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After Life

Prologue

Xander leads Tara, Willow and Anya on a shortcut through an alley. They’re on their way to Buffy’s house, and hoping to find her there. Tara asks if he’s sure this is the fastest route.

“Hey, I’ve done a lot of fleeing on these mean streets,” says Xander. “I know all the shortcuts.”

Anya looks at a burning car. It makes her nervous. “Fire’s rarely a sign of imminent safety.”

Willow wishes they were there already.

“Hey, don’t worry, ladies,” says Xander. “I’ll get us there just fine. My senses are primed for danger. Nothing is going to—” He’s nearly run over by a Hellion on a motorcycle that comes around the corner behind him with a couple of its companions. Xander does a quick inventory of all his limbs while they disappear down the alley.

“At least the demons almost hit you on their way out of town,” says Anya.

“Yeah, now that their leader’s gone, they seem to be making with the big skedaddle,” says Xander.

“It was Buffy, right?” asks Willow. “We saw her and it was really Buffy?”

“I think we screwed it up,” says Anya. “She’s broken.”

“No! She’s not broken!” says Willow. “She’s just disoriented from being tormented in some hell dimension, probably tortured. It’s like…we don’t even know how much time has passed there for her. Possibly years. That’s not something you just get over. Oh, my god. What if she never gets over it?”

“And you think of this now?” asks Anya.

“What are you thinking, Willow?” asks Tara. “That—that she’s— That she’s not right or—or maybe, like, dangerous?”

Dawn and Buffy stand on the walk in front of their house. The yard is scattered with trash, and there’s a fire burning across the street.

“Home, see?” says Dawn. “You’re back home. We’re all okay now.”

Buffy just looks at the house.

Act I

Buffy walks into the living room of her house. Dawn turns on the light, and Buffy flinches. Buffy looks around and notices that things have changed.

Dawn tells Buffy that Willow and Tara have moved in. “We didn’t do much. We moved some of the chairs and took out some of the little tables, but…” She moves into the dining room. “This is the same.” She notices Willow’s iBook set up on the end of the table. “Except the computer stuff. That’s Willow’s, obviously. We eat at the other end…obviously.”

Buffy turns away, and walks up the stairs.

Dawn gently cleans Buffy’s face with a washcloth in the bathroom. She has already gotten Buffy changed into clean clothes. “There you are. I knew you were under that dirt somewhere. You remember what Mom used to say? ‘Either wash that neck or plant potatoes.’” Buffy doesn’t react. “Yeah, I never thought it was funny, either.”

Dawn notices that Buffy’s shirt isn’t buttoned. “You want to button that or, um…” She notices Buffy’s bloody knuckles. She takes Buffy’s hand in hers and lifts it up for a closer look. “Uh, we’ll take care of that after—”

Buffy pulls her hand away and hides both of them behind her back. “Okay.”

“Here, I’ll do the shirt, and then we’ll do your hands.” Dawn starts to button Buffy’s shirt. “See how nice you look?”

Buffy turns away from Dawn and walks into her mother’s room. Dawn follows her, and turns on the light. Buffy flinches.

“Mom’s room,” says Dawn. “I know it’s really different now.”

“Willow and Tara,” says Buffy. “This is their room?”

“Yeah, well, it seemed to make the most sense. No one was using it, and it’s the biggest, but, you know, now that you’re here, we’ll have to figure out something to do.”

Buffy turns and walks toward the door out into the hallway.

Dawn steps in front of her. “Buffy… you want to, like, stop? We can— We can sit down and talk.”

“What else is different?” asks Buffy.

“Do you mean about the house or… Um, let’s see. Giles… It’s so weird. He left today. Because you were— He-he’ll come right back. I’ll call him. Someone’ll call him.”

Buffy wonders what Dawn will say to him, but she’s startled by the sound of the front door opening. “What was that?”

Dawn tells Buffy that it’s okay, and she hears Spike calling for her from downstairs. “It’s just Spike.” She answers Spike’s call and starts down the stairs.

Spike looks up at Dawn. “Thank god! You scared me half to death. Or more to death. You— I could kill you!” Dawn tries to interrupt him, but he keeps going. “I mean it! I could rip your head off one-handed and drink from your brain stem!”

“Look.” Dawn looks up the stairs at Buffy, who is coming down them behind her.

“Yeah? I’ve seen the bloody bot before,” says Spike. “Didn’t think she’d patch up so—” He stops. He realizes this isn’t the Buffybot.

