Buffy cast worried glances from her best friends to her sister, trying hard not to fidget. She didn't like not knowing exactly what was going on. She absolutely hated that there was nothing she could do about it.

Dawn had broken out into a sweat. Willow continued to chant softly, her eyes distant and unfocused. Xander lay silently on his cot.

Angel leaned against the wall, calmly taking it all in.

Buffy just wanted to hit something.

"Should it be taking this long?"

Angel shifted. "Xander's lost at least three years worth of memories. That's a lot to sort through even without the mental illness on top of it. We've only been here for half-an-hour. This could take days."

Buffy glowered. "I am not letting my sister sit on a concrete floor for days."

Angel shrugged. "We probably won't get it all done at once."

Xander suddenly stiffened on the cot, then rolled off onto the floor. He wrenched himself onto his back, his hands curling into fists and his head arching backwards. He started screaming.

Buffy jerked forward, only to find herself held back by Angel's arm across her chest. "He's hurting! We have to stop them!"

"If anything were happening to Xander, Willow would put a stop to the spell."

"Dammit," Buffy wrenched herself free of Angel's grip and darted forward between Willow and Dawn, neither of whom seemed to have reacted to Xander's outburst. She pressed herself against the barrier between herself and Xander, then spun around. Her eyes started to prickle. "Get Giles down here. We have to pull down the barrier."

"Buffy, calm down."

"I won't calm down until someone does something! Xander's in pain--"

And suddenly, Xander was still again. His eye was closed and his body relaxed.

He looked like he'd just fallen asleep.

Buffy sank slowly to the floor, her eyes flicking between the three most important people in her world. She nearly sobbed out loud as she realized she couldn't do anything to help them. She forced herself to her feet and brushed past Angel.

"Buffy,"

"I'll send Giles or one of the junior slayers down."

"Where are you going?"

"Patrolling." She gritted her teeth. "I need to go kill something."

When the mindscape reformed around Dawn, she found herself sitting on a concrete bench in an enclosed garden. The plants were well tended and healthy, some flowering into an assortment of incredibly vibrant colors, and the stone pathway that lead into the towering ferns looked like it had been recently swept clean. The sky above her was a perfect shade of blue, the air was cool without being cold, and she could see birds and insects flitting from tree to tree out of the corners of her eyes.

She allowed herself to relax slightly. She still had no idea what affect the figure in the electric chair had had on Xander's psyche, or what it might represent, but if he could have an area in his mind as well- ordered and peaceful as this one, he couldn't be that far gone. She scanned the garden over and over, searching for her friend.

"Xander?"

"He's not here." A woman with sandy brown hair dressed in blue scrubs stepped out from behind the ferns on the path. She was holding her arms tightly across her body and glancing about herself, as though checking to make sure everything was in order.

"Ooookay," Dawn took another look at the garden. "But we're in his HEAD. How can he NOT be here?"

"He's unconscious. He's in a different part of his mind right now." The woman continued toward Dawn in an unthreatening manner. Dawn shifted slightly on the bench.

"And you are?"

"I'm not sure." The woman shook her head. "Part of me remembers being real, like you are. I worked at the facility where Xander's great-aunt lived. But I don't know if that's right, because part of me remembers being . . . Xander. I think maybe I was that girl, but now I'm also sort of him."

Dawn shook her head. "That doesn't make any sense."

"I know." The woman smiled. "But it's the best I've got, right now."

"What are you doing here?"

"I tend the garden." The woman reached out and ran her fingers over the edge of a bright green leaf. "I keep out the chaos, so that Xander can come here when he needs to calm down. It doesn't always work, and sometimes the garden gets damaged, so I have to fix it."

Dawn leaned forward slightly, studying the woman. If she was here, in Xander's mind, then she had to be part Xander, didn't she?

//You're in Xander's mind, too. Are you part Xander now?// Willow's voice carried a lot of sadness. Dawn closed her eyes for a moment and let out a long breath.

"What's your name?"

"It was Yasmine."

"Was?"

"I don't know what it is, now." The woman shrugged. "It might still be Yasmine. I might still be out there, somewhere, still at the facility. Or I might be dead. I really don't know."

