Fanfic / The Seventh Segment

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The Seventh Segment is an entry in the Adventures of a Line Hopper Series Fic that crosses over Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Doctor Who. Consisting of 35 chapters, it was first published from July 9 to August 21, 2012, preceded by Nothing and followed by Something. In the official chronological order, it is preceded by Something and followed by Elizabeth.

This fic specifically crosses over Buffy season 5 and Doctor Who series 4, being a collection of stories where the Doctor visits Sunnydale with Donna when Buffy is dealing with her Backstory Invader sister Dawn and her current multiverse-threatening Big Bad, Glory. The Doctor's attempts to meddle prove to be useless however, because the universe keeps mysteriously rewriting itself and temporarily removing the Doctor out of Buffy's life whenever he significantly changes the story of her fight against Glory. Meanwhile, Rose Tyler is jumping across universes trying to find the Doctor to warn him about another threat to the multiverse, only to end up in various points in the Doctor-less versions of Buffy's life.

Unlike most fics in the series, The Seventh Segment is divided into many sub-stories. For the full, spoiler details and trope list of each one, see the Recap page.

Tropes applying across The Seventh Segment include:

• Alliterative Title: Ignoring the definite article, "Seventh Segment".
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Throughout the fic, some of Glory's minions defect from her to take the Doctor's offer to move them somewhere safe. When Glory asks why does her minions keep doing that, one of her remaining minions carefully admits that the Doctor is simply nice and treats them like a real person. Glory couldn't take the hint and berates them for merely admitting it. It's no surprise that more minions have defected right after that.
• Bookends: Lampshaded by Buffy, although the definition of "end" needs to be stretched for her lampshading to hit the mark. In "Quest", the last chapter before "Endgame", Buffy says that the whole story starts with a quest for Excalibur ("Not a Sword") and ends with her current quest.
• Bound and Gagged:
  • In "Wibbly Wobbly", besides knocking out and tying up the Doctor, Riley also ties up and gags Donna to make her shut up.
  • In "Home", the Doctor is tied up when Glory's minions bring him to Glory and gagged to stop him from trying to convince them to defect. Amusingly, Glory forgets to open the gag first when she begins her interogation of him.
• Call-Back:
  • The Doctor surmises that Dawn is probably unaware of her own status as the Key, because neither was Princess Astra.
  • "Everything Has Its Time"'s version of Buffy trying to find out how Slayers happens because Buffy remembers that the Doctor has seen every Slayers before her die, something established way back in Don't Be.
  • In "Everything Has Its Time", Buffy's conclusion on what she needs to do is to keep remembering "that the night is only dark, when you ignore the stars", reminding the Doctor that he is the one who told her that back in Starlight.
  • "The Setup": When the Doctor surmises that the humans in the experiments are manipulated by some baby-eaters, Buffy realizes that this is Lucronis^* (spelled differently from the canonical name Lurconis for some reason) from "Band Candy" all over again. Since Lucronis is dead, it means the baby-eaters are creatures of its kind.
  • In "Shadows", Xander compares the Doctor not just telling the solution to what he does during the fight against the Mayor. Buffy then remembers that Xander saying that is what creates a Stable Time Loop and makes the (future) Doctor not tell the the solution back then. "Epilogue" even reveals that Xander's words are the reason the Doctor goes to the time with the Mayor in the first place.
  • Buffy's anger is "Key" is driven from her memory of the guilt-ridden Doctor who visited her in 1999, which mirrors the guilt that may happen if the Doctor kills Dawn too closely for her comfort.
  • The Doctor's actions towards Glory's minions in "Epilogue" is directly motivated by the "Blame Sheet" from Elizabeth coda.
• Call-Forward:
  • When describing Excalibur, the Doctor mentions that it might not be a scythe since an actual sycthe is also around Sunnydale, referring to the Scythe from Buffy season 7.
