#fix her eventually

(It’s called being a fucking genius)

Anyway, the first bit is now up, and my aim is to post a “chapter” roughly twice a week. Chapters will be 2000-4000 word scenes, each with a single POV character (alternating among Buffy, Faith, Kendra, and Willow), and each AO3 “work” will be a set of chapters corresponding to one canon episode. Episodes 13-16 proceed largely as in canon with escalating divergences, then 17 and onwards move more heavily off the rails.

The door opened and Jenny emerged, still in a black robe, with a black mask covering her face. Everyone turned, expectantly.  “Allow me to present,” Jenny declared, a little sardonically, “the Willows Rosenberg…” behind her, two versions of Willow walked in, and for a moment Buffy couldn’t tell which was which. It wasn’t just that they looked physically identical, even down to matching hair. And it wasn’t even that their clothes were both equally Willow-ish, one in jeans and a striped T-shirt, one in dungarees and tie-dye. It was that their faces, their movements, their whole demeanour finally matched: both radiated the sweet, shy, kind-heartedness that had made Buffy want to protect Willow from the very first day they met.  But it only took her a moment to identify the vampire: the girl in the dungarees was slightly paler, slightly stiller from the lack of breathing or heartbeat. And something in Buffy’s gut told her: enemy. But she had none of Carmilla’s languid menace — in fact, the vampire looked, if anything, like the more shy and nervous of the two, more in need of protection, more like the Willow Buffy remembered from three years ago.  “Hi everyone!” The Willow in the jeans waved awkwardly. “Thanks, um, for waiting. I’d like you to meet,” she swept her arm towards the other Willow, who also waved awkwardly, “my good vampire double, Laura!”  There was silence. Wait, were we supposed to clap? Nobody was clapping. 

“Ok look, Carmilla, I—” that name sounded so wrong and so familiar, but the other Willow must have seen how she flinched, with a strange laugh in the back of her mind, and she corrected herself, “I mean Willow, you just have to listen, I know this is all very strange and scary but I can explain everything, I promise. I have diagrams!” She held up a pad of paper, on which were some very detailed and complicated looking timelines. “Ok.” She managed to squeak out a response. She liked the idea of seeing a diagram. That might help.  “So, first off, uh, magic is real. I know it’s hard to accept at first.” Willow nodded slowly. Yeah, actually it explains a lot. There had been a giant praying mantis at school, and a box of infinite spiders at city hall, and there was… something wrong with this this Kendra girl that she couldn’t quite remember. Plus, of course, there were two of her.  “And, um, due to a spell going wrong… or rather, uh, two different spells both going wrong and the, uh, the interaction, plus the amplification of the Hellmouth, uh… you got duplicated. So there’s two of us.” This all sounded… sort of right? Like it was connecting with memories she still couldn’t fully process.  “So you’re really me? Not, like, a shapeshifting impostor?”  “Yeah! Of course I’m really me!” The other her looked cute when she got angry, the same way Willow had sometimes been told she looked cute when she got angry. “We just, uh, we sort of lived divergent versions of the last three years or so.” “Ok…” She thought she could see the exit, a narrow opening in the rock over there. Something in her head said we can make it out of here...  “Oh, and, as part of the divergence, one of us got turned into a vampire.” Willow’s eyes widened.  “You’re a vampire?” But of course it made sense that this was her as a vampire: more confident, more in control, dressed in black robes like a creature of the night, and radiating, now that she thought of it, an almost palpable sexual magnetism. And that must be why her merest touch produced such intoxicatingly nightmarish visions… But the other Willow was shaking her head apologetically.

