Introduction
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| Two to Go | Lessons |
Buffy slowly climbs to her feet, and looks at Giles standing in the doorway of the Magic Box. “Giles?”
Anya is back on her feet too. “Giles!”
Giles attention remains focused on Willow, lying on the floor where his blast of energy left her. She sits up, wipes the blood away from her nose and looks at him. “Uh-oh. Daddy’s home. I’m in wicked trouble now.”
Giles slowly walks toward her. “You have no idea. You have to stop what you’re doing.”
“Oh, sorry. Can’t do that. I’m not finished yet.” Willow starts to get back to her feet.
“Neither am I.” Giles waves his hand toward Willow. “Stay down!” Willow falls back to the floor.
“How’d you do that?” asks Anya.
Willow is surprised too, she sits up again. “That’s borrowed power. No way is it going to be strong enough—”
“I’m here to help you.”
Willow thanks Giles for the offer, but she figures she can kill a couple of geeks without any help from him. “But, hey, if you’d like to watch. I mean, that’s what you Watchers are good at, right? Watching? Butting in on things that don’t concern you?”
“You concern me, Willow. Stay on this path and you’ll wind up dead.”
“Willow, listen to him,” says Buffy. “I don’t want to fight you anymore.”
“I don’t want to fight you, either.” Willow looks at Giles. “I want to fight him.” She gets to her feet again.
Giles waves his hand at Willow. “Stay down!”
“No!” Willow casually brushes aside Giles’ spell this time. “Remember that little spat we had before you left? When you were under the delusion that you were still relevant here? You called me a rank, arrogant amateur. Well, buckle up, Rupert…” Willow starts to summon her power. “…’cause I’ve turned pro.”
Willow summons her power. “Asmodea, bring forth—”
“Vincire!” A green bolt of energy fires from Giles’ hand, and envelops Willow.
“What? No! Get off!” Willow struggles as the energy surrounding her lifts her off the ground. “Solvo! Libero!”
Willow can’t break free. Giles holds out his hand again, and her head snaps back. She hangs motionless, suspended in the air, unable to move or speak.
Buffy moves up beside Giles. “What did you do?”
“Contained her and her powers within a binding field. It puts her in a kind of stasis for the time—” Giles looks at Buffy. “You cut your hair.”
Buffy looks at Giles for a moment, and then grabs him in a tight hug.
Anya comes up behind Giles. “I’m blonde.” Giles looks around at her with raised eyebrows. “I—I coloured my hair. Again. I’m blonde.”
“Yes, I noticed.” Giles holds out one of his arms toward her, and Anya joins Buffy in his arms.
Giles releases Buffy and Anya, and walks toward Willow. “I’m very sorry about Tara.”
Willow’s eyes open, and she tilts her head a bit to look toward him. “This…won’t hold me forever.”
Buffy and Giles go back into her training room for a quiet chat. Buffy asks him if he was sent by the Council.
“The Council haven’t a clue,” says Giles. “About much of anything, really.” A powerful coven of witches in Devon had sensed the rise of a dangerous dark force in Sunnydale, fueled by grief. He had hoped that it wasn’t Willow, but then a seer in the coven told him what happened to Tara. “That’s when the coven imbued me with their powers.”
“And sent you here to bring Willow down?” asks Buffy.
Giles wants to know what’s been happening. He thinks it’s pretty obvious that Willow has been abusing the magick.
“She has,” says Buffy. “She was, and I barely even noticed. Giles, everything’s just been so… Xander left Anya at the altar, and Anya’s a vengeance demon again.” Giles’ expression freezes on his face as Buffy continues. “Dawn’s a total klepto. Money’s been so tight that I’ve been slinging burgers at the Doublemeat Palace, and…” Buffy looks away. “…I’ve been sleeping with Spike.”
Buffy looks up to see how Giles reacts to that last bit of news. She sees his frozen expression, and looks down, ashamed of herself.
