Introduction
Season:
First | Second | Third | Fourth | Fifth | Sixth | Seventh
Other Bodies | Episodes | Dramatis Personae
Ramblings | Links | Fanfic
| Primeval | Buffy vs. Dracula |
Buffy sees Riley off in the front hall of her house. It’s late in the evening on the same day as the battle against Adam and the demons in The Initiative. Buffy still has the cut on her forehead she received in her fight with Adam following Forrest’s death.
Riley is leaving for Washington for a debriefing. Buffy is a little worried about that, but Riley isn’t. He’ll have Graham and several of the other surviving Initiative soldiers testifying that they’re alive because of him. He expects that he will be given an honourable discharge when it’s all over.
“In return for your silence, no doubt,” says Giles.
“Oh, yeah,” says Riley. “Having the inside scoop on the administration’s own Bay of Mutated Pigs is definitely an advantage.”
“It’s like you’re blackmailing the government,” says Willow with a grin. She sees the look Riley gives her. “In a patriotic way.”
Xander comes out of the kitchen carrying a bowl of popcorn, and announces that dinner is served. Joyce follows him, carrying a bowl of party mix.
“Well, you guys have fun tonight.” Riley extends his hand to Joyce. “It was very nice meeting you.”
Joyce takes his hand. “It was nice meeting you. Finally.”
Buffy and Riley say bye to each other, and Riley goes. Buffy closes the door. “Did you notice how pointedly I said ‘finally?’” asks Joyce.
“No.” Buffy heads into the living room.
They are all set up there for an all night vidfest. Giles invites Joyce to join them, but she tells them she’s too tired. She is surprised that they aren’t all exhausted after what they just went through.
“Still feel a little bit too wired,” says Giles.
“Mmm. Yeah,” says Willow, “that spell—that was—that was powerful.”
“Don’t think I could sleep,” says Buffy.
Everyone settles into their seats. Buffy and Willow on the sofa, Giles in a chair. Xander calls dibs on first choice: Apocalypse Now.
“Did you get anything less Heart of Darkness-y?” asks Willow.
“Apocalypse Now is a gay romp,” says Xander. “It’s the feel-good movie of whatever year it was.” Buffy wants to know what else he got, and Xander assures her that they also have lots of chick and British Guy flicks. They have enough tapes to last all night. He loads the first tape into the VCR as Joyce heads up the stairs to bed.
All four of them are asleep before the FBI warning at the beginning of the tape is over.
Tara lies on her stomach on her bed. She isn’t wearing a top. She thinks it’s strange that they haven’t found a proper name for their kitten yet. She looks at Miss Kitty Fantastico playing with a ball of yarn. She is starting to worry. “You’d think she’d let us know her name by now.” Willow thinks she will in time. Miss Kitty isn’t all grown yet.
“You’re not worried?” asks Tara.
“I’m never worried here,” says Willow. “I’m safe here.”
“You don’t know everything about me,” says Tara.
“Have you told me your real name?” asks Willow.
“Oh, you know that,” says Tara.
Willow dips a paint brush into a bowl of black ink.
“They will find out, you know,” says Tara. “About you.”
Willow doesn’t have time to think about that now. She has to finish her homework. She dips the paint brush into the bowl again, and goes back to painting on Tara’s bare back.
Tara asks if she will finish before Willow’s first drama class. Willow isn’t worried about that. She can be late. Tara thinks she might miss something important.
Willow’s done. She has been writing in Greek on Tara’s back.1 Willow still doesn’t want to leave Tara’s room. She goes and opens the curtains, flooding the room with brilliant sunlight. “It’s so bright, and there is something out there.” Outside Tara’s window is a desert, and there’s a creature lurking, hiding in the scrub.
Willow walks through a campus hallway on her way to drama class. She meets with Xander and Oz. Oz has heard she’s taking drama, it’s a tough course.
“You took it?” asks Willow.
“Oh, I’ve been here forever,” says Oz.
Willow goes to her locker and tries to open it. She can’t get the combination right.
Xander asks Willow if she’s been doing spells. “She does spells with Tara,” he confides to Oz. Oz has heard about that.
The bell rings, signalling the start of class. Willow rushes off, she’s going to be late.
Xander and Oz watch her go. “Sometimes I think about two women doing a spell,” says Xander. “And then I do a spell by myself.”
Willow arrives backstage for her drama class. It’s bustling with activity. Full of people in a wide variety of costumes. The orchestra can be heard tuning up out front.
