Okay, I have no idea how many of you guys still care, but here it is, nearly six years after the last update: the second half of this two-parter. It was never my intention to abandon this fic. When I started writing "Season 8," the Buffyverse was the only fandom I wrote for, and BtVS and Angel were the only two shows I obsessively rewatched. Over time, my list of fandoms has expanded, and it got harder and harder to get my muse to focus on the story that got me started. I've had two thousand words of this chapter sitting in a Word document and a detailed outline in my writing notebook from an undergrad fiction writing workshop for years. Between Sunday of this week and this morning, that document went from two thousand words to eleven. I haven't written for this fic this fast since I was cranking out the entirety of "Season 8" in five months when I was eighteen. It was incredible. I broke my old word count rules of making it 10,000 words or fewer because 27-year-old me is much less rigid about those things than 21-year-old me was. I will definitely have to break those rules again for the finale, because I can't imagine how it'll fit into under 10K words if this couldn't.

So! For everyone returning because you got what was probably the most unexpected update alert ever, I'd recommend rereading the last few chapters (as I had to do to write this) to remind yourself of what's going on. If your memory is way better than mine and you feel that's unnecessary, I'll supply a brief Previously on Taaroko's "Season 9."

Previously on Taaroko's "Season 9": Buffy and Angel are struggling to cope with her miscarriage and the world at large is still plagued by the Old Ones. Five soulless vampires (Spike, Drusilla, Nyx, Demetri, and Sophia) have decided that it's in their best interests to help defeat the Old Ones, so they're currently on Team Scoobies. Research has proven largely fruitless, which is why Buffy has gone to the Faerie Wood in search of Boone, a being old enough to remember the last time the Old Ones roamed the earth. However, the Faerie Wood is a more treacherous place than she realized, so Angel must go after her to make sure she doesn't end up lost there forever. Meanwhile, various inhabitants of the Hyperion have mysteriously vanished, and are now trapped inside mirrors.

Episode 21: On Further Reflection

Guest Starring (sort of): Angel Coulby as Renée Blackwood,

Rachel Hurd-Wood as Nyx,

Sean Maher as Tobias MacGowan,

Jewel Staite as Tahn,

John Francis Daley as Leonard,

Morena Baccarin as Sophia,

Alan Tudyk as Demetri,

John Francis Daley as Leonard,

Ryan Cartwright as Nigel,

and

Josh Groban as Bracchion, the Immortal (because why not)

†

Angel staggered sideways into Willow, who caught him and held him up. "I don't think you should be doing this, Angel," she said. "You still have the flu. Someone else should go in after Buffy."

"She's my wife," he said flatly. If anyone was going to get her out, it was him.

Willow pursed her lips, but didn't argue further.

"There it is, there it is!" cried Livvy, pointing ahead to the tree branch archway. She tried to run towards it, but Abby's grip on her hand was inescapable.

"You're not going in again," she said firmly. Over Livvy's whining protests, she turned to Willow and added, "and neither should you."

"I know," said Willow, though she was staring at the archway with longing.

Angel pulled away from Willow's support and took a step forward. A wave of dizziness threatened to make him fall, but he managed to steady himself and keep walking.

"Take us back to the hotel," said Abby from behind him.

"Wait," said Willow.

Angel turned back when he was within arm's reach of the archway. "We'll call for you once we're back out," he said. Willow nodded, and he stepped through. The next second, he wished he hadn't, but when he looked around, there was no archway in sight.

Far from the fairytale forest Willow had described, he was standing in a dreary swamp. The trees, all gnarled and twisted and bone-white, were devoid of leaves, but black moss hung from their branches in thick, slimy curtains. Tendrils of fog clung to the dips in the sodden terrain, and what little he could see of the sky was thickly overcast.

"Okay," he muttered. "At least there won't be any danger of me wanting to stay here."

†

"This can't be real," said Buffy, staring at the child standing in the center of the clearing, taking in the dark hair and eyes that could have been Angel's, the nose that could have been hers.

"No," he said, and indeed, the illusion was already broken somewhat by his voice, which sounded more like a chorus of voices. "This form is merely a projection of what your heart longs for." As he spoke, Buffy noticed that his appearance was slowly changing, as if to show her all possible combinations of herself and Angel that they might have seen in their son.

"Can you return him to me?" she asked desperately.

"No," said the boy-shaped creature, his expression sympathetic. "As much as I may wish to, that is beyond my power."

Buffy's disappointment was sharp and bitter. She swallowed painfully. "Are you Boone?" she said.

He nodded slowly.

"I came here to find you," she said. She frowned. "But I can't remember why…." She looked around at the beautiful forest, at the little fairies dancing in the air at the edges of the clearing. "Why are they all children?" she said. "Where are their parents?"

"They have none," said Boone. "They were all once children of your world. They came to this place when that world failed them and left them alone." He spread his small hands wide, gesturing at their surroundings. "I have assumed the form of your dreams; theirs are what you see around you." He fixed Buffy with a piercing stare. "I have given them all that I can, but just as I cannot return your child to you, one thing I can never give my charges is—"

"A mother," Buffy finished for him.

†

Spike shoved Nyx hard against the sewer wall and continued to attack her lips with his. The lingering taste of blood in her mouth from the homeless guy he'd caught and killed for her was intoxicating. When he'd had enough of that, he moved to kiss her neck instead.

"You know," she panted, running her hands up and down his back, "homeless man? Not the best vintage when it comes to giving your lady a gift."

"It's only the first date, love," he murmured against her skin. "Can't expect me to pull out all the stops just yet. Besides, you're the one who insisted on going in the middle of the day, so you take what you can get when you're hunting in the sewers."

"Fair enough," said Nyx, pulling his face back to hers so she could kiss his lips again.

†

Dawn, Giles, and Oz continued researching in the office after Willow left with Angel, even though everyone else seemed to have called it an early day. This batch of new books was yielding no more helpful information than the previous fifty. Lorne walked in with a mug of coffee in hand and another book under his arm. "Wow, the team morale is low in here," he observed.

"A typical consequence of weeks of fruitless research paired with illness while the world continues its steady descent into madness," said Giles.

Drusilla drifted out of the portal right behind Lorne, making him yelp and spill half his coffee.

"Oh," said Drusilla, looking a little surprised. "You're still here. I thought you would have gone. Nearly everyone else has."

"Yeah," said Oz. "Can't really blame them. It's some nasty flu."

"No," she said, tilting her head to the side and staring at the ceiling. "They've gone somewhere else." She began moving her hands like a mime doing the invisible box trick. "They've gone through the looking glass, and now they can't get out."

"What are you talking about?" said Giles, his brow furrowing.

"I'd offer to read her," said Lorne, "but the migraine from the last time I did it is finally almost gone and I don't want to recharge it."

"Don't look too close when you go to see them," said Drusilla. "The glass is still hungry."

Before they could get another word out of her, she wandered off into the lobby, humming to herself. Oz and Dawn made to go after her when Sophia walked in too. "What's going on?" she said, frowning over her shoulder at Drusilla.

"I don't know," said Dawn. She looked at Oz. "Did she mean that people are getting trapped in mirrors? 'Cause, crazy talk aside, that's kinda what it sounded like."