Giles face stays frozen for several seconds, and then it breaks. He snickers. Giles quickly puts his hand over his mouth to try and hide his smile, but it’s hopeless. “I’m sorry.” His snickers turn into chuckles.
Buffy looks at Giles in disbelief, as he completely loses control of his laughter. Then she starts to smile too. His laughter is contagious. She’s soon laughing along with him.
Anya starts to clean up the mess in the Magic Box. She carries a basket of things she’s picked up off the floor over to the remains of the cash counter. She hears Willow’s voice in her head. “Anya.”
Anya turns cautiously toward her. “Willow.”
Willow now has control of her neck back. She looks toward Anya. “I need you, Anya. I need you to do something for me.”
“I know what you’re trying to do,” says Anya. “I hate to burst your bubble, but that mind control mojo doesn’t work on vengeance demons, so why don’t you just—”
“Stop talking and listen.”
“Okay.” Anya is very disturbed by how easily Willow did that.
“You need to free me.”
“No.” Anya starts back toward Buffy’s training room.
“You don’t want to call out to them.” Anya stops and turns back toward Willow. “You want to take away this binding spell.”
“I don’t know how,” says Anya.
“I do. Do you want me to tell you?”
Buffy is laughing so hard she’s lying draped over her pommel horse as she tells Giles about how she almost killed all her friends because she thought they were all figments of her imagination.
Giles is laughing too. “Duct tape?”
“On their mouths,” laughs Buffy. “So the demon could eat them.”
“Because they were figments!”
“All of it. You, Sunnydale… And I was just some nutcase in L.A.”
“Of course. Why didn’t we see it before?” Giles manages to get his laughter under control. “Can you forgive me? I should never have left.”
Buffy stops laughing too. “No. You were right to leave. We’re just…stupid.”
Giles grins. “I know you’re all stupid. I should never have abandoned you.”
“No. Giles, you were right about everything. It is time I was an adult.”
“Sometimes the most adult thing you can do is ask for help when you need it.”
Buffy grins at him. “Now you tell me. I guess…I wasn’t ready before. It took a long time for that feeling to go away.” Giles looks up at her. “The feeling that I wasn’t really here. It was like…when I clawed my way out of that grave, I left something behind. A part of me. I just… I don’t understand why I’m back.”
“You have a calling.”
“But it was my time, Giles,” says Buffy. “Someone would have taken my place. So, why?”
Giles doesn’t have an answer for that one. Buffy switches topics back to what they are going to do about Willow.
Giles doesn’t know. The coven is working on finding a way to extract Willow’s power without killing her, but even if she survives he doesn’t know if she’ll be like she was. “Willow’s killed a human being. How will she be able to live with herself?”
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” says Willow. Buffy and Giles turn and see Anya hanging suspended in the doorway. Willow is behind her, holding Anya up with one hand by the neck. “Willow doesn’t live here anymore.”
Willow drops Anya onto the floor.
Buffy steps toward Willow, and gets hit by a lightning blast that knocks her against the back wall of her training room. She falls to the floor, and doesn’t get up.
Giles tries his binding spell again, but Willow’s ready this time, and dissolves it with ease. “Fool me once,” Willow wags her finger at him, “Shame on you.” She looks at the rack on the wall where Buffy’s throwing knives and axes are hung. They float free, and spin in the air.
Giles looks around desperately. He sees Buffy’s punching dummy. “Tego!” The dummy slides in front of him just in time to block the knives and axes as Willow sends them flying his way.
Willow waves her hand, and the dummy is knocked away.
Giles is ready with his next spell. “Excudo!” He throws a ball of green fire at Willow that knocks her through the brick wall behind her, back out into the main section of the Magic Box.
Dawn and Xander walk quickly down a residential street, with Jonathan and Andrew following along, still carrying the swords. Dawn wants to know where they’re going.
Xander still has no idea, which surprises him. “I can’t even run away well. That’s something I’m usually good at.”
Dawn suggests that they go back to the Magic Box to help.
