Xander reached the door of his two-room apartment, still digging around in his jacket pocket for his keys. He was immediately on guard as he stepped cautiously inside and crept towards the living room. Keeping his back to the doorway, he scanned the room for any sign of disturbances. Everything looked normal and he couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. Suddenly a hand came down on his shoulder. Xander yelped and jumped to his side, spinning around to face whoever was behind him. A recognizable figure stood right in front of him on the stairs, leaning on the rail and smirking at him.

"Geez, Brit, don't do that! You nearly gave me a heart attack!"

She laughed softly, and as he began to relax, she smiled. She had been going out with Xander for a couple of months and still after that time, it felt like it was their first day. Every day was filled with unexpected excitement.

"Come here," he instructed, moving backwards to his couch. She sauntered towards him and accepted his hug gladly. "Not trying to be mean, Brit, but why did you follow me from Buffy's?"

She pulled back from the hug regretfully, her hands still running through his hair. "You didn't say goodbye so I made sure we would."

"I appreciate that, Brit, but next time try to approach me... Face to face."

"No problem, Xand," she said quietly.

"You look tired," he told her, reaching out to run his hand along her arm. "How about a nap?"

Normally, she would have protested, but her body took over her mind as she caved into a big yawn. Brittany sighed, handed Xander his bag and was led by him into his bedroom. She noticed as they entered the bedroom that the sheets had changed and a flood of satisfaction rushed through her.

"Oh, you finally changed your sheets Xander. I was hoping the next time we'd have sex we'd do it on clean sheets." She yawned again.

"Who said we were having sex? You need to get some sleep."

She undressed almost in a trance and climbed under the covers, already slipping into a drowsy state. Xander sat down at the edge of the bed and pulled the sheets up around her, before leaning forward to place a soft kiss on her forehead.

"It's really nice to have you as a boyfriend. You know that, right?" she murmured sleepily.

"Yeah I know," he whispered back, making sure to close the door softly behind him as he left the room.

Xander put down his fork and was finishing the last mouthful of his steak dinner when a thought came to him. He had taken his bag of clothes to Buffy's, had prepared to sleepover, but before he decided to leave he remembered that he did not care to see if he had taken the right bag. There were, according to his memory, four bags at Buffy's, all of which were black.

Xander scrambled over to the black bag he had brought into his apartment. As he thought about if he had taken the right bag and between his friends and girlfriend, he didn't hear the soft knock on the door, or the quiet footsteps. He bit down on his lip, stripping open the bag from the zipper in one clean rip.

"Xander?"

The sudden voice startled Xander and he jumped, accidentally falling backwards onto the floor. He stood up quickly to make sure, if it was an intruder, to be in a ready position.

"You're hilarious, Xander!" she muttered sarcastically. The visitor he was surprised to see was Buffy. She was holding a black bag in her hands.

He winced in embarrassment for being so startled by his good friend.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you. I knocked a couple of times, so I began to worry. I just came to give you back your bag," she explained.

"It's okay, Buffy. It's my fault." He sighed, looking at the bag he brought and the one in Buffy's hands. "So... who's bag did I take?"

"I don't know."

Xander sighed, and added, "Alright, let's find out who's bag it is. But if you have my bag, then shouldn't the person who's missing this bag realize theirs is gone?"

"He or she probably didn't remember they brought a bag. It happens occasionally. We're humans and we make mistakes."

Xander glanced at the clock.

"It's 11.40 PM now. We should just do this tomorrow, and then we can find out whose bag it is. It's not like this is a crisis."

Buffy looked at him and caught his gaze. Xander could almost see the thoughts running through her mind. He knew it was the stubborn, resisting look.

"Losing clothes and personal belongings to some people is a crisis, Xander," she said quietly. "And I highly doubt if you lost your bag, you would sleep and wait 'til the next day."

Xander felt a sting in his forehead run through him, and he gulped.

"So Buffy, are you going to stay here or let me do this by myself?"

"I don't mind if..." she glanced down at her hands, before looking back up at his face. "I mean, if your tired, we can just find out whose bag it is and call them. And we can sleep here..."

Xander raised his eyebrow and was surprised, despite the warm rush of arousal that spiked through him at her words.

"That's quite an offer." He seemed to remember saying that before, to another girl. "Yeah and look what followed that!" he thought, as he remembered the first time Brittany and him had sex, a couple months ago.

"I wouldn't be asking if I wasn't serious. I'm tired myself."

Xander walked deliberately in the opposite direction towards the bedroom, opening and locking it from the inside.

"Are you alright?" she called across to him.

"Yeah, I'm just trying to figure out where you can sleep..."

She chuckled. "Not with you."

