Introduction
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| Him | Sleeper |
November 12, 2002 8:01 PM
Spike sits at the bar, nursing a drink in the Bronze while Splendid sets up their equipment on stage. Angie Hart steps up to the microphone, and starts to sing.
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Night falls, I fall And where were you? And where were you? Warm skin, Wolf grin, And where were you? |
Buffy walks slowly through the cemetery. |
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I fell into the moon And it covered you in blue. I fell into the moon. Can I make it right? Can I spend the night? |
Willow is studying in the UCSunnydale library. She starts to doze off. |
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High tide, inside. The air is dew And where were you? While I, I died And where were you? |
Dawn comes home to an empty house. She drops her purse by the door, and tosses her jacket across the back of a chair in the living room. She sees a note attached to the shelf over the desk, with some money clipped to it: |
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I crawled out of the world And you said I shouldn’t stay. I crawled out of the world, Can I make it right? Can I spend the night Alone? |
Will and I are out late. Here’s money for the store. |
Buffy stops and kneels by a grave. She reaches down and puts her hand on the freshly turned soil. An arm erupts out of the ground.
“Here we go,” says Buffy.
Jonathan drives an El Camino with Andrew in the seat beside him. Andrew thinks they should stop circling, and just go straight in. Jonathan wants to maintain a low profile.
“You’re just scared,” says Andrew.
“Of course, I’m scared,” says Jonathan. “Last time we were here, 33.3 bar percent of us were flayed alive.”
“Calm down,” says Andrew. “No one’s getting flayed alive. I’ve got a plan. I’m going to fix all that.”
“We should’ve stayed in Mexico.”
“I didn’t like it there,” says Andrew. “Everybody spoke Mexicoan.”
“You could’ve learned it,” says Jonathan. “You learned the entire Klingon dictionary in two and a half weeks.”
“That had much clearer transitive and intransitive rules, okay? Besides I can’t keep having those nightmares.”
“Me neither,” says Jonathan. “‘Desde abajo te devora.’”
“‘It eats you starting with your bottom.’” says Andrew.
“We’re going to make it right.” whispers Jonathan.
“We’re outlaws,” says Andrew, “with hearts of gold.”
Jonathan stops circling, and passes the Welcome to Sunnydale sign1 on the way into town.
The newly risen vampire brushes dirt from its suit. Buffy swings a punch at it, but the vamp ducks under it, and blocks her next punch. It hits her with a left cross to her jaw, and Buffy staggers back. It hits her with another backhanded punch before she’s recovered, picks her up and throws her against a tree.
Buffy rolls to her feet, and ducks under the vampire’s kick at her head. She tries to punch it, but the vamp blocks her again. It punches her in the stomach and kicks her in the head.
Dawn pulls a slice of her pizza out of the box.
“Anchovies, anchovies, you’re so delicious,
I love you more than all the other fishes!”
She shoves the slice into her mouth.
Dawn takes her pizza up to Buffy’s room. She takes one of Buffy’s blouses and holds it up in front of herself in front of the mirror. She sees that she has gotten pizza sauce on it.
Dawn is worried for a second, but then she relaxes. “Aw, she’ll think it’s blood.”
Dawn moves back to the living room, and starts to examine the contents of Buffy’s weapons trunk while loud music plays. She takes out an axe and swings it around her head. “Taste my blade, spawn of evil!” She swings the axe and sinks it into the top of the trunk. “Aah!”
Dawn switches to a crossbow. She loads an arrow into it, and swings it around. The crossbow triggers, and the arrow sticks into the wall beside the fireplace. Dawn tries to pull the arrow back out again, but a hunk of drywall comes loose with it. Dawn moves a potted tree to cover the hole.
Dawn dances around the kitchen to the beat of salsa music on the radio. She goes to the cupboard, pulls out a bag of marshmallows, and puts one onto a plate in the microwave. She turns it on, and watches the marshmallow swell. “Cool!”
Dawn is startled by a loud thump, like the sound of a door slamming shut. She looks around, but sees nothing.
Willow writes some notes from a book she’s reading onto a pad of paper.
“So!” says a voice behind her. “This is the UC library, huh? It’s so big.”
Willow looks around and sees Cassie Newton looking at her through a bookshelf. “I know you. I mean… I saw your picture.”
Cassie comes out from behind the shelves. “Yeah, I know. It’s kind of weird, because we never really met.”
“Or kind of weird ’cause you’re really dead,” says Willow.
“Yeah, well…” Cassie laughs.
“Did I fall asleep?” asks Willow.
“No. No, I’m here. I’m mean, not—not here here. It’s kind of complicated.” Cassie checks out some of the books on the shelves. “Kind of ironic, too, you know? I write all that intense poetry about ‘the end’…and here I am again. Chatting you up.”
