Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

1) No one on the show has ever been petrified

“... and apparently, the mayor had had Sophie – that’s the gorgon - bound in some cavern outside of Sunnydale, and Faith found this out, and freed her before coming to work for him,” Dawn was eagerly explaining the situation to Buffy. “And then, when you and Faith were fighting ‘cause Faith had kidnapped me and mom, Sophie came back and petrified you, because she’s a gorgon and petrifaction is what she does.”

“And then what happened?” Buffy slowly asked, vividly remembering the sudden black-out that came over her as she was fighting Faith all over the Summers’ living quarters.

“Well, mom was rather mad. Being kidnapped was one thing, seeing you petrified before her – our - eyes was quite another. Consequently, she got real mad and gave Faith and Sophie a very stern talk.”

“She did?”

“Yeah, remember the talk you two had about Spike in the kitchen with the cocoa? It was in that vein... Anyways, both Sophie and Faith apologized, Sophie even put away her ‘grrr’ face – it’s kind of like Spike and Angel’s, only scarier and, well, petrifying, and they promised to turn you back to flesh-“

“Which they did.”

“Yeah, but it was real hard. Apparently, only a Pegasus could restore you back to flesh after Sophie turned you to stone, and only one who is pure of heart and noble of intentions could capture one of those, so Faith and Sophie needed help, and I couldn’t help until it was spring break, so we kind of waited until then. Oh, and then the soldier guys – remember them? – created this Frankenstein monster, and we had to stop it, and then a hell-goddess came to town and we had to stop her.”

“Dawn. How long?”

“About two years, on the average.”

“Two years?”

“Yeah, but Faith is real good as a Slayer, and besides, um-“ Dawn visibly hesitated about telling Buffy the next part, and Buffy saw it.

“Dawn. Out with it.”

“Well, according to Giles it’s an unfortunate, but unavoidable side effect-“

“You’re stalling, Dawn.”

“Buffy. You’re no longer the Slayer and mom says that now you’ll be able to catch-up on your studies and be the daughter that she always wanted you to be-“

Buffy fainted.

-Or-

“... and apparently, the mayor had had Sophie – that’s the gorgon - bound in some cavern outside of Sunnydale, and Faith found this out, and freed her before coming to work for him,” Buffy explained to Willow, who grew more and more apprehensive as the story unfolded. “And then, when Faith confronted the two of us at the U of S campus, Sophie decided to help and sort of petrified you on the stop. Would have petrified me too, if Faith didn’t knock me away.”

“Then what happened?”

“Well, everybody scattered except for me and Faith ‘cause Sophie, when she goes ‘Grrr’, she goes not only petrifying, but really glittering and intimidating even from a distance, so me and her and Faith had a conversation to ourselves, and then the three of us kind of dragged you over to Giles’, and he told us that only a Pegasus could restore you back to flesh, and that only the ones with purest of heart and the noblest of intentions could capture one of those, and so Tara obviously had to go with them, and Giles also because he knew how to get there-“

“Get where?”

“To the land where Pegasi roam,” Buffy stated as if it was obvious. “Tara ‘cause she had the prerequisites, Giles because he knew how, Sophie because she was a native, and Faith because Sophie asked her to, very politely,” Buffy hesitated, and Willow clearly noticed it:

“What is wrong, Buffy?”

“Well, nothing went wrong with them,” Buffy said guiltily, “they came back and brought a Pegasus who restored you back to flesh. Only – and Giles here tells me that it is an unfortunate side effect – this restoration means that you no longer have any magic in you, and won’t able to use it ever again.”

“What?!”

“But on the plus side,” Buffy hurriedly spoke, “Tara and Anya can deal with magical emergencies of the supernatural side, and no Wiccan studies means that you can now devote your full time to your U of S studies, because you’ve been expelled due to petrifaction, so all has worked out, right?”

Willow had a nervous breakdown and fainted.

2) Nothing (too) exciting has ever happened to Joyce

“Giles, you’re babbling,” Buffy said with a nervous tick, “and you never babble. What has happened?”

“Buffy,” Giles said with a big gulp of air, “when you run away this summer, your mother had received several Native African masks for her gallery, and one of them was a very real and magically powerful mask of Anansi, the spider god.”

“I do so not like what you are getting at here, Giles,” Buffy said as a trickle of fear skid down her back.

“And you take too long to make sense, either,” Joyce agreed, as with clicking of her 8 legs, she entered the room.

Buffy just stared in mute terror at the 8-foot, 200-pound, 4-eyed monstrosity that her mother had turned into.

