Spike looked around. He was back home, in his world. That was some dream, he thought. Then he put his right hand to his right cheek. His realized his cheek was bleeding, right where Dawny had scratched it. That was no dream. He remembered what Tara said, about some Higher Power sending him. Clem sent him. Was Clem a Higher Power? He stood up, turned around and looked at Clem.

"What did you do to me? What the bloody hell did you do to me!?" He ran at Clem, grabbed him, and pushed him against the wall. "You better start explaining yourself, or I'll rip your deceitful big head off!"

Clem chuckled and tried to keep cool. "So Spike, learn anything about yourself? I thought you passed with flying colors. Except for the Dawn stuff. You seemed a little too into that." Spike pulled on Clem's ear, trying to hurt him. Clem flinched. "Ow, ow, ow! Careful. Don't want to do anything you might regret."

"Oh, I'm way past that point," Spike answered. "What the bloody hell are you?"

"Remove your paws from me and I'll tell you." Spike let go. He eyed Clem with great suspicion. "It's the wackiest thing. I can transport people to alternate realities. Change one aspect of the past to create an alternate present. Like a virtual-reality parlour game. It runs in my family. Back home we never use It's a useless power, if you think about it. I can't truly alter the past. I can't predict the future. All I can do is give people a glimpse of a world which could have been, but never will be. What's the point in that?"

"I don't know. To get your get rocks off by kidnapping people and putting them through your merry-go-round of horrors? I had no idea you had such a sick, sick mind."

"I'm only the transportation. I have no control over the destination. I can watch. But I have as much control over the show as I do when I go to the IMAX. To be honest, I saw a lot of things there I wish I hadn't. I'm gonna have a lot of nightmares for the next few years. Not to mention that I'll never be able to look at some people the same way ever again."

"Same here. And one of those people is YOU," Spike answered, grabbing Clem round the throat.

"Watch the hands, mister!," Clem wheezes. "Trust me, it was far worse for me. Cause I saw everything. And what you didn't see, well, thank your lucky stars. But I think you learned something. This town wouldn't be the same if you hadn't come here."

"Yeah. Tara would be alive. I killed Tara. That's a nice thing to have on my conscience," Spike concluded.

"Spike, there were too many random variables for everything to have turned out worse. But you said it yourself to Buffy - this world is wrong.' And it was, because you hadn't been a part of it."

"Oh, no. Great bugger all. Are you my Guardian Angel? Lovely. Just lovely. I don't even get a bloody human!"

"These days, they prefer to be called Consultants," Clem explained. "And I'm not one of them. I'm an Observer."

"For who?," Spike snorts.

"They call themselves Higher Powers. But they're more like Middle Management. They love the fancy titles."

"I should have known your patsy act was bogus. I mean, cum on! No demon's as helpless as you pretend to be."

"I'm 320 years old," Clem answered. "That's like eighty in your human years. Why do you think I'm so wrinkly and saggy? My muscles wasted away. My bones have thinned and softened. You should have seen me at 200. I could have taken you apart limb-by-limb. You can't know how frustrating it is, losing that much power. Oh wait, you can. Then again, who am I kidding? You never had my power."

Spike started laughing. "You? Some sort of super-warrior demon? That's a laugh."

"No, I was average where I came from. I was no warrior. We didn't have warriors. We didn't have wars. When you can live to be 400, who wants to risk an early death? Of course, paying for a century of retirement isn't a picnic. Hence the second career. This planet's retirement Heaven. All the movies. The tv shows. A whole world designed for those of us who can only sit around and do nothing."

"Do nothing!," Spike screamed, shaking Clem by his lapels before shoving him back towards the couch. "You tried to trap me in another world."

"Like I told you from the get-go, I didn't want to do that. But I had to keep you from falling off the rails. It was the only way I knew to show you how much good you've done. You said it yourself — that world was wrong. And it was wrong because you hadn't been in it. And what did you do? You fixed it. You tried to help. That's the kind of person you are."

"Help? I didn't try to help. I tried to have fun."

"What about laying down your life to save Buffy? Were you trying to have fun then?"

"I wusn't thinking. Maybe I knew her life is more important than mine. That I'm the one who deserves to die."

"Or maybe, just maybe, you knew that you couldn't live without her."