"Do you know what's wrong with Xander?"

Yasmine didn't answer right away. She knelt down and carefully removed a dead leaf from one of the flowering plants. When she spoke, she didn't look at Dawn. "I didn't have a degree, but I could guess. He's a lot like Edna was. Confused."

"What made Edna confused?"

Yasmine looked up at her and smiled, softly. "Her mind did. Schizophrenia--a chemical imbalance, if you want to believe all the doctors. But when it comes right down to it, her mind was just . . . mixed up. She couldn't put everything together in the right order, so she got confused."

"And now Xander's like that, too?"

"Seems that way, doesn't it."

Dawn thought about that for a moment. Confused was a pretty good way of describing it. Very little of what she'd seen in Xander's mind so far had been in the right order, and he'd seemed to have trouble following the thread of things, when she'd run into him on the street. "Yeah." She looked Yasmine in the eye. "I'm here to fix it. You need to show me where Xander is now."

Yasmine's eyes suddenly went wide. "You don't want to go there. Trust me, it's not a very nice place."

"Then I have to get Xander out of it."

"But ‘it' is Xander. Do you want to take him away from himself?"

"It's NOT Xander. You didn't know him, like I did. You only met him when he came to visit Edna. I've known him for years. He's not like this."

"People change."

"Not Xander."

Yasmine gave Dawn a solemn look, but didn't argue. "What are you hoping to find, in here?"

"Xander."

"You've found him. What are you still looking for?" Yasmine stepped up in front of Dawn, suddenly looming over her. "Are you trying to find out what happened? How all of this began?"

"Yesss," Dawn let out her breath through her teeth. "Are you going to help me, or stand in my way?"

"It won't be easy."

"Then I guess I'll just have to try real hard."

"You could hurt him. I've tried to show him what happened, how he ended up this way, but he doesn't listen. He doesn't want to know."

"But *I* do."

Yasmine seemed to study Dawn for a long moment. "Are you sure?"

//That's a good question, Dawnie. I can pull you out, if--//

Dawn's eyes narrowed. "Yes."

Yasmine nodded. "Okay. The doorway at the end of the path. It will take you to his memories, you can see it first hand."

Dawn stood purposefully and Yasmine stepped to one side. "Follow the yellow brick road,"

Yasmine laughed. "That's right Dorothy. Well, sort of. The door isn't really there, but neither is the path. It'll take you there, all the same. Good luck getting back to Kansas."

"You're not coming?"

"Oh, hell no." Yasmine shuddered. "I see enough of that in here." She held Dawn's gaze for a moment longer. "You must really love him."

Dawn remained on edge. "Guess so,"

Yasmine smiled and turned back to her plants. Dawn started purposefully down the path. Yasmine's voice floated after her.

"Just don't eat the flowers."

"Thanks." Dawn rolled her eyes. "THAT'S a big help,"

Giles tried to sort through frustration, guilt, worry, and exhaustion as he searched through the files on the computer for the graph he had stumbled across earlier. All four emotions were quickly boiling themselves into an unfocused rage, and he was hard pressed to keep it under control. He was capable of doing some very nasty things when he became that mad, and none of those things would be of any use.

He didn't even have dear old Ethan to beat up upon. Pity, that had always calmed him down before.

He allowed himself a soft, dark chuckle at that thought as he continued his favorite method of finding anything on a computer monitor--clicking random icons. He was so busy calming his nerves by thinking up new ways to enact his Ethan-revenge fantasies on the blasted computer that he nearly cleared his chair completely when Buffy spoke up from behind him.

"I still don't believe it."

Giles removed his glasses and used the action of cleaning them to still his shaking hands. "I had thought as much." He turned back to his former charge. "There are times when I find it difficult as well." He replaced his glasses and took in her rumbled clothing and somewhat disorderly hair. Well, rumbled and disorderly for Buffy, anyway. It seemed to him that even when she was on her last ropes, she maintained an air of being coiffed and put together. "You've been patrolling."

"Yeah, well, sometimes a girl's just gotta kill something."