“Now Buffy,” Joyce continued to speak in her old voice, “I am aware now that you’re a Slayer and all that, but I am afraid that now our family dynamics will have to change and you will have to grow-up quicker than you thought-“

But here Buffy could remain aware no longer and mercifully fainted.

3) There were no lycanthropes other than Oz

“...All that I am saying is that there were dozens of other guys out there at the construction site at Gus’s grave but I am the one who ended up cursed!” Xander complained loudly at the Summers’ family’s Thanksgiving table. Even more unfortunately, he chose to complain to Spike who was hardly sympathetic to his plight.

“Here,” the blonde vampire said flatly, “have some honey mustard lest your situation becomes too unbearable.”

Xander roared and shifted into his ursine form as he whirled onto Spike. The chipped vampire, unable to harm humans, was just as eager to take on the new werebear in a wrestling match, and the two began to roll around the dining rooms.

...In the end, it took all of Buffy’s strength to keep them apart and by then she wasn’t too gentle with either of them. It was a family Thanksgiving that no one forgot for a long, long time.

4) There was no (official) occasion when Willow’s spells had backfired on her

“Willow,” Giles almost clucked from indignation, “I got to say that I was wrong when I thought that Amy turning herself into a rat was the worst thing that an aspiring witch could turn herself into. Did you have to prove me wrong?”

“No,” Willow resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at the currently dour Englishman, “I didn’t. But the enchantment sounded really cool and I thought that it would be actually harmless.”

“Well, it is not!” Anya said sharply before Giles could. “It’s obviously not harmless, and the restoration spell to drive it out is actually costly: flippers of dolphin, fur of selkie, legs of a frog – and the scales of golden carp of Heavens. Hmm, Giles, you said that Faith was a criminal, right? Maybe we can break her out of jail so that she gets these scales for us, because that’s what criminals do, right? They break in and steal things, especially valuable ones?”

“Anya!” Buffy spoke up sharply as the mention of the other Slayer raised her hackles instinctively. “Don’t joke! Faith is the last person we need at this hour!”

“Perhaps,” Giles agreed, nipping this argument in the bud, as he glared down at Willow, “but we may have to, in the long run, before the spell becomes permanent, and Willow’s transformation is permanent.”

Willow gulped air and slid under the surface of the water-filled tub. So now she was a mermaid and could breathe water through gills. Big whoop. Stupid spell.

And if it were to be permanent, what would she do?

5) There weren’t any non-human Scoobies (besides Angel, and Spike and Anya don't really count)

“Ah, you must be Tara – I’m Faith.”

Tara whirled around and saw another young woman of apparently the same age as her own leaning casually against a tree.

“Yes, I am Tara,” she managed to say, “and you-“

“-are apparently evil and know your nature.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Tara said, as she nervously tried to back-paddle from the spot.

“Maybe,” Faith drawled out, and something in her voice made Tara stop in her tracks, as she turned and stared at the other girl. Brightly green eyes met dark black ones and held.

“Now,” Faith continued, as she rapped her knuckles lightly against a trunk of an oak tree next to which she stood, “I truly hate to impose my will on another person, but right now, I am out for revenge on Buffy, and you may be just the person to aid me.” She rapped her knuckles again, this time not so lightly, and the tree shuddered from her strength.

“Fine, I will help you, woodrot your soul!” Tara spat out.

Faith nodded, her face impassive, her eyes languidly dark once again. “Thank you, young dryad; I will not force you to do anything too evil.”

Forced to literally choose her life over her principles, Tara just nodded.

6) What if Cordelia’s wish was different?

“...And I wish that everyone could see Willow Rosenberg as the shy wallflower she claims to be!” Cordelia spat out her wish.

“Granted!” Anyanka nodded, her true visage briefly coming to the fore.

“Giles!” Xander and Buffy yelled a few moments later, as they rushed into the library.

“What is it?”

“We just sat down for class and Willow turned into this!” Buffy wailed, as she thrust a small, potted flower into Giles’s arm.

Giles sat down with a look suggesting that he would rather have a heart attack than deal with this, but he had no choice.

And in her new flower pot, Willow the heliotropium just bloomed quietly.

7) What if Angel’s curse was different (from canon?)

“Willow!” Buffy quickly scurried into her best girlfriend’s room, “I have so messed up!”

“Buffy?!” Willow exclaimed just as quietly, “what have you done?”

“After Angel rescued me from the judge, me and him, he and I, we-“

“You didn’t!”

“We did! And then he turned into this-!” Buffy thrust the birdcage in her hand up to Willow’s face. Inside the container, a large black and white magpie was chattering excitedly. “Help? Ideas? Willow, I’m traumatized here!”

“I’m sorry,” Willow replied as she did her best to contain her giggles, “let me just... catch my breath.”

