"So what caused the real life nightmares?" Xander asked from the chair he was sitting in, with Cordelia in his lap. He didn't intend to let go of her until she decided to demand that he do so. She hadn't gotten to that point yet.
"Billy Palmer." Buffy said sadly. "My dad showed up and told me it was my fault that he and my mom got divorced. That I was a terrible daughter and didn't live up to expectations."
"Oh, Buff." Xander said sympathetically. He could understand, Tony Harris' bitter drunkenness often led to him saying similar things his son. "You know that's not true, your mother wouldn't be fighting so hard to protect you if she believed a crock a bull like that."
"Yeah, I do, but it's still a fear of mine. Anyway, after Dad drove off, I saw a kid, between 10 - 12 years old. He apologized. I realized I'd seen him before, when Wendell's nightmare with the spiders happened. He apologized then too, so I tried to talk to him. He said the Ugly Man was trying to get him. And than I saw what he meant, a monsterous human shaped, lumpy thing with a giant club like arm, shuffling towards us. I tried to fight it but it was stronger than me, so we ran. The Ugly Man only said one thing, lucky number 19. At some point I realized I'd lost Billy and came back here to find Giles. He was having his own adventure."
"Mrs. Madison in Amy's body woke up." He told them. "And was most displeased at being locked up.
"She didn't hurt you, did she?" Xander dreaded the answer. Sooner or later, he might have to face Mrs. Madison for real and he was dreading the possibility.
"Fortunately, I know some Magic myself and managed to hold her off. Ms. Calendar heard the fight and came in and assisted me. Between the two of us we were able to subdue her again."
"I'm sorry, Giles." Amy said miserably from where she was standing, held in the circle of Jesse's arms. "She was able to hurt you because no one was willing to hurt me by killing her when they had the chance. If she was dead -."
"It wouldn't matter, Amy." Ms. Calendar told her. "If she was dead in real life or not, fears don't have to be based in reality to be something that affects us. If you feared her taking over your body again, than the nightmares coming to life today could still have manifested the same way. It's not your fault or Xander's for not killing her when he had the chance."
"The nightmares might not be." Xander agreed. "But Mrs. Madison potentially being a problem is on me. I killed Wesen today, whether they were artificial constructs or real Wesenrein somehow pulled here, I still killed them. And I have to live with that. I had reason to kill them, a reason that makes sense to me. I had reason to let Mrs. Madison go, a reason that also made sense to me. And at the time those reasons were valid. Only time will tell if they stay valid. Both those choices could result in an escalation from either Mrs. Madison or the Wesenrein. And I will have to live with that too."
"What about this Billy Palmer?" Jesse asked. "Is he a problem too? How did he make our nightmares real?"
"He was trapped in his own nightmare. Billy Palmer was the boy we read about in the newspaper." Buffy told them. "The one beaten into a coma. Turns out, it was his little league coach that beat him. Billy dropped a ball during the game. The coach decided that dropped ball was the reason the team lost. So he beat Billy into a coma and trapped Billy in a nightmare of the Ugly Man chasing him and wanting to finish the job. I realized Billy needed to face his fear, to beat it and he did."
"He woke up almost immediately." Giles took up the narrative. "I called the hospital to inquire about him. He named the coach as the one who beat him. As for how he caused other people's nightmares to come to life, the effect of his nightmare seems to have had a contagious affect. His astral self would appear near someone in an effort to escape this Ugly Man and his fear would infect someone nearby and each of them, then affected others and so it spread. Once he faced his fear, that too had a contagious effect and the nightmares ended."
"An adult beat a kid, put him in a coma and trapped him in a nightmare. Because of a dropped ball?" Xander was the one growling now. "I hope that son of a bitch spends the next twenty years making special friends with every tattooed knuckle dragger on his cell block. His reason is just like the Wesenrein's, an excuse to pretend they've got power over someone else, because they feel weak and overlooked. One more bully."
"Unfortunately the world is full of them as we discovered recently." Giles pointed out. "With the possessed children who had been bullies for a long time."
"And now they're in therapy and know the world isn't what they thought it was." Cordelia said sadly. "And they have to live with the knowledge that they not only killed someone, they ate him. They're going to be messed up for a long time."
"Billy might be too." Buffy said, equally as sadly.