“Yeah,” says Willow. “Ironic.”
“I knew this would completely freak you out. It’s just…” Cassie sits down across the table from Willow. “…she asked that I come talk to you. It’s important.”
“She?”
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt you or anything—”
“Who asked you?” asks Willow. “What are you talking about?”
“She says she still sings,” says Cassie.
“What?”
“Remember that time on the bridge when you sang to each other? Well, she says even though you can’t hear it, she still sings to you.”
“Tara?” asks Willow.
Dawn sits on the floor in front of the TV with her melted marshmallows on a plate in her lap. She licks marshmallow from her fingers while talking on the phone with Kit, and watching an old black and white horror movie on the TV. “Oh, come on. She is so dead. … Well, he’s clearly a psychopath. … Is so! … What? … No, that is not Tom Hanks. … Well, what channel are you on?”
Dawn hears the thump again, and nearly drops the phone. “Okay, there it is again.” She puts down her plate of melted marshmallows. “I keep hearing this, like, thumping.” Dawn mutes the TV and gets to her feet. She hears a couple more thumps.
Dawn walks toward the door. “No, I can’t tell if it’s…”
The door bursts open, driven by a gale force wind. Dawn grabs the door. “Kit, are you there?” She pushes it closed. “Is there a storm?”
The sound comes back on on the TV. Dawn tosses the phone aside as she runs back to it, and tries to turn it off. The power button on the front of the TV doesn’t do anything, so Dawn pulls out the plug. Dawn stands holding the TV’s power chord in her hand, while the TV continues to play.
The vampire grabs Buffy by the lapels of her jacket, and tries to bite her. She punches it in the face, and it throws her away. Buffy does a hand spring off the ground, and comes up ready to punch it again. The vampire takes her punch, and kicks her in the gut. Buffy staggers back against a headstone and the vampire puts its hands around her throat, and starts to strangle her.
The vampire suddenly straightens up. “Buffy? Buffy Summers?”
“Have we…?” gasps Buffy.
The vampire lets go of Buffy and steps back. “Oh, uh… Webs—Holden Webster. We went to school together. European history. I let you crib off my Vaclav Havel essay that time.” Buffy looks completely mystified. “You—you really don’t remember me?”
“Sure! Sure,” lies Buffy.
Dawn looks around the living room. The radio tuned to the salsa station in the kitchen, and the stereo in the living room are playing at full volume now too.
Dawn takes one of Buffy’s axes, and smashes the TV and the stereo. She moves into the kitchen to get the radio there.
Dawn sees that the microwave is on too, and it’s starting to smoke. She moves toward it with her axe.
The microwave explodes before Dawn gets to it. Dawn steps quickly back, trying to avoid stepping on the bits of broken glass showering down around her bare feet on the floor.
The radio changes stations. A familiar voice comes out of it. “Dawn?” It switches back to the salsa music.
Dawn stands holding the axe, and staring at the radio. “Mom?”
Holden is still trying to get Buffy to remember him. Nothing connects until he tells her about the time she was helping him move the lighting board during the school production of Pippin, and he dropped it on her foot. She remembers that. She apologises for not recognising him earlier. “Your face…” She waves her hand in front of her face. “…all demon, and I think you’ve filled out a lot.”
“Oh, yeah, well, I got into tae kwon do in a big way at Dartmouth,” says Holden.
“Well, that’s great,” says Buffy. “So what have you been up to?”
“Ah, well, apparently dying.” Holden laughs. “Uh, no, but other stuff. Um, you know, majoring in psych, really liking that.” He and Buffy start to walk together through the cemetery. “Um, I took a year off to do an internship at the Sunnydale mental hospital.”
“Wow. That’s got to be a…popular joint.” Buffy stops and leans against a headstone.
“Ha,” says Holden. “I keep telling them we ought to get a velvet rope and a bouncer. Hey, you remember Jason Wheeler? You know, Crazy Jay?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“He always had that schtick— ‘Oh, I’m crazy, I’m crazy.’”
“How is he?” asks Buffy.
“Crazy,” says Holden. “He’s been in the chronic ward since graduation. Ha! Not really that funny, I guess.”
“Ironic, sorta,” says Buffy.
“Yeah.” Holden’s vampire face morphs back to human. “Whoa!” He blinks. “Did my face just change?”
“Yeah,” says Buffy. “You look human now. You can do that: go back and forth.”
“Oh. So I’m a vampire. How weird is that?”
“Sorry.”
“No, no. Feels great!” says Holden. “Strong, like I’m connected to a powerful, all-consuming evil that’s going to suck the world into a fiery oblivion. How about you?”
