Introduction
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| The Body | Intervention |
Buffy walks between rows of caskets in a dimly lit room. She comes to one which is simple and elegant dark stained and polished wood. She walks around it, lifts the lid and looks inside. It’s empty, and lined in fine white cloth.
The lights startle Buffy when they come on. She looks toward the door and sees Giles entering, along with Dawn and the funeral director. Giles asks her if she’s all right. The funeral director asks if she’s found something she likes.
“This one.” Buffy indicates the casket she has been examining.
The funeral director says that he thinks it’s a fine choice. Buffy, Giles and the funeral director start to go, but Dawn hangs behind, looking at the coffin. Buffy asks her if she doesn’t like it.
“No. It’s not that,” says Dawn. “It’s just…what if Mom…what if she’d like something else better? I mean, how do we know for sure? She’s the one who has to be in it forever.”
Buffy is starting to think that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea for Dawn to come along, she shouldn’t be having to deal with this sort of stuff. The funeral director offers to leave them alone if they need more time to decide.
“No. It’s done. It’s fine,” says Buffy. “Okay?” she asks Dawn. Dawn gives a bit of a nod. “Okay.”
Buffy, Giles and the funeral director leave the room. Dawn stays behind, staring at the coffin.
Dawn sits at the end of the dinner table, not eating. Willow and Xander are seated on either side of her. Buffy and Giles are going over the preparations for Joyce’s funeral at the other end of the table. Buffy is worried about how they are going to tell people that there isn’t going to be a wake after the service. Giles suggests that they can put a line into the program about Joyce’s preference not to have one.
“There’s no wake?” asks Willow.
“Mom didn’t like them,” says Buffy. “She said that pot lucks are depressing enough as it is.”
This is the first Dawn has heard about this. She asks when their mother said that.
“Right before she went in for the operation,” says Buffy. “We had a talk about what she wanted, in case…”
“She never said anything to me,” says Dawn.
“I’m sure she just didn’t want to upset you, Dawnster,” says Xander. He tells her she should eat something. She hasn’t touched her dinner. Buffy seconds that.
“Why should I?” Dawn asks her sister. “You’re not.”
“This isn’t about—”
Buffy is interrupted by the phone. She asks Giles to take it. She has talked to enough people on the phone today. She doesn’t want to speak with anyone else, unless it’s her father. She still hasn’t been able to get in touch with him. He isn’t at the number that they had for him in Spain. Buffy has been leaving messages everywhere she can think of for him.
It isn’t Hank Summers on the phone this time either. It is someone looking for information about the funeral. Giles gets up and goes into the living room while he tells the caller that it’s going to be tomorrow at three o’clock.
Buffy goes back to trying to figure out how to word the announcement about not having a wake, and Xander moves down the table to help her. Willow starts clearing away the dirty dishes and carrying them out to the kitchen, leaving Dawn sitting alone at her end of the table.
Dawn asks what they are going to do after the funeral, if they just going to be coming back to the house, but Buffy doesn’t know. She goes back to working on the program with Xander.
“I don’t want to be here,” says Dawn, but no one hears her.
Willow comes back for more dishes and Dawn asks her if she can go with her after the funeral. Willow says she wouldn’t mind but Dawn really should talk to Buffy about it.
“Can I?” asks Dawn.
“Huh?” asks Buffy.
“Can I go to Willow’s tomorrow after the service?” asks Dawn.
Buffy is a little surprised by the question, but she tells Dawn that she can if she really wants to. Dawn leaves to get her sleeping bag out of the attic.
Willow and Xander leave Buffy’s house together. Willow tells him that she’s going to go visit her mom before going back to the dorm. She’s been doing that a lot lately.
Xander thinks maybe he might drop in on Willow’s mom too. “Well, I’m not going to my place,” he says off her look. “Those people are scary.” He sees Spike coming toward them. “Speaking of…” He sees the bunch of flowers Spike is carrying. “You have got to be kidding.”
Spike tells them that he wasn’t planning on going in. He’s just going to drop off the flowers and go. Xander has no intention of letting Spike get near enough to Buffy’s house to do even that. He doesn’t think this is good time for Spike to be trying to score points with Buffy.
“This isn’t about Buffy,” says Spike. “They’re for Joyce.”