Buffy pouted.

8) Ethan has never actively stood-up to Giles

“...And all you need to do to return all party-goers to normal,” Ethan wiped some of his blood from his face, “is to smash the statue of Janus.”

“You’re honest?” Giles said suspiciously.

“Yes.”

And Giles smashed the wax statue. There was a flash of waxy-white light, the echo of a magical backlash, and in place of a bespectacled Englishman a small poplar sapling began to acquire moisture through its roots.

“I finally got you now, Ripper,” Ethan nastily smiled.

9) Nobody knows how Ethan dealt with the Initiative

“We’re onto you!” Riley sternly told the Chaos Mage. “You won’t be able to do any of your tricks here!”

Ethan just smiled, and perhaps it could be easily considered a reply as a semi-transparent mist began to seep through the subterranean complex’s air vent systems. Riley noticed and whirled around to raise an alarm, but it was too late: he was shrinking, his limbs were stiffening...

“Oh Ripper,” Ethan said few moment later, after it was all over, “you never learned that no prison could hold me.”

At his feet, a big greylag goose – formerly a commando for the Initiative, named Riley Finn, made a mournful honk, echoed by his compatriots, now also all sorts of wild fowl species. The crushed feathers of the Stymphalian words have done their work well; all people except for Ethan were now birds.

Ethan Rayne just smiled a little smile and left, eager for his next rematch with Rupert Giles.

10) Darla had relatively very little screen time in canon (on BtVS)

“Mom, I am home!” Buffy called out as she entered the house – and froze. Her mother was sitting in the Summers’ family kitchen, next to another smallish blonde woman, whose face sprouted the trademark bony ridges of a vampire.

“Ah, hello my dear!” Joyce turned to Buffy, her own eyes yellow and faced ridged. “How was your patrol? Please, sit down and let me introduce you to Darla who will be a very important person in our lives from now on.”

Buffy took a big gulp of air... and fainted.

11) Willow could have defeated Glory in other ways

“All right, who ordered Armageddon?” Glory asked haughtily, as she watched Willow stride into her room. “Do you think you can hurt me, little witch?”

“You hurt Tara,” Willow growled through her teeth, “so I bring you pain!” A greenish-white dart of magical energy flew from her finger into Glory’s well-endowed chest.

Glory blinked. “Little witch, your bark is worse than your bite – that didn’t hurt at all-“ The hell-goddess stiffened and fell silent, as bark covered her mouth and her flesh turned to wood.

“Yeah, it didn’t hurt at all,” Willow chuckled grimly, as she looked at the gnarled myrrh tree that Glory has turned into. “Guess I will just have to do something different.”

With these words – and an appropriate arcane gesture – Willow conjured a lightning bolt that blasted the immobile tree into smithereens, thus restoring Tara’s sanity back to normal.

12) Dawn’s impromptu spell does bring Joyce back - wrong

“Dawn!” Buffy exclaimed angrily. “What have you done?”

“I brought mother back!” Dawn replied in equally bad mood. “How’s that for an answer?”

Before Buffy could reply, the front door off was torn off its hinges and in came a 9-foot-tall 500-pound heavy Joyce with pale-greenish skin.

“Now girls!” Mrs. Summers thundered in her new loud voice. “Stop fighting with each other and behave!”

Both Dawn and Buffy fainted.

13) Buffy did come back wrong

“Fix me,” Buffy thundered, “now!”

“We will, we will!” Anya gushed, as Willow fluttered in a grip of a 32-foot-tall female colossus with blonde hair and skin the colour of flint. “But please put Willow down. We need her - unfortunately.”

Back in Buffy’s grip, Willow gulped. Somehow she began to suspect that even if they do fix Buffy, she would have still a mountain of trouble to get through.

Starting with the very obviously angry Anya – and Tara.

14) Buffy was never a Slayer

“Mr. Giles,” Buffy said with a slight growl in her voice, “I hate to tell you this, but you’re wrong. I am no Slayer – I am a werewolf. Deal with it!”

Giles paled.

Chapter Text

“...All that I am saying is that there were dozens of other guys out there at the construction site at Gus’s grave but I am the one who ended up cursed!” Xander complained loudly at the Summers’ family’s Thanksgiving table. Even more unfortunately, he chose to complain to Spike who was hardly sympathetic to his plight.

“Here,” the blonde vampire said flatly, “have some honey mustard lest your situation becomes too unbearable.”

Xander roared and shifted into his ursine form as he whirled onto Spike. The chipped vampire, unable to harm humans, was just as eager to take on the new werebear in a wrestling match, and the two began to roll around the dining rooms.