“Yeah, ’cause I’ve been such a big help already,” says Xander. “Standing around like a monkey while Buffy gets shot. Tara’s dead, and Willow’s… losing—”
“Well, feeling sorry for yourself isn’t helping either, Xander, okay?” says Dawn. “You know, if Spike were here, he’d go back and fight.”
“Sure, if he wasn’t too busy trying to rape your sister.”
Dawn stops. “What?”
“Forget it.” Xander keeps moving.
Dawn hurries to catch up with him. She doesn’t believe what Xander just told her. Spike wouldn’t do that.
“Is this blind spot, like, a genetic trait with the Summers women?” asks Xander. “The only useful thing Spike ever did was finally leave town.”
A demon screams in the darkness. Its head comes rolling out of the shadows across the cave floor.
“Well, that was a bloody doddle and a piece o’ piss.” Spike steps out of the shadows, carrying another demon head by its horn in his hand. He collapses to his knees. “You got any more ruddy tests for me, you ponce? I’ll take anything you can throw at me, if it’ll get me what I need to take care of the Slayer. Give her what’s coming to her.” He sniffs. “You just bring it on. Bring on the whole…”
A chittering sound fills the cave. Spike looks down. “Bloody hell!”
Thousands of bugs are crawling across the cave floor. They start to swarm over him. A beetle crawls up his nose. Spike cries in pain, and more bugs crawl into his mouth.
Willow stands in the middle of a circle of burning books in the ruins of the Magic Box. Holes have been knocked through the exterior walls into the neighbouring alley, and part of the roof has caved in. “That all you got, Jeeves? ’Cause I could stand to go another ten rounds. Whereas…you can barely stand.” Her face is scratched, and bleeding.
Giles is leaning against a support pillar for the loft. “Your powers…may be undeniably great…but I can still hurt you if I have to.”
“Boy, you just don’t get it, do you? Nothing can hurt me now. This…” Willow waves her hand in front of her face, and her scratches heal. “…is nothing. It’s all…nothing.”
Buffy appears at the hole in the wall back into her training area, and looks out at Giles and Willow.
“I see,” says Giles. “If you lose someone you love, the other people in your life who care about you…become meaningless. I wonder what Tara would say about that.”
“You can ask her yourself.” Willow sends a bolt of lightning at Giles.
Buffy knocks Giles out of the lightning’s way, and it hits the support column for the loft. The column buckles, and the loft collapses where Giles had been standing.
Willow looks down at Buffy and Giles on the floor. “You’re always saving everyone. It’s kinda pesky.” She reaches down and scoops up a ball of fire from the burning books. It floats above her hand. “You probably even think you’re buying escape time for Jonathan and the other one. Well, I got a little secret for ya. I can kill them from anywhere I want…with this.” Willow waves her other hand over the ball of fire, and it grows. “It’ll find them. It’ll bury them. Along with anyone else helping those Dead Men Walking.”
Buffy gets to her feet. “Don’t.”
Willow is feeling very chipper. “Unless…somebody, somehow, can get there in time to save them. Ha. Oh, well.” She tosses the fireball into the air. “Fly, my pretty, fly.” It burns through the ceiling and vanishes. Willow smiles, feeling very proud of herself. “See what I did there?”
Buffy looks at Giles. “Go!” he tells her.
Buffy runs out of the shop. “Good luck!” Willow calls after her. She turns back to Giles. “Thought she’d never leave. Now I finally have you all to myself.”
Buffy reaches the street and looks up. She sees the fireball rising high into the air, and moving rapidly away. She runs after it.
Willow paces around the Magic Box. “You’re such a hypocrite. Waltzing in here with your borrowed magicks…so you could tell me what? ‘Magick’s bad?’ ‘Behave?’ ‘Be a good girl?’ Ha. Well, I don’t think you’re in any position to be telling me what to do.” She looks up. Giles is pinned against the ceiling. “Do you?”
Willow gestures with her hand, and Giles falls back to the floor. “I used to think you had all the answers, that I had so much to learn from you.”