Dawn tells Spike that Buffy’s been through a lot, with the death and all, but she thinks she’s okay. She notices the strange expression on his face, and asks if he’s okay.

Spike starts to answer the question, but quickly switches the subject. “What did you do?” he asks Dawn, but he keeps staring at Buffy.

“Me?” asks Dawn. “Nothing.”

Buffy feels even more uncomfortable under the intensity of Spike’s gaze, and remembers that her shirt is still partially unbuttoned. She starts to do it up. Spike notices her hands.

“Um, I was going to fix them,” says Dawn. “I don’t know how they got like that.” Buffy moves her hands behind her back.

“I do,” says Spike. “Clawed her way out of a coffin, that’s how. Isn’t that right?”

Buffy looks away. “Yeah. That’s what I had to do.”

“I’ve done it myself. Um, we’ll take care of you.”

Spike sends Dawn to get the bandages and stuff. He reaches out to put his hand on Buffy’s shoulder, but he stops, not quite touching her. He pulls his hand away again. Buffy goes into the living room and sits on the sofa. Spike sits on the coffee table facing her. He takes her hands in his.

“How long was I gone?” asks Buffy.

“147 days, yesterday,” says Spike. “Uh, 148 today. Except today doesn’t count, does it?” He looks down at her hands. “How long was it for you, where you were?”

“Longer,” says Buffy.

Dawn returns with the bandages and disinfectant at the same time as Willow, Tara, Xander and Anya burst through the front door. They are happy to find Buffy there, and all start asking her if she’s okay. Spike gets up and heads out the door without saying a word.

Dawn is instantly suspicious. “You knew she was back? How did you know?”

The others ignore her. “You’re not a zombie are you?” asks Anya. The others start barraging Buffy with questions about how she feels, and what she remembers.

“Hey!” says Dawn. “Back off! You did this! What did you do?”

“A spell,” says Willow. “We did a spell.”

“We didn’t think it worked, but it did!” says Tara.

Dawn asks if Buffy’s going to be okay.

Buffy looks up at the people standing over her. “I’m okay. I’m going to be fine. I remember. You brought me back.”

Anya asks Buffy what it was like, but Buffy says she can’t talk about it.

“It’s okay,” says Xander. “You don’t have to talk about this, Buff. Hey, do you want something? Anything. Pizza! I’ll get you pizza.” Tara and Anya think that sounds like a good idea.

“She doesn’t want pizza!” says Willow.

“Guys!” says Dawn. “Back off!”

Willow tells them Dawn’s right. They should just let Buffy tell them what she needs. Everyone falls silent.

Buffy looks up at her friends all looking expectantly at her. She stands up. “I—I think I just want to go to sleep.”

Tara thinks that sounds like a good idea.

“Right,” says Willow. “Long day. But, Buffy, be happy. We got you out. We really did it.”

Buffy looks away and says she’s tired.

“Well, yeah. I mean…jet lag from Hell has got to be, you know, jet lag from Hell,” says Anya.

Buffy asks if her room is still hers, and Dawn tells her it is. Buffy goes upstairs.

“Well, sh-she’s fine, normal,” says Willow. “She used to go to bed all the time.”

Xander and Anya leave the house together. Anya thinks that Willow is being overly optimistic about Buffy’s condition.

Xander thinks it will just take a little time. “I bet in a week, she’ll be our little Bufferin again.”

“Oh, yes. Six or seven days,” says Anya. “That’s all you really need to get over eternal hell experiences.”

Xander hears a twig snap, and looks toward the sound. He sees Spike’s back, he’s leaning against a tree. Xander asks Spike what he’s doing there.

Spike wipes a tear off his face before he turns around.

“I hope you’re not going to start your little obsession now that she’s around again,” says Xander.

Spike grabs Xander by the collar and shove’s him up against the tree, ignoring the pain that causes in his head. “You didn’t tell me! You brought her back, and you didn’t tell me!”

“Well, now you know,” says Xander.

“I worked beside you all summer!”

“We didn’t tell you,” says Xander. “It was just— We didn’t, okay?”

“Listen… I figured it out.” Spike lets go of Xander. “Maybe you haven’t, but I have. Willow knew there was a chance that she’d come back wrong. So wrong that you’d have— that she would have to get rid of what came back, and I wouldn’t let her. If any part of that was Buffy, I wouldn’t let her. That’s why she shut me out.”