Harmony comes running up to Willow in a milk maid costume. She’s all excited about their first production. She can’t wait until their scene together. She gives Willow a hug. “I love you!” She breaks the hug off. “Don’t step on my cues.”
Buffy runs up to Willow dressed in a black flapper dress and a short black wig. She has just been peaking out through the curtains at the audience. “The place is packed. Your whole family’s in the front row, and they look really angry.”
Willow is surprised that they are doing a play already. She thought that this was their first class.
Riley arrives, in a cowboy costume. He tells Willow that she’d have a better part if she hadn’t shown up late. He got there on time, and he gets to be “Cowboy Guy.”
“Your costume is perfect.” Buffy tells Willow, ”Nobody’s going to know the truth.” she whispers.
Willow tries to tell Buffy that she isn’t in costume, this is her everyday outfit.
“You’re already in character!” says Buffy. “I should have done that!”
Willow is just getting more confused. She thought that the drama class would have some class before they got into doing a play. They haven’t even rehearsed or anything. Willow doesn’t even know what play they’re doing. “This isn’t Madame Butterfly, is it? Because I have a whole problem with opera.”
The director claps for everyone’s attention. It’s Giles. “In just a few moments, that curtain is going to open on our very first production. Everyone that Willow’s ever met is out in that audience, including all of us. That means we have to be perfect. Stay in character, remember your lines and energy, energy, energy, especially in the musical numbers.”
While Giles is talking Willow notices that there is something lurking, hiding among the crowd of actors, but she can’t get a good look at it. No one else notices, and Giles continues with his pep talk.
“Acting is not about behaving, it’s about hiding. The audience wants to find you, strip you naked, and eat you alive, so hide.” Harmony has switched to her vamp face, and is trying to nibble on his neck. “Stop that,” says Giles. “Now, costumes, sets…Um, the things that you, uh, you know, you know, um, you hold them, you touch them, use them—”
“Props?” asks Harmony.
“No,” says Giles.
“Props,” says Riley.
“Yes! It’s all about subterfuge.” Harmony is still trying to bite Giles’ neck. “That’s very annoying,” he tells her. “Now go on out there, lie like dogs, and have a wonderful time. Now, if we can stay in focus, keep our heads, and if Willow can stop stepping on everyone’s cues, I know this will be the best production of Death of a Salesman we’ve ever done.” Harmony still hasn’t given up. “Stop it! Good luck, everyone! Break a leg!”
Everyone starts to talk and bustle, getting ready to go on, but the sound fades away and Willow can’t hear any of it. She wanders around in confusion. She sees a middle aged, balding man, wearing a brown suit and glasses. “I made a little space for the cheese slices.” He gestures toward a small table on which he has laid out a neat row of processed cheese squares.
Willow steps behind a curtain. She walks down a narrow passage with red curtains hanging on either side of her. She finds Tara.
“Things aren’t going very well,” says Tara.
“No!” says Willow. “This drama class is just— I think they’re really not doing things in the proper way, and now I’m in a play, and my whole family’s out there, and why is there a cowboy in Death of a Salesman anyway?”
“You don’t understand yet, do you?”
“Is there something following me?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what should I do?” asks Willow. “The play’s going to start soon, and I don’t even know my lines.”
“The play’s already started,” says Tara. “That’s not the point.”
Riley is on stage with Buffy and Harmony. Buffy is reclining on a love seat. Harmony is holding a couple of milk pails. Riley asks the little lady if he can help her with those.
“Why, thank you, but they’re not very heavy,” says Harmony. “Why have you come to our lonely small town which has no post office and very few exports?”
“I’ve come lookin’ for a man.” Riley looks out toward the audience. “A sales man.”
“Everyone’s starting to wonder about you.” Tara tells Willow. “The real you. If they find out, they’ll punish you. I can’t help you with that.”
Willow is still worried about whatever is following her. She doesn’t know what it is. “Is it something I was supposed to do? Was I supposed to—”
“Shhh!” Tara looks around.
Willow hears something moving behind the curtain. She asks Tara what it is.
“But what else could I expect from a bunch of low-rent, no-account hoodlums like you?” Buffy asks Riley on stage. Harmony is sitting on the love seat behind her sobbing, with Xander’s dead body lying at her feet. “Hoodlums, yes! I mean, you and your friends, your whole sex! Throw ’em in the sea for all I care! Throw ’em in and wait for the bubbles. Men, with your groping and spitting! All groin, no brain. Three billion of ya passing around the same worn-out urge. Men! With your…sales!”