Buffy shrugs. “Not so much connected.” She gets up and starts walking again.
Holden follows her. “No, no, I mean, you know—with the stake and the cross—you do this kind of thing a lot?”
Buffy stops and turns back toward him. “I’m the Slayer. It’s sort of a thing.”
“So, what?” asks Holden. “You, like, fight vampires professionally or…”
“I don’t get paid,” says Buffy. “It’s more like a calling. Since even in school.”
“I heard a lot of rumors about you back then. You were all mysterious.”
Buffy smiles. “I was?”
“Well, you were never around,” says Holden. “A lot of kids thought you were dating some really old guy or that you were just heavy religious. Scott Hope said you were gay.”
“What?” asks Buffy. “I dated that ringworm!”
“He says that about every girl he breaks up with,” says Holden. “And then, last year, big surprise, he comes out.”
“Men,” says Buffy. “Do I know how to pick ’em?”
Holden crosses his arms. “So all that time you were a Slayer.”
“The,” says Buffy.
“‘The’ like as in the only one?” asks Holden.
“Pretty much,” says Buffy.
Holden steps toward her. “Oh. So when you said, ‘not connected,’ that was kind of a telling statement, wasn’t it?”
Buffy rolls her head. “Ah, Psych 101 alert.” She puts her hands on her hips.
“Well, I’m just saying…”
“Yeah, what I really need is emotional therapy from the evil dead.”
“Hey, it was your phrase,” says Holden.
“I’m connected. I’m connected to a lot of people, okay?” Buffy doesn’t notice that her cell phone, which got knocked lose during her fight with Holden, is lying on the ground several feet away, ringing.
“No. No, I hear you,” says Holden.
“I really am.”
Dawn sits on the coffee table, bandaging her foot, with the phone to her ear. “Buffy, come on, pick up! I don’t know what to do!”
Dawn bends down and picks up the radio that she heard her mother’s voice come from. When she straightens up again, Joyce is lying on the sofa behind Dawn, where she died. Dawn shakes the now silent radio. “Do it again! I heard you!”
Dawn senses that there is something behind her. She slowly looks around at the sofa. It’s empty. She looks around the silent house.
The lights suddenly go out, and Dawn hears things moving all around her. When the lights come back on a second later everything has moved. Chairs and tables are stacked on top of each other, and Buffy’s weapons trunk is standing on end, with its contents spilled out on the floor. “Mother’s Milk is Red Today” is scrawled in blood on the wall by the desk.
The lights go out again, and again Dawn can hear things moving. When they come back on everything is back where it belongs, and the wall is clean.
The thumping starts again, this time over and over. “Why are you doing this?” Dawn slides off the table and sits on the floor. “Why are you— I don’t understand!”
The thumping continues. Getting louder and louder.
“Stop!” yells Dawn. “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!” she screams.
The thumping suddenly stops. Dawn slowly stands up in a silent house. “Hello?”
She hears the thud again.
“Once…for yes,” says Dawn. “Once for yes…twice for no! … Mom?”
Thud!
“Mom? It’s you?”
Thud!
Dawn starts to smile. “Are you okay?”
Thud! Thud!
Dawn’s smile vanishes. “You’re not. Mom? Mommy? Are you—are you alone?”
Thud! Thud!
The house starts to shake, like in an earthquake. Pictures fall from the walls. “Why are you doing this?” screams Dawn.
Jonathan rappels down a rope into the Sunnydale High library. He unhooks himself and steps away. Andrew falls onto the floor behind him.
Jonathan looks around at Andrew. “Get up, you wuss.”
Andrew lies on his face on the floor. “I have shin splints. Ow.”
Jonathan and Andrew move out into the hallway. They both have large backpacks of equipment, with picks, shovels and other digging tools slung on the outsides of them. Jonathan hears a noise, and spins around. He shines his light down the empty hall. He thinks maybe they should skip this, and just go get Buffy.
“No way,” says Andrew.
“We should just tell her what we know about this evil Danthalzar,” says Jonathan.
“Think, McFly,” says Andrew. “Why would she believe us without any proof? If we go to her empty-handed, we’ll be coolin’ our heels in the clink in a Bell’s microsecond.”
“I ain’t goin’ back to the big house,” says Jonathan. “That place changes a man.”
“That’s why we need proof,” says Andrew. “Think of it as trial by fire, a quest.”
“Una cuesta.”
“We find it, we alert the Slayer, we help her destroy it, we save Sunnydale,” says Andrew. “Then we join her gang and possibly hang out at her house.”
“Right. Okay,” says Jonathan. “What do we do?”
