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| Shadow | Into the Woods |
Dawn sits beside Joyce in her hospital bed eating Joyce’s lime Jell-o with her fingers. Buffy is seated in a chair on the opposite side of the bed. Joyce tells her daughters that they don’t have to be there to eat her creamed spinach. They can go out for real food. Buffy won’t hear of it. She tells her mother that she thinks this is a great deal, getting to eat off trays brought to you.
Dawn likes the Jell-o. “It’s good ‘n’ wiggly. This girl at school told me that gelatin is made from ground-up cow’s feet and that if you eat Jell-o, there’s some cow out there limping with no feet, but I told her I’m sure they kill ’em before they took off their feet…right?”
Joyce just looks at Buffy. “You’re the one who insisted on teaching her to talk,” says Buffy.
Dr. Kriegel enters the room. After telling Buffy and Dawn that they should be careful not to wear Joyce out he delivers some good news: Joyce’s blood work is back and everything’s fine. They can go ahead with the surgery the day after tomorrow. Buffy doesn’t react like she thinks this is good news. Dr. Kriegel asks Joyce how she feels about it.
“Oh, well, I think they had me scheduled for volleyball,” says Joyce, “but I can work around it.”
“All right, then,” says Dr. Kriegel. “Joyce, you take care. Make sure you get some good solid rest. And I mean that.” He casts a pointed look at Buffy and Dawn, and leaves.
Joyce doesn’t think she can take two more days of just waiting in the hospital, but Buffy and Dawn try to cheer her up. There’s lots for them to do. Soap operas to watch, trashy magazines to read, an adjustable bed to play with. Joyce tells Buffy that she doesn’t have to stay. She knows that Buffy has her patrolling to do. Buffy tells her not to worry about that. Riley and the others have her covered. Buffy isn’t going anywhere.
Giles, Xander and Willow are fighting two large female vampires in the cemetery. There is no sign of Riley. Willow attacks one of the vampires with a stake, but it casually picks her up and tosses her into the bushes. Then it turns its attention back to Giles. She picks him up and throws him to the ground.
Willow picks herself up and grabs her stake again. While the vampire’s attention is still on Giles she runs up behind it, and plunges her stake into its back. The vampire explodes into dust.
Xander is being tossed around by the other vampire. She throws him against the side of a crypt, dazing him. While he is trying to recover it grabs him by the throat, and pushes him up against the crypt wall. Giles attacks the vampire from behind, but it senses him coming and moves out of his way. Giles nearly stakes Xander. “Hey! Human chest! Human chest!” yells Xander.
The vampire grabs hold of Giles, and pushes him up against the crypt beside Xander. It holds each of them by the throat. Willow step up behind it and plunges her stake into its back, dusting it.
Willow is psyched. She dusted two vampires, even if she is a little wobbly in the knees now. Giles and Xander support her as they start to leave. Giles suddenly stops her, and picks up his glasses off the ground where she was about to step.
“Not so much a big success night for me,” says Xander, “but I think I should get points just for showing up, unlike some Riley Finn who shall remain unnamed.”
“Yes, that was disappointing,” says Giles. “Things would have been easier if he’d been here.”
“Oh, piffle,” says Willow. “Who needs him when I’m dusting two at a ti—” Her knees give out, and Giles and Xander catch her before she falls. “Whoops. Maybe it would have been good if he had showed up.”
“Perhaps he forgot,” says Giles.
Riley sits in an old beaten up chair in an abandoned building. A girl vampire is sucking on his arm.
Willow arrives in Joyce’s hospital room bearing a bag of presents for the Summers girls. “Oh, I feel just like Santa Claus except thinner and younger and female and, well, Jewish.” She reaches into her bag and pulls out her first gift. For Joyce she has a beer hat. It seemed like a good idea in the store, but now she’s thinking maybe she’s crazy. Joyce tells her it’s perfect. Willow starts to pull Dawn’s present out of her bag, and Joyce rubs her temples.
“Headache?” asks Buffy, and Willow stops.
Joyce tells her it’s just a little one, but she’s fine. She wants Willow to go on. Willow pulls out a small red book, called Spells. Dawn is thrilled by it. She takes it to a chair by the room wall and starts to look through it.
Buffy is much less thrilled. “You got her a book on spells? The girl who can break things by just looking at them now has a book to teach her to…break things by looking at them?”