  • "Wibbly Wobbly" shows how Buffy's notebook will end up having two different versions of what happened to Elizabeth's Sunnydale as seen in Elizabeth, as the Doctor at this point still believes that Elizabeth was tricking him as later mentioned in the book, so Buffy notes it down after hearing it from Riley.
  • In "Home", the Doctor tells Buffy that if the Key is unleashed, it may causes some other version of Buffy to appear, which is exactly what will happen in Elizabeth.
  • At the end of "Non-Interference", the Doctor and Buffy have a discussion about Elizabeth, about how she blames him for her mother's death even though he wasn't even there, something first brought up in the 2001 section of Elizabeth.
  • Dawn mentions that Buffy has a handcuffs kink in "The Setup", which is something established in Buffy season 6 episode "Dead Things", which hasn't happened yet from the characters' perspectives.
  • In "Shadows", the Doctor surmises that the Mayor makes himself invulnerable by using Jack's vortex energies, something that will get repeated about 10 years later.
  • Buffy describes Elizabeth as a killer who can't even say "I love you", a nod to the Scoobies later finding out in Elizabeth that the phrase is a trigger for Elizabeth.
• Character Title:
  • The titular seventh segment of the Key to Time is Dawn. Doubles as MacGuffin Title as well since she is the MacGuffin Turned Human whome the Big Bad is after.
  • One of the chapters is titled "Defender of the Earth", which is one of Rose's titles as she declares to Glory. This is the first chapter where Rose appears prominently rather than showing up briefly at the end.
• Continuity Cavalcade:
  • In "Wibbly Wobbly", when Riley declares that nobody hates the Doctor more than him, the Doctor is unimpressed and tells him many of his enemies would declare the same, listing in quick succession the Slitheen, a "sassy trampoline" from the future, Sutekh, Magnus Greel, the First Evil, the Master (specifically citing that time he destroys the world out of petty sadism), and even the other Elizabeth.
  • In "Non-Interference", the Doctor reminisces about his granddaughter Susan with Dawn, quickly name-dropping their adventures in Skaro, the French Revolution, Marinus and the ones with Marco Polo, the Aztecs, and the Sensorites. He also mentions that he left her to build her own life in the 22th century.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The future Doctor's message in "Prologue" makes references to the time "a third of the world ascends to the rooftops" and the death of "the Prime Minister in the skies".
  • In "Wibbly Wobbly", Riley gets Buffy to admit that she did something that is basically sex with the Doctor, although Buffy points out that it was before she and Riley are in a relationship and she was a cave-woman at the time.
  • Buffy stops thinking that Riley trying to kill the Doctor is out-of-character when she remembers that time Riley tries to kill her ex-boyfriend Angel and how he tries to get her to forget about the Doctor while the Doctor is captured by the Initiative.
  • In his warning to Buffy in "Not a Sword", the Doctor mentions that 2/3 of Earth's population will die because of him, which Buffy remembers is something Omega claims in Don't Be.
  • When motivating herself to stop the Doctor from killing people, Donna remembers how she already does such thing in Pompeii.
  • When listing people who knew about the Key to Time, the Doctor also mentions Amy and Zara who debuted in Big Finish's Key 2 Time arc.
  • In "Not a Sword", Buffy tells Dawn that the Doctor tells her that Rose turns an entire Dalek fleet to dust once, so they are not taking chance with any of the Doctor's companion.
  • The Doctor mentions having to deal with Excalibur before, three years ago in Earth time, in adventure involving atomic bombs in England. And he was Merlin. Giles' research even confirms all of it.
  • The Doctor introduces himself to the Trifaldoreign as Earth's champion, a title he accepts when he duels a Sycorax in "The Christmas Invasion".
  • When Riley introduces himself as the man whose girlfriend the Doctor is trying to steal, the first man that the Doctor think of is Mickey, referring to their Love Triangle with Rose in the first series of the Doctor Who revival. He also snarks that Riley does match the nickname he gave to Mickey ("idiot").
