She stared around in confusion. She hadn't been here a minute ago, had she? It was difficult to be sure. She was having a hard time remembering...well, much of anything, and her surroundings weren't helping. She was standing in a gray wasteland. No plantlife broke the monotony of the landscape, the clouds overhead were like a single mass—too thick to see where the sun was—, and she couldn't see more than a few dozen yards in any direction because of a bank of fog.

Memories began to trickle in. Her mother's and father's faces. The home she'd grown up in. The images brought happiness, until she remembered finding their bodies inside that home. She grasped desperately for something different to focus on, but recoiled again under the onslaught of memories of fighting monsters, especially the one that had gotten close enough to slice her face open. Her lips burned with as if the wound was fresh instead of an old scar.

Then, she remembered the beautiful face of a man. A man who loved her. Angel. Except he wasn't a man. He was a vampire, and she loved him with everything in her. She looked down at her hands in surprise. They had begun to glow with golden light. Not just her hands—all of her. She remembered the stubbly, world-weary Watcher who had protected her and Angel, helping him hide from the Council. She remembered her friends. The short, red-haired guitarist. The burly football player. The kind girl with light brown hair who was happier on a Hellmouth than in her own home.

She was Buffy Summers, Vampire Slayer. Everything else fell into place and the light coming from her skin grew much brighter, but she still couldn't figure out how she'd gotten here, not to mention why she was so shiny all of a sudden. The last thing she remembered was throwing herself between Angel and the soul-eater in the Bronze, and then everything had exploded in light.

"Hello?" she called. Her voice echoed over that gray wasteland far longer and louder than it should have. She shivered. What was this place?

Once paramedics and the coroner's team arrived to take care of the injured fighters and haul the bodies of the fallen to the incinerator in the morgue, Angel, Buffy, and the White Hats returned to the library, bringing the Naqraw's burnt corpse with them. Jim was already planning to try again with the reopening scheduled for the following Friday instead, considering that the Bronze was still in fairly good shape after the battle. It was less about optimism and more about a refusal to be cowed by circumstance.

The entire way back to the school, Angel couldn't shake the sense of wrongness he kept getting from Buffy. She hadn't released his hand the entire time since Darla turned to dust, but her touch was devoid of the usual tenderness. It was simply possessive.

At the library, Tara, Amy, and Jenny were still waiting, and Michael's body was gone. As soon as she saw Angel, Tara stared intently at him for about two seconds before leaping up on her crutches and coming over to him as fast as she could, then flinging her arms around him, the crutches falling to the floor. "You're okay!" she said. "I was so w-worried it would get you!"

"Yeah, I'm okay, Tara," said Angel, hugging her back. "The Naqraw's dead." He saw Buffy eyeing them warily, and he gently released Tara and helped her pick up her crutches.

"It's dead?" said Jenny, perplexed.

"And extra crispy," said Oz, helping Giles and Larry carry the thing inside. Jenny, Amy, and Tara all recoiled. The guys set it on the floor in the middle of the room.

"We're still not sure how that happened," said Giles, straightening up.

"Yeah, it just kind of burst into flames," said Buffy.

Tara stared at the Naqraw's body and shuddered. "Wh-what are we going to do about that?" she said.

"Well, we have to be sure it can't revive itself before we do anything," said Giles. "I'm afraid we'll have to leave it here to keep an eye on it. Hopefully we'll be finished with it before school hours on Monday."

"Fun," said Oz.

Buffy tugged at Angel's hand. He looked around at her, and she jerked her head in the direction of the bookstacks, a seductive smirk on her lips.

"Not now," Angel murmured. "We should help deal with this."

As quiet as he'd been, his words had drawn the gazes of Jenny and Tara, who were standing beside them. Tara frowned when she looked at Buffy, and then her eyes went wide. "No," she said.

"What?" said Buffy flatly.

"Your soul." Those two words confirmed Angel's worst fears.

"What are you saying?" said Giles, removing his glasses and polishing them hurriedly on a handkerchief. "The Naqraw got Buffy's soul instead of Angel's?"

Buffy didn't give any of them a chance to discuss it further, because she launched herself at the Watcher, a cold, murderous expression on her face.

Angel lunged forward and tackled her. "NO!" she screamed. "I won't let him kill me like he killed Michael!"

"Nobody's going to kill you!" said Angel. Everyone watched as Angel struggled to subdue the empty shell that had been the woman he loved.

"Why should I believe that?" she demanded. She fought him as hard as she'd fought Darla. Without her soul, all that mattered to her was her own continued existence, and she now believed he was a threat. He failed to block an uppercut to his jaw, which lifted him off his feet and sent him crashing to the floor. Buffy rounded on Giles again, but then she went rigid, trembled for a few seconds, and collapsed, revealing Oz holding a taser.

Angel got back up, blood streaming from his mouth, and stared at Buffy's unconscious form. This had happened to her because she'd been trying to protect him. They'd spent all this time focusing on how she was a threat to his soul, but it had never occurred to him that he might be a threat to hers. He let out a roar of rage and anguish and slammed his fist into the wall, then left the library before anyone could call him back.