"Yes." Giles leaned back in his chair and turned back to the computer. He considered to himself what the graph had shown him, wishing not for the first time that he hadn't allowed Willow and Dawn to rush in to their spell; he needed to consult with the witch regarding her findings. He glanced back at Buffy for a moment as she continued to lean against the door jamb. "I'm about to ask you a very odd question. I'd like you to answer as honestly as possible."

"Giles, I'm thinking you need to go to bed."

Giles shook his head. "I suspect I wouldn't be able to sleep."

"You ordered me an' Will to bed, now it's my turn." Buffy marched over to where he sat, and Giles felt his mouth twitch as he tried to decide whether to sigh angrily or smile.

"My question, first."

Buffy crossed her arms. "Fine. Then bed."

"Yes, Mother," Giles rolled his eyes and finally smiled at Buffy's snort of disgust. "Have you ever encountered, since you were called as a slayer, an area that seemed to be devoid of any demon activity?"

Buffy blinked. "Well, we both know LA and Sunnyhell were hotbeds, so I assume you're talking since then?" Giles merely shrugged and continued to watch as Buffy seemed to sift through her travels in her head. She'd lived in several different cities and countries, both with the immortal and without, since they'd shut down the Sunnydale hellmouth, so the process appeared to take some time. "No." She said finally. "I was beginning to think they were following me."

Giles felt his fingers twitch toward his glasses again. "Good lord. That's what I'd thought."

He turned back to the computer, but could feel the slayer's gaze on his back.

"What does that have to do with anything, Giles? You thinking of retiring? ‘Cause I can tell you right now, ain't gonna happen."

"No. Not at all." Giles rested his chin on his hand as he finally managed to open the correct file. "I doubt I'll be retiring any time in the foreseeable future." He leaned back and let Buffy peruse the graph.

"Okay, what am I looking at here? Object d'art?"

Giles quietly explained the meaning of the various symbols that decorated the graph, and nodded with no real satisfaction when he watched the realization widen Buffy's eyes.

"Holy crap, Giles, this is . . ."

Giles nodded. "Slayers die, and the demons move on."

"They really HAVE been following me." Buffy stood and backed up. "And not just me, is it. It's all of them. All the brand new slayers." She shook her head. "I knew we'd have some demons go after them, but those numbers. . . ."

"Thousands. Entire clans of demons, arriving at almost precisely the same time as the slayers, and then leaving when the slayer is gone." Giles shook his head slightly. "If Xander has been killing slayers, I think we're looking at the reason why."

Dawn opened her eyes to darkness.

She was hiding. She'd found the best possible spot; there was no way Willow would find her in here.

Wait a minute,

//I think we might have gone too far back.//

Willow was in her head. Wasn't supposed to be in her head, she was supposed to be LOOKING. Getting all tele . . . telepath . . . in her head was CHEATING.

//Okay, yeah, definitely went too far back.//

Dawn shook her head mentally, while she held her breath and listened for the sounds of footsteps outside her hiding place. The thoughts running through her head weren't hers, and weren't necessarily Willow's either.

She was in a memory, she realized after a moment. The thoughts were Xander's, the ones he'd been thinking when this actually happened.

For some reason, she'd sorta thought she'd be on the outside WATCHING Xander do things. Not seeing them from his perspective.

//It worked that way when I was in Buffy's head. Maybe it has to do with the way Xander thinks?//

The footsteps outside got closer, and a lot louder. That wasn't Willow, so it must be a monster. Dawn felt a blast of fear through her that, she realized after a moment, wasn't even HER fear. She tried to will Xander to calm down, but it was futile. She couldn't change events, they'd already happened. She could only watch.

But it was REALLY dark in here.

The footsteps stopped just outside, and the monster let out an soft breath. Dawn swallowed and hoped it wouldn't look in here.

So, of course, it did. Monsters were like that.

Okay, Xander was kinda fucked up, wasn't he.

//Hold on,// Willow thought. //I think I might know where we are.//

The door opened, and the monster peered down inside. Dawn let out a high-pitched gasp as it reached for her, then calmed abruptly when it started ruffling his hair and pulled her out of the drier.

DRIER?

//Ohhhh, yeah, I know where we are. This isn't going to help. We should leave.//

"Xander," the monster, who turned out to be Willow'sMom, cradled her against her chest. "What were you doing in there?"