“It doesn’t actually have spells in it,” Willow tells Buffy quietly. “Just history and anecdotes, stuff like that.” She pulls out her present for Buffy. A much larger History textbook.
“Homework?” asks Buffy. “I don’t believe in Tiny Jewish Santa anymore.”
Willow pulls one more item out of her bag and hands it to Buffy. “And a Yo-Yo.”
Buffy thinks that is a much better gift. Willow explains that the textbook was just in case Buffy wanted to do a little catching up. They are into World War I now. They just had a test on it. She doesn’t think Buffy will have any trouble when she takes her make-up test. Buffy is having doubts about whether or not she’ll be taking that test at all.
“I’d rip it in half and stick it in bed with me!” blurts out Joyce. Buffy gives her mother a concerned look, while Dawn cringes back in her chair. Joyce looks around in confusion, and then tells them that she is feeling tired. She wants to rest. Buffy thinks that is a good idea. She, Willow and Dawn move out into the hallway.
Dawn is a little freaked by her mother’s behaviour. Buffy tries to reassure her. She should have told Dawn earlier, but the doctor had warned Buffy that things like this might happen because of the thing pressing against her brain.
“Does she know she’s saying them?” asks Dawn.
“Not really,” says Buffy. “It’s sort of like a flash, you know, but you saw her two seconds afterwards. She was normal.”
“And after the operation, no more pressing,” says Willow. “She’ll be all normal all the time.”
“Is that right?” asks Dawn.
“Hey, Santa doesn’t lie,” says Buffy.
A man being led down the hall by a woman, and accompanied by two teenaged girls, bumps into Buffy. It’s the security guard who Glory did the brain suck on. “Careful,” he tells her. “The facts say a picnic is in order.” He notices Dawn. “What is that thing?” He points at her. “There—there’s no data. There’s no pictures on this one! There! What is the data? There’s no one in there.”
Dawn backs away from him. Buffy takes her protectively under her arm and tells her not to worry about it. The woman who was escorting the man turns him around and leads him away. “I’m going home?” he asks her, “Home? Home, home, home.”
Dawn asks Buffy what was wrong with the man, if it’s the same thing as their mother. Buffy thinks its something different. The intern Ben shows up. He asks if the man was bothering them. Buffy tells him that it was nothing, he was just babbling, and introduces Ben to Willow. She thinks it’s strange that they were letting the man go home in the condition he was in.
“Don’t get me started,” says Ben. “The mental ward’s booked beyond capacity, literally nowhere to put them, so the ones with families, they’re letting go home. Like his family’s going to be able to take care of him. He has to have someone watch him 24-7. What was he saying to you?”
“Oh, he was just babbling,” says Buffy.
Willow and Tara lie out on a rooftop with a couple of sleeping bags and pillows looking at the stars. Willow thinks it is kind of weird that some of the stars they’re seeing no longer exist. “In the time it takes for their light to reach us, they’ve died…exploded…poof.”
Tara asks if things were rough at the hospital, but Willow dodges the question, and keeps talking about the stars. She points out some constellations: Canis Minor, Cassiopeia.
Tara points at one: “The Big Pineapple.”
Willow isn’t familiar with that one, and Tara points out the stars that make it. “It’s big,” says Willow
“Hence the name,” says Tara. She tells Willow that none of the standard constellation names made any sense to her, so she made up her own. Willow asks her to teach them to her. Tara points out some more of her constellations: Short Man Looking Uncomfortable. Moose Getting a Sponge Bath. Little Pile o’ Crackers. That last one is a bit of a stretch. She suggests that Willow try naming some, and points out another group of stars. “What would you call…that one.”
Willow considers for a moment, looking at the group of stars. A meteor appears among them hurtling toward the ground. “A huge flaming meteor about to crash into something,” she says.
She and Tara jump to their feet and see the flash of light from the meteor’s impact in some nearby woods.
Something breaks out of the meteor at the bottom of its impact crater. It slithers out and starts to move away. It sees someone approaching it. It is the security guard who was released from the hospital. He has managed to wander away from his family. He walks aimlessly through the woods, babbling. “I know what I said. I said—I said I won’t go away far. A person needs to respect a man. And then it says…that…the facts says…”
The creature moves toward, and then up a tree. The man doesn’t notice it. He keeps babbling as he walks. “He’s got to go take a walk to get some fresh air and find some fresh spaces. And—and he needs to walk—and some fresh space! And—and needs to walk to get—to get where he’s going.”
The creature from the meteor drops out of the tree on top of him.
