Seeing Tim at the end of her lazer rifle brings Willow a deep sense of satisfaction. This is it: the last name on her list. The last person to ever hurt Maggie now stands before her and cries and begs for mercy, and it looks so damn good on him. As soon as she can bring herself to squeeze the trigger, she will finally be free to step out of the shadows of her past life and live up to her full potential as Willow. As she swallows thickly and grits her teeth, she swears she can see a tuft of vibrant, red hair resting upon her own shoulder; but then she shakes her head roughly and it disappears.

"Focus, Willow." Maggie says calmly, yet when Willow glances over to her she is shocked to see herself standing there, staring back at her. Her eyes widen and the apparition disappears, and she blinks several times but then turns back to Tim looking slightly more crazed than before.

"Maggie, I... I thought you were dead this whole time. I had no idea..." Tim snivels, only to feel the barrel of the gun push so hard against his chest that he almost feels as though it could go right through him.

Willow growls lowly in her throat and angles her chin down to glower at him through her brow. "Maggie is dead." she says. "You killed her that night I caught you fucking Constance. Remember that, Tim?"

"I-I-I..."

"DO YOU REMEMBER THAT, TIM?!" Willow suddenly shouts, which elicits a whimper from Gina on the floor. She glances briefly to the woman and almost feels bad that she'll likely become collateral tonight. Willow doesn't consider herself to be a bad person, but right now, she can't find it within herself to really care about what happens to this innocent bystander. Gina doesn't even make sense to Willow – she is so completely ordinary. She looks tired, unremarkable and utterly average, and yet, she is the woman who Tim has decided to settle down with. How was she, herself, never good enough for Tim yet this woman is?!

Willow shakes her head again in frustration to bring herself back to focus, and when Tim doesn't answer her, she tuts and rolls her eyes. He has always been so cowardly: some things never change.

"I have spent the last several years of my life tracking and hunting down every single person who has ever hurt Maggie. Every man who put his filthy hands on my body without my permission, every sick fuck who treated me like their plaything." The way Willow keeps switching between referring to herself in first and third person is dizzying to Tim. He tries to follow along but it is clear that this woman is sick – and he can't help but to feel at least partially responsible. Willow continues. "And you know what, Tim?" she laughs with malice, "I saved you for last. You wanna know why? Because you were the very last person to ever break Maggie's heart. To-to ever break my heart."

As the words leave her mouth, Willow suddenly pictures MacCready, standing in the dull light of a lamp-post beside a caravan and watching her from across the street. She can see clearly in her mind the way the soft light illuminates the fabric of his duster and the way he holds the artwork she'd done for him so carefully. She can see his attempted smile and glassy, ocean-blue eyes as they stare back at her longingly. Her chest tightens as slowly he fades from her view, and she can feel her heart threaten to burst at the memory alone. She removes a hand from her gun and uses it to slap herself in the cheek. Focus. But then, she can't help but notice that her hands feel so much softer than usual, and her cheek much more full...

"Maggie, I—" It is the sound of Tim's voice that snaps Willow out of her trance, and she bares her teeth at him.

"Stop calling me Maggie!" she barks. "It's Willow. I'm Willow. I'm. Willow."

Tim can't really tell if she's saying this to him or to herself, but he nods complacently. "Okay, I'm s-sorry, Willow. But, listen – I... What I did w-was... It wasn't nearly as bad a-as what those other assholes did to you!"

"You destroyed me." Willow's voice is guttural, raw and pushed straight up from her chest; breath ragged as she desperately clings to her sense of self. She widens her stance and returns her hand to her rifle, then licks her lips in anticipation. "I spent my whole life feeling like a worthless object until I met you – only for you to throw me away for a shiny new fucking toy when I became too much for you! How the fuck do you think I felt?! You made me feel worse than any of those men ever did. You broke my trust. You broke me. I hate you."

