The beginning of May a new note appeared and this confirmed their fears and speculations on where other Willow had been heading.
'Today was the most terrifying day of my life. Today Willow Rosenberg, the closest thing to a sister I've ever had, became the monster we had fight to save the world. After stopping Warren Mears from another criminal act, he decided to get revenge on Buffy. He showed up in her back yard while we were talking after the blow up over us discovering Buffy has been having sex with Spike and shot her. He wanted to kill her. He ended up killing Tara instead. She died in Willow's arms. Willow tried, but couldn't save her. Buffy flat lined, but Willow succeeded in pulling the bullet from her using Magic and resuscitated her. Then Willow went on a killing spree. She drained the black magic books Giles has for reference, then she killed Rack, the black magic dealer and drained his power. She threatened to kill Dawn and then she tracked down Warren. She tortured him, skinned him alive and immolated his remains. We arrived just as she skinned and burned him. Then she decided she was going after Johnathan and Andrew simply because they'd been part of his group. They were in jail at the time Warren shot up the Summer's house. Then Giles arrived from England. Teleported all the way by a very powerful coven he knows there. They infused him with Magic and sent him to bring down Willow. Willow! And she tried to kill him too and drained his power too. And then she decided to end the world. Somehow she knew about a buried temple to an upper level she demon called Proxapexa. After dropping Buffy and Dawn into a big hole and creating root monsters, of all things, to attack them, she headed for Kingman's Bluff where the temple was buried. I tried to talk to her, to convince her to stop and she tried to kill me. She funneled energy from the Earth itself into me and threw me more then twenty feet. I kept getting back up, what else could I do? I'd lost Jesse and Cordy, I wasn't going to lose Willow too! I kept telling her I loved her, that she was my friend and had been our whole lives. I reminded of her of good times and told her I knew she was hurting. Finally I got through to her. She started crying and I held her. But it wasn't just Willow going crazy and trying to end the world that was crazy, it was her physically transformed with all that black magic in her. Her hair went black and not shiny black or dull black, the kind of black that a room looks like before your eyes adjust to the lack of light. Her eyes were totally black, no white visible at all and even her veins stood out black against her pale skin. When I first saw her looking like that, my first thought was, 'that's not Willow!' And it wasn't, it was Dark Willow.'
"So." Faith said. "That's how bad it got. Dark Willow. How much Magic would it take to transform her like that, Giles?"
"A terrifying amount, I'm afraid. And stripping that amount of Magic would have killed her outright. Likely I took her to the Devon Coven, the one other Xander mentioned. They helped me recover from Eyghon. They probably attempted to help stabilize her. If we couldn't stabilize her, then killing her would probably have been the only option we would feel we'd have. She was a proven danger and filled with literal black magic and knowledge from my references. I hope we were able to help her."
"We won't know until other notes appear." Xander said. "Other me can't write about the future, he has to wait until time syncs up. So hopefully he'll leave another note telling us she came home."
Other Xander did, but not until October.
'Willow came back from England today. She spent nearly five months with the Coven and we all hoped she was stable enough to come home. Unfortunately, we quickly found out, that when Willow's emotion flare, so does the Magic in her. She was embarrassed by her behavior and accidentally put herself out of phase with us. Looking back on it now, I can't help but compare Willow and Faith. Both have killed two people. Faith killed one accidentally and one on purpose. Willow killed two on purpose. Because Faith killed in a normal human manner, using a knife, she went to jail for her crime. Willow killed using Magic and left no evidence for the courts, even if there was anything they could do about it. Both took responsibility for their actions. Willow's embarrassed by her actions and got about five months worth of counseling. And that's it. Everyone thought she was all better. Faith gets twenty five to life and is ashamed of her actions and haunted by them. Willow's afraid using Magic on purpose will send her over the edge again, and then there's Buffy, who never once thinks about the more then one hundred people Angelus killed or Catherine Madison or the zookeeper or the assassins or Pete, all of whom she killed for one reason or another, usually in defense of herself or someone else. And Faith, whom she tried to kill. She hates Faith now, because of Faith's actions and totally supports Willow, her friend. And I'm still pissed over the fact that she wouldn't let me dust Spike after I found her on her bathroom floor after he tried to rape her after she broke it off with him. It all seems so messed up.'
"It does seem really messed up." Willow agreed. No one argued with her. What could they say that would make it better? Nothing. So they said nothing, because it was messed up.
"What was that about sex with Spike? And rape?" Cordelia asked. Something else no one wanted to talk about. Mostly because eww! And What?!