  • In "Wibbly Wobbly", Riley evokes the Dalek's catchphrase by saying "Extermination" to the Doctor with emphasis, having met them in My Weapon. He also unknowingly evokes the Dalek's dismissal of killing other species as just "pest control". The Doctor gets concerned about how could Riley met them, since at this point of his life, he only knows of one remaining Dalek survivor.
  • While worrying for Donna's injury in the hospital, the Doctor tells Buffy that he once died in a surgery for a bullet wound, in California and around the year 2000 too, no less.
  • In preparation for their first meeting in "Home", Glory decides to be careful when dealing with the Doctor because she knows what he did to Sutekh.
  • When the Doctor in "Home" is nonchalant about what Riley did in "Wibbly Wobbly" since it technically never happened due to the universe rewrite, Buffy warns him that in his future, Riley is complicit in torturing him. Since nobody else is hurt, the Doctor shrugs it off and reminds Buffy that she tries to kill him when they first met.
  • In their first meeting, the Doctor warns Glory that he doesn't give second chances, something he notes in the first appearance of this particular incarnation.
  • The title of "Everything Has Its Time" comes from the Doctor's quote to Rose when letting Cassandra die in "The End of the World", a quote that gets repeated when he explains to Buffy why he can't save any of the dead Slayers.
    The Doctor: Everything has its time and everything dies.
  • When drawing a similarity between Slayers and Time Lords, the Doctor uses a phrasing similar to the one he tells Martha in "The Sound of Drums": "Some are inspired, some go mad, and some… just run away."
  • In "A Riley Interlude", when Riley claims he has stolen some grenades, the Doctor internally remarks how that is expected from someone who has tortured the Doctor in his future, something he finds out back in "Home".
  • When Buffy accuses Dawn of making the Slitheen up in "Non-Interference", Dawn retorts that at least she doesn't spend an entire summer making up monsters in order to "make kissy faces at an alien".
  • Due to the tape she finds in "TV", Buffy wonders whether this world is an illusionary one created by a spell like the one with Jonathan in "Superstar". Xander also brings up Anya's "world without shrimp" example from the episode.
  • In "The Setup", when the Doctor says that the air in the area is filled with pheromones, Buffy remembers the word coming up in a situation involving Xander and a bug before.
  • In "Shadows", when Buffy tells him that ultimately he is not a killer, the Doctor remarks that he is a "coward, every time."
  • In "Popcorn Moments", as an example to show that he doesn't give vampires unusually special treatment, the Doctor brings up that he gave the Krillitaines a choice too and they are evil murderers as well.
  • In "Popcorn Moments", Buffy brings up how she breaks up with Riley after finding out that he lets vampires feed on him, so maybe she should get angry at the Doctor for the same reason now.
  • "Funeral, Rewrite": When seeing Rose's eyes, Buffy sees that Rose has lost a parent and failed to save them too.
  • Besides the canon recognition, Buffy also recognizes the desert in "Quest" as the one where she sees the young Doctor fresh from the Initiative's torture.
  • In Blue Box Bad, Buffy is told by the future Doctor that what they did isn't mind-sex as they didn't reach the part that is the closest to that, but he refuses to tell what is that part. In "Quest", Buffy remarks as she is doing it that she has found out what is that part.
  • After their mind-sex in "Quest" is done, Buffy tells the Doctor that a future version of him (in The Facksisil of Balime) has told her that physical components can be added to it as kinks.
• Doomed Appointment: In "Quest", Buffy agrees to travel with the Doctor after the problem with Dawn and Glory is over. She ends up sacrificing herself next chapter to stop said problem. By the time she is resurrected, the Doctor has believed that she is gone for good.
• Dramatic Irony: This fic has a Foregone Conclusion even without consuming Buffy season 5 since Paradox and Elizabeth/Something have established that Buffy is going to sacrifice herself to save the world so that Dawn doesn't have to. Buffy and the Doctor don't know that and spend multiple chapters stressed because it looks like that the universe is conspiring so that one of them will have to kill Dawn.
