"Hmm. I don't think that's what someone good at lying would've told me to do but I can see why you'd think so."

" - I mean, it's probably not the most sensible lie possible, I'm probably not going to think of that. But it's always technically possible for someone who's good at lying to give you something that isn't the most convincing possible lie specifically because they expect you to assume that if they were trying to lie to you they would have done it more perfectly, and it's also always technically possible for even really good liars to mess up at some point. I think."

"Yes."

"...so I think the evidence I needed to be looking at wasn't just whether you could have lied better to me, but whether you were doing other things that would have been really obviously working cross-purposes or shooting yourselves in the foot if you knew the Silmaril would be here and wanted to get it to destroy the world. One, even if you didn't know exactly where the Silmaril was going to surface, you let a crow fly off with your car keys. Two, you didn't start scanning people's minds until you were prompted by trying to find the thing that killed Azalea and Connor, the timing there was convenient enough that it was really unlikely to have been a coincidence. Three, not only did you keep telling me to try to end the nightmares - which would clearly have been somehow integral to whatever evil plot you guys had going on, the timing there is again too convenient for it to be a random occurrence - you also did in fact send Wishbone to the hospital to help me do it, when you could have misdirected him and told me that something had eaten him on the way or something. And four - this is a different category, not an error you would've made - by the time the Silmaril appeared I had already seen two things that were definitely your nightmares, and I feel like the sort of being that was faking all along so he could destroy the world would not be horrified by the thought of running over crows or having his students commit suicide on him. It's still at that point technically possible for you to be lying and somehow magically faking your nightmares, but it's an awful lot of times to shoot yourselves in the foot."

"Didn't think of this at the time because..."

"...well, one, the whole stealing babies to feed to demons thing was pretty outside what I expected you to do, that messed me up a little. And two, I didn't have 'magical compulsion to get the Silmaril' as an available hypothesis, so I read everything you were doing as an intentional choice you were making in the moment, and figured you had to have what you thought were good reasons for it. I did figure it was possible that you were trying to save the world from someone else, and that you figured the world had a lot more than eight babies in it, but then I figured that in that case you would probably have been prioritizing ending the nightmares, and you weren't. - especially because you're both smarter than me, so leaving me to do the detective work didn't immediately make a ton of sense to me."

" - I'm not smarter than you."

"Are so. Maybe not innately, but I'm never going to know as much stuff as you do. Works out to the same thing."

"You'll get there. We only found about all this vampire and demon stuff in 1970. - sorry, that's not really relevant."

But it absolutely is getting scribbled in the corner of this notebook page, right under the list of terrible and mysterious things that Alex has apparently done.

"...anyway. I figured that if ending the nightmares was actually the most important thing for me to be doing, and there was any chance at all that I was on the right track, then you wouldn't both be leaving me to do it by myself."

Nod.

"So, uh - I do remember that I thought that Billy would be out apologizing for terrible things, so I was as likely to run into Billy at the baby sacrifice as I was anywhere else. This was possibly an excuse, but I don't know that it was wrong. Didn't happen that way, though."

"Yeah, you ran off to Hell." Sigh. "I never know how much to argue with someone when they do something obviously, patently, grievously stupid and then God helps them pull it off. It's like -" Shrug. "I mean, not that I'm complaining. This time. I've complained about some of them."

"Sorry. Didn't want the babies to die. ...didn't want you guys to have to deal with having killed them, either. Also sort of thought you guys were trying to destroy the world and didn't know how else to preempt that. And was sort of just generally upset by that point."

"Not mad at you. Not ever mad at you. God and me have some bad blood but - hey, you know, you made it. And I'm glad about the babies."

She looks maybe the tiniest bit surprised at the beginning of this, but she nods solemnly at the end.

"So, uh, I went to hell - that kind of sucked - and then I killed Lurconis and got the Silmaril and got spit out back in Sunnydale. Figured that if you guys were trying to save the world then you could trust me about the rock being safe, and if you were evil then it was kind of important for you not to get it. So I gave it to Zeke, because you couldn't read Zeke. In case you were evil. Still didn't have 'magically compelled to get the rock' as a hypothesis."

"That feels like the mayor getting the Silmaril in the first place, like of course it was going to somehow work out that way because it wouldn't be our nightmare if it didn't."

She nods. "Yours, yeah. Sorry. That it happened, anyway."

"Well. At least now you know what'll happen."

"Mhmm. Helps to not think the other option is the end of the world. Good try, with the giving me options, but I didn't know how oaths worked and was also busy choking on monster guts at the time, so I think I really wasn't going to end up grabbing any of them."

"No one ever does. Even when it's not a nightmare, I mean, and when they know what's going on."

"That sucks." This is probably not a very appropriate response, but she can't immediately think of a better one. "If I ever do get ahold of one I'm just gonna give it to you, but I'm also gonna go ahead and hope it just doesn't come up again."

"Me too."

"...you know how I know it wasn't my nightmare too? It's not super tactically relevant, but, uh, while we're on this part."

"Mmm?"