Willow looks around for Tara, but she’s vanished. Suddenly a stone knife slashes through the curtain at her. Willow starts to run, but a clawed hand reaches through a gap in the curtains, blocking her. The knife slashes through the curtains again.
Willow backs away, and trips. She falls to the floor. The knife slashes again, and Willow puts up a hand to defend herself. The knife slices into her palm.
A hand reaches through the curtain, and grabs Willow’s wrist. “Will!” says Buffy. She’s out of costume now. She helps Willow back to her feet. “Come on. Stay low. What did it look like?”
Buffy leads Willow through a gap in the curtains, into an empty classroom at Sunnydale High. They stay crouched down low as they make their way up an aisle between the rows of empty desks. Willow tells Buffy that she doesn’t know what the creature looks like. She has no idea what’s after her. Buffy thinks Willow must have done something.
Willow doesn’t think so. “I’m very seldom naughty. I just came to class, and the play was starting.”
Buffy tells Willow that the play was over long ago. She wants to know why Willow’s still wearing her costume. Willow once again tries to explain that these are her everyday clothes.
“Willow, everybody already knows,” says Buffy. “Take it off.”
“No,” says Willow. “I need it.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, just take it off!” Buffy reaches out and grabs Willow. She turns her around and grabs the collar of Willow’s shirt and rips it off her. “That’s better. It’s much more realistic.” Buffy goes and sits in the single remaining vacant desk in the classroom full of students.
“See, isn’t everybody very clear on this now?” Harmony asks the people around her. Willow is standing in front of the class looking the way she did three years ago, the first time Buffy ever saw her. Long brown hair. White blouse and leotards. A short brown plaid dress that her mother bought for her at Sears. Anya thinks she looks like a Greek tragedy.
Oz leans toward Tara. ”I tried to warn you.” he whispers. Tara tries hard not to giggle.
Willow starts to read her book report, on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to the class.
“Oh, who cares!” calls out Xander from the back of the class. Oz is whispering something else into Tara’s ear, and she’s giggling.
The creature attacks Willow, and knocks her to the floor. Buffy sits watching, looking bored as it mauls her. No one else in the class makes any move to help Willow as she struggles against the beast. It leans down and sucks the breath out of her.
Asleep on Buffy’s sofa, Willow struggles to breathe.
Xander wakes up after dozing off for a few seconds. He asks if he missed anything. Giles tells him nothing much at all.
Buffy takes a handfull of popcorn. “Bunch of massacring.” Willow is lying on the sofa, struggling to breathe.
On the TV a lone soldier is walking through the jungle. He tells his men that they have to keep going, take that hill. Giles is starting to think that Apocalypse Now is a very overrated film.
“No, no. It gets better,” says Xander. “I remember that it gets better.” He doesn’t seem to remember having seen this part of the movie before.
Buffy offers him some popcorn. “Butter flavor?” asks Xander.
“New car smell,” says Buffy. That sounds good to Xander and he takes some. He notices that Willow is having trouble breathing and asks what her deal is.
“Big faker,” says Buffy.
Giles is starting to understand what the film is about. “It’s all about the journey, isn’t it?”
“Thanks for making me have to pee.” Xander gets up and heads toward the stairs. Buffy offers to help him, but Xander tells her he can manage. He has a system.
“Hey,” says Joyce as Xander approaches the bathroom door. Xander turns around and sees her. She is wearing a long slinky red nightgown, and standing in the door to her bedroom. Xander asks if they are making too much noise downstairs.
“Oh no,” says Joyce. “Anyway they all left a while ago.” Xander thinks that he should go catch up with them. “I’ve heard that before,” she says.
“I move pretty fast,” says Xander. “You know, a man’s always after—”
“Conquest?” asks Joyce.
“I’m a conquistador.”
“Are you sure it isn’t comfort?”
“I’m a comfortador also,” says Xander.
Joyce does know the difference. She tells Xander she’s learned about boys. Xander thinks that’s cool. “It’s very late. Would you like to rest for a while?” Joyce looks toward her bed.
“Um, yeah,” says Xander. “I’d like you. I’m just going to go to the bathroom first.”
“Don’t get lost.”
