Title: Purple Rain (The Story Formerly Known As "That Night")
Author: lilyme
Summary: Set in BtVS Season 3. Can changing one pivotal event be the beginning of something entirely unexpected? Or will things still turn out the same?
Pairing: A slayer and a Witch (OR - two people much more similar than expected)
Rating: PG-13 to R
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters in this story, nor do I own any rights to the television show "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". They were created by Joss Whedon and belong to him, Mutant Enemy, Sandollar Television, Kuzui Enterprises, 20th Century Fox Television and the WB Network. Thank you all for these characters! Parts of the story line and dialogue taken from the episode "Doppelgängland". No copyright infringement intended!
Schedule: I'm planning to update this on a weekly basis. Unless I don't find the because of...what do you call this again...oh, right, "life"! ;)
Thanks to: My lovely betas Wil-Lehane- and K
Dedication: To the Buffyverse-characters and the people behind them (actors and writers).

A/N: Still amazed at the amount of reviews I'm getting for this story. A big thanks to anyone who has reviewed so far (or in any other way has come to like this story)! Love you guys ;)

CHAPTER TEN -- DOUBLE TROUBLE

Faith felt as if she was suffocating. Her fears had been justified. Her worst nightmare had become true.

Willow had been killed and she was responsible for it.

No, it hadn't been Buffy, she was sure of this. It was her fault alone.

She had tried to steer Willow away from her to prevent exactly this…and now it had happened.

She had noticed that something was seriously off with Willow, but at this moment had not thought about the possibility that her redhead might be "undead". Seeing Willow alive – even though behaving weirdly – had calmed her inner turmoil somewhat, she had been relieved that the wicca still lived.

The look into Willow's vampire visage made her feel sick; a lump formed in her throat, making it almost impossible to breathe.

"No," it was barely more than a whisper.

Buffy, whose slayer hearing detected it, turned her way, pain and desperation marked her features – matching Faith's.

"What have I done?" the dark slayer asked horrified.

She couldn't stand to be around the remains of the Scoobies any longer, couldn't stand seeing the pain in her eyes and knowing that her behavior was the reason for it.

She took off, pushing people out of her way in her desperate escape from the Bronze.

"Faith?" Xander shouted after her. His voice was shaky.

By the time Faith reached the exit, her tears had started to flow. She didn't care to wipe them off. She just needed to get away.

Willow made her way to the Sunnydale High library. She really didn't know how she had survived this day.

After that disaster with Faith one day ago – We both know she was lying when she said that she didn't care – she had simply wanted to get through this school day, make it to the weekend. The weekend, on which she would…she didn't even know why she was looking forward to it…

She had thought about playing hookie for a few seconds, but decided that this wouldn't help her any. She would only have more to think about it all. Plus the others would wonder what happened to her and she wasn't in the mood to explain these things to them.

Ten minutes after she had arrived at school, however, she had regretted her decision to show up. Snyder wanted to see her in his office during her first break. This was never a good sign; she just wondered what plan the annoying little man had cooked up this time. Of course it was a tutoring job...again. The tutoree this time – Percy West: Sunnydale High jock, basketball star...and arrogant and uncooperative as hell.

She would have loved to put a spell on him, turning him into a little ringworm or something like that...if she had that kind of power. She wasn't even able to turn poor Amy back into a human being. Plus, Percy disappearing shortly after Willow Rosenberg reluctantly takes on a tutoring job for him might arouse suspicions – especially after that Hansel and Gretel incident. Snyder still knew about her dealing with witchcraft, but probably ignored it just like her mother did.

Now she had even more work to do since Percy apparently expected her to write his paper for him. She would do this – rather than to have to deal with Snyder should Percy flunk history.

It was so weird that everybody expected her to be agreeing to just about everything. Everybody saw her as reliable. Snyder relied on her for tutoring just about anyone; Xander relied on her for taping "Biography" each Friday. As if this guy doesn't have his own VCR…

She was Old Reliable, Old Faithful, Old Yeller, Doormat Person, Homework Gal, whatever.

And then this girl had showed up. What's her name – Anya? Wanted to do a spell? Willow had been interested immediately. For the first time today being pegged as "reliable" didn't bother her. She had been intrigued. Conjuring a necklace from somewhere – not really interesting, but at least it was something.

Of course that spell had ended different than she had hoped. They hadn't conjured up Anya's family heirloom. Instead she had seen horrifying flashes of some demon girl that resembled Anya choking Giles, herself and Xander as vampires, the necklace in question, Buffy staking Xander, herself impaled on the broken wood of a cage, demon girl's necklace smashed, her vampire self falling to the floor, being grabbed by Larry, sitting alone in an empty factory, Oz coming for her, the Master grabbing Buffy.

After that she had refused to try this spell again and had gone home. This Anya girl freaked her out; there was definitely something off about her. She'd rather do Percy's homework than any more spells with her.

She had worked on the Roosevelt paper for about four hours, researching on her laptop and filtering out the most important facts, the essentials. She figured that she might even get this paper done tonight; she just needed to get some books from the library.

She was walking through the library doors and was surprised to see Giles, Buffy and Xander sitting on the steps that led to the stacks.

"What's going on?" she asked curiously. Normally they shouldn't be here on a Friday night. Well, Giles, maybe, but not Buffy and especially not Xander.

They all looked up in surprise and Xander lifted a cross he was holding slightly, as if he wanted to protect himself.