"I'm sorry!" Tim wails. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Almost an entire decade of regret and shame and guilt bubbles up from inside of the man and erupts from his mouth as sorrowful apologies. As he stares tearfully at the woman in front of him and watches her eye twitch, he realizes the extent of the damage he'd done to her. He'd never meant to hurt her so badly – he really had loved her at one point. Hell, maybe he'd never stopped – but at the end of the day, their relationship was doomed from the start. Maggie was too young for him; and though he always told himself that it wasn't a big deal, he realizes now as an older man just how predatory he'd really been. He can't even imagine how he would feel watching a grown man put the moves on his own daughter – the thought alone makes him sick with anger. And yet he'd so recklessly done it to this girl and abused his power over her just as everyone else in her life had. Maybe he really was no better than the rest of them.

Willow grunts, and Tim takes that as a cue to keep talking. He levels his voice and summons what little courage he has, then takes half a moment to collect his thoughts. "Look, I..." he says finally, "What I did to you was awful. I never should have ever gone out with you in the first place. I should have known better – and that's on me. I-I just..." his glassy eyes drift about the room as he speaks, "I'm sorry for cheating on you. I'm sorry I never stood up for you, I'm sorry for treating you the way I treated you, and I'm sorry for making you feel like you were worthless when the opposite was and always will be true. You deserved so much better Mag– er... Willow. I..."

He trails off. Though it is undeniably harrowing, it also feels... good to finally take ownership and responsibility for what he'd done. He still fears for his life, yet a calm begins to seep into him as he accepts his fate and locks pleading eyes with Willow.

"Just... Don't do this." he whispers. "Not in front of my family—"

"Daddy?"

All three adults snap their focus to the hallway, where Tim's daughter emerges and sleepily rubs her face. She freezes as she locks eyes with the strange, dangerous-looking woman in the kitchen, and an involuntary gasp slips from Willow's lips. As she regards the girl, suddenly the world around the two of them falls away until they are standing together in an inky abyss sharing a wide-eyed stare. The child remains frozen in place, and Willow slowly lowers her gun yet doesn't break eye contact with her.

"Why haven't you done it yet?"

Maggie's soft voice cuts through the darkness, and out of the corner of her eye, Willow can see her as she materializes from the shadows. She can't respond, though. All she can do is stare at Tim's daughter and ponder the implications of slaughtering her parents in front of her. She can still see the image in her head of her own parents' corpses and it is one which haunts her; even though they'd hurt her so badly and shown her nothing but cruelty, there was still a part of her that loved them despite it all. And if even after all they'd put her through, she still found the image of their dead bodies distressing, then she couldn't imagine the psychological damage she could do to this little girl. She doesn't want to hurt her. She can't...

Her silence frustrates Maggie, who steps impatiently into her peripheral. "I would have done it by now."

"Yeah? Well – I'm not you!" Willow snaps and turns sharply toward Maggie, and the ghost of who she used to be is stunned into a shocked silence as Willow's fist balls at her side. "You would have done it, sure. But I'm not you anymore. I'm Willow now. A-And Willow doesn't want to scar this innocent fucking child. I don't want her to have to grow up without a mom, I don't want her to have to deal with the... the trauma of watching her dad's fucking heart liquefy against my lazer gun, I..." she pauses, taking a brief moment to steady her breath. "Maybe I want to forgive."

Tears fall from Willow's eyes but she fights the urge to wipe them away and instead maintains her authoritative stance over Maggie. "Look, I'm... I'm really happy that we did what we did. With the list. You know – we took some real fucking scumbags out of this world and I'm God damn proud. But Maggie, I'm..." her voice wavers, "I'm so tired."

She takes a moment to steady her breathing and gives Maggie the opportunity to speak, but she doesn't. She stares blankly up at her as if daring her to go on, and Willow takes a deep breath for courage but does not back down. "I don't want to live for revenge anymore. I just want to... live. I've given up so much for you, but I think it's time to start living for me. I want to give back to the world, I want to make sure what happened to me never happens to anyone ever again – I want to make a real difference. I... just want to be free.

"I'll always have a piece of you in me," Willow's voice drops, and she speaks softly as she raises her hand and presses it against her chest. She can feel her own heart pumping beneath her palm. Maggie's heart. "But... Can't forgiveness be enough this time?"

The silence which hangs between the two is heavy, and neither speak for a long while. Maggie is unreadable, and Willow feels nervous when she finally steps towards her.