• Entertainingly Wrong:
  • In "Not a Sword", the Doctor tells Buffy that he is looking for Excalibur and whatever he is planning to do would make her hate him. Buffy deduces that the Doctor is planning to kill her boyfriend Riley in order to destroy Excalibur, because Riley seems to be hiding something lately and she knows that Riley is going to try to kill the Doctor sometime in his future. She is completely wrong about whom the Doctor considers killing because she doesn't count on the possibility that Excalibur is her sister Dawn.
  • In "Key", Buffy deduces from how she has seen a future version of the Doctor (injured from torture by someone who hates him) begs her to kill him back in Elizabeth coda that he wants punishment for killing Dawn. Also as seen in Elizabeth, her initial guess that he is distraught over her own future death is actually the correct one, and she gets the version of Buffy who tortured the Doctor wrong.
• Foregone Conclusion: Even without assuming that this fic won't diverge from Buffy season 5 ending, Paradox, Elizabeth (release order), and Something (chronological order) have established, thanks to characters who have already went through the events of this fic, that Dawn isn't going to die at any point because Buffy will sacrifice herself instead at the end.
• Have We Met Yet?:
  • In "Not a Sword", when the Doctor shows confusion the first time he meets Dawn, Buffy assumes this is happening as usual because she remembers the Doctor, presumably in his future, meeting Dawn before. In truth, the Doctor knows that Dawn never exists before and Buffy's memories are messed up to make her think Dawn has always been in her life.
  • As long foreshadowed, Riley tries to kill the Doctor in "Wibbly Wobbly" after months of jealousy and paranoia. On the other hand, the Doctor has no idea who Riley is because this is their first meeting from his perspective.
  • This fic has Buffy meeting Rose for the first time in 2000, but Rose comes from the future and reveals that she has already met Buffy in 2004 when Buffy keeps showing up in Rose's life to give her support after her breakup with Jimmy Stone.
• It's All My Fault:
  • In "Wibbly Wobbly", the Doctor blames himself for Donna getting accidentally shot by Riley, since Riley's intended target is him and it wouldn't have happen if he doesn't bring her in the first place.
  • Averted for once in the epilogue. Thanks to the Blame Sheet from Elizabeth coda, the Doctor agrees not to blame himself for Buffy's death like he would usually do and instead firmly put the blame on Glory's remaining minions who are much more directly responsible.
• Jerkass Has a Point: In "Wibbly Wobbly", Riley in murderous-jealous mode accuses Buffy of having double standards when it comes to the Doctor, letting him get away with everything that she would be angry with if it is done by her other friends. In "Non-Interference", the Doctor asks a similar thing to her and she internally admits that Riley is right (outwardly, she says that The Punishment Is the Crime when it comes to the Doctor and his guilt issues).
• Layman's Terms:
  • In "Not a Sword", the Doctor explains to Donna that his "toaster" is "psychic augmentation detector" meant to "pinpoint the locus of the psychic interference matrix", among other complicated words. Donna asks, "In English?" to get the Doctor to use simpler words, that they are looking for something that has just popped into existence but they have to deal with a magic spell that causes people to think that something has always been there.
  • In "Patrol", the Doctor attempts to dumb down his Technobabble-y explanation of Glory's weakness after everybody else tells him to speak in English. "Attempts" being the keyword here because the first time, he is still talking about dimensionality to the others' confusion, and the last time, he boils it down to, "Sometimes, Glory isn't Glory."
• Love Confession:
  • "Shadows" has a not-so-subtle version with Buffy telling the Doctor that she needs him not so they can do some heroics, but because she wants him and she knows from the rewritten timelines that she would fall apart without him. When she proceeds to kiss him, he kisses her back, until the moment is interrupted by Spike and Buffy knows the Doctor would pretend it has never happened.
    Buffy: I've never wanted anything from you. All I ever wanted was you. Just… you.
    The Doctor: Ah, and… that would be some sort of human… thing, then?
    Buffy: No. It's not a promise, not a commitment, not a hookup or invitation or anything. It's just… who I am. Behind the shadows. I'm someone who needs you.