"Yeah," said Oz, a slight frown on his face.

"Well, let's find out," said Dawn, jogging off into the corridor that led to the rooms on the ground floor and turning into the first one on the right, the door of which was already wide open.

"Dawn, wait!" said Oz, running after her. Giles, Lorne, and Sophia followed as well.

They reached the room in time to see Dawn peering into the large mirror hanging over the dresser. "Connor?" she said in alarm. "How did you—" But her sentence ended in a scream as she was suddenly pulled forward into the glass.

"Dawn!" shouted Giles and Oz in unison, running forward, Lorne close behind them.

"Stop!" said Sophia sharply. All three of them froze. "If you look into it, you'll probably get sucked in too." She walked forward slowly and stood before the mirror, examining it in fascination.

"What are you—" Oz began, but she interrupted him.

"I have no reflection," she said. "It was a lucky guess, but it looks like only those who exist on both sides of the mirror can be pulled across."

Careful to keep well to the side of the mirror, Giles, Oz, and Lorne moved closer. They could see Dawn and Connor standing just on the other side. Dawn pounded her fists against the glass for a moment before an idea seemed to strike her. She closed her eyes and furrowed her brow. A second later, her right hand shone with bright green light.

"What is she doing?" said Sophia, frowning.

"Trying to make a portal to get out," said Lorne.

"That should do the trick, right?" said Oz. "She can go anywhere in the world like that. Anywhere in any world."

"Yes," said Giles. However, a few seconds later, the glow faded from Dawn's hand and a look of intense frustration came over her face. "Except in this case, it would seem."

"Well, then let's hope those books have more to say about mirrors than they do about destroying Old Ones," said Sophia.

Filled with a fresh sense of urgency and purpose, they rushed back out into the lobby, just in time for it to fill with the white light that heralded the return of Willow, Abby, and Livvy. The next second, Spike and Nyx, both disheveled, emerged from the basement access corridor.

†

Angel walked slowly through the gloomy bog, careful to avoid the wet patches. He didn't know how he was supposed to find Buffy in this place, but he wasn't about to give up without trying. As he passed a large, gnarled tree covered in yellowish-gray moss, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned and caught sight of a boy, perhaps seven or eight years old, staring at him from around the other side of the tree. The boy was as colorless as his surroundings, and Angel didn't think he'd seen a more miserable expression in all his exceptionally long life.

He kept walking, trying to ignore the shiver running up his spine—one that had nothing to do with his fever. After a few minutes' progress, he had to pause as a wave of nausea and dizziness overcame him. Why couldn't he have gotten the flu last fall, when nothing was going on? Eventually, he managed to push through it and keep going.

It seemed that the boy behind that tree wasn't the only one in here. Angel kept catching glimpses of other gray, woebegone children with increasing frequency the more ground he covered. A sound like whispering began to build in the air. At first, he couldn't discern any words, but then phrases began to pop out at him.

You're not welcome here.

Don't hurt me, please!

Why are you doing this?

Mother! Father! Wake up! Oh, please, please wake up!

You're not welcome here.

It took every ounce of resolve Angel possessed to keep moving forward in spite of the sick, crawling feeling of dread in his stomach. The whispering continued, but he tried to block it out, even though it was punctuated with familiar voices and pleas he'd heard before. It seemed that the Faerie Wood didn't keep just anyone who wandered into it—it focused on children who had nothing left in the world. No wonder they didn't want him here.

A rasping croak sounded overhead, and Angel looked up. On one of the dead, clawlike branches above him perched a large raven. It glared at him out of one beady eye for a moment, then took flight. He kept going. A moment later, a shape passed through the trees just too deep into the veil of mist that he couldn't see it clearly, but he thought it might have been a stag.

For a while now, the trees around him had been getting larger, though they still looked just as dead as the rest of them, and he noticed that the ground had a very slight downward slope. The ghostly children had gotten better at hiding from him, but he could still hear their chilling whispers coming from every direction. He felt sure that he was moving towards the center of the Wood, and even more so when he walked between the two largest trees he'd seen yet and suddenly found himself in a circular clearing devoid of mist.

"Buffy?" he called.

There was no response, but a pair of eyes appeared in the scraggly undergrowth at the far side of the clearing. Angel moved forward, squinting to see what the eyes belonged to. "Boone?" he tried again. With a yowling roar, the creature, which turned out to be an enormous charcoal-gray lynx, sprang out towards him.

†

For a second, Buffy could have sworn she heard someone saying her name. Someone familiar. She glanced around in search of the voice, and the forest suddenly looked nothing like the magical, happy place she'd just been standing in. But before she could really register the change, she blinked, and it was all back to normal. She looked back at Boone.

"Is someone else here?" she asked.

"Do not trouble yourself," he said. "He'll be dealt with soon enough."

Buffy frowned. It was so hard to think, but Boone's words didn't reassure her. "What do you do to people you don't want here when they manage to get in?"

"Punish them."

†

Dawn had gotten so used to the free mobility her powers gave her that their sudden uselessness felt crippling. She stared from Connor to Leonard, the one Connor had unwittingly followed inside, hoping one of them had thought of something, because she was out of ideas. "How are we gonna get out of here if I can't make portals?" She glanced helplessly out at Giles, Oz, Lorne, and Sophia.

"How did we get in in the first place?" said Leonard.

"Let's let them figure that out," said Connor, jerking his thumb at the glass. "We're not the only ones in here. Now that I'm on this side, I can hear a bunch of other people banging on mirrors and yelling in other rooms in the hotel. Let's find everyone else so we're all together when Giles and the others find the solution."

"Okay," said Dawn, reassured by her boyfriend's decisive tone.

"I hope they can get us out soon," said Leonard. "The book I was working on translating might actually have information we can use, for a change, but it won't do us much good if I can't tell anyone out there about it."

"Are you serious?" said Connor.

He shrugged. "Maybe I just hallucinated it. My fever's still pretty bad." He frowned. "Or, it was. I haven't really felt sick since I landed in here. I was in the middle of working on a passage about the Deeper Well when I looked in the mirror to see if I looked as sick as I felt. The passage could still be nothing, but it's more than anything I've found so far."

Spurred on by this on top of their desire to get out, the three of them ventured deeper into the mirror world in search of the other people trapped there. Their improved mood didn't last long, though. Being backwards wasn't the weirdest thing about the reflected world they'd been sucked into. They'd entered through a mirror above a dresser, but the room intersected the reflection from the bathroom mirror, creating two fragments. When they went out into the corridor, things got even stranger.

"This is like being inside a kaleidoscope," said Connor, staring around. His voice echoed weirdly, as though bouncing separately into each mirror's reflected space. Every time they walked into the space of a mirror that wasn't perfectly vertical, gravity would change. They would prepare to step up or downhill, but instead find themselves walking perfectly level on a slanted surface. They could only feel the change on the borders between two spaces, and the sensation was bizarre.

"Can you still hear people?" said Leonard, while Dawn squeezed Connor's hand.

