Sometimes the best way to help someone is to step aside and trust somebody else to do the helping for you.

But the tricky part with stepping aside is the actual stepping aside.

“Navitas Lux Lucis Repleo. Navitas in Mihi Recro Key.”

As Buffy Summers watches the magic sparkle around Willow‘s fingertips, stretched out at either side of Dawn‘s head, she looks for any possible sign of movement.

An eyelid. A lip quiver. A hiccup. Anything. And every second takes longer than the last. Andrew stands nearby, twitching nervously. Hand to his face. “Is it working?”

Willow looks up, her eyes dozy and her head still sort of glowing. She looks exhausted. Buffy wishes she could wipe that away just like her friend did her scar. “Everything’s different now, Buffy. It’s gonna take more than a simple spell to fix this.”

“Have you tried a ‘complex’ spell?”

“Don’t worry. I’m all the way to ‘extremely elaborate’ and working my way up to ‘nearly impossible’… but it’s going to take time. And I know it’s been ages since we’ve had some quality girl talk, but the questions? Not helping.” The whole time she’s talking, Willow’s hands glow with ethereal energies, searching the essences around them, looking for answers.

Buffy sighs. “Okay. Hint heard. Hint about to be taken.” She leaves the room, walks slowly down the stairs to the outside of the building and sits on the steps. She pulls her knees close to her, wallowing almost.

But when you face the world with people you trust, how can you lose?

Without warning, a portal opens beside her, warping the air until it looks distorted, a circular pattern emerging from the centre of the gap, which is now radiating green light. When Xander suddenly steps through it, Buffy calls his name in surprise.

Then he falls to the ground, in obvious pain. Buffy rushes to his side. “Who? What? Did Willow..?”

Xander doesn’t look at her, doesn’t get up, but he tells her what she wants to know. “Severin. He gave me a ride home.”

“Oh God,” whispers Buffy, turning Xander around and staring at his face. It’s covered in bruises, his remaining eye swollen. He also has a broken nose. Her eyes spark with anger. “Who gave you everything else?”

“That would be Simone.”

“Simone and Severin? So, they are a team now.” She looks annoyed with herself for a moment. Then she turns back to Xander. But why did they pick a fight with you?”

Xander groans as he sits up. Holds his aching side. “It wasn’t about me. It was about you. They tried to turn me against you, and in return they promised they’d save Dawn. They had a plan to turn back the clock, erase everything you’ve done. Make things normal again. Dawn, too.”

“Why didn’t you say yes?” Buffy asks the question and immediately regrets it. The look of hurt on Xander’s face slaps her right where it hurts.

“Are you serious? Thanks for the vote-of-very-little-to-no confidence.” He gets up, waves her opinion away with his hand.

“You really think I would betray my best friend?,” he says and then slaps himself on the side of the head, remembering. “Oh, yeah. Our fight. Walls punched. Things said that can’t be unsaid.”

He calms down for a moment. He hasn’t got the energy to fight anymore. He bows his head in shame. “It boiled down to one thing. Something I forgot last night. A long time ago, you died so that Dawn could live. No way Simone and Severin would ever fight that hard.”

Buffy silently gets up behind him and wraps her arms around him. “Thanks Xander.”

She stays there for ten seconds and then he starts yelling “Ow!” at her. She lets go in alarm, unaware of how tight she was hugging him. As they walk inside the building, Xander rubs his side again and looks at her. “The torture’s supposed to stop when you escape the bag guys!”

“So what did evil and eviler want from you?”

Xander opens the door for her as he explains. “They wanted me to steal the book Giles left you.”

Buffy’s confused. Why would Simone want that particular book? She’s forcibly rejected everything about being a Slayer. Xander shakes his head.

“They wouldn’t say. But they wanted the book to show them where they needed to…” He’s interrupted by a noise and they both look up to the apartment window. An explosion rips through the building, taking out the front window and a fair chunk of the wall. The building shakes, as do the cars on the streets, alarms blaring and dogs barking.

Upstairs, Dawn lies untouched in the centre of the room. Willow lies further away from her. She has her hands to her head and is looking around the room, surveying the damage. “Ouch,” she says, rubbing her head.

