Andrew Wells is concerned. Concerned enough to be running throughout the monastery in Tibet, late at night, while everyone else is sleeping. Well, everyone except Giles that is, who’s awoken by Andrew frantically knocking his door. He gets up and answers, Andrew, flushed in the face, before him. “This had better be a demon attack,” a tired Giles warns him.

“It is!” Andrew cries. Giles looks at him in alarm: “Really?” Andrew nods his head, fast. “Well, it could turn into one!” Giles tells him to go to bed, irritated, closing his bedroom door. Andrew stops him, just before it closes.

“You don’t understand… there’s a spy in our midst.”

Giles lets him into his room. Andrew sits down, while Giles makes himself more presentable. Andrew explains that he saw Warren in Rome, somewhere he shouldn’t have known about. How? he questions. Giles calms him down. “You think he’s watching us? If you start saying that, then you’re going to engender suspicion, division, finger-pointing…”

Andrew reiterates again, this time more forcefully. “Sir, I think we’re in danger.” Giles considers his junior’s request and tells him no. “Go to bed, Andrew.”

Andrew walks back to his room, annoyed that he wasn’t listened to. He rummages through his belongings, all packed in bags, action figures and all, and finds something Xander picked up for him. It’s a digital camera.

If there is a spy among us, I will find her or him. Or it. The puppy has always struck me as dodgy, and it would be a great disguise. And no one will suspect why I’m documenting our little community…

I shall begin, gentle viewer with a little tour. And an examination of a certain stranger who is suddenly all up in our midst.

Perfect-seeming, perhaps. But is everyone this happy? I use this question as an excuse to look for malcontents.

Yes, there is malcontent here. It is the kind of environment that might foster a spy. I take note of the unhappy girls and continue to collect evidence…

Faith has always stood apart. She’s another likely suspect, I set out to document her mental state.

Buffy stops, bends down to pick up a beam to help them budge the boulder, and Faith asks her a question: “You miss what you’re giving up, don’t you?”

Buffy questions her back. You don’t? Faith says it got to her, for a minute, but it’s what we have to do. They work together to level the boulder out of the way with the beam. This is harder without their Slayer strength than they thought. Buffy tells her former nemesis that she wants to connect to people, but most of all, she doesn’t want to stand over people anymore.

Ah, Faith and Buffy, finally connecting. It’s nice. I don’t detect the foul smell of spyishness there. I move on. I have to look at everyone. Even the most loyal-seeming people of us all.

“Right. A chance. To have a life.” Dawn looks into Xander‘s eyes. “For you to go for what you want, Xander.”

Hmmm. A cryptic reference. What does Xander want? Is it something Twilight can provide for him, perhaps? I investigate further. I investigate more. The next time I see Xander, he’s taking the time to just sit with his friend Buffy and yak.

“So,” Xander begins. “Have you told Willow your big secret.” Buffy looks at him.

Big secret? What big secret would that be?

“What big secret would that be?” she counters back, grin on her face. Xander tells her that he overheard her and Giles on the submarine. He knows about their concerns about Willow and what Buffy had to do to Dark Willow in the future. Buffy tells him that she’s not sure if telling Willow could cause her to go dark. Xander counters: maybe not telling her does the same thing?

Buffy sucks her thumb, having got a splinter in it. Xander takes her hand in his. Let Nurse Xander take a look at it. Buffy yelps in surprise. “Why does that hurt? It’s so little.” Xander tells her it must be the training working, her Slayer abilities fading. Buffy asks him if he thinks she can feel more now. They both look down at their hands. “You tell me,” Xander replies softly.

Buffy lies back into the grass. She says she thinks she feels more now, somehow. She turns to him and tells him that there’s not a lot of people she loves, so she needs to tell Willow. Xander, now lying next to her tells her that he’ll be by her side, no matter what. Whenever it is, she’s to come find him straight away afterward. Buffy looks into his eyes, smiling. “I will,” she promises.

This is big information. I snap back into action.

