The Borders of Night Start to Give, Chapter 16/26

[punch_kicker15]

Title: The Borders of Night Start to Give
Author: punch_kicker15
Rating: R
Characters/Relationships: Willow/Giles
Summary: A prophecy leads Giles to practice dark magic once again. This sets him down a dark path, and Willow may be the only one who can help. AU in which Willow’s magic training started earlier than in canon.
Word count: 47,533
Notes: Thanks to scratchingpost1 for generously offering a plot bunny that ate my brain, gilescandy and dragonyphoenix for looking over a very rough first draft and offering helpful suggestions and encouragement. Thanks also to the mods (red_b_rackham and traycer_ and other participants at het_bigbang for all of the help and hand-holding throughout. And special thanks to angelus2hot for some amazing art she created for this story.

Chapter Sixteen

Willow

Willow checked the mixture of herbs and clay, then smeared some of it under her eyes. She knelt down in the circle of sand, and took a deep breath. This was the first major spell she'd done since Tara practically ordered her to date other people. Part of her still wanted to crumple into a ball and wallow in the pain of rejection. But Giles needed information and she could do this. She'd managed to bring her vampire double from another dimension by accident; she was much stronger now.

She reached out to the infinite number of dimensions, searching for a version of herself as an anchor. Versions of herself echoed back, intensifying into cacophony. She sifted through to her other-selves, trying to find one also fighting The First and the Turok Han. There was one dimension where the energy from her aura seemed to burn brighter, and the sense of fighting Turok-Han was strongest. She dove into it.

A room materialized around her, and she blinked. She was in a brightly-lit conference room with a polished marble floor, and there were three of her seated at a table.

The one in the middle smiled at her. "Hi! Welcome to WillowCon 2005."

"2005?" Willow repeated, too disoriented to ask a more coherent question.

"Yep. There can be some temporal shifts with interdimensional travel. Let me give you a name tag--you can be Willow-Red. I thought the color designations would be more humanizing than numbers or letters." Willow found this other Willow unnerving. Was she herself always this weirdly cheery and efficient?

The other Willows had name tags as well: Willow-Green was the one who'd spoken to her, Willow-Orange on the left, and Willow-Blue on the right. This was going to be confusing, so she searched for other distinguishing marks for the other Willows. Willow-Green had her hair cut in a short bob. Willow-Orange had kept her hair the darker natural color. Willow-Blue had longish dyed-red hair, and was wearing that long green skirt that Tara had always liked.

Willow-Green said, "I think we're all here now.” She sat down, drummed her fingers on the table. “We're gathered here to share strategies and insights on fighting The First's army of vampires. I'm Willow Rosenberg-Finn, and we've been developing robots and cyborgs to fight the Turok-Han. We've integrated magic and volunteers from the human and demon populations along with the latest in robotic technology."

Rosenberg-Finn? As in <i>Riley</i> Finn? Willow forced herself to focus on the world-savey part, not get distracted by the distorted mirror alternate-dimensional stuff.

"I'm Willow-Orange, Dr. Willow Rosenberg. I'm working with my colleagues on developing a modified airborne hantavirus to kill the Turok-Han vampires. We think we can design it to be harmless to humans."

"I'm Willow-Blue, Willow Rosenberg. I'm working with a lot of other witches and sorcerers on a reality-altering spell. We're still discussing the details of it, but we're going to change reality to stop the Turok-Han."

Once, when Willow had been fretting about her class rank, Ms. Calendar had told her, “Don’t worry about other people. Just focus on being the best Willow Rosenberg you can be.”

Clearly, she hadn’t become the best Willow Rosenberg she could have been.

Now it was her turn to talk, and she had a big load of nothing to share. Nothing compared to the impressive strategies the other Willows had presented.

She cleared her throat, and said, "I'm Willow-Red, Willow Rosenberg. We just found out The First and the Turok-Han, and um, we're still looking for ideas. This was kind of an introductory step for us. We're not as far along as all of you are."

Willow-Green gave her an encouraging smile. (Or maybe it was a patronizing smile; since Willow usually didn’t see her own facial expressions, she found them hard to read on Willow-Green’s face.) "Why don't we break into pairs and see if we have any helpful details to share one-on-one."

Willow found herself paired with Willow-Green first. Willow-Green chattered away about robotics; Willow tried to think if this was something that she could do in her own world. But Willow-Green was a little older than her, and her robotics stuff sounded way more advanced than any of the dabblings with Ted's hand or the Buffybot. When it was clear that they didn't have any other world-saving topics to discuss, Willow asked, "So, I'm dying to know: is the Finn for Riley Finn? Because there's a Riley Finn in my universe."

Willow-Green grinned. "Yep, that's my husband. My company designs demon-fighting robots for the army, and he was helping us test them in the field. Nothing more romantic than watching robots shred demons into bits. So what's your Riley like?"

"Well, um, he dated Buffy for a while, and well, they broke up, and he's back in the army, I think he's somewhere in Central America now. He's a nice guy." She sort of cringed at the last part. Riley was nice, most of the time, but the way he'd left Buffy had been anything but nice. She hoped that Willow-Green's husband wasn't sneaking around getting bitten by vampires. And that Willow-Green wouldn't freak to find out an alternate version of her husband had slept with Buffy.

"He dated Buffy?" Willow-Green’s brow furrowed. "They must have gotten along in your world better than they do in mine. In mine they’re just super awkward whenever they talk to each other.”

They switched pairs, and Willow found herself talking to Willow-Orange. The germ warfare stuff was even more out of Willow’s league technically than the robotics.

