Standard Disclaimer
This is fan fiction of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, which were created by Joss Whedon. If you like, you can read my thoughts on the ethics and legality of fan fiction.
[Start reading story from beginning]
Chapter 31
In the months after, a lot of things changed.
Willow returned to the San Jose College of Witchcraft, but it didn’t take long to realize she was making everyone nervous. Apparently they didn’t like getting performance reviews from someone who could kill them with a thought. Sad, but a little relieved, she resigned as President. By unanimous vote, the Board chose Emily to replace her.
With Cathy’s permission, Willow moved to Redwood Falls, Minnesota, to be closer to Xander. After some early friction, she and Cathy grew to be friends. She set up shop as an independent magic tutor, and never lacked for clients.
Buffy retired from Zeta Black. Some of its members left to work for the Watchers’ Council, or do other things, but most remained together, turning the team into an all-purpose demon-fighting unit. She gave the Scythe to its new commander.
She moved to London, where – to the surprise of absolutely no one – she and Spike found a flat together, just a few blocks away from where Spike’s childhood home had once stood. Spike left Peace Village in the capable hands of its assistant director. He and Buffy signed up to work at a local homeless shelter. They both insisted they had no plans to get married, but Willow expected a phone call any week now.
Giles got hired as a senior adviser to the Watchers’ Council, where he made a great nuisance of himself by coming up with better ideas than anyone else. He firmly declared that – with advances in modern medicine – he fully intended to remain a nuisance for another fifty years.
Dawn felt an enormous weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She had her whole family with her: the kids, Buffy, and Giles. Everyone who saw her agreed she seemed happier than she’d been in decades. She still refused to upgrade her prosthetic leg.
And one day, Willow got a message from Illyria, asking if they could meet.
Chapter 32
The place was a karaoke bar by the name of Comitas, a few blocks southwest of Union Square in San Francisco.
From the outside, it was a nondescript beige rectangle nestled between a Korean sushi joint and a discount grocery store. (A simple glamour spell made it invisible to anyone not looking for it on purpose.) Inside, Willow found a sleek, modern lounge with hardwood floors and mellow lighting.
Comitas was packed with demons and humans, all looking rich and sophisticated, wearing what she could only assume was the latest fashion. Willow felt distinctly out of place. She searched the crowd and found Illyria on a plush stool at the bar, examining a martini glass that held some kind of pale green liquid.
“There you are,” said Willow, standing beside her, since there were no open seats. She raised her voice over the beat of the music. “I didn’t know you drank alcohol.”
“It is for you,” said Illyria. “Something called an ‘Emerald City.’ A curious mixture of vodka, various juices, and a high proportion of melon liqueur. The ethanol content should be sufficient to induce mild intoxication.”
Willow grinned and took a sip. “Pretty good. Hey, some people just left, let’s take that seat over there.”
They claimed a fuzzy armless sofa in the back of the lounge. A blue-skinned bonesucker demon in a sparkling jacket was up onstage, doing a not-too-bad rendition of some forgettable pop number from the 2020s.
“I feel bad I’ve never come here before,” said Willow. “I knew Lorne had opened a new bar, I just never got around to visiting.”
“It is my first time here as well,” said Illyria. “I do not normally enter venues that are this…” She glanced around. “Distracting.”
Willow sipped her drink. “So why the invitation? No offense, Miss Burkle, but this really isn’t like you.”
“Would you consider us to be friends?”
“Um. Yes.”
“That was my assessment as well.” Willow laughed, and Illyria went on. “Since you have undergone emotional trauma, and – to a lesser extent – physical trauma, I felt obligated by our friendship to provide solace.”
“You were worried, and wanted to cheer me up. Illyria, that’s sweet.”
“Agreed.” Illyria was watching the demon sing. “But I am uncertain how best to comfort you. My talks with others suggest I could temporarily distract you from your trauma, or provide superficial, asinine reassurance. Would you like either of these options?”
“Uh, they sound really tempting, but I’ll pass.”
“In that case,” said Illyria, “I shall address the causes of your suffering directly. First, your interaction with Tara. The pain of losing her will never disappear, and I cannot alter that.”
