Introduction
Season: First | Second | Third | Fourth | Fifth | Sixth | Seventh
Other Bodies | Episodes | Dramatis Personae
Ramblings | Links | Fanfic

Killed by Death

Prologue

Buffy jumps down off the wall at the edge of the cemetery. She coughs and staggers a bit when she lands. She hears a noise, and pulls out a stake. She cautiously approaches the Alpert crypt. She darts around the corner, stake at the ready, and nearly plunges it into Xander’s heart.

“Non-vampire,” says Buffy. “Plus two.” Xander’s with Willow and Cordelia.

“Man, Buffy!” says Xander. “My whole life just flashed before my eyes! I got to get me a life!”

Buffy wonders what they are doing there. They are wondering the same thing about her. She is sick with the flu. She should be home in bed.

“No, I feel fine,” says Buffy. “I mean, the world’s spinning a little bit, but I like it, it’s kinda like a ride.”

“Half the school’s out with this flu,” says Cordelia. “It’s a serious deal, Buffy. We’re all concerned about how gross you look.”

Buffy is touched by their concern, but she has work to do. Willow thinks that taking one night off won’t kill her.

“No, but it might kill somebody else,” says Buffy.

“You mean Angel might,” says Xander. He does not think that this is the time for Buffy to be challenging Angel. He’s at full strength, and she’s only half a Slayer.

“Yeah, but I’m still the Slayer,” says Buffy, “And as long as I am, Angel’s not going to kill anybody else.”

“Aw, come on. Just one more!” says Angel. He rushes at them, and tackles Cordelia.

Buffy pulls Angel off Cordelia, and attacks him. She tries to stake him, but Angel grabs her arm, and twists it, forcing her to drop the stake. “Not feeling well, lover?” he asks.

Buffy punches Angel, and when he tries to kick at her, she grabs his foot and dumps him onto the ground. She tells him she’s feeling better. She attacks Angel again but he kicks her away, and gets back to his feet. Buffy swings a few punches at him, but he dodges or blocks them all.

Angel grabs Buffy by the throat. “You know, you being off your game’s kind of taking the fun out of all this.” He punches Buffy in the face. “Nope, still fun!” He punches Buffy a few more times, knocks her to the ground, and pins her down. “Uh-oh. This does not look good for our heroine.” He leans in for the kill.

Willow tosses Xander’s jacket over Angel’s head, blinding him. Xander grabs Angel, punches him, knees him in the head, and knocks him away from Buffy. Angel scrambles back to his feet and finds himself confronted by Willow, Xander and Cordelia, each of them holding a cross. He decides it’s time to go.

Buffy staggers to her feet. She does not seem to appreciate that her friends have just saved her life, but she collapses again.

Act I

Xander carries the unconscious Buffy into the emergency room at the Sunnydale Hospital, and calls for help. An intern asks what happened.

“The flu.” “She fell.” “She fainted,” say Willow, Xander and Cordelia together.

“The flu, fainted and fell,” says Xander. “She’s sick, make it better!” He puts Buffy onto a gurney. The intern starts to examine Buffy as she’s wheeled into an emergency room. Her friends are stopped at the door.

Willow says she’ll phone Giles and tell him what happened. She tells Cordy to phone Buffy’s mom. “Tell her—not what happened—just get her here.”

Joyce arrives at the hospital and finds Giles and Buffy’s friends in the waiting room. They have no news about Buffy’s condition. No one will tell them anything.

Buffy’s doctor—Dr. Wilkinson—comes into the waiting room. She tells Joyce that Buffy is going to be fine, but they are going to want to keep her for a couple of days.

Buffy is wheeled out of emergency on a gurney. She’s still a little delirious. Her left wrist is bandaged. She wants to go home. On hearing that she has to stay in the hospital for a few days she starts to freak. She starts struggling, trying to get up, while her doctor, an orderly and a couple of nurses try to hold her down.

“No! No! Let me go!” cries Buffy. “Giles, tell them! The vampires! I need to kill the vampires!”

