quit with the wincing, and help me get him back?"

Willow made an effort to grin back and rolled her eyes, "Yeah, just promise me you're not going to go all 'Anya' on me and give me the gory details of your sex life."

"Slayer's honor. No tellee. Unless you askee nicely, of course."

Willow covered her ears with her hands. "La-la-la, I'm not listening," she said, her eyes wide.. She dropped her hands and confided, "It's *Giles*. It just doesn't feel right, yet, asking."

"Yet?"

"Well, you're my best friend! I reserve the right to know…someday. Maybe. Under the right circumstances."

"Okay, I promise not to give you the gory details, if you promise to forgive yourself."

Willow looked at the ground. "I'll try."

Buffy leaned towards her and whispered, "Giles does this thing with this tongue…"

"I'll try harder!" Willow interrupted desperately, her hands darting ttowards her ears.

Buffy chuckled, "Fair enough." Her face sobered. "I mean it, Will. I'm good with being here. I'll be great -- beyond great -- if we can get my guy back."

"Got it." They shared a long smile. Willow stirred and gave Buffy questioning look, asking if she was ready to get back to the matter at hand. Buffy nodded.

"So, you were in the desert, in your dream?"

"Yeah; sand, night, big fire. I knew immediately that the First Slayer would be waiting for me. And I knew that Giles and I had messed up, somehow."

"How did you know that?"

Buffy's hand rose to her mouth, and she frowned. "I guess it was because my lip hurt. Huh."

"What?"

Buffy stirred and looked at her friend. "The last time I had a First Slayer dream, was right after… you know, you activated the slayers."

"Yeah?"

"I had that stab wound? I mean, after I came down off all the adrenaline, it hurt like hell. Even with slayer healing, it wasn't so great. It pulled something fierce when I moved, and I had the dream *that* night, so I would have been hurting. I didn't feel the wound in that dream; I felt fine, even traded a few punches with Miss Dreadlocked and Dirty."

"But your lip was bitten in the dream the other night."

"Yeah, it hurt."

"Okay, weird and noted."

"Is it a clue?"

"Might be." Willow kept her gaze firmly and thoughtfully locked on the garden. Maybe Buffy's lip manifesting in the dream had something to do with the blood bond. She really didn't understand enough yet to know whether it was a good sign or not, but it was certainly significant. "So, you were in the desert, waiting for the First Slayer with a fat lip. What happened next?"

Buffy described discovering the First Slayer holding Giles, bound, and trying to prevent him from transmitting through the Bond. "She kept saying it was too much, ‘too much share,’ and implied that we'd go crazy soon if we kept it up."

"Implied?"

"Well, yeah. This time she didn't come an interpreter. She sorta did a charades thing when she got beyond her vocabulary."

"Huh?"

"In the first dream with her, someone came to interpret for her – s-someone I knew. The First Slayer spoke to me at one point – herself – and it was like her vocal cords still had training wheels; it was so not easy for her to talk. The second time, during my vision quest, she spoke, but with someone else's voice, like she'd gotten an interpreter upgrade. The time before this, she didn't speak much, just whomped on me a little and kept screaming things like 'Why?' And 'Fight Alone!' Kinda didn't need subtitles to get her point across.”

"But this time she talked a lot?"

"Well, yeah, for her, and she said that she'd come on her own this time, whatever that meant." Buffy lapsed into silence and stared across the room at Giles. She seemed to be listening to something. Willow touched her knee to bring her back.

"Did she say exactly why she'd come?" Willow asked gently. "Other than you were sharing too much?"

"To protect me. She said that our Bond was this big." Buffy drew a grapefruit sized circle in the air. "And that 'most share' was this size," she held up two fingers together. "I don't know if she meant that the size was the largest anyone else had ever been Bonded, or if that was the largest it should be. She did say that our Bond was too big to protect us from sharing too much.

"She seemed pretty intent on the whole protecting thing when I got there."

"Yeah." Buffy turned and looked at her friend. "She wanted you to protect me, and then she showed me again the biggest the Bond 'most share'." Her face clouded over a little. "But she didn't tell you to protect Giles."

"No. But don't you think it's implied because she was trying to tell you that you could have a smaller Bond?"

"I hope so."

"And you said Giles felt… hopeful before the Bond was cut?"

Buffy rubbed the center of his chest. "Yeah, he did."

"Well, I'm going to have to go with Giles, on that. I think that's what the First Slayer was trying to do; give you a second chance."

Willow heard Buffy's shaky little sigh, and turned to find her friend's eyes filling with tears. "Okay, so we can Bond again, and I guess this time you'll help us figure out what sort of barriers to put up so that we won't fry each other's brains?" The red head nodded. "I'm betting if the First Slayer hadn't stepped in, we'd be on our way to Vegetable Land pretty soon."

"Probably."

Buffy started to tremble. "It's just hitting me that that dreadlocked spookfest just saved my life from inside my head. How did she do it? How wiggy is that?"

"Pretty wiggy, Buff, and I don't know how she did it, but I'm glad she did."

"Do you think," Buffy started to ask, and her voice broke. She sat a moment fighting not to cry again. "Do you think you know how to wake him up now?"

"Buffy," Willow turned to look at her friend. "I've always had an idea of how to wake him up. I just need to have all the facts before I go in there. I'm almost ready."

"Really?" Buffy said in a tiny voice. Willow nodded. Buffy covered her mouth with both hands, curled her legs to her chest and choked out a few relieved sobs. Then she straightened, turned and swatted her friend. "You should have *told* me!"

"I don't know for sure, Buffy. I've never done anything *exactly* like this before."

Buffy looked at her with surprise. "You're going to go in Giles' head, aren't you? Like you did with me."

"That was the general plan."

Buffy's chin tilted up a stubborn angle. "I'm going in with you."

"I know," Willow said calmly. Buffy gaped at her friend.

"Okay, I didn't think it would be that easy… so why am I going with you?"

"What were you feeling when the First Slayer cut the Bond?"

Buffy blinked a few times. "Um, anger, terror, uh, big guilt."

"No hope?"

"No." Buffy whispered, eyes widening. "Does Giles have all that trapped inside of him?"

"I think so, Buff."

"Oh god."

* * *