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Chapter Nine

She was suffocating.

Eyes, mouth, hands and feet: all were bound and useless and leaving nothing but her ears as a weapon.

A weapon that was equally useless—at least in regards to setting her free and wreaking a little bloody revenge.

Willow had barely registered that Buffy was back when a deafening boom exploded in her head and she was overcome with the most pervasive darkness she’d ever known. It wasn’t until the throbbing pain in her skull finally ripped through her unconsciousness that she’d recognised everything was a mess. Everything was all wrong and even though she could almost feel the dark circles forming beneath her eyes, even though she moaned at the splitting headache that was violently confirming she was still alive, Willow couldn’t form the first thought of what to do about it.

There were too many voices.

There was her own voice, more timid and confused than usual, but she wasn’t speaking due to the filthy rag that had been forced between her teeth and was annoyingly blotting her tongue of moisture. It was all crazy; nothing made sense and for the first time since she’d been a weak, nerdy school girl, the redhead felt paralysing fear. This was the opportunity Buffy had probably been waiting for, though how she’d managed to join sides with Spike was something Willow had no chance of understanding. There was no doubt in Willow’s mind that Buffy had been even more isolated that she had been the past year. Buffy had had no one left.

Except Buffy didn’t seem to be Buffy anymore; she was Liz and Spike had become William and Willow wondered if she was losing it. She’d remained on top of everything since she’d found Xander’s dead body, lying naked and helpless amongst Faith’s filthy sheets. She’d held it together when Giles had been torn from their lives. All that badness was behind her now and she’d been right at the top of everything since, wielding her magic and keeping all threats to her sanity and power at bay. Now, she was tied up and left painfully stretched out on the floor, and Willow knew that she was losing it. Knew that she was helpless against a group intent on taking her power away.

She should be thankful that they apparently felt they’d neutralised her; Willow could make out two separate conversations in two different rooms and it made the urge to be sick against her gag recede a little. None of them had any qualms about walking off and leaving her on the floor. They were all too busy sorting out their own dilemmas and now that the head-pounding agony was waning slightly, she realised this could be to her advantage. Nobody seemed worried about revealing secrets within earshot, and so with a wicked grin that more than likely looked positively macabre around her gag, Willow gathered material that would help her defeat these people. They weren’t her friends. Only one of them had had any relationship with her at all in this world, and while once it would have killed her if anything were to happen to Buffy, now she couldn’t wait to get the back-stabbing bitch out of her life for good.

Buffy, who was now, apparently, Liz.

God, as if having one Buffy vying for leadership wasn’t bad enough, now Willow was expected—or maybe not so much with the blindfold and the rope burn on her wrists—to just hand everything over like she’d been a casual white hat stand in for every villain or apocalypse that had rode into town like a really bad western.

She could hear Bu…Liz’s whiny voice in the kitchen and if she’d been able to snarl she would have. Seriously, the Slayer had outlived her destiny and it was high time Willow received the Hellmouth for all she’d sacrificed this past year. Hell, she’d earned it. She’d paid for it in blood and tears. She shouldn’t have to give any more of herself to the deities just to gain control over what had been hers for months. She’d sacrificed her one remaining friend for the allure of power and there was no way that Willow was going to step aside and let Buffy take it from her now.

Either Buffy.

Herself was a different matter.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

“So, I’m like, really evil in this dimension?” Willow was unable to repress the tremor of fear that such a question conjured in her heart. There were times where she’d fallen into an alluring trap of justifying her actions during the darkest period of her life. She’d not really been evil. She’d done what she’d done because she’d cared too much: about Tara, about humanity. There was so much suffering in the world, within her own body, that the desire to end as much of it as possible had been overwhelming.

Had been essential.

But then she remembered the bits that she had to repeat to herself daily; the ones that forced her to acknowledge that there was nothing good in what she’d done. Trying to return Dawn to a ball of ancient and mystical energy, trying to kill her best friend despite Buffy’s repeatedly saving her life—both times of which Willow could now admit were entirely selfishly motivated. There’d been nothing good, just delusions and half-truths and it made her sick that the path she’d crashed into in her world might have been the stronger path in this one. With a crushing sense of horror, Willow realised for the first time how shallow she really was. She was incapable of handling loss, because with it came insensitivity and a thirst for control. The Willow tied up and left on the floor in the other room could have been her fate—if she’d been untouchable.