Dr. Wilkinson injects Buffy with a sedative.

“Yes, uh, we’ll, get to those vampires later,” says Giles. He laughs gently, and smiles at Joyce. “I hear it’s best to play along.”

Buffy is wheeled into a hospital room, while her concerned friends watch. They aren’t used to seeing Buffy scared. Joyce tells them that Buffy has hated hospitals ever since her cousin Celia died in one when Buffy was eight. Buffy was alone with her at the time.

Joyce goes to phone Buffy’s father to let him know what happened. Giles shows her to the phones. She thanks him for the way he has been looking out for Buffy, and expresses her sympathy for Miss Calendar’s death. She’s heard that they were close. Jenny’s death has affected Buffy greatly. She normally never gets sick.

Xander looks in through the window in the door of Buffy’s room. He’s still worried. He asks Willow and Cordy if they think she will be okay.

Cordy isn’t too sure. One of her friends came into Sunnydale Hospital for a nose job. “She came in looking for the Gwyneth Paltrow, and out more like the Mr. Potatohead.”

That isn’t the sort of problem that’s worrying Xander, or Willow. Buffy isn’t in here for cosmetic surgery.

“No, but while she’s in here, she might as well get that thing done,” says Cordy. Willow and Xander just stare at her. “You know, that thing on her face? You know that thing.”

Willow and Xander ignore Cordy. Willow asks Xander if he thinks Angel might attack Buffy here. It’s a public place. Angel can come in any time he wants.

“Am I the only one that’s noticed that thing?” asks Cordelia.

The clock in Buffy’s room ticks over to 2:27 AM, and she wakes up. She looks toward the door of her room, and sees a young boy standing there looking in at her. The boy turns and walks away. Buffy sees a man following him. He is dressed in black, and is wearing a black bowler hat. His face is grotesque, with a huge hooked nose, and an under jutting jaw with large upward pointing fangs. Long straggly grey hair comes out from under his hat. He looks at Buffy too, and then follows the boy.

Buffy gets out of bed—still not very steady on her feet—and follows them.

An eight year old Buffy walks down a corridor in a different hospital. She enters a room, and approaches a curtained off bed. Buffy reaches out to pull the curtain aside.

The clock in Buffy’s room ticks over to 2:27 AM, and she wakes up. She sits up in her bed, pulls the IV needle out of the back of her hand, gets out of bed and walks out into the corridor. A security guard standing in an alcove watches her pass.

Buffy walks down the hallway toward the children’s ward. A pair of orderlies wheel a gurney out of a room, with a small covered body on it. “Man, I hate it when you lose the young ones,” says one of them.

Buffy looks in to the room, and sees Dr. Wilkinson arguing with another doctor over his treatment of the children. Dr. Wilkinson thinks that his methods are too risky. She wants him to step back on the dosages until they get the test results back.

“There isn’t time,” says the other doctor. “I should think that would be clear to you by now.”

“The normal course of treatment—”

“They aren’t responding to the normal course of treatment. Look, they’re getting worse. I have the consent of the parents.”

“They’re desperate!” says Dr. Wilkinson. “They don’t understand what they’re—”

“You know what, if you have a problem with my methods, just take it up with the board.”

“I have!” says Dr. Wilkinson.

Buffy turns away from the door, and sees the young boy she saw earlier, along with another girl waiting in the hallway too.

“He comes at night,” says the boy. “The grownups don’t see him. He was with Tina. He’ll come back for us.”

“Who?” asks Buffy.

“Death,” says the boy.

Act II

Xander sits in the waiting room down the hallway from Buffy’s room. He sees Angel coming in, carrying some flowers, and whistling Ode to Joy.

Xander gets to his feet and blocks Angel’s path. “Visiting hours are over. Why don’t you come back during the day? Oh, gee, no, I guess you can’t.”

“If I decide to walk into Buffy’s room, do you think for one microsecond that you could stop me?” asks Angel.