"Yeah," said Connor, frowning. "But it's weird. Nothing's coming from where I think it's coming from, and nothing has a scent." They wandered around for another few minutes until Connor seemed to get the hang of the way things sounded. Then he set off purposefully towards what Dawn thought might be the stairwell, but she couldn't be sure because it kept splitting off in more fragments and the path ahead was shrouded in shadow.

Connor led the way through the shadow with confidence, but Dawn didn't like it. It felt cold and drafty, as if the draft was going through her. She gritted her teeth against the feeling, and suddenly the darkness was pierced with green light. Green light that was coming from her. She and Leonard yelped in surprise at the same moment.

"Whoa, Dawn!" said Connor. "Can you make a portal after all?"

"What? No. I mean, I wasn't trying to," she said, looking down at her gleaming fingers intertwined with his. They reached the landing of the next floor, which was also a kaleidoscope of hallway fragments going in different directions. The glow Dawn was giving off didn't fade when they stepped back into the light, but her attention was caught more by the appearances of Connor and Leonard. She squinted from one young man to the other. "Are you guys okay?" she asked.

They exchanged glances, and their eyes widened. Then they held their hands up in front of their faces. It was subtle, but they had both become very slightly translucent.

"Giles and the others had better find a way to get us out of here fast," said Dawn nervously.

†

Within minutes of meeting up in the lobby, the five vampires had been sent to find anyone in the hotel who hadn't been sucked into mirrors already and begin an evacuation. Spike was halfway through the fourth floor, pounding on doors, having only found five people to send downstairs so far out of twice that many rooms, when Nyx caught up with him again. He smirked at the sight of her. "Aren't you supposed to be evacuating the top floor?" he asked.

"Already done," she said.

"Fine, but isn't there usually a wait of a day or two between the first date and the second?"

"What can I say?" she said. "Self-denial is for those who can't get what they want."

"Ah, can't get enough, can you?" The fact that Drusilla was one floor down didn't trouble him. He'd put up with her chaos and fungus demon beaus, and those were only the most recent cases of infidelity. Just because he'd gone back to her when she got rid of his soul didn't mean he'd forgiven her previous flightiness, especially when she still showed signs of missing Angelus.

"Actually, I've thought of what you could get for me to make it up to me for the poor quality of dinner," she said, slipping her arms around his waist and pressing up against him.

Snogging Nyx in this corridor wouldn't exactly be conducive to the task he'd been assigned, but what the hell did he care? "Oh yeah, what's that?" he said, turning to push her against the wall beside the door he'd been about to knock on and bending down to kiss her neck. "It shouldn't be too hard to get something younger and cleaner once the sun goes down."

"I'm not talking about blood," she said.

"What were you talking about?" he said, but he was much less interested in the conversation than in undoing the laces of her corset top. Bloody things were far too intricate; he was about two seconds away from simply ripping it off.

"Your sire's ashes."

Spike froze, then abruptly pulled away. "You think I'm going to kill my sire for you?" he said, eyes narrowed.

"Why not?" said Nyx. "I killed my sire for me, and Erebus is dust as well. This whole thing will be much tidier if there aren't any exes hanging around."

"Then why aren't you demanding I kill Buffy?"

"Oh, Mrs. Gallagher won't be a problem, since she obviously feels nothing but disdain for you." Spike tried and failed to suppress a flinch at the sound of Buffy's married name, and Nyx's eyes flashed with amusement. "And from what I hear, the two of you didn't really have a relationship and therefore couldn't really be described as each other's exes. Besides, killing her would sort of ruin this whole truce thing, if you could even pull it off. But Drusilla? She needs to die."

"Look, if you want a dead ex, I can whip you up one in a jiffy," said Spike, thinking of Harmony.

Nyx raised an eyebrow, plainly not amused. "Think it over," she said, then sauntered off down the corridor.

"If you want Dru out of the way so bad," he called after her, "why don't you stake her yourself?"

"It wouldn't mean anything if I did it," she said, without breaking stride.

It was a few minutes before Spike had gotten past his bewilderment and anger enough to resume knocking on doors.

†

Angel blinked. The last thing he remembered was the enormous lynx leaping in his direction. He now found himself lying flat on his back in mud and dead reeds, the lynx perched on a flat, slimy rock in front of him. He sat up cautiously. The lynx kept its great eyes on him, not so much as blinking, but didn't move to stop him.

"I've come for my wife," he said, confident enough that the lynx was no ordinary cat not to feel silly talking to it. "You can't keep her here."

"You dare first to enter my domain and then to make demands?" the lynx growled. Its ability to enunciate perfectly around those fangs was somehow even more unsettling than hearing it talk in the first place. Even with two and a half centuries of practice, Angel hadn't always been able to avoid lisping in vampface.

"You're Boone," he said.

The lynx didn't reply this time. However, Angel noticed that they weren't alone in the clearing. Over a dozen of those sad, ghostly children had joined them, forming a loose ring around Angel several yards across. Most wore ragged clothing from more than a century ago, but two small girls were in oversized t-shirts and cartoon print pajama shorts.

"This place is called the Faerie Wood, but they aren't really fairies, are they?" said Angel.

"They were once children of your world. They come to me when they lose everything. Too many of my charges are here because of you." By the time he finished speaking, Boone's words were barely intelligible through his growls.

Photographic memory was not always a blessing, particularly with a past like Angel's. He recognized all of these children. As Angelus, he had taken great pleasure in killing family members in front of each other. Most often, he had forced parents to watch while he murdered their children, or else he had left their dead children for them to find. Occasionally, though, he had done the reverse, and in either case, he had rarely left survivors. The few children he had left alive after killing their parents were the ones who stood around him now.

†

"I may not be able to restore your child to you," said Boone, whose seven-year-old form currently had curly blond hair, a straight nose, and dark eyes. "But my charges will love you just as well as he would have if you remain here, and you them. They can fill the hole in your heart if you let them."

"Please, stop," said Buffy, her throat so tight she could barely get the words out. She wasn't sure what she thought of the idea of anyone taking the place of her unborn son, as much as she felt for the many orphans around her. "Do you have to keep looking like him?"

In the blink of an eye, he transformed into the majestic stag she'd glimpsed before. "I am sorry to have brought you more pain. Stay here, and you needn't feel it any longer."

†

It took the five vampires about twenty minutes to check every room and gather all the Slayers and Watchers-in-Training who were still on the right side of their mirrors and return to the lobby. Roughly half of the hotel's inhabitants had been unaffected, and they were mostly the ones who'd been too sick with the flu to get out of bed.

"Is this everyone?" said Giles, frowning after completing a head count. Most of the Slayers and Watchers-in-Training were now filing towards the doorway to the Academy. Cleveland might be caught in a nasty storm that involved showers of eerily glowing hailstones at the moment, but the mirrors were at least behaving normally there, which made it the safer place to be.

"Everyone who hasn't been sucked into the Phantom Zone?" said Xander. "Yeah." He looked extremely tense and unhappy—Renée was not among the group in the lobby.

"I think it's just this building," Oz announced, re-entering the hotel through the main doors. "Traffic is the same as it's been all week out there, and nobody seems to be getting sucked into their rearview mirrors."

"That's something," said Willow.

"I'm not sure it's something good, though," said Sophia. "Does it mean this is a targeted attack by the Old Ones?"