Xander lifts the toilet seat, and unzips his pants. Then he notices that he isn’t alone. He looks around and sees that there are several Initiative scientists and soldiers watching him. The scientists all have clipboards, and are poised, ready to take notes. Xander zips up his pants and decides to find another bathroom.
He crosses the hallway and opens the door to Buffy’s room. He walks into it.
Xander walks into his basement. He is a little surprised to be there. As he looks around he hears something rattling the door at the top of the stairs. “I didn’t order any vampires.”
Whatever is up there keeps trying to open the door. Xander backs away from it. “That’s not the way out.”
Xander enters the park on a bright sunny day. Buffy sits in the sandbox with a plastic shovel and pail. Giles and Spike are on the swings. “Hey, there you are,” says Xander.
“Are you sure it’s us you were looking for?” asks Buffy.
Giles and Spike keep swinging. They’re both quite happy, and are dressed in identical tweed three piece suits. Spike tells Xander that Giles is going to teach him how to be a Watcher. Giles adds that Spike is like a son to him.
“I was into that for a while, but I’ve got other stuff going on.” Xander looks off across the park to an icecream truck, where he’s selling treats to a bunch of kids. “You got to have something. Got to be with moving forward.”
“Like a shark,” says Buffy.
Xander looks at Buffy, and asks if she wants to be playing there. “It’s a pretty big sandbox.”
Buffy is sitting alone, out in the desert. “I’m okay. It’s not coming for me yet.”
“I just mean, you can’t protect yourself from…some stuff,” says Xander.
Buffy looks up at him from the sandbox. “I’m way ahead of you, big brother.”
On the swings Giles exhorts Spike to swing higher. “A Watcher scoffs at gravity!” Xander stands and stares at Buffy.
Xander watches himself with Buffy, and Giles and Spike on the swings from the icecream truck. He leaves the window in the side of the truck and walks to the front. He sits in the driver’s seat beside Anya. The truck is already moving.
“Do you know where you’re going?” asks Anya. She’s thinking of getting back into vengeance. She thinks that this is going to be a very big year for it. She needs a hobby.
Xander doesn’t think she needs a vengeance hobby. “It’s dangerous. People can’t do anything they want. Society has rules and borders and an end zone. It doesn’t matter if—” He’s interrupted by the sound of giggling coming from behind him. He looks around and sees Willow and Tara nuzzling with each other. “Do you mind? I’m talking to my demon.”
Willow is wearing black leather pants, and a midriff baring top covered with an open black jacket. Tara has on a black miniskirt and is wearing a white jacket. The top buttons are undone, showing lots of cleavage. Both are wearing bright red lipstick, and dark mascara.
Willow apologises for disturbing him, but Tara thinks Xander is interesting.
“Oh, I’m going places,” says Xander.
“I’m way ahead of you.” Willow whispers something into Tara’s ear and caresses her thigh. Tara giggles.
“Is that right?” asks Xander.
“Watch this.” Willow starts to kiss Tara. Xander watches, slack jawed, paying no attention to where the icecream truck is going. After a while Tara asks Xander if he’d like to join them in the back.
“Oh go on!” says Anya. “I’ll be fine. I think I’ve figured out how to steer by gesturing emphatically.” Xander gets up and moves toward the back of the truck. Anya stays up front, steering by waving her hands around.
Xander walks toward the back of the icecream truck. He climbs up over the freezers, pushes a cooler out of his way, and climbs down on the other side.
Xander is back in his basement. There’s no sign of Willow or Tara. Something is still trying to open the door at the top of the stairs. Xander slowly approaches the foot of the stairs, and looks up. “I know what’s up there!”
He backs away from the stairs, and turns around. The Cheese Man holds up a blue plate with a row of cheese slices neatly laid out on it. “These will not protect you.” Xander leaves the basement through the back door.
Xander finds himself at the university. Everything around him is monochromatic green. As he makes his way through the crowd of students he notices that there’s a creature following him. He can’t get a good look at it.
He finds Giles leaning against a wall, eating an apple. Giles is surprised to see him there. Xander asks him if he knows what’s following him. Giles doesn’t know what it is, but he knows that it’s because of what they did.
“What we did?” asks Xander.
“Mmm.” Giles takes another bite from his apple. “The others have gone on ahead. Now listen very carefully. Your life may depend on what I’m about to tell you. You need to get to—” Giles continues talking, but he has switched to French. Xander can’t understand a word of it.2 Giles gets frustrated with Xander’s lack of understanding, and still speaking French tells him to stop playing his idiotic games. (Idiot is the one word Xander does understand.)