//Come on, Dawn, let's go.//

Aww, but she wanted to see mini-Willow. Dawn leaned against Willow'sMom and talked around a mouthful of thumb.

Xander sucked his thumb? She wished there was a mirror or something. She wanted to see this.

Willow'sMom sighed, sounding kinda mad, like Dawn's mom (no, XANDER'S mom) did when she was real tired, had a headache, and wanted him to Goplayoutside. Dawn squirmed. "Xander, take your thumb out of your mouth. You've passed that stage of development."

Dawn could hear Willow's annoyed huff through her mind. //Mom wasn't always that great with the compassion.//

Dawn pulled her thumb (Xander's thumb) out of her mouth with a *pop*. "Willow an' me--"

"‘Willow and I'"

Willow'sMom was playing? Dawn shook her head and remembered that Willow'sMom wanted her to talk good.

"‘WillowanI' an' me played hide'n'seek."

"Found you!" Dawn stiffened.

"No fair!" She struggled against Willow'sMom's grip. "That's cheating!"

//Okay, Dawnie, let's move on now, ‘kay?//

Dawn smiled internally. But it was so cute! Willow was all short, and pigtailed, and jumper-wearing.

"I woulda found you," Little-kid-Willow announced. "You're ALWAYS in the drier!"

Willow'sMom stiffened.

//Dawn, I'm not kidding. I remember this lecture, and I'm not looking forward to hearing it again.//

"Your mother lets you hide in the drier, Xander?"

//Concentrate on what we want to see. Something in the last five years would be a good start, so think grown-up Xander.//

Dawn concentrated, picturing Xander as she had last seen him before the battle with the immortal. She felt herself shift slightly, and Willow's mother's voice faded out mid-lecture.

//Phew.// Dawn could just about feel Willow's relieved grin. //On-, up- and crazy-wards.//

Buffy continued staring at the graph for several more moments. She could feel Giles behind her, the way his gaze seemed to bore into the back of her head. She shuddered.

"We need to do something about this."

"Yes." Giles sounded, somehow, even more exhausted than he was moments before. She remembered that she was going to order him to bed, but understood now why he wasn't willing to go. It took a force of will to pull her eyes away from the graph.

"What are we going to do about this, Giles?"

He'd removed his glasses and closed his eyes at some point. If it weren't for the fact that the muscles in his face were tense, exaggerating the fine wrinkles around his mouth, she'd have thought he'd fallen asleep in his chair. "I . . . ." His breath hissed out and he replaced his glasses and opened his eyes, staring resignedly at the computer screen. "I have no idea."

Buffy wished she could be surprised at his answer. What COULD they do about . . . her brain danced around naming the phenomenon she was looking at, or what Xander might have done to try and solve the problem. "We have to tell Faith." She took a second look at that statement, then nodded. She knew that Faith wouldn't have any solutions, but the other slayer tended to think more . . . creatively in bad situations than the Scoobies did. "She deserves a warning."

"Yes." Giles shifted, closing his eyes again. His crows feet deepened. "About that."

Buffy narrowed her eyes. "Okay, what is this, Giles Confession Day? What ‘about that'?"

Giles gestured to his phone, which was blinking rapidly. "I have been entirely unable to contact the Cleveland branch. I've been trying since before Xander arrived, but all I've received is a message that no one is answering."

Buffy swallowed. "That's bad."

"Indeed."

She rounded on her watcher, straightening. Her arms crossed in front of her without her even thinking about it. Giles seemed to shrink slightly. "Giles, this is very, very bad."

"I would be open to any suggestions you may have."

Buffy took a long breath and forced her arms to relax at her sides. Her right hand fisted and opened. "Why didn't you tell me earlier?"

"We've had quite a lot of information dumped upon us, today, Buffy. I've been trying desperately to keep up with it and keep all parties informed." Giles swivelled in his chair and rested his elbows on his knees. "I'm afraid I'm only human."

Buffy nodded, running her hand through her hair to keep it from fisting again. "I'm sorry, I'm just--"

"I understand."