"If that were the case, this building would no longer exist," said Illyria with her usual haughtiness. "The effects we have seen across the world thus far are merely the ambient energy given off by my kin. They have not made a direct attack. The hotel's history and the amount of power that dwells in it has likely made it into a focal point that any nearby surge of energy would be drawn to."

"So we're living inside a lightning rod for reality-altering weirdness," said Xander. "That's just perfect. Now how do we get everyone back out of the mirrors?"

"Are we sure they won't just pop right back out when the energy surge dies down?" said Oz.

"I wouldn't assume we'll be so fortunate," said Giles. "They could just as easily end up permanently trapped." He looked at Illyria. "Can you feel this energy?"

"I can. I would estimate a window of mere hours before the hotel reverts to its usual state."

Drusilla hummed, seemingly amused. "The glass will seal soon, but the lights are already fading."

†

After giving up trying to break back through her mirror to the real world, Renée had cautiously begun exploring the reflected world she found herself in. She quickly discovered that, for all her Slayer strength, she couldn't so much as turn a doorknob in here, but the reflections of different mirrors intersected in such a way that this didn't leave her trapped in her own room. She moved through these, trying other mirrors with no success. To her chagrin, the first other person she found was Bracchion, inside the most fragmented room she'd seen yet. He apparently owned quite a few mirrors, which didn't surprise her at all.

"I suppose you got sucked in during one of your thrice-daily self-admiration rituals," she said scornfully.

"Were you as beautiful as me, my dear, you'd be your favorite thing to look at too," he said, completely unabashed. He eyed her up and down. "Not that you aren't easy on the eyes as you are. Even with that ugly scar."

She turned on her heel. He could stay stuck in here for all she cared. Nobody in the hotel would miss him and his constant preening and flirting.

"Wait, you can't leave me here!" he protested, all suave dignity forgotten as he ran to catch up with her.

She rounded on him and shoved a finger in his face. "If you're going to come with me, then I'll have none of your nonsense while we're stuck in here, ken?"

He grimaced sourly, but nodded. They moved on, and soon found Laurel, Sarah, and Nigel all shouting and banging on the same mirror. They readily joined them, and the group kept going, finding more trapped Slayers and Watchers-in-Training, as well as Tobias and Tahn, along the way.

They quickly learned to avoid dark patches if at all possible, because whenever they went through them, they came out the other side a little less solid than they were when they entered. Bracchion handled this discovery with by far the least dignity of everyone in the group. He was used to being immune to dangers that affected mere mortals, but that was clearly not the case here.

More than once, they encountered terrain that was entirely upside-down—usually the result of a hand mirror lying flat on a dresser or bathroom counter. These were extremely strange to enter and exit (many of them fell flat on their faces when gravity reversed), but sometimes they were the only way to travel from one floor to the next in the hotel.

Shortly after using this strategy for the third time, they met Dawn and Connor, leading a group of people just as large as theirs—and just as transparent, except for Dawn, who glowed green. "Damn," said Renée. "How many of us are in here?"

"What parts of the hotel have you covered?" said Connor.

"The top three floors, I think," said Renée. There was no sign of Xander in Connor and Dawn's group either. She hoped that meant he wasn't lost in here, but she was certain she'd checked every room, including his. He was probably going completely spare on the outside with her in here.

"We've done the rest," said Dawn. "This should be everyone in the hotel, and we didn't find any way out of the building to check if it goes farther than that."

"Any ideas on getting out?" said Tobias.

"Giles saw me get sucked in," said Dawn. "Everyone who isn't trapped is probably working on a solution downstairs. We figure the best we can do is make ourselves as easy as possible to rescue."

"Then we should probably do the buddy system so we don't lose track of anyone on the way back down," said Tobias.

"Agreed," said Renée. She turned to face the huddled group. "Okay, you lot, find a partner and stick to them like glue. We're going to the lobby, and we're not leaving anyone behind. Hopefully they'll have a way out for us soon."

Bracchion ended up the odd one out, but he whined so much that nobody was likely to lose track of him anyway.

†

"The part of me that did this to them—the demon—it's gone," said Angel. He might not have argued on his own behalf, not when confronted by so many of his most innocent victims, except that he wasn't here for himself. He was here to get Buffy, and to make sure she got the information she came for.

Boone growled. "If this were not the case, I would have destroyed you the instant you arrived. But still, you should not have come."

With difficulty and some dizziness, Angel pushed himself upright on trembling legs and met Boone's gaze. "I'm not leaving without Buffy. The world needs her. The Old Ones are free, and it's only a matter of time before they destroy everything. Keep me as your prisoner or kill me—do whatever you want with me, just let her go."

The great lynx cocked his head. "You would toss yourself aside so easily?" He prowled closer. "You are burdened with great guilt. Guilt unrelated to your crimes against these children."

Before Angel could move, Boone shot forward and raised a clawed paw towards his face. One claw touched the center of Angel's forehead, but it seemed Boone's purpose was not to attack. Moving images poured out of the spot the creature had touched, filling the empty air of the clearing. Angel found himself watching the very memories he'd been torturing himself with in recent weeks. Speaking with Drogyn in the Deeper Well. Drogyn's death at his own fangs and hands. Buffy in the hospital after losing the baby. Lindsey's ghost taunting him that the Old Ones' escape was his doing, and that maybe he hadn't earned his humanity by helping the side of good after all.

"Arrogance," Boone hissed.

"What?" said Angel, distracted from his guilt.

"To assume the blame for that which would have come to pass regardless? The capacity for pride and foolishness of human adults knows no bounds. This is why only children are welcome in my domain."

"What are you talking about?" said Angel. "Are you saying the Old Ones would've gotten out no matter what I did?"

"You were but one small, interchangeable cog in the machinery that brought this about. The guardian you slew would have met his end regardless, as his counterpart at the other end of the Well did."

Angel gaped. Now that Boone mentioned it, of course there must have been someone guarding the New Zealand entrance to the Well. But while this alleviated some of his guilt, it also made the fact of the Old Ones even more frightening. They would've come back no matter what he did. It made their chances of defeating them feel even slimmer.

†

Buffy frowned. It was still difficult to think and remember clearly, but something about Boone's offer didn't make sense. Her pain gone...but pain hadn't been all there was before, had it?

At the exact moment she had this thought, maybe even because of it, her surroundings flickered. She saw again the miserable swamp she'd caught a brief glimpse of before, with sad gray children in place of the fairies—and Angel was there. He looked like he was barely staying on top of his fever, and an enormous lynx crouched in front of him, in the exact same spot as the stag.

"Angel," she breathed. The stag, the beautiful forest, and the twirling fairies returned, but not before she saw Angel look around at the sound of her voice.

†

Spike and Demetri entered the lobby carrying a large mirror from Bracchion's room, which they were able to enter because he wasn't human. The glass was carefully covered by a sheet, which they only removed after setting the mirror down facing away from the few humans who had remained in the hotel. Illyria had gone to the roof to watch for any other threats, and Nyx, Sophia, and Drusilla were searching the Archive for books on cursed mirrors.