“Like you care about her.” Xander steps up to Spike and looks like he wishes he had a stake handy. Willow doesn’t think that this is the time or place for this confrontation.
“Care?” asks Spike. “Joyce was the only one of the lot of you that I could stand. I liked the lady. You understand, monkey boy? She was decent. She didn’t put on airs. She also had a nice cuppa for me. And she never treated me like a freak.”
“Her mistake,” says Xander.
“Think what you want.” Spike drops the bouquet on the walk at Xander’s feet, and leaves.
“Unbelievable.” says Xander. “The guy thinks he can put on a big show and con Buffy into being his sex monkey.”
Willow picks up the bouquet, and looks at it. “Xander, he didn’t leave a card.”
Buffy is dressed and ready for the funeral, but it isn’t time yet. She sits on the edge of her bed alone in her room. Dawn is ready and waiting too, sitting on the edge of her bed in her room.
There are about thirty people gathered in the cemetery for Joyce’s funeral. Buffy and Dawn stand together beside the grave with their friends around them. A couple of dozen other people are assembled around the grave. The minister finishes the service, and the coffin is lowered into the ground. A workman starts to shovel dirt into the grave.
Dawn starts to cry. She turns to Buffy and buries her face in Buffy’s shoulder. Buffy stands silently holding her. The other people there for the funeral pause to offer their condolences before they filter away. Soon nearly everyone is gone. Buffy still hasn’t moved from where she has been standing beside the grave. Dawn, Willow and Tara are the only other people still there.
Tara comes over to Buffy and tells her that Dawn wants to go now. Buffy thinks that’s a good idea, she shouldn’t be there.
“What about you?” asks Tara. “We can wait if you want.”
“I’m fine,” says Buffy. “Thank you.”
Tara and Willow leave with Dawn, who looks back at her sister still standing silently beside her mother’s grave.
Buffy is still standing there after the sun has set. Someone steps up beside her.
“I’m sorry,” says Angel. “I couldn’t come sooner.” Buffy silently reaches out and takes his hand in hers.
Dawn has spread her sleeping bag out on the floor in Willow’s room. Willow and Tara sit on either side of her.
Willow wishes she could do more to help. “The only thing is, it’ll get better, I promise.”
“You don’t know that,” says Dawn.
“Sure she does,” says Tara. “We’re witches. We know stuff.”
“What?” asks Dawn. “Life goes on, and I forget Mom? Is that what you’re saying?”
Willow doesn’t mean that, but she has trouble finding the words to express what she does want to say.
Tara gives it a try. “You make a place for her in your heart. It’s sort of like she becomes a part of you. Does that make sense?”
Dawn doesn’t say anything. Willow thinks maybe they don’t have to talk about this now, they should go to sleep.
Dawn isn’t ready for sleep either. She gets up and walks over to a table on which Willow has some of her magical paraphernalia. There is something she wants to do.
Willow gets up too. “Great. What are you up for?”
“You guys are witches, and you do magic and stuff.”
“You want us to teach you something, like a glamour?” asks Willow, “Or I could make a stuffed animal dance.”
“I want to do a spell,” says Dawn. “I want to bring Mom back.”
Anya sighs in contentment, and lays down to rest on top of a spent Xander. Their love making has been especially intense. “It’s because of Joyce.”
“Right,” says Xander. “Huh?”
“Well, she got me thinking about how people die all the time, and how they get born, too, and how you kind of need one so you can have the other,” says Anya. “When I think about it that way, it makes death a little less sad and sex a little more exciting.” Xander is still confused. “Well, I just think that I understand sex more now. It’s not just about two bodies smooshing together. It’s about life. It’s about making life.”
Now Xander is getting scared. “Right. When two people are much older and way richer and far less stupid.”
Anya smiles, and tells him it’s safe to breathe. His face is turning colours. “I’m not ready to make life with you, but I could. We could. Life could come out of our love and our smooshing, and that’s beautiful. It all makes me feel like we’re a part of something bigger, like I’m more awake somehow. You know?”
Xander kisses her. “Yeah, I do.”
Willow and Tara understand Dawn’s desire to bring her mother back, but they try to tell her it’s just not possible. Magic can’t be used to alter the natural order of things.
“But all you do is mess with the natural order of things,” says Dawn. “You make things float and disappear and—”
“But we don’t mess with life and death,” says Tara.