The creature follows some paramedics bringing someone into the hospital on a stretcher. It has a slug like body about four feet long with arms, but no legs. A round, bald head with red eyes, and a mouth ringed with rows of teeth, like a lamprey’s.
Joyce presses her call button over and over. “This thing doesn’t work. It isn’t working,” she says. Buffy takes it away from her, and tells her that she’s sure that they heard her. “I bet it’s not even hooked up to anything,” says Joyce, “just like the push buttons at the crosswalk that are supposed to make the signal change.”
“I’m sure someone’s on— What? The push buttons aren’t hooked up to anything?” asks Buffy.
Dr. Kriegel comes into the room. “Oh, tell him, Buffy. Tell him, okay?” says Joyce urgently. Buffy tells the doctor that they want to go home. That sounds fine to him. Buffy and Dawn can come back to visit their mother tomorrow, but Buffy tells him that he misunderstood. They all want to go home.
Dr. Kriegel is reluctant. He doesn’t think that it’s a very good idea, but Joyce doesn’t want to spend any more time just sitting around in the hospital. “It makes my head hurt to be here, can’t you tell that?”
“Joyce, there’s no reason to get upset,” says the doctor.
“No reason to get upset?” asks Joyce “Oh, right. Sorry. I must just think there is because of my brain tumor!” She stops and looks across the room at Dawn, suddenly ashamed to be letting her fear show in front of her younger daughter.
Buffy hands Dawn some money and suggests that she go get herself a snack.
“I—I’m sorry I said that,” says Joyce. “I’m just tired.”
“I know,” says Buffy. “Listen, Doctor, I don’t see why we can’t take her home, you know, just until… I mean, wouldn’t it be better for her to rest someplace where she felt safe and comfortable?”
“Even if it would mean some work for you, taking care of her?” asks Dr. Kriegel.
“Oh, thank God,” says Joyce, seeing that he is giving in.
Buffy tells him she’ll do it. The doctor starts telling her some of the things she’s going to have to do. Giving Joyce her medications, taking her vital signs. “I’m afraid you won’t get a lot of sleep.”
“I’m not much of a sleep person anyway,” says Buffy. Joyce starts to get out of bed. She wants to go now. Buffy pushes her back. She has to get all the medications, and instructions first. Then they can go.
“She’s right,” says the doctor. “Let’s do this right. We don’t want to forget anything.”
Dawn sits in the waiting room reading the book she got from Willow. The creature crawls across the ceiling over her head.
Riley walks through the woods with the others. He’s glad they called him in on this. Xander rather pointedly tells him that he’s glad he answered. Riley apologises for missing last night. “Heard I missed out on some fun.”
“Oh, yeah. Fun was had,” says Xander. “Also frolic, merriment, and near-death high jinks.”
They reach the impact crater, and Riley starts to examine the meteor. It’s still smoking.
Anya asks if it’s hot. “’Cause, uh, if there’s radiation, you could, like, go all sterile.”
Xander steps back. Riley continues his examination. He quickly discovers that the meteor is hollow.
“So, uh, we’re all thinking the same thing, right?” asks Anya.
“Festive piñata? Delicious candy?” suggests Xander.
“Something evil crashed to Earth in this and then broke out and slithered away to do badness,” says Willow.
“In all fairness, we don’t really know about the slithered part,” says Giles.
“Oh, no,” says Anya. “I’m sure it frisked about like a fluffy lamb.”
Tara suggests that they look around. The group starts to disperse into the woods. Willow finds the security guard’s body and calls the others over.
Riley kneels down and feels at his throat for a pulse. There isn’t one.
“Yep,” says Anya. “Space lamb got him.”
Xander looks over Riley’s shoulder. He doesn’t notice any marks on the body. Willow recognises him as the man who was released from the hospital.
Riley notices something in the guard’s mouth. He uses his pen to probe into it. The pen comes out covered in black goo. Everyone recoils away from it. The goo stinks. Riley tells them all to be careful not to touch it. It might be toxic.
“Oh, yeah,” says Xander. “Touching it was my first impulse. Luckily, I’ve moved on to my second which involves dry-heaving and running like hell. Oh, man, does that smell.”
Willow really wants to call Buffy in on this, but she also doesn’t want to bother her with it. She has enough on her plate now dealing with Joyce’s illness. “So—so we’ll just figure this out ourselves. We’re experienced.”