“Maybe not.” Xander looks around the waiting room. “Maybe that security guard couldn’t either. Or those cops, or the orderlies. But I’m kind of curious to find out. You game?”

“Buffy’s White Knight. You still love her.” Angel leans in close and whispers to Xander. ”It must just eat you up that I got there first.”

Xander clenches his jaw. “You’re going to die. And I’m going to be there.”

Angel slaps the flowers against Xander’s chest. “Tell her I stopped by.” He turns and walks away.

Xander starts breathing again.

Buffy dreams about playing with her cousin Celia. She is Power Girl, with a towel for a cape, saving Celia from an avalanche of pillows. Then she is back in the hospital, pulling aside the curtain from Celia’s hospital bed, and seeing her sleeping there.

Buffy wakes up. Dr. Wilkinson is there. She’s come in to check up on her patient. Buffy’s fever has gone down.

Buffy starts to get out of bed. “Well, good! Thanks for having me! Let’s try and keep in touch.”

“Not so fast!” Dr. Wilkinson pushes Buffy back down into the bed. She starts to examine Buffy’s bandaged wrist. “Hmm.”

“Good ‘hmm’ or a bad ‘hmm?’” asks Buffy.

“Swelling’s…gone!” says Dr. Wilkinson. She presses on Buffy’s wrist with her fingers. “Does this hurt?”

“Nope.”

“Amazing!”

“Well, then I should probably go, right?” Buffy starts to try and get out of bed again. Dr. Wilkinson stops her. Buffy’s fever may be down, but it isn’t gone. It’s a strong virus she has. Buffy asks if it’s the same virus the kids have.

Dr. Wilkinson doesn’t get a chance to answer. There is a knock on the door. Giles asks if they can come in. Willow, Xander and Cordelia are with him. Dr. Wilkinson is happy to see them. She hopes they can keep her patient from bolting. She leaves the room.

Giles and Buffy’s friends are baring gifts. Xander has brought balloons. Giles brought some grapes, and Willow has brought Buffy’s homework. Buffy isn’t trilled by that gift until Willow tells her that she has already done all of Buffy’s assignments. All Buffy has to do is sign her name.

Cordelia didn’t bring anything. “Nobody told me I was supposed to bring a gift,” she tells Buffy. “I was out of the loop on gifts.”

“It’s tradition among, um…people,” says Giles. He asks Buffy how her night went.

Buffy wants to tell them about what happened, but there’s a nurse messing about in Buffy’s room so she suggests they go for a walk.

Willow pushes Buffy outside in a wheelchair while Buffy tells them about Tina’s death. They don’t really think that children dying from the flu is really Buffy’s jurisdiction. Buffy goes on to tell them about Dr. Backer—who has been giving the children some sort of experimental treatment, and makes her feel creepy—and about the boy Ryan saying that he saw Death.

“Death?” asks Cordelia.

“The Death?” asks Willow. “As in ‘It is your time?’”

Giles is dubious. He doesn’t trust the reports of a frightened child, but Buffy tells him that she thinks she saw something too.

“Did it have an hourglass?” asks Willow.

“Ooo, if he asks you to play chess, don’t even do it,” says Xander. “The guy’s, like, a whiz.”

“Maybe it wasn’t death,” says Buffy. “Maybe it was something else.”

“So this isn’t about you being afraid of hospitals ’cause your friend died and you want to conjure up a monster that you can fight so you can save everybody and not feel so helpless?” asks Cordelia.

“Cordelia, have you actually ever heard of tact?” asks Giles.

“Tact is just not saying true stuff,” says Cordy. “I’ll pass.”

Buffy still thinks that Ryan saw something real, and she intends to find out what it was.

“So, is this the part where we say ‘What can we do to help?’” asks Xander.

”You just had to say that didn’t you!” Cordelia whispers to Xander as they sneak into the hospital records room to get Tina’s file.

Xander doesn’t expect this to be any problem. Five minutes tops to find Tina’s file.

“This is what happens when you’re compassionate towards sick people,” says Cordelia. “They take advantage of you.”