“Willow…”
Willow gestures again, and Giles is slammed back up against the ceiling. “You were jealous. Still are. Just couldn’t bear that I was the one with power. That’s why you ran away. That’s why you—”
“Incurso!” Green energy flows from Giles’ mouth, and knocks Willow back against the remains of the cash counter. Giles falls back to the floor.
Willow straightens herself up. “That…was rude! Now I forgot what I was saying.”
Giles gets up onto his hands and knees. “Perhaps you’re not as strong as…you think you are.” He struggles to get himself erect, standing on his knees on the floor. “You’re expending way too much of your mystical energies to maintain your powers. At this rate you’ll…burn out…and up.”
“Blah, blah, blah,” says Willow.
“Willow, you need to stop.”
“What I need…” Willow is suddenly beside Giles. “…is a little pick-me-up.” She presses her hand against Giles’ chest, and he gasps in pain as she starts to drain the power from him.
Willow pulls away, nearly overcome by the potency of the power she extracted from Giles. “Whoa! Who’s your supplier? This is… Wow. It’s incredible!”
Giles falls back to the floor, barely conscious while Willow tries to gain control over the power she has extracted from him. It’s overwhelming her. She feels like no mortal person has ever had so much power. It makes her ecstatic. “It’s like I’m connected to everything! I can feel. It feels like… I can feel…everyone!” Willow’s ecstasy quickly fades as more feelings wash over her. “Ohh. Oh, my god. All the emotion. All the pain. No, it’s, it’s too much! Oh, jeez, it’s just too much!”
“Willow,” gasps Giles, “it doesn’t have to be like that. You…you can stop it.”
Willow pulls herself to her feet. “Uh…yeah. I…I can. I have to stop this. I’ll make it go away.” Willow looks down at Giles. “Oh, you poor bastard. Your suffering has to end.” She rises into the air, and vanishes into a whirlwind, and lightning.
“No,” says Giles. This isn’t what he wanted.
Dawn watches Xander kick at the door of the Alpert crypt in the cemetery.
Jonathan and Andrew are trying to break into another crypt. Jonathan tries to use his sword to pry open the door. It slips, and he cuts his hand. “Ow! Son of bitch!”
“Buttwipe!” says Andrew.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” says Jonathan.
“Oh,” says Andrew. “Reflex.”
Xander is surprised that they’re having so much trouble. They’ve really tightened up security at the cemetery. Andrew doesn’t really think much of Xander’s idea for hiding out there, but Xander doesn’t much care what Andrew thinks of it.
Dawn has become distracted by something she sees in the sky. “Xander! What is that?”
Xander and the others look in the direction of Dawn’s gaze. They see the fireball hurtling toward them.
Buffy is running underneath it. “Get out of there!” she shouts at them. “Move!”
Buffy knocks Andrew and Jonathan off their feet just in time to save them from the fireball which hits where they had been standing. The blast knocks Dawn and Xander off their feet. Xander’s head hits a headstone, and he gets knocked out.
The ground under Dawn gives way. A chasm opens up under her, and she falls into it. Buffy tries to grab her, and the ground gives way under her too.
Dawn and Buffy land on the floor of a chamber far underground. Buffy looks up, and blanches. She rolls aside just in time to avoid having one of Jonathan and Andrew’s swords impale her head. The second sword lands on the ground beside it.
Buffy and Dawn look around the pit that they have fallen into. They’re in a chamber about twenty feet down. The walls and floor are dirt. There are coffins on the floor, and the ends of more are sticking out of the walls.
Jonathan and Andrew get to their feet, and look around. They see the dark hole where Buffy and Dawn vanished. They can’t see the bottom of it. They see Xander lying unconscious on the ground.
Jonathan looks at Andrew. “Mexico, huh?”
Andrew nods. They both run away.
Anya opens the door from the training room. It falls off its hinges. She enters the ruins of the Magic Box, and looks around. She sees Giles lying on the floor. “Giles.” She rushes to his side and kneels beside him. She puts her hand on his chest and gently shakes him. “Giles!”