"Doesn't make me a good person. Told you before, I do what makes me happy. Always have. I only helped the Scoobies when I wasn't physically able to kill them. That's not good. That's not altruism. That's pure and simple selfishness."

"Taking an ax blow for Buffy is not selfishness. It was the whole point of this exercise. To prove that you care about more than looking out for number one. That was your ticket back."

"Ticket back? You were going to leave me there?"

"Until you did something unselfish, yes."

"But what if I died before I got the chance?"

"There's always a risk. Otherwise there can't be a reward."

"There's no bloody reward! I'm back here, right where I started, I don't know how many hours later. Quarter of nine! You almost made me miss my show! I'm on in a half-hour. You, Clement, are the most deceitful, most inconsiderate," and then Spike ran out of things to say. He punched Clem in the face. Clem fell down. "That's for trying to kill me!" Then he ran out.

At the end of dinner, Dawn had a question for Buffy. "There's a party tonight at Randy Stoler's house. Can I go?"

"On a school night! Of course not."

"Oh, I forgot to mention, I'd be going with a guy. Kind of like a date."

"Well, if there's a boy involved, that's different." This was the exact opposite of how this would go for any other teenage girl. But Buffy was eager to wean Dawn off of Connor. Hence the counterintuitive parenting. "Is it that cute guy I saw you with at school last week?"

"You mean at the trophy case? Yeah, it's him. His name's Clarke."

"So tell me about this Clarke."

"He's a Junior. He's in my chemistry class. Plays football, wrestles."

"And he's not a vampire?"

"Buffy!"

"Just checking. You have seen him in the sunlight, haven't you?"

"Buffy, stop it. I mean, you're one to talk. Maybe when he comes by to pick me up you can take his temperature and his pulse."

"Just kiddin' ya, Dawn. I'm so excited for you! By the way, when is he picking you up?"

"9:30."

"Can't wait to meet him."

A few hours later, Clarke rang the doorbell. Buffy answered. "Hi. You must be Clarke." He was in khaki slacks and a blue oxford button-down shirt, looking very much the young gentleman.

"And you must be Buffy," Clarke answered. "Dawn has told me wonderful things about you." Actually, Dawn had said nothing about Buffy. But Clarke knew her name and gave her the line to impress her.

Buffy was flattered. "Why thank you. Come on in, Clarke. Sit on the couch, make yourself comfortable. Dawn will be down in a few. Would you like something to drink?"

"No thanks," Clarke answered. Buffy sat down across from Clarke.

"So, tell me about yourself. I hear you play sports."

"First-string halfback on the football team. Captain of the wrestling team. It's what I do, but it's not who I am. Know what I'm saying?"

Buffy understood a thing or two about teen identity issues. "So then, Clarke, who are you?"

"Who am I? Do any of us know who we really are? One thing I do know is that I'm very fond of your sister. She's an incredible person. You must be very proud of her."

"That's very nice of you to say." Buffy was a bit bowled over by the charm offensive. She wanted to like this boy, and he was making that very easy. Perhaps too easy. Clarke looked up as Dawn walked down the stairs. She is wearing black pants and a black and white checkered sweater.

"You look really nice," he told her.

"Uh, thanks. You look, nice, too," she nervously responds.

"Would it be alright if I had Dawn back by midnight?," Clarke asks Buffy.

"Of course. Midnight's fine. Stay out later if you want. You two have fun." Dawn wonders if this is reverse psychology: Is Buffy pretending to like Clarke to make him seem less attractive to Dawn because Buffy doesn't approve of him? Either that or Buffy actually liked a boy who liked Dawn, which for Buffy would be completely out of character.

"Sorry I kept you waiting and left you all alone with my sister," Dawn says to Clarke as he drives to the party. "I hope she didn't scare you too much."

"Buffy? No, she was great. Really nice. Very laid back."

That didn't sound like Buffy to Dawn. "Glad to hear that," she responded with a hint of confusion.

"Must be tough for Buffy, taking care of you on her own, with your mother gone."

"I came here to have fun, not to discuss my problems," Dawn responded.

"Okay then. Fun. I'll see what I can do about that." Clarke glanced over at Dawn and smiled.

