“No!” Anya shouted. “I can’t let you have those books, Willow.”

    “I need more power.” Willow’s intonation seemed to rock the Magic Box, and Anya was shaken. Was this what had ultimately come of her wish? Willow, black hair and dark eyes, reaching out the blackest of black magics. Anya had almost expected it, but... things still seemed off. It was too soon... or wrong... or... something didn’t seem right. Willow was not feeling vengeful. She should have been feeling vengeful. Instead there was a hatred and a self-loathing that Anya couldn’t sense with her vengeance-demon-powers, but could almost taste in the air rolling off the witch. Willow put her hands into the tomes and sucked up all their magic through her skin.

    “Why?” Anya asked. “I mean, if you wanted to take vengeance, I get that, but what–”

    “Shush,” Willow said. “Osiris!” she shouted. “I demand you come to me now!”

    “It won’t work,” said a clear British voice from the door of the magic box. Giles stood there, Buffy behind him, panting. She’d run all the way there at Giles’ call. Xander had been left at home, dealing with the aftermath of Tara. “The coven sensed you were about to crack,” Giles said. “We’ve sealed off the realms of the gods. Locked all the doors between worlds. You will not be able to contact Osiris again, and all the power in the world won’t force his hand. They sent me to contain you before–”

    Willow didn’t even let Giles finish talking before she moved her hand and ripped his head off. It was visceral, bloody, nothing like what cerebral Willow would have done. “Willow!”

    “Did you know rats will eat each other?” Willow said conversationally to Buffy. “Tear each other apart and nibble nibble nibble. Amy taught me that. I needed her power to cast the spell on Xander. She didn’t want to give it to me.” She lowered her head and looked up at Buffy through dark eyes. “Did you know how delicious someone’s soul can be?” she said. “Do you know? Do you know what I did? What I’d done? I was going to make Xander better. I can make Tara all better.” She looked at Giles’ decapitated corpse as if she herself were only a rat.

    “The dimensional doors are locked, Willow.”

    Willow’s head tilted again. “Then all I need is a key.”

    Without warning Dawn stood there in the middle of the Magic Box, still in her yellow Juvenile Detention uniform. She blinked, and then looked happy to see Willow and Buffy. “Willow? Buffy? You got me out!” Then she looked nervous. “Um... maybe.... Thanks. I’m sorry I was so mad, but... it’s only a year, and... they’ve taken time off already, ‘cause I’m doing good in my school work.” Buffy ran up to her, terrified. Dawn hadn’t caught on to what was happening to Willow. “No really, Buffy, it doesn’t look so bad these days. The counseling sessions are helping a lot. Like, helping me deal with Mom and stuff. It means a lot you came to get me, but maybe you should put me back?”

    “I’ll put you back, Dawnie,” Willow said with disturbing charm. “I’ll put you right back where you came from.”

    Buffy caught on to what Willow intended a second before she did it. “No!” she shouted, as Dawn dissolved into a glowing orb of green energy, which sank into Willow’s hands.
    

***
 

    Anya picked herself up from the pool of blood left by Giles’s corpse and forced herself to look at the fell creature in the center of the room.

    Willow was very dead, that was clear. She was almost a burnt husk. Dawn was still there – sort of – hovering as a green light between the dark slayer’s hands. Anya had only caught glimpses of what happened. Willow dissolved Dawn, to get the power of the key so she could open the dimensional walls to get Tara back. But then Buffy had grabbed for Dawn, and seemed to be sucked into the witch along with the key’s energy.

    Anya had seen things like that before – those monks had tapped into Buffy’s blood energy, and with Buffy touching Dawn, Willow had tried to draw in the slayer, too. Like she’d drawn in Amy. But Buffy was the personification of strength. Connected by the key, the two were as one for a single moment, mirror images of power. Once the witch and the slayer had the same power, none of Willow’s grief and self-hatred could withstand Buffy’s.