Willow tries telling Dawn that she knows how much she is hurting, but Dawn doesn’t believe her.
“It’s awful and unfair,” says Tara, “but this isn’t the way.”
Willow isn’t even sure it’s possible. She has seen things on resurrection spells, but they always seem to backfire.
Tara doesn’t think that’s the point. “Witches can’t be allowed to alter the fabric of life for selfish reasons. Wiccans took an oath a long time ago to honour that.”
“So it’s possible to bring someone back,” says Dawn. “They wouldn’t have taken an oath if they didn’t know they could do it.”
“Maybe they could, but we can’t,” says Tara.
“You said you wanted to help me.” Dawn lies down in her sleeping bag. Willow kneels down beside Dawn and tries to comfort her. Dawn rolls away.
Buffy sits under a tree in the cemetery with Angel by her side. Buffy is worried about what she’s going to do tomorrow. Up until now she has had the funeral preparation and things to keep her busy, but she doesn’t know what she’s going to do tomorrow.
“Tomorrow, the stuff of everyday living resumes,” says Angel.
“And everybody expects me to know how to do it because I’m ‘so strong.’” says Buffy.
Angel tells her she just needs time, everyone understands that.
“Time’s not the issue,” says Buffy. “I can stick wood in vampires, but Mom was the strong one in real life. She always knew how to make things better, just what to say.”
Angel thinks that Buffy will find her way, but Buffy isn’t so sure, and she keeps thinking about what might have happened if she had only found her mother earlier.
“You said they told you it wouldn’t have made a difference,” says Angel
“They said ‘probably’ it wouldn’t have made a difference,” says Buffy. “The exact thing they said was ‘probably.’ I haven’t told that to anyone.”
Angel still doesn’t think it would have made a difference.
“I didn’t even start CPR until they told me,” says Buffy. “I fell apart. That’s how good I am at being a grownup. It’d be okay if it was just me I had to worry about…but Dawn—”
“It’s okay,” says Angel. “I know you don’t feel like it now, but you are strong, Buffy. You’re going to figure this out, and you have people to help you. You don’t have to do this alone.”
Buffy looks up at the sky. It is beginning to lighten with the approaching dawn, they have been talking all night. Angel tells her he can stay in town as long as she wants him to.
“How’s forever?” asks Buffy. “Does forever work for you?” Angel doesn’t say anything. “That’s a bad idea. I’m seriously needy right now.”
“Let me worry about the neediness,” says Angel. “I can handle it.”
Buffy kisses him gently, and Angel responds in kind, but soon the kiss stops being gentle, and becomes more passionate. They both break it off, and pull away from one another a bit. “I told you,” says Buffy. “You better go.”
“I’m sorry,” says Angel.
“No!” says Buffy. “I’m so grateful that you came, Angel. I didn’t think I was going to be able to make it through the night.”
Angel looks up at the sky. He still has a few minutes left.
Buffy rests her head against his shoulder. “Good, good.”
Ben encounters Jinx outside the hospital. He is not pleased to see one of his sister’s Jawa rejects. Jinx is there with a message from Glory. She has learned of Ben’s relationship with the Slayer, and she wants to encourage it. It might lead to information about where the Key is located.
“And why would I share that with the Most Unstable One?” asks Ben.
“Time is running short, sir,” says Jinx. “Every moment you fight Glory, you’re only fighting yourself, you see?”
“Fine,” says Ben. “Let the best me win. Let Glory understand this: I won’t help her find the Key. I would never do that to an innocent—” He stops, realizing that he has just said something he shouldn’t.
That fact hasn’t escaped Jinx’s notice either. “‘An innocent?’ The Key? That’s an interesting choice of words.” Ben tries to tell him that he didn’t mean what Jinx thinks he means, but that only confirms what Jinx already knows. Jinx is anxious to be on his way.
“You’re going to run and tell her, aren’t you?” asks Ben. “Do you understand what’s going to happen if she finds the Key? How many people are going to die?”
“Please. I heard nothing.”
“I can’t let that happen, don’t you see?” Ben pulls the dagger out of Jinx’s belt and stabs him in the gut with it. “I can’t!”
Willow and Tara ask Dawn if she wants to come for breakfast with them.