Buffy bursts into the room, calling Willow’s name. Xander looks at her and then looks inside the room. “Willow’s back? Why didn’t you tell me Willow’s back?”

Buffy is too excited however and ignores the damage she sees everywhere. “Does the ‘BOOM’ mean it worked?”

As Buffy and Xander help the witch off the floor, she sighs. “I think it means I exceeded my recommended daily allowance of magic. There’s still a lot to get used to now that I’m bewitched again.”

Buffy’s face drops slightly. Willow feels awful. “Sorry, Buffy. But I think we’re going to have to keep trying.”

She then stops everything and turns to look at Xander, as if the question has been held in for too long and is threatening to burst within her. “What happened to your face?”

Xander grins and puts his arm around her shoulder. “What happened to your magic?”

And then Dawn’s eyes open!

Buffy shrieks in surprise! “It worked!” Xander and Willow both look equally stunned, but watch with smiles as Buffy reaches down and hugs her sister tight.

“Dawnie, I am so sorry!”

Dawn reacts with alarm suddenly, freaking out and yelling. “What’s going on? Where am I? And why won’t Buffy let go of me?”

Buffy looks straight in her sister’s eyes, smiling. “I thought I was going to lose you forever.”

Dawn nods, but looks at her hands. They’re paler than snow. Her hands don’t feel quite there. And she can’t quite remember… “Why… do I feel so empty? What’s happening to me?”

Willow looks over at her. “Magic is still escaping her body.” Dawn panics as soon as she sees Willow, reaching her arms out to protect herself, begging Buffy to protect her. “Who are you? What are you doing to me?”

“You don’t remember Will?”

“Is she still dark? Did she do this to me? It’s all so fuzzy.”

Buffy turns back towards Willow’s notes and speaks to her, quietly so Dawn can’t hear her. “She’s losing memories.”

Willow doesn’t think the spell worked as it should. “Buffy, I think I only woke her up. Maybe magicked her a couple of days.”

Dawn can hear their words, however, and stands up, demanding answers. “What does that mean? Why is everyone talking like I’m not in the room?” Xander walks towards her, puts his hands on her arms and looks her straight in the eyes. He talks bluntly and clearly.

“Because pretty soon you’re not going to be. Do you remember me? Do you remember us?”

Buffy rolls her eyes. “Not helping, Xan.”

She’s still rummaging through Willow’s paperwork. “Was it the spell? Is there a different spell we can use?”

Willow shakes her head. It’s not the spell, she explains. It’s her. She just doesn’t have enough magic yet.

Xander clicks his fingers, as if he has an idea. “Wait. We have Willow. Where’s the Vampyr book?”

Minutes later, and Willow, searching through the book, seems to have found the very thing they need. “The Deeper Well? That must be the place Severin and Simone wanted to find.” Xander is convinced they have their answer.

Billy is offering to help at the door, but Buffy thanks him for bringing the book to her. Anaheed is with him. “I’m a full-service Slayer. You want donuts? Coffee? Freshly carved stakes?”

Anaheed smiles at his enthusiasm, smiles at Buffy and grabs Billy by the arm. “Let’s leave the slaying to the professionals.”

Outside, Billy is unamused. He grabs free of her grip and turns to her, anger and confusion in his tone. “But aren’t you gonna tell her that you’re…” He stops, and Anaheed finishes his sentence.

“Chosen? Do you really think it’ll boost Buffy’s confidence to know that a bunch of Slayers thought she needed a babysitter to hold onto a craptastic apartment?” Billy protests however: doesn’t Buffy need to know about Tessa Freer and Dowling and the zompire Slayer? Anaheed agrees with him and nods, but also points him towards the exit of the building.

“Sometimes helping is knowing when to get out of the way.”

Inside Andrew’s apartment, Willow is looking at the same book, astonished with herself. “I should have thought of this sooner. Giles showed me the entrance in England. The Deeper Well is where the Old Ones are entombed. There’s an entrance in England and in New Zealand, both heavily guarded.”

She opens the book and shows Buffy and Xander the information and the pictures inside. She reads from a passage. “The Deeper Well has to be guarded. It’s the tomb for the Old Ones, the first demons to walk the Earth. Or slither, scuttle and crawl their way across it. They were pure evil and kept the Earth in a constant state of chaos until mortal creatures rose up and banished them.

