Discovery

Chapter 42

Willow had been right – it had been a long week, especially with Angel being shot by Faith with the poisoned arrow and the final preparations for graduation. She hadn't had much time to work on her valedictorian speech since she had been helping Buffy by taking turns watching over the injured Angel. As disturbing as it was to have her many times great-grandfather shamelessly flirting her, his delirious mind thinking that she was his girlfriend, Willow stayed with Angel for her shifts, trying to cool the vampire's fever with water and trying to soothe his pain through gentle words and soft encouragement. She had been very relieved when Angel had recovered, thanks to drinking Buffy's blood.

Getting their class organized had also taken a lot of effort. Willow had used all of the teaching skills she had learned when she had taken over Jenny Calendar's class the previous year to try and teach her group of seniors the finer points in slaying, hoping in her heart that they would survive but knowing deep down that there would be casualties. She might not like everyone in her year level but she didn't want any of them to die.

The morning of the day before graduation, Willow had gotten dressed. She was supposed to help Giles pack up the library, given that, all going well, the library wouldn't exist after graduation and the books had to be protected. She also knew that she was supposed to help set up the courtyard for the ceremony and that she needed to go over the plan for the graduation ceremony with her assigned group of students one last time. Willow wanted to go through the plan numerous times herself because, as she would be seated up on stage, Xander had decided that she would be the one responsible for signaling the rest of the students when the Mayor actually transformed. Then Willow was to jump off the stage and join the rest of her classmates. It was simple enough but Willow was terrified she would signal at the wrong time and cause a massacre. She didn't want to be reason of her classmates dying and yet she had been pushed into the role and there was nothing she could do about it.

Having eaten some cereal for breakfast and washed the dishes, Willow had been getting ready to walk to the school when there was a knocking at the door. Willow frowned. She wasn't expecting anyone. Xander was back to going to school in Cordelia's car and Oz lived in the opposite direction of Sunnydale high to her... it was a bit out of the way, even though he still occasionally came by to collect her. Remembering her recent kidnapping by Faith and the Mayor's goons, Willow considered grabbing a weapon but dismissed the feeling as being paranoid and instead cautiously approached the door of her parents' home (she had offered to stay there the previous night as Joyce and Buffy had planned a mother/daughter bonding night before Joyce went to L.A. in order to protect her from the violence would occur at the graduation) and peered through the peephole. Willow's jaw dropped and she let out a gasp and flung the door open.

"Surprise!"

BtVS/BONES

Willow was still shaking when she walked into the library an hour later. Xander, Buffy, Giles, Cordelia and Oz were all there when she walked through the door but all conversation died when their eyes fell on Willow's pale face. Joyce was not going to be at the graduation and Xander had (without much effort) convinced his parents to stay away. Oz too had talked his parents out of attending and Cordelia's parents were too busy with their impending court case to attend their only child's high school graduation.

"Willow, what's wrong?" Buffy asked, hurrying across the room to Willow's side. "You look like you've seen a ghost. Please tell me you aren't a ghost again." She reached out a tentative finger, poking at Willow's shoulder gently to see if it was solid. Satisfied that Willow was still solid, Buffy steered Willow towards the rest of the gang.

"What's up?" Xander asked, drawing closer to his best friend.

"We have a problem," Willow choked out as Buffy gently pushed her into a seat. Willow dimly realized that it was the exact same seat that she had found herself in mere days ago, when she'd told the others about how she'd been named valedictorian. She even had a funny feeling that it was exactly the same chair that she had dropped into on the fateful day, almost two and a half years before, when she and Xander had been told the truth about the supernatural's existence and everything that came with it.