“Enough!” Buffy pulled the two wrestlers apart, her irritation compensating for the gap in strength between her and the two men. “Seriously, Xander, stop jumping onto Spike whenever he says something typical of him, and Spike, stop getting Xander into those situations. Seriously, do you enjoy in him getting the upper hand over you all the time?”

To everybody’s uneasy surprise, Spike appeared to be seriously thinking over Buffy’s more rhetorical question. “Well, I don’t know,” he finally admitted. “Between Rupes’ musings about his messed-up love life and my own lack of any since Drusilla left me... I am really scared about thinking an answer to your question, you know?”

There was a pause, and then Xander went pale and fled into Summers’ family’s bathroom. “Xander!” Buffy yelled, almost shrilly, and then whirled to Giles. “And why exactly where you bonding with Spike over your love lives?”

“We weren’t,” Giles looked faintly ill. “He actually brought it on first, when he began to discuss his life with Drusilla-“

“Lies! You asked me about it for your paper for the Watchers Council or whatever!” Spike yelled back.

Slowly, Buffy’s face began to turn red. “You!” she spoke to both men and neither. “You! And Xander – what’s that smell?”

“That’s him exactly,” Anya said sagely. “The bears, when they are scared, tend to have the runs, and-“

“Okay, new plan,” Buffy said, snarling. “First, I get a plunger and run it up Xander’s ass-“

It was at that moment that Xander appeared back on the scene, now pursued by the ghost of Gus, who was firing arrows at Xander’s backside. Something snapped in Buffy, and snapping off a leg of a chair, she began to whale it at the Amerindian, yelling something indescribable, full of sound and fury, clarifying nothing.

“Ah, the power of a woman,” Anya said a trifle wistfully, “now I remember why I never bothered the Vampire Slayers – I liked them. If I knew that Buffy was the Vampire Slayer back when I granted Cordelia’s wish, I wouldn’t have granted it instead.”

“Sure, and the fact that that wish cost you your demony powers doesn’t mean anything to you either,” Willow said sceptically, and then she paused. “Shouldn’t we help Buffy instead?”

At the same time as Willow asked this, Buffy yelled something along the lines of, “and you can go back from where you came!” and run the ghost through with the chair’s leg. There was a sudden clap of thunder, a sharp smell of ozone, and the ghost vanished... simultaneously with Xander returning to normal.

“Xander! You’re normal!” Willow exclaimed happily, and then frowned. “You are normal, right?”

“He smells as a regular human,” Spike shrugged, “guess the curse is over.”

“Hah, too bad – no more wrestling with me, Spike,” Xander said smugly.

“Why – you’re going to miss it?” Spike said, dryly.

“No!” Xander blanched, and sat down on the nearby chair. Unfortunately, that chair was missing a leg, which was driven into the floor, where Buffy had slayed Gus. Consequently, Xander abruptly fell onto the floor with a loud thump, causing Spike to laugh some more.

Buffy opened her mouth to say something to Spike, to warn or to threaten him, but then she smelled once the smells from the bathroom and closing her mouth shut instead.

“...Everybody out,” she finally said. “This Thanksgiving is cancelled, okay? I have reached my limit today, and if you won’t co-operate, then you better leave. And Anya? That’s not a rhetorical statement.”

“Just what I wanted to know,” Anya nodded and looked at the others. “Well, do we take Buffy on her statement or what?”

To be continued?

Chapter Text

“Willow,” Giles almost clucked from indignation, “I got to say that I was wrong when I thought that Amy turning herself into a rat was the worst thing that an aspiring witch could turn herself into. Did you have to prove me wrong?”

“No,” Willow resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at the currently dour Englishman, “I didn’t. But the enchantment sounded really cool and I thought that it would be actually harm-less.”

“Well, it is not!” Anya said sharply before Giles could. “It’s obviously not harmless, and the restoration spell to drive it out is actually costly: flippers of dolphin, fur of selkie, legs of a frog – and the scales of golden carp of Heavens. Hmm, Giles, you said that Faith was a criminal, right? Maybe we can break her out of jail so that she gets these scales for us, because that’s what criminals do, right? They break in and steal things, especially valuable ones?”

“Anya!” Buffy spoke up sharply as the mention of the other Slayer raised her hackles instinc-tively. “Don’t joke! Faith is the last person we need at this hour!”

“Perhaps,” Giles agreed, nipping this argument in the bud, as he glared down at Willow, “but we may have to, in the long run, before the spell becomes permanent, and Willow’s transformation is permanent.”

Willow gulped air and slid under the surface of the water-filled tub. So now she was a mermaid and could breathe water through gills. Big whoop. Stupid spell.

And if it were to be permanent, what would she do?