Giles opens his eyes. “Anya.”
“I’m so sorry,” says Anya. “Willow forced me to free her with her brain. Are you okay?”
“I can see.”
Anya is surprised. “Oh! It’s a…” She isn’t sure what it is. “…miracle!”
That wasn’t the sort of seeing Giles meant. He means that he can see Willow. She took his magic, and now he knows where she is, and what she’s going to do. “I can feel what— Oh, god!”
Anya tells Giles to rest, but he doesn’t have time for that. He’s dying.
“No, you’re not!” says Anya.
“It was…it was the only way,” says Giles. “I thought we— there’d be a chance, now, but… I know where Willow is. She’s going to finish it.”
“Finish what?”
“The world,” says Giles.
The sun is starting to rise. Buffy has climbed about half way out of the pit she and Dawn have fallen into. A root she’s grasping gives way, and she falls back. She lands on the rotting lid of a coffin, and shatters it.
Buffy gets quickly to her feet, freaked by the shattered coffin she landed on. Dawn asks her if she’s okay.
Buffy doesn’t answer. She just looks up at the opening twenty feet over their heads, and shouts for Xander. Dawn is pretty sure she saw Xander get knocked out. Buffy shouts for Xander again.
The pit reminds Dawn of the chamber under Spike’s crypt. Buffy ignores her comment and goes to one of the coffins sticking out of the wall. She starts pulling on it. Dawn asks what she’s doing.
“If we can pull these out, we can use the coffins for height,” says Buffy. She picks up one of the swords, and starts digging at the dirt around the coffin with it. “Maybe get out of here.”
“Maybe one of the tunnels Spike uses is around here,” says Dawn. “We can use it to get to his place.”
Buffy keeps digging. “That’s the last place on earth we need to be.”
“Oh. But it was good enough for you to take me there after what he did to you?” asks Dawn.
Buffy turns to look at her. “What he—?”
“Tried to do,” says Dawn. “Whatever.”
Buffy figures out what Dawn’s talking about, and how she knows it. “Xander.”
“So it’s true?”
“Dawn, you may not have noticed, we’re in really big trouble here.”
“Why did you not tell me?”
“’Cause you didn’t need to know,” says Buffy.
“Yes, I do,” says Dawn. “I need to know. I’m not a kid anymore.”
“Dawn, I’m trying to protect you—”
“Well, you can’t. Look around, Buffy. We’re trapped in here. Willow’s killing, and people I love keep dying. And you cannot protect me from that.”
“Dawn—” Whatever Buffy is about to say is interrupted by Xander calling down from above. He asks if they’re okay. He can’t see Dawn until she steps into the light beside her sister. Buffy asks if Jonathan and Andrew are up there with him.
Xander looks around. “Nyah. They must have skedaddled when I was out. Weasels.” A clump of sod by the edge of the hole that Xander’s leaning his hand on gives way, and he nearly follows it into the hole. “Whoa!”
Buffy tells Xander to find a rope or something to get them out.
Xander looks around. He doesn’t have any idea where, but he tells Buffy he’ll look for one.
“And hurry up,” says Buffy, “before—”
Anya teleports in beside Buffy. “Holy frijole!” She’s surprised she’s in a hole in the ground.
Buffy is surprised to see Anya. She asks her what she’s doing there, and asks where Giles is. Dawn is surprised to learn that Giles is back, and wants to know why Buffy didn’t tell her about that either.
Buffy ignores Dawn. “Did he stop Willow?”
“No,” says Anya. “And things just got a whole lot worse.”
Xander is still kneeling at the lip of the hole, listening as Anya explains what’s happening to Buffy.
“How worse?” asks Buffy.
“End of the world worse,” says Anya. “Willow’s going to destroy it.”
“She can do that?” asks Dawn.
“Well, she can and she will when she gets to where she’s going.”