She glanced back at the phone, and the hyper-active red light on the upper right-hand corner. "Have you tried checking your messages?"

"Er," Giles twisted to follow her look. "My . . . ." He dropped his head into his hands. "I'm a complete idiot."

Buffy felt her mouth curl into a grin that she didn't feel. "Let's try that. And if they don't turn up anything, you're going to bed, mister."

"Yes." Giles straightened and blinked at his phone. "Yes, of course."

When the darkness cleared this time, Dawn was lying on her side in a dingy, gray warehouse, staring at the dead body of Malia, the South African slayer.

"Oh." She whispered. She wasn't sure if it was actually her speaking, or Xander. Either way, she felt every word. "Oh god."

She reached out a large, scarred and calloused hand. Xander's hand. She brushed some of Malia's hair off of her forehead. Xander's hands were covered in blood, and the cartilage in his joints seemed to have been replaced with broken glass.

She heard Willow whimpering softly over the mind-to-mind connection. Dawn took a deep breath and swallowed. Something moved under the cover of Malia's hair. She shifted again, wincing in pain, and brushed more hair off of the girl's face.

A large, bloated white worm, maybe an inch in diameter, squirmed its way out of Malia's left eye socket.

Dawn rolled quickly away from the thing and threw up.

Oh god. Ohgodohgodohgodohgodtheeyeohgod. . . .

//Dawn.// Willow sounded as nauseous as Dawn felt. //You need to c alm down.//

OhgodohgodohgodwhathaveIdone?

//Dawn,//

This was all her fault. If she'd just stayed calm, reasoned with Malia, she never would have run off. If she just hadn't blown up like that, like Tony used to, this never would have happened. All her fault.

//Dawn, those aren't your thoughts.//

She couldn't do this. She couldn't be a watcher. She couldn't keep doing this to young girls. Malia was never her favorite, but she was her responsibility, and she'd ruined it, she'd ruined it just like she'd ruined everything else she'd ever done.

//Dawn, listen to--//

Something was cracked in Dawn's head. It ached. She closed her eye, but all she could see was the worm.

Oh god. The eye.

//DAWN.// Willow's voice forced itself over the continued self-recriminations of Xander's mind. //THIS NEVER HAPPENED.//

What?

//Think about it, Dawn. Malia was . . . she was ripped apart.//

She was?

A flash of grathnals piling around the young slayer appeared in Dawn's mind. She was screaming as the claws ripped at her shoulders, hips, knees, neck. Blood sprayed, and the world went dark again.

Right. Dawn could have done without ever seeing THAT.

//The body you saw a minute ago? The head was still attached.//

Dawn really wanted to hate Willow for sounding so calm and rational when all she wanted to do was lie here and never, ever move again.

But she was right. Malia's neck had been pristine. Her whole body had been present. But that worm. . . .

What could it mean?

//Xander's doing this.// Willow paused. //He's showing us things that he thinks will make us leave. He's trying to scare us off.//

"Why?" Dawn's voice, when she spoke, was her own. She was back in control. She sat up, her body no longer aching. She glanced over. The body wasn't Malia's anymore. "Why would he be doing that? Doesn't he want us to help him?"

//I don't know, Dawnie.// Another pause. The world seemed to shift around Dawn, fracturing at the edges. Her eyes widened as she started to make out Xander's mindscape beyond the cracks.

"I think--" She swallowed again, peering into the whirling darkness beyond the walls of the warehouse. "I think he's waking up."

Angel was . . . well. Angel was doing what Angel did best, when not trying to save the world, which was something that he hadn't been physically capable of doing in quite some time now. Angel was brooding.

It seemed an appropriate thing to be doing. Xander had been silent since he'd calmed from whatever fit he'd had that sent him into unconsciousness and Buffy running. Willow continued to chant in a low whisper, and Dawn remained perfectly still, her face a mask of concentration. So Angel sat in the corner by the stairs, keeping an eye on the girls and an ear on Xander, and he brooded.

His left hand drifted up to the scars covering his right shoulder. He could feel the thick, polished skin of the burns through the material of his shirt. It had become a habit, running his fingers over his "bad side".

He used to be a champion.

