Tara gathered everything she needed and began lighting the candles. They had all gathered in the Magic Box when she had told the others she had found a way to reverse things to the way they were.

"Is there anything we can do?" Buffy asked.

"No, thank you," Tara said. "I've got everything I need. I just…I say the spell and it goes back."

"Will we remember?" Xander asked, concerned more about what would happen to Willow if they remembered all of this. Tara shook her head.

"Alternate realities work that way," Anya said solemnly.

"Everything will revert to the way it would've been in the other reality at this point in time," Tara said. She lit the last candle and then lit some incense in a bowl. She glanced at her notebook and then turned. "So that's everything."

The others were silent. Suddenly Anya stepped forward and gave Tara a tight hug. "You were the best employee I ever had."

Tara laughed and returned the hug. She smiled at Anya when they separated. "Thanks. I liked working for you. For a whole day."

Anya stepped back and Tara looked to Buffy and Dawn. Buffy looked guilty. "I'm sorry, Tara. I almost wish that we had never met. If we hadn't, Warren never would've…"

"I don't regret meeting you. I always knew what came with knowing you guys," Tara said. She stepped forward and gave Buffy a hug. "It's not your fault."

She turned away from Buffy and saw Dawn sulking against the bookshelves, her arms crossed over her chest and tears welling in her eyes. Tara's heart broke. The Scoobies had become Tara's family. When she had let Glory feed off her mind rather than reveal Dawn as the key, it wasn't just because of what would happen to the world if Glory found Dawn. She did it because she loved Dawn as if she was her own little sister. She didn't want to leave any of them.

"Dawnie," she said, stepping forward. Dawn didn't move. "I'm sorry, sweetie. Please…"

Dawn closed her eyes and gave in. She stepped forward and Tara wrapped her arms around her as she sobbed. "Don't go," Dawn said tearfully.

"I have to," Tara whispered. "I'll always be with you in your heart. Never forget that."

Dawn finally released her hold of Tara and stepped back. Buffy wrapped her arms around her little sister, who leaned against her heavily. Tara moved to her circle of candles and took a deep breath before she began reciting the spell.

Her voice trembled with emotion as she spoke. A wind blew within the magic shop and the others watched sadly as bright glowing orbs began swirling around Tara. When she had finished reciting the spell once, she closed her eyes and repeated it twice before she felt an electric energy surging through her. She couldn't speak any longer as the force overcame her. Suddenly there was a bright flash and she was thrown backwards.

She expected oblivion to follow, but instead she simply felt cold. Tara realized her eyes were closed and she finally opened them. She assumed she was still in the Magic Box. It was dark, and the area around her looked nothing like the Magic Box she knew. The place was a disaster area. It appeared that a serious battle had taken place there. The upper level where Giles had kept his private collection of books not suitable for general customers was broken, hanging above her precariously. She quickly pushed herself up off the floor to get out of harm's way in case that fell. When she stood it gave her the opportunity to survey the rest of the shop. There was broken glass, broken shelves, broken everything.

"Hello?" she called, pretty sure that nobody else was in the shop. She didn't understand what had happened. The reversal spell shouldn't have left her alive. Then another thought occurred to her.

"What if I'm not alive?" she asked the empty shop.

Was this her afterlife? It seemed unlikely, but she had guessed that once the spell was complete she would end up in her own afterlife. However, she had also guessed that, like everyone else, she would not be aware that reality had changed at all. She remembered everything. Amy, the Warrens, everything.

Finally Tara decided the best place to look for answers was at Buffy's house. She hoped she wouldn't find it in the same state of disarray as the Magic Box.

"Hurry it up, Dawn," Buffy said as they walked toward the porch of their home on Revello Drive. "We need to get a bandage on your neck and then you need to get to bed. Tomorrow's the big day."

"Yeah, yeah," Dawn replied. "You keep reminding me. Big day. First day at the new high school."

"I still can't believe they built it in the same place as the old one," Buffy said as she fished her keys out of her pocket. "You think they'd learn that hellmouths are not productive educational environments."

"Well, you did learn a bunch of stuff about evil there when you were in high school," Dawn said as she led Buffy up the porch steps. She suddenly stopped in her tracks and Buffy bumped into her, nearly knocking both of them over.

"Dawn, what are you…?"

She couldn't finish her question when she followed her sister's gaze to the end of the porch. Instinctively, she stepped between Dawn and Tara. Aside from herself, people didn't generally turn out to be good when they rose from the dead. So the Tara she was looking at could be anything from a zombie to a vampire to a demon spirit. She wasn't taking any chances.

"I couldn't find the hide-a-key," Tara said, not sure what else to say. "I guess you guys moved it."

