“I’ve seen worse.”

The look Buffy Summers gets from Xander and her sister Dawn confirms that now is not the time for Buffy’s trademark sarcasm. “I’ll take the one on the left,” Xander says. “You get the rest.” He grins at Buffy. The three of them stand outside a large summer beach house, pool in the yard, palm trees blowing in the breeze… and a horde of zompires coming up the courtyard steps towards them. By the state of Buffy’s ripped sweater and Xander’s cuts and bruises, this fight has been happening for some time. Buffy is armed with a stake and not much else. Xander has a baseball bat. Dawn, somewhat nervously, stands behind them.

As the horde races towards them, they shuffle backwards, towards the nearest apartment. Dawn tries the lock quickly. “Your key, Buffy!” she yells. Xander swings his bat at the closest zompire. “If we’re stuck in a zombie movie, why don’t I have a shotgun?” He punctuates his question with repeated blows to the zompire’s head, knocking the creature backwards.

Buffy wades her way through, staking one vamp, shouting over the din as Dawn catches the keys she’s just thrown in her sister’s direction: “Because this isn’t a movie!”

Dawn has managed to open the door and she and Xander pile into the room. Buffy isn’t far behind, not looking back at the demon she just staked as it bursts into ash and dust. She slams the door shut behind her, leans against it, and sighs. She closes her eyes and exhales deeply. “We made it,” she says with a smile.

When she doesn’t get a response, Buffy opens her eyes. There’s a growl in the air and, as she turns, Buffy finds Xander and Dawn in front of her, vamped out and zombified!

They dive at Buffy, who grabs both zompires by the throat. As they move closer to bite at her neck, an overwhelmed Buffy braces herself for the bite, scrunching her eyes shut and turning her head as far away from their fangs as she can.

It’s then that someone comes out of nowhere and puts a stake through both of their hearts. In a flash, Xander Harris and Dawn Summers, like the zompires in the corridor outside, are nothing but a pile of ash and dust, spraying over Buffy, who’s watching in stunned horror.

She looks up at the saviour who’s come to her aid: it’s Sineya, the First of the Slayers, her white-marked face obvious to Buffy as soon as she sees her predecessor. The First Slayer looks down at her and tells her: “You are not the Slayer.”

For a moment, Buffy relaxes – after all, she’s been in dreams with Sineya before. Her calmness and levity transforms into righteous fury however, yelling that she killed her sister and her boyfriend – who also happens to be her best friend. She launches herself in anger at the First Slayer, but the First Slayer is prepared for her and stakes Buffy straight through her heart…

Buffy Summers wakes up in her room, startled. She’s had Slayer dreams before, but nothing that made her feel like she’d actually been hit in the gut. She throws up, accidentally forming a queue for the bathroom as Tumble waits rather impatiently, in nothing but a towel, outside the door.

Shortly afterward, grabbing coffee on the streets of San Francisco, Buffy has met with Willow, who asks her if she actually felt the wound in her dream? Buffy tells her it was enough to make her sick. Willow asks if any other Slayers had the dream perhaps, but Buffy doesn’t want to know: they’re not exactly lining up to talk with her, especially Kennedy. Willow asks Buffy what the Slayer said to her and Buffy repeats Sineya’s words: “You are not the Slayer.” Even the First Slayer is getting grudgey, she complains.

She asks whether it could be a sign that she’s starting to lose her powers, but Willow says the power is inside her, not given to her. She has to get back to work – the life of computer-programming – and assures Buffy that she wishes she could help more. Buffy also has to work.

Just before she leaves, Willow asks Buffy if she ever thought of looking inside the ‘Vampyr’ book that Giles left her.

In her room, Buffy pulls her Slayer chest from it’s hiding place under the bed. It contains her usual weapons and artifacts, with the broken Scythe and the Vampyr book neatly on top. As she picks up the book, her thoughts instantly turn to Giles.

I miss Giles. I really miss Giles, she thinks as she slowly crosses her legs on her bed, and opens the book. Within moments, she’s interrupted from a familiar voice on the other side of the room.

Sineya stands there, exactly as she did in the last dream, still the same stance, still the same stakes. “You are not the Slayer,” she repeats to Buffy. Buffy sits up and asks Sineya what she’s trying to tell her, but the First Slayer runs off into the edges of Buffy’s dreamscape, into the dark.

