Room 121, Monday evening

[soldtoarmenians]

Xander was...sort of packing. In that way where he was straightening stuff up and putting it in boxes while pretending that maybe it was just because he needed more room and was going to shove all the boxes under the bed. Except not, but there was always the chance. Except not.

[For willbedone and the b-word-person. NFB due to omg sekrits.]

Comments

[willbedone.livejournal.com]

Saying goodbye to Anakin had gotten Willow to think some very thinky thoughts. After making a decision - or acting fast enough that any second guesses about this decision couldn't catch up with her - she showed up at Xander's door with something in her hand.

She knocked.

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

Bridge, who had been "helping" in the sense that really meant "sitting on the bed and watching", gets up to answer the knock.

"Hey, Willow," he says with a smile, waving her in.

[willbedone.livejournal.com]

"Hey, Bridge," she said back, coming inside. "Sorry to interrupt any last minute snuggly time. I need a BFF favor."

[soldtoarmenians]

"Willow, hi." Xander put down the box that he was packing books into - and who knew that he'd actually have books that he wanted to take home with him? "More like first-minute packing time, so please. Interrupt away."

[willbedone.livejournal.com]

Willow noticed the packing. "Okay, two favors. One, I want any books you're not taking with you. And two - " she held up what she'd brought with her, which was Amy inside of her portable terrarium " - take her with you?"

[soldtoarmenians]

Xander blinked and scratched his head. "Okay... One, you're so welcome to Ethics books.I'm not sure we actually used them in the class; it was all discussion. Two.. buh?"

[willbedone.livejournal.com]

"Take her with you," Willow repeated. "Because I'm stupid and lame and the worst witch ever and can't fix her, and your Willow can, and plus we're getting all new students and teachers who can talk to animals and Jenny's back and the likelihood of somebody talking to Amy or otherwise finding out that I'm not supposed to have her is way too high for my ability to sleep at night and I swear that's not the main reason why I'm asking you since yay, woo, fixed Amy but it's a factor and I'm panicking and please?"

All in one breath too.

[soldtoarmenians]

Xander reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a paper bag, handing it to her.

[willbedone.livejournal.com]

Willow accepted it gratefully and used it to help get her breathing under control.

[soldtoarmenians]

Xander peered at Amy's terrarium. "Would now be a bad time to mention that I'm... kind of... one of those animal-talky students? I actually took the class in the first place so I could try to talk to the home-game version of Amy and see if...she was actually in there, I guess."

[willbedone.livejournal.com]

Willow gave him a curious look as she kept breathing.

[soldtoarmenians]

He grimaced sheepishly. "Except I kind of tried with your Amy already, and she mostly just sat there and blinked at me. And then ate a carrot. Maybe she speaks Norwegian Rat and I only learned American or something?"

[willbedone.livejournal.com]

"She may not even know Rat at all," Willow said, finally putting the paper bag aside. "Just because she turned doesn't mean she got all the ratty knowledge. But there's still psychics and, again, I haven't forgotten the importance of how the real issue is getting her human. Please? Can you take her?"

[soldtoarmenians]

Xander took a breath of his own. "I can take her, yeah, I don't see why not, but my Willow can't turn her human again. She told me it worked when she was at Hogwarts - well, London in that dimension - but once she and Amy got back and Willow tried the same spell in Sunnydale, 'pfffzt.' "

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

Bridge raises his hand, and waves it around a bit.

[willbedone.livejournal.com]

Willow gave Bridge a questioning look.

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"Couldn't *Amy* do the spell?" Bridge asks. "Like, not this Amy because she's a rat and I don't think rats have the appropriate vocal cords or, you know, the ability to manipulate objects very much but there's an Amy in Xander's Sunnydale who does have hands and not paws and the ability to speak in English or Latin or whatever the spell actually needs."

[willbedone.livejournal.com]

"Oh!" Willow said, suddenly getting excited. "Yes! And? Also? If it's Amy doing the spell it totally does not count as me being a completely lame and useless witch who couldn't figure this out because it was Amy's spell to begin with so obviously that's an unfair advantage and Xander's Willow got to go to Hogwarts and I'm sure if I spent a year there too I could so do this but I'm just being extra nice by not making poor Amy wait that long."