“What are you talking about?” asks Xander. “Willow wouldn’t do that. You’re just covering. Don’t tell me you’re not happy. Look me in the eyes, and tell me when you saw Buffy alive that wasn’t the happiest moment of your entire existence.”

Spike looks Xander in the eyes, and then turns away. He walks toward his new motorcycle. “That’s the thing about magic. There’s always consequences.” He gets onto the bike. “Always!” He kick starts the bike and rides away.

Buffy stares at her reflection in her mirror. She’s startled by the sound of a door closing out in the hallway. It’s Willow leaving the bathroom, on her way back to her room.

Tara is brushing her hair. She asks if Willow got through to Giles. She did, and he’ll be coming back as soon as he can, probably a couple of days. Tara asks how he took the news.

Willow isn’t sure. “Glad, but kind of weirded out, which I get, you know. Lots of ‘dear lords,’ and I think I actually heard him clean his glasses.”

Tara asks if Willow’s worried, but she tells her all is good.

Tara knows better. She gets into bed. “Hey, Will, this is me. It doesn’t all have to be ‘good’ and ‘fine.’ This is the room where you don’t have to be brave. I still love you. If you’re worried, you can be worried.”

Willow admits that she isn’t not worried. “What happened…that was intense. That’s got to change you.” She closes the door, turns out the light and gets into bed with Tara. She remembers Buffy telling her that Angel was like an animal when he got back.

Tara holds Willow in her arms, and tells her that Buffy isn’t like that. “You know what I think? I think we all just assumed crash positions. It-it’s like…we were all tensed up, like…we were expecting it to screw up. We weren’t prepared for it to actually go right.”

“Tara? If things did go right…wouldn’t you think she’d be…happier? Like, wouldn’t you think she’d be so happy that we brought her out?”

“Sure she is,” says Tara. “You thought she’d say thanks. Be more grateful.”

“Would I be a terrible person if I said ‘yes?’” asks Willow.

Tara thinks that they just need to give Buffy a little time. Everything will be okay.

Buffy sits on the edge of her bed. She’s still dressed. She gets up and picks up the picture of her, Willow and Xander off her bedside table and looks at it. She sets it back down and goes over to her desk. She looks at the pictures of her and her friends—Xander, Willow, Tara and Anya—stuck to the wall above it.

The pictures change, the faces changing into skulls. Buffy closes her eyes. She opens them again, and looks at the pictures. They’ve changed back to normal.

Act II

Willow and Tara are a startled awake by something breaking against the picture above their bed.

Buffy is standing in the darkness at the foot of the bed. “What did you do? Do you know what you did? You’re like children. Your hands smell of death. Bitches! Filthy little bitches rattling the bones! Did you cut the throat? Did you pat it’s head?” She picks up a crystal ball and throws it at the picture. It shatters, and glass rains down on top of Willow and Tara. “The blood dried on your hands, didn’t it?”

“Oh, my god,” says Tara. “Oh, my god, oh, my god.”

“You were stained,” says Buffy. “You still are! I know what you did!”

Willow jumps out of bed and turns on the light. Buffy vanishes.

Tara looks down at their blankets “The glass… there’s no glass.”

Willow quietly opens the door to Buffy’s room and looks in. She and Tara see Buffy asleep in her bed. Willow closes the door again.

Willow quietly closes the door of their room. “Okay, what in the frilly heck is going on?”

Tara suggests that they just dreamed it.

“Right, right,” says Willow. “Wrong. Different brains.”

Tara runs her hand over her undamaged crystal ball. She asks if Willow understood anything the apparition said to them. Willow says she understood the words, but not what they meant.

Willow hears a picture move on the wall behind her. “What was that?” She turns around and sees something moving across the wall, passing beneath the wallpaper.

“Th-there’s something in the house,” says Tara.

Willow thinks it’s time to call Xander. She hopes he’s up.

Anya leans over the sleeping Xander. “Xander, are you up? I can’t sleep. Play a word game with me.” Xander keeps sleeping. “Xander, are you awake? Okay, I’m going to describe an adjective with accurate but misleading clues, and then you have to guess what it is.” She tickles his cheek. “Xander? Xander?”

The phone rings, and Xander starts awake. “What? Do what?” He reaches for the phone.

“That ought to do it,” says Anya. She gets out of bed, and walks out of their room.