"So how do you think this mirror world works?" said Oz. "I mean, normally, reflections are just light bouncing off shiny surfaces. They don't actually exist in space."

"I'm not sure they do now," said Willow, brow furrowed. "I don't think these reflections are made of matter. I think they're still made of light, but that they're forming an actual dimension of their own."

"That would explain why Dawn can't create doorways, yes?" said Giles. "Perhaps her powers are limited to travel within dimensions made of matter."

"Yeah!" said Willow, excited. "And vampires can't get sucked in for the same reason that the people inside can't get out. They only exist on one side!"

"What does this have to do with getting everyone back out?" said Xander, still as restless and agitated as he had been since failing to find Renée on this side of the mirrors.

"Well if it isn't the Immortal," Spike snickered, eyes on the mirror, where Bracchion was front and center in a large group of people, nose pressed flat against the glass in a most undignified way, plainly desperate to escape. "I s'pose it was only a matter of time before the self-absorbed ponce stared at himself in a mirror hard enough to get stuck in it."

"It looks like most of your missing residents are in here," said Demetri.

At the mention of trapped people besides Bracchion, everyone else rushed around as far as they dared to see what he was talking about.

"What's happening to them?" said Lorne, disturbed.

They all realized what he was was talking about at the same time. Everyone on the other side of the glass were some degree of translucent, except for Dawn, whose whole body glowed green. "Oh no," said Willow.

"What is it?" said Xander, eye on Renée, who was smiling at him over Bracchion's shoulder in a way that attempted to reassure him. It didn't work. He could see through her, and the scar on her face went the wrong way, both clear reminders that the situation was far from okay.

"Well, I think we're right that the mirror world is a dimension made of light," said Willow, "but it isn't self-sustaining. It only exists where light does on our side. They must've walked through some unlit areas of the hotel to get here, and it diminished their substance."

"Then why's the nibblet glowing?" said Spike.

"Because she's the Key," said Giles. "Out here, Dawn Summers is made of the same matter as normal humans, but the Key is made of some kind of green energy. The mirror world must be stripping away the human component, but the Key would remain intact because it's its own light source."

"Okay, then let's get them out before it gets worse!" said Xander.

"Shouting won't lead to a faster solution!" said Giles. "I want them back out as much as you do, but this isn't something any of us has ever encountered before!"

"Hey, what if we just try putting another mirror in front of that one and bouncing them out?" said Oz, which broke up the tension.

"It's worth a shot," said Willow.

"Plenty more mirrors where this came from," said Spike. "Narcissistic immortal git." He and Demetri left to get a second mirror.

"We should get the names of everyone inside to compare against the list of people evacuated to the Academy," said Giles. They spent the next few minutes checking off all the names. In what felt like the first good news of the day, nobody was unaccounted for.

†

"What are they doing?" said Bracchion. "Why did they go away?"

Dawn and Connor exchanged exasperated looks. "They probably have a plan to get us out. Will you please chill?" said Dawn.

"Dinnae mind him," said Renée. "He's just never had to confront the possibility of his own death before." Bracchion glared reproachfully at her, to which she merely raised her eyebrows.

"You really think we could die in here?" said Tahn, fingers tightening around Tobias's hand.

"Well, I certainly dinnae think this opacity problem we're all having means anything good," said Renée.

"Hey, they're back," said Connor. Everyone's heads swiveled towards the mirror again, through which they saw Spike and Demetri coming back into view, carrying another mirror. They set it down a few feet away from this one and whipped the sheet off it. Suddenly, the fragment of mirror world they were in cascaded backwards, with seemingly infinite copies of itself repeating back and forth as far as they could see. It did the same in the other direction. The result was dizzying to behold, but nothing else happened.

Bracchion let out a wail. "I'm going to die!"

†

"Bummer," said Oz. "I guess that didn't work."

"There are probably more books than this," said Sophia, emerging from the office with an armload of leather-bound tomes, followed by Drusilla and Nyx, who carried similar cargo. "We just brought a few to get started. I asked Triennia if she's ever seen anything like this, but it seems like we aren't that lucky."

"Let's get to it, then," said Giles.

"We could do that," said Spike, staying put as everyone else headed for the books. "Or we could just try this." With that, he aimed a swift kick at the mirror. Willow, Oz, Xander, Giles, Sophia, and Drusilla all shouted a protest, but his foot had already connected.

†

With a deafening, echoing crash, the single large, immobile kaleidoscope fragment in which everyone stood instantly became hundreds of tiny, moving fragments with their own gravity, spinning apart in different directions. Everyone was caught in the erupting mayhem and hurled away from each other and the lobby.

Dawn knew a moment of utter chaos where she watched all the people standing around her fly off in their own prisms of reality. Connor's hand was wrenched out of hers, and she tumbled through space, pulled in what felt like a dozen directions at once. When she finally landed, the endless hallway of reflections of the lobby was gone. She was in a fragment that looked like it could have been any room in the hotel, and she was alone.

†

"I know Buffy's here! I heard her call for me," said Angel. "You can't keep her here."

Boone's tail flicked back and forth. "You have already taken much from my charges. Would you deprive them of someone else who would love them as they deserve?"

"But Buffy doesn't belong here!" Angel insisted.

Boone stared at him so hard he felt like his entire soul was laid bare. His whiskers twitched. "It is not I who keeps her here. I have seen into her heart. She is crippled not only by grief but by guilt, and she wishes to be free of it. This I can grant her, and I will if she chooses it."

"Guilt?" said Angel. He felt like he'd been punched in the chest. "What would Buffy feel guilty about?"

"Is it so impossible for a man who assumes blame for the present state of the entire world to imagine that another might likewise put an unnecessary burden on her shoulders? She blames herself for losing the child, and she believes you do as well. This is why the desire to remain here is so strong for her."

"But that's not true!" Angel protested. He'd struggled to face Buffy since that day in the hospital out of shame for his own failure. He should've realized what those demons were sooner. He should've been there to protect her. It hadn't even occurred to him to blame her. "It wasn't her fault! Buffy, please!" He wasn't looking at Boone anymore, but around, praying that she would hear him. "I'm sorry! I shut down, the same way I did when Connor was taken and I thought I'd lost him forever, but I should've turned to you! I didn't mean to let you feel like you were going through this alone! We can do this together, just like we can take down the Old Ones together!" He sank to his knees and wept.

†

Buffy couldn't quite hear Angel's words, but she could feel them. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She'd felt so lonely since the miscarriage, and she'd tried to bury it under the fight against the Old Ones. How many times had she wanted to reach for him, but been too afraid that he would pull away and confirm her worst fears?

"He cannot stay here," said Boone. "But whether or not you do is your choice. If you remain, you will know joy the likes of which you can scarcely imagine."

"I believe you," said Buffy. She smiled and held out a hand. One of the fairies landed on it briefly before flying off again. "This place...it reminds me of heaven, and I think you've made something good for these kids. But I have work to do."

"Then finish your work and return, Slayer."

Buffy shook her head, a bittersweet feeling in her chest. "I know what perfect happiness is for me, and it doesn't live in this forest."