There was a knock on the door. “Who is it now,” Buffy muttered crossly, “if it’s a friend of Spike or Harmony, there’s going to be slayage-“ she flung open the door.

An entity that looked rather like one of the orcs from the latest Peter Jackson’s movie stood there. “Yes?” Buffy said a trifle cautiously, not really sure if the newcomer was a vampire or not. “What do you want?”

“I’m here to see Giles,” the orc grumbled in moderately accented English.

“Of course you do. Why?”

“Shop business.”

“Giles! There’s an orc here to talk to you about the shop!” Buffy yelled. “What have you been doing?”

“Excuse me?” Giles emerged from the insides of the apartment complex, rubbing his glasses. “What orc – Buffy, that’s not an orc, that’s a-“

“Sign here,” the orc that was not an orc rumbled, “Delivery from the higher-ups to you.”

“A delivery? I never ordered anything-“ Giles took a look at the list that the delivery man (loosely speaking) was thrusting to him. “Hah. How did you know that we needed this?”

“By the agreement of long ago, when the prodigal daughters of Zeus, Ata Discordia Eris and Melinoe of the Saffron Robes stood shoulder to shoulder with Mother Hydra against the gorgons, the shapeshifters of the night, their children can help one another and settle things... peacefully,” the orc rumbled. “An avatar of Melinoe has contacted the higher-ups somehow or other, and told them of her vision. They divined for themselves, and eventually agreed to a trade.”

“Right,” Giles said slowly. “That avatar – she’s not blonde?”

The not-an-orc shrugged.

“Well, fair enough,” Giles said after looking at the paperwork. “And I see that we’re still getting billed. That explains some things, I suppose. Where do I sign?”

“Giles!” Buffy exclaimed incredulously, but quieted down after catching his look – the semi-retired Watcher was clearly even more unhappy about this than she was, but whether about the news about the trade or the bill she could not tell. Therefore, she decided to keep quiet, as Giles filled the papers and accepted the package.

“Giles, what is that all about?” As soon as Giles closed the door Buffy whirled on him. “We do not accept-“

“Buffy, this is the best choice for the moment. Tell Tara and Anya to begin to prepare the counter spell to cast on Willow – these are the scales that we lack. As for myself, I need to go to Los Angeles and talk to Wesley.” Giles looked unhappier by the moment. “And by the way, Buffy, you didn’t have any Slayer dreams recently?”

“No,” Buffy cautiously said, “Giles, what is going on?”

“The right question would be – what Willow has started?” Giles slowly, “but first I have to talk to Wesley about some Watcher topics.”

“Can I come along?”

“No, you’ll have to oversee the spell – and if something goes wrong, call me,” said Giles and left to prepare for his L.A. trip.

To be continued...

Chapter Text

“Fix me,” Buffy thundered, “now!”

“We will, we will!” Anya gushed, as Willow fluttered in a grip of a 32-foot-tall female colossus with blonde hair and skin the colour of flint. “But please put Willow down. We need her - unfortunately.”

Back in Buffy’s grip, Willow gulped. Somehow she began to suspect that even if they do fix Buffy, she would have still a mountain of trouble to get through.

Starting with the very obviously angry Anya – and Tara. Tara... Willow frowned deep in thought. If she got out of it alive and not crippled, she and Tara had to clear the air between each other, whether they or everyone else liked that idea or not. Admittedly, right now the rest of the Scoo-bies probably leaned towards liking this idea, at least initially, so-

“Buffy? What are you doing? Get down and put Willow down this instant!” Dawn Summers, the sister of the late (or whatever her current condition was) Buffy finally made an appearance, as did Spike, ‘the other vampire with a soul’. “What’s wrong with you, anyways?”

“Willow used the urn of Osiris,” Anya replied in her matter-of-factly style before anybody else could. “Egyptian resurrection spells are notoriously for leaving the resurrected being coloured differently than before, and as for the size-“

A wave of a rather noxious stench – a mix of acid and chlorine, really – hit them, and when it dissipated, a much more Buffy-sized Buffy stood in a middle of a circle of dead grass and other plants, and also Willow. Who was also standing and clearly alive, though obviously sickened, somewhat.

“Willow,” Tara said rather reluctantly, “we have to talk.”

“Fine,” Willow agreed to Tara’s suggestion with a surprising ease. “Come on, then, it’s confrontation time. Do you want to have a mini-showdown here or somewhere else?”

“Um, somewhere else?” Tara somehow didn’t seem too enthused about the whole idea, certainly no more so than Willow. “And it’s not a confrontation, really.”