“Uh, huh,” says Xander. “Buffy almost died just to put you out.”

“I didn’t want to be the first one to say it.”

Xander just points Cordelia toward the filing cabinets that he wants her to look in, while he moves to another set.

While they’re searching the security guard who had watched Buffy the night before comes in and asks Cordy what she is doing there. He doesn’t see Xander, who hides behind some filing cabinets.

Willow and Giles enter the library. She asks Giles where they should start. Giles doesn’t seem to have much of an idea. Willow senses a lack of commitment on his part.

“Oh, I suppose so,” says Giles. “Cordelia may be homerically insensitive, but she may also be right. Death and disease are things—possibly the only things—that Buffy cannot fight. It’s only natural for her to try to create a defeatable opponent. Especially now, after…after Jenny.”

Willow agrees that Giles may be right, but on the other hand they do live on the Hellmouth. These kids may have seen a monster.

Giles is still doubtful. It would have to be a monster that only the children can see, and he can’t recall any creatures that fit that description. Then he then realizes that sometimes children do see things that adults don’t: people’s true selves. He and Willow decide to dig into Dr. Backer’s background.

Cordy flirts with the security guard in the records room to keep him from noticing Xander, who’s still quietly looking for Tina’s file. The guard is a short balding guy, who kind of looks like he could be Principal Snyder’s younger brother. She asks him about the girl who died, and about Dr. Backer.

“Dr. Backer’s a great man,” says the guard. “He understands the real truth about children.”

“What’s that?” asks Cordy.

“Sometimes they die.”

Xander finds Tina’s file, and while Cordy continues to distract the guard he sneaks back out of the records room. He waits outside for Cordelia to emerge. It takes her a while. “Could you make just a little more with the touchy-gropey?” he asks her.

“Jealous?” asks Cordelia.

Xander laughs. “Of Rogaine Boy? I don’t think so.” He hands Cordelia Tina’s file to take to Giles, while he stays in the hospital to watch Buffy’s back.

Cordelia is not thrilled by Xander’s obsession with protecting Buffy. “I’ve seen you watch her back.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” asks Xander.

“I was using the phrase ‘watch her back’ as a euphemism for ‘looking at her butt.’ You know, sort of a pun.”

“Oh! Right,” says Xander. Then he realizes that he has just been insulted. “Hey!”

“Well, you do,” says Cordy.

“Jealous?” asks Xander.

“Fine! Watch my back.” Cordelia turns and walks away. Xander cocks his head to watch her back as she goes.

Buffy pays another visit to the children’s ward. She finds Ryan there, drawing a picture with crayons. He tells her that she shouldn’t be there, he’s contagious. Buffy says it’s okay, she’s already got what he’s got. She looks at what he’s drawing. It’s a picture of the creature she saw the night before.

“He’ll come again tonight,” says Ryan.

“Ryan, listen to me,” says Buffy. “I’m not going to let this thing hurt you. Any of you. Grown-ups don’t believe you, right? Well, I do. We both know that there are real monsters. But there’s also real heroes that fight monsters. And that’s me.”

Ryan keeps colouring his picture. “Can’t fight death.”

Willow has accessed Dr. Backer’s records. They don’t look good. He has several reprimands in his file for controversial experiments, risky procedures, and a malpractice suit.

“Factor in Buffy’s observation that he gives her the, um, wiggins…” says Giles.

“This may be our death guy?” asks Willow.

“I just wish I knew what he was doing to these children,” says Giles.

Dr. Backer goes over his notes in his office. He has discovered something. He opens his refrigerator, pulls out a test tube, and makes a notation on its label before putting it back. He picks up a book off his desk, and flips through it. “Yes!” he tells himself, and writes something in his notebook.

Xander sits in a chair in the hospital waiting room, trying to keep from nodding off. Cordy drops a bag of doughnuts on the table beside him, and sets down a tray with a couple of cups of coffee. She sits in the chair on the other side of the table and starts flipping through the copy of Cosmopolitan she has brought with her. Xander picks up one of the coffees and the bag of doughnuts, and sips from the coffee.