Xander answers the phone. Willow tells him what they were attacked. He asks if it was a vampire, but she tells him it was something that looked like Buffy, but it wasn’t her. Xander tells them to get out of the house.

Anya comes back into their bedroom. She has a knife in her hand, and her eyes have gone white. She starts to laugh, and slices her cheeks with the knife.

“Anya!” Xander drops the phone and snatches the knife out of her hand. Anya collapses to the floor. He kneels beside her. Her cheeks are uncut. Something slides away from her, moving under the carpet on the floor.

The Scoobies assemble in Buffy’s back yard next morning. Xander thinks that things are very bad.

Anya sits on the arm of Xander’s chair, and rubs his back. “He’s all traumatised.”

“Well, whatever it is, it’s not the traditional haunting because it’s not limited to one specific place,” says Willow. “And there’s not, you know, a dead person.”

“Not anymore,” says Tara.

Anya thinks it’s a hitchhiker. Xander wonders what she means by that.

“Standard way to travel through dimensions,” says Anya. “Some demon-a-thing sees someone moving between worlds and grabs on for the ride.”

“You mean, like, some hell beastie rode in with Buffy?” asks Willow. “Like…we’re responsible for this?”

“Assume crash positions,” says Tara.

“I think we shouldn’t have brought Buffy back,” says Anya. “I knew it was going to end badly. I should’ve said something.”

Xander wonders just what they are going to do about this. “I’m feeling the need for some vigorous doing, you know?”

Willow thinks they just have to kill the beastie.

“Can we do that?” asks Xander. “Kill it?”

“We killing something?” asks Buffy. Everyone looks around at her. She’s just come out of the house holding a cup of coffee. Willow is surprised that she’s up, and Tara asks how she’s feeling. Buffy ignores the question. “So what are we killing?”

“A demon you brought back from Hell with you,” says Anya.

Willow glares at her. “It’s not like she’s making it sound. A little haunting-type stuff. Boo-scary. Everything’s normal.” Buffy doesn’t have to worry about it.

“Um, I remember something,” says Buffy. “Last night, uh…” She stops.

“Buff?” asks Xander.

“Uh, the photographs…of us. They changed. They were dead. I mean, we were dead, like, um, dead bodies. But then they were okay, so I just, you know, figured it was me. I was going crazy.”

“Well, maybe you are going crazy, from Hell,” says Anya. Willow glares at her again. “No, you’re fine.”

“You are,” says Willow, “And, Buffy, we’re— we’re so glad.”

Xander and Tara agree. They’ll take care of this haunting thing, and having Buffy back is wonderful.

Buffy looks at them. “We should get to work.”

Dawn looks over Willow’s shoulder in the Magic Box. “What’s the list?”

“Possible hitchhikers,” says Anya. It’s a list of demons who may have come out of Hell with Buffy.

Dawn reads the list over Willow’s shoulder. “‘Skaggmore demons, Trellbane demons, Skitterers, large and small bone-eaters.’ If we get to pick, I say we go with the small bone-eaters.”

“Well, that just means they prefer to eat things with small bones,” says Anya. “Like you.” That earns her a glare from Dawn.

“That’s just what we have so far,” says Willow. “Five species of demons that have been known to move transdimensionally. Two of them may be invisible in this dimension, and two others who can perform spells to alter perception.”

“Well, that’s four,” says Anya. “What’s the other one like?”

“Like the others, only dripping with viscous fluid,” says Tara.

“Ew!” says Dawn.

Xander wants to know if they should concentrate on learning how to kill the ones they’ve got, or keep looking for more demons. Willow isn’t sure.

“I miss Giles,” says Buffy.

“Oh, he’s coming back,” says Willow. “I talked to him. I know I’m a kind of poor substitute, but until then, we’ll get it done.”

Buffy sets her book aside, and gets up from the table. She wants to go patrol. Xander asks if she wants him, or anyone else to come with her.

“No,” says Buffy. “I—I need to go. Sorry.” She starts to walk toward the door.

“You should go,” says Dawn. “I’ll be safe here with the others.” Buffy opens the door. “Don’t worry about me.”

Buffy leaves without looking back. Dawn’s eyes turn white, and she smiles.

Act III

Buffy walks through the cemetery. She pauses by a statue of an angel.

Anya returns to the Magic Box carrying a tray of paper cups. “I found one of those 24-hour places for coffee. Remember that bookstore? Well, they became one of those books and coffee places, and now they’re just coffee. It’s like evolution, only without the ‘getting better’ part.” She has coffees for everyone but Dawn, for whom she has a hot chocolate.