“It’s a war of words, fine,” Willow shrugged. “Dawn, Spike, please take Buffy home and apologize on my behalf once again.” Upon saying this, she and Tara walked arm and arm away from the cemetery into the shadows.

“Er,” Giles began to speak, but was interrupted by Xander:

“Don’t. When my parents fight, they prefer to do it in private, unlike the more distant relatives of mine, by the way.”

Giles, of course, was not likely to back down so easily, but his eyes had also caught something else, and that something else was perhaps even more important than Willow and Tara’s impending ‘war of words’, and so he decided to back down instead.

“Fair enough,” was with what he responded instead. “Now let’s go to my place and do some research instead.”

“We would rather-“ Anya began but caught Giles’ look and decided to give-in, for a change. “Oh, fine!”

“Now Buffy,” Dawn was telling her dead sister, or rather, babbling nervously. “There’re some changes taking place while you were away-“

“What? Willow and Tara moving in to keep you company?”Buffy asked innocently even as she drilled Dawn with her gaze.

“Um,” Dawn winced, as she and Spike opened the door to the Summers’ residence. “Not exactly, not like that at all.”

That was actually the understatement of the air. What Dawn meant by ‘not like that at all’ was Joyce Summers, sitting at Summers’ dining table and arguing about something or other with Drusilla. Being undead – for Buffy could clearly remember their mom dying from a brain tumour sometime before her own demise – didn’t suit Joyce Summers all that bad: true, her skin was the grey colour of a corpse, her eyes now had a distinct reddish tinge, and her teeth were quite a bit sharper, especially the incisors. Still, now that Buffy herself was on the wrong side of existence, so to speak, she didn’t feel too inclined to throw stones at her mom’s new look.

“Mom?” she asked instead, rather coolly. “What’s Drusilla doing here? She’s kind of evil, you know?”

“And a good evening to you too, dear,” Joyce said dryly. “As for Drusilla, well, somebody’s got to help me run the gallery, and both Dawn and Spike lack the artistic touch... as do you, actually.”

“Mom,” Buffy said carefully, “Drusilla’s crazy.”

“So was Van Gogh, and yet his artwork is selling like you wouldn’t believe how,” Joyce wasn’t backing down either, and now the rather acidic-chlorine smell of Buffy was mixing with the smell of freshly uncovered earth.

“Fine,” Buffy decided to give her mom some leeway once more (for now). “So what else you were up to?”

A tabby kitten ran from deeper inside the Summers house and rubbed against Dawn’s ankles, mewing. “I won that one,” Spike explained quickly, “in a poker game-”

It was then that the Buffybott made her appearance as well. “All done watering the snaky cactus... oh, it the other me-me, only she doesn’t look like me now.”

Buffy carefully sat down and looked into every member of the Summers’ expanded household right in the eye. “Why don’t you start from the beginning?” she said firmly.

“Okay, Tara, spill. What do you want to say to me?” Willow turned to Tara not unlike how her mom would turn to her dad whenever the elder Rosenbergs had a disagreement. “You’ve been quietly disapproving of me doing something in the background, and I think that it’s time that I knew what. So, spill.”

“Um.” Unlike Willow, Tara had a less than a healthy relationship when it came to arguments, especially between closely-connected people. “It’s not that I am disapproving, it’s that that I am... I guess I am disapproving of you becoming more and more powerful-“ She paused. “Not because I am jealous, I, I am-“

“Yes, Tara?” Willow said gently, seeing that her almost-significant-other was becoming more tongue-twisted by the minute. “You’re what?”

“I, I am afraid,” Tara whispered something. “What if, what if you become too powerful and will no longer need me?”

Willow blinked and carefully sat down next to Tara, who looked like she would break into tears at any moment. “What do you mean? I mean, I love you not because I need you, I mean I do need you, but what’s magic got to do with it?”

“Mom said that dad loved her. He, he-“

“He mistreated her, I assume?” Willow asked and seeing Tara nod in agreement, just sighed. “Oh boy, I think that we do have a problem, and magic’s probably not the way to solve it, not after Buffy’s less than splendid resurrection. Well, I have another idea – let’s go and talk to my folks. They got doctorates in psychology and what-not...let’s go talk to them?”

Feeling both somehow relieved and confused, Tara just nodded.

To be continued...

Chapter Text

“Well! That was just rude!” Anya spoke as the door closed behind Giles. “I mean, I understand how calling a hobgoblin an orc might piss-off a British man, but really-“

“Wait! A hobgoblin?” Xander spoke incredulously. “For real? Aren’t they the same thing? In PJ’s movies that’re based on-“

“Master Tolkien,” Anya said seriously, “was a great author and man, in fact there are rumours... never mind. My point is that like any great men, he tended to be a bit high-handed with the smaller details, you know? Goblinoids aren’t orcs, not really, certain ignorami do call bugbears black orcs, but that’s just wrong-“

“Ahn, you’re beginning to rant,” Buffy said firmly. “Now is not a good time to begin to rant. Now is a good time to fix Willow. How do we start fixing Willow?”