Dr. Backer leaves his office and heads for the children’s ward. Buffy follows him. He goes into the ward and injects something into one of the children’s IV tubes. He hears a giggle, and looks around, but there’s no one there.

Something grabs Dr. Backer and pulls him around, but he can’t see it. It slashes at him and chokes him while the terrified children in the ward try to hide under their blankets. Blood is splattered on the wall, where the creature’s clawed hand also casts a shadow.

Buffy looks through the door just in time for Dr. Backer to come flying out through it. She tries to help him, but the invisible creature knocks her aside, and drags Dr. Backer’s body away.

Act III

Giles and the others arrive in Buffy’s hospital room to report on their findings. Before she died Tina seemed to be recovering from the fever, and Willow tells her that Dr. Backer was not the most solid of citizens.

“It wasn’t Backer,” says Buffy. “He was clean.”

“What do you mean ‘clean?’” asks Cordelia.

“What do you mean ‘was?’” asks Xander.

“He’s dead. This thing killed him, and not with kindness.” Buffy hands the picture that Ryan drew to Giles.

Willow asks Buffy if she saw the creature, but she didn’t. It was invisible. “I saw Backer nearly shredded and the thing knocked me down. But it’s real. Which means I get to fight it.”

Giles looks at the picture. “Um…this is your work?”

“No,” says Buffy, “one of the kids.”

“Well, it would help if we knew what it was,” says Giles. “It’s invisible to you, but the children can see it?”

“But you said you did see something the other night,” says Cordelia.

“Yeah, but I was pretty delirious,” says Buffy. “I mean, it doesn’t make any sense. Why would I see it then and not last night?”

Joyce interrupts their session when she arrives with the news that Buffy can go home. She is surprised to learn that Buffy doesn’t want to go just yet. Buffy tells her that she isn’t feeling so good all of a sudden. Joyce leaves to talk to Buffy’s doctor again.

Buffy sends Giles back to the library to see if he can find this creature in his books, now that he has a mug shot of it. Buffy is going to check out Dr. Backer’s office. She asks Willow to come along to interpret.

“Oh, yeah,” says Willow, “I’m good at medical stuff since Xander and I used to play doctor all the time.”

Buffy and Cordy give Xander a look.

“No, she’s being literal,” says Xander. “She used to have all these medical volumes, and diagnosed me with stuff. I didn’t have the heart to tell her she was playing it wrong.”

“Wrong? Why?” asks Willow. She turns to Buffy “How did you play doctor?”

“I never have,” says Buffy. Cordelia raises her eyebrows at that one.

The gang disperses. Xander tells Cordy to go with Giles. He’s going to stay on sentry duty in the hospital.

Giles tries to object. “Why do I have to have—” He sees the look Cordelia is giving him. “Uh, good thinking. I could do with a research assistant.”

“Let’s go, tact-guy,” says Cordy.

Giles starts toward the elevators.

Cordy tells Xander to be careful, and follows him.

Ryan opens the door of the children’s ward and looks out. He sees the security guard walking down the hallway toward him, so he ducks back inside.

Willow and Buffy enter Dr. Backer’s office and Willow starts reading through his notes while Buffy checks out the rest of the office. Willow notices that he left an unfinished cup of coffee on his desk.

“Yep, another person I wasn’t in time to save,” says Buffy. “It’s too bad Angel didn’t put me in the hospital sooner… There’s something I never thought I’d hear myself say.”

Willow’s reading of Dr. Backer’s notes indicates that his treatment of the children was starting to work. He was inoculating the kids with a controlled dosage of the virus. “So he really was trying to help the kids.”

“Till that thing stopped him,” says Buffy.

Giles and Cordy are searching through Giles’ demon books. They aren’t having much luck, and are further hampered by Cordy asking Giles about what each demon in her book does.

Giles gets fed up with Cordelia’s questions. “It asks endless questions of those with whom it’s supposed to be working so that nothing is getting done.”