The Summers girls said nothing. They didn't know what to say. Confusion was etched over both their faces. She could tell they both wanted to be happy that she was there, but they had to be cautious. She understood that.

"I'm not a vampire, I'm not a zombie and I'm pretty sure I'm not a ghost," she explained, trying to convey that she was almost as confused as they were. "As far as I can tell, I'm not evil, and I don't think I'm supposed to be here."

"How are you here?" Buffy asked, finally finding her voice. Dawn was still staring in confusion.

"It's a really long story," Tara said. "I think we should go inside."

"Okay," Buffy said. She turned and nudged Dawn toward the door. She unlocked it, the two of them stepped in and Buffy consciously made sure she did not vocally invite Tara in. This was test one. Tara passed with flying colors as she crossed the threshold uninvited.

"I passed," Tara said, knowing exactly what had been going through Buffy's mind.

"Sorry," Buffy apologized, hating that she couldn't trust someone she had known as a friend.

"I understand," Tara replied. "I'd do the same."

"You don't look like a rotting corpse which is usually the case with zombies," Buffy said. "So that's test two passed."

Dawn stepped toward Tara.

"Dawn, say something," Tara said. The youngest Summers was strangely silent through all of this. Tara was used to Dawnie the Chatterbox. Instead the young girl reached forward with her right hand and rested it on Tara's left shoulder.

"You're real," she said, her voice trembling slightly.

"I am."

Dawn looked Tara in the eyes a moment, the confusion replaced with an emotion Tara couldn't find the words for. It was a combination of several emotions—joy, surprise, sadness. Dawn suddenly stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Tara. Slowly, the witch returned the embrace. Buffy gave her a relieved smile.

"That's the ghost test," the slayer said. She realized that tears had sprung in her own eyes and she wiped them away. She stepped forward and joined the hug between Tara and Dawn. All of this was bittersweet to Tara because she knew she didn't belong here. Something had gone wrong with the spell and she wasn't sure how to fix it.

When they finally separated they moved to the living room. Dawn sat next to Tara on the sofa and Buffy sat on the coffee table across from them.

"I thought…I thought that magic couldn't bring you back because a human killed you," Dawn said. "Osiris told Willow it was natural order."

"How are you here?" Buffy asked. "I mean, we buried you." An alarmed expression spread across her face. "You didn't have to…your grave…"

"No, I didn't dig out of my grave," Tara said. She held up her hands to show they were not injured from clawing out of a coffin as she remembered Buffy's had been. "Although I should be in my coffin. Something went wrong."

"You said it was a long story," Buffy said. "I think you should start at the beginning."

Tara told her story, starting with the headaches and how she had seen this reality through a spell. She explained how Amy erased all Warrens from existence, allowing Tara to remain alive. She tried to gauge the girls' reactions. She could see the hurt already surfacing on Dawn's face because she was realizing that Tara had tried to change the world back to one where she was dead. Buffy was merely taking it all in, trying to think of answers to the questions they all had.

"I woke up in the Magic Box when I thought I'd be waking up in the afterlife, whatever that might be for me," Tara said. "I don't know how I'm here. I need to find out. Me being here in this reality is probably even more wrong than me being in the other reality. I don't even have my notes from the spell. I'm going to have to go off of my memory on that."

"Xander, take her upstairs."

The three of them looked over to the foyer when they heard Buffy's voice. They didn't see anything.

"I still don't get what happened," they heard Xander say.

"Hopefully Anya will find something," Buffy's voice said. Dawn and Tara looked at Buffy and were certain she wasn't speaking the words.

"Did she put herself in a coma? I thought everything was supposed to change," Dawn's voice said. The end of her sentence faded. They heard Xander's voice start to speak again, but they couldn't make out the words as the entire conversation faded away.

"What was that?" Buffy asked. The three of them shared the same confused look.

"They were talking about a spell," Dawn said. She looked at Tara. "They were talking about your spell."

"I think that was the other reality, but I don't know how that's possible," Tara said.

"They were going upstairs," Buffy said. She stood and the other two followed her. "Maybe we can hear more if we follow them."

The three of them went up the stairs and Buffy led them to the bedroom she now occupied that had previously been shared by Willow and Tara. If Tara was still alive in the other reality, Buffy assumed that they would still be in that room. She flipped on the light and they looked around. Suddenly there was a flash of an image. They briefly made out the shapes of people. They saw their almost completely transparent bodies. Xander was gently laying Tara down on the bed. She appeared unconscious. Buffy was standing at the end of the bed while Dawn was standing near Xander. They faded away as quickly as they appeared. There were no voices.

Buffy was both confused and agitated when she asked, "Okay, what the frilly heck was that?"