He used to have an entire support team, but they were gone, burned away like his arm in the final battle against Wolfram and Hart. The law firm had taken so much from him.

Now he was nothing more than just another vampire. With a soul, of course, mustn't forget the soul, but it was just a human soul, capable of handling only so much isolation and stagnation before it was little better than the demon.

He leaned the scarred skin of his face against the cool concrete of the wall and, for the briefest of moments, shut his eyes.

As always, the darkness brought the faces of all the people he'd known over the years. Most of them were dead, and he'd grown used to the blasts of guilt and remorse he felt every time they saw them. Even the Angel Investigations team.

Time heals all wounds, but it leaves behind the worst scars.

He focused in on the sounds of the basement prison. Willow's voice was little more than a frog's croak now. Dawn's heart was racing, as it had been since shortly after the spell began. And Xander's . . . .

Xander's had picked up speed. He was awake.

Angel opened his eyes and stood, stepping carefully over and around the chalk markings of the spell. He stopped just behind Dawn and let himself loom over her. He wanted Xander to know that he wouldn't let him hurt the girl.

Xander had rolled from his back to his side. His right arm stretched up from the shoulder, supporting his head. His left was stretched forward, toward Dawn, the fingers gently curved as though he was holding something precious. The greasy lock of hair that normally covered the crater where his eye should have been drooped instead across his nose and his forehead, but Xander made no move to cover the old wound.

He didn't seem to have noticed Angel at all.

They stayed there like that for what seemed both like an eternity and an instant. Then Xander spoke.

"What's she doing?"

He sounded like he was all of five years old. His eyebrows tilted upwards a few centimeters. He didn't look at Angel.

"She's helping you."

Xander closed his eye again and seemed to slip back into sleep. Angel lowered himself to the bench behind Dawn, his hand returning to his scar.

A rattling crash echoed from upstairs, and Angel turned his head away for a few moments, searching the ceiling for signs that he might be needed.

Right. Because a half-dead vampire was exactly what a building full of Slayers needed for back up.

He turned back and stiffened when he heard the barrier crackle. Xander had rolled himself up to the very edge of the cell, and now seemed to lean in mid-air, his right cheek flattened slightly and speckled with blue flashes as the barrier worked to keep him inside.

He was still staring at Dawn. His mouth moved slightly. After a moment he realized that Xander was softly imitating the sounds of the barrier with unnerving accuracy.

"Krrssht, tsik, pahtsik, pahtsik, krrsssssht,"

Well. At least he was remaining calm.

He didn't seem to have noticed Willow, though she was barely within his line of sight. His attention was focused entirely on Dawn. He smiled slightly.

"Snap." He said, his eye flickering up to meet Angel's gaze. "Crackle and pop." He looked back at Dawn. "They're in my head."

Angel stiffened slightly again. The plural was not lost on him. "They're there to help."

Xander shook his head. "Silly vampire." He twisted slightly, pressing his nose against the barrier, and focused on the flashes in front of him. "They don't help anything. I don't know why they're there." His eye snapped up to Angel's again, lingering longer this time. He seemed almost amused by the whole situation. "Snap. Crackle. Pop."

Angel stared back.

"Rice crispies!" Xander sang, and laughed. Not the unnerving giggle he'd let out earlier, but a short, ironic, half-laugh. A sane-Xander laugh. "Oh, you should see your face."

Angel raised his only eyebrow. "Feeling better, then?"

Xander's expression abruptly sobered, and his eye switched back to Dawn. "It's always quieter when I first wake up." He shrugged, sending a fresh wash of sparks over the barrier. "It'll get worse, again."

"Do you remember anything?"

Xander nodded. His eye closed and he swallowed. "A little. Just--just Malia. I wish I didn't." He shrugged again. "There's still a lot of holes."

Angel leaned forward, resting his elbow on his knee. "Who are the voices?"

Xander tensed. "I don't know. One of them is her. Malia. One might be Kelly, but I don't remember what she sounded like. The oldest was Edna's. Not her voice, but the one that talked to her. And there's her nurse. They're almost all girls."

"What do they tell you?"

Xander shook his head and flipped over, facing the back wall of the cell again. He curled up on himself. "Dawn makes them quiet."