Dawn isn’t hungry, she just wants to sleep some more. She looks like she had a restless night. Willow and Tara aren’t going to be coming back to the room after breakfast, they have to get to classes. That’s fine with Dawn. She has already made arrangements to have Giles come pick her up when she calls.
Willow says she’ll drop back in to see her around lunch time. Dawn tells her not to bother, she’ll probably be gone by then.
Tara tells Dawn to take care, and she and Willow start to go. On the way out of the room Willow telekinetically pulls a book out on her bookshelf, making it stick out away from the rest. Neither Dawn nor Tara notice it move.
Dawn settles back down in her sleeping bag, and looks toward the bookshelf. She sees the book sticking out, and gets up and looks at it. It’s The History of Witchcraft. Dawn takes the book and flips to the table of contents. “Age of Levitation. War of the Warlocks,” she reads. She flips to the next page. “Resurrection— A Controversy Born.” She quickly flips to that chapter.
Dawn helps out in the Magic Box, running a feather duster over the shelves of potions and books, examining the labels and titles while she does it. Anya follows her around. She suggests that Dawn should sit down and relax. Maybe watch some TV. Giles thinks that Anya should be the one to relax. If Dawn wants to make herself useful around the shop that’s fine. He can always use a hand.
“But you have a hand,” says Anya. “A paid hand. A hand that isn’t the hand of illegal child labour.”
“Anya,” says Giles, with a pointed look.
Anya gets it. “But, of course, it’s wonderful that you find doing my job so distracting. I am unthreatened. Proceed.”
Dawn asks Giles if there is anything she should know, like if there’s anything that’s off limits to the customers.
Giles tells Dawn that all the really potent stuff is kept up in the loft. “If anyone asks you about anything in that area, just come and get me.” He offers to teach her how to work the cash register.
That gets Anya nervous again. “Ring up sales? With the money? She gets to fondle the money?” She spots a customer and quickly goes to demonstrate how essential she is to the running of the shop by helping them out.
Giles has some things to do in the storeroom and promises to show Dawn how to work the cash when he gets back.
With Giles gone, and Anya distracted, Dawn grabs her backpack and goes up the ladder into the loft. She scans the bookshelves and quickly spots the book she’s looking for. She puts it into her backpack, along with a potion from off another shelf and starts back down the ladder. She freezes when she hears Giles coming out of the storeroom but he passes right beneath her with noticing. She quickly and quietly comes the rest of the way down the ladder, and sets her bag down by its base.
Giles turns around and spots her. He suggests that she come and watch Anya doing the transaction with the customer at the cash, and then she can try the next one.
“You got it,” says Dawn.
Dawn kneels beside her mother’s grave, and scoops some of the fresh soil from it into a jar. She has the book she took from Giles’ shop open on the ground beside her.
“I hope it’s just dirt you’re after,” says Spike. Dawn spins around to look at him. “If the spell calls for anything more than that, you’re into zombie territory, and that’s bad news.”
Dawn tries to deny that she was doing anything, but Spike knows that’s not true. He recognises the book. It’s infamous.
“Please. Don’t tell Buffy,” begs Dawn. “I just—I have to get her back. I have to.”
“I’m not going to tell, Little Bit,” says Spike. “I’m going to help.”
Giles puts his copy of Cream’s Disraeli Gears onto his turntable and begins to play Tales of Brave Ulysses. He settles down in a chair with a glass of scotch, listens and remembers.
Spike leads Dawn through the streets of Sunnydale. He’s heard of someone who’s supposed to be an expert on resurrections and things. Dawn thinks she knows why he’s being so nice to her. He’s trying to get in good with Buffy.
“Buffy never hears about this, okay?” says Spike. “Found out what I was doing, she’d drive a redwood through my chest.”
“Then, if you don’t want credit, why are you helping me?”
“I just don’t like to see Summers women take it so hard on the chin is all,” says Spike, “and I’m dead serious. You breathe a word of this to Buffy, I’ll see to it that you end up in the ground. You got it?”
“Yeah,” says Dawn. “Got it.”
Glory is getting anxious. Jinx is hours overdue. Her minion Murk tries to reassure her, Jinx has just been delayed. “He’s most loyal to—”
“Hey!” Glory spins to face him. “He’d better be loyal.”
Before Glory can do anything to the cringing minion her door opens. She turns anxiously toward it. “Jinxy?” She sees him, being carried by Dreg and another of her minions. Jinx is in bad shape, but he’s still alive.