“The most powerful – those who couldn’t be defeated by death – were entombed in sarcophagi. Their essences trapped in crystals, embedded into the stone. Then they were placed deep beneath the Earth, in a crypt that stretches from one side of the planet to the other.” She looks up from where she’s sitting on the bed.

Xander is the first to say something. “That’s a lot of dead demons.” Buffy also recalls that Illyria was an Old One. “But she and Koh ran off to find the Council.”

Willow timidly coughs and raises a hand like she’s in class. “Um. Sidebar. Buffy, the last Old One to be banished to the Deeper Well sired the first vampire.”

The room goes quiet. Buffy gets up and walks to the window. She looks out, quietly. “Nothing good ever happens when we go underground.”

Willow looks surprised at her. “Since when are you scared of a showdown with a vampire?”

Buffy shakes her head. “It’s not that. Something doesn’t add up. If Sev can zap his way anywhere, why didn’t he just steal the book?” Xander suggests that maybe they didn’t because they didn’t know where it was hidden.

“My point is, why do they even need it? Severin doesn’t need to use the entrance. He could just poof himself into the centre of the Earth.”

Willow holds the book up and gestures at it. “I think it’s more complicated than that. The Deeper Well was designed to hold untold amounts of magic. It also works in reverse: what good would a prison be if you could teleport ancient deities in and out? If you want to get something out of there, you’d need to break in through one of the entrances.”

Xander concurs. “And if you attack one entrance, the guards at the other end would probably come and lend a hand.”

Willow nods. “He’s right, Buffy. But with the book, we know what we’re up against.”

Buffy looks out of the window for another few seconds and then turns to Willow with her resolve face.

“Okay. Then let’s go get you some magic, Will…”

In the main sitting area of the apartment, Dawn is now noticeably frantic at Buffy, who’s on the edge of the couch beside her. “You just want to leave me here?”

“You’ll be safer. Andrew, Billy and Anaheed will make sure you have everything you need.” She reaches for her sister and pulls Dawn into a hug. “I love you.” Dawn squeezes her harder, as tight as she can.

“Why does it sound like you’re saying goodbye?”

Buffy pulls back and puts her hands on Dawn’s face. “Because I am. But that was just a twenty-four-hour goodbye. If it were for any longer I’d probably have accidentally broken one of your ribs.”

She puts their foreheads together, looking straight into Dawn’s eyes. “You’re my sister. I’m not going to fail.”

“I know. You always find a way.”

A few minutes later, Willow notices that Buffy seems increasingly happy and confident all of a sudden. Buffy turns to her friend and chuckles. “Want to know the secret to my unflappability? It’s so Dawn doesn’t wig out.”

“Uh-Oh. Are you gonna wig out?”

“No. But Xander might.” Willow herself chuckles at that joke. Buffy continues, taking a stake from Willow’s hands and packing it into her leg brace. “I’m just being careful. I want to make sure we’re making the right decision this time.”

“Even though Xander was wrong about a lot of the things he said, he had a point. If I had questioned what was going on when Twilight was ramping up, maybe I would have done things differently. What if we go into the Deeper Well and accidentally release a bunch of cranky demons who’ve been locked up for millions of years?” She stops and looks at Willow.

“What do you think they’d do in a world without magic?”

“I suppose that would qualify as an apocalypse,” is Willow’s response. Thinking for a moment Willow has a suggestion. “We should have a strict no-touching rule down there.”

She bows her head for a moment and Buffy notices the sudden sadness. She looks at Buffy and tells her that she knows people gave her a hard time about the Seed.

Buffy looks at her. “People?”

Willow chuckles nervously, but smiles. “People includes me. But I was just being short-sighted. Fighting to get my mojo back made me realise something: I don’t have to be afraid of my power anymore. I might not have learned that if you hadn’t made the choices you did. Sometimes things have to get worse before they get better. It just took an interdimensional walkabout to make me realise that.”

Buffy picks up the Scythe. She looks down at it. It’s been a while. She turns to Willow. “Are we at the better part yet?”