“I wouldn’t say evil exactly,” answered Liz cautiously. She turned and looked back through the kitchen door to see the bound legs of her partner-turned-megalomaniac and shuddered. No, Willow wasn’t evil exactly, but she wasn’t entirely good.

“Because you always tie up and blindfold the good guys?” the witch asked hopefully.

Liz’s right eyebrow skimmed her hairline and Willow slumped against the breakfast bar.

“Can’t blame a girl for being all denial-ly,” she muttered in self-defence. Though, relatively speaking, her Buffy probably should blame her if she ever got so big-headed as to forget the disasters of the past by trying to deny culpability for them.

“You seem kind of jumpy about this whole good/bad deal. Is there something I don’t know?” Liz asked, then rolled her eyes at her own obvious understatement. “I mean, there’s a whole other world of stuff I don’t actually know, because, obviously, I wasn’t there. But in particular? Did you go all dark and dangerous like my Willow?” she asked suspiciously.

Eyes wide and thoroughly caught, Willow had to fight hard not to lower her head in shame. That wasn’t her anymore, and she’d paid her penance. No one blamed her for the past; nobody held grudges that she was aware of, and just because she’d tagged along to another dimension, it didn’t make her responsible for this Willow’s decisions. They may be similar and deal with their pain in a really unhealthy way, but she wasn’t the one tied up here.

“I…did…some things,” she began slowly. “But I got better. Giles helped me and—”

And this Willow didn’t have a Giles. She didn’t have anyone but Liz, and as much as it hurt to think it—because admitting it out loud wasn’t going to happen in any lifetime—Buffy wasn’t enough. In her own reality Willow knew that Buffy hadn’t had a hope of scratching the surface of the pain that had welled up to explosive proportions in her body. Buffy had never had what it had taken to bring her back from the brink of a darkness that was propelling her toward insanity.

“My girlfriend was shot right in front of me and I went kind of crazy,” the witch admitted quietly. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault and I guess I was just lucky to have friends like Xander to stop me trying to punish the world.” A pause. Then, “I killed someone. Chased him down like an animal, strung him up and then stripped off his skin.” She flinched at Liz’s look of horror but forced herself to continue. “Sure, he killed Tara—and shot Buffy too. But murdering him in the way that I did…I know that was wrong. That’s something I can never take back. And as much as I hate him for what he took from me, sometimes I wish I could, you know? Sometimes an eye for an eye is just…really wrong.”

Liz had stubbornly refused to step away, despite the churning in her belly that warned her against trusting anyone Willow-shaped. But this woman had been honest with her, and the Slayer had to respect that. She had to admire it. If only her Willow had retained some of the character that had ordered Liz’s former admiration, then their situation might not have appeared so impossible to retrieve.

Suddenly one nugget of the information she’d just received struck her brain cells rather violently and Liz blinked. “Did you say girlfriend? As in…girlfriend?”

The redhead blushed. “I take it your Willow didn’t go down that track?”

Liz looked at her stunned. “My Willow didn’t go down any romantic tracks. She burned tracks. Oz didn’t look back when she went all dark and vengey.”

The witch’s bottom lip trembled and her eyes looked to be shimmering with sudden tears. “She turned away from Oz?”

Liz nodded and felt sympathy melting her caution. “He’s at SU. I see him now and again. You know, mainly around the full moon. Just to make sure he’s okay and all with the caging himself up to protect the less-wolfy folk.”

Willow allowed herself a small grin. So that hadn’t been any different in this world either. But Oz was here. “Did…Has he met Veruca yet?”

Wide-eyed, Liz shook her head violently. “I slayed that skank way before she could get her clutches into Oz. He’s not really been dating. It’s almost like he’s in stasis waiting for Willow to drop the power-kick and see reason.”

Hope seemed to bloom in the redhead’s heart and she shared the brightest smile she had in her arsenal. “That’s good. Really good. There’s hope then.” She seemed to come to a decision within herself, but before she did the sharing thing, she walked past Liz and located Buffy and Spike. Will seemed to be nowhere—until Spike indicated with a jerk of his head the front porch and the cloud of smoke that was coming through the open door.

“Guys, I think we should stay for a while. Maybe help Liz and…and me out?” She’d started off strong, but as soon as her eyes had fallen to the heap on the floor that was identical in everything but power to herself, she visibly wilted. Xander wasn’t here to do the inspiring speech that had brought her back to the rational world—the world that still held people she cared about.

But maybe this time, she could save herself.





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