"Oh, god!" Dawn exclaimed as she and Tara neared the two seemingly unconscious figures and the mausoleum. "Are they...?" she trailed off, not wanting to finish the sentence.

Tara tentatively took a step forward, taking Andrew's hand carefully, feeling around on his wrist for any sign of life. When Andrew's eyes opened and his head turned to look at her, she jumped back, startled. "No..." she said to Dawn. "They're not..." she told her, conscious of not adding the 'yet' to the end of the sentence, even though she knew it wouldn't be long for them.

She looked back at Andrew, seeing his mouth opening as if he were mouthing words, trying to tell her something. It didn't take more than a few seconds to work out that Willow had cast a spell on them. She closed her eyes thoughtfully for a second, said a short, quiet incantation, and suddenly she could hear the gasps coming from both of the boys.

"...Tried telling you this was a bad idea...but you wouldn't listen... Help us..." Andrew begged, crying, not sobbing because that would have taken too much energy, and he didn't have much left. "Please...help us..."

At the sounds of his friend's voice, Jonathon stirred, looking at Dawn sadly. "She got us..." he said, almost with a trace of a smile on his face. "I guess...she won, huh?"

Dawn moved forward, ready to help as she reached out a hand to pull the sword from his body.

Tara quickly intercepted, pulling Dawn's hands away. "No," she told her. "We can't move them."

"Why not?" Dawn asked.

"We remove the swords, they'll die instantly," Tara said quietly and gravely. "The trauma is too much for their bodies to handle.

"Then what are we supposed to do?" Dawn asked in a hushed voice. "I mean, we can't just leave them here."

"We're not going to," Tara said. "But I'm just thinking that if Willow did this, she was probably interrupted if she didn't finish the job. We have to be careful."

"Um..." Dawn said, suddenly distracted by something. "I hate to make things worse..."

"What do you mean 'worse'?" Tara asked.

"Well, I'm not exactly an expert," Dawn said, "But I'm thinking a fireball in the sky can't be a good thing..."

Tara turned to see the ball of orange, red and yellow coming towards them, flying through the air.

"Get out of there!" they heard Buffy yell from a distance, seeing her running towards them, desperately trying to keep pace with the fiery object, leaping over the headstones, occasionally glancing up. "Move!"

Buffy leapt forward, pushing Dawn and Tara out of the way of the mausoleum as the fireball hit it, part of the sturdy building collapsing from the impact, Jonathon and Andrew falling free from their bindings, all five of them flat-out on the ground.

Dawn immediately pushed herself onto all fours, crawling to her sister a few feet away as the earth suddenly began to shake and move beneath her, making her stagger on the spot.

"Dawn!" Buffy yelled, worried. "Dawn, hold on!" she told her, trying to get to her feet to get to her, when suddenly a huge hole opened up in the ground, right beneath her sister. She reached out as Dawn screamed, falling into the gaping hope, but only found herself following.

Buffy landed on a dirt floor, twenty or thirty feet below the surface, dirt raining on them from above. She looked up to where they had just come from, just in time to see one of the swords that had been skewered through the boys earlier falling at her. She rolled out of the way just in time, feeling the breeze on her skin as it fell through the air. The sword landed, point down, where her face had been an instant ago. She got to her feet as the second sword fell down, brushing herself off and taking in their surroundings.

It looked like they had happened upon some sort of cave or cavern, dark and dank and smelling of damp, the walls made up of the dirt and rocks one would usually find digging up ground. The thing that unnerved them both was the sections of coffins that protruded from the walls in various places. They both looked up to the hole that had been made, knowing they weren't going to climb out of this easily.

Above them, it was silent. The fireball had demolished part of a building, the remains of which were scattered across the cemetery, but it had also freed Jonathon and Andrew from their makeshift shackles.

They lay there side by side, the cuts and bruises they both appeared to have on their faces paling in comparison to the burns the fireball had caused, and the wounds in each of their torso's that you could almost see right through.