Anya appears, but she’s talking French too. She grabs one of Xander’s hands and starts to pull him away with her. Giles grabs Xander’s other hand and pulls too. Students who had been passing by in the hallway start pushing and pulling him. A couple of soldiers grab Xander, pick him up, and turn him upside down. Music sounding kind of like The Doors’ The End from Apocalypse Now begins to play.
Xander is taken through the jungle, his hands tied behind his back, guarded by a soldier. He’s taken into a darkened room. A man is lying on a bed, hidden in the shadows. Xander kneels beside him, his hands still tied.
“Where are you from Harris?” asks the man on the bed. His voice is strangely familiar.
“From the basement mostly,” says Xander.
“Were you born there?” asks the man.
“Possibly,” says Xander.
“I walked by your guidance counselor’s office one time.” The man moves a bit on the bed, and brings his face into the light. It’s Principal Snyder. “A bunch of you were sitting there…waiting to be shepherded. I remember it smelled like dead flowers. Like decay. Then it hit me. The hope of our nation’s future is a bunch of mulch.”
“You know, I never got the chance to tell you how glad I was you were eaten by a snake.” says Xander.
Snyder sits up. “Where are you heading?”
“Well, I’m supposed to meet Tara and Willow,” says Xander as Snyder moves a bowl of water over in front of himself. “And possibly Buffy’s Mom.”
Snyder dips his hands in the bowl, and pats water onto his balding head. “Your time is running out.” He rubs the water back into his hair.
“No I’m just trying to get away,” says Xander. “There’s something I can’t fight.”
“Are you a soldier?” asks Snyder.
“I’m a comfortador.”
“You’re neither. You’re a whipping boy, raised by mongrels, and set on a sacrificial stone.”
“I’m getting a cramp.” Xander stands up.
Xander is outside Giles’ apartment. He sees the creature appear on the landing. He runs into the apartment. “Giles! It’s here!”
Giles doesn’t pay any attention to him. He, Buffy and Anya are standing overlooking Willow who’s sitting in a chair, struggling to breathe. Buffy thinks that whatever this is, she can fight it. Anya suggests slapping Willow to wake her up.
Xander goes down Giles’ back hallway and into the hallway of Buffy and Willow’s dorm. The creature is still following him. Xander goes into Buffy and Willow’s room and calls out for Buffy, but she isn’t there. The creature snarls behind him.
Xander opens Willow’s closet and goes inside. He pushes aside the clothing and enters a tunnel. He runs down it.
The tunnel takes Xander back to the basement. He looks around. He can hear something banging on the door at the top of the stairs. He walks slowly to the foot of the stairs, and starts up them. After a couple of steps he stops, and looks up. ”That’s not the way out.” he whispers to himself.
The door at the top of the stairs bursts open. It’s Xander’s father. Xander lowers his head, unable to look at him. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he asks Xander. “You won’t come upstairs? What are you, ashamed of us? Your mother’s crying her guts out!”
“You don’t understand,” says Xander.
“No. You don’t understand.” His father comes down the stairs toward him. “The line ends here with us, and you’re not going to change that. You haven’t got the heart.” He hits Xander in the chest. As he does he transforms into the creature. It plunges its hand into Xander’s chest and rips out his heart.
Asleep in Buffy’s living room, Xander convulses.
Giles swings a pocket watch in front of Buffy’s eyes. They are in his apartment which is bare of furniture, except for the chair Buffy is sitting in.
“You have to stop thinking,” says Giles. “Let it wash over you.”
“Don’t you think it’s a little old-fashioned?” asks Buffy.
“This is the way women and men have behaved since the beginning, before time,” says Giles. “Now look into the light.”
Buffy starts to laugh.
Buffy drags Giles by the hand into a carnival, being held in the cemetery. She has her hair done in a couple of pigtails, and is wearing some denim overalls. She has the eagerness of a young child. Olivia is with them. She’s pregnant, and pushing an empty baby stroller.
Buffy pulls Giles up to the “Crack Drac” game, where the object is to ‘stake’ a vampire by throwing nerf balls at a bobbing vampire dummy. She wants to play. Giles tells her to go ahead.
Buffy throws the first ball, and misses the vampire by a mile.
“Buffy, you have a sacred birthright to protect mankind. Don’t stick out your elbow,” says Giles. Olivia gives him a look, she thinks he’s being a little harsh.