Xander shrank back and remained silent. He had seemed to lose his sense of humor at the moment. He did not find Buffy's comment, although intended to be humorous, funny at all.

"Although it shames me to tell you, I think you might have to stick with the couch..." Xander stated.

Xander looked confused, and Buffy looked stunned, before asking in a shaking voice, "I'm the guest right?"

Xander nodded. "Yes."

"Shouldn't I be gifted with sleeping on a bed?"

"No," Xander replied quickly, catching Buffy off guard. "I mean, no thanks. I didn't clean the sheets and frankly it just smells in there."

"Don't tease me like that," she groaned. "It's bad enough I had to drive twenty minutes to get down here and the night before, getting two hours of sleep. The couch would just make things worse."

"Oh, you're just overreacting," Xander laughed nervously.

Buffy shot Xander a confused look. He mirrored it back at her. Buffy inhaled deeply and gave up, "Okay. Where are you sleeping?"

"Floor," he said simply.

"Splendid!" Her disappointment had suddenly skyrocketed to happiness. "If I would have known, I would not have complained," she giggled.

"So, can we just open the bag already?" Xander asked frustratingly.

Buffy looked at him, smiling. "Hey, you stole it. You can open it, I'm getting the television."

She moved speedily to the couch and leapt up and onto it, instinctively grabbing the remote control for the television.

"You have to leave early in the morning though," Xander added.

"How early?" she asked, flipping on the television.

"Whenever I wake you up."

Buffy turned her head and frowned at him. "Just remember I can beat you up..."

Xander inwardly winced at the comment, remembering the amount of times she had reminded him that in recent months. "Anything good on television tonight?" he asked, changing the subject.

"Don't worry about it Xander, just find out what's in the bag."

Xander held up his hands so Buffy could see, palms out, and dug his hands into the open bag. Suddenly, many tiny beams of light escaped his palm. In the middle of the room, a small flash of light occurred. A tiny spark appeared, swirling and growing. Around the spark, the air seemed to bend and melt. A form started to take shape as the spark grew. The form was definitely a portal to an unknown forested area. The first thing Xander noted was that in the background were huge buildings of marble and concrete. Soon, distinct features of the buildings began to emerge. Xander could see the Roman Coliseum in grand scale.

"Oh my god..." Xander whispered. He could see in the corner of his eye that Buffy did not notice what was going on.

Xander steadied his body against Buffy's head, which was still facing the television.

"Xander! What's your..." Buffy trailed off, as the intense light that she had turned to suddenly blinded her.

Xander uttered, more like squeaked, simply, "God help us."

This wasn't a safe place for them, not for anyone. Still, Buffy and Xander remained still as if the light would not recognize them as humans. The form wrapped itself around them so fast that they did not have time to move. "Help!" Xander and Buffy screamed in unison, as the light captured them both.

Brittany woke up in a start, sitting up in Xander's bed, making the old springs squeak. She turned over the bed and got onto her feet. The loud yelp had awakened her senses.

"Xander!" she called out. There was no response. Brittany couldn't remember the last time she was shaking so much. "You there, Xander?"

Brittany creaked open the bedroom door and noticed immediately that no one was in the apartment. She went to the small kitchen and opened up a cabinet. She retrieved one of her many prescription bottles, and struggled opening the cap of the sleeping doses. She shook the two tablets out and they stuck to her sweaty palm. She put them in her mouth and let them dissolve onto her tongue, the taste of it acid and nauseating. She waited until she gagged it out into the sink and then washed it down with warm tap water. This was her nightly ritual.

Brittany's cold feet treaded across the cold tile of the kitchen onto the warm carpet of the living room. She noticed two black bags lying on the floor. The television also remained on. Strangely, she had totally forgotten about the television. The silent volume perhaps was the reason.

She walked over to the television and turned it off. She knew something was wrong. Her mind flashed back from the television to the bags. One of the two bags was open while the other was not. Brittany choked back her fear and walked over to the opened black bag.

She had a feeling this was the problem. It had to be. As she prepared to open wide the bag, a quick burst of adrenaline ran through her body and her mind calmed.

"I'm going to have to do this," she reassured herself.

She knelt to the ground and quickly spread the opened bag. She was surprised to see that nothing was inside. The faint scent of burnt smoke and fire floated from the hole-filled bag. Brittany mumbled something like an obscenity but she could hear nothing but her own heartbeat, pounding into her ears. Then there was a sharp and intense pain that shot through her body. The pills and the smoke had overcome her and she lost consciousness.

A dizzying ray of sunshine in ethereal essence poured over a field of flowers. The breeze blew gently, washing the scent of heather through the air. Just beyond a stone-fenced row, a trickling brook flowed through the land. The water flowed from the brook all the way into a city.