“Where is she going?” asks Buffy.
“Big old satanic temple, Kingman’s Bluff,” says Anya.
Buffy’s puzzled. “There’s no temple on Kingman’s Bluff.”
Willow stands on top of Kingman’s Bluff with her arms outstretched. A trident on top of an inverted pentagram rises out of the ground. The pentagram is on top of the spire of a temple. The spire rises out of the ground. At the base is an alabaster statue of a female demon. She has medusa like hair and a forked tongue sticks out of her mouth. A snake is entwined around her body.
Anya tells Buffy about how the temple of Proserpexa was swallowed up by an earthquake in 1932, along with all of Proserpexa’s followers. 1 They had intended to use her effigy to end the world.
“So now 70 years later Willow’s going to make their dreams come true?” asks Buffy.
“She’s going to drain the planet’s life force and funnel its energy through Proserpexa’s effigy,” says Anya, “and burn the earth to a cinder.”
“Not if I can help it,” says Buffy.
“You can’t,” says Anya. “Something else Giles said. ‘No magic or supernatural force can stop her.’” She doesn’t really know what that means. “He—he said ‘the Slayer can’t stop her.’ And then he said a bunch of other stuff, and he really wasn’t too clear.”
Buffy is worried by the implications of what Anya is saying. “Anya, what are you—”
“Look, uh…I should get back to him,” says Anya. “He’s alone.”
“Is he okay?”
Anya doesn’t answer the question directly. “Don’t think he has a lot of time left.” Dawn gasps when she realises what Anya means. “I’m sorry.” Anya vanishes.
Buffy looks up at the hole over her head. “Xander! Where is that rope?”
“Buffy…” says Dawn.
“Xander! Where is he?” Buffy still isn’t getting any response from him.
“You heard what Anya said,” says Dawn. “And you heard what Giles said!”
Buffy goes back to her old plan of piling up coffins. “I heard, and I don’t care. I have to try.” She has no intention of just standing idle while Willow incinerates the world.
Willow stands before the Temple of Proserpexa.
“From the pit of forgotten shadows, awaken, sister of the dark,
Awaken and—”
Willow turns away from the temple. She senses what Buffy is doing. “Always the Slayer, right to the last.”
Buffy hears Willow’s voice in her mind. “Willow?”
“And it is the last, you know.” says Willow. “For all your fighting, thinking you’re saving the world.”
“Buffy?” asks Dawn.
Buffy holds up her hand to stop Dawn.
“And in the end, I’m the only one that can save it.”
“By killing us?” asks Buffy.
“It’s the only way to stop the pain.” says Willow. “I can’t take it anymore. But I know you, Buffy. You’re a warrior. You won’t go out without a fight. I don’t really have time for one. But you should go out fighting.”
“Willow, what are you—”
“It was me who took you out of the earth. Well, now…the earth wants you back.”
The underground chamber is rocked by an earthquake. The arm of a creature made of earth, and roots breaks free from the wall. It has large pincher claws made from bone. More creatures start to break out of the other walls.
Buffy fights off the earth monsters with one of the swords. A new monster rips free from the walls of the chamber for every one she kills. “They just keep coming. I can’t take ’em all.” She turns to her sister. “Dawn…will you help me?” She holds out the sword.
Dawn takes the sword from Buffy’s hand. “I got your back.”
Buffy grabs the other sword off the ground.
Willow holds out her arms.
“Proserpexa, let the cleansing fires from the depths burn away the suffering souls and bring sweet death.”
Lightning starts to flash around Willow, and wind swirls around her. She stands in the center of a whirlwind laced with lightning. The ground beneath her starts to scorch. Energy flows from her into the statue of Proserpexa.
The Magic Box is rocked by an earthquake.
Anya is kneeling beside Giles. “Giles… Giles! Don’t die. Not yet. There are— there are things I want to tell you. Thanks a lot for coming. It was good of you to teleport all this way.” A stronger earthquake rocks them. “Though in retrospect, it probably would have been better if you hadn’t come and given Willow all that magic that made her, like, ten times more powerful. That would’ve been a plus.”