Angel inched forward on the bench. "What do they tell you, Xander?"

"That this is my fault. They're right, I think. It's my fault I'm like this. My fault they're dead. My--" Xander jerked. "Willow."

The witch twitched slightly, but continued her chant. Xander rolled back towards the barrier. Angel prepared to stand, though he had no idea what he could do.

"What's she doing in here?" Xander's eye was bright, and no longer lucid. "She's not supposed to be in here. She's going to mess it all up, she's--PULL THE SWITCH."

Willow's chant picked up speed. Xander snapped his gaze to Angel again. The vampire could see the full circle of his iris. A glitter appeared along the eye's bottom edge. "Kill me."

"What?"

Xander seemed to choke for a moment, his eye shutting again, then snapping back open. "Angel, kill me. They won't do it, and I'll just keep getting worse. God, I've--please, don't let me stay like this!"

Angel stood. "That's out of the question."

Xander seemed to collapse in on himself. "They found it." He rolled over again, presenting Angel with his back. "They found it. They found it. . . ."

Angel sat back down on the bench and ran his hand over the scars on his face as Willow and Dawn started to come out of their trances.

And Xander used to say that Angel was too cryptic.

The walls of the warehouse fell away, and Dawn was sitting on the pathway in Yasmine's garden. The walls surrounding the courtyard shook. The birds and butterflies swerved in looping circles in the air. Yasmine stood over her, her hands on her hips.

"He's not here. You have to keep moving."

"What's going on?" Dawn pushed herself to her knees. The world spun for a moment.

Yasmine shrugged. "He's waking up. He usually stops here on the way, but you've shaken him up. He's headed for the chair."

"What is the chair?" Dawn tried to stand, but the ground shook and she fell back to her knees.

"You know," Yasmine took on an air of exasperation and she gestured vaguely with her right hand. "The chair? The switch?"

Dawn pictured the figure in the electric chair. Her nose wrinkled. "Oh. I hate that thing."

"It serves its purpose." Yasmine grabbed Dawn's arm, helping her stand. "He knows you're in here. You have to be quick. Unpredictable."

"Yeah, well, judging by his state of mind?" Dawn glanced around the garden, which was looking considerably less clean and calm than it had last time she was here. "Unpredictable is exactly what he's expecting."

Yasmine crossed her arms. "Well, I have to protect the garden. So you have to deal with the crazy."

"You're real helpful, aren't you."

Yasmine rolled her eyes. "You've been here for, what, a couple hours? I've been here for years, honey, don't tell me what helpful is."

Dawn glared at the other woman for a moment before heading for the path to the door. "I assume that this time this will take me to the conscious mind?"

"Sure. Why not?" Yasmine didn't turn to face Dawn as she stalked past her. Dawn repressed the urge to flick her off.

//Sooo,// Willow seemed as frustrated as Dawn was. //Yasmine is, what, Xander's impudence?//

"Whatever." Dawn paused briefly as the ground heaved again, then kept moving forward. "Anything helpful you'd like to add? Something wacky about flowers maybe?"

"They're red!" Yasmine shouted back.

"Yeah, that's what I thought."

Blue crackles flickered across the pathway, and for the briefest of moments, Dawn seemed to be looking at herself, sitting cross-legged on the path, eyes closed tight. "Eh?"

The apparition was gone as quickly as it came. Yasmine stood beside her.

"Try the other door." She said, before flickering out of existence. Dawn stared at the spot where she stood.

//Another metaphor?// Willow mused. //I guess we'll know when we see it.//

"I hate Xander's brain." Dawn took another step forward, willing herself to wherever Xander-- Picasso-Xander or five-year-old-Xander, crazy-Xander or sane-Xander, she didn't care which, as long as it was XANDER--was. The garden flickered over with blue sparks and spiraled away around her, to be replaced with the mindscape as she'd first seen it. She clenched her jaw and turned.

There was the chair. The figure sitting in it was silent and still, except for the slight rise and fall of its chest. The switch hovered in mid-air just out of reach of her right hand. She started toward the chair; the switch followed her. She ignored it.