Xander sat up from the grass, surrounded by flowers. He was sweating from every pour from his body and he whispered a name on his quivering lips, "Buffy."

As his voice trailed off, the brilliant day darkened. The clouds were chased away by a harrowing storm, where the rain fell hard and as deep as a swift razorblade. Xander looked away from the sky to find a cart full of villagers dragged by a horse on a marble road. The road seemed to be leading right into the heart of what appeared to be a huge city.

Brooding over the heavy rain, Xander was lost in his own thoughts. What the hell was in that bag? Whose bag was it? In all of his imaginations of what could be inside the bag, never had he been so shocked to find out that it was a portal to another world. The details crept up on him now; the fine lines under his eyes, the sick paleness streaking his skin, how sad his eyes looked. Shaking out of his fit of analysis, Xander surfaced and scanned the area for Buffy. "Buffy!"

Grasping his body and clothes to see if he had lost something, he noticed that the only living things around him besides the people in the cart on the road were beautiful flowers.

Xander smiled weakly at the sight of the flowers, filling his heart with some joy and lessening some of the tension inside him.

"Lovely flowers," he said. He directed his gaze up towards the city that lay in front of him. The sight was staggering.

Standing stiff, Xander held his breath in awe as the city hung before him like a stage in which he was in the back row.

Its features included high, steep hills surrounded by deep ravines and impassable valleys. Lush vegetation, including old woods, covered the hillsides and the outskirts of the city, together with fields, gardens and vineyards. The streams that flowed through the valleys, like the brook next to him, turned into marshland, forming ponds, and small lakes in the city. Xander noticed some villages on hilltops and down below, and more easily, the Coliseum. It was Rome. Just when Xander thought there was nothing else to admire, he diverted his eyes towards a massive water aqueduct surrounding the forest.

"You got to be kidding me." Xander would have completely believed he was in a dream if it wasn't for the raindrops chilling his skin. The rain surrounding him left Xander to wonder where he could find shelter. He then began to think of a hotel. "I don't think these people take credit cards or cash," he remarked.

Even though he felt the rain wash over his face that made his eyes close several times, he continued to stand still amidst the flowers. Xander saw that the cart began to fade away into a grayish sort of color, which he recognized as the Roman city itself. If he lost sight of the cart, he realized that he would have trouble finding anyone inside the city that could help him.

"Wait! People! Please come back! You must turn around!" Xander demanded, his eyes narrowing and lighting up with a certain amount of frustration in them. "Turn around immediately!"

Despite Xander's pleas, the people rode the cart casually down into the city, allowing their eyes to be trained on him as they rode out of his sight. The looks on their faces were of disgust and pity.

Watching someone turn him down right in front of his eyes was not something Xander had not seen before. But it was the looks on their faces that startled him the most. It was the murderous, callous, uncaring stares of people that gave him an image of how people in the city might be like.

Xander shivered as the rain continued to pour down his clothes. "Damn strangers." Xander grunted and fingered through his pockets. "It's going to be a long night."

Xander stepped back from the flowers and squatted on his heels next to a tree. The enormous tree beside him did not cover the rain from hitting him, but did reduce the heavy pounding into small drops. Taking his wallet from his pocket, he picked out his small picture of Brittany from it.

He looked at the picture as if it was the real person herself. "I know it's going to be tough, Brittany. But I'll come back, I promise you." He kissed the picture and placed it back into his wallet.

Giles would have loved to be here, Xander thought. The rain continued to pour hard, basking the flowers with nutrients. Xander began to think again of the bags. The people at Buffy's house were he, Willow, Faith, and Giles. It was easy for Xander to think that the bag that led him to this place was Giles, but he had second thoughts. He knew Willow and Faith had connections to witchcraft, whereas Giles did not. "A portal is a sign of witchcraft," he thought, remembering his wedding to Anya where an old man went through the portal to warn Xander of the dangers of marrying Anya.

Xander bent over to pick up two flowers that resembled daffodils. "Two prime suspects... Willow and Faith." Xander sniffed both of the flowers, smelling the essence inside each. "Take your pick, winner loses all." Xander dropped the flower that represented Faith and held the flower in his left hand as Willow.

Xander looked at the flower with a playful, uncaring ease. He ripped apart the stem and petals. He let the decapitated flower fall to the ground. "Willow, how could you!" he yelled. He slid along the tree, making room for him to rest his head.

Xander did not take his eyes off the dead flower. "Willow," he said, laying a hand on the parts of the flower. "Get another hobby." He relaxed against the bark of the tree and closed his eyes. "I'm going to sleep now," he whispered to himself. "Let's hope to god that I wake up in a bed, not in this mess." Xander truly believed he would wake up in his bed. In a way, he had a right to. It wasn't often to be sent to a different world. To Rome.