As Archaeus’ cackle echoes in her ears, Buffy hesitates for a moment as she looks at Spike, impaled on Angel‘s sword. Or is it Angelus? She hasn’t time to figure it out. “Angel! What are…”

She’s interrupted by Spike himself, punching Angelus to one side with his left hook and then pulling the sword out of his own chest. “I’ll tell you what he’s doing. He’s making a massive bloody mistake.”

Then Spike sees red. He knows no reason now. Just rage. Buffy yells at him to stop as Angelus growls, their swords clashing and their blows parrying deeper into the abandoned vessel. As she races towards them both, Archaeus stops her with one of his spiked appendages coming from his spine. “DON’T SPOIL IT,” he taunts. “YOU THOUGHT I WAS HIDING FROM YOU? I WAS GIVING YOU TIME TO LET YOUR HATES AND FEARS AND JEALOUSIES FESTER.“

He moves closer towards her, raising up to his full height before her. “YOUR LOVERS ARE A CHALLENGE. DESPITE BEING ANIMATED BY MY ESSENCE, THEIR SOULS LET THEM RESIST MY COMMANDS. UNLESS I ASK THEM TO DO SOMETHING THEY DESPERATELY WANT.” He roars at her, bloody teeth in his mouth. “YOU, I SHALL GLADLY KILL MYSELF!“

A short distance away, covered by Xander, Giles and Dawn and surrounded by vampire bats, Andrew is struggling to get through the magical locks on the box. He doesn’t want to attempt it until he has Giles for back-up, but Giles yells back: he’s busy! Xander agrees – without Giles’ magic, they’re all dead. Even Dawn knows that their plan is not working: they’re falling apart here…

Buffy is enraged and has sliced Archaeus with the Scythe. He doesn’t react. She can’t even tell if he noticed. She yells at Spike and Angel to stop, but Spike insists that it’s not him: “Talk to the forehead! He’s the one messing this up!”

Archaeus takes advantage of Buffy’s switched focus and slices into her back with a sickening squelch. Buffy screams loudly. Archaeus chuckles. At least the Slayers of the past knew that their emotional attachments made them weak. As he prepares to strike Buffy, on her knees on the ground, spitting blood, he’s stopped by a sudden blast of green light, courtesy of Willow. “Really depends on who you’re attached to, doesn’t it?” she smirks. But the blast is strong, and takes the wind out of the witch, who barely has enough energy to stand.

As Archaeus snarls at her and pounces, Buffy only just manages to move Willow out of his way in time. She realises how injured Willow is, but her friend tells her she can still fight. “You and me. Together.” But Willow doesn’t look confident. As she throws up a force field to protect her and Buffy from another blow, she tells the Slayer that while they’re tough together, they’re not enough this day.

Buffy, however, ignores her, moving from Willow’s side as she continues to fire blasts at the demon lord. She tells Spike that he has to stop Angel by helping him, not hitting him. He’s known him over a hundred years , after all.

Spike struggles to hold Angelus back, realising that all he really knows is Catholic guilt and daddy issues, which suddenly gives him an idea.

He backhands Angelus across the face. Yells at him, his spit in his grand-sire’s eyes. “Look at you, boyo. You’re pathetic. After all this time, all your talk of power and independence… You’re still doing what your father tells you! Dancing like a puppet on a string to win his approval. Isn’t that right, Liam?” Angelus shoots a look at the blonde. He snarls.

Archaeus stops, mid-blow. He points at Angelus, calls him a fool. “I GAVE YOU A COMMAND! ARE YOU STUPID, OR JUST USELESS? DO AS I SAY!“

But it’s too late. In Angel’s mind, Archaeus is gone. His father, tailored-suit, fine wig, Irish brogue riding on memory, stands before him instead.

Berating. Scowling. Disapproving.

Angelus shakes his head and looks down at the ground. “No,” he whispers.

By the time he looks up again, Angel is back. He moves like a force of nature, as sudden as a breaking dam, launching himself at Archaeus and slashing him ferociously with his blade. “Never again!” he proclaims, Archaeus yelping as Willow hits him from the other direction.

Helping Spike up, Angel apologises and says that he’s alright. Buffy orders Willow to help the others with the artefact. Willow hesitates, asking Buffy is she’s got this one, but Angel and Spike join her, weapons prepared. “We’re sure,” the three tell her in unison.

Archaeus is stunned. How dare they think they can stand against him? They can barely stop from murdering each other! He grabs Buffy in his claws, but she smashes the Scythe into his torso. “Y’know what happens when you fight all the time?” she asks the demon.

She swings again, as Angel and Spike slash elsewhere. “You get really good at it.” The demon roars in pain as the blows reign down, just as Willow vaporises the vampire bats plaguing the others. She floats to Andrew. The box is next. Giles says they can manage – for the moment – but recommends that she hurry.