"So this is it, then?" she asks.

After giving up so much to get here, it almost feels like a waste to not follow through. If she kills Tim, then she can feel vindicated in her decision to let MacCready go and maybe it wouldn't hurt so bad. But then, showing mercy feels better. It feels right. And so she nods wordlessly, then holds her breath as she awaits Maggie's response.

To her surprise, Maggie offers her a soft smile, and Willow notices her eyes are as wet as her own but Maggie does a far better job hiding it. "Okay," she says, and despite her tears, her voice remains transcendentally smooth. "Then I guess..." she pauses, as if considering her words before she continues, "I guess I'm ready to let you go."

The weight of the world lifts off of Willow's shoulders and she heaves a weepy sigh of relief. For once, Maggie's presence feels comfortable. It feels safe.

There is another short moment of silence, before Maggie smiles gently and says, "I'm really proud of who we've become."

"Me too." Willow agrees softly. And one last time, the girls exchange a smile. Maggie is so beautiful; but then... So is Willow. Finally, Maggie steps back and fades away into the abyss, leaving Willow alone to stare wistfully after her for some time. But eventually, she turns her head back to the frozen tableau that is Tim's daughter, and the darkness around her begins to fall away in chunks.

When she comes back to, she finds herself staring wildly at the child with her gun still pressed against Tim's chest. It takes a couple extra seconds for the muffled noise around her to become coherent again, but when she hears the sound of Gina fearfully begging her for mercy for their daughter and Tim trying desperately to get the child to run, Willow slowly lowers her weapon and turns her head back to Tim. The little girl whimpers and bolts back down the hallway and into her room, and Gina and Tim both fall silent, unsure of what Willow's intentions are.

"What's her name?" Willow juts her chin out, and Tim is taken aback by the sudden question.

He hesitates a moment, and then slowly lowers his hands which he had been holding up in surrender. "It's, uh..." he clears his throat sheepishly. "It's Megan."

Willow's eyes widen. "You mean like...?" she whispers, and Tim nods.

"Yeah."

Willow pauses, and a breath catches in her throat, but she tries her best to seem stoic as she takes a step backward. The room is quiet, and Willow's gaze falls on Gina who is watching her with trepidation. "And he's good to you?"

Gina isn't really sure what the correct answer here is, but she chooses honesty and nods her head 'yes' and tries to bite back a whimper. Willow's lips press into a thin line, and she turns back to Tim once more. She takes yet another step back, and when she holsters her rifle, both Tim and Gina stifle a sigh of relief.

Tim still flinches, though, when Willow raises her hand sharply and points a finger at him. "You'd better take care of them." she warns, and Tim's lip quivers as he nods frantically.

"I will." he whispers. Willow offers him a final, hardened look, and then she slips into the darkness of the livingroom and through the front door, leaving Tim and Gina alone to piece each other back together.

As she steps back into the cold streets of Diamond City, Willow looks around as if she hopes to see MacCready lingering nearby. But of course, she doesn't. She knew she wouldn't. And she doesn't see Maggie, either; Willow is completely alone in the darkness of the night. And despite her solitude, for the first time in her life, she feels free.

She moves slowly through the alleyways, dragging her fingers idly along the walls she used to sneak past in her youth. She wanders by the gardens where Constance used to work, and even finds herself wondering where life has taken the woman she used to hate so much. Her eyes flit about the rooftops, and she smiles to herself as she thinks back to all the silly little poems she'd written and pictures she'd drawn under starry skies. And, as she passes by the neon-lights of the Valentine Detective Agency, she recalls how she'd always been so fascinated yet intimidated by Nick despite never having actually interacted with him. She's still beyond nervous to meet with him, but... Well, she owes it to Cass.

Speaking of, as she languidly crosses the empty market and breathes in the smell of Takahashi's famous noodles, she catches the familiar orange ashes of a cigarette around the side of the Mega Surgery Centre and follows the glow until she has reached Cass' side. He glances to her and raises an eyebrow, his disposition amiable as usual. "Well?" he asks and pushes himself from the wall. "You good?"

Willow thinks for a moment, then shrugs. She doesn't really know yet if she is good. Cass gives her a sympathetic smile, then draws in a breath to speak but before he can, Willow does.