“Yes, ’cause it seems like we’re always dealing with creatures from outer space,” says Anya, “Except that we don’t ever do that.”
Giles suggests that they look around some more. He takes a couple of steps toward the woods. No one follows him. Xander suggests that they skip right to the research. Nearly everyone agrees that that sounds like a much better idea. Riley wants to keep looking around here for a bit. He really isn’t much of a researcher. He wants to keep looking over the crime scene for a bit.
“Give us a call if you need help?” says Giles.
“Believe me, something jumps out at me in the dark, you’ll hear me even without the phone,” says Riley. “Call me if you learn anything.”
“You got it,” says Willow. She and the others start to leave. “I don’t want to be the one that finds the bodies anymore.”1 she tells Giles.
Riley watches them go. As soon as they are out of earshot he pulls out his cell phone and places a call to Graham.
A patient strapped into bed in the hospital mental ward complains about being cold. The nurse pulls a blanket over him and leaves the ward. She goes back to her station and tries to ignore the sound of his babbling coming from inside the ward.
The patient hears something moving along the floor. He tries to see it, but the straps don’t let him look over the side of his bed. The creature moves up beside the bed, and then jumps on top of him, and pins him down. At her station the nurse hears him yelling but she just shakes her head and goes back to taking care of some paperwork. The creature vomits some goo all over the patient’s face.
Dr. Kriegel hands Buffy a sheet of paper with his phone numbers, and a bunch of pill bottles. They’re in the hallway with Dawn and Joyce, who is all dressed and ready to go. He still doesn’t think this is a great idea.
“No. No, no. I got this,” says Buffy. “And we really, really appreciate—”
“You look just like your father when he cries.” Joyce tells Buffy. “And what do you think he was begging for?”
“I told you she’s been…” Buffy tells the doctor.
“I know,” he says. “Joyce? Joyce. We’re all done here. Why don’t you take your girls home now?” Joyce thanks him for his help, and the doctor tells them that he’ll see them in a couple of days.
“Oh…let’s get the hell out of here.” Joyce tells her daughters. Buffy picks up Joyce’s overnight bag, and Dawn has the bag that Willow brought their presents in. They walk out of the hospital together. The creature hangs from the ceiling watching them.
Buffy unlocks the front door of the house and they all go inside. She turns on the hall light. Joyce cringes away from it and complains that the light is too bright. It hurts her eyes. Buffy quickly turns it off and sends Dawn into the living room to turn off the lights there too. She takes her mother upstairs to bed.
An unmarked black helicopter swoops over a hilltop and across a pond to the clearing where the meteor landed. Riley is standing beside the crater waiting for them. Four men get out, dressed in black commando gear. Their commander, Major Ellis, introduces himself to Riley. Riley starts to lead them toward the body.
Graham comes up beside Riley. “You found a stiff in the woods and called us in? Don’t you usually call your girlfriend for this kind of thing?” Riley just gives him an annoyed look.
Major Ellis starts to examine the body. Riley tells him to be careful not to touch the stuff in its mouth.
“Toxic?” asks the major.
“Just messy,” says Riley. He tells them the guy seems to have choked on the stuff. He tosses a vial in which he has already collected a sample to the major. Riley thinks its some sort of protein alkaloid. The major asks if this looks like any sort of Sub-T that Riley is familiar with.
“Not subterrestrial, major. Extraterrestrial,” says Riley. He leads the major over to the meteor crater. “It came out of that.”
The major tells Graham to break out the protein trackers, but Riley tells them not to bother. The stuff is breaking down too quickly. He thinks they will have better luck using radiation sensors. That works for the major too. They have geiger counters.
Buffy and Dawn sit together on the sofa watching an old comedy on TV. Dawn is resting her head on Buffy’s shoulder. The creature is in the house, creeping along the hallway ceiling.
Joyce comes down the stairs dressed in her nightgown and goes into the kitchen. Her daughters don’t notice her until they hear the sound of pots and pans rattling around in the kitchen. They run into the kitchen and find Joyce staring into the open refrigerator. There’s something burning in a pan on the stove. Buffy quickly pulls the pan off the burner, and turns it off. She asks her mother what she’s doing.
“I’m making breakfast!” says Joyce. “And you shouldn’t eat any more. You’re disgustingly fat.” She stops and shakes her head. “Oh, Buffy, I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Buffy tells her mother that she just needs some rest, and she and Dawn lead her out of the kitchen. The basement door is ajar, and a shadow can be seen moving inside it.