Willow noticed their sad faces and was amazed at the expressions. "Jeez, who died?"

No one replied.

She realized she may have gotten it right. Had her spell-induced vision not just shown her some freaky alternate universe? Or had this Anya-girl still tried another spell that went wrong? Or…oh, God, there were so many things that could have happened. Was it Cordelia? Wesley? Her breath caught in her throat. Joyce…? F-Faith…? She didn't…do something to herself…did she? She panicked almost, "Oh, God! Who died?"

Xander jumped up and thrust his cross in her face, "Back! Get back, demon!"

She didn't cower from it, instead showed deep concern for him. Xander shook the cross, like you might shake a remote controller if it doesn't work properly, and put it back in her face. Buffy and Giles noticed that she was not frightened of the cross, and slowly approached.

"Willow, you're alive?" Buffy asked hopeful.

Willow was puzzled. What was going on here? "Aren't I usually?"

Without further hesitation, Buffy ran to her best friend and hugged her hard and close. "Oh!" She savored the warmth she found in the redhead's body – a warmth that definitely indicated that she wasn't hugging a vampire.

Willow was surprised and let out a little groan from the tightness of the embrace. An instant later, Xander was also hugging her with all his might.

"I love you guys, too," Willow uttered, wondering what had gotten into her friends. The hug eventually got too intense for Willow. "Okay. Oxygen becoming an issue."

Buffy and Xander let go, smiling at her with tears in their eyes. She smiled back, but still didn't know what to make of it all. Okay…smiling. Smiling is good. Means everything is okay…right?

She turned to the watcher, thinking he might tell her something sensible. "Giles, what's going on with these...?"

Before she could finish her sentence, she found herself being warmly embraced again by the normally reserved Watcher.

"Oh! No..." Again she groaned from the tightness of the hug, and Giles quickly released her, a bit embarrassed at his emotional display.

"Oh. Sorry," the man backed away. Willow looked at him with a perplexed expression.

"It's…really nice that you guys missed me...Say, you all didn't happen to do a bunch of drugs, did ya?" she asked with raised eyebrows, semi-serious. Up one minute, down the next…or the other way around. For all she was concerned, her theory wasn't even that illogical.

"Will, we saw you at the Bronze. A vampire," Xander explained.

"I'm not a vampire," Willow seemed almost insulted. Though on second thought, this assumption explained her friends' behavior.

"You are," Buffy went on and got a look from Willow. "I-I mean, y-you, you were."
The blonde turned her confused frown towards Giles. "Giles, planning on jumping in with an explanation any time soon?"

"Well, uh... something...," the watcher was unsure about what to say, "something, um, very strange is happening," he stated, mildly, helplessly gesticulating with his arms.

"Can you believe the Watcher's Council let this guy go?" Xander mocked.

Faith finally came to a halt. Shady Hill cemetery. She didn't know how long she had run. Shady Hill wasn't far away from the Bronze, but she had run in circles, not caring where she ran and who she might run into. But she wasn't surprised to end up here.

She knew that Buffy could have followed her easily, but Faith knew very well that she hadn't.

Buffy and Xander had been glued to the ground in terror of what they had seen. The demon that had taken over their beloved Willow's body.

Faith stood stock still. There was no sound except for her own ragged breathing and the rustling of the leaves on the trees. It was a calm night, but anyone that might by walk by her would notice that Faith was anything but calm. Mortified, desperate, angry – all perfect adjectives to describe her current state.

Oh, God, Willow, I'm so sorry. I'm so...

She looked up at the clouded sky. Her tears had stopped, at least for now. She stared up.

The last 24 hours. The conversation that had went so terribly wrong. She knew that this would haunt her for the rest of her life.

She had never believed in things like God and heaven, but she felt that Willow's soul was still here – probably above.

I wish I could rewind the day and hand it back. I would do everything differently. I would show you how much you mean to me.

She waited for the response that she felt would never come.

She realized very well where exactly she was. In a cemetery, surrounded by graves with names that had no meaning to her. But behind them one could find so many different fates, and so many different people left behind, grieving for a beloved friend, spouse, child, parent.

When it hit her that Willow's loved ones wouldn't even have a grave of hers to visit and mourn at, to keep her memory, she felt even worse than before – which she didn't think was possible.

Buffy and Xander explained to Willow the details of what they had seen in the Bronze, leaving out that Faith had been there also. Willow was surprised at her vampire double's dominatrix-like appearance, all clad in leather and red lace. She would never even think about wearing something like this.

Then Angel came rushing in, explaining to Buffy, Xander and Giles that Willow was dead. After saying a casual 'hi' to Willow he finally got why the others hadn't freaked when he had told them about her death.

He informed them about a cadre of vampires that had invaded the Bronze and saw Vamp Willow as their leader. They decided to stop the vampires right now, hoping that they were still in the holding patterns.

But Willow didn't want them to kill her vampire double. She told the others to go ahead and walked back into the library to retrieve the tranquilizer gun.

She went to the checkout counter and leaned over, but can't reach the gun. She started around it, but an arm reached around from behind and grabbed her. A cold hand clamped over her mouth to prevent her from screaming.

Her own voice said, "Alone at last."

to be continued...


A/N: So, who noticed the little Tru Calling quote in there? Btw, disclaimer: I don't own Tru Calling either ;)

Sorry for the shortitude of this chapter, but, hey, important things still happened