"I owe you an apology."

Cass' brow furrows, and he tilts his head. "An apology? For what?"

"For what I said back at the house. About Lana." Willow looks down to her feet and picks at her nails. "And for abandoning you when..."

The man blows air from his nose and drops his half-finished smoke into the street, which he then grinds down with his boot. "It was not your responsibility to take care of me." he murmurs.

"Yeah, and it wasn't your responsibility to take care of me. But you did anyway."

It had, after all, been Cass and Lana who had taken Maggie out of the city the night of her disappearance. It had been them who'd set her up in a nearby abandoned apartment and stayed with her for weeks at a time so she didn't have to be alone. It was Lana who'd shaved off what remained of Willow's red hair and taught her how to love herself even though she didn't feel beautiful anymore; and it was Cass who'd bought her her first lazer rifle and taught her how to use it. From self-defence to foraging to hunting and basic survival, Cass and Lana had happily dropped everything to take Willow under their wings and ensure she was cared for. Really cared for. For two years, until Lana's untimely death, the couple raised Willow with more compassion and care than anyone else had ever shown her in her entire life.

And yet when Lana had succumbed to cancer and Cass had fallen victim to addiction, Willow was quick to detach and run away. She'd done it to protect herself from having to watch the man who was more a father to her than her actual father destroy himself with chems, and it had hurt both of them so badly. But in the end, Cass had been happy she'd done it. He was a completely different man then, and he knows he would only have brought Willow down with him.

Now though, it feels good to have Cass back, sober and once again standing by her side as she steps into this exciting new chapter of her life. He scratches at the back of his head and chuckles lowly. "Listen, kid." he mutters, and Willow looks up at him then. "Lana and I always agreed that taking you in was one of the best decisions we'd ever made."

Willow's heart leaps and she once again feels tears prick at her eyes. God, she is so tired of crying.

But Cass speaks the truth. Willow had been a blessing to them – since obviously he and Lana could never have children of their own given the severity of Lana's illness. "So do not worry about it, alright? I'm so proud of the woman you've become, Willow. And Lana would be, too. I know it."

Willow sighs inwardly, then falls against Cass and relaxes as she feels his arms wrap around her. His embrace is comfortable and nostalgic, and Willow can't help but mumble, "She'd be proud of you, too."

Cass cranes his neck then to look up at the stars which shine above, and he smiles lightly as he imagines Lana among them. "Yeah." he whispers. "I hope so."

After some time, Cass gives Willow two firm pats on the back and pulls away, and she steps back and hastily wipes the tears from her cheeks. "Alright," Cass says with a chuckle, and he shakes his head. "No more stalling. It is time." He raises an eyebrow and places his hands on his hips. "Are you ready to go and meet Detective Valentine?"

Willow inhales and crosses her arms self-consciously. She's not ready, no. But she'll do it for Cass. Apprehensively, she nods, and Cass grins. "Come on. I'll go with you – don't worry," he laughs, "I wasn't going to make you do this alone."

Cass begins walking, but Willow stays rooted in place for a moment. She turns and looks up toward the upper stands, where she once lived, and she stares for a long time. This place never really felt like home – it was always more like a prison; but tonight, she finally strips herself of the shackles which have burdened her for her entire life.

And she knows she wouldn't have been able to do it without MacCready. Her heart aches; she misses him so badly already and wishes he were here by her side. His absence leaves an empty space within her heart, and she doubts she'll ever find another person who can quite fill it as he had. And it sucks, but she's glad she'd stuck by him through everything. She will forever cherish the short time they'd spent together, and revel in the memories of his embrace for as long as she can before his scent fades from her clothes and he is truly gone for good.

As she turns away to follow Cass, she swears she sees Maggie staring at her from over the railing. But when she turns back, wide-eyed, there is no one.

Cass stops then and turns, watching her with bewilderment. "Willow!" he calls out with a chuckle, halfway across the market by now. "You coming?"

Willow blinks and stands still for a moment longer, before she finally lets go and turns to face Cass.

"Yeah." she says with a nod as she makes her way toward him. "I'm right behind you."