Jonathon moaned quietly, finding he had no strength to make any louder noise, reaching out with a numb arm to touch the blood that was oozing from his stomach. He managed to touch the sticky liquid there and bring his hand up to his face to look at it. The deep red looked almost black in the night, and he wondered if it really was that colour seeing as how he'd done things so terrible that it hurt to think about them.

He had landed awkwardly, not that he could be in any more pain than he already was, but the back of his legs were flat against the disrupted earth, while his back was twisted so that he was turned toward the demolished mausoleum. It took a lot of effort, but he mustered enough strength to turn himself onto his back, now seeing that Andrew had landed on his stomach, his head turned toward Jonathon, his eyes fluttering open and closed.

Jonathon opened his mouth to speak, but nothing would come out except a rasping noise that sounded like he was choking. He coughed up the blood that was filling his airways, turning his head towards the other boy. "Andrew...?" he said quietly. "Andrew...?"

With some effort, his eyes opened and looked ahead at Jonathon. Somehow, there was an unspoken understanding between them now. Everything they had done...this was their payment for it. Whether or not it was fair, they weren't sure, but people had died because of them. Innocent people. Now it was their turn.

There was the smallest smile on Andrew's face that Jonathon had to admire. He had been the one who was so convinced that they had to pay for their actions, and now they were. He had always thought of Andrew as a bit of a whiner. If he had ever been asked to imagine what Andrew would be like on his death bed, he would have imagined lots of crying and sobbing and screaming that it wasn't fair.

He couldn't feel anything now, which was a very bad sign, he knew. While he could feel everything that had been done to him, he knew he was alive. Now it was all just...gone. It wouldn't be long now.

He smiled back at his friend. "So," he managed to get out. "Mexico, huh?"

There was no reply from Andrew, just the closing of his eyes for the final time.

Jonathon turned his head, laying it flat against the ground silently, looking up at the stars one last time before his chest rose and fell for the final time.

Having finally awoken from the whammy that Willow had put on her after she had freed her from the binding spell Giles had used, Anya was now surveying the damage done to her livelihood. She hadn't gotten very far, just reaching the doorway from the training room into the Magic Box proper, but as she did, as if the vibration of someone walking through it was too much, the door fell from it's hinges, startling Anya and making her gasp and jump.

She walked slowly into the main room, looking around at the destruction, when she saw something on the floor, recognising it right away. "Giles," she said, rushing over to him. She knelt next to his beaten and weary body, his eyes closed, unmoving, and shook him lightly. "Giles! "she repeated, panicking now.

His eyes opened slowly, staring at the ceiling, the girl looking relieved. "Anya..." he said slowly.

"I'm so sorry," she told him, sincerely upset. "Willow forced me to free her with her brain. Are you okay?"

"I can see..." he told her.

"Oh," Anya said, uncertain. "It's a ...miracle?"

"Willow..." he clarified. "I can see her. She took the magick I had and...now...I know where she is. I can feel what..." His face crumpled slightly, unreadable. "Oh, God..."

"Giles..." she told him. "...You have to rest."

"Silly girl, I'm dying," he told her matter-of-factly.

"No, you're not," she said, alarmed.

"It was... It was the only way. I thought we... There'd be a chance...now...I know where Willow is. She's going to finish it..."

"Finish what?"

"The world. "

As the sun began to rise through the few clouds in the Sunnydale sky, tiny rays filtered into the hole that had been made in the cemetery. Not far below that hole, a pair of hands clutched at the tree roots that had been exposed around the edges.

Buffy was standing on a coffin, pulling herself up with all that she was worth, attempting to climb the walls of the hole that she and Dawn were trapped in. But, inevitably, the roots gave way in her hand, and she fell backwards, landing on the coffin with a pained yell.

"Buffy!" Dawn called.

The Slayer quickly scrambled off the coffin, standing on the bottom of the hole and brushing herself off, staring up at the only way out.

"Are you okay?" Dawn asked her.

"We have to get out of here," she told her sister determinedly. "Tara!" she yelled loudly.

"I think I saw her hit her head," Dawn said. "Again."

"Tara!" Buffy yelled again.