“No, but the world’s on its way, Buffy. Starting with Dawn. I can feel it. Something inside me tells me the Deeper Well’s exactly where we need to go.”

Inside the living area, Dawn is visibly upset. She sits away from Xander on the couch and looks at him out of the corner of her eye. “Why do you have to go?”

He reaches over to her, places his hands on hers. He can barely feel them underneath. “I can’t sit on the sidelines calling this game. Not when your life is on the line.”

Xander brings his hand to her cheek. “But everything in my head is starting to get cloudy and if you’re not here when it’s completely gone…” Tears start to form behind her tired, almost deadened eyes. “Buffy and Willow can do this without you.”

Xander pulls Dawn close and whispers in her ear. “No, Dawn. They can’t. And when everything’s back to normal, it will be because of what I did.”

Before she can ask him anymore, Buffy calls them over. Kennedy has a plane waiting: it’s time to go. As they leave, Andrew, Anaheed and Billy settle in, watching Dawn as she moves back to lying on the sofa. Then they hear a thud.

Billy hears it, instinctively grabs a stake and they hear heavy footsteps above them. “What was that?” Andrew gets nervous and asks the young man what he can do to help. “So, um, don’t you actually have Slayer strength?”

Anaheed shoves past them both, stake in hand. “I do.” Then the door swings open and Andrew yelps in surprise.

Spike‘s in front of him. “Where is she?” he demands, loudly.

“You just missed Buffy. She’s on her way to the Deeper Well.”

“Deeper Well, eh? Too bad Drogyn’s out of a job. I coulda helped her get in. But I ain’t here to play puppy dog to the Slayer.”

He storms his way, through the three of them, straight to Dawn on the couch. He sits next to her fragile form and smooths her hair. “I’m here for little bit.”

Dawn’s eyes flicker for a moment as she tries to talk to the newcomer. “Do I know you?”

Spike sighs and puts his arms around her. “Better than you think, love.”

In England, specifically the Cotswalds, Buffy, Willow and Xander are moving through a mass of oak trees. Willow has been here before. She wonders why Giles chose to show her so much power at a time when she was vulnerable. Buffy smiles. “Because he trusted you, Willow.”

The witch looks up from the book and then looks ahead of them. “The entrance should be disguised as a tree with a hollow in it. And according to this, there should be a guardian protecting it.”

Buffy has stopped, causing Xander to bump into her. “Was that ‘a’ guardian?”

Xander shakes his head. “She must have said twenty.”

Willow now looks up from the book and her jaw drops. “I should have said forty!”

An army of demons and creatures stand before them, easily more than forty. Leading them, in his usual robes and with his usual disarming charm, is D’Hoffryn. “Slayer.”

“D’Hoffryn. What are you doing here?”

“When the Seed was destroyed, the guardians ceded control of the Well to us. And after Illyria’s defeat, we got word that the Siphon was coming here.”

Willow raises the book as proof to D’Hoffryn. “He won’t find here without this.”

Buffy tells him what she needs. “We came just to get enough mystical energy to keep my sister alive.”

“I’m sorry, Slayer. But our job is to protect magic from everyone.” D’Hoffryn emphasises his last word. He will not be pushed.

Xander grips his axe tighter and Willow conjures blinding lights in her hands. Buffy shoves her hand towards the demon’s face and directs him to come at her. “Bring it,” she says with conviction, daring the army to move.

In New Zealand, literally the other side of the Well, Simone and Severin are watching a group of demons gathered around a tree. “Harris’ intel was solid. That’s the other entrance.”

The little girl, holding her red balloon, addresses the assembled creatures. The balloon bellows with it’s loud voice. “The Cotswalds entrance is under attack! There are more assailants than expected. You others go face them. I will stay.”

Simone grins. “Summers is attacking the Cotswalds. Harris is two for two. He can really think on his feet.”

Severin is less amused, eager to continue. “Didn’t hurt that you beat him to a pulp.” He looks up as the little girl with the red balloon is now left alone at the entrance. “Let’s move. As long as the Council is distracted by Buffy…”

“We can walk right in the back door.” Simone grins, cocks her gun and sniggers, as they creep up behind the little girl…