“I think we should find the principal’s office and work our way down from there,” says Andrew.
“Okay. Um…” Jonathan takes the blueprints to the school out of Andrew’s hand, and shines his flashlight on them. He points down the hall. “You go check down the hallway and I’ll go over here.” He points the other way.
Andrew takes the plans back. “Check communications?”
Jonathan nods, and raises his walkie talkie. “Check, check.”
“Check, check,” says Andrew into his walkie talkie.
“Check. Check, check.”
“Check, check. Check, check.”
“Check. Check.”
“Check.” Jonathan takes one last look at Andrew, and turns and walks away down the hall. Andrew walks the other way.
Jonathan raises his walkie talkie to his mouth. “Echo Two to Echo One.”
“This is Echo One,” says Andrew. “Go ahead.”
Jonathan turns and looks back at Andrew. “Do you think they’ll really let us join their gang?”
Andrew doesn’t say anything. He just shines his flashlight at Jonathan. Jonathan turns away and walks around the corner.
Warren walks up behind Andrew. “Nice job!”
“There you are!” says Andrew. “I’m scared out of my frickin’ gourd here! Do you have any idea how hard it’s been to act this cool?”
“Calm down. You’re doing great,” says Warren. “All specs are within parameters.”
“You keep leaving,” says Andrew. “I hate it when you leave me. One time you died, and I ended up a Mexican.”
“We’ve been over this,” says Warren. “Now, that death thing was all part of the master plan. Come on. ‘If you strike me down…’”
“‘I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.’” Andrew laughs. “Of course. Do you think maybe Willow could kill me, too?”
“Hey, don’t worry,” says Warren. “When Short Round pulls off his end of the bargain, we’ll both become gods.”
Andrew looks the way Jonathan left. “That boy is our last hope.”
Warren slips into his Yoda impression. “No, there is another.”
“Wait, really?” Andrew turns to look at Warren. “Who’s our last hope?”
“No, I was just going with it. It was a thing. I— no.” Warren waves in the direction Jonathan went. “He’s our last hope.”
“Tara, is it you?” asks Willow.
“She’s sorry she couldn’t come herself,” says Cassie.
“Why didn’t she?” asks Willow. “I don’t understand… I mean, if you can manifest yourself…”
“She just can’t,” says Cassie. “Because of what you did.”
“What?”
“You killed people,” says Cassie. “You can’t see her. It’s just how it is. I’m sorry.”
“But—but she’s talking to you?” asks Willow. “And…and she can hear me?”
Cassie doesn’t say anything, she just looks sad.
Willow looks up. “Tara… Tara, I miss you. I miss you so much.” Willow starts to cry, and looks at Cassie. “Can she hear me?”
Cassie just sits, saying nothing.
“W-what’s happening?” asks Willow. “Did she say anything? What? Did she go away?”
“She’s crying,” says Cassie.
“No. No, don’t cry!” says Willow. “Don’t cry, sweetie. Talk to me.”
“She misses you, too,” says Cassie. “She wishes she could touch you.”
“Me, too. Oh, me, too,” cries Willow. “Oh, god, Tara, it hurts so much. Every day it’s like this giant hole… and it’s not getting better.”
“It will,” says Cassie. “It can.”
“How? You’re gone!”
“But you’re not,” says Cassie. “You’re strong, like an amazon. Remember?”
“I do,” says Willow. “I remember.”
Spike is still nursing his drink in the Bronze. Someone puts down a pack of cigarettes on the bar in front of him, and he looks up and sees a blonde girl. She indicates the empty stool beside him, and Spike nods. She sits down.
Buffy lies on a sarcophagus, like a patient in a psychiatrist’s office, with Holden sitting on a nearby headstone.
“So when you meet someone,” says Holden, “you form a bond…”
“And it never lasts,” says Buffy.
“Do you mean all relationships or just yours?” asks Holden.
“My parents weren’t exactly the paragon of stay-togetheriness,” says Buffy. “Maybe that’s part of it. Oh, I think there are people out there who make it. I just…target the impossible ones. With deadly accuracy.”
“You think you do that on purpose?” asks Holden. “Maybe you’re trying to protect yourself?”
“Protecting myself?” asks Buffy. “From heartbreak, misery, sexual violence, and possible death? Not so much.”
“From committing.”
“I commit!” Buffy sits up. “I’m committed. I’m a committee!”
“So it’s them,” says Holden. “You’re reaching out. They’re just not coming through.”
“Well, it’s different,” says Buffy. “I think you’re confusing me because you’re evil.”
“I just think you’re in some pain here, which I do kind of enjoy, ’cause I’m evil now, but you should just ease up on yourself,” says Holden. “It’s not exactly like you have the patent on bad relationships.”
