Buffy and Giles park the car in the desert, Buffy doesn't know what to think of this whole 'vision quest' thing but if it gets her closer to defeating Glory, keeping Dawn safe, and maybe even learning something about herself then she'll do it. Giles gives her a look then puts his hand on top of hers which is resting on the center console and squeezes it before quickly letting go, getting out of the car, and going to the trunk. Buffy takes a deep breath sits up straight and focuses on the Slayer in her. There is no time to be worried and scared for Dawn right now, she has to do what she always does and focus on getting the job done. So she opens the door, gets out, and walks over to Giles to see what he's gathering.

"Oh good, supplies. I was wondering about that, like food, water, maybe a compass?

He straightens up, "What about a gourd, some twigs, and a book?"

"I don't think I'll be that hungry."

"They're for me, for the ritual to get you a guide."

"Right, of course, what every ritual needs, a great sacrifice in the form of a healthy but yucky snack, a snackrifice, if you will."

Giles cracks a smile at that one but quickly gets back on track. "Yes, quite. Now, let's go, I'm sure you don't want to be away from Dawn for long."

That thought wipes the smile right off Buffy's face. "Yeah, let's go."

They walk deeper into the desert not saying much to each other. About twenty minutes into the walk Giles stops, "Okay this looks as good a spot as any. You must do this alone, Buffy. I'll stay here and do my part."

"So what am I supposed to do?"

Giles clears his throat. "If I'm being quite honest, I don't know. I assume you'll know when you get there. This quest is very old and has not been documented in a long time."

"Are we wasting our time here, Giles?"

"Oh Buffy, no, I truly don't think so."

She takes another deep breath. "Okay, let's do this."

She nods at Giles then turns around and starts to walk. She feels like she is walking for hours before she actually feels anything out of the ordinary. Something trips her Slayer senses and she looks around but doesn't see anything. Then, she hears a purring sound, she looks at the same spot that tripped her senses and suddenly a mountain lion is lying there.

"Hello, kitty."

The mountain lion stands up and starts walking, Buffy somehow knows she has to follow it, so she does. She leads Buffy for a long time until she finally stops. Buffy sits on the rock once she realizes the mountain lion isn't going to move anymore and looks around. "I know this place."

It's strange, she doesn't know if it's the ritual that Giles did or the fact that she's out in the desert all by herself but she feels like she is in a fog. She realizes she'd been sitting in the same spot for a long time when she looks around and it's dark. When she first sat down it couldn't have been much past noon.

Buffy sits up fast and wipes a little drool from her lip, she realizes she must have fallen asleep after sitting there for so long. Somehow, there is a large fire burning in front of her, which is good because she'd be majorly of the cold if it wasn't keeping her warm. She looks around trying to find who started it, she sees a shadow of someone who is sitting opposite of her but the flames are so tall that she can't see over them. After a few seconds, she sees the person leaning to the side around the fire and right at her.

"I know you, you're the first Slayer," Buffy says

"This is a form, I am the guide."

"I-i have a few questions, about being the Slayer. What about… love? N-not just boyfriend love." She's mad at herself for stuttering but the first slayer always gives her the heeby jeebies and these answers are really important to her.

"You think you're losing your ability to love."

"I didn't say that… Yeah."

"You're afraid that being the Slayer means losing your humanity."

"Does it?"

"You are full of love. You love the key, you love your friends, your family, and the world. That is not the issue."

"Then what is?"

"I wish to show you something."

"What?"

The first Slayer finally walks around the fire, well more like slinks, Buffy thinks, she has a way of walking that reminds Buffy of those crab walks she used to have to do in elementary school gym class. She stays low to the ground and takes wide steps. When she finally makes it to Buffy, she doesn't know what to expect. She's surprised when the first Slayer simply brings her pointer finger to Buffy's forehead.

When she does, it's like Buffy gets tunnel vision and she's moving really fast, being pulled to the end of the tunnel. When she finally gets to the end and her vision is normal again, she's no longer in the desert, somehow she knows she's in the year 1765 in Brazil and she knows she's watching a past slayer.

"What are you doing here? I told you, you have to stay away. This isn't right." Buffy knows logically that they're not speaking English but she can understand them nonetheless.