[soldtoarmenians]

Xander blinked at her for a moment, doing instant Willow-to-normally-intelligenced-person translation, which skill he sometimes suspected had possibly been designed specifically to prepare him for dating Bridge. "If we locked you two in a room together you'd either solve world hunger in an hour or you'd run out of oxygen in five minutes; I'm not sure which."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"I'm going to take that as a compliment," Bridge says solemnly.

[willbedone.livejournal.com]

"Wouldn't we want to solve the oxygen problem first?" Willow pointed out.

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"I'm pretty good at holding my breath," Bridge supplies. "So just as long as the room isn't also doing that thing where it gets smaller and smaller and smaller? We could probably fix the oxygen thing first if I could hold my breath long enough to fix the ventilation in the room."

[willbedone.livejournal.com]

"If it's a computer systen I could totally hack it to try to stop the room from shrinking," Willow said. "Oh! And maybe I could do a spell to create portable oxygen spaces for us so we don't pass out and die before you can fix the ventilation, which is good because it's bad enough to die at all, but worse when you've left the world hunger problem waiting because your brain went all woozy."

[soldtoarmenians]

Xander calmly reached into his pocket for his phone, pressed the button on the front, and unwrapped the twinkie that dropped out, listening politely without interrupting them.

[willbedone.livejournal.com]

Willow noticed and looked sheepish. "Or we could deal with the Amy situation first."

[soldtoarmenians]

"Oh, I'm on it." Xander held up the phone. "We need to call ahead, though, or she's liable to come through with chartreuse polka dots." He inclined his head towards Jeremiah's tank.

[willbedone.livejournal.com]

"Say hi for me," Willow prompted.

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"And me!" Bridge bounces.

[soldtoarmenians]

"This is so weird." Xander punched in the number and hoped to get Willow on first try, because he wasn't sure he had the brainpower to explain this twice.

Somebody was listening, apparently, because there was a bright, "Hello?" on the other end.

"Hey, Will."

"Xander! Are you done packing? Do you need boxes, because I'm pretty sure I can *poof* you some extra boxes; card board's dead so it's pretty easy to--"

"Willow?"

"...Yes?"

"You say hi."

Wow, silence. For a second. "Didn't I say hi? Hi, Xander!"

"No, I mean the other you. Also Bridge. Hey, while we're not talking, can we talk about something not boxes for a second?"

"Other me is there? Hi other me!" That was yelled loudly enough that it might very well be heard by people who weren't Xander's dying eardrum. More quietly, she added, "My peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are still better than hers, right?"

[willbedone.livejournal.com]

"Hi other me!" Willow shouted back. She also waved. Not that you could see that over the phone, but some instinctive Willowness inside of her said that other Willow would know.

[soldtoarmenians]

[--->]

[soldtoarmenians]

"Oh, hi Bridge too!" The phone moved away from Willow's voice in a way that Xander could tell meant she was waving at it. And then moved closer in a way that he could tell meant she was pretending she hadn't waved at it. "Are you having a party and invited proxy-me because I couldn't be there? That's kind of cool in a weird way..."

Xander waited until she ran out of words before he said, "Party not so much, no. More like we need to have a talk about rats."

___

Ten minutes and a lot of inner-ear damage later, Amy's terrarium was sitting on the desk, right next to his open phone with the speaker turned up. "Okay, everybody stand back - I think we've got the bugs worked out of this, but it never hurts to stay out of suck-in range," Willow's voice said over the tiny speaker.

And then there was something in Latin, and then there was something purple and shiny pouring out of the phone, and then there was an empty desk where there used to be a rat cage.

Xander paused for a moment, then reached gingerly for the phone. "You've got her?"

"GOT HER!"

Ow. Speaker. "Ow. Speaker."

"Sorry!" Willow lowered her voice. "Got her, yep. I'll take her to, um, herself, in the morning, and once it's done, we shouldn't have much problem getting her home, if we're all working together."

[willbedone.livejournal.com]

"Thanks, me!" Willow shouted.

[soldtoarmenians]

Xander just held the phone away from his ear so that the "YOU'RE WELCOME, ME!" he knew was coming didn't completely kill what was left of his hearing.