Buffy smiles. “Wouldn’t it be cool if I did?”
“And what, are you supposed to be settling down already, at 21?” asks Holden. “You know, my girlfriend at college, she’s so sweet. We have this great thing, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to go…vampify her just so we can be together forever.”
“Sire,” says Buffy.
“What?”
“The word,” says Buffy. “When you turn a human into a vampire, it’s you sire them. It’s a noun too.”
“Cool.” Holden gets up and walks over to another headstone that’s been set up with a small shrine on top of it. He leans against it. “Oh, I have so much to learn. Come on, isn’t this insane? I mean, I was afraid to talk to you in high school, and now we’re, like, mortal enemies. Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we became nemeses?”
“Is that how you say the word?” asks Buffy.
“We’re going to have to fight to the death, aren’t we?” asks Holden.
“It’s the time-honoured custom.”
“Wow!” Holden suddenly gets more serious. “Reality just shows up sometimes, doesn’t it? But you know, I got the blood-lust pumping, and I kinda get it. I’m looking for a fight. And, oh, it’s nothing personal.”
Buffy stands up. “Oh, no. I mean, you’ve been great.”
Holden steps toward her. “It’s been fun catching up. I haven’t really kept in contact with many of my friends from high school. Guess I’ll be looking them up pretty soon.”
Buffy is saddened. “Yeah.”
“Hey, I don’t mean to be count butt-insky here, but you just don’t seem as thrilled,” says Holden. “Is it because we’re going to fight?”
“It’s ’cause I’m going to win.”
Holden laughs. “Hello. Two years of tae kwon do and vampire strength. I think somebody’s countin’ their chickens.”
“You’re not leaving this graveyard. Can’t let you.”
“Do the words ‘superiority complex’ mean anything to you?” asks Holden.
“You think I’m going to let you go kill a bunch of people? You know I’m sworn to—”
“No, no. I get the battle against evil. That’s not the issue.”
“There is no issue. Don’t ‘issue’ me.”
“Just answer me this. Whose fault was your parents’ divorce?”
“Okay, you know, this is beyond evil,” says Buffy. “This is insane troll logic. What do my parents have to do with this?”
Holden sits down on the sarcophagus. “I’m just curious. Your opinion.”
Buffy sighs, and sits beside him. “They both had a lot of—”
“Off the top of your head,” says Holden
“My dad,” says Buffy. “He cheated. Um, I think he cheated.”
“So…of all of these relationships of yours that you knew subconsciously were totally doomed, whose fault is that?”
“It’s incredibly different.”
“I was just wondering.” Holden gets up and turns to face her. “Is it possible, even a little bit, that the reason you have trouble connecting to guys is because you think maybe they’re not worth it? Maybe you think you’re better than them.”
“Say, there’s that blood-lust I was looking for,” says Buffy.
“Struck a nerve,” says Holden.
“I’m going to strike a nerve cluster in a minute, you don’t get off this,” says Buffy. “I don’t remember you being this annoying.”
“You don’t remember me at all!” says Holden.
“Yes, I do.”
“Yeah, like after 30 minutes of reminding,” says Holden. “And I don’t take it personally, because clearly, you were in your own little world in high school, all chosen, all destiny. Who could live with that for seven years and not feel superior?”
“I’m not,” says Buffy. “My god, if anything, I—”
“What?”
“Just…” Buffy sighs. “…if you knew what I’ve done… what I’ve let myself become. My best friends don’t even— You’d laugh if you heard some of the things I’ve done to them.”
Holden sits back down on his headstone. “Buffy, I’m here to kill you, not to judge you.”
“The last guy I was with got really… I behaved like a monster,” says Buffy. “Treated him like… And at the same time, I let him completely take me over…do things to me that… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get all true confessions on you there. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
Holden gets up and goes over to the shrine. He picks up a statue of the Virgin Mary and looks at it. “There’s nothing wrong with you.” Holden spins around and hits Buffy with the statue. He knocks her over the sarcophagus she had been sitting on.
Holden jumps over the sarcophagus, and grabs the stunned Buffy by the lapels of her jacket. He’s morphed back into his vampire face. “Everyone’s got issues.” His teeth close on her neck.
Buffy kicks Holden away, and jumps to her feet. She punches him, and bounces his head off a headstone. “You son of a bitch!” She kicks him in the head. “I think I’m going to kill you just a little bit more than usual.”
Holden gets back to his feet. Buffy punches at him again, but he blocks her, and kicks her in the stomach. “Aw, come on. I mean, we had a moment. You opened up. It was really sweet. It made me want to bite you. I’m sorry if I overstepped my bounds. I’m just new to this whole mortal enemy stuff.” Buffy attacks him, and Holden kicks her in the head. “Pretty fast learner, though, right?”