“Boy, there’s a demon for everything!” says Cordelia.

Giles is beginning to suspect that their search is hopeless. He gets up from the table and starts to pace. They may never find a picture of the demon that they are looking for, since it doesn’t seem to have been seen by very many people.

“Well, it’s not in here,” says Cordelia. She closes the book she’s been looking through, and pushes it away across the table. Giles looks down at the cover. It has is a picture of the creature they are looking for on it.

Cordy phones Buffy from Giles’ office with the news that they have identified the monster. It is known as “Der Kindestod” which means “Child Death.” The demon feeds on sick children by draining the life out of them. It would have looked on the children’s ward at the hospital as an all you can eat buffet. It killed Dr. Backer because by curing the kids he was taking away its food supply.

Giles comes into his office with his latest find. “I found a picture of how it kills,” he tells Cordelia. “Let me talk to her.”

Cordy takes the book from Giles and looks at it. “Oh! Eww!”

“What?” asks Buffy.

“Oh! You should see this thing! The way it does its thing, I mean, eww!” Cordelia hands the phone off to Giles and gets up from her seat in front of his desk. “Why do I let you guys drag me into this stuff?” She walks out of the office.

“Uh, Buffy?” says Giles into the phone. “Are you still there?”

“Hanging on every ‘eww.’” says Buffy.

Giles describes the way the Kindestod feeds to Buffy. It pins its victim down, and slowly sucks the life force out of them. “It must be horrifying for the victim.”

As Giles talks, Buffy remembers watching her cousin Celia die. How she screamed, and seemed to be trying to push against something that Buffy couldn’t see.

Giles notices that Buffy isn’t saying anything on the phone and asks what’s wrong. Buffy still says nothing. Willow takes the phone from a stunned Buffy, thanks Giles, and hangs it up.

“It killed Celia.” Buffy tells Willow.

“Your cousin?”

“We have to get this thing, Willow, before it gets any more kids.”

“You will,” says Willow. “We will.”

Buffy isn’t so confident. How can she fight something she can’t even see.

“You saw it once,” says Willow.

“Did I?” asks Buffy. “Maybe my mind was playing tricks on me. I mean, I was crazed with that fever. Who knows—” She stops.

Buffy and Willow return to Dr. Backer’s office. Buffy starts searching in his fridge. Willow wants Buffy to reconsider her plan. She thinks it’s crazy.

“The fever,” says Buffy. “That’s how you see the Kindestod. That’s why Celia could see it. That’s why Ryan still can. It’s the only way.” She finds the test tube she’s looking for and pulls it from the fridge.

“But how are you going to fight this thing with 107 degree temperature?” asks Willow.

“I guess we’ll find out,” says Buffy, and raises the test tube to her lips. Willow stops her, but Buffy tells her that she is going to do it.

“Buffy, that’s 100% pure,” says Willow. “It’ll kill you in an instant.”

“Oh,” says Buffy. “They really should put that on the label.”

Willow gets a bottle of water out of the fridge and pours some of it into a beaker. She uses an eyedropper to add a single drop from the test tube into the water. Buffy makes her add a second drop.

Buffy picks up the beaker. “Here’s to my health.” She drinks from it.

Buffy and Willow return to the children’s ward. Buffy is feeling a little shaky, Willow has to help her stay on her feet. Buffy is starting to suspect that her plan wasn’t such a good idea.

Willow tells Buffy to hang in there. When they get to the ward Buffy looks in through the window in the door and discovers that the children are gone.

Act IV

The children run through a basement corridor, looking for a place to hide.

As Buffy looks through the window into the children’s ward she sees the Kindestod appear. It looks around the room searching for the children itself. The Kindestod looks up toward Buffy and sees her. It knows that she can see it too, and it doffs its hat to her. It heads toward a door at the other end of the room with a sign reading “Basement Access” on it.

Buffy tries to open the door to the ward, but it’s locked. Dr. Wilkinson shows up and wants to know what’s wrong. Willow tells her that Buffy isn’t feeling so good again. Dr. Wilkinson tries to send Buffy back to bed, but Buffy pushes her away.