Another sip of her drink. Willow ought to have been hurt, or offended, or something, but she couldn’t help smiling again. This was genuinely Illyria’s idea of comfort. And in a way, it was more comforting than the vague platitudes she’d gotten from others.
“Second. Your decisions regarding the use of magic. I do not believe you have cause for regret. You were guided by conscience and love, and thus, your actions were as ethical as can reasonably be expected.”
Willow’s eyebrows went up. “Really? That’s your standard for ethics? I figured you’d come up with something more…precise.”
Illyria looked at her. She never smiled, but she seemed pleased somehow. “I attempted to do so. I tried to define a set of moral axioms and deduce the rightness or wrongness of your action. But the choice of axioms proved difficult, and even with a given set, I found their application to real-world problems to be a nontrivial affair.”
“Logic is tricky,” Willow translated.
“Having failed in that, I next surveyed the pronouncements of traditional authorities. But I found most of these to be irrelevant or demonstrably false, and many of the ones that remained contradicted each other. For instance, I am told that ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’ by individuals who worship an omnipotent, benevolent God.”
“The average IQ of the room has gone up ten points. Well?”
“Eventually,” said Illyria, “I returned to my original foundation for ethics. I asked myself what Wesley would do. Would he use a power like yours to dispense executions on a daily and global basis?” She gazed at Willow with piercingly blue eyes. “I do not believe he would. I believe he would be guided by conscience and love.”
Willow finished off the Emerald City and didn’t answer right away.
The song finished, and now Lorne walked onstage. He wore a suit – no surprise – garish crimson but otherwise classy. He didn’t look a day older. Willow seemed to recall that Pyleans aged very slowly.
She stood up and waved vigorously, dragging Illyria to her feet. He looked surprised at first, but he grinned and winked at them.
“A shout out to Red and Blue, the two lovely ladies in the back. Mike, their drinks are on the house.”
He tapped a few buttons on the karaoke stand. The music started, and he began to sing in a rich, effortless voice.
Fly me to the moon
Let me play among the stars
Let me see what spring is like on
Jupiter and Mars
Willow sat down with Illyria. She said, “Wesley was a good man, but you can’t just base your decisions on what someone else would do. Nobody’s perfect.”
Illyria tilted her head. “Not even Tara?”
She doesn’t know what she’s doing to me, thought Willow. She thinks we’re just talking.
“No,” said Willow. “Not even Tara.”
“If she is imperfect, in what ways do you wish to change her?”
Fill my heart with song
And let me sing forevermore
You are all I long for
All I worship and adore
Willow frowned. “I don’t want to change her,” she said. “That’s not what I mean.”
“You directly altered reality, creating a new reality better suited to her survival. In effect, you considered Tara more perfect than the universe itself.”
“I don’t…” She shook her head. “It’s not exactly…”
“I have hypothesized,” said Illyria, “that perfection is a relative trait. Wesley is perfect, relative to me. Tara is perfect, relative to you. Dawn – and later, the vampire project – were perfect to Buffy. The pursuit and defense of our ideals is the meaning of love.”
“You make it sound so romantic,” murmured Willow. But she was lost in thought.
In other words, please be true
In other words, in other words
I
Love
You.
Everyone applauded, though half the crowd had probably never heard the ancient song before. Lorne bowed and bowed again, then hopped off the stage and made his way to ‘the two lovely ladies.’
“Sugarcakes,” he said to Willow, “you ought to call first. I could’ve had a private room lined up and everything.”
She smiled. “I’m having a good time right here.”
“So what’s shakin’? What brings you to my humble establishment? Do you want me to read your aura?”
“No,” she said. “No, that’s okay. I think I finally know who I am.”
“Must be nice,” said Lorne. “So who are you?”
Willow was still smiling.
“I’m Tara’s girl.”
[The End]
Brian D. Buckley 
This was such a wonderful read! I felt like I was saying farewell to the Scooby gang again (and the Angel crew!). You all got their quirks and sense of humor so perfectly. I definitely got choked up when reading… Willow meeting Tara, Illyria’s beautiful thoughts on perfection and love, and all the things the group has been up to and has experienced. Thanks for putting this up!