Dawn looks away from the bookshelves she is standing by. Her eyes are still white. “Idiot! All of you did it. You stupid children. Did you think the blood wouldn’t reach you? I smell the death on you. Look at what you’ve done!”

Dawn roars, and a jet of flame erupts from her mouth. Xander, Willow and Tara duck away from it, and it sets the books on the table on fire. Dawn collapses. Something slithers away from her under the floor tiles.

Tara rushes to Dawn while Xander smothers the burning books with a pillow. He asks if Dawn’s okay.

“Did I look like that?” asks Anya. “I hope I didn’t look like that.”

“No,” says Willow, “I’m sure you looked really glamorous cutting up your face.”

Dawn sits up. “What—what is it? What’s happening?” Willow tells her she’s going to be okay.

“I bet you’ll experience some dry mouth,” says Anya.

“Huh?”

“Fire,” says Anya.

“Was it… Did the demon thing have me?” asks Dawn.

“It’s okay,” says Tara. “It’s okay.”

“Yeah, it’s gone,” says Xander.

“Yes, but where did it go?” asks Anya. “I mean, evil things have plans. They have things to do.”

Spike paces aimlessly in the chamber carved out under his crypt. He punches at the wall, and pulls away his bloody hand. He looks at it, and starts to giggle hysterically. He stops when he hears the door of his crypt opening. He picks up a knife, and climbs up the ladder to see what has come to visit him.

Spike comes up behind Buffy. She hasn’t noticed him. She seems intent on the covers of the magazines lying on a table. “Buffy. You should be careful.” She turns to look at him. “You never know what kind of villain’s got a knife at your back.”

Buffy looks down at the knife in Spike’s hand. She doesn’t seem to notice it. “Your hand is hurt.”

“Same with you,” says Spike. Buffy sticks her hands into her pockets.

Spike sets his knife down on a shelf by the wall of his crypt. He tells Buffy that Willow seems to be getting pretty strong. “Bringing you back. It’s hard to get a good night’s death around here.” He indicates a chair, and tells her she can sit down.

Buffy doesn’t say anything, but she sits in the offered chair. Spike sits on the table beside his TV facing her. “Uh, I do remember what I said. The promise. To protect her. If I’d have done that, even if I didn’t make it…you wouldn’t have had to jump. But I want you to know I did save you. Not when it counted, of course, but after that. Every night after that. I see it all again, I do something different. Faster or more clever, you know? Dozens of times, lots of different ways. Every night, I save you.”

Xander and Tara look out the front window of the Magic Box. The sky is starting to lighten.

“I like sunrise better when I’m getting up early than when I’m staying up late, you know?” says Tara. “It’s like I’m seeing it from the wrong side.”

Xander has a question for Tara. Spike got him thinking. “This spell we did— It’s having consequences. I mean, it sure seems like it. I was just wondering… Did you know that this might happen?”

“No!” says Tara.

“Do you think— Could someone have known?” asks Xander.

“Willow is a talented witch, and she would never do anything to hurt anyone.”

“I know, I know.” Xander steps back, and raises his hands. “Backing up quickly. Hands in the air. I just meant—”

“Thaumogenesis!” blurts out Willow from the counter where she has been reading a book.

Anya starts awake, and raises her head off the book she’s been using as a pillow. “She’s possessed.”

Dawn has been napping at the table too. “Yeah, right.”

“I’m not possessed,” says Willow. “I think I figured it out. This demon— It’s not a demon we let out. It’s a demon that we made.”

“We made a demon?” asks Xander. “Bad us.”

Willow explains that thaumogenesis is when a spell actually creates a being, as a price. “Think of it like the world doesn’t like you getting something for free, and we asked for this huge gift—Buffy. And so the world said, ‘fine, but if you have that, you have to take this, too.’ And it made the demon.”

“Technically, that’s not a price,” says Anya. “That’s a gift with purchase.”

Willow and Tara explain that this demon is out of phase with this dimension. “Its consciousness is here, but its body is caught in the ether between existing and not existing.” It doesn’t have a body, so it’s borrowing theirs, or manifesting as copies of them.

“So we need to uncreate it, right?” asks Xander. “We need to send it the rest of the way out of our world.”

Willow tells him that there’s a problem with that. The demon is linked to the spell, and they can’t send it away, without undoing the spell.