“I can get the sheep shears,” Anya suggesting, but caught the decidedly unamused looks of the rest and relented. “Fine. Tara, you want to start or I should?”

“Um,” Tara said, uncertain. “I’m not really a starting person... can you?”

“Fine,” Anya exclaimed, still sharp. She picked up a knot of kelpie fur and began to chant:

“From the sea and back to land,
Let Creator stretch his hand.
Bring this wayward child back!
Let her have what she could lack!”

As Anya chanted, she forced the fur into a crude, long thread and wrapped it around Willow’s head on one end and connected to the ground on the other. Immediately, the room’s temperature seemed to drop somewhat, and a slightly acidic smell began to permeate the air.

Tara, meanwhile, had picked up a jar of preserved frog legs and began to chant her own rhyme:

“From the water onto earth,
That transition isn’t coarse.
Growing legs a must, of course –
Let her do so with force!”

As Tara finished, she dropped a pair of them (pulled out with a forceps) into Willow’s bathtub. Immediately, the water there began to grow murkier, the acidic smell in the room began to inten-sify, and the temperature dropped even further.

“Buff,” Xander told the blonde Slayer sotto voce, “the weather outside is growing nasty very quickly. Are you sure what Ahn and Tara are doing is correct?”

“No,” Buffy replied just as quietly. “But the only one who could sort this thing out would be Giles, and he’s currently AWOL – at the speed that he had left for LA, he’s closer to there, rather than here, by now.”

“Oh.”

Anya, meanwhile, was again starting to chant, this time picking up a jar of dolphin fins.

“From the sea and onto land,
What before was, now must end.
Come on forth, so now you’ll be,
On land living, and quite free!”

As Anya dropped dolphin fins alongside frog legs into the tub, the water murkened even further, and between the acidic smell and low temperatures, the room was very uncomfortable to be in.

“This is getting to be uncomfortable,” Xander muttered. “And outside is shaping to be quite a storm as well.”

“Xander, you’re not helping,” Buffy muttered, even as she kept a wary eye over the proceedings: Tara, meanwhile, had picked up the scales of the golden carp, and began the final chant:

“From the wet onto the dry,
No tears you shall cry.
As Creator did decry,
Thou shall live now high and dry!”

With these words Tara threw the scales of the golden carp into the now-dark bathtub. There was a sound of ice cracking, the earth shook beneath the house, there was a flash of light – and then Willow got out of the tub on her own two legs.

“So, how do I look?” she asked, carefully.

“Um” Buffy hesitated in answering. “Well...”

As a matter of fact, there was a good reason behind this hesitation: Willow may have looked generally human, but...

“Willow, you look fine,” Xander finally spoke, “you just don’t look like yourself anymore.”

“What?” Willow whirled around and looked at a nearby mirror. Sure enough, her trademark red hair was gone, replaced by a more ordinary, brownish-black one. Her eyes now were of a much deeper green, and her skin was a lot more paler than before, almost the colour of a fish’s or a frog’s belly. “What, what has happened to me?” Willow gasped.

“What did you expect? By becoming a mermaid you’ve embraced the magic of elemental waters,” Anya explained ‘helpfully’. “Our spell brought back into the realm of humans, but some elemental magic always remains after such spells. You now got elemental water magic in your veins – so no fiery spells... and you better invest into a lot of sunscreen, ‘cause you’ll get sun-burned, easily.”

Willow blinked, once, twice, and then went into shock. As Xander and Tara went to get the smelling salts and bring her back to consciousness, Buffy just stared at Anya in mute disapproval.

“What? I was only trying to help,” the ex-demoness sounded genuinely confused.

To be continued...

Chapter Text

As the two of them walked over to the Rosenberg household for the first time, Tara felt more and more nervous. Sure, she disapproved of Willow’s latest approach to life – magic-crazy – most ardently, but, being put like that on the spot... it was not for her. Tara was a shy wall-flower, and she thrived that way; maybe not exactly thrived, but confrontations? That was not her style, uh-uh.

And neither was it Willow’s, or so she had reckoned. Somehow...she wasn’t sure just what to expect from the elder Rosenbergs, ‘cause neither she nor Willow had been very much (i.e., not at all) at their place since they’ve met. The fact that they were coming now to do so bothered Tara a lot, and she couldn’t quite fathom why.