Across the room, Spike is impaled on Archaeus’s spine and screams out. Buffy grabs another appendage and slashes. Angel slices the demon’s throat. Black goo erupts from his incision, and Buffy yells out in disgust.

Buffy, anxious to finish, asks Willow how long. Willow is unsure. Andrew says there’s two more layers of protection on the box. Buffy says she can handle that.

She slices with the Scythe one more time, this time slashing Archaeus’s face. She lands and looks at the vampires next to her. “Quickly, before he heals.”

Spike and Angel each grab her boots and propel Buffy into the air on the count of three. She soars above them with a smirk.

Archaeus watches on in horror and screams in defiance as Buffy arches herself above the magical bone box, Scythe ready to strike. When the blade hits the box, the light that emanates blinds them. The box glows in the dim light and then, with a sudden quiet calm, it ends, pieces shattered and destroyed. There is almost nothing left.

As the dust settles, Archaeus has vanished. They’ve won this round. Willow mentions that the box has been vaporised, whatever it was.

On the deck of the ship, coming through a port hole is a hand with too many digits, skittering away back to its master. It has a piece of the box in its fingers.

A few hours later, back at her apartment, Buffy turns away from a screaming D’Hoffryn. “You’ve won nothing,” he declares, exasperated. “An artefact such as the Restless Door cannot be destroyed so easily!”

He tells them angrily that one of the pieces was stolen. Not just stolen, but stolen by the Sculptor, who his research and spies tell him has made an alliance with the Soul Glutton and the Mistress. He warns them: they will attempt to reconstruct the box and when they have, they won’t hesitate to sell its power to all who can pay.

“After all the work we’ve done to protect this world, you’ve made it an infinitely more dangerous place! A hunting ground for demon kind!”

Xander interrupts: couldn’t they just write a rule in the book that stops the Restless Door? Giles says no, simply because it belongs to a Hell dimension and they have no claim on it. But D’Hoffryn considers that Xander is right. There must be laws they can use to at least mitigate the danger to their world.

However, ultimately, they have to retrieve the stolen fragments and “the spawn of endless Hells” will be sent against them to stop them. Buffy suggests preparing back-up: Riley, Kennedy, Billy and Willow says that she will continue to try and track Archaeus. Angel mentions his contacts in London and Los Angeles, as well as Faith. He’ll warn her. D’Hoffryn will tell the Council: from this point on, they are all targets and must be vigilant.

As the group disperse, Xander makes sure that things are okay between himself and Angel. Therapy has taught him to have an open mind, and he concedes that he and Angel have more in common than he thought. Angel smiles, tells him they’re good as he walks out the apartment.

Heading towards Buffy and Spike, Angel tells them he’s leaving. Spike goes to give the former couple a moment, but it’s Spike that Angel wants to see. He thanks him for what he did to shake him out of Angelus. Spike smiles. “Yeah, well… once you get past all the crap, we’ve been known to make a passable team.”

Angel tells Spike that he can tell he cares for Buffy. But if he hurts her, he’ll come for him. Spike tells him that he’ll hold him to that promise. The two shake hands and Angel nods.

Turning to Buffy, the pair look at each other. “I know there were some bumps, but it was really good to see you again.”

“I feel bad it took so long,” Buffy tells him. “I missed you.” She smiles at him, a warm, emotional smile. “I know things with us are never gonna be simple. But am I overreaching if I think we’re both strong enough to be part of each other’s lives again?”

“I’d hate it if we weren’t.” Buffy asks him about Spike, but Angel smiles back. “All I ever wanted was for you to be happy. You seem like you are. I can live with that.”

Buffy pulls him into a hug and kisses him tenderly on the cheek. She tells him to keep in touch, to investigate the existence of social media. Angel remarks that he’s finally getting used to cell phones. Buffy tells him to take care of himself as Angel leaves, Willow waiting for him outside.

Walking out of the building, Willow admits that that couldn’t have been easy for him. Angel says it wasn’t that hard: it’ll never last. Willow stops a moment, asks if he’s going to start trouble, but Angel says he wouldn’t do that and nor does he have to.

“You were right,” he says to her. “Immortals don’t really change. Soul or not, he’s still Spike. He fixates on someone, decides they’re gonna solve all his problems – give his life meaning. Make him stop hating himself. But they don’t, because they can’t. In the end, he drives them away, confirming what he believes about himself.”

“And then he’ll start all over again.”

Willow thinks he’s being harsh, but Angel knows. He’s not actively rooting for it to happen, he admits, not really. He would honestly prefer to think there’s another way for people like them.

“But I’ve lived a long time and never seen a happy ending,” he tells Willow, quietly. “My experience? It’s the happiness that always ends.”

Then they continue to walk, in shrewd silence.