Look, I’ll level with you.  You know I love Buffy: The Vampire Slayer.  I mean, “really love it because it saved my life in high school” love it.  I mean “got Faith’s tattoo on my upper arm as a symbolic move of freeing myself and reclaiming my body” love it.

But Seasons 6 and 7 you guys.

I mean, okay, a bad season of Buffy is going to be better than a good season of other shows (Big Bang Theory, I’m looking at you).  But Seasons 6 and 7 are still painful for me to get through for the most part.

And then, at some point, I had a glorious revelation:

I could just make up my OWN seasons 6 and 7 of Buffy and go from there.  I could even change the whole plot of the comics for seasons 8 & 9 if I really wanted to!

What’s that?  You want to hear MORE?  Well, then, strap in and come along with me on this journey!

SEASON 6:

The cold open of the season features the Scoobies at Giles’ apartment, all seemingly discussing Buffy’s death.

This ends when Willow suddenly says “Buffy!” in surprise, and we see her enter the apartment, tanned, healthy, carrying several shopping bags and, importantly, very much ALIVE.

Buffy smiles “So, who wants souvenirs?”

The Scoobies all raise their hands.

The tone for the beginning of the season stays much the same.  Obviously the audience is still aware that Buffy was dead, but no mention of it is ever made by the characters.  We also become aware that Dawn still has nightmares about the attempted sacrifice, meaning that at least that still happened (“They were shallow cuts. That’s what he said.  There’s no scars, so how come I can see them, Buffy?”).

Throughout all of this, though, strange things are happening, even for Sunnydale.  Tara’s the one who initially observes that something “feels wrong.”  Eventually, it turns out that some kind of weird “reality rips” are appearing throughout the city and “leaking” other-worldly foes.  The Trio are still active in this season, and we’re led to think that somehow they are causing this.

At some point before the mid-season break, we get at least one answer: Buffy never died because it was Faith who threw herself into the energy mass to save Dawn.

But HOW, you ask?  Well, okay, things that bugged me: supposedly Dawn was made from the blood of the Slayer.  But there were two active Slayers, so wouldn’t it stand to reason she was made from blood from BOTH of them?  I am just SAYING.

The point is: at the mid-season break, we discover that the rips in reality are being caused by two alternate realities bleeding into each other, but one of them is WRONG.  While investigating one of the rips for answers, Willow gets in a little too far and comes face-to-face with her evil self, who insinuates that the reality tears are all because of her.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Well, we find out that after Buffy’s death, Willow tried to bargain for Buffy’s life, arguing that there was no other way to save the world.  Which is when she’s told, no, there was another sacrifice that could have been made.

With this revelation, Willow decides that rather than bringing Buffy back, she can just change what had originally happened.  Unfortunately, she can’t just fix it so Dawn was never captured or never cut, instead she has to use a fixed point in time with an energy fluctuation large enough to trace.

So, you know, a giant ball of energy ripping worlds apart.  That works.

Willow travels to LA, visits Faith Lehane in prison and releases every bit of anger and spite she has over Buffy’s death, telling Faith that if SHE had died instead of Buffy, it would have been the first and only worthwhile thing in her life.  And that’s JUST what was going to happen.

She uses magic to swap Faith with Buffy just as the latter was diving into the energy mass to save Dawn’s life.  She puts Buffy safely beside her sister and effectively CREATES the other timeline.

But using that magic warped the barrier between realities AND set THAT Willow on the path to her magic addiction and heel turn.

And then what?

I.

Um.

Don’t know.

I also don’t know where Spike fits into all of this, sorry.

Okay, so I don’t have this TOTALLY planned out, what do you think this is, a fanfic?

Oh.

Good point.

…dammit.