The stag lowered its antlered head, and in an instant, her surroundings changed—not to a swamp this time, but to an almost-ordinary forest. The fairies became regular children, dressed in clothing from various cultures and time periods. Most importantly, Angel knelt beside her, pale, red-nosed, and shivering, his face as tear-streaked as her own must be. He blinked up at her in amazement, and she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.

He pushed feebly at her shoulders. "Buffy, no, I'll get you sick!"

"I don't care!" she said, kissing him over and over again, the tears still flowing and her voice cracking. "I don't care. I missed you. I didn't mean to push you away."

"I missed you too."

†

Xander swung a fist at Spike's face. Spike blocked it, rolling his eyes, which only made Xander angrier. "What the hell were you thinking?!" he bellowed. "What if that killed them?"

"I don't think so," said Sophia, who had walked over to the remaining mirror. "But it definitely didn't help."

"They're still there? Are you sure?" said Giles.

"They're not where they were before the mirror shattered, but I can see a couple of them. It looks like they got knocked backwards."

"There," said Spike. "See? You have to admit it was worth a try."

"If Renée doesn't make it out of there, you're dust," Xander snarled. He turned to face everyone else. "I'm going in."

"What?!" said Willow. "You can't!"

"You'll find a way to get us out," said Xander. "I'm just gonna make sure everyone's ready when you do." And he turned to face the mirror before anyone could stop him. He met his reflection's eye, and then found himself hurtling forward, past Sophia and through the glass. The next thing he knew, he was looking back out at them through his good eye, which was now the left one. Willow was staring at him from the side of the mirror, her hands over her mouth, distraught with worry, next to the five vampires, whose expressions ranged from bored to mildly impressed.

He turned and took in his mirror world surroundings. The shards of glass from the mirror Spike had shattered were doing some seriously weird stuff to the terrain of the lobby. Wherever a shard had landed right-side-up, there were holes leading to another version of the lobby beneath this one, and the upside-down ones splintered the rest of the room into pieces where the floor and ceiling had reversed.

Renée was in no version of the lobby Xander could see, but Sophia had been right that it wasn't empty. Sarah and Nigel were at the foot of the stairs, just getting to their feet.

"What are you doing in here?" Nigel groaned.

"I came to make sure that Spike's little stunt didn't cut you guys to shreds or something," said Xander. "Did you see what happened to everyone else?"

"They all went flying in different directions," said Sarah. "They must've ended up back in other parts of the hotel."

"You two stay here. I'll go find them."

†

Over the next hour or so, the big brains (Willow, Giles, Oz, and apparently Sophia) raised and debated various potential solutions to the mirror world problem they found in the books, but Spike paid little attention. He was sitting with a book on his lap, not reading it but allowing Drusilla to turn the pages and trace her fingernails over the illustrations while muttering nursery rhymes to herself.

Every time Spike made eye contact with Nyx across the lobby, she shot a pointed glance at Drusilla, and he was growing increasingly annoyed over it. If she could talk about staking her own sire like it was nothing, then she plainly had no understanding of what a powerful bond that was for some vampires, particularly the ones in his line. When he'd been prepared to stake Dru for Buffy, she hadn't appreciated that either, which was why he hadn't done it in the end. It had to mean something. Something beyond a routine prerequisite before he was deemed worthy to be Nyx's new toy.

Sod that.

"I just don't know if any of this is the right approach," said Willow. "Obviously a mirror dimension opening up in the hotel is mystical, but it's not because of an actual curse or anything. It's more like the laws of physics going haywire. So we just need to figure out how to work within the new set of rules."

"Freddikins would've loved solving this one," said Lorne. He looked at Spike, but then his expression went tight and he quickly looked away again.

Spike frowned. Thanks to Dru, the part of him that had loved Winifred Burkle like a sister was missing. He couldn't quite remember what that had felt like, but, as when Joyce Summers had died, he could still appreciate the absence of someone he'd liked having around. It was good there were still people who loved Fred's memory, even if he wasn't capable of being one of them anymore.

"I wish I could have gotten to know her better," said Willow.

"I guess having an Old One on the team came at a high price, huh?" said Oz.

"Yeah," said Lorne. "Fred was something special." He smiled. "I remember one time, the summer after we brought her back from my home dimension, I went up to her room to bring her a bag of her favorite street tacos. That skinny little thing could put those away like you wouldn't believe. And when I got there, she was sitting on the floor, and she'd found an old camera somewhere and taken it completely apart. She said she wanted to find out if you could use the lens to focus ordinary light enough to use it against vampires."

"Yeah, she sounds great," said Demetri irritably, but nobody paid him any attention, because Willow had leapt to her feet so hard she sent the book in her lap flying across the lobby.

"That's it!" she said.

"That's what?" said Giles.

"Lenses!" she said triumphantly. "We bounce everyone back out with lenses! Another mirror couldn't do the trick, but if we add a little light and some lenses, then we can throw them out of the mirror world the way a projector throws an image! Now, it'd be nice if people actually made six-foot lenses since we're working with human-sized subjects on a one-to-one ratio, but two regular camera lenses focused in a line in opposite directions should be enough to fix that. I don't think we have any cameras in the Hyperion, though."

"Oh, not to worry, ginger snap," said Lorne, standing up too. "There's a cinematographer in Malibu who had some very experimental ideas for lighting his sets, and he owes me a favor. Do you need to see a map to know where to teleport?"

†

Gathering everyone and finding her way back to the lobby was proving much harder the second time than it had been the first. Renée was really starting to feel the effects of walking through those dark patches now. She felt tired to her bones, but it wasn't a heavy sort of tiredness. Quite the opposite. She thought she might float right off the floor soon. But she forced herself to keep going.

Everyone else she found looked just as bad. The worst was Tahn, who had actually landed in darkness after getting thrown from the lobby. She almost blended into whatever was behind her, she was so transparent now. Tobias and Nigel had to help her along with arms around her waist.

Dawn was another matter. The green light coming from her was far brighter than before, and she gave off a steady hum reminiscent of power lines. She clung to Connor, who held onto her just as tightly. She looked scared, something most of the rest of them were too tired for.

"Renée! Dawn! Connor! Where are you guys?" came the echo of a voice down the mirror fragments ahead. It was Xander.

"Over here!" Connor yelled. Even his voice sounded transparent.

Renée had never been less happy to see her boyfriend than when he jumped down out of an inverted fragment into theirs, hair parted the wrong way, eyepatch on the wrong side, and not entirely opaque. "Have you gone daft?" she said, half-laughing from incredulity, half-crying from fear. "What did you come in here for?"

Instead of answering, he grabbed her and kissed her until her knees turned to jelly. He cupped his hands around her face when he pulled away. "Marry me," he said. "I'll drive us to Vegas the second we get out of here if you want."

The laughter and crying both intensified, and she felt a little less tired somehow. She couldn't care less that a couple dozen transparent people and one glowing girl were likely all staring at them. "With the portal to Faith and Wood's flat, I think it'd actually be a shorter drive to Gretna Green in Scotland, and then my family could come."

"Is that a yes?"

"Aye, that's a yes," she said, kissing him again.

He grinned his biggest, goofiest grin at her when she pulled back. "Then let's get the hell out of here." He turned to face the others. "Anyone need help getting that far?"