Buffy takes after her in a run, but finds her some time later. She suddenly finds herself in San Francisco, but not the one she knows. It’s dilapidated, rubbish and dirt everywhere, the buildings wrecked, no sun in the sky. The First Slayer stands in front of her, pointing. Buffy follows her finger to a pile of trash. At the top of the huge pile is the Slayer Scythe, embedded in rock, still damaged. The bottom of the mound is surrounded on all sides by zompires and vamps.

Buffy points out to Sineya that the Scythe is broken, but the First Slayer tells her pointedly that only the Slayer can pull the blade from the rock. “And you are not the Slayer.” Buffy looks at her confused and tells her that she’s not making any sense – even for a dream. “Do you want me to get the Scythe or not?” She stops for a moment, thinking. “And since when are you so chatty?”

She realises that the image in front of her may look like the First Slayer, but it’s not her. Buffy roars and launches herself at ‘Sineya,’ violently pinning her to the ground. As Buffy looks on, the form of Sineya dissolves into a smaller form, that of a Faerie, who remains pinned. Buffy looks at the tiny creature, with it’s pale-green skin and it’s transparent wings. “You’re not the Slayer, either!” Buffy tells her captive. It’s then that she wakes up.

Later that day, after another night’s disturbance, Buffy once again meets with Willow, this time at her office. Sitting in Willow’s cubicle at her desk, Buffy tells her that someone is hacking her Slayer dreams. Willow is surprised: is that sort of dream-hacking even possible in a world without magic? Buffy says she checked Giles’ book for mentions of the Slayer dreams, but she thinks she’s being intercepted by two different messages: one from the Slayer line, like she’s always experienced, and another by a hacker. And the latter looks like Tinkerbell, she whispers to Willow, aware that what she’s just said sounds pretty damn insane. She thinks that the creature is the one telling her she’s not the Slayer. There’s only one thing for it, Willow starts to explain. “Buffy, you need to get your sleep on.”

That night, Willow is sitting on a chair in Buffy’s room, coffee in her hand. She has extra pillows and some midnight munchies to keep herself awake while Buffy sleeps. Buffy jokes that it’s like a slumber party, one which, Willow orders her, they’re not going to mention to her current girlfriend.

As the banter between the two friends begins to flow, Buffy tells Willow that she’s missed this: Just hanging with my bestie. Willow wasn’t sure the job title was still hers, but she smiles back. “I know Slayer dreams can be intense,” she tells Buffy, remembering her own experience with Sineya. “If you look like you’re in distress, I’ll wake you up.” Buffy nods, but tells her to be sure: she doesn’t want to have to do all this again because she woke up too soon. She settles back, closes her eyes and goes quiet, preparing to drift to sleep.

She wakes up, still in her bed, but not in her room. She looks around. It’s an empty black void. A small voice above her gets her attention: it’s the faerie from her previous dream. Her name is Tink. “Buffy?”

Buffy asks the creature who she is. “You couldn’t pronounce my name even on this side of dreaming,” she says, in a rather impatient tone. She’s not a large creature, about the size of Buffy’s head. The creature flutters around her head for a minute before beckoning for her to follow. As she flies, the faerie explains to Buffy who she is and what she does.

“I lay dream eggs in people’s ears. Nightmares too. But without the Seed, my powers have weakened. I needed to ride in on someone’s else dream to talk to you.” She points at an image of Sineya. There’s also a Buffy standing in front of her. “I came through her.”

Buffy questions why the faerie looks like Tinkerbell when last time she looked like Sineya. Tink tells her that she doesn’t need to disguise herself to Buffy anymore. “I came to punish you,” she tells Buffy, when the Slayer asks for an explanation. Buffy automatically starts trying to defend her actions with the Seed of Wonder, but that’s not what the faerie wants.

She floats to Buffy’s eyeline, angry, her little voice growing harsh. “I thought I saw the real Buffy Summers die fighting Yamanh in the Underworld. So I thought you must be an imposter. But once I got inside your head, I realised she was impersonating you.”

Buffy realises that the faerie is referring to one of her decoys, based around the world in case of assassination attempts. “She died, keeping the demons from the surface,” Buffy recalls. Tink yells in the affirmative! However, while she was planting nightmares to punish Buffy, she found something that she thought Buffy needed to see. Tink lifts her wings and flies into the darkness. A vampire attacks Buffy and Tink tells her that the vampires will keep attacking her here until she gives Sineya her attention: it is the First Slayer’s dream and once Buffy’s figured out what the Primitive wants, then she’ll tell her what she needs to know.