No, that was a lie, for she clearly could: she was afraid. If Willow broke up with her, Tara could not guarantee that the rest of the Scoobies will back her up instead of Willow, who had had sen-iority there, of course, and moreover-

As Tara opened her mouth to talk to Willow and imply that them coming over to Willow’s parents was not necessary, Willow spoke-up first:

“Tara, we’re here. Brace yourself,” and she rang the bell.

Almost immediately, Mrs. Rosenberg opened it. “Hello, Willow,” she smiled wildly, albeit in a somehow feline sort of way. “And you must be Tara. Welcome.”

“Well, Buffy,” Dawn began insecurely, “see-“

“It was my fault,” Spike interrupted hastily. “After you were gone, Nibblet managed to talk me into resurrecting your mum. I mean, the Wiccans-“

“-Have resurrected me,” Buffy said dryly, “and I suspect now that Giles might’ve gone along with them because he wasn’t ready to handle mom on his own – they’ve slept with each other after Ethan did his bad candy bit, as I’ve found-out. Only that didn’t work...” she shifted and looked Joyce straight in the eye, “the spell wasn’t Egyptian, I guess?”

“No, it was just straightforward demonic spell,” Joyce admitted, as she put her hand on top of Buffy. “I resurrected differently from you, see?”

“Yes mom, I do,” Buffy nodded, as her mother’s mottled greyish skin contrasted vividly with her olive green one. “That said, what’s Drusilla doing here?”

“She saw this in a vision of hers and decided to join in,” Buffy-bot explained helpfully. “Appar-ently that is what she does as a crazy seeress. And I’m here because I had to be you. Still do, because you’re green.”

“Thanks, ‘cause I would’ve never noticed on my own,” Buffy said wryly. “Now what about the cacti?”

“Oh, it’s just a hobby and to keep the neighbours away,” Joyce shrugged, “I mean, who would want to mess with a family that grows cacti in their back yard? Plus, they’re supposed to bloom really beautifully at night.”

“Of course they do,” Buffy said, somewhat wryly. “Can I see them?”

This was Tara’s first time she had met the Rosenbergs, and frankly, she was quite unsure what to expect. The fact that Willow looked a bit like both of her parents, with her dad’s red hair and her mom’s green eyes was definitely one of those unexpected developments.

“So, kids, what seems to be the problem?” Sheila Rosenberg asked with a smile that was definitely not very Willow-like – Willow did get her eyes, but she was more like her dad, Tara surmised.

“What makes you think that there’s a problem, mom?” Willow said with a rather insincere smile.

“Because,” Sheila gave her daughter a look, “you would never come here otherwise...and your friend looks as if she would be anywhere else but here. What’s wrong?”

“This!” Tara managed to exclaim before closing her eyes in pure mortifying embarrassment. “I mean-“

“Tara has family issues, big ones,” Willow interrupted smoothly, “her family is kind of dysfunctional, in a bad way. And now we’re sort of gotten into a fight, and we don’t know how to pro-ceed, because we didn’t exactly have too much experience in such matters. Can you help?”

“Sure,” Ira said with a grin, “nothing like an old married couple to give the youngsters a boost. Plus, are we psychologists or what?”

“The jury’s still out on this one, dear,” Sheila said, wryly. “Children, follow us. We’ll be happy to help.”

To be continued...

Chapter Text

“So, these are the cacti,” Dawn explained carefully, as Buffy stood in their back doorway, gazing slowly as the tangled plants. “What do you think?”

“I’ve seen cacti before,” Buffy said slowly. “We are living in a desert, you know? They didn’t look anything like this. This looks more like nature’s answer to barbed wire – literally.”

“It’s – it’s a different species from those that grow there,” Dawn explained, haltingly. “And, yes, they might be ugly, but... mom says that they bloom really beautifully at night. And they’re supposed to be blooming tonight, if you’re interested.”

“Well, never let it be said that I can’t appreciate some flowers,” Buffy almost chuckled. “And speaking of flowers, Dawn? Maybe you should call mom – it looks like the flowers are about to bloom.”

“I’m on it!”

It was funny, but until she had met Willow’s parents, Tara had never realized how much Willow resembled both of them – her mother in looks (except for the red hair), and her father in behaviour. Considering that Tara herself took almost completely after her mother (and hurray for that) this realization was strange, and rather confusing for her.

“So, now that we all had tea,” Shelia cast a rather pointed look at Ira, who had the grace to put down some papers he had been busy explaining to Willow and look sheepish, “please, go ahead and explain what troubles you so badly.”

Willow and Tara exchanged another look, and Willow spoke first:

“Well? Essentially, I did some either very bad or very stupid things...”

TBC