“Oh, no, no! Mind the rug, honeys. Blood’s a bitch.” Glory tells them as they carry Jinx to the sofa. “Was this the Slayer? I’ll pull her wings off!”
“No,” gasps Jinx. “It was Ben.”
“Ben?” asks Glory. “Ben? Oh, God! You pointless, stupid lump!” She turns away from Jinx and starts to pull handfulls of her hair from her head. “Oh, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!”
“The Key,” gasps Jinx. “He told me.”
Glory instantly turns back to him. “The Key? What about the Key?”
“He indicated that it was a person, Most…Highest You.”
“The Key’s in human form?”
“I believe so…Good One.”
Glory sits on the sofa beside Jinx, and hugs him. “Ahh! Jinx, you robed stud, you’re my man! I’m even going to let you slide on the lame toadying on account of your dying and stuff.”
Glory gets back up off the sofa. “So, the Key’s all secreted away in a flesh wrapper, huh? This narrows the search from now on in a serious way. I mean, we didn’t have a clue. It could have been a log or a bicycle pump or whatever, am I right?” she asks Jinx, but he’s passed out.
Glory looks at the unconscious Jinx. “Oh. Get him fixed, would ya?” she tells her minions. “I want to hear the whole story again without all that annoying moaning.”
Dawn and Spike enter a cluttered apartment. Books, newspapers and things are scattered all over the place. A black cat walks across a pile of books on a table and disappears. Dawn doesn’t think this looks like the home of some big time magic guy. It smells like grandpa. Spike calls out asking if anybody’s home.
Someone who looks like grandpa comes out of the next room. His name is Doc. He’s wearing an old tattered bathrobe over his shirt and pants. He looks at Spike, and asks if they know each other. He thinks he’s seen Spike down by the corner mart, playing Dominos. Spike is sure that Doc is thinking of someone else.
“I’d swear you were that guy,” says Doc. “I mean, your hair’s a different colour, and you’re a vampire, but other than that…”
Dawn is becoming more certain that they have come to the wrong place, and she wants to go.
Doc tells her to stay. “Now, just because the lights are dim doesn’t mean the juice is all gone. What can I do for you?”
“This one’s mum kicked it a few days back,” says Spike. “We were wondering what’s to be done about it. Heard you were the one to ask.”
“Oh…no. No, that’s, uh— you don’t want to mess with that,” says Doc. “I know some tonics, make the grieving fly by.”
“I don’t want any tonics,” says Dawn.
“Either one of you witches?” asks Doc. “Got any experience with spells of this magnitude?” He waits for an answer that doesn’t come. “I didn’t think so.” His hand darts out and he grabs one of Dawn’s hairs and pulls it out.
“Ow!” says Dawn.
Doc ignores her. He takes the hair over to a lamp and examines it carefully. “Your mother’s a good candidate, at least. Strong DNA.” He starts moving around the room, looking at books and things on his shelves and humming Peter’s theme from Peter and the Wolf to himself. Dawn is startled to catch a glimpse of a tail coming out the back of his bathrobe. She looks at Spike to see if he’s noticed it too, but Spike is distracted by the cigarette he’s lighting up.
Doc takes a large volume over to his desk and opens it. Dawn follows him over and tells him that she’s found a spell, and gathered some of its ingredients, but there are parts of the spell that she doesn’t understand.
“We’ve got the Ghora demon standing between you and success,” says Doc. “That’s the translation you were missing.”
Spike has heard of the Ghora, and asks if they’re local.
“Yeah, they like to stick close to the Hellmouth.” Doc reads from the book. “‘Egg of the Ghora gives life.’ It’s key to the spell.”
Dawn asks if they can buy it somewhere.
“If it was as easy as making an omelet, everyone would try it,” says Doc. “No, you have to steal the egg from the nest of the demon. And the Ghora won’t be happy about it.”
Spike asks where they can find this demon, but Doc has other things to say first. In order to do this spell they are also going to need a photograph or painting of Joyce.
“Once you get all the ingredients together, put them in the center of a sacred circle with the photo of your mother.” Doc picks up a pad of paper and starts writing something out on it. “Then, say this incantation three times. She won’t appear, you know, poof. It’ll take a while. But she will come to you.” He rips the page from his pad and hands it to Dawn. “Got it?”