“Almost got me that time…” Carmilla had come a stop in front of the wall of photos, gazing thoughtfully at all the different Willows up there. “I guess you are becoming more like me…” Willow swallowed, and decided to advance The Plan.  “I really am.” Carmilla wheeled around in shock as Willow stepped out, wearing her almost identical outfit. Except mine doesn’t open down there… she tried to keep her eyes on Carmilla’s face as it shifted between alarm and hope.  “Willow… you found me.”  “Sure did.” They smiled matching, odd, uncertain smiles at each other. Like a second first meeting, just on equal terms now. “I guessed your door code too. Just had to, uh,” she stepped closer, and Carmilla mirrored her, “take the old me, and flip her upside down.”  “What are you doing here?” The smirking sardonic predator was almost absent: Carmilla looked open, hopeful, vulnerable. She looks like me. And behind her, Willow could see slow, cautious movement, but she dared not focus on it. Even the slightest movement of her eyes might give Kendra away.  “I’ve been thinking about… all the things you said.” She bit her lip. “They've been running through my head and, and maybe… maybe you’re right. Maybe you and me, and the others, should just…” The joy in Carmilla’s eyes made her feel guilty, but she was saved from having to keep lying because then Carmilla kissed her. It’s just like in my dreams. Except the dreams had been real, many of them, and this was real too, lips exactly like her own, even a matching temperature now, warmed by her exertions running here, soft and sweet and hungry. Her own hands on her head and her hands tangled in her own hair. For a moment, it all felt ok: maybe we really can just run away together…  Then the foot came; pain in her fingers and pain in Carmilla’s voice and the impact that shook her but sent Carmilla sprawling. Kendra’s kick had achieved perfect surprise, and now she was lunging, seizing Carmilla, pulling her arms up behind her back, holding her tight.  “You tricked me…” Carmilla seemed dazed at first, but as she realised what had happened, she glared at Willow. The betrayal in her eyes hurt almost as much as Willow’s fingers, which she was shaking and massaging in the hope that Kendra hadn’t accidentally broken them. She had to back away to avoid being caught by Carmilla’s flailing legs.  “You really are becoming more like me.” Then she stopped struggling, twisted her head around (Willow still didn’t understand how she could be so flexible in such restrictive clothing) and tilted it back, angling her mouth up towards Kendra’s.  “Or maybe you just brought a friend, because you wanted to share…”

The nearest vampire thought she was unarmed, but Buffy was slipping a stake into her hand right as he leapt over a table at her, right onto the stake’s point. Then two more were coming at them from the side, and over behind them she saw Angel wrestling a third while Giles guarded his flank, and behind that Carmilla was slipping out the door, except that suddenly she bumped bodily into— “Nobody moves!”  It was some guy in a suit who looked like a Ferengi, and two cops, who suddenly had guns out, pointing them around the room, trying to cover all of the nine other people present.  Nobody seemed to know how to respond to this. Even the vampires froze, looking at each other as if unsure who to take orders from.  “I knew you kids were up to something.” The snide little man took a few steps into the room, with Carmilla yielding space a little.  “Snyder, get out of here.” Buffy sounded worried about him. Snyder. That rang a bell - a teacher? Someone in over their head, it seemed like.  “You're not giving orders, young lady. I suppose you're going to tell me I won't find drugs if I search you and your various… associates…” A note of anxiety was creeping into Snyder’s voice as he took in the fact that most of the people in this room were not students. And had visible fangs.  Then he looked at Carmilla, taking in her outfit and finally recognising her face.  “Rosenberg?” Now he was looking into her eyes. Big mistake, buddy. “Snyder, this is above your paygrade.” His eyes bulged in shock at being talked down to, then narrowed in anger, then slipped into a blank stare. “More importantly, you won’t remember any of it.” And Carmilla just strolled past him, out the door.  Fuck that. Faith started towards Snyder and the door. Then everything went crazy at once.

“Here.” Kendra pointed at the page, and the other two crowded around. “If this translation is to be believed, a Bodhisattva travelled backwards through time to repair the damage caused in an earlier age by his previous incarnation as a vampire.”  Willow stared at the English annotations beside the Pali. “It… it says that he was surprised when the vampire entered a house where he had been staying and slew all the inhabitants.” She glanced up. “Wait, are Bodhisattvas real?”  “Almost everything is real, almost nothing is fully understood,” her master replied, “these annals are probably 50% accurate records of what people at the time thought was happening, but if we believe them then it sounds like by inviting him in, they also invited in the vampire.”   “Right,” Willow was nodding thoughtfully, “because they were the same person, just time-displaced.” “So it is indeed a result of her status as your Doppelgänger.” Kendra concluded.