Chapter Text
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Sunnydale, May 2002
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She had just finished draining the books dry when she'd looked up at Anya.
"Don't do this."
She'd paused.
Or what?
Anya had told her one simple idea that had stunned her, had shaken her, and had led her to thump her forehead. With Anya looking at her like a lawyer did a Tyrannosaurus she gathered the ingredients for the spell, made the ritual circle, let herself stand in it, and then invoked the most powerful spell that would ever be seen from her.
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Sunnydale, May 2002
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She had done the second most difficult spell and had done it with a finality that she understood as what it was. The alternative was that future of blood, of 'your shirt', of the monster she'd become. Here, she could turn evil from first saving Buffy's life to saving Tara's and undo the dark future that had reached out to get them all. The staff was akin to that of Toth but different, created by and sustained by her own power. An incantation and then what was one was two. The first had nodded, and had then made her way via flight from the dorms of the University of California-Sunnydale to 1630 Revello Drive. She.....she took a deep breath and made herself walk those familiar halls and pause when she'd reached a familiar door.
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Willow was staring with horror at a bloodstained revenant-looking version of herself. A shirt, one of her favorites, stained with dark blood. Her hair dark as night, her eyes likewise.
"You-"
I am you.
A voice spoke, low and menacing.
You will hate what I have to tell you, but as a sacrifice it will be worth it.
"What do you mean?"
Her dark mirror took a deep breath and then leaned forward.
I know we both long to be back together with Tara. But you can't.
The heartbreak was there, for a moment, and then her eyes went right back to the blood.
"No," she'd wanted to breathe in denial as magic, the power caged within her, had boiled within her veins.
Yes. You have a wonderful few days.
A brief warmth in that face.
And then a bullet. It will be better, and less selfish, to live in a world with Tara alive, and happy without us, than to draw her back into all this, and have her die. I killed a man for killing her.
Roaring in her ears, she was on her side, curled up, eyes closed and trying to scream to take away that terrifying truth.
I don't regret it, either. Warren is dangerous. He needs to die. It's him who killed her. Not by intent, a random, utterly purposeless death. All that heartache, all that pain, all that beauty. And it ends with a spray of blood and two gunshots and glass shattering. But I've thought about nothing else, from the gunshot, to killing him. The arc didn't make sense.
"Then I don't-"
I didn't say it was him. It was what we did. You know exactly what it was.
That brought her up short.
You know what it was. What it really was. It will be a long, slow, important process to show that change, but it shouldn't be about Tara, or anyone else. The thing that dragged us to and then over that abyss? I can see it, now.
Emotionless words had become leaden, weighed with a kind of grim finality.
I can see that, when it does no good. The power we have is dangerous, we cannot be trusted to wield it. Giles abandoned us, our friends hate us, and have every reason to do so. I cannot decide how that works, but I can think that whatever else we do, it won't be with her.
Willow blinked.
What I did, what's within me? All absorbing the magic books did was grant greater knowledge. The power is innate, the variety of spells wielded with it, not so much. What I am, and what I became from grief and anger, that can happen to you. Any strong enough emotional state with great power would do it.
And what happens to our Tara if it's something else? We took memories twice. With power like this.....
Grief, yes, but something else, as she took a deep breath.
"Love."
Of course. Sometimes if you love someone, the best thing you can do is let them live their own lives and enjoy their own happiness.
A long, deep, slow breath and then a nod.
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Tara had stared in blank shock at the bloodstained revenant standing in front of her, one whose eyes swam with dark tears. She registered the sight of blood on that shirt and it took her less than thirty seconds for her eyes to widen.
"H-How?"
A bullet. In the chest. Whatever you do, you cannot go to 1630 Revello Drive, you cannot be there.
"A b-bullet? That s-seems mundane."
It is. A natural death. I cannot undo it. But I can try to prevent it.
She'd given a long stare, pale and trembling, and had then nodded.
"And th-then I get b-back with her."
A long silence.
You shouldn't. Look at me, Tara.
She did, her gaze threading along Willow's body. The blood staining her shirt, dried upon her face and her lips (and her knees threatened to give out). Dark hair, dark eyes, pale skin. And all that beautiful, deadly power that she'd admired thrumming in and through her.
Grief and anger turned me into this. Any powerful emotional state, or shock, would do it. I am dangerous, to you, to Buff, to everyone around me. I hurt you with less power because I was afraid, because I was selfish, and I wasted so many months of what in my future was the rest of your life.
Let me love you, Tara, by letting you live that life, by letting you see, and be, with all of us. Like this?
A pale finger touched the still-wet blood on her shirt.
Never. The rest......
A very long pause. Asking the Goddess to forgive her for the lie, Tara had prepared to only for this strange Dark Willow to give her a long stare.
At least I got to see you one last time......
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Sunnydale, Forest, May 2003
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And then she'd reappeared not in the Magic Box, power drunken in, but in front of a pile of ashes, a bloodless axe that had once been in her back tossed aside. The spell had taken a great toll on her and as both parts of her merged the darkness rose for her and she could hear a voice singing I'm under your spell, how else would it be, that anyone, would ever notice me.....
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1630 Revello Drive, May 6th
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She had made a promise and she had lied, not entirely for the first time. The words were menacing but that meant that someone or something was going to be bringing a gun near Buffy's house, and that was too much risk. She wouldn't be on that floor or in that bedroom, and the thoughts, the words, the promises, they were there. And in the end she had cast a confusion spell, the improved version of the one that she'd used on that day.