Buffy and Dawn tuck their mother into bed. Buffy gives Joyce one of the sedative pills they got from the doctor. While Buffy takes Joyce’s robe and puts it away in the closet Dawn stays with her mother gently stroking her hair.
Joyce suddenly gasps and pulls away from Dawn. “Don’t touch me, you…you thing. Get away from me. You’re nothing. You’re— you’re a shadow!” Dawn looks back and forth between Buffy and her mother in confusion, while Buffy tries to calm Joyce down. “I don’t know what you are or how you got here!”
“Mom, it’s Dawn,” says Buffy, but this is too much for Dawn. She turns and runs out of the room.
“Dawn, honey, what’s wrong?” Joyce calls after her.
“She’s…just tired,” says Buffy. “We all are. Come on. Go to sleep.” Joyce lies down in her bed. “I’ll check in on you in a little bit.”
Buffy enters Dawn’s room.
Dawn is sitting on her bed. “She hates me.”
“No,” says Buffy.
“She called me a thing.”
Buffy kneels on the floor beside her sister’s bed. “She loves you, okay? She’s not herself. I told you what the doctor said about the tumor.”
“No, not just Mom. People,” says Dawn. “They keep saying weird stuff about me.”
“Are you talking about the man in the hospital?”
“He called me a thing, too,” says Dawn. “And there was another one. Weird guy outside the magic shop. He said I didn’t belong. He said I wasn’t real. Why does everybody keep doing that? What’s wrong with me?”
“Nothing,” says Buffy. “It’s not you. I think there’s something that happens in people’s brains when there’s something wrong. It’s—it’s like a short-circuit, and it makes them feel like nothing’s real except for them. That’s all it is.” Buffy moves to sit on the bed beside Dawn. “Look, it is not you, okay? And if anyone says anything like that to you again, don’t listen, even if it’s Mom.”
“I hate it.”
“I know,” says Buffy. “Just don’t listen.”
The group is researching in the astronomy section of the university library. Xander doesn’t really understand why they are there looking for information about a killer snot monster.
“Because it’s a killer snot monster from outer space,” says Giles. He stops. He can’t really believe that he just said that. “Demons enter our world in all sorts of different ways. This one came from above.”
“And the university library’s astronomy section is the home of aboveness,” says Xander. “Got it. Hey, digging the study material, too.” He holds up the book he’s been reading. A very thin one entitled Meteors and You.
Anya and Tara return from checking out the periodical section. They haven’t found anything about recent similar meteor impacts, so the good news is that it doesn’t look like they are facing an invasion.
Willow has been doing a computer search for information on older impacts. “Uh, guys, I’ve got some stuff. The most recent meteoric anomaly was the Tunguska blast in Russia in 1917. Some witnesses claimed the meteor was hollow.”2
“Hmm. Maybe with a chewy demon center, like ours,” says Xander.
Giles asks how far back her list of anomalies goes, and Willow tells him it goes back to the Queller impact in the 12th century. “The what?” asks Tara.
“Queller,” says Willow. “I don’t know why they call it that. It didn’t hit a place called Queller or anything. It landed just outside of Reykjavik in Iceland.”
That reminds Xander of something he just read. He starts flipping through his Meteors and You book. “Ah! Here. Here. ‘Primitive people used to believe that the moon was a cause of insanity, sometimes they would pray to the moon to send a special meteor to fix the problem the moon had caused. These meteors were expected to quell the madmen.’” He slams his book down feeling very satisfied with himself.
“The man in the woods— he was a mental patient,” says Tara.
“And he got pretty well…quelled,” says Xander.
Willow does a quick cross reference history search. She finds several references to plagues of madness whose timing correspond with meteor impacts.
“As if something emerged from the meteors and quelled the madmen,” says Giles.
“Meteor go boom, crazy guy goes bye-bye,” says Xander.
“Xander’s little book made it sound like this Queller thing had to be summoned,” says Tara. “So, who summoned it?”
“Who else?” asks Xander. “My money’s on Glory, our resident beastie summoner.”
Willow wants to call Buffy again, but they can’t do that. Giles agrees. They should call Riley to let him know what they’ve learned though.
Riley gets the phone call in the mental ward of the hospital. He is there with Major Ellis’s team. He already knows that this creature is after crazy people. He has five more bodies.
Willow starts to get worried. “I saw Buffy’s Mom earlier, and she’s acting kind of…whacky. Insane whacky. If you know what I mean?”
