Dawn, listen to me. Listen. I love you. I will always love you. This is the work that I have to do. Tell Giles I . . . Tell Giles I figured it out, and that I'm okay. Give my love to my friends. You have to take care of them now. You have to take care of each other. You have to be strong. Dawn, the hardest thing in this world is to live in it.

There was pain—sharp, stinging waves coursing through her muscles, her skin, her veins—

Be brave. Live . . . for me.

For me.

—and then sweet, dark peace. She felt her body tingle and lift like a feather, floating up into oblivion. If this was death, she thought, it wasn't so bad. It was like every pore of her skin was filling up with light and she felt complete, and the—

"Ow."

Hard, rough cement. She was no longer weightless. Everything was extremely and most-definitely weight-y. The limbs of her legs ached and her fingers and palms scratched against the ground. She could feel the air ruffling her hair. Buffy just . . . decided to lay there for a while and hope she'd just hit a signpost or something on the way to sweet peaceful oblivion. Maybe if she kept her eyes closed, she'd just be scooped up and put back where she belonged. Yep. She was just gonna wait right here, thank you very much. Nothing to see here.

Any minute now.

"Um . . . are you okay?"

Buffy Summers groaned at the sound of the voice and rolled over. Every little bit of the motion ached. She squinted against the harsh light of day, vaguely aware that it was nighttime only moments ago. Muddled, she opened her mouth to speak, wondering if this was death, and the question came out in a soft little squeak: "Dawn?"

"Hey," her sister answered, kneeling beside her. A face came into view, but it wasn't her sister's big eyes and her long, soft brown hair. The young woman had a pale round face and very short dark hair. Her hand reached out and Buffy flinched and forced herself to sit up. "Whoa, hey, easy," the woman said, wide eyes watching her with concern. "You're alright. Do you know where you are?"

A world of 'no.' Buffy brushed off the dirt from the knees of her pants and kind of tried to stand. Dawn . . . That utterly complacent all-encompassing knowing that her sister was all right was completely gone. Now it was replaced with all-too-familiar fear and uncertainty, and worry that Dawn was standing on that bell tower somewhere, and her sacrifice meant nothing.

"Snow? What's going on?" A man's voice startled her out of her reverie, and if he had come from behind her, Buffy would have probably spun around and greeted him with a hard right backhanded punch, but he appeared behind the woman. He wasn't entirely of the unattractive variety, Buffy couldn't help but notice (so sue her), but neither of them looked like Glory's brain-sucked worshipers. That was something. "What the hell is this?" she asked aloud, eying the streets, the sidewalk, the quaint little buildings. The store on her right was called Modern Fashions, something that while it would definitely have benefited the more fashion-impaired residents of Sunnydale, California, it definitely was not a place Buffy recognized. This was so not Sunnydale. First of all, the skies were bereft of a certain dragon-like, dragon-y thing that she was pretty sure tore its way out of the portal before she jumped.

Buffy cringed a bit at the memory, not to mention the stiffness in her joints, and fully faced the woman, whose brow was furrowed and looked decidedly un-demony, so, points in her favor. "Where am I?"

"Storybrooke," the woman answered, exchanging a look with the man and eying Buffy like . . . well, like she just fell out of the sky.

"Storybrooke," Buffy repeated. Sure enough, the sign on one of the nearby buildings read: Storybrooke Country Bread. She looked at it and the others nearby with increasing suspicion. "Let me guess . . . train goes in a circle, trees are made of cardboard, and there's a giant creepy little girl laughing at us 'cause we're all stuck in her dollhouse-town?" The woman opened her mouth, but didn't answer. "Just checking."

"You're in Storybrooke, Maine," the man said. "My name's . . . David. This is Mary Margaret. Do you remember how you got here?"

Buffy paused. Maine. It was better than Hell, which is pretty much what she expected. But if all Glory's portal did was catapult her across the country and land her in a creepy little town in the middle of nowhere, she would have been less dramatic about the dying.

Still, she wasn't exactly ready to buy a one-way ticket to Crazy Town, not until she knew where the hell Storybrooke, Maine was. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

Mary Margaret shared a grin with the man called David, and she smiled. "Try us."

[ ] [ ] [ ]

God, oh God, did Buffy miss Giles.

This was usually the part where she received a nice, long-winded, British-y explanation of the what and the why. Of course, when Mary Margaret and David took her to Storybrooke's Sheriff Station, she did the sensible thing and tried to call him and got a big 'ol unhelpful dose of the-number-you-are-trying-to-reach-cannot-be-found. She tried Willow, and Xander, and her own house, and God she even wished Spike's crypt had telephone service.

But no dice. She couldn't get through to anyone. And she couldn't help but notice that each time she tried, the looks on Mary Margaret and David's face darkened with anxiety. She slammed the phone down one final time and turned to them, arms folded, all business. She hadn't told them everything, not until she knew the score. All they knew was that she closed her eyes in Sunnydale, California, and woke up in Storybrooke, Maine. None of her friends were answering, and considering the last thing she remembered doing was jumping off a bell tower so her death could close a portal and save the world? She had way more reason to be anxious than they did. She couldn't even be satisfied that it worked, because If she was tossed into some other dimension, for all she knew her jump o' death did nothing, and she was wrong, and Dawn was . . .

No. She couldn't go there. It worked. She knew it worked. Death was her gift.

"I don't have time for this," she said, stomping past the hovering couple to the door. She didn't know why she was here. She didn't care. She needed the fastest way out of this town. Mary Margaret and David were calling after her, advising her to slow down, rest, but Buffy didn't have time to do any of those things. She'd been going non-stop for days trying to stop Glory and protect Dawn, and if she stopped now . . .

She might never start again. And Willow wasn't here to mindwalk in her head and bring her back.

"Look," she said, whirling on them outside the Sherriff's office, "you wanna help? That's fine. How 'bout a welcome package? You know, a nice fruit basket, a brochure, maybe a bus schedule? 'Cause my friends might be dying back home, and I really need to be not here. So if you've got any suggestions, you know, I'm all ears."

Mary Margaret and David let her go, their faces twisted in a mix of confusion and sympathy which probably came from the friends might be dying bomb she dropped on them. Good. The last thing she needed was more hovering. Okay, she understood why they were wary. Maybe Storybrooke, Maine wasn't accustomed to the kind of Sunnydale-type weirdness that became a once-a-week phenomenon. But Buffy was so the wronged party, here. She made her choice to die—for her sister and the world.

So why was she here?

Buffy walked along the streets of the small town, desperately wishing right about now that that whole Buffy in Cars thing wasn't such a disaster. She didn't get many looks, but she gave a good many. There was just something about this place. Something she couldn't quite put her finger on. Her slayer-y sense was tingling.

Before long, she was standing before a sign along a wet dirt road near the forest. LEAVING STORYBROOKE.

"Don't mind if I do," Buffy muttered to herself, looking at the orange line actually painted across the road. That wasn't a little odd. She glanced warily behind her, eyes scanning the road and the woods for anyone—or anything—planning on doing something as stupid as attacking. Truthfully, she hoped they did.

The minute her boot stepped across the line, Buffy was thrown back on the road, landing hard on her ass.

She stood, fists clenched. The slayer stared daggers at the sign and the creepy little town line.

"What. The. Fu—"