    Willow had fried before she’d even known what she’d done.

    Buffy stood staring at the power left in her hands. Her own blond hair had gone white – not the clear white of purity, but the death-white of age. With Spike’s coat around her shoulders, she almost looked as if she were trying to become him, but even with his game face, Spike had never looked so deadly.

    And the truth clicked in Anya’s head. That was her vengeance spell. She didn’t have all the details yet – time hadn’t caught up completely. But whatever the vengeance was supposed to be for must have been meant to happen tonight, or soon. It was Spike. He had done something to wrong Buffy, and left the doors open for a vengeance spell.

    And whatever that wish had been, had left the world like this. Anya felt actively sick.

    “Dawn...” Buffy whispered. Her eyes glowed bottle green, like the power in her hands.

    “It isn’t supposed to be like this, Buffy,” Anya said. It was the bravest thing she’d ever done, drawing the attention of that dark force.

    Buffy’s eyes twitched toward Anya, and two laser spots of green touched the vengeance demon’s face. Anya swallowed. “It wasn’t supposed to be this bad. We’re all caught in a wish. A vengeance wish, that I cast.”

    “You granted a wish?” Buffy asked. “Whose?”

    “Yours, I think,” Anya said.

    “Vengeance? Against Willow?”

    Anya shook her head. “No. Spike. I don’t know what happened, I got caught in it too. But the time line has been changed. All of this... Willow, Giles, Dawn... none of them are supposed to be dead.”

    “Why not?” Buffy asked dully. “Death comes to everyone, right? Death is my gift. That’s what I bring. I wished Spike dead? And everyone died, right? I’m a slayer,” she said. “I slay. My gift... but not my gift. My gift has been taken away. My chance at peace... my only chance...”

    “I can take the wish away, Buffy, but you have to wish it, too. If you still want to keep the vengeance, it’s stuck. You have to change your mind.”

    “Change my mind? For something I can’t even remember? Forgive a crime when I don’t know what it is?”

    “How bad could it be?” Anya gestured around the charnel-house of the Magic Box. “Yeah, I guess you wished him dead, but what the hell are we in the middle of now?”

    “Hell,” Buffy said. “We’re in the middle of hell. I knew from the moment I opened my eyes.”

    Anya took a step toward her. “Just let me undo the wish, Buffy,” she said. “The power’s eating your mind, corrupting your soul. Willow, and Amy, and Tara, and Giles and Dawn, they’re all in you now. If we kill this wish, maybe we can bring some of them back–”

    “Bring them back?” Buffy said. “Bring back the dead? Let’s just bring them all back, why don’t we? That’s what we do, right? Bring back the dead?” She looked down at her hands. “I have the key. I went through that door. The door’s still there.” She could see it, in her mind, there beneath the earth, the path her soul had traveled to return to her body, lodged in its coffin. It was sitting there, glowing, a bright golden light in her awareness, halfway across town. All she’d have to do is put the key in the lock... put her hands on the earth... and the gates of heaven would open again.

    She couldn’t cross through, of course. Her soul was too corrupted. But... why not make heaven on earth?

    Or at least... bring everyone in it down to hell.

    Buffy started to move, and the world shifted with her. It didn’t feel like walking, or flying, just as if she leaned forward and the world shifted to put her where she wanted to be. She stood in the moonlight before a headstone which no one had bothered to take down.

BUFFY ANNE SUMMERS

She saved the world a lot.

    Buffy stared at it for a moment, still feeling the path beneath her feet, the door locked, just waiting for the key to open Heaven. She pointed her hands at the ground. The energy poured from her like blood (like blood, like Dawn’s blood) and pooled around her, and the door quietly opened, like a budding flower. Souls, invisible, but with a weight of eternity clinging to them, began to pour out. Buffy could feel them. She could hear them. Screaming.

    The earth trembled under their weight.

    “Slayer,” said a voice behind her. “I think that’s my coat.”