Buffy’s next throw is on target, and the vampire falls over. Buffy eagerly looks to Giles for approval. “I haven’t got any treats!” he tells her.
“For god’s sake, Rupert,” says Olivia, “go easy on the girl.”
A disappointed Buffy turns to the man running the booth. He hands her some cotton candy. “This is my business.” Giles tells Olivia. “Blood of the lamb and all that.” He looks at Buffy. “Now you’re going to get that all over your face.”
Buffy turns back to Giles. Her face is covered with grey mud. “I know you,” he tells himself.
Giles sees Spike calling and waving to him from over by his crypt. The entrance to it is flanked by half a dozen garden gnomes. Spike goes back inside.
Giles enters Spike’s crypt. Buffy has disappeared. Olivia is there ahead of him, sitting beside the overturned stroller, crying. Giles doesn’t have time for her now. He has a great deal to do.
Spike has hired himself out as an attraction. “Side show freak?” asks Giles.
Spike strikes a series of dramatic posses, allowing the tourists filling his crypt to take photos of him. “Well, at least it’s show biz!” He strikes another pose.
Giles looks between the crying Olivia and posing Spike. “What am I supposed to do with all this?”
“You ought to make up your mind, Rupes,” says Spike. “What are you wasting time for? Haven’t you figured it all out yet with your enormous, squishy frontal lobes?”
Giles doesn’t appreciate this. “I still think Buffy should have killed you.” He starts toward the back of the crypt.
Giles sees the Cheese Man. He has a couple of slices of cheese on top of his head, and another on his shoulder. “I wear the cheese. It does not wear me.”
“Honestly, you meet the most appalling sort of people.” Giles walks away from him.
Giles walks out the back of Spike’s crypt into the Bronze. He walks toward the stage. Xander and Willow are there, sitting on his sofa, with his coffee table in front of them, covered with his books. The rest of the furniture missing from his apartment is around them. Giles apologises for being late. There is a lot going on.
“Don’t we know it,” says Willow. “Only at death’s door over here. Look at Xander.”
Xander points to the wound in his chest. “Got the sucking chest wound swinging. I promised Anya I’d be there for her big night. Now I’ll probably be pushing up daisies in the sense of being in the ground underneath them and fertilizing the soil with my decomposition.”
Anya is on the stage, telling a joke about a man who walks into a doctor’s office with a duck on his head. She has to keep consulting her notes as she tells it.
“You suck!” calls out a heckler from the audience.
“Quiet! You’ll miss the humorous conclusion,” she tells him.
Giles thinks Anya is doing quite well. Willow isn’t interested. “Do you know this is your fault?” she asks him. Giles isn’t interested in that. He has a gig himself tonight. “Something’s after us,” says Willow. “It’s like some primal—some animal force.”
“That used to be us,” says Giles.
“Don’t get linear on me now, man,” says Xander.
Anya finishes her joke, and gets a big laugh at the punch line. She starts to explain the joke to the audience, getting more applause.
“Rupert, we’ve got to focus,” says Willow. “You must have some kind of explanation. If we don’t know what we’re fighting, I don’t think we stand a chance.”
Giles starts to sing.
It’s strange
It’s not like anything we’ve faced before.
It seems familiar somehow.
Of course!
Giles goes up onto the stage, and takes over the microphone from Anya.
The spell we cast with Buffy
Must have released some primal evil
That’s come back seeking—
I’m not sure what.
Willow, look through the chronicles
For some reference to a warrior beast.
I’ve got to warn Buffy.
There’s every chance she might be next.
And Xander help Willow,
And try not to bleed on my couch.
I’ve just had it steam cleaned.
The audience in the Bronze are all holding lit matches and lighters over their heads—including Willow and Xander—and swaying in time with the music. Willow and Xander continue to look through the books while they do it.
Giles realizes that he’s gotten it wrong.
No, wait—
His microphone goes dead. Giles looks around, trying to figure out what happened. He starts to trace the microphone’s cord. He follows it backstage, crawling along on the floor. It leads into a rat’s nest of cables. He finds the pocket watch.
He picks up the watch. “Well, that was obvious.”
The creature is behind him, standing over him. She’s a primitive human. “I know who you are,” says Giles. “And I can defeat you with my intellect. I can cripple you with my thoughts.” She grabs Giles by the hair, and lays her knife on his forehead. “Of course, you underestimate me. You couldn’t know. You never had a Watcher.” She slices her knife across his forehead, and blood runs down into his eyes.
