You're gonna get tired of hearing from me but holy frijoles this is even creepier reading it the second time around! (A sign of good writing/storytelling, of course.) At first it felt a little like STSP but you've ramped it up to nuclear. Really gone "back to the beginning" the way the show promised to do but never quite fulfilled. (Even though there's a lot of things I do love or appreciate about S7, for all it's flaws and shortcomings.)

The idea of Dawn glimpsing a younger Buffy circa S3/GD? Fantastic.