//Dawn, what are you--//

"I'm sick of this." Dawn stalked right up to the figure, which seemed to straighten as she approached. "No more metaphors. No more wacky mind-crap." She stopped just in front of the figure in the chair.

//Dawn,//

"I wanna see the man behind the mask."

She tucked her fingers under the polished black leather and jerked it up, Mission Impossible style. The mindscape seemed to hold its breath.

Xander--the wonderful, healthy, whole Xander who Dawn hadn't seen since he left for Africa some four years before--blinked in the sudden light and stared up at her.

Willow twitched in her invisible position over Dawn's shoulder as her best friend suddenly looked straight at her.

No. Nonononono. This couldn't be possible. //Oh god,// she sent. //What the hell--?//

"Willow." Xander's eyes flicked from her, to Dawn, and back. He was terrified. "You can't be here. You both have to leave. Now."

"Xander." Dawn's voice cracked. She leaned down to unlock the restraints on his wrists. Xander tried to jerk away from her.

"No, Dawn, put the mask back, and get out of here!"

"Like hell," Dawn yanked the metal cuff away from the chair. Willow was surprised at how easily it bent and twisted in her grip. "We're here to help you, and that means getting you the hell out of here."

"Not a good idea."

Willow and Dawn both spun. Xander, keeping his hand clenched on the arm of the chair, flinched away from the other voice. The voice of Picasso-Xander.

//What is this, multiple personalities?// Willow shook her head. //I thought we were working on schizophrenia.//

"Maybe it's a Freud thing." Dawn crossed her arms and glared at Picasso-Xander. "Id, I presume?"

Picasso-Xander smiled at her. He didn't seem to see Willow, although the Xander in the chair was glaring at the witch. "Pull the switch."

"Nuh-uh."

The mindscape whirled, and Willow was glad that she wasn't completely in Xander's head. Dawn looked like she might be sick.

Something red flashed in Willow's peripheral vision. She concentrated on it, and felt her eyes widen.

//The other door!//

Dawn spun in place, then staggered. "What?"

//The red door. Red, like the flowers. The other door.//

Chair-Xander seemed to sink into himself, closing his eyes. He murmured a curse. Picasso-Xander lunged for Dawn, who shrieked and dodged backwards.

"Willow,"

//Go open the door, Dawn.// Willow concentrated and pulled herself more fully into the mind-scape. Picasso-Xander twisted to face her, the black hole of his left eye seeming to swallow his face. "I'll distract Xander. The Xanders. Whatever."

"Not until I know what the hell is going on here." Dawn hovered next to chair-Xander.

"Pretty sure that's not going to happen, Dawn." Willow braced herself as Picasso-Xander lunged at her. He passed through her and whirled again, snarling. "We've got to do SOMETHING."

Dawn turned to chair-Xander, who was staring at Willow, now. The witch met his gaze, trying to send as many reassuring thoughts to him as she could.

He twisted his head slightly, but didn't break her gaze. "Are you evil?"

Willow rolled her eyes. "Please." She held out a hand as Picasso-Xander tried to punch her. He stilled, and the black hole shrank again. His expression was as lost as chair-Xander's was blank. "After all these years, you still don't trust me?"

Chair-Xander smiled slightly. "Never said that."

Dawn huffed a breath. "So? Verdict? Door or no door?"

Three voices, two of them Xander's, answered her. "Door."

Dawn grabbed at the spinning landscape and the door halted in front of her. It was a deep, blood red, with faint black streaks. Other than the color, it matched the door in the garden to a T. Both Xanders seemed to freeze as Dawn twisted the handle, then jerked on it, then started slamming her shoulder into it. "It's locked,"

Willow rolled her eyes. "So be the key." Picasso-Xander was getting antsy again, and she had to focus on holding him back.

"Yeah, HOW?" Dawn rammed her shoulder into the door again. It shuddered, but held. Willow noted briefly that the black streaks were actually cracks. Dawn growled something out low, under her breath, then paced back a few feet and ran full speed at the door, shoulder first. The cracks widened as she impacted, and then the door shattered in a haze of blue, green, and red. The Xanders stiffened and vanished.

The door opened onto an urban South African street, and a very angry young slayer.