With no response, both girls looked up to see the sunny blue sky and the tops of the palm trees that were so common in California. Resolved to doing something, anything to keep herself busy, Buffy went over to one of the walls to tug on a wooden coffin there that was protruding awkwardly from it.

"This looks a little like Spike's place," Dawn said, looking around. "You know, under his crypt." When Buffy ignored her, still pulling on the coffin, Dawn looked a little confused. "What are you doing?"

"If we can pull these out, we can use the coffins for height. Maybe get out of here!" Buffy paused for a second, looking around, and picking up one of the swords that had fallen earlier. She took a second to look at the blood that was still staining the blade, chills starting up her back at the thought of where it had come from, before she resolved that this wasn't a time for sentimentality. She shoved it between the wood and dirt, using it to try and pry the coffin loose.

"Maybe one of the tunnels Spike uses is around here," Dawn suggested. "Uh, we could use it to get to his place."

"That's the last place on Earth we need to be."

"Oh, but it was good enough for you to take me there after what he did to you?" Dawn asked, annoyed now.

Buffy finally turned and looked at her sister. What he...?"

"Tried to do," Dawn corrected. "Whatever."

"Dawn..." Buffy began.

"So, it was true?" Dawn yelled at Buffy. "What Willow said at the Magic Box?"

"Dawn, you may not have noticed, we're in really big trouble here. This isn't—"

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because you didn't need to know."

"Yes, I do. I need to know! I'm not a kid anymore."

"Dawn, I'm trying to protect you," Buffy said angrily.

"Well, you can't!" Dawn yelled back. "Look around, Buffy. We're trapped in here! Willow's killing and people I love keep dying! And you cannot protect me from that."

Buffy looked down at the floor sadly as she realised that Dawn was right, as much as she wished she wasn't. "Dawn..." she whispered.

"Hello?" a voice called down.

Buffy and Dawn looked up, trying to see where it was coming from. "Tara?" Buffy called.

"Buffy?" Tara called, kneeling at the edge of the pit, looking down. "Are you okay? Where's Dawn?"

"Here," Dawn called up, relieved to see that Tara was okay.

"Are Jonathan and Andrew up there with you?" Buffy called up.

"Yeah..." Tara said slowly. "They...I think the fall was too much for them. They're..."

"Dead..." Buffy said softly.

Tara nodded to herself, even though there was no one else to see it, as she leaned forward, trying to see how to get them out. Suddenly, the edge of the pit gave way beneath her. Earth and dirt and grass and rocks fell into the hole as Tara barely managed to pull herself back from the edge.

"Tara?" Buffy called up. "You've gotta find some kind of rope or something and get us out of here."

"Right," Tara said uncertainly, glancing at her surroundings. "Okay, I'll, uh, I'll take a look around."

"And hurry up before—"

She stopped suddenly at the familiar shimmer of magical energy that appeared in front of them, even though part of her wondered if this was Willow, coming back to finish all of them.

"Holy frijole!" Anya exclaimed, looking around in surprise at the pit.

"Anya!" Buffy said. "What are you doing here? Where's Giles?"

"Giles?" Dawn asked Buffy.

"He's still at the magic shop," Anya told them.

"Giles is back?" Dawn asked, turning to Buffy, who in turn rolled her eyes. "You didn't tell me that."

Buffy ignored her sister, instead fixing Anya with a stare. "Did he stop Willow?"

"No," Anya told them. "And things just got a whole lot worse."

"How worse?"

"End of the world worse. Willow's going to destroy it."

"She can do that?" Dawn asked, amazed.

"She can and she will when she gets to where she's going."

"Where's she going?"

"Big old satanic temple," Anya said uncertainly. "Kingman's Bluff?"

"There's...no temple on Kingman's Bluff," Buffy said with a frown.

This place had once been a source of comfort to Willow. But now, Kingman's Bluff was only going to help her end everything. She'd spent so much time here with Xander when they were growing up.

They'd play hide and seek behind the trees that grew wild at the edges of the clearing here. They'd sit and watch the town below, sometimes in silence when Xander was having a hard time with his dad, or when Willow was being ignored by her mom, but always hand in hand.