Asleep in the chair in Buffy’s living room, Giles goes into convulsions.
Buffy wakes up in her bed in her dorm room. Anya is in Willow’s bed. “Buffy, wake up!” she whispers. “Buffy, you have to wake up right away.”
Buffy doesn’t want to wake up. She isn’t in charge of these things, and she needs her beauty sleep. She rolls away from Anya, and sees the primitive chained and dangling over her bed.
Buffy wakes up in her bedroom at home. Then she’s out of the bed, fully dressed, and looking back at it’s rumpled sheets. “Faith and I just made that bed.”
“For who?” asks Tara.
“I thought you were here to tell me,” says Buffy. She wonders where the others have gone. Tara tells her that she lost them. Buffy thinks that they need her to find them. She looks at her clock. It is 7:30 AM.3 “It’s so late.”
Tara tells Buffy that the clock is completely wrong. She hands Buffy a Tarot deck, with the Manus card on top. Buffy doesn’t take them, she’s never going to use them.
“You think you know,” says Tara. “What’s to come, what you are. You haven’t even begun.” Buffy looks toward her bed. It’s all made up again.
Buffy thinks that she has to find the others. She leaves the room.
“Be back before Dawn,” says Tara.
Buffy looks for her friends at the university. No one has seen them. She sees her mother behind a hole in the wall, and she goes to talk with her. Buffy doesn’t understand why her mother is living inside the wall.
Joyce tells Buffy she’s just fine. She is learning to play mahjong. “You go find your friends.”
“I think they might be in danger,” says Buffy. Joyce begins to giggle. A mouse is tickling her knees.
“I really don’t think you should live in there,” says Buffy.
Joyce looks at the edges of the hole. “Well, you could probably break through the wall…” Buffy sees Xander going up the stairs, and leaves her mother to follow him.
Buffy loses Xander, but she finds Riley in an Initiative conference room. He is wearing a suit, and seated at a table with another man. There is a pistol lying on the table between them. “Hey there Killer!” Riley greets her. Buffy is surprised that he’s back so soon, and that he hadn’t called her. Riley tells her that they made him Surgeon General.
“Why didn’t you come and tell me?” asks Buffy. “We could have celebrated.”
Riley has been too busy drawing up plans for world domination. The key element: coffee makers that think.
“World domination?” asks Buffy. “Is that a good?”
“Baby, we’re the government,” says Riley. “It’s what we do.”
The man with Riley understands Buffy’s anxiety. He’s the person that Adam got many of his parts from. “Aggression is a natural human tendency,” he tells Buffy. “Though you and me come by it another way.”
“We’re not demons,” says Buffy. The primitive is standing behind her.
“Is that a fact?” asks Adam.
Buffy asks what his name was.
“Before Adam?” he asks. “Not a man among us can remember.”
The lights go out. “The demons have escaped,” announces the PA system. “Please run for your lives.”
“This may be trouble!” Adam tells Riley.
“We better make a fort!” says Riley.
“I’ll get some pillows!” says Adam.
Buffy looks around, and sees her weapons bag at her feet. “Wait!” she whispers. “I have weapons!” No one hears her.
Buffy crouches down and opens her bag. It doesn’t contain weapons. It’s full of grey mud. She reaches into it, feeling to see if she can find anything else. She doesn’t. She pulls her mud covered hands out of the bag and looks at them. She starts to smear the mud onto her face.
“I thought you were looking for your friends,” says Riley. He’s now dressed in a red T-shirt, with a plaid shirt over it. “Okay, Killer. If that’s the way you want it, I guess you’re on your own.” He walks away from her.
Sunlight fills the room. Buffy stands and walks toward it. The tiles under her feet turn to wind rippled sand.
Buffy walks out onto a sandy hilltop in the desert and looks around. The mud is gone from her hands and face. “I’m never going to find them here,” she tells herself.
“Of course not.” Tara walks toward her across the sand. “That’s the reason you came.”
“You’re not in my dream,” says Buffy.
“I was borrowed,” says Tara. “Someone has to speak for her.”
“Let her speak for herself,” says Buffy. The primitive appears behind her. “That’s what’s done in polite circles.”
The primitive slowly circles around Buffy. Her face is smeared with dry grey mud, and her body and legs are wrapped in gauze. Her long hair is a tangled mass of dreadlocks.