"I cannot stay away, I don't know why you're fighting this so much. I love you, you love me, what is so wrong about that?"

"You're what I'm meant to kill. You don't really love me, I know you can't, vampires can't feel." The Slayer says with venom.

The vampire scoffs, "You know that's not true. How can you say that after all we've been through together?"

"Because it makes saying no to you easier." The slayer whispers.

The vampire walks up to her and cups her cheek. "And why must you say no?"

She leans into his touch. "Because my watcher would never understand and he's the only family I have. I've been taught since birth that vampires are nothing but evil dead things, but I know that's not true, I know you can be evil but I know you can be good, I've seen it."

"Let me prove it to him just as I've proved it to you. We can do this, we can make it work. Please, stop fighting this, we can be happy together, I can fight alongside you and help you with your calling."

"O-okay." She says before standing on her toes and kissing him.

Buffy doesn't have a chance to ask what is happening before the tunnel vision comes back when it ends she sees the same two people, she can tell a few years have passed, the Slayer looks like she is in her mid-twenties now. The vampire walks into what Buffy assumes is a kitchen area for that time in history, where the Slayer is and she sounds annoyed when she speaks. "Paulo, where have you been?"

"Sorry, my love. I'd thought of going patrolling without you to give you the night off since it's our anniversary, I wanted you to be able to relax. It turns out there was a nest of Chillago demons they took longer than I'd expected them to."

"Are you okay?"

Paulo walks up to the Slayer and wraps her in his arms. "Yes, my love. Think no more of it, now let us celebrate. It is the anniversary of our claiming, after all." He leans down and gives the Slayer a kiss so intense Buffy feels like a perv for watching.

Thankfully, they move to another scene. No, memory, Buffy corrects herself. She knows instinctually that these events actually happened. This time they are in the year 114 BCE in Rome. Even if she wasn't somehow mystically given the information she'd know they are in ancient Rome because they are wearing those white flowy clothes, she thinks they're called togas. She focuses on the memory when she sees another Slayer, she's walking around at night and Buffy is surprised when instead of killing the thing that's clearly a demon, she waves at it.

"Marcus, how are the kids?" Again, Buffy knows they aren't speaking English, she isn't even sure if her language had been invented by that time but she can still understand them.

"Thanks for asking, Cassia, they're great, Augusta is healing well from childbirth too, thank you for suggesting those herbs, she said they helped take the pain away."

"Good, I'm glad. I'll see you later, my watcher told me about a group of vampires that don't want to follow the rules, so I'm going to go either talk some sense into them or.." She makes a stakey motion with her hands and the demon laughs.

"Okay, be careful, will you? I hate when new demons come to town and try to mess up the peace you've made here."

"Yeah, me too." She says wistfully then with one more wave, walks away.

She's walking for a few minutes when she nonchalantly reaches for her stake then quickly moves behind a wall and grabs a vampire that's lurking there. She has the stake to his heart but he doesn't even look like he's fighting back. They're looking into each other's eyes and panting even though neither has used much energy. Buffy can feel the electrical current that's going back and forth between them.

"Who are you?"

"Claudius, and you are?"

"Cassia, also known as the Slayer and this is my town. Are you part of the nest that's trying to wreak havoc?"

"That doesn't matter, you feel it, don't you?"

"Feel what?"

"The pull, the pull between bonded pairs who have not yet claimed each other."

"Is that what that feeling is? My watcher told me about it before but I never thought I'd meet mine." She slowly lowers the stake from his heart.

"Nor did I but I'm sure that's what this is, as are you."

"I can't bond to someone who's killing the people I'm meant to keep safe."

He stays quiet for a long time before responding. "Okay, I understand."

Though Cassia just met him, she feels pain at the thought of never seeing him again. She knows she should kill him, he just said he isn't going to stop killing but she can't dust the person she is meant to be with. "You have to go, I might not be able to dust you but I can't have you here and hurting people."

"What? Why would I leave?"

"Because you're not going to stop hurting people, I cannot be involved with that."

"I won't. I'll figure out another way to survive."

Her eyes light up in hope. "You will?"

"Yes, of course I will. I'd be a fool to turn you away."