The whirlwind, and the area of scorched earth surrounding Willow grows. The beam of energy flowing from her into Proserpexa is suddenly cut off. The whirlwind dies around Willow.
Xander is standing between Willow and Proserpexa. “Hey, black-eyed girl. Whatcha doin’?”
“Get out of here,” says Willow.
Xander doesn’t move. “Oh, no. You’re not the only one with powers, you know. You may be a hopped-up uber-witch, but this carpenter can drywall you into the next century.”
“I’m not joking, Xander. Get out of my way, now!” Willow knocks Xander off his feet with a bolt of lightning. Willow pauses. She’s sorry she did that to him.
Giles opens his eyes. “There.”
“What?” asks Anya.
Giles smiles at her. “It’s not over.”
One of the earth monsters knocks the sword out of Dawn’s hand, and slashes her arm with its claws. She falls back away from it.
Buffy sees that her sister’s in trouble. “Dawn! I’m coming!”
Buffy slashes at the two monsters attacking her. She kills them, and turns back toward Dawn in time to see her duck under a slash from the monster’s claws, and dive and roll across the floor back to the sword she’d dropped.
Dawn scoops up her sword and spins back to stab the remaining monster. She pulls her sword back out of it, grabs the handle with both hands, and chops off its head. She notices the amazed expression on Buffy’s face. “What? You think I never watched you?”
Another pair of earth monsters pull free from the walls on either side of Buffy and Dawn. The sisters stand back to back, ready to face them.
The whirlwind swirls around Willow again, and the scorched area grows around her. The effigy of Proserpexa starts to glow red from the power flowing into it from Willow. Xander stands up into the beam again, cutting it off.
“You can’t stop this,” says Willow.
“Yeah. I get that,” says Xander. “It’s just, where else am I going to go? You’ve been my best friend my whole life. World going to end— Where else would I want to be?”
Willow smiles at him. “Is this the master plan? You’re going to stop me by telling me you love me?”
“Well, I was going to walk you off a cliff and hand you an anvil, but it seemed kind of cartoony.”
“Still making jokes.”
“I’m not joking. I know you’re in pain. I can’t imagine the pain you’re in. And I know you’re about to do something apocalyptically evil and stupid, and hey,” Xander shrugs. “I still want to hang. You’re Willow.”
“Don’t call me that.
“The first day of kindergarten you cried because you broke the yellow crayon, and you were too afraid to tell anyone. You’ve come pretty far. Ending the world, not a terrific notion. But the thing is, yeah, I love you. I love crayon-breaky Willow, and I love scary-veiny Willow. So if I’m going out, it’s here. If you want to kill the world…well, then, start with me. I’ve earned that.”
“You think I won’t?”
Xander steps toward her. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll still love you.”
“Shut up!” Willow slashes at the air in front of her with her hand, and deep scratches appear in Xander’s cheek.
Xander feels at the gashes in his cheek. He pulls his hand away and looks at the blood on his fingertips. “I love you.”
Willow slashes the air again, and Xander’s shirt is rent open. Deep gouges appear in his chest.
Xander staggers, and falls to his knees. He gets up again and steps toward Willow. “I…love you.”
“Shut up!” Willow sends a blast of death at Xander, but her power has been drained.
Xander still staggers from its impact. “I love you, Willow.”
“Stop!” Willow sends another blast at Xander, even weaker than her last one.
“I love you.” Xander steps toward Willow again.
“Stop!” Willow tries to blast Xander again, but she only generates a few sparks around her hands.
Xander staggers toward Willow. She tries to blast him again, and gets nothing. She starts to cry, and pounds on his chest with her fists.
“I love you.” Xander hugs Willow as she collapses to the ground, crying.
Xander and Willow sit on the ground together. He hugs her as she cries. The black flows out of her hair, and it returns to red. The veins fade from her face.
