My epilogue to Doppelgangland, fairly self-indulgent, probably not to everyone’s tastes, doesn't move the plot forward hugely, but... if you’ve ever thought that this episode should end with Willow spanking vampire Willow, then hi, we have the same disease.
So I’ve been tinkering for a while with an idea for a season 3 AU with the following premise:
Kendra reappears as an ensouled vampire halfway through the season, and her presence nudges various other character dynamics in different directions (most notably between Buffy and Faith, and between Willow and her vampire Doppelgänger), and… well from my url you can probably guess what direction it ends up going in.
(Working title is “Fix Her Eventually”, as in the popular poll question “would gay sex fix her or make her worse?”)
And I have a few chapters written up and I figured there’s no better day to start actually posting it than on the first day of Kinktober (to be clear, this fic is not just endless kinky smut but it is that among other things. Eventually).
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
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.
Fic update: Research leads to a breakthrough in understanding why vampire Willow can enter Willow's bedroom uninvited, and suggests a way to turn it against her. Also more BDSM.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
“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.
Fic update: Buffy tries to console Willow over her mistakes with vampire Willow by taking her to see Faith; Faith inadvertantly confesses a detail of the events of "Doppelgangland" she hadn't brought up before. Much angst, resolved with BDSM as per usual.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
"Wesley was right, it was stupid and selfish to keep her alive and now everybody’s paying the price!”
Willow looked overpoweringly miserable, and for some weird reason it made Faith like her more. She put a hand on her other shoulder, opposite Buffy’s hand.
“Hey, I get it Red. Carmilla’s, like, crazy hot. It’s not weird to act stupid over her.” Willow smiled at that, just as Faith realised that calling one of the pair ‘crazy hot’ might be taken to carry implications about the other. If she just dressed more like Carmilla…
“Plus, this chick’s such a fucking menace, when you catch her and get her working for us, I reckon the bad guys are toast.” The smile she got from Willow made her feel funny, but the smile she got from Buffy was like sunlight. She was on a roll. Say something else to make her feel better.
“Plus, you know, her turning up that night basically saved your life, so…” Their stares made her swiftly realise that had been a mistake. Fuck.
“What do you mean?” Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Nothing, just, uh…” Think of something to say quickly. “I just meant, she might have scared off, other vampires, you know?”
“Oh… ok. Yeah.” Willow nodded slowly, but seemed to accept this. But Buffy was giving her a look.
“Faith, that doesn’t make sense.” And she just looked at Faith expectantly.
Fic update: Possibly the beginning of the actual Summersberg arc of Fix Her Eventually? Though oddly enough not through anything physical happening, so much as a long succession of confessions and confidences.
(Structurally also this is the collapsing of a bunch of built up dirty secrets to try and re-establish some sort of shared knowledge among the core protagonists)
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
For a little while they just sat, listening to each other’s breathing. It was a surprise, almost, how much weight felt lifted by sharing this. By knowing that her Willow understood, still saw her the same way.
“So who else knows?”
She shook her head. “Only Faith, and Kendra, and Jenny.” She leant against Willow, their heads and shoulders touching now as they supported each other. “And now you.”
“That’s probably enough people.” Buffy’s stomach had been twisting in fear that Willow might tell her to tell everyone. “I feel like the others, you know, they… they might not understand.”
“Yeah. I think you’re right.” She thought of something and allowed herself a teasing smile. “Like I guess they wouldn’t understand about you and Kendra?”
Willow started upright and squeaked in response, “That was just a one-time thing! Or, a two-time thing. Unless it happens again.” She bit her lip again. She has to stop doing that. It was too distracting. “I guess Kendra told you about that?”
“Yeah. And she told you about Faith and Carmilla?”
“Yeah… I guess there’s a whole bunch of things that the others wouldn’t understand, huh?”
They had relaxed against each other again, heads resting together, staring down at their interlaced hands. It felt comforting.
“I’m glad that we understand.” She felt Willow nod.
“Buffy and Willow, Willow and Buffy! Working together.”
“Right. Plus Jenny and Kendra and Faith…”
“Yeah, because they get that… that when you’re fighting evil, sometimes you make mistakes, or you have to do things that seem weird, or freaky, and it doesn’t mean… it’s just that the others would get too freaked out.”
Buffy nodded, and Willow went quiet for a bit. Eventually she asked an unexpected question.
“What about next year? Have you decided where you’re going, for uni?”
Laying back in bed, she opened the envelope eagerly, then stopped.
This is wrong. She could feel that there were several photos inside… and whoever they were of probably wouldn’t want her to see them. And Carmilla did.
You should take it into school, show Giles and the others. She put the envelope down.
If someone wouldn’t want you to see this, would they want half a dozen people to all see it? She picked the envelope up again, pulled out the stack of photos, face down.
You should just get rid of them. Burn them. Don’t let Carmilla play her mind games. But could she really go on never knowing what they showed?
What if they show someone in danger? What if they’re a warning? What if they’re a mistake? What if Carmilla slipped up and included a fatal clue?
Ok, fic updates on AO3 have been outpacing posts about them here, so trying to catch up: two chapters from Willow's POV, one that's 5000 words of graphic Vampire-Willow-on-Willow sexual violence, as Willow learns the truth about the dreams she's been having each night.