Buffy hits Holden with a two footed kick to his chest, and he staggers back. She charges at him, and tackles him. Her momentum carries both of them through a stained glass window into a crypt.
The sound of heavy breathing fills the darkened living room of the Summers’ house. “I hear you,” says Dawn. “I hear you breathing. Are you hurting my mother? Are you keeping her from coming back to me?”
There’s a flash of light, and Dawn sees her mother lying on the sofa. She starts to feel her way toward it. “Mom? I see you. I’m coming towards you, okay?” She can see something moving in the darkness.
There is another flash of light, and Dawn sees her mother again. She seems to be trying to call and reach out to Dawn, but there is a black demon on top of her, choking her.
Dawn screams. “She’s trying to talk to me! Get off her and let her talk to me!”
Dawn remembers the axe she’d had earlier, and starts feeling around on the floor for it. There is another flash of light, and she sees the axe: in the hands of the demon, swinging toward her head.
Dawn pulls back, and the axe narrowly misses her. She jumps to her feet and runs to the front door.
“Get out!” says the demon.
Dawn opens the door and is hit by a blast of wind. “No!” Dawn forces the door closed again. “She’s my mother. I’m staying!”
Jonathan and Andrew are in the school basement. Jonathan is feeling nostalgic about his high school days.
Andrew looks around. “Everything’s shifting around. I feel like we’re in Hell Raiser. I hate Pinhead.”
“Let’s see that.” Jonathan takes the blueprints from Andrew and looks at them. “We circled all the way around? I think we should start over.”
Andrew sees Warren standing in front of a metal door. “There it is.” He shines his flashlight at it.
“What?” Jonathan looks. He only sees the door. “Are you sure?”
Andrew is still seeing Warren. “Yeah.”
They find a small room with a bare earth floor on the other side of the door. Jonathan consults the blueprint again. “You know…I think you may be right. If this lines up…what we’re looking for should be right…” He shines his light on a spot in the middle of the floor. “…under there.”
Andrew’s pick sinks into the floor at the spot where Jonathan is shining his light.
Buffy punches and kicks at Holden. He falls to the floor. She plunges her stake at his chest, but she stops an inch short. “See? You’re dead. That enough of a moment for ya?”
“Okay.” Holden morphs back into his human features. “But are you killing me ’cause I’m evil or because you opened up?”
Buffy groans, and stands up. She turns away from Holden. He sits up and starts to laugh. Buffy spins around and kicks him in the face. “What is wrong with you?”
Holden gets up and starts brushing the dirt off his suit. “Nothing. I got no worries. I’m dead. Biggest thing on my mind is whether or not Tricia Waldman came to my funeral or not. You remember her. Ohh—biteable.”
“See, this is what I hate about you vampires,” says Buffy. “Sex and death and love and pain: it’s all the same damn thing to you.”
“Well, you know, it’s kind of a guy thing.” Holden starts to walk around a sarcophagus in the crypt. “We talk about nailing a girl. There’s all this—”
“No, it is not the same,” says Buffy. “With vampires, it is completely— Believe me, I know.”
“Oh, my god!” says Holden.
“Oh, your god what?”
“Oh, well, you know, not my god, because I defy him and all of his works,” says Holden. “Does he exist? Is there word on that, by the way?”
Buffy shrugs. “Nothing solid.”
Holden pulls off his jacket. “Oh. I keep getting off topic, ’cause my mind is just racing here. All right… I’ll make a deal with you. We fight. To the death. Great. That last fight was just exhilarating, and I actually had a move coming up to block that stake.” Holden has finished circling the sarcophagus, and leans against it in front of Buffy. “But you have to answer one question, and if I’m right, I get to ask anything—no secrets, no defensiveness—anything I want to know.”
“What’s your question?” asks Buffy.
“Your last relationship,” says Holden. “Was it with a vampire?”
Spike walks down the street with the woman he met in the Bronze. He laughs at something she said.
“I don’t know where to start,” says Willow. “After Warren shot you…you know all about that? What happened? It was horrible. I was horrible. I… I lost myself, the regular me.”
“You were grieving,” says Cassie.
“A lot of people grieve,” says Willow. “They don’t make with the flaying. I hurt so many people.”
“It was the power.”
“I am the power,” says Willow. “It—it’s in me. Did I mention the random destruction of property? The Magic Box is not so much a box now.”
“The power is bigger than you are.”
“I know, but—”
“Things are more clear where Tara is, where we are,” says Cassie. “We can see your path, and you have to stop. You can’t use magic again, not ever.”