“She’s sorry!” says Willow, and she and Buffy run off down the corridor. Dr. Wilkinson picks up a wall phone, and calls security.

Buffy and Willow run into a couple of security guards, including Cordelia’s friend. The girls exchange a glance, and then Willow start to freak. “Frogs! Frogs!” she screams, and slaps at her clothing. “Get them off of me! Oh my god! Frogs! Get them off!” The guards move to restrain the hysterical girl, and Buffy quietly slips away.

Dr. Wilkinson arrives and finds the guards holding Willow. “Not her! The other one!”

Willow suddenly stops her act. “No more frogs,” she says to the guards.

Buffy finds Xander. She tells him that they have to get to the basement.

The Kindestod searches the basement for the children, who are hiding in the boiler room. One of the girls says she’s cold, so Ryan gives her his robe. “We’re going to be safe in here,” he tells the others.

The children start to scream. The Kindestod grabs Ryan from behind.

Buffy and Xander find the stairs leading down to the basement.

“You don’t know how to kill this thing,” says Xander.

“I thought I might try violence,” says Buffy.

“Solid call,” says Xander.

The Kindestod throws Ryan down on the floor.

Ryan looks away from the Kindestod, toward where the other children that he tried to save from it are cowering and screaming. He looks back up at the Kindestod as it pins him to the floor. Tentacle like things extend from its eye sockets down to Ryan’s forehead. Ryan screams and struggles helplessly.

Buffy wacks the Kindestod in the head with a 2x4. “You make me sick!”

The Kindestod gets slowly back to its feet, and Buffy wacks it again. It blocks her, and knocks the 2x4 out of her hands.

Xander grabs Ryan, gathers up the other children, and herds them out of the boiler room while Buffy fights the Kindestod. She isn’t doing very well. Her fever has left her too uncoordinated. Half her punches miss their target, and the ones she does land seem ineffective. Xander returns and sees Buffy fighting with nothing.

The Kindestod throws Buffy to the floor, where she lies, temporarily stunned. It picks up its hat, and brushes it off before it returns its attention to her. It pins her down, grabs her head and starts to extend its eye stalks toward her.

Buffy reaches up, grabs the Kindestod’s head in both hands and twists. Its neck snaps and it falls off her, dead. Buffy gets unsteadily back to her feet.

Xander comes over and looks at Buffy looking at what to him seems to be an empty piece of floor. “Are you okay?”

“Actually, I think I’m starting to feel better,” says Buffy.

Buffy turns, takes a step toward the exit, and stumbles. Xander catches her, and helps support her as they walk out together. “He’s dead right?” he asks. “I mean, I heard something snap.”

“That would be his neck,” says Buffy.

“You’re not going to yak on me, are you?” asks Xander.

Epilogue

Buffy continues her recovery at home in bed. Xander and Willow are there watching TV with her. Joyce delivers a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to Buffy with a glass of juice, two parts orange, one part grapefruit, just the way she likes it.

Buffy sends the sandwich back. She wanted crunchy peanut butter, and extra jelly. Willow orders a refill for her drink, and Xander wants another bag of cheesy chips.

“Uh, you ate the last one,” says Joyce.

“No, there’s another bag hidden behind the raisins,” says Xander.

Joyce sighs. “I’m on it.” She leaves Buffy’s room.

“Your mom’s trying to Bogart the cheesy chips.” Xander says to Buffy. “What’s that all about?”

Joyce comes back. She’s remembered that a letter has come for Buffy. She pulls it out of her pocket and hands it to her.

Buffy looks at the return address on the envelope. “It’s from Ryan.”

Buffy opens it and pulls out a piece of paper. “Oh, he drew you a picture!” says Joyce. “How…” Joyce gets a better look at the picture. “…nice.” It’s a picture of Buffy, standing in triumph with her foot on a vanquished foe. Its neck is sliced open and there’s blood all over the ground, and all over Buffy.

Death Toll