"Before we get to Buffy's, there's some things we should talk about." Other Xander said. "You do have power. Power and Magic are different things. Magic is energy anyone can work, despite what Willow has told you. Power is an innate ability. You don't always know you have it. I didn't know I was psychic, 'til a seer told me I was. Then I realized I'd been using the ability without ever knowing it. Both your Cordy and mine are seers. You and I, we See. That's something different as well. It's seeing what others do not see. The Dawn girl, she has green energy in her. What is that?"

"You can see that? That's the key energy. Energy that can open portals between dimensions. Dawn was made from Buffy so the key could be stored in her. It was hoped Buffy could keep it safe."

"They don't look anything like. I thought she was adopted. How do you know she's made from Buffy?"

"One of those that made her told Buffy so."

"What exactly did they say?"

"That they made her from the Slayer and gave her to Buffy to protect."

"Gods. No one pays any attention. Buffy's not the Slayer. The title passed from her when she drowned. Faith is the Slayer. You guys need to learn to do follow ups. No one's verified Spike's story, have they?"

"No, but Buffy's very protective of him. Insists he can be a good man. She's totally pissed at Giles and Wood for trying to dust him. Spike killed Wood's mother, she was a Slayer in the seventies. And Spike killed a bunch of people on orders from the First, but we're supposed to believe he's just fine now, because she says so. Before the shiny new soul, they had a very aggressive sexual relationship. She broke it off and he tried to rape her. She's forgiven him."

"I should have dusted him when I had the chance. Where I can find him when he's not in her back pocket?"

"In the basement."

"She's letting him live in the same house as those girls?! After he's killed, with his shiney new soul that no one bothered to verify he actually has?!"

"We're not allowed to protest that either."

"I wonder how much of that is Willow's doing. So determined to give Buffy what she wants, so Buffy is happy. How much is she aware of what she's doing and how much is she unconsciously operating?"

"You really think she's unstable."

"In every reality we've found that she does Magic in, she is. Granted, we've only been to a few realities. But her behavior in our own reality certainly supports it. She has no true understanding of Magic. Like Buffy, Willow thinks it's learning as many spells as she can. She keeps pulling Magic without leaning how to handle what she's already got first."

"She's stolen Magic from others too. A black magic dealer, the black magic books that Giles had at his store for research purpose and Giles himself when he was sent to bring her down. She nearly killed him."

"How exactly was she helped with all that she did?"

"Giles took her to England, to a Coven there. They started helping her to control it, I guess. But her very first day back in Sunnydale, she accidentally made herself invisible, because she was embarrassed by her behavior. Which tells me you're right, she doesn't have control over it. And now she's afraid of what she has in her."

"Magic is closely tied to emotions. You'd have been better off if they'd stripped her of the Magic. Especially given what I saw in regards to that First thing."

"What did you see?"

"Not yet. We'll get to that after we get some answers from Willow. That thing said Buffy died and Willow resurrected her. When was this?"

"When Glory came after Dawn. Glory was a fallen Hell goddess. She wanted the energy so she could use it to open a portal back to her dimension. Problem with that was twofold. One, it was now part of Dawn and Glory needed her blood to close it. Second, our dimensions would have bled together once it was open. Buffy sacrificed herself to close the portal Glory succeeded in opening after capturing Dawn."

"How did Buffy close it?"

"She believes Dawn is her sister, one blood. She threw herself in the portal and died."

"Did Buffy do anything to declare themselves one blood?"

"Actually, she did. She put some of Dawn's blood on her hand and pressed it to a wound she, herself had."

"Mystically binding themselves together. That's why it worked. Why did Willow resurrect her?"

"She convinced herself and the rest of us, that because Buffy died closing a portal to a Hell dimension, that her soul might have ended up in Hell. Turns out Buffy was actually in Heaven and we pulled her."

"No, you didn't. An entire coven of witches as powerful as Willow is wouldn't have the power to pull a soul from Heaven. Where'd you get that idea?"

"A demon that made us sing out our hopes and fears and things we'd been hiding. Buffy sang that she thought she was in Heaven and that we'd pulled her out of there."

"She might believe that, but no, she wouldn't have been in Heaven. She has no remorse for all the people that are dead because of her. She never even thinks about them, let alone acknowledges that they're dead because of her choices."

"Then where was she?"

"The same place Angel was when Willow redid the soul curse. Reincarnated into an unborn baby. One that died as a result of the soul being yanked."