“Black magic, of course,” says Willow. “But Giles says it isn’t as simple as quitting it all cold turkey.”
“It’s too dangerous,” says Cassie. “You can’t take the chance that you’ll lose control.”
“I—I don’t want to,” says Willow. “I can’t. I never want to cause that kind of pain.”
Cassie shakes her head. “Of course you don’t.”
“So… I won’t,” says Willow. “I’m going to be okay.”
“She says…” Cassie stops and listens.
“What?” asks Willow.
“You’re not going to be okay,” says Cassie. “You’re going to kill everybody.”
Jonathan and Andrew are almost finished digging up what they came for. “I hope Buffy’ll know how to destroy it,” says Jonathan. He suddenly stops digging. “36-19-27. That’s it!” Andrew just looks at him. “That was my locker combination. It’s been bugging me all night.” He starts digging again.
“Dude, we spent the last few years trying to forget about high school,” says Andrew. “Why are you trying so hard to remember it?”
“I don’t know,” says Jonathan. “I guess I miss it. Don’t you?”
“Yeah, I really miss it,” says Andrew sarcastically. He sees Warren standing behind Jonathan.
“I’m serious,” says Jonathan. “I really miss it. Time goes by…and everything drops away. All the cruelty, all the pain, all the humiliation… It all washes away. I miss my friends. I miss my enemies. I miss the people I talked to every day. I miss the people who never knew I existed. I miss them all. I want to talk to them, you know? I want to find out how they’re doing. I want to know what’s going on in their lives.”
“You know what? They don’t want to talk to you,” says Andrew. “Those people you just mentioned, not one of them is sitting around going, ‘I wonder what Jonathan’s up to right now?’ Not one of them cares about you.”
Jonathan quirks a smile. “Well, I still care about them. That’s why I’m here.”
Jonathan’s finished digging. They have uncovered a large pentagram that was buried about a foot underground. It’s cast metal of some sort, six feet in diameter, with the image of a goat headed demon in the center of it.
Dawn sits on the floor of the living room with open spell books and burning candles in front of her. She’s grinding up ingredients with a mortar and pestle. “I know you’re there. I will cast you out. My mother needs to talk to me.”
Dawn takes a pinch of her potion and throws it into the air in front of her. A force grabs her, and slides her back across the floor until she slams into the wall. She takes another handfull of her potion and throws it into the air in front of her.
“I cast you from this place! It is your poison and your bane!”
Something slashes Dawn’s cheek, and she screams. She throws another handfull of her potion.
“It is the skin that is cut from your flesh!”
A wind starts to swirl around the living room, blowing out all of Dawn’s candles. The front windows blow in, peppering glass all around.
Buffy sits on the floor of the crypt beside Holden. “And the joke is…he loved me. In his own sick, soulless way…he really did care for me. But I didn’t want to be loved.”
“Didn’t you?” asks Holden.
“I have…all this power. I didn’t ask for it. I don’t deserve it,” says Buffy. “It’s like…I wanted to be punished. I wanted to hurt like I thought I deserved. I sorta think— You know, this is, um…complicated. If you’d rather just fight—”
Holden leans back on his elbow. “Tell me.”
“I feel like…I’m worse than anyone,” says Buffy. “Honestly, I’m beneath them. My friends, my boyfriends… I feel like I’m not worthy of their love, because even though they love me, it…it doesn’t mean anything, because their opinions don’t matter. They don’t know. They haven’t been through what I’ve been through. They’re not the Slayer. I am. Sometimes I feel— This is awful. I feel like I’m better than them. Superior.”
“Until you can’t win,” says Holden. “And I thought I was diabolical…or at least I plan to be. You do have a superiority complex, and you’ve got an inferiority complex about it.” He laughs. “Kudos.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” says Buffy.
“Oh. It makes every kind of sense.” Holden sits up. “And it all adds up to you feeling alone. But Buffy, everybody feels alone. Everybody is. Until you die. Speaking of…you ready for a little death match?” He gets to his feet, and starts to stretch.
“I suppose.” Buffy gets up too. “Uh…thanks for listening.”
“Well, you know, there’s some things you can only tell a stranger.”
“You’re not a stranger,” says Buffy. “That stuff with Spike is pretty—”
“Hold it,” says Holden. “Did you say Spike?”
Spike and the girl reach the front steps of her apartment building. She invites him to come with her as she starts up the stairs, but Spike indicates that he should be going. She steps back down toward him.
Dawn stands in the center of the hurricane in her living room. She throws a handful of her potion into the wind.
“I cast you out with every prayer from every god that walks the Earth and crawls beneath!”
Something hits Dawn and knocks her down.