They'd play superheroes, but Xander would always be the hero with his home-made cape and a pair of his mom's pantyhose, and he'd joke that he'd never be the saviour in real life, so pretending was the next best thing. She'd told him then that she'd always be his damsel in distress, whether he knew it or not, but he hadn't really gotten the sentiment of it when they were ten years old.

Even after everything that happened when they met Buffy, when the life saving became literal and not metaphorical, it was Xander she held above everyone else. She still felt that way, figured she always would, and that was why this had to happen.

When they'd spent days here, even in their wildest games, they would never have imagined that something so absolutely amazing as this had been under their feet the whole time.

She stood with her hands outstretched at the dry land, the earth rumbling slightly as a huge steeple pushed its way out of the earth like something being born, pointing at an angle, but that didn't matter. The sun shone on the five-pointed pentacle that sat atop the new structure, a trident topping that, with various stone carvings on the actual temple. A carved, stone woman was fixing her with its cement, stone eyes and snake-hair, a snake wrapped around her body, and her mouth wide open, a snakelike tongue coming from her open maw like she was ready to devour everything and everyone, which was incredibly apt in this case.

She watched with blackened eyes as the steeple and the temple continued to rise from its confines, controlled by her magick, ready to welcome the end of the world.

"Proserpexa? "Buffy asked Anya, clearly confused. "Who's she?"

"Uh, way up there in the hierarchy of she-demons," Anya informed her. "Her followers intended to use her effigy to destroy the world. They all died when the temple got swallowed up in the big earthquake of '32."

"So now seventy years later, Willow's going to make their dreams come true?" Buffy asked.

"She's going to drain the planet's life force, and funnel its energy through Proserpexa's effigy and, and burn the Earth to a cinder."

When Buffy saw Dawn's alarmed, scared face, she resolved to do something, anything to stop her from doing any more damage. "Not if I can help it."

"You can't," Anya informed her, as they looked at her in surprise. "Something else Giles said. No magic or supernatural force can stop her."

"What does that mean?"

"Don't know. He, he said, 'the Slayer can't stop her,' and then he said a bunch of other stuff," she told them anxiously. "He really wasn't too clear."

Seeing something in Anya's movements, the tone of her voice, Buffy stepped forward suspiciously. "Anya, what are you—"

"I...I should get back to him," she said nervously. "He's alone."

"Is he okay? "Buffy asked, suddenly worried.

Anya fidgeted, taking her time with the words she knew they didn't want to hear, the both of them staring at her, waiting for an answer. "Don't think he...has a lot of time left," she said quietly, and Dawn gasped loudly. "I'm sorry."

She disappeared as quickly as she had appeared to them, leaving the Slayer and her sister sombre and even more worried.

After a moment, Buffy's instincts kicked in, refusing to let her give up. "Tara!" she yelled, not seeing the other at the edge of the hole as she had before. "Where is that rope?"

"Buffy..." Dawn said quietly.

"Tara!" Buffy called again, shaking her head. "Where is she?" she asked herself.

"You heard what Anya said..." Dawn told her, clearly upset with tears in her eyes and a look that Buffy was sadly used to seeing these days. "You heard what Giles said."

"I heard," she confirmed. "And I don't care, I have to try..." she said as she tried to move one of the coffins.

"From the pit of forgotten shadows..." Willow began, the woman that had transfixed her before now at ground level, life size and facing her.

"I'm not just gonna sit here while Willow incinerates what I'm chosen to protect," Buffy declared.

"Awaken, sister of the dark, awaken—" Willow looked to her side, listening.

"I have to stop her," Buffy said determinedly.

"Always the Slayer..." Willow's voice sounded in Buffy's head, making her pause and straighten up in surprise. "Right to the last."

"Willow?" Buffy asked uncertainly

"And it is the last, you know? For all your fighting...thinking you're saving the world..."

Dawn watched her sister. "Buffy?" she asked, receiving only a hand signal from a distracted Buffy to tell her to be quiet.

"And in the end..." Willow continued. "I'm the only one that can save it."

"By killing us?" Buffy asked.

"It's the only way to stop the pain. I can't take it anymore. But I know you, Buffy. You're a warrior. You won't go out without a fight. I don't really have time for one. But you should go out fighting."