"Tahn," said Tobias. "I think the rest of us can manage."

Xander promptly bent to put an arm under the demon girl's knees and one behind her back. "God, she hardly weighs anything," he said. "Let's go."

"We haven't found everyone yet," said Renée.

Xander quickly looked around at each face. "No, we're good. The rest are already back in the lobby."

†

Willow and Lorne were back with a comically oversized glass disk in the space of half an hour. In their absence, Oz and Giles had directed Drusilla in sweeping up the shards of the broken mirror and covering them safely with a sheet and Sophia in setting up the rest of the components for Willow's idea while they stayed well clear of anything reflective. All Sophia had to do was mark the floor with a large X in three precise locations that formed a right angle, with the mirror facing directly into the middle of the angle.

"Oh, good," said Willow, taking stock of their preparations. "It's all set up. What about everyone inside?"

"All there, but they don't look good," said Oz. He, Giles, and Lorne all stood safely behind the mirror.

"Let's see what we can do about that." Willow moved to stand on the first of the X marks, and Spike and Demetri took the giant lens and rolled it to the third. "Hey, no heartbeats or breathing should make it pretty easy for you guys to hold that lens completely still, so that's handy! Just tilt it a little to the left...perfect." Demetri scowled at her. He definitely hadn't forgotten that she was the one who gave him the scars across his face, and he did not enjoy taking orders from her. "Okay, it's about to get bright in here."

"How bright?" said Sophia. "Should we be worried?"

Willow grimaced. "I mean, I'm not making sunlight here, but if Fred's theory was correct, you should definitely stay clear of the other side of that lens, because frying like ants under a magnifying glass is a real possibility."

"Brilliant," said Spike.

"Literally!" said Willow. "Well, we're about to find out if this works. Who's going first?"

Sophia, who stood halfway between Willow and the giant lens, gestured at someone on the other side of the mirror to come closer, then pointed at the X on the floor. Willow saw them come into view. It was Dawn. Probably a good call.

"Here we go," said Willow. She held her hands out in front of her and screwed up her face. She'd never tried to make this spell so powerful before, not even against Triennia and Giles while they were cursed. "FIAT LUX!" A brilliant beam of white light shot from her hands straight onto Dawn in the mirror, then reflected off and hit the lens. Exactly the same distance past the lens as the lens was to the mirror, the shining green silhouette of a girl began to appear.

"It's working!" several voices shouted at once.

"Not...yet...," said Willow. She maintained the beam of light. Slowly, Dawn's silhouette solidified while the green light faded to nothing. At last, it was completely gone. Willow kept going a few seconds longer for good measure, but Dawn didn't seem to get any more solid than she already was, so she let the beam of light cease. Drusilla stepped close enough to give Dawn a good poke with one of her long, painted nails.

"Hey!" said Dawn, swatting the pale hand away. Then her eyes went very wide. "Hey! I'm out!"

"There you are, dearie," said Dru, patting Dawn on the head like she was one of her dollies.

Dawn gave Dru an awkward smile before running to hug Giles, who returned the hug with considerable relief. "I don't think I ever want to look into one of those things again."

"No indeed," he chortled.

"Okay, next!" said Willow.

Sophia looked annoyed, and Willow soon saw why. Bracchion seemed to have forced his way past everyone else for the privilege of being the first one to go, now that they knew it worked. Willow rolled her eyes. "Asshole. Fiat lux!"

The Bracchion who emerged from the mirror dimension possessed none of his characteristic swagger. From where he stood, Spike could see Drusilla's reaction to her first glimpse of the Immortal since her little tryst with him in 1894. Instead of swooning like she and Darla had back then, she wrinkled her nose and edged away. Bracchion was pale, sweaty, and wide-eyed, and the second he had fully escaped the mirror, he sprinted to the corner of the lobby farthest from its surface. Spike grinned.

The bouncing-out process definitely took longer on those who had faded more, but it worked every time. Xander had to hold Tahn for ten straight minutes of exposure, but when they were both out, she ran into Tobias's arms.

They triple-checked to make sure nobody had been left behind before Nyx dropped one of the sheets back over the mirror. Then everyone who had escaped all clamored to invite vampires into their rooms so they could cover the mirrors there too.

"No thanks. I already need to take a bath to wash off all the good deeds I've done today," said Nyx with a grimace, and she headed for the basement access corridor.

†

"You came here to ask me about the Old Ones, Slayer," said Boone. "I will answer."

Buffy and Angel looked towards the center of the clearing, arms still around each other. Where the stag had been for Buffy and the lynx had been for Angel, a large raven now perched in midair at eye level. "How can we kill them?" said Buffy.

"That is beyond you. They are not like demons. They are elevated beings, beyond comprehension. Only Old Ones can kill other Old Ones, but even then they are not truly dead, or this could not have happened."

"Then what can we do?" said Angel.

"Lock them away," said Boone. "As they were before. There is still time before all falls to chaos."

"Do you mean we can put them back in the Deeper Well?" said Buffy. "How? There's no way we have that kind of power. Even Willow—"

"It is not a question of power. There are laws of reality even they must answer to."

Boone spread his wings, and the air was filled with images. Buffy and Angel watched in amazement. This time, it wasn't Angel's memories that were on display. It was Boone's, and by the looks of it, they were of the day the Deeper Well was created.

When the flashing images faded, so too did Boone, the children, and the Wood. They were back in the ordinary forest where they'd started.

"We've got to tell the others about this," said Angel. He started off in a random direction, even though all they needed to do to get back to the Hyperion was call Willow. Buffy grabbed his hand before he could go more than two steps.

"Not yet," she said.

He looked around at her. "What? Why not?"

"Boone said there was still time, and I know how I want to spend it, especially because it looks like he might've taken care of your flu." She looked into his eyes and let the last of the barriers she'd put up fall away. Even losing her mother hadn't torn at her soul like losing their son. That pain wasn't gone. She'd chosen to keep it instead of letting Boone take it away, and it was raw and sharp. But she could survive it. They could survive it, together. "Make love to me, Angel."

†

For Spike, the day ended as it had begun, with him following Nyx into the basement.

"Last time I checked, Drusilla still wasn't dust," she said after the door shut behind him. "So I'm not sure what you think you're doing here."

"Don't get your knickers in a twist," he said. "I'm not here for anything from you. More to the point, I'm not some fanboy who exists to stroke your ego, and I'm not killing Dru. Not for you, not for anybody."

She raised an eyebrow, her expression cold. "Who knew the infamous William the Bloody was such a romantic sap."

"What can I say? I'm love's bitch, but that doesn't mean I'm going to be yours." And he left her standing there. It was odd. On paper, Nyx should've been his ideal. She'd both been a Slayer and killed more of them than any other individual vampire in history, and yet Spike wasn't interested at all. Perhaps it was her utter assurance of her own superiority. His own Slayer kills had been fights to the death that could just as easily have ended with him turning to dust. For Nyx, it wasn't a thrill or a challenge, and there wasn't anything particularly special about the Slayers she chose. It was a routine display of her own superiority, nothing more. There was no passion in those fights, just as there was no passion in her.