“I cast you out with the strength of those who love me!
I cast you out with the strength I have inside me!”
Dawn grabs her bowl off the floor and struggles back to her feet. She throws the entire bowl with her potion into the wind.
“I cast you out into the void!”
Dawn can hear the demon scream in agony. “That’s right! Die, you bastard!” Blood splatters across the living room walls.
The wind dies around Dawn, and she finds herself standing in the middle of the wreckage of the living room. The blood fades from the walls. Glass and dead leaves and other stuff blown in from the yard are mixed in with papers and other things blown from the shelves. Dawn stands in the silence for a moment, before she collapses to the floor.
A golden light starts to fill the living room. Dawn looks up toward it. “Mom?”
“I’m going to what?” asks Willow.
“That’s why I came,” says Cassie. “We needed to warn you.”
“You saw my path?” asks Willow. “What—what do you know? What—what did you see?”
“You don’t want to know what we saw.”
“Oh, god!”
“But if you stop, completely,” says Cassie. “No more magic…”
“Right. Right. Stop,” says Willow. “But, what about Giles? He made it seem like it was just as dangerous for me to quit completely, like I’ll go off the deep end again.”
“You can’t,” says Cassie. “If you do so much as another spell—”
“I tried to stop. I tried. What if I can’t do this?”
“Don’t think that way!”
“Well, how can I not?” asks Willow. “You’re telling me I’m going to murder all my friends! I’m not strong. I’m not an amazon. I’m just me.”
“There is one thing…one thing you could do to stop it,” says Cassie.
“What?” asks Willow. “Anything!”
“Then you could see her. You wouldn’t have to talk through me.”
“Tara?” whispers Willow.
“It’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“Of course—”
“So go!” says Cassie. “Be with her. Everybody will be safe, and you’ll be together again. It’s not that bad. Really. It’s just like going to sleep.”
Willow slowly stands up, her eyes filling with suspicion. She looks down at Cassie. “Who are you?”
“What do you mean?” asks Buffy. “How do you know Spike?”
“What do you mean how?” asks Holden. “He was the guy that, um…oh, what’s the word?”
“Sired…”
“Yeah!” says Holden. “He was the guy that sired me.”
Spike’s fangs sink into the girl’s neck.
Joyce stands in the living room, wearing a white gown, and bathed in golden light. “Things are coming, Dawn. Listen, things are on their way. I love you, and I love Buffy. But she won’t be there for you.”
“What?” asks Dawn. “Why are you…”
“When it’s bad, Buffy won’t choose you,” says Joyce. “She’ll be against you.”
Dawn watches her mother fade away. “No! No, don’t go! Please don’t go!”
Jonathan looks up at Andrew. His eyes go wide when he sees Warren standing behind him. Jonathan doesn’t see the knife that Andrew drives into his belly.2
Cassie looks up at Willow. “The suicide thing was too far, huh? Hmm. You seemed so ripe.”
“Tell me who you are,” says Willow.
“I stand by my opinion,” says Cassie. “The world would be a better place if you took a razor blade to your wrist—”
“Stop!” says Willow.
“I can see it now. Candlelight…” Cassie stands up. “…the Indigo Girls playing, picture of your dead girlfriend on your bloody lap.”
“Stop it!”
Cassie holds her hands over her heart. “‘Oh, baby, you left such a big hole! It hurts so bad!’” She rests her hands on the table and leans toward Willow. “You don’t know hurt. This last year is going to seem like cake after what I put you and your friends through, and I am not a fan of easy death. Fact is, the whole good versus evil, balancing the scales thing—I’m over it. I’m done with the mortal coil, but believe me: I’m going for a big finish.”
“‘From beneath you it devours.’” whispers Willow.
Cassie straightens up. “Oh, not it. Me.” She starts to smile. Her smile starts to stretch, her mouth grows and opens wide. It folds back on itself, engulfing her entire head. The rest of her body is sucked up into the void as Cassie swallows herself.
|
I fell into the moon And it covered you in blue. I fell into the moon, Can I make it right? Can I spend the night Alone? |
Dawn sits on the floor in the ruins of her living room. Jonathan collapses on top of the pentagram. Blood flows from his body, filling the image cast in the pentagram. It starts to glow. Spike drops the girl’s body on the apartment building steps. He wipes her blood away from his mouth. Buffy stands in the crypt, watching the dust from the vampire Holden Webster dissipate. |
| Who or What | Where | How |
|---|---|---|
| A girl | In front of her apartment building | Bitten by Spike |
| Jonathan Levinson | The school basement | Knifed by Andrew |
| The vampire Holden Webster | Cemetery crypt | Staked by Buffy |