Willow asked, “How long have you been working on those viruses? I’m trying to figure out whether it’s something we could get started in our world.”

Willow Orange tilted her head to the side and looked at Willow over her glasses. “Well, the project I’m working on started back when I was in junior high. I got recruited to help out when I was in high school.”

“So more like a ten-year kind of project instead of something we could just pick up in a few months?”

“Pretty much. I can give you some notes, if you could find some virologists in your dimension, that might help them.”

“Thanks." Since there wasn't anything technical to ask, she decided to indulge her curiosity. “Is there a Riley Finn in your world?”

Willow-Orange laughed. “Yes, he’s part of the Army’s biological weapons division. We’re friends, but I can’t imagine being married to him--I prefer girls.”

“Yeah, me too,” Willow felt an odd sense of relief.

“My girlfriend’s a virologist, too.” Willow-Orange got a dreamy look on her face, like she was still in the honeymoon stage of the relationship. “Winifred Burkle. Do you know her in your world?”

“No, I don’t. But, hey, it’s a big world. She’s probably out there somewhere. Maybe she’s even one of the virologists I can hand your work off to.”

They switched partners again.

"So your main thing is magic, too?" Willow-Blue asked.

"Yeah, that's me. Spell-o-palooza Girl."

Willow-Blue smiled. "Finally, a version of me who will understand the ins and the outs of the spellwork. I mean, completing a dual transmogrification spell is as complicated as the science they do, but I don't think they get that."

At last, a Willow who spoke her language! "I’m really curious about how your reality-altering spell works."

"It's kinda complicated. There was a Hellgod trying to take over the world. One of her victims survived and regained her sanity. But she remembered that rival gods from the other dimension gave her the reality-altering spell in a dream. Part of the spell is in her head and she can't explain it. The gods told her we'll need her to help us perform the spell."

It was kinda nice to know that Willow-Blue hadn’t figured out to do reality-altering spells on her own. Maybe she wasn’t that far behind Willow-Blue in the magic department after all.

Then Willow wondered how close Willow-Blue’s world was to her own. "Is that--Tara Maclay?" Maybe this was her dimension's solution, too, and all they needed to do was wait for the gods to contact Tara.

"Yes.” Willow-Blue answered. “Is there a Tara in your world, too?"

"Yeah, she's my girl." Willow didn't want to get into the whole confusing broken-up-but-trying-to-get-back-together mess with some version of herself that she'd just met.

"Oh,” Willow-Blue said. With a wistful smile, she added, “I dated her for a while, but she broke up with me."

Now Willow felt like a jerk, but there was no way to walk that one back. "Oh, I'm sorry." She cast about for a subject change: "It's good to talk to a me who sounds like me, you know? I mean, the other me’s seem nice enough, but all of the robotic army and virus stuff and being married to a guy--"

Willow-Blue looked a bit sheepish. "I'm, um, involved with a guy now."

Oh, good one, Willow. You can't even talk to yourself without putting your foot in your mouth. She knew she should stop digging, but couldn't help but blurt out, "Was it weird? Going back to Boystown?"

Willow-Blue laughed. "Yeah, I was kind of freaked at first. I mean, I thought I was gay because it was mostly women I was attracted to. And it was hard because I’d dated men in the past, and I didn’t know if that mattered, or if it was who I was attracted to on a daily basis. I finally decided that I could be bi without being attracted equally to men and women, as long as there were some men that I was attracted to."

“Was anybody freaked by it?” Willow thought about Buffy’s reaction to Willow coming out. Explaining that her sexual orientation had changed, again, seemed like a recipe for a lot of uncomfortable conversations.

“It was more about who it was.”

Willow had a moment of panic, wondering if it was someone completely off-limits, like Angel, or someone completely gross, like Parker. But then Willow-Blue was in an alternate reality, so maybe Angel wasn’t Buffy’s ex and Parker wasn’t a pig. “Really? How come?”

“It was Giles, and that got everyone wigged, but they’re over it.” Willow-Blue considered that for a moment, and added, “Mostly.”

Wow. That was just . . . wow.

***

The return trip to her home dimension felt considerably slower and harder to direct than the first trip. It was kinda like trying to swim in Jell-O.

She hit the floor of Catherine’s kitchen with a thump. Her head throbbed painfully, and there was something warm and drippy on her face--oh, yuck, her nose was bleeding. Willow pulled herself up from the floor, grabbed a paper towel, and held it to her nose as she tilted her head back. She tried to send a little healing magic to stop the bleeding, but her magic seemed just out of reach, an itch she couldn’t scratch. She tried again, and still nothing.

Catherine touched her shoulder. “You’ve overextended yourself. You’ll need a few days rest before you can do any more magic.”

“But what if Giles needs--”

Catherine grabbed a dish towel, knelt down, and started scrubbing blood off the floor. “Then he can ask Tara, or do the damn spell himself.”

Willow’s legs wobbled. She grabbed onto the kitchen countertop before they stopped working altogether.

Catherine stood up, grabbed Willow’s arm to steady her. “Pushing yourself to the limit like this--it’s risky. I’d hate to see you make the same mistakes I did.” Her voice was much gentler than it had been a minute ago, and that helped her words penetrate the fog of Willow’s mind and sink in.

Compared to being permanently de-powered like Catherine, a few days of being temporarily de-powered didn’t seem quite so bad. Maybe they’d all get lucky and Willow wouldn’t need any magic on those days.

Chapter 17