“Like it never brought Buffy back,” says Dawn.

“Yes.”

“You can’t do that!” Dawn stands up from the table. “You can’t think for a second that you’re going to do that! If you think you can give her back to me and then take her away again, no! That’s worse than if you never brought her back! You can’t mess with people’s lives this way!”

“Dawn, we’re not going to do it that way,” says Willow.

Dawn turns to look at the others. “How can you let her do this? How can you even talk about letting her go?”

“Honey, you’re not listening,” says Tara. “She said we will find another way.”

“We will,” says Willow.

“Then do it!” says Dawn.

Willow turns back to her book, and resumes her reading. It doesn’t take her long. “Wait, wait. Dawn, everybody, hold on.” She starts to smile.

“What?” asks Anya. “Why are you smiling? That’s inappropriate.”

“Because it’s temporary,” says Willow.

“What is?” asks Xander.

“The demon,” says Willow. “It’s going to dissipate. The only way for it to survive on this plane is if it were to kill the subject of the original spell.”

“It would live if it killed Buffy?” asks Tara. “That’s not going to happen.”

Xander’s eyes go white. “Thanks for the tip!” He collapses to the floor, and the entity slides away from him under the floor.

Buffy enters her house, and goes up the stairs. A cloud of mist coalesces behind her, and follows her.

Act IV

Buffy enters her room, and pauses to look at the pictures over her desk.

“You don’t belong here,” says a voice from behind her. Buffy spins around, and sees the mist coming into her room. It forms a vaguely humanoid shape. She punches at it, but her fist passes right through it. A tendril of mist lashes out at Buffy and knocks her back. Buffy recovers, and looks around. The mist has vanished. It starts to reform and she punches at it again, with no effect. The mist lashes out, and Buffy is knocked out the door of her room into the hallway.

Buffy looks back into her room, but the mist is gone. She slowly walks back in the door.

“Did they tell you you belonged here?” asks the demon. “Did they say this was your home again?” It starts to reform in front of Buffy, and lashes out with a mist shrouded hand. Buffy catches it, but it dissolves in her grasp. The mist vanishes again.

Buffy looks around. The mist starts to reform behind her. She spins around, and punches through it.

The mist dissipates. “Were you offered pretty lies, little girl?” It moves over Buffy’s head and starts to coalesce around her. “Or did they even give you a choice?” The mist surrounds Buffy, holding her in its grasp.

Xander drives toward Buffy’s house with Anya and Dawn in the car. Dawn wants him to drive faster.

“She’s right, you’re like a snail,” says Anya. “A snail who’s driving a car very slowly. Come on, give it the lead foot! We got to help Buffy with that demon you sent after her.”

“I did not send the demon,” says Xander. “I was possessed. The demon used me to eavesdrop on our conversation.”

“Great. So now what?” asks Anya. “We have to talk in some sort of anti-demon secret code?”

“Ood-gay idea-yay, An-yay,” says Xander.

“Stop talking wrong in Pig Latin and drive!” says Dawn. “Buffy’s in trouble!”

Xander tells Dawn not to worry. Willow and Tara are doing a spell. That doesn’t really reassure Dawn, she’s afraid it will send Buffy back.

“No, of course not,” says Xander. “It’s just that she can’t fight this thing if it’s all misty, so they’ll make it more solid so Buffy can kick its fully-embodied ass.”

“Sure it’ll work?” asks Dawn.

Willow and Tara kneel on the floor of the Magic Box with candles burning around them. They face each other and hold hands.

“Child of words, hear thy makers.
Child of words, we entreat.
With our actions did we make thee.
To our voices wilt thou bend.”

Buffy breaks free from the mist enveloping her. It knocks Buffy across her bed, and she lands on the floor beside it.

Willow and Tara continue their spell.

“With our potions, thou took motive.
With out motions, came to pass.
We rescind no past devotions,
Give thee substance, give thee mass.”

Buffy’s hand goes under her bed and comes out holding an axe.

“You’re the one who’s barely here,” says the demon. “Set on this earth like a bubble. You won’t even disturb the air when you go.”

Buffy swings the axe at the demon, but it just passes through it.

Xander, Dawn and Anya appear at the door to Buffy’s room. Buffy turns when she hears them, and tells them to get Dawn out of there. Xander grabs Dawn and tries to pull her away, but Dawn doesn’t want to go.

A light starts to glow above Willow, and she goes silent while Tara continues with the spell.