“Got it,” says Dawn.
“Oh, Anything goes wrong, the only way to reverse the spell is to destroy the image of your mother, understand?”
“I’ll do it right,” says Dawn.
“It’s a tricky spell, girl. I can’t say for sure your mother will come back exactly like she was. Sometimes these things…get a little off.”
“But she’ll still be my mother. Won’t she?” asks Dawn.
“More or less,” says Doc.
That gives Dawn pause. “Good,” she says, not sounding very sure of herself. “Good.”
Spike reminds Doc that he still hasn’t told them where to find the demon. Doc says that the entrance to its lair is through the sewer under Tracey Street. Spike and Dawn start to go.
Dawn pulls some money out of her pocket. “No, no. Keep your money.” Doc holds out his hand. Dawn takes it and thanks him.
“You just keep in touch now. Let me know how it goes.” Doc smiles at Dawn, and his eyes flash black.
Dawn quickly pulls her hand back. “I—I will.”
Spike and Dawn move through the sewer. Spike has armed himself with a battle axe. They find the entrance to the Ghora demon’s lair right where Doc said it would be. Spike is a little surprised that the lair’s there, he was half convinced that Doc was just a crazy old coot. He tells Dawn to wait there while he goes to get the egg.
Dawn doesn’t want to do that. She’s planning to come with him. “You need me, Spike. Somebody’s got to get the egg while you distract the Ghora. Now, come on.” She starts down the passage into the demon’s lair.
“Well, what do you know?” Spike asks himself as he follows her. “Bitty Buffy.”
Spike and Dawn find the demon sleeping in front of its nest full of eggs, looking very much like a giant Easter basket. The Ghora is a dragon like creature about ten feet long. Dawn doesn’t think it looks so bad.
“Wait till it wakes up,” says Spike. “That’s usually when the bad starts.”
Dawn can’t get to the nest unless the demon moves. Spike figures he can take care of that.
Spike moves out into the demon’s lair. “Head’s up!” he yells at the Ghora. The Ghora wakes up and raises its three heads to look at him. “Right then. Heads it is.” Spike attacks it with his axe.
Spike’s attack pulls the Ghora away from its nest, and Dawn darts in and grabs an egg. She takes it and retreats back to the entrance. She calls for Spike to come on.
Spike takes one last swing at the Ghora and leaves his axe embedded in one of the demon’s necks before he follows her toward the entrance. Dawn starts to scramble up the passageway from the lair, and drops the egg. It shatters.
Spike thinks that they should just forget about this, and keep going, but Dawn is determined to get her mother back.
“It’s too dangerous,” says Spike, “and I haven’t got…” Dawn ignores him and runs back into the demon’s lair. “…A weapon!”
Dawn runs back to the demon’s nest, but this time it knows she’s there, and it’s angry. It turns toward her. Spike picks up a rock and throws it at one of the Ghora’s heads. He follows up with several more, and yells at it. The demon’s attention is split between Dawn and its tormentor. It can’t decide who it wants to kill more.
It settles on Spike. It sweeps his legs out from underneath him with its tail, and the jaws of one of its mouths close on Spike’s side. That was a mistake. It brings the handle of the axe that Spike had left embedded in its neck into Spike’s reach. He grabs it, pulls it free, and starts to hack at the demon with it. The demon lets go of him.
Dawn has gotten a second egg, and is back at the entrance to the lair with it. She calls for Spike and he runs after her, holding his injured side. “Sorry!” she tells him.
“Did you get it?” asks Spike, and Dawn shows him the egg. “Don’t be sorry then.”
Dawn has the ingredients she has assembled spread out on a white sheet out on the floor of her mother’s room. The shell of the Ghora demon’s egg has been set aside, and its contents are in a large bowl in the center of the sheet, surrounded by lit candles. A photo of Joyce is leaning against the bowl.
Dawn draws a circle around the bowl with the mixture of blood, earth from her mother’s grave, and the other ingredients she has collected and begins her incantation. “Osiris, giver of darkness, taker of life, god of gods. Accept my offering. Bone, flesh, breath. Yours, eternally. Bone, flesh, breath. I beg of you, return to me.”
Willow lies on her bed, writing in a fresh journal. She asks Tara what she had for breakfast this morning. She thinks maybe it was a bagel. She knows that Tara had eggs. “I remember because they were wiggling at me like little boobs.”