“I just meant, it was nifty that we foiled the evil scheme! We beat her! I mean, we beat you… the real you.” Willow saw something harden in Carmilla’s eyes, and then suddenly, like a snake uncoiling, her face transformed and she surged up from between Willow’s legs and everything changed.
“You beat me?” Now Willow was pinned down, one steel-strong hand around her neck, the other gripping her wrist and pulling her hand away from the breast it had been squeezing. Willow’s other hand was still tangled in Carmilla’s hair, but with the vampire pinning her down like this, any sense of power that might have given her was a joke.
“You think you’re winning this game?” She stared helplessly into those yellow eyes, shocked at her dream suddenly taking such a turn into the nightmareish… but the delicious thrill in her body told her that it might still end the same way. It’s fun when she’s on the bottom, and it’s fun in a different way when she’s on top. She felt the hints of a smile at the corners of her open mouth. It was scary, but scary-fun, like a ghost story.
“Yeah, I think I am… you keep trying to destroy the orb and failing, and one day soon you’re gonna get orbed!” She stuck out her tongue playfully. She had never thought of herself as a brat before, but… Carmilla had been a brat while she had been held captive, and anything in Carmilla must have some roots in Willow. So she stuck out her tongue to see what would happen next.
“Oh really?” In a heartbeat Carmilla had shifted off her, keeping her grip, and then flipped her roughly over onto her belly, shoving her half off the bed, bent over so that her face was pressed into the carpet and her butt was stuck up in the air. “You want to know who’s winning?”
She felt her arm pulled up behind her back, twisted painfully while her other arm tried desperately to stop her sliding further down onto the floor. Carmilla was sitting on the bed, with one leg wrapped around Wilow’s legs to pin them, and one off the bed, pressing her foot down onto Willow’s head. She held Willow’s arm with one hand and spread her labia apart with the other, lowering her mouth towards them.
“How about this?” She could feel every cold breath from Carmilla’s mouth over her wet lips. Yes. Yes, please just touch me. “What if one player had been sneaking into the other player’s room every night to rape her, and every single time she just thought it was a dream?” No, wait. This was a weird dream. But still a dream. “Would that player be winning?” She was starting to feel queasy. The arm that was being twisted up behind her back hurt - a very concrete, clear, anatomical kind of hurt. Not the sort she usually felt in dreams.
Then a much shorter chapter, of the fallout the next day.
All through the walk to school and her first class she fought to keep these thoughts at bay. The greatest fear wasn’t even what would follow if the dream had been real. It was how she might have to explain it to the others. She couldn’t keep something like this to herself, after all, that would be irresponsible. But maybe if she just told Jenny… except she felt Jenny would consider this a lapse in vigilance worthy of punishment. Or maybe if she just told Buffy… but then how much else would she have to tell Buffy? She definitely didn’t want to tell Xander, and the thought of Giles or any of the others finding out was mortifying…
Then she walked into the library and saw the others gathered around a lavender envelope. I’m in so much trouble.
There were four of them: Giles, Wesley, Xander, and Cordelia. It was Cordelia who greeted her.
“Oh hey, it’s about time. Your girlfriend left another of her little love letters in my locker.”
Fic update: Buffy Faith and Kendra try to figure out what happened over the past 48 hours and how much of it was Bad and Wrong and for what reasons. Sort of a smut scene of people reflecting on all the previous smut scenes? Meta-smut?
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
“Kendra?” Buffy was waking up, blinking at them. Maybe the sound of their voices, maybe the smell of the food. When she saw the two of them, and Faith naked, her eyes opened. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing, B., just K. bringing us food.” Faith’s stomach dropped at the worried look in Buffy’s eyes, like she had been caught doing something bad again. They said I had to take all my clothes off, I didn’t have a choice. That old excuse again…
She walked over to the bed to hand the bag to Buffy as she sat up. The blanket slipped a little, almost showing them her breasts, which Faith wasn’t staring at, not at all. She seemed to realise she was just as naked as Faith, and pulled the blanket demurely over her chest.
But when she opened the bag she looked just as happy, and just as hungry.
“Thanks…” she glanced between the two of them. “Are you guys feeling ok?”
“My desire to bring Carmilla to justice burns white-hot. But physically I am alright.” Faith smiled at that, nodding in something like agreement. Buffy pulled a hamburger out of the bag, and started trying to eat it without making too much of a mess of the bed.
Faith reached for a bag of fries, but before she could start eating them she heard Buffy gasp. “Whoah, Faith, how did you…” she was staring at Faith’s butt; in the mirror, the deep blue-brown of the stripe was vivid.
“Oh, uh, well…” she realised she didn’t know if other people punishing her was ok. Is that something only she gets to do?
“I did that. That is why I am here.” Kendra broke in. “I have come for debriefing. We should share what we know of recent events.”
Faith stopped smiling. She hadn’t fully processed what the events of last night might mean. How they might seem to Buffy. What she had done with Kendra, with Oz, with Carmilla. What if she hates you?
Buffy sighed. “Ok, I guess I got my thirty seconds of being awake before the heavy stuff starts.”