Riley knows, but he has already talked with Ben. He tells Willow that Joyce has checked out of the hospital. She’s safe at home.
“Oh, good,” says Willow. “And the thing, the Queller, is it still there?”
“We—I think I’ve got it cornered in the air ducts,” says Riley. “Look, Willow, keep at what you’re doing. Call me if you find out how I can kill this thing.”
“Well, okay, but shouldn’t we come help?” asks Willow, but Riley has already hung up. “Okay,” says Willow and returns to the others.
Joyce lies in her bed staring at the ceiling. She has pushed off her covers, and has her knees pulled up. “I wish that someone had bothered to tell me that there would be tennis being played. I just didn’t know. Those eyes…those eyes, they’re like gasoline puddles. Tell me. Tell me because I need to know why. Why are you staring at me like that?”
Dawn can hear her mother babbling while she lies in her own bed in her room.
“What are you asking me? You are asking me, aren’t you?” asks Joyce. “Is this a test? And if this counts on the final grade, I need to know now. Okay, there are teachers and they put this in the syllabus, but they do not stare down at you. They do not cling. They do not look down on you.”
Dawn tries to cover her ears with a pillow, but it only muffles the sound a bit.
“You know there are people who are nice, and they give you presents, even when you are bad.”
Buffy is down in the kitchen doing the dishes. She turns on the radio which is tuned to a station playing some peppy Spanish dance music. She starts to cry.
Joyce is still talking to her ceiling. “Does someone know you’re here? Because they should have told you that at the gate. You’re not supposed to be here. I need to rest now. I—I don’t like the way you’re staring at me. Did they tell you that at the gate?”
The Queller demon is clinging to the ceiling over her bed looking down at her.
“Stop staring at me! I don’t like it! Oh…please.”
Graham follows the radiation trail out of the hospital to the edge of the parking lot, where it stops. Riley figures that means it hitched a ride under a car.
“So some poor mental patient checks out of here today, drives away with this thing,” says Major Ellis. “Took it right to its own home.” He starts to ask one of the commandos to get a list of all patients who checked out today.
“No,” says Riley. “I know where it’s going. We’ve got to move, now!”
“I’m going to close my eyes, and when I open them, you are going to go away.” Joyce tells the Queller demon. It drops off the ceiling and lands on her. She screams. “Help me! Get it off me.” The Queller vomits goo all over her face.
Dawn hears her mother’s call for help and opens the door connecting their rooms. She sees the demon on top of Joyce in the bed holding her down. The goo has solidified over Joyce’s face keeping her from breathing.
Dawn grabs the coat rack from beside her door. She charges into her mother’s room and uses the base of it to knock the demon off of her mother. Her hands freed, Joyce pulls the hardened mass of goo off her face and gasps for breath. Dawn stands guard holding her coat rack and looking around for the creature, which has vanished.
The Queller demon suddenly scrambles across Joyce’s bed heading for Dawn. Dawn drops the coat rack and runs back into her room with the demon chasing her. She runs back out into the hallway and into the bathroom. She slams the door and screams for Buffy.
Buffy is still crying in the kitchen. She doesn’t hear Dawn over the sound of her sobs, the running water, and the radio.
Dawn runs through the bathroom, and through the private connecting door between it and her mother’s room. She slams it shut, and pushes Joyce’s exercise bike in front of it. Then she runs back to the hallway door and slams it shut too. Dawn opens the door a crack again just long enough to scream “Buffy!” and slams it shut again.
This time Buffy hears her. She runs upstairs, and opens the door. “What? What is it?”
“There’s something out there, Buffy,” says Dawn. “It’s after Mom.”
Buffy tells them to stay where they are, and closes the door. The Queller demon drops down off the ceiling onto her. Buffy wrestles with it briefly, bouncing off a wall, and then they fall down the stairs together. The demon gets away from Buffy and vanishes into the dining room.
Joyce and Dawn sit together hugging each other on Joyce’s bed.
“It’s okay, my baby. It’s okay,” says Joyce.
Buffy goes into the kitchen and arms herself with a knife. She can hear something moving, but she can’t see anything. She starts to move toward the basement door. It suddenly bursts open, and Spike steps out.
“Spike?” says Buffy.
“Yeah. Listen, uh, did you hear a noise?”
Buffy wants to know what he is doing in her basement, and Spike tells her that she’s got a lot of junk down there, and since he needs junk… “You were stealing?” asks Buffy.