“Why do you follow me?” asks Buffy.
“I don’t,” says Tara.
“Where are my friends?”
“You’re asking the wrong questions.”
“Make her speak,” says Buffy.
“I have no speech,” says Tara. “No name. I live in the action of death. The blood cry, the penetrating wound. I am destruction—absolute, alone.”
“The Slayer,” says Buffy.
“The First,” says Tara.
“I am not alone.” Buffy looks down at the top card of the Tarot deck in her hands. It shows her with Giles, Willow and Xander in the living room of her house. In the card they’re awake.
“The Slayer does not walk in this world,” says Tara.
“I walk,” says Buffy. “I talk, I shop, I sneeze. I’m going to be a fireman when the floods roll back. There’s trees in the desert since you moved out, and I don’t sleep on a bed of bones. Now give me back my friends.”
The First Slayer finds her voice. “No friends! Just the kill. We are alone!”
The Cheese Man leans between them, smiles at Buffy, and waves a couple of cheese slices at her.
“That’s it!” says Buffy. “I’m waking up.”
The First Slayer jumps on Buffy, and knocks her to the ground. She hits Buffy’s head against the sand several times before Buffy pushes her away and springs back to her feet. They exchange some kicks and punches, and then stand facing each other.
Buffy relaxes, dropping her guard. “It’s over.” The First Slayer shakes her head. “We don’t do this anymore,” says Buffy.
The First Slayer tackles her, and they roll down the sand hill together.
“Enough!” yells Buffy.
Buffy wakes up lying on the rug in her living room. She looks around and sees Willow, Xander and Giles sleeping peacefully. She’s glad to be home and starts to get to her feet.
The First Slayer jumps on her and starts stabbing at her with her knife. At first Buffy is surprised, but then puzzled as the repeated stabs have no effect on her. Then she rolls her eyes. “Are you quite finished?”
The First Slayer backs away, confused. Buffy gets to her feet. “It’s over, okay? I’m going to ignore you and you’re going to go away.” She heads back toward the sofa. “You’re really going to have to get over the whole primal power thing. You’re not the source of me.” She picks up the blanket and settles onto the sofa beside Willow. She pulls the blanket over her lap. “Also, in terms of hair care, you really want to say, ‘what kind of impression am I making in the work place?’ ’Cause—”
Buffy wakes up. Giles, Willow and Xander wake up too. They all look around at each other.
The four of them sit around the dining room table, talking about what happened.
“Somehow our joining with Buffy and invoking the essence of the Slayer’s power was an affront to the source of that power,” says Giles.
“You know,” says Buffy. “You could have brought that up to us before we did it.”
“I did,” says Giles. “I said there could be dire consequences.”
“Yes, but you say that about chewing too fast.”
Their talking has awakened Joyce. She comes into the dining room wearing a bulky bathrobe. She guesses that she has missed some fun. Willow tells her that the spirit of the First Slayer tried to kill them in their dreams.
“Oh. You want some hot chocolate?” asks Joyce. It sounds like a good idea to all of them. “Xander?”
“Yes, what, Joyce?” Xander remembers her from his dream. “Uh, Buffy’s Mom.” Joyce asks him to come into the kitchen with her and help her carry stuff. “Yes, sure…Buffy’s Mom.”
Buffy tells them that she feels like she’d like a quick shower. She gets up from the table. “The First Slayer. I never really thought about it. It was intense. I guess you guys got a taste of that, huh?” Xander and Willow agree, and they would appreciate it if from now on she kept her Slayer friends out of their dreams. Buffy starts to leave. “Well, at least you all didn’t dream about that guy with the cheese.” She walks toward the stairs. “Don’t know where the hell that came from.”
Buffy doesn’t notice they way they all look at her in surprise. From her position at the head of the table Willow notices that Xander and Giles reacted to Buffy’s comment about the Cheese Man just the way she did.
Buffy pauses outside the bathroom, and turns and looks into her open bedroom door. She remembers Tara’s words from her dream. “You think you know. What’s to come, what you are. You haven’t even begun.”
Artfully adorned Aphrodite, deathless
Child of Zeus and weaver of wiles I beg you
Please don’t hurt me, don’t overcome my spirit,
Goddess, with longing,
But come here, if ever at other moments
Hearing these my words from afar you listened
And responded: leaving your father’s house, all
Golden, you came then,