“Child of words, hear thy makers.
Child of words, we en…treat.”

Tara notices Willow has stopped. She lets go of her hands.

Willow’s head snaps back, and she opens her eyes. They’ve gone black. “Solid!”

The demon solidifies into a white skeletal form dressed in gauze in front of Buffy. Buffy swings her axe at it, but the demon knocks it from her hands, and knocks Buffy to the floor. Xander is still trying to pull the resisting Dawn out of the room. Buffy recovers the axe and springs back to her feet. She swings the axe at the demon again, and this time she connects. The demon’s head comes off, and rolls across the floor.

Dawn closes her eyes, and looks away. “Ooh…that’s probably the sort of thing I’m not supposed to see, right?”

Anya pats her on the shoulder.

Epilogue

It’s a bright, sunny morning when Dawn leaves the house, and goes down the walk. Buffy appears at the door and calls her back.

Dawn turns and asks what’s wrong.

Buffy comes down the front steps with a brown paper bag. “Lunch.”

“You made me lunch? Wow, thanks.” Dawn takes the bag from Buffy.

“You better go,” says Buffy. “You been out of school since…I got back. And you know what they say: those of us who fail history… Doomed to repeat it in summer school.” She gives Dawn a bit of a smile.

Dawn gives Buffy a hug. “Thank you. Are you okay?”

Buffy smiles a little more. “I’m going to charge money for every person who asks me that.”

“Everyone’s been doing that, huh?”

“Little bit,” says Buffy.

Dawn tells Buffy it’s because they all care about her a lot. “When you were gone… It was bad when you were gone. But it’ll be better now, now that they can see you being happy. That’s all they want.” She turns and leaves for school.

Buffy thinks about what Dawn said.

Willow and Tara are putting books back on the shelves when Buffy enters the Magic Box. Xander asks if she got Dawn off to school all right, and offers to help pick her up later. Buffy tells him she has it covered.

“Look, you guys, um, there’s this thing. So I’m just going to say it,” says Buffy. “You brought me back. I was in a… I was in Hell. I, um, I can’t think too much about what it was like, but it felt like the world abandoned me there. And then, suddenly, you guys did what you did.”

“It was Willow,” says Tara. “She knew what to do.”

Buffy looks at Willow. “Okay, so you did that.”

Willow smiles, and nods.

“And the world came rushing back,” says Buffy. “Thank you. You guys gave me the world. I can’t tell you what it means to me. And I should’ve said it before.”

“You’re welcome,” says Willow. She moves to Buffy and hugs her.

Xander wraps his arms around both of them. “Welcome home, Buffy.”

Buffy steps out into the alley behind the Magic Box. She’s a little surprised to see Spike there sitting on a crate in the shadows by the opposite wall. “It’s daylight, and you’re…”

“Not on fire?” asks Spike. “Sun’s low enough. Shady enough here.” He had been planning to go inside, but he overheard them talking, and started feeling queasy. “Say, aren’t you leaving a hole in the middle of some soggy group hug?”

“Just wanted a little time alone.” Buffy sits down on the crate beside Spike.

“Oh. Uh, right, then.” Spike gets up and starts to walk away. He stops when he realizes that he’s fully fenced in by sunlight.

“That’s okay,” says Buffy. “I can be alone with you here.”

Spike isn’t sure how to take that. He looks at her for a moment. “Buff? Slayer? Are you okay?”

“I’m here,” says Buffy. “I’m good.”

Spike doesn’t believe her. “Buffy, if you’re in— If you’re in pain. Or if you need anything, or if I can do anything for you…”

“You can’t.”

Spike sits down beside her. “Well, I haven’t been to a hell dimension just of late, but I do know a thing or two about torment.”

“I was happy,” says Buffy. Spike looks at her. “Wherever I was…I was happy. At peace. I knew that everyone I cared about was all right. I knew it! Time didn’t mean anything. Nothing had form. But I was still me, you know? And I was warm. And I was loved. And I was finished. Complete.

“I don’t understand theology or dimensions, or any of it, really. But I think I was in Heaven. And now I’m not. I was torn out of there. Pulled out…by my friends. Everything here is hard, and bright, and violent. Everything I feel, everything I touch… This is Hell. Just getting through the next moment…and the one after that. Knowing what I’ve lost…”

Buffy gets up, and walks away from Spike, out into the sunlight. She stops and looks back at him. “They can never know. Never!”

Death Toll