  • In "Quest", Buffy finally tells the Doctor, "I love you", and unlike her declarations of that to her friends at the beginning, it is clear that this one is the romantic kind.
    Buffy: Doctor, I love you.
    The Doctor: [Beat] Sorry?
    Buffy: I love you. In spite of everything that's happened, and everything that you screwed up, I just… love you.
• The Meddling Kids Are Useless: A pretty glaring example even in a series that frequently use this to ensure canon-compliancy, since this time the universe itself magically removes the Doctor out of the story every time he tries to resolve the plot of Buffy season 5 or even just intervene in a small but significant way (e.g., assuring Dawn that she is a person after she finds out that she is the Key). Downplayed as the resolver, Buffy, is still a prominent character herself.
• Meaningful Echo:
  • In Starlight, the Doctor tells Buffy that he keeps saving people in spite of all the evil that keep showing up and all that he has lost because to him, "the night is only dark if you ignore the stars." Here, the Doctor tells Buffy how every Slayers will either get scared of the darkness from the Slayer Consciousness and let themself die or embrace the darkness outright, not unlike the Time Lords. Buffy points out that is not what happens to the Doctor, and she quotes back what he says in Starlight to assure him that she is not going to end up fall into the darkness.
  • In "Shadows", Buffy confesses that beneath the shadows, she is someone who needs the Doctor. In "Epilogue", the Doctor's internal thoughts admit that beneath the shadows and blusters and everything, he is someone who needs Buffy too.
  • In "Non-Interference", when the Doctor questions Buffy's lack of willingness to punish him for Dawn's potential death, Buffy replies that the punishment is that Buffy will make sure the Doctor lives with his guilt and never forgets that he has killed an innocent girl. In "Epilogue", when Glory's minions ask if the Doctor is going to kill them as punishment for Buffy's death, the Doctor replies that his punishment is that he is going to make sure they all live with his guilt and never forget that they have killed an innocent girl.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: In "Non-Interference", six of Glory's minions teleport the Doctor to safety from her, having fed up with being mistreated and wanting to be free. The Doctor pays them back by moving them to a safe planet. As the fic progress, more and more of Glory's minions do the same, although some stay loyal until Glory's death.
• The Needs of the Many: The moral dilemma of whether Dawn should be sacrificed to save the universe from Buffy season 5 is carried over to here. The Doctor starts out with a firm "yes" as his answer before faltering pretty quickly because sacrificing Dawn would hurt Buffy's feelings and Dawn herself proves to be so nice to him.
• Noodle Incident:
  • When telling Dawn that the Doctor's companions are dangerous as well, Buffy briefly mentions two off-screen adventures with them that she is involved with, one where Martha talks a vampire out of killing her and one where Amy defeat some kind of a slime demon.
  • Donna apparently has some alien aphrodisiac in "The Setup" due to a briefly-mentioned adventure where the aphrodisiac causes her to fall in love with an alien who looks like a blob of jelly.
  • It's mentioned in "Shadows" that the Scoobies apparently have dealt with the Silence before, but their recollection of them are very hazy due to the Silence being memory-manipulators.
• Not What It Looks Like: "Not a Sword" has Buffy tying up the Doctor on her bed simply to secure him. Dawn points out, considering the Unresolved Sexual Tension between them, that it makes her look kinky. Due to hearing it from Dawn, Riley rants about it multiple times in "Wibbly Wobbly".
• OOC Is Serious Business:
  • In "Not a Sword", Buffy can tell that the Excalibur business is very important and dangerous because the usually-pacifistic Doctor outright tells her that he is planning to kill someone to stop it.
  • In "Everything Has Its Time", the Doctor quickly works out that there is something wrong when Buffy asks him to help her with her patrol, as they both know that all the Doctor does in vampire-hunting patrols is stopping her from staking vampires to her annoyance. Once they go outside, the Doctor also notes that Buffy doesn't bring any weapon with her, meaning she really wants to appeal to the Doctor's good side right now because what she wants of him is not something he would happily give.