The earth creatures attacking Buffy and Dawn dissolve into dust. Dawn looks around. “What happened?”
Anya sits on the steps in the ruins of the Magic Box holding her head in her hands. She hears Giles grunt, looks up, and sees him struggling to sit up. “Giles. You’re not dead!”
“No,” says Giles. Anya rushes to Giles’ side and hugs him. “However, I’m still in some pain.”
“Oh.” Anya lets go and sits back. “Well, why aren’t you dead? Why aren’t I dead?”
“The threat’s gone,” says Giles. “Willow’s been stopped.”
Anya’s face falls. “Oh. You mean she’s—”
“No, she’s alive. It, uh— The magic she took from me, it—it did what I hoped it would do.”
“Oh, you dosed her!” says Anya. “You knew she’d take your powers all along!”
“The gift that was given me by the coven was the true essence of magic,” says Giles. “Willow’s magic came from a place of rage and power.”
“And vengeance. Don’t forget vengeance.”
“Oh, how could I?” Giles smiles at Anya. “In any case, the magic she took from me tapped into…the spark of humanity she had left. Helped her to feel again. Gave Xander the opportunity to reach her.”
Anya is surprised by that. “Xander?”
“Yes,” says Giles. “It was he who got to her in time. He saved us all.”
Anya is proud to hear that it was Xander who saved them, despite herself.
Buffy slowly sits down on top of one of the coffins on the chamber floor.
“I think it’s over, Buffy,” says Dawn. “The world’s still here.”
Buffy places her face in her hands and starts to cry.
“Sorry to disappoint you,” says Dawn. A snort of laughter comes out through Buffy’s crying. “Wait. Is—is that happy crying?”
Buffy looks up at her sister. “Yes, dummy. You think I wanted the world to end?”
“I don’t know. Didn’t you?”
“Dawn…” Buffy gets to her feet, and hugs her sister. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.”
Dawn hugs Buffy back. “It’s okay, Buffy. It’s okay.”
“No.” Buffy sniffs back tears. “It hasn’t been. It hasn’t been okay. But it’s going to be, now. I see it.” She pulls away so she can look Dawn in the eyes.
“See what?”
“You. Things have really sucked lately. That’s all going to change. And I want to be there when it does. I want to see my friends happy again. I want to see you grow up. The woman you’re going to become. Because she’s going to be beautiful. And she’s going to be powerful.” Buffy turns away and looks at one of the broken caskets on the floor. “I’ve got it so wrong. I don’t want to protect you from the world. I want to show it to you.” Buffy turns back to Dawn. “There’s so much that I want to show you.” She hugs Dawn again.
Buffy’s arm reaches up out of the pit. She grabs at the sod and lifts herself most of the way out of the hole. Once she has a secure grip she reaches back with her other hand, and helps Dawn climb out too.
Willow and Xander are still sitting on the ground hugging each other on Kingman’s Bluff. Willow is still crying.
Anya helps Giles to his feet. She pulls his arm around her shoulder, and she supports him with her arm around his waist as they leave the Magic Box together. They have to duck under one of the fallen ceiling beams on their way out.
A truck driver chews on a toothpick and leers at Jonathan and Andrew, who are sitting beside him in the cab. Jonathan slides as far away from him as he can get, without shoving Andrew out the door.
Buffy looks around as if seeing the world for the first time. The spring flowers and trees are in bloom and it’s a beautiful warm day. She and Dawn put their arms around each other’s waists as they walk off together.
Spike lies on his back on the cave floor.
“You have endured the required trials,” says the demon.
Spike struggles to get up onto his knees. “Bloody right I have. So you’ll give me what I want. Make me what I was, so Buffy can get what she deserves.”
“Very well.” The demon places its hand against Spike’s chest. “We will return your soul.”
The demon’s hand glows brightly. Spike’s eyes flash, and he screams in pain.
| Who or What | Where | How |
|---|---|---|
| About seven earth monsters | Underground chamber | Killed by Buffy and Dawn |