“Well, yeah. Can’t exactly work the counter at Burger Barn, can I?” He starts to stuff something into his coat pocket.
“Wait,” says Buffy. “Are those pictures of me?”
The Queller demon jumps onto Spike, knocking him to the floor. Buffy stands over them as they wrestle, looking for an opening to use her knife on one of them. The demon’s tail lashes up and knocks the knife out of her hand. The demon turns and leaps at her.
Buffy and the demon roll out into the dining room. Buffy gets back to her feet, and Spike scoops up the knife she dropped. “Buffy!” he calls, and tosses it to her. Buffy catches the knife. The demon leaps at Buffy again, knocking her to the floor. She holds on to the knife and starts to stab it over and over in the back, until it is dead.
Buffy pushes the dead demon’s body off of her, and looks up to see Spike standing over her holding out his hand. She reaches up and grabs it. He pulls her to her feet.
The front door bursts open, and Riley and Major Ellis rush in. Graham and a couple of other commandos break in the back door. They quickly spread out through the house with their weapons.
“Buffy! You okay?” asks Riley as she lets go of Spike’s hand. Buffy just nods to him, and runs upstairs to check on Dawn and her mother.
“You just missed a real nice time.” Spike tells Riley. Riley looks at the demon’s body with the knife in its back.
Buffy finds Joyce and Dawn still hugging on the bed. She tells them everything’s fine. She killed it.
“It’s gone, you promise?” asks Dawn.
“I promise.” Buffy hugs both of them. “Everything’s all right. Everything’s all right.”
It is raining gently when Ben leaves the hospital at the end of his shift. He gets into his car and shuts the door.
“It’s strange,” says Dreg from the back seat. “A body might ask what exactly it is you think you’re doing. He might ask what all this was meant to accomplish, because to a humble postulant, it looks like chaos. Like unnecessary attention drawn where it ought not to be.”
“Get out,” says Ben.
“Sir,” says Dreg respectfully, and he gets out of the car. He isn’t finished though. “Sir, forgive me,” he says through the window. “I just want to understand. Why summon the Queller?”
“Why do you think?” asks Ben. “Because I’m cleaning up Glory’s mess, just like I’ve done my whole damn life.” He starts his car and pulls out of the parking lot, leaving Dreg standing in the rain.
A nurse inserts an IV into the back of Joyce’s hand, and then leaves the room, leaving her alone with Buffy.
“Buffy,” says Joyce. “I’m going to ask you something, and if I’m— if I’m being crazy, you just tell me, okay?”
Buffy sits on the bed and takes hold of her mother’s other hand. “You got it.”
“The other day…well, actually, I’m— I’m not sure when,” says Joyce. “The days seem to all bleed together.”
“It’s not important.”
“No, I guess it isn’t,” says Joyce. “I do know I was pretty out of it, and I had… Not—not a dream…exactly. More like I had this…knowledge. It just came to me, like truth, you know? Even though it didn’t seem possible, even though I shouldn’t think such things.”
“What?” asks Buffy.
“That Dawn… She’s not mine, is she?”
Buffy sits looking at her mother for several seconds before she answers. “No.”
Joyce takes a few seconds too. “She’s…she does belong to us, though.”
“Yes, she does.”
“And she’s important…to the world,” says Joyce. “Precious. As precious as you are to me. Then we have to take care of her. Buffy, promise me. If anything happens, if I don’t come through this—”
“Mom—”
“No, listen to me. No matter what she is, she still feels like my daughter. I have to know that you’ll take care of her, that you’ll keep her safe, that you’ll love her like I love you.”
“I promise.”
“Good. Good,” says Joyce. She and Buffy hug. “Oh…my sweet, brave Buffy. What would I do without you?”
Buffy is wondering what she will do without her mother.
Buffy and Dawn watch as their mother’s gurney is wheeled toward the operating room. Joyce gives them a little wave as she looks back at her daughters, standing together, with Xander, Anya, Riley, Giles, Willow and Tara behind them.
| Who or What | Where | How |
|---|---|---|
| Vampire 1 | The cemetery | Staked by Willow |
| Vampire 2 | The Cemetery | Staked by Willow |
| Crazy security guard | The woods | Killed by the Queller demon |
| Five mental patients | Sunnydale Memorial Hospital mental ward | Killed by the Queller demon |
| Queller demon | Buffy’s dining room | Stabbed by Buffy |