Another time jump happens but this time as they are moving from one place to another, the first Slayer speaks. "That is how it used to be. Slayers and peaceful demons working together in harmony. Watchers being taught the truth so that they may teach their Slayers the same. Now only the highest up in that group that trapped me knows the truth and doesn't want it getting out."

"Why?" Buffy asks even though she's still not sure what that 'truth' is.

"Because the Slayers are already stronger than them, for the slayer to become what she is fully meant to be, the watchers would have no real power at all."

They land in another scene before Buffy has a chance to ask more. It is the same couple and again instinctually Buffy knew a lot of time had passed. They both look so happy, they are patrolling just like Buffy does every night but they are laughing and working together. It looks like Cassia is actually able to enjoy her calling because she has a partner. It reminds Buffy of when she was still with Angel and he'd come with her on patrol. Though they didn't laugh like that and there wasn't so much with the teamwork taking out baddies, but there were a lot of hot graveyard smoochies.

'Is that what she's trying to tell me? I need to do whatever this claiming thing is with Angel and that's how I can defeat Glory? The Slayers seem to survive a long time once they're bonded or whatever, maybe they get stronger. He's the only vampire I've ever felt a real connection toward, other than Spike and that zing I got when I first met him but that was just because he's got that stupid bad boy evil thing going on that a teenage hormone bomb couldn't ignore.' Buffy thinks and a big smile comes over her face because maybe finally finally this will be a chance for her to get her happily ever after with the love of her life. She forcefully ignores that she felt nothing when she met Angel for the first time, she thought he was a creep for following her. She didn't actually feel something for him until a few months after that.

She goes back to watching when Cassia starts to speak again. "I can't believe it, we've made it another year, I didn't think I'd make it to my twentieth year but because of you and the bond I've made it to my 120th." She says, smiling at her lover.

'What? 120th? What? How? What? That makes the kind of sense that doesn't. She's human and a Slayer to boot, in no world did I think I'd make it to 30 let alone grow old enough to look old.' Buffy thinks.

She has so many questions she doesn't know where to start but Buffy being Buffy, opens her mouth to start anyway. Unfortunately for her, there is another time warp, this time they land in France, and the year is 126. So if Buffy is doing her math right it is about 200 years after the last one or maybe 300? She isn't sure, the ageless Slayer from the last time jump is still throwing her for a loop.

"Cassia, lived a long time after that, in fact, there was only one Slayer called inbetween her and this one. She never met her bonded though, so she was not long-lived. The Watcher's council changed a lot between Cassia and this Slayer, Éléanor. Cassia worked with them for a long time, over a hundred years, she had three Watchers that she loved greatly. That was until there became a new head of the Council, the fourth one in her lifetime, he did not believe that they should work with the demons, he believed they were all evil. He also believed that the Slayers were nothing more than a tool for the council, a tool to be used to get what they wanted done. Cassia did not agree so she stopped listening to them. Her leaving the council was the turning point for them. The head of the Watchers used that as an excuse to push his agenda and from then on out, the council changed forever and started to become what you know today."

"Wow," is all Buffy could think to reply. That is a very different history than the one she was taught. But she can admit that the Watcher's council does give off strong vibes to suggest she's nothing more than a tool to them. A tool that they can test whenever they want to see if it's working properly. She shakes her head to rid herself of that thought because she gets majorly angry whenever she thinks about it.

"The Slayer, Éléanor too met her bonded and they lived a long life, although nowhere near as long as Cassia, unfortunately, Éléanor and her claimed, Éliott met their end during an apocalypse though they were able to save the world, they had to sacrifice themselves to do it.

The guide shows her many more examples of Slayers who met the one they were supposed to make a bond with. They jump backward and forward in time seeing different examples, she becomes even more positive she knows what the first Slayer is getting at when she realizes a lot of these vampires are from the order of Aurelius.

When they go through another time warp Buffy is expecting to see another situation where a Slayer meets the one they were supposed to be with but is surprised that they are back in front of the fire. She waits a few seconds to see if the Slayer is going to say anything but when she just keeps staring at her Buffy can't hold her question in any longer.

"I get it, in order to grow into my fullest potential I'll have to bond to my other half but how is that supposed to happen when if we sleep together, he loses his soul?"

Buffy is beyond shocked because the first Slayer laughs not just a giggle or a chuckle but a full-on belly laugh.