In one poetic element she had permitted herself, only Willow would be able to see her, and only if she was looking. She hadn't gotten back together with Willow, in the end. They had spoken, and she had mentioned that long, important process of their being together in each other's lives and figuring out their places, if there was one.
All Willow had done was stare at her shoes and had spoken words that left Tara wondering something it would take her many years to find out for sure. Even if they weren't together she was a Scooby, she had committed herself to fighting the good fight, and her friends, her family were in danger.
And so she'd watched, quietly, as Xander had talked to Buffy. She could read in her aura traces of something very bad that had happened to her and bit her lip. And then the shouts.
"You think you can just do that to me? You think you can get away with that?"
Warren Mears, raving and ranting and her blood ran cold as she saw the gun.
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Upstairs Willow had stared, looking down. Tara wasn't here, the bullet couldn't-she could hear shouting and her blood ran cold and then-
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Too slow, Tara would think dully. She would regret that Willow had rejected her magic, then, because that magic might have saved everyone from what would follow. Shouts, anger, her stepping out and Warren freezing, the magic he'd used telling him someone was there, someone he couldn't see. Buffy holding up her hands and then he'd taken the gun and had pointed it at her.
A shout in Latin as he'd pulled the trigger and there was a flash of light, and that terrible roaring sound that marked six gunshots.
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Magic had spared Buffy Summers. She knew that voice, her Slayer senses certainly did. A strange shade of events past followed, but that gun barrel so terrifyingly close had somehow missed. Every single bullet had. And then the smell of iron hit her, terrifyingly powerful and vivid in a way that it wasn't, quite, except with Angelus. And a more sour stench as well, Warren's body twitching. One of his bullets had gone through his jaw and exited through the top of his skull, a grisly blend of blood and grey matter spewed across the lawn.
At the time they hadn't even questioned where the other five had gone, not at first. Not until Tara had dispelled the invisibility spell, so strangely familiar, and her eyes had craned up to her mother's bedroom, to what a part of Buffy still hoped would again be Will and Tara's. And as Buffy had realized what room she'd followed, at first, in curiosity as much as anything else.
And when she'd opened the door she understood immediately why Tara was running when a smell lingered, not the one of her mother's death, so silent and cold on the couch. Iron. She made herself not run up the stairs because she would have hurt Tara and she'd followed, and had then reached that door where Tara stood trembling, her fingers shaking, and with a slow deliberate gesture Buffy made herself grab the doorknob....
Empowerment Center, San Francisco, 2012
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Willow winced, looking at the cloudy sky, brushing the trace of the old wounds. She had undone a lobotomy done to her by Amy Madison, and other, worse injuries. She could have undone this if she'd wanted to at any time, and would have done so if the mood had taken her. She hadn't. They were proof that time's course had changed.
That strange monster wearing her skin like a cloak had shown her the kind of power that had taken her, ever so briefly, in England when she'd finally been awakened from what was and wasn't coma and what was and wasn't trance. The Coven had saved her life. She took another deep breath, still staring at the sky.
Ten years.
"But-"
She turned to look at one of the women in the Center, tilting her head with her crown braid shimmering, almost, in the light.
"But-"
"Don't Slayers stop fate?"
Willow laughed, ruefully. "To a point they do. But in truth that's both a yes and a no, depending. The fates thwarted come up, the prospects that all of them can happen do, a whole timey wimey wibbly wobbly ball of causality."
Another rueful laugh and a headshake.
"But some things are fated. Buff was shown in a prophecy that she'd die, and she did. And then Xander brought her back."
A long silence lingered.
"Does she know?"
Willow shook her head.
"She knew something. I'm pretty sure she saw the same thing I did."
Her nose twitched. A sensation like sunlight and the warm happiness of a soothing hug, and she found herself looking all the way over at the door. Ten years ago her dark mirror had shown up and had shown her rather convincingly that she could not trust her own power, but that love was letting someone go.
She looked at some of the photos on the wall and took a deep breath. Five years ago, when they had finished that joint mission to restore magic, in the wake of the discovery of that change and the terrifying potential for the world, what they had all done with and to magic, the small changes she had worked for Tara, specifically, to prevent any prospect that she (or anyone else) could treat her like that (and how D'Hoffryn most of all beings rued that, in hindsight, not that she'd even considered that as a possibility) horror done in the past......
Tara had looked at her. They had held hands in that convenience store and Tara had gotten from her a promise, and a very real one.
She looked at the calendar. Five years to the day.
The door opened, and Tara walked in, favoring her with her warmest smile and with a deep breath Willow stood up and took her arm and the two would walk into her office.
"Things fall apart, they fall apart so hard," she had said, years ago. Now, now......the long walk ended, and as she went into her office she slipped off her jacket and hung it up, and let herself sit down, as Tara was reclining on the couch.
"A couch?"
She looked at her ex, and nodded.
"Yes."
She raised an eyebrow.
"Sounds cliche, doesn't it?"
Willow shrugged.
"Well," Tara took a deep breath, looking about as nervous as she had ten years ago, when the gunshots had slammed into the wall, save one that had cracked that window and had by the very narrowest of margins missed Willow's heart. Her magic, reacting on raw primordial instinct, had saved her.
That had made her wake up as the same monster that had spoken to her. That it was raw survival instinct had saved her life. Giles lied, Althenea and Harkness lied, but she knew that kind of lie when she heard it. The only thing she'd remembered about it was that Tara had immediately made her way up there, that she had known and yet Willow had never been able to ask.
"Is ten years a long enough process?"
Willow bit her lip, taking a deep sigh and leaned forward, her mouth opening.