Andrew has just disturbed Giles again. This time, he doesn’t wait to be asked in, or for Giles to get comfortable. He sits down and looks Giles directly in the eyes. “You knew.”

Giles isn’t sure what he’s on about, so Andrew tells him: “You knew that Buffy killed Dark Willow in the future. Doesn’t that suggest, sir, that Willow is going to go Dark again?” When Giles doesn’t answer, Andrew raises his voice and yells in his face.

“Answer the question, sir!”

Giles looks away. “Yes,” he confesses. Andrew stands up, resolute. He wants to watch her, and if he finds evidence that Willow is communicating with Twilight, or undermining them in any way, he will deal with her. “I will do whatever it takes to keep the others safe.” Giles is about to say something, but then stops. “You’re quite right, of course.”

Andrew is surprised. “Follow her,” Giles instructs him, giving him permission. Andrew, excited, hurries from the room.

A gentle pause, my fellow investigators. You see, I too once had an encounter of my own with the deadly, black-haired, veiny Dark Willow… Please, allow me to explain.

In her room, Willow and Oz are talking about the training. Willow is stressed. All of the Slayers are finding the training easy and are all draining their powers into the Earth around them. She, the most powerful Wiccan in the hemisphere, can’t even do it! She’s too much.

Oz tells her to calm down, baby Kelden in his arms. “You can do this.” Willow isn’t too sure. Oz tells her that every time she does a spell, she’s manipulating energy, right? It’s all energy that she pulls together, tighter and tighter, until eventually it explodes.

Willow nods. “If you say so…”

Oz continues. “We’re just trying to teach you not to bottle up the poison inside you.” Willow looks at him, sadly. She wonders, without the poison, who is she? Oz tells her that that was a telling statement. He scoots over towards her, concerned. “What is up with you? You’re pissed at me?”

Because he got out, Willow states. He got out of this whole game and then did something to make sure he couldn’t be dragged back in. Oz asks her how he did that. Her eyes start to darken – “Because you had a kid! You were real and now you’re fake, pretending to be a normal person.”

Oz puts his arm on her shoulder. “I’m normal. I’m human. I have a family. And you can too.” Willow pulls away. “I can’t have a baby! Not with what I am! Not with what I have to do!” Her eyes return to their normal colour.

Oz pulls her back into a hug, their first in years. “You can be done, Willow. You can just be Willow Rosenberg. Just let the Earth take the magic and you’ll feel it sliding away…” Willow pulls away. “No,” she says. Oz tells her “Yes,” in return. He asks her if she’d like to watch Kelden and Willow, with tears in her eyes, looks surprised. “You’d trust me?”

Well, she is a slippery one. It’s taken me a while to find her. But here she is. Buffy is joining her in progress. Could this be the confession?

Willow, carrying the baby, walks into the corridor. Buffy stops to talk. Willow is amazed by the baby, and asks Buffy if she can believe Oz made this? She’s more positive, convinced by Oz that, maybe, one day, they can actually live their lives. Buffy interrupts her with a grim look. “I killed you in the future.”

There’s a small silence and then Buffy tells her about the Dark Willow she met and killed in the future. Willow shrugs off her concerns. “It wasn’t me.” Buffy looks at her. “What?”

Willow bends down to look her in the eyes. She explains that while that must have been terrible for Buffy, she doesn’t think that she’s going to go dark again. She controlled it today, when it came out. She doesn’t even think she has enough power left to even go Dark. And even if that one day, somehow, still happens, she’ll work harder, with Buffy, in the now, to ensure it.

Buffy asks if they’re okay, to which Willow says that they’re great. Big hugs follow. Buffy starts to rush off, determined to tell Xander that the secret is out. Willow tells her that Xander is a good guy, which Buffy agrees with. Willow calls after her, a grin on her face. “We can all have futures, Buffy. Even you.”

Buffy smiles, heading for Xander’s room. She spots Andrew following her.

“Stop following me with that camera, Andrew.”

She was about to go back to Xander, but she’s seen something and she’s stopped, still as a grave. What is she looking at? Oh my…