• Resort to Pouting:
  • "Everything Has Its Time": During the initial begging for information about past Slayers, Buffy pouts as she tells the Doctor that she is being good right now (not staking vampires, not bringing weapons). The Doctor acknowledges the point, but refuses to give the information.
  • In "Home", when the Doctor walks back on agreeing that Dawn can come with him, Dawn starts pouting and crosses her arms in an attempt to change his mind back. It doesn't work.
• Ship Tease:
  • In "Not a Sword", Donna notices that Buffy and the Doctor always hug each other in a way that doesn't look like people who are "just mates".
  • The Buffy in the tape in "TV" verbally admits that there's a certain someone (that she can't mention by name due to the universe rewrites) in her life that she sometimes wants to kiss or would do anything for.
• Shout-Out:
  • Upon finding out that magic is real, Donna jokingly asks if the Doctor is going to bring her to Hogwarts next. She and Dawn then begin discussing the books, although the Doctor reminds her that she shouldn't say anything past the third book (the fourth was only released in 2000).
  • In "The Setup", when the Doctor finds an entrance to an apparently sunny meadow behind a closet wall, Buffy uses the term "Narnia'ed" for what he has just done, although the Doctor disagrees with the comparison because the meadow is just holographic projections.
• Silent Treatment: After a crazed Riley accidentally shoots Donna while trying to kill the Doctor in "Wibbly Wobbly", the Doctor spends the rest of Riley's appearance in the fic deliberately ignoring him as punishment, even as Riley tries to get his attention and prove himself the better choice for Buffy.
• Sparing Them the Dirty Work: Early on, when the Doctor warns Buffy that he has to murder someone to save the world, Buffy becomes determined to kill whomever it is, because she feels he has seen too much darkness already and because... just compare their titles ("The Slayer" vs. "The Doctor"). When Buffy finds out that the person in question is her MacGuffin Turned Human sister Dawn, she is pissed off at him, but as the fic progresses and the chance of saving the world without killing Dawn decreases, Buffy goes back to this mindset: if someone is killing Dawn, it has to be Buffy so that she can't blame anyone else. In the end, Buffy sacrifices herself to save both Dawn and the world instead as in canon.
• Stable Time Loop:
  • Lampshaded by Dawn in "Not a Sword" (although she calls it a "self-fulfilling prophecy"). Buffy has known for a while that Riley is going to try to kill the Doctor in Riley's future and thinks that the Doctor's Excalibur quest is related to it, so she warns Riley that someone is out to kill him. Dawn points out Buffy is just making Riley paranoid enough to be a person who would try to kill the Doctor in the future.
  • In "Shadows", Xander brings up how the Doctor doesn't say anything helpful when they are dealing with the Mayor's Ascension in Paradox, not understanding he is complaining about a future version of the Doctor and he both gives the Doctor the idea to go to that point in time and ensures the Doctor can't say anything helpful when he does that.
  • In the prologue, a regenerating Tenth Doctor gives Buffy a TARDIS key to Dawn. In "Reality", the Doctor finally notices the key that Dawn wears like a necklace and realizes that he is going to give it in his future. Some drama is milked from this as Buffy and the Doctor don't know whether Dawn really will live until the future events mentioned in the future Doctor's letter or the future Doctor only gives the key to complete the loop.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial:
  • In "The Setup", after the Doctor immediately moves on from their kiss to talking about the current problem at hand, Buffy's internal thoughs has this to say.
    It wasn't like she was crushed or upset or near tears or anything. And she was definitely not planning to go home and cry into her pillow for a few hours, like a stupid wussy little… not-Slayer.
  • In "Checkpoint", Buffy's denial of being in contact with the Doctor gets really specific about what is totally not the exact nature of the relationship.
    Buffy: I'd never even think to become best friends with someone the Watchers Council is super-duper scared of.
• Tap on the Head: The Doctor gets knocked out by a hit on the head twice across the fic and wakes up restrained but not injured otherwise.
