Author's Note: Ooh, thanks for the reviews! Yes, tcganimefan, considering how drastically bad things can get for the Summers girls, this isn't actually so bad. Hey, at least the Doctor's around somewhere, taking care of the Master! Otherwise, they'd have to do that, too, and that'd be a nightmare!

Thanks, MadCow77, I'm glad you liked my End-of-Time tie-in. As per usual with my stories, all the characters have their part to play in making the events in the Doctor Who episode happen, but not necessarily in the way you think. Like in my 456 story!

Anyways.

Enjoy!

"Elizabeth always knows more than she technically should," Willow muttered. "Don't take anything for granted around her." Willow thought it all through. Then, something striking her, as worry flooded her face. "Oh." She looked over at Seo. "Oh."

"What?" said Seo.

"Yeah," said Xander. "You've figured it out, huh? After all. There's only one group out there who can manipulate time things, and if Seo came from a different timeline—"

"—she's one of them," Willow concluded. "A Time Lord." Her face going pale. "Xander. We never told Elizabeth about the Doctor's war thingy. You said we needed to make her think he was still dropping in and checking up on her all the time!"

"Yeah, and I bet she was really disappointed," Xander agreed, "that when she destroyed the world, the Doctor never showed up to stop her." He adjusted his grip on his gun. "Maybe a passing Dalek floated by and told her the truth."

Seo looked between the two of them. "I don't understand."

"Xander's right — this is a trap," said Willow. "It has to be. If you know the Doctor — or if you're important to the war — she thinks he'll come after you. So she can kill him." Willow sighed, shook her head. "Except he won't. He's got bigger stuff to worry about. He made that pretty clear, the last time we saw him."

But Seo had a very uneasy feeling, niggling away inside of her.

If this was a trap…

Well, Elizabeth might not know about Seo. But she had been to Mom's timeline, before. She knew one other person who could unlock multiversal gateways. And who'd run into the middle of danger, to rescue a sister she loved.

"Aunt Dawn!" said Seo. A smile lighting up her face, as she worked it out. "Oh, it's the Key! That's why she built that structure, there! She's not guarding the gateway, to make sure Mom can't get back! She's not safeguarding against me and Aunt Dawn! She wants to get out! She wants to use me and Aunt Dawn to let her through into our world!"

Xander and Willow looked confused.

But Seo just jumped up and down, applauding her own genius. "It is a trap!" she cried, happily. "It makes sense! She'll set up Mom to be right where Xander and Willow can see her. Willow will cry out, Xander will shoot first and ask questions later. Then Elizabeth will play herself off like she's Mom, and get me to carry her out of here!"

Xander lowered the gun.

Suddenly rattled.

"She's right — if Elizabeth's an alternate timeline version of her mom," Willow said, "they'll look identical. Sound identical. We could get the wrong one, Xander."

"Yeah, I can take the hint," Xander muttered, putting the safety back on his gun. "I might be legally blind. I'm not legally stupid." He paused. "Or… any kind of stupid."

"But don't you understand?" Seo cried. "It's a trap! And that's brilliant!"

Xander gave a mirthless laugh. "'Brilliant'?"

"Yes!" Seo agreed. "It means she wants us all to get up there alive. Get to Mom alive. We all have our parts to play in her plot, and that means she might threaten us, but she won't actually go through with it and kill us."

And, to prove her point, Seo raced over to the barricade, throwing the items away and yanking open the door. Rushing out the door, throwing her arms open.

"Here I am!" Seo shouted. "Not fighting back! So go on! Kill me, already!"

The evil monsters all stopped.

Turned to Seo, their eyes fixed on her. Murderous and hungry.

They seemed to be struggling against something. As if something had a hold of their very natures, and was yanking back their chains. Trying to get them to do its bidding.

Something wavering.

Then one of the monsters broke free.

And so did the others. Racing after the first one, rushing Seo with jaws open and teeth bared.

"Oops," Seo said.

Darting out of the way of a ravenous wolf-looking thing, as a group of vampires blocked her escape back to Willow and Xander. She ducked past a demon's punch, then skidded around some shining-looking entities that tried to encompass and smother her. Her eyes fixed on those technological systems Elizabeth had around the building.

