Gone Away

Your Shirt...

The day was etching on slowly, bringing on the routine pain and despair casted on the redhead. the long drabble of the day had seemed to bring willow stumbling into the Magic Box for a last minute scooby meeting. When she entered, the air that surrounded her reminded her briefly of old times of sitting in the back corner reading, researching, and sometimes smooching. All things she couldn't do the same again.

while she was temporarily mentally elswhere, Anya approached her and stood in front of her awkwardly. Her face expressed her confusion on what the witch was doing. "Willow?" she asked concerned. "Willow!" she snapped the redhead out of her daze.

"Hm?"

"What are you doing just standing there? The meeting is over here." She pointed to the large table further back in the shop covered with big books.

"Yeah, sorry, I was just..." She glanced back to Anya's face. "Nevermind." it was only then that she looked down and saw what the shopkeeper was wearing. She wore a denim skirt that was just above her knees, with a light blue sweater. The sweater. Willow scrunched her face as past pictures went through her mind. In a very small, defeated tone, she echoed her lost lover's words, "Your shirt..."

Anya looked down and straighten it out. "What, did I get something on it?"

"Wh- uh, no. No its fine." she looked away and rubbed her eyes. "We'd better get over to and help with the research." Flat leaving the blonde, Willow scurried over to the table and sat quietly. Boy, was the universe out to get her today.

"What's up with the research today, G-man?" Xander looked up from the stack of leather-bound books in front of him.

"Light reading." Giles stood, cleaning his glasses on the edge of his shirt. "Although we seem to have, um, a slight apocalpyse."

everyone groaned, "Again?"

"Yes, I'm afraid."

"What kind of apocalpyse is it this time?" Buffy asked in a bored-tone. She's already stopped six and died twice, all in a days work.

"I fear it's not one we can fight-off with weaponry." he put his glasses back on. "Dawn is..."

the group livened up and was quick to answer.

Buffy was the first, "Dawns in trouble!" she shouted and turned to Willow. "Is it tuesday?"

Xander was next, "Dawn is injured? Is she okay?"

Anya chimed in, "Dawn is dead?"

The slayer was horrified. "She isn't dead, right?"

Giles rolled his eyes and scoffed. "No, Dawn is quite alright. Let me finish." he finally sat down and rested a hand over a bold headline in the newspaper. "It appears Dawn will be attending the new Sunnydale Highschool, since the other school closed. This means shes fine now, but is in imeadiate danger when school starts."

The group relexed somewhat, knowing that their youngest scooby wasn't in any harms way for now.

"Speaking of, where is she?" buffy only realized now her sister was no where to be found.

"She went to the mall with her friend, Linda." Willow finally spoke. the slayer nodded and turned back to the small group.

"But also speaking of, I'm in charge of that site." Xander declared, puffing out his chest in pride. "And I have to say some wierd things are going on there, and being that I have seen some strange things in my day, that's saying something."

Giles was intrigued. "Wierd how?"

"Well a bunch of my guys were working on the library. They came in early that day and saw it was completely finished. But it wasn't completely finished like the plans said, it was just like the old libray, literally down to the last book."

Buffy couldn't look confused if she tried. "How?" she looked to her watcher. " 'Splain."

He ignored her and pressed for more. "When was this?"

"Just yesterday. But it gets wierder. by the end of the day, when I made my rounds of the property, I checked back at the library and one minute its all old highschool memory lane libray and then the next, it was all gone. There was only what little work the guys started the previous day."

"It changed in front of your eyes?" The englishman was practically drooling.

Xander nodded and crossed his arms over his chest in triumph, he had made the book-man stumped.

Although she didn't show it, Willow was quite amazed too. The whole time she had been silently observing, and watching closely at the people around her. She watched as each of them smiled, or feared or frowned. she watched it all play across their expressive faces with envy. For a long time now she couldn't get an emotion other then sorrow to show on her face for very long. And she also couldn't feel any other emotion but dread for very long either. So to watch her best friends expierence them and think little to nothing of it, she couldn't help but feel jealous.

"Well," Giles finally spoke, "I suppose my light reading had turned into full blown research now. I suggest we start looking at effects from the hellmouth." The scoobies started to pass out books to each other, each one looking more torn then the last.

Willow was handed a worn-out leather book with some binding broken off. She had seen this book plenty times before. In fact, she clearly remembered Tara handing this book to Dawn after the teen whined about being old enough to research. Just remembering blonde, it sparked a vague spark of her energy that was left on the book. It was just enough to light some shred of hope in the small witch's heart. Somewhere long burned out. This brought new lighting to her dark situation, maybe one day she would see her again.

**************

Serious side note I thought i'd share with you guys. So I realized, you know that blue sweater Willow wanted to wear to the morgue, but couldn't find in the episode The Body? It was the same sweater Tara wore a year and a half later when she died in Seeing Red.

"I wish I had the blue one, Joyce liked the blue one, she told me one time."

-

"Your shirt..."

Joss made sure SOMEONE got to wear it to the morgue.