Tara wonders what Willow’s doing, and comes and sits on the bed with her.
Willow has decided to start keeping a journal. “I figured life goes by so fast. If you don’t write stuff down, it just gets lost. And I want to remember.”
“Down to every last bagel,” says Tara.
“Down to every last everything I do with you,” says Willow.
Tara looks over toward the bookshelf and notices that there’s a book missing. She asks Willow what happened to The History of Witchcraft. Willow pretends to be surprised that it’s gone.
“Dawn must have taken it,” says Tara. “This is bad. This is really bad.”
Willow doesn’t think it’s something they need to worry about. It’s just a history book, it doesn’t have any actual spells and things in it. It might help to answer some of Dawn’s questions.
“Well, it’s not a ‘how to’ guide,” says Tara, “but it refers to specific resurrection spells and potions.”
“But I didn’t—” says Willow. “I mean— Hey! How’d she know that?”
Tara doesn’t know, but she wonders what else Dawn may have taken.
“Nothing!” says Willow, much too quickly. She starts to cover her tracks. “I—I think. I think she took nothing else. But maybe she did, and we should probably look because who knows? I don’t.”
Tara doesn’t think they have time to look. They don’t know what Dawn might be up to.
“We have to call Buffy,” says Willow, “Now.”
Buffy hears the phone ringing as she comes in the front door of her house.
“Bone, flesh, breath. Yours, eternally,” chants Dawn. “Bone, flesh, breath. I beg of you, return to me.” Thunder booms.
“Dawn, what have you done?” asks Buffy from the doorway. “What have you done?”
“She’s coming,” says Dawn. “She’s coming home.” She gets up off the floor and runs from the room.
Buffy sees the photograph of their mother, and snatches it up before following Dawn downstairs to the foyer. “Dawn! You have no idea what you’re messing with! Who knows what you actually raised, what’s going to come through that door.”
“No, I know!” cries Dawn. “It’ll be her!”
Buffy has been talking with Tara. She knows that these spells go wrong all the time. People come back wrong.
“She won’t!” says Dawn. “He told me her DNA—”
Buffy grabs Dawn, and shakes her. “Who told you? Who helped you? Dawn refuses to tell her. “You have to stop it, reverse it!”
“No!” Dawn takes the photo from Buffy’s hand and moves into the living room. She sets it down on the coffee table.
“Dawn, you know this is wrong. You know you can’t let this happen. Not to Mom.”
“But I need her,” says Dawn. “I don’t care if she— I’m not like you, Buffy. I don’t have anybody.”
“What? Of course you do!” says Buffy. “You have me!”
“No, I don’t,” says Dawn. “You won’t even look at me! It’s so obvious you don’t want me around. Mom died, and it’s like you don’t even care.”
“Of course I care. How can you even think that?”
“How can I not?” asks Dawn. “You haven’t even cried. You’ve just been running around like it’s been some big chore or something. Cleaning up after Mom’s mess.”
Buffy slaps Dawn, and then stops, aghast at what she just did. “Oh, my god. Dawn. I’ve been working. I’ve been busy because I have to—”
“No! You’ve been avoiding me.”
“I’m not! I have to do these things ’cause— ’cause when I stop, then she’s really gone!” Buffy is starting to cry. “And I’m trying— Dawn, I am— I am really trying to take care of things, but I don’t even know what I’m doing. Mom always knew.”
“Nobody’s asking you to be Mom.”
“Well, who’s going to be if I’m not? Huh, Dawn? Have you even thought about that? Who’s going to make things better? Who’s going to take care of us? I didn’t mean to push you away. I didn’t. I just— I couldn’t let you see me—” A shadow moves across the window. “Oh, god, Dawny. I don’t know what we’re going to do. I’m scared.”
“Buffy—” says Dawn.
There is a knock on the door. Buffy turns toward it hopefully. “Mommy?”
“Buffy…” says Dawn.
“Mom!” Buffy rushes toward the door. Dawn picks up the photo of her mother and tears it in half as Buffy opens the door. There is no one outside.
Buffy turns back to her sister. “Dawn…”
Dawn goes to Buffy and they hug. “It’s okay.” The two of them collapse to the floor, crying in each other’s arms. “It’s okay.”