He found Drusilla standing in what seemed to be her favorite spot in the hotel: the part of the second floor corridor that overlooked the lobby. He sidled up to her, wrapped an arm around her waist, and leaned close so he could breathe in her scent.

She reached up one delicate hand to caress his face. After all their time together, she could still send shivers up his spine. "The dead Slayer tried to take you away from me. Naughty girl." She looked into his eyes. "I did wonder if you would chase after her."

"She couldn't hold a candle to you," said Spike. "Less than a day, and I was already bored."

Drusilla smiled broadly. "Grandmum and Daddy laughed when I chose you, but they could never see what I could."

"That's right," said Spike smugly. "Arrogant snobs, the pair of them. Couldn't see past their own noses, and look where it got them?"

Her brow furrowed and she looked down at the lobby. It was past midnight. Most of the hotel's inhabitants had gone to bed, but a few still milled about. The Scoobies, mainly, and a couple of the poncy newbie Watchers. All this time he was spending helping this sorry lot had better turn out to be worth it.

"Everything's about to change, Spike," said Drusilla. "Five little monsters to lay the trap, but they'll be the first ones caught in it. I hear a wolf howling. The battering of horns. Cloven hooves on stone. Three in one. One in three. Will you stay with me when they come?"

"I'll stay with you forever," said Spike.

She clutched at her head. "I can't see past them," she moaned. "What comes next is dark. I fear I'll be all alone."

He pulled her hands away and kissed her knuckles. "You won't be, love."

†

There was a light thump from the direction of the courtyard. Willow and Oz glanced toward it. It seemed Illyria had decided to jump down from the roof rather than take the stairs. She strode inside commandingly, as always, pushing both doors open.

"The energy is fading," she announced. "It will be entirely gone by the end of another hour."

"One less thing to worry about," said Oz.

"Then you succeeded in releasing those who were trapped in the mirrors?"

"Yep," said Willow. "With a little help from Fred."

Illyria cocked her head to the side. "When I first awoke in this form, I could scarcely believe that mankind had outlived my kind and survived the intervening eons. I see it now. Adaptation may be compromise, but in such a weak species, it is basic necessity. You are beginning to adapt to this threat. Your chances of victory may not be as negligible as I assumed."

"Uh. Thanks?" said Willow.

"Hey, so, the Old Ones out there," said Oz, "they're four-dimensional, right? I've been thinking about it a lot, and at first it seemed like they just had some kind of magic it's impossible to understand, but now I'm not so sure."

"The complexities of my kind are far beyond your comprehension," said Illyria.

"Yeah," said Oz. "Because they're four-dimensional. To three-dimensional beings like us, trying to understand a four-dimensional being is like a flat drawing of a person trying to understand us. We're barely even living creatures to them."

This gave Illyria pause. "Perhaps you do have some understanding of your own insignificance."

"It makes sense," said Willow. "It would explain why we can't look at them without going crazy, and why they haven't bothered to attack us. It would explain why stray energy from them being nearby would turn mirrors into pocket dimensions made of light. Maybe this is how we could approach fighting them. I mean, Illyria, you're three-dimensional now, and we know it's possible to trap demons in books—which is like turning them two-dimensional. Couldn't we do something like that to turn the Old Ones three-dimensional so that we can actually fight them?"

"You could," said Illyria, but before Willow and Oz could do more than exchange an excited glance, she continued. "This...three-dimensional form I inhabit could not contain my full power. My timeline began to fragment and my own power would have torn me apart from the inside, obliterating this entire city and beyond."

"Then why didn't it?" said Willow.

"Wesley used a device to siphon off the excess power. He left me a weakened remnant of my true self, but I survived."

"So assuming we could find a spell to do it, collapsing the Old Ones from four dimensions to three really would make them easier to fight...but not without blowing up the planet," said Oz.

"Great," said Willow. "Back to square one."

Willow! We're out of the Faerie Wood!

"Hang on," she said, "it's Buffy and Angel. I'll be right back." She teleported out, leaving Oz blinking from the blaze of light. A minute later, there was another bright flash, and she was back, one hand on Buffy's shoulder, the other on Angel's.

"Buffy!" said Giles, emerging from the office, where he'd been working with Leonard on his translation. "Thank God."

She smiled and went to hug him. "What did we miss?"

"Oh, nothing much," said Dawn, following Giles out into the lobby and hugging Buffy too. "Most of us just spent half the day trapped in a mirror dimension and almost faded from existence. No big deal."

"You—what?" said Buffy, looking confused and alarmed.

"You've got a leaf in your hair," said Dawn, pointing, and Buffy blushed and hastily removed it.

"Did you learn anything from Boone?" said Willow.

"We did," said Angel. "He showed us a way to defeat the Old Ones." Everyone in the lobby went very still and stared from Buffy to Angel and back.

"Um, is there any way can that wait?" said Dawn, eyes on the top of the stairs, suddenly bouncing with excitement. Frowning, Buffy and Angel followed her gaze. Xander and Renée were coming down. Their fingers were intertwined and they were dressed in what looked like their best clothes. Buffy's hands flew to her mouth, as did Willow's.

"Is this what I think it is?" said Willow, her voice squeaky.

"Yeah," said Xander, grinning. "Whaddaya say, want to have a wedding before we save the world?"

"I can make a doorway straight to Renée's family's house and then to Gretna Green," said Dawn, staring at Buffy, a wheedling note in her voice. "We can be back here in a couple hours. Please?"

Buffy smiled. "Let's do it."

Wow, *not* a cliffhanger. That's rare for me. I suppose it's the calm before the storm, since the finale is next. You might find it hard to believe, considering how long it took me to get this chapter written, but the concept of the Faerie Wood was the part of this fic I was most excited to get to when I started. That it became the chapter that took six years (and then ultimately four days) to write is baffling. I had a lot of fun with the mirror world stuff, even though I had to do an unexpected amount of science research to figure out a good solution for it (as well as Oz, Willow, and Illyria's conversation about four-dimensional beings). Originally, Oz's idea to bounce everyone out using two mirrors facing each other was going to be the real solution they would come up with at the end, but I like the makeshift projector idea much better, and the mechanics of it make more sense to me. As a writer, my MVPs for this chapter are definitely Lorne, Bracchion, and Renée. At first, I had Lorne stuck in the mirror dimension, but he came in much better use outside of it, with his pastry nicknames and his weird Hollywood connections. I had completely forgotten about Bracchion until I reread the previous chapter and saw the bit about him living at the Hyperion against everyone's wishes. Using him as comic relief inside the mirror world made those scenes much easier to write, and so did Renée, who was a good secondary focal point next to Connor and Dawn. I've planned for a long time for Xander and Renée to elope by the end of this fic, but I wasn't expecting Xander to march into the mirror world, find Renée, and propose in front of a dozen witnesses. Xander, however, was determined to do it, so I let him. Hopefully you liked the Buffy/Angel stuff, with them beginning to work through their grief while also getting some crucial information. And the short-lived Spike/Nyx/Drusilla triangle! Very fun to write. It was never my plan to permanently pair Spike with one of my OCs, but Nyx was a good device for getting him and Dru to deal with their infidelity problems in a way that makes sense for soulless characters.

I'd love to hear what you thought!