  • In "Not a Sword", upon realizing that the Doctor is going to do something messed up, Buffy quickly punches him in the head to knock him up.
  • In "Wibbly Wobbly", Riley knocks the Doctor out by surprise-hitting his head with the butt of a pistol, with the Doctor waking up fine although in a position meant for a murder victim.
• Targeted to Hurt the Hero:
  • In "Defender of the Earth", sick of Buffy hiding the Key, Glory tries to kill Buffy's sister Dawn as a message. Dawn is saved by Rose's sudden arrival, however.
  • Discussed in "Shadows". When the Doctor offers to get Glory to target him and lure her away from the Scoobies, they tell him that Glory is petty enough that she will try to attack them or Donna anyway to hurt him by hurting his friends. Later chapters show that the Doctor has been secretly doing it anyway, and their concerns prove to be unfounded.
• Title Drop: Thanks to being the only fic in the series with chapter titles, some chapters have their title dropped.
  • "Not a Sword" gets dropped by the Doctor as he explains Excalibur's true nature to Donna: "It's… actually… not a sword. At all. Just a segment."
  • In "Everything Has Its Time", the Doctor says the reason he can't save all the Slayers whose deaths he witness is "Because everything has its time, and everything dies."
  • The title of "The Setup" gets dropped early as Donna asks what Dawn wants to do about the Doctor and Buffy is a "setup".
  • In "Defender of the Earth", Rose introduces herself to Glory with, "I am the Bad Wolf, the Defender of the Earth."
  • During their talk in "Endgame", Rose asks Buffy, "Endgame for you, too?"
• Twice Shy: Lampshaded during Dawn and Donna's discussion at the beginning of "The Setup". Donna points out the Doctor is someone who won't admit having romantic feelings to anyone, while Dawn says that Buffy is too afraid that the Doctor would reject her if she admits it first. So they end up with an Unresolved Sexual Tension for multiple chapters even after Buffy breaks up with Riley.
• Unwanted False Faith: Glory's minions can't stop worshipping things, including the Doctor for rescuing them from Glory's abuse in spite of his insistence that he is just a regular time-traveling guy and his refusal to be worshipped. When he rescues the remaining minions who stick with Glory until she dies, he is outright furious at their attempt to switch to worship him, since their Just Following Orders mindset is the reason behind Buffy's death. Unfortunately for him, the best they can do is to still call him their god while making god-worship a sin.
  Travorzine: Commandment one. 'What? No! I'm not God! Stop worshipping me!' Commandment five. 'Seriously. Don't worship me. Ever!' Commandment seven. 'Stop taking this down! These aren't commandments, I'm not God, and… no, really, stop worshipping me!'
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?:
  • At one point in "Not a Sword", Buffy hopes that Excalibur turns its victims into something nonhuman so she can kill them in the Doctor's place.
  • In "Wibbly Wobbly", Riley invokes this to justify his attempted murder of the Doctor both to him and Buffy; killing a non-human isn't a murder (he has checked). He is at least consistent about it, since when he shoots Donna by accident instead, he is horrified.
• Wistful Amnesia: Every time the Doctor is erased from her life, Buffy always feels like she is missing something without knowing what she misses is him.
• You Can't Fight Fate: Throughout the fic, the Doctor worries that Buffy's Line Hopper status has fated her into following Elizabeth's footsteps of becoming hateful after the death of her loved one. As the fic progresses, Buffy starts worrying the same thing. It doesn't help that every time the Doctor tries to resolve the conflict his own way, the universe rewrites itself as if to forbid him from choosing a path that doesn't end with him killing Dawn. Ultimately, as established in Paradox, Buffy's actual fate is too jump into Glory's portal, connecting her timeline to Elizabeth's and causing the birth of the Doctor there who will eventually create Buffy's timeline; the universe is preventing the Doctor from doing things that would prevent the portal's opening since it is vital to create the Stable Time Loop that ensures both timelines exist.