Buffy went out on patrol. No new suspicious recent burials for her to wait on that evening. So she went downtown, prowling the alleys, ready to pick off the vampires as they came out to feed. But the dark ends of the streets were empty that even. Her search for the bad guys led her towards the Bronze. And so she went inside. Plenty of bad guys here. Starting with Spike, who was onstage, singing Social Distortion's "Darlin This Time:"

"As I'm looking back on broken down dreams

heartbreaks and memories that I've had

I made it through the hard times and came back a stronger man

but this time darling it's just not the same.

"Down the lonely stairs with a suitcase in my hand

misery can be a heavy load

I've made it through the hard times and in vain I made it back

but this time darling it's just not the same."

This, Buffy hadn't planned on. She looked away from the stage, trying as best she could to pretend he wasn't there. She scoped out the joint, checked the coatroom, scanned the dance floor. Nothing suspicious. She went up to the balcony. That was always a favorite spot for the vampires, as she knew all too well. At the front end of the balcony, there was a man talking to a woman. They stood next to each other, leaning down to look at the stage, the man on the left, the woman on the right. His lungs weren't expanding and contracting. He wasn't touching her. Didn't look ready yet for the kill. Perfect chance to nip this deadly courtship in the bud.

"So you just moved here?," the vampire asked the woman. "Where from?"

"Las Cruces, in New Mexico."

"Came out to the coast. How do you like Sunnydale so far?"

"It's nice. Good location. Very affordable. Kind of a dead town, though."

"It is a small town, bit it's quite exciting if you give it a chance. I'll think you'll be surprised."

Buffy had snuck up behind the vampire and staked him in the back. He disintegrated before the woman's eyes. "He said you'd be surprised," Buffy told her. She had trouble comprehending what she thought she just saw. People aren't supposed to vanish like that. Nothing is supposed to vanish like that. California was even weirder than she imagined.

Xander came over to Buffy's house. "Hello. Anybody home?," he asked. Willow heard him. She left her room and came down the stairs.

"Hey Xand."

"Where is everybody?"

"Buffy's patrolling. Dawn's on a date with Clarke - you know, the guy we saw her with at school last week."

Xander's eyes lit up. He was the other charter member of the Anyone But Connor Club. "Hey, that's great! Good for her. So what's up with you, Willow?"

"Xander, if I ask you something, promise to tell me the truth?"

"Always. What's up?"

"If I were to let you know that I wanted you — you know — in the physical sense, would you sleep with me?

Xander was quite flumoxed. "Could you repeat that? Wait. On second thought, please don't."

"Hypothetically, of course. If I got all touchy and kissy with you, you wouldn't turn me down and walk away, right?"

"I don't mean to sound rude, but why exactly are you asking me this?"

"It's Zooey. Last night I let her know that I wanted us to be, you know, MORE than friends."

"And she didn't want that. She doesn't find you attractive?," Xander asked, confused and deeply bewildered. This was definitely new territory for Xander, talking with Willow about girls in this way.

"She does. Always has, ever since we met. She loves me. Or at least she says she does. She says it quite a bit, actually, the whole I've never loved a woman the way I love you' line."

"Oh yes, that tired old line," Xander deadpanned. "How many times have I heard that one?"

"And here's the kicker — she says be wouldn't do anything with me BECAUSE she loves me! Have you ever heard anything so crazy in your entire life?"

"Not personally. Not to my face. So let me get this straight, er, I mean, right. You're both attracted to each other."

"Of course. Very," Willow answered. Xander pondered this for a few seconds, then realized it would be best if he stopped pondering.

"What exactly did she tell you?"

"Something about how she wanted it to be perfect. How she doesn't want us to make a mistake. But what's the mistake?"

"Dunno. Sometimes friends are attracted to one another, and in a moment of weakness they give in to temptation, and then they regret it. Or so I've heard. Maybe she wants to make sure it's something deeper."

It had been nearly two months since Connor left town. After a month, Dawn got sick of moping and feeling sorry for herself. She had already done plenty of both in her brief lifetime. Now she wanted to let loose, have a little fun. She had done precious little of either in her brief lifetime.

NEXT: The final chapter, where Dawn tries to party in order to forget about Connor and Spike tries to score in order to forget about Buffy. Both plans hilariously backfire in ways neither of them expected.