"Willow, what are you—"

"It was me that took you out of the Earth. Well, now...the Earth wants you back."

Suddenly, the ground beneath the sisters began to rumble loudly, scaring Dawn and unnerving Buffy after what she had just heard from the person who used to be her best friend. When she looked around, she saw it was for good reason. The walls that been containing them so adequately before, were now alive. Made up of the dirt and earth and rocks and vines, elemental creatures came at them from all directions.

Willow stood with her arms by her sides, concentrating on the effigy before her, focussing all of her energy on what she had planned. "Proserpexa...let the cleansing fires from the depths burn away the suffering souls and bring sweet death."

Lightening crackled between her and the statue fixed on the temple, lighting Willow's pale face with black veins, the ground beneath her shaking, wind that had come from nowhere whistling around her strongly as bolts of green energy shot from her body to the statue.

A light fixture fell from the ceiling of the Magic Box, making Anya duck her head at the resulting plaster and dust that fell from above, the ground shaking roughly beneath her as she kneeled beside him.

The rumbling went through the earth as Buffy and Dawn staggered around, the swords from earlier now in their hands as weapons against their new supernatural foe.

"Willow..." Buffy said nervously.

Anya felt the rumbling and shaking stop, and for a second she looked around, ready for it to begin again. She looked up, waiting for debris to crush her to death, then allowed her eyes to flicker over what was left of her shop, finally resting on Giles' unmoving body and closed eyes.

"Giles?" Anya said loudly. "Giles! Don't die," she told him tearfully. "Not yet. There-there are things I wanna tell you." She paused for a second, watching him and thinking. "Thanks a lot for coming," she told him. "It was good of you to teleport all this way."

Another tremor hit, making the rumbling start again, and Anya ducked her head, hiding her face in Giles' chest until it subsided. "Though in retrospect, it probably would have been better if you hadn't come and given Willow all that magic that made her like ten times more powerful," she said sadly. "That would have been a plus."

Green magic continued flowing from Willow toward the statue, the wind swirling around them, filling the air with dirt and debris and the ever-present lightning, while the statue glowed bright yellowy white in response.

Suddenly, without warning, the stream of magick that Willow had grown so fond of was interrupted, the glowing subsiding as the wind calmed, but it wasn't until the debris cleared that she saw why.

Tara.

"Hey, Sweetie," Tara told her, hands nervously on the waistband of the long skirt she was wearing. "Whatcha doin'?

There was no emotion in Willow's eyes as she looked upon the person she was supposed to be in love with. "Get out of here," she told her.

"Sorry," Tara said with a nervous shrug. "I can't. I mean, I thought I should be here."

"Why?" Willow asked bluntly. "You haven't understood anything else I've been trying to do." When Tara smiled, something in Willow ticked louder than before, and her face set. "Get out of my way. Now."

Before she knew what was happening, without thinking, a bolt of energy that was now becoming her staple flew from her hands and at Tara, lifting her off her feet and throwing her to the ground a few back, her body landing at the base of the statue.

The wrinkles on Giles' face seemed deeper, making him look a lot older than he actually was, the pallor of his pasty skin and the blood smears not doing him any favours at all. But, with most of his energy stolen from him, he knew it wasn't looking good for him. He had made his peace with that.

The Watcher in him, the part that had been instilled in him from an early age by his father, and, later, by people like Quentin Travers, wasn't ready to give up. At least not without some shred of hope still flaring to life in his old, beaten body. Dignified to the end, he hoped, like his predecessors, but the only person who could possible tell was the demon girl sat with him, cradling his head lightly.

It was this determination inside of himself that forced him to open his eyes, against all the messages his body was sending, telling him to just give in, but he swore to protect the world, once upon a time, and even if that world was coming a close sooner than expected, he was ready.

But hope still remained.

"There..." he whispered, his voice barely there at all after the trauma he had endured, but he caught Anya's surprised eye with his own.

"What?" she asked.

"It's not over..." he whispered with a small smile of hope, moving his hand to touch where Anya held his head.