The control box.

She jumped over a snake demon, flipping around to kick out at an airborne flying monster coming at her the other way. Landed by the control box, yanking it open, and frantically wiring the whole thing together. Praying and hoping she'd be fast enough to make this work.

A growl behind her.

Seo spun around, as a horrible bear-looking monster loomed over her, about to strike.

Then the monster cried out, toppling to the side.

To reveal Willow, behind its body. Xander pushing her forwards. Xander's gun nestled in Willow's hands.

"Finish up," said Willow, handing the gun back. "We've got an Elizabeth to bring down. And a world to save."

She woke up.

Didn't know who she was, at first. Buffy… or Elizabeth. Her head swum with too many memories, all contradicting each other. That horrible pulse throbbed in her skull, threatening to tear her apart. It was getting louder and louder, almost feeding itself into the far wall of the room, into that area by… by the…

She froze.

That area beside the other-her.

That area that had a tiny, faint little crack in reality reaching through it. So faint, in fact, that she might never have noticed it — except there was this pulse beating away inside her head, a pulse that almost seemed to be… leading her to the crack.

Right where the portal should be — a crack. Right now, it was too small for her to get through. But… when Seo came…

"You're awake," said the other-her. Who was not behind bars.

"I'm imprisoned," her-her said, hands closing around the bars locking her away. "That means… I'm Buffy. You're Elizabeth." Then, remembering the last few seconds before she'd been brained by an iron bar, shouted out, "You hit me!"

"And I've got the bump to prove it," Elizabeth replied, her hand on her own head. "But you should have heard yourself. Being all with the, 'We've got to save the world', and 'this is bigger than just us'!" She rolled her eyes. "You were asking for it."

"This is bigger than just us," Buffy snapped. Pointed to the blinking Crystallizer. "It's still doing stuff! You know who controls it and just what they can do. They're in the middle of a massive war, and I know what they did at the end of that war. What they tried to do. The Doctor told me!"

"Nothing is bigger than me!" Elizabeth spat, spinning around to glare at her counterpart. "Not the Time Lords! Not that stupid Doctor! Not you or your daughter or anything!" She stepped forwards. "My freedom! My life! My existence! It trumps everything else in the whole universe. In any universe."

And a part of Buffy felt like… yeah.

She was right.

Total right!

The other part just kept struggling to maintain her own sense of self. The knowledge that she was Buffy.

"That's what this reminds me, every single day!" said Elizabeth, pointing at her head. "Those beats should have made me go crazy, huh? But they didn't. He didn't. The Doctor tried to shove his head into mine, but I fought back. I beat him."

"Yeah, you're all with the sane," Buffy muttered.

Elizabeth checked a reading on her desk. "Your daughter's coming," she said. "Already entered the building. Short trip in the elevator, and she'll be here with the others. All ready for their finest hour."

She gave a small whistle, and a demon emerged from the shadows. Bowing its head to her, as she handed him the key for the cell beside Buffy.

"Time to get this show started," said Elizabeth. Turning, and walking into the cell. "Time to see just how smart your daughter really is."

The Masters had stopped looking for Dawn.

In fact, they'd all pretty much left. Only a few wandering around, idly, talking in hushed tones about something they'd found nearby that was absolutely fascinating.

Good for Dawn.

It meant none of them noticed as she smashed Ace's bike into pieces. Or smashed up other broken machinery into pieces. Following the instructions in the book she'd taken from Buffy's, trying to get all the smashed up bits to fit together and make something else.

"I'm not just Dawn, anymore," she reminded herself. "I'm the Key. That means I'm kind of Dawn, kind of Seo. And while Dawn might not know how to do this, Seo can do it totally easy."

Which, Dawn was guessing, was the only reason she was succeeding.

She snuck out of the cave. Looked out, at the Sunnydale crater. As the sun began to rise, above the horizon. And dawn approached.

The first tendrils of morning dancing across the crack that was their link to the other world.

"Please, don't come out until I'm finished," Dawn said. Turning and rushing back into the cave. "Please, please, please. Just a little longer, Seo. Just a little longer!"