Arriving at the mound with the Scythe atop it, Buffy tells Tink that the First Slayer wants to tell her that she wrecked the world, is that it? Tink says that it’s not about Buffy. Sineya needs her to restore the world. Buffy asks Tink how she’s supposed to do that, and Tink looks at her. “Unlock the key,” she tells Buffy.

Recognising Dawn’s words from her earlier dream, Buffy races for the mound and the Scythe. But once she reaches the top, she finds she cannot pull the blade from the stone it’s embedded in. “Why does the First Slayer keep bringing me here if I can’t budge it?” a frustrated Buffy asks, straining in an attempt to move the sacred Scythe even an centimetre. Tink looks at her and points beyond her: “Because it’s not for you, ” she says.

As Buffy looks back at the Scythe, she sees the Primitive First Slayer, her eyes staring at Willow, who’s reaching for the Scythe. As Willow pulls the Scythe effortlessly from the rock, Buffy asks her friend why she’s in her dream. Willow tells her that she’s part of Buffy, always, and their connection transcends reality. “The Scythe could be the key to restoring magic to the world.”

Buffy looks at her friend. “Does that mean I’m supposed to give it to you when I wake up.” The image of Willow looks at her. “I think so. I need to go away. And I need to take the Scythe with me. It’s going to be a long trip,” she finishes.

Buffy puts her hand on Willow’s arm. “I don’t want you to go. Things are starting to get better,” she tells her friend’s image with a twinge of sadness and grief in her voice. “There’s so much I’m figuring out about my life right now. I need you.”

Willow’s image looks back at her, sincerity in her voice, love in her eyes. “If you love something, set it free.”

“So this is goodbye?” Buffy questions, as the cityscape arounds them fades to black, Willow now holding the Scythe. “This is just a dream, Buffy.”

As Willow walks into the darkness towards Sineya, Buffy tells her that it feels real. As Willow disappears, Tink appears by Buffy’s ears. “The First Slayer is satisfied,” she tells Buffy. Buffy doesn’t seem that relieved, upset with Willow’s departure. She turns to Tink with some anger: “What do you need to tell me?”

Tink flutters towards and rests on Buffy’s palm as she extends a hand for the faerie. “Like I said, you aren’t the Slayer. The Slayer’s a part of you, but you’re not a girl anymore.”

Buffy asks why people can’t say what they mean in dreamscapes, but Tink tells her that dreams have a way of losing their messages in interpretation. Buffy thinks she gets the “cryptic and vague message,” but would very much like to wake up now and inform her best friend that they have a way to restore magic. As Tink heads off in the opposite direction to Buffy, she tells the Slayer that Willow already knows. “You share a deep bond,” she says. “Your dream spaces bleed together.” As Tink disappears, Buffy realises that means Willow must have fallen asleep too, which means that it really was a goodbye.

She wakes up in her room with a start. The chair Willow settled in is now empty, her door wide open. Buffy rushes to the chest concealed under the bed. Instead of the broken pieces of the Scythe, Buffy finds a hastily-written note from her friend.

“Buffy, the world needs magic. You know why I had to go. No use saying goodbye twice. I love you. Willow.”

Buffy runs outside, note in hand, but it’s too late: Willow is gone. I wouldn’t have minded a double goodbye. But I can handle this. Because the faerie is right. I’m not a girl anymore. Realising something, she gets up and starts to move.

A while later, Tumble and Anaheed are waiting for Buffy to return. They need to talk to her. As she walks through the apartment door, they both begin to bombard her, before they lose their nerves. Buffy tells them she hasn’t got time to talk and walks past them, but they inform her that they know she’s a Slayer. As Buffy slams the door to the bathroom, Buffy tells them that that anyone who watches the news knows that’s she’s the Slayer, but her roommates are trying to tell her that they don’t think it’s safe, living with her.

In the bathroom, Buffy asks them if this conversation can wait. She’s pre-occupied. She is angry because her roommates are scared of her. Simply because she’s a Slayer.

She looks down. She’s nervous, but she’s scared too.

The pregnancy test in her hands shows a positive result.