Thank you very much! This took a lot of work and the target audience is pretty small, so I’m thrilled that it connected with you. 🙂 I really appreciate the comment.
Wow, this was so, so good! Such a breath of new, fresh air. Between how long it has been since the end of the show and how few really good stories for BTVS exist, I needed it, lots! I like your characterizations, I adore your dialogue and I love the plot you made. I feel like some moments could have used a little more fleshing out, but I get that it’s not your writing-style and no one can ask you to dedicate more than exactly as much time as you want to a work of fan fiction you won’t get a dime for.
I also read your thoughts on fanfiction, and I agree 100%. I would go further and say that even in the few instances people manage to make money out of fan fiction (I’ve… heard of writers who will create saucy stories for a paying audience, but I don’t know much about that…) they don’t do so by taking revenue that would otherwise go the copyright owner. Though I guess the owner should get a cut. Do you think Joss got any money from the all of the ‘Vampire Layer’ porns made back in the day? Lol. But I digress.
In the depts of my heart I think authors who don’t approve of fanfiction don’t understand the experience of reading and writing it. Though I might be just trying to excuse the fact I read and write GOT stories (let’s not tell George).
I also would really advise you to post this story on other platforms, if you haven’t. Maybe you have and I just didn’t find it because I’m always just searching fics by pairing, but I had to stumble on this on Reddit to read it, and I’m constantly looking for good stories.
Back to talking about the fic, I have to say, Willow is my favorite BTVS character and it was pure joy to read her here. I love her for herself, but I also love her power and how it’s portrayed. I’m so grateful for how you brought her back and focused on that part of her. The chapters in which she let her power loose and then was exposed for it were awesome! I have to say I saw the twist coming, but that’s simply because I know that someone who made Willow the lead in a gen-fic loves her character, and thus, can not bear the thought of her being powerless indefinitely. Especially if Tara is there in need of saving.
Also, Goddess Willow who is ten times stronger than most Gods and doesn’t like being called a Goddess? God damn it that was sooooooooo satisfying.
I feel like the part of this that resonated the least with me was actually, unfortunately, Buffy. Her character here was just such a far cry from the one in the show that it was hard to visualize her, though when she was with Dawn, Joyce and Spike her image became a lot less blurry in my mind. But I think that’s part of the point. Her own closest friends and family didn’t recognize the person she became at first.
And a semi-unfair critique is that the villain was very much boring. But, oh, well. You can’t have super-extra-mega-powerful Willow and an actual good, threatening villain in the same story, unless she is the villain herself. And it was not the point of this story. It did what I imagine you set out to do incredibly well: it showed the scoobies’ lives and their coming apart, only to promptly make them come together. They needed only a common enemy and Abbadon or whateverhisnameis did his job of that. The misgivings Willow had with using her power also make all the sense for her character, so it doesn’t feel like it’s there solely to fill a plot point. Though I wonder if Willow can even die, at this point. Or if she will retain power even after death. Do you have a headcanon for your own fic? I would love to hear it.
Anyways, this is waaaayyyy too long. Sorry about that. Thank you so much for having created and shared this. It’s awesome and so well-done, you are a great writer! I will search for more of your stories around here now. Also, if you know any good BTVS fics (particularly willowy ones) let me know? I’m a fan in need.
Ok, that’s that, bye!
Thanks Lorena! I’m glad you enjoyed it and really appreciate all the feedback. You’re right, I haven’t put this story anywhere else besides this site, but posting it to a fan fiction site is an idea I’ll consider.
I love Willow — she’s probably my second-favorite character, behind Buffy. I can understand not liking so much the person Buffy had become. I was trying to think of ways that people might change over the decades. And yeah, the villain was sort of a placeholder obstacle rather than a real character — more like a hurricane, something impersonal.
My headcanon is that Willow can still die … but this being the Buffyverse, who knows what might happen? 🙂
I don’t have any other Buffy fic authors to recommend (although I’m sure there are lots of good ones out there). All my other Buffy creations (stories, music videos, etc.) can be found here:
Thanks again!