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YES! Just this beginning has
helped mitigate some of the bitter taste of this
cliche' of a season finale.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, May 22, 2002 2:40
PM
Subject: RE: ::BuffyLovesWillow:: FIC;
"Life; Version 2.0" prologue(1/?) (SPOILERS)
Yoshi,
Damn straight I'm interested. This has some awesome potential
here!!! I'm very looking forward to the next chapter of Life, v2.0 and your
DotN series.
--Bill Gopher
Okay, this story takes off from the
season finale, and takes a wild left turn. So, Spoiler Space rules
apply.
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Disclaimers;
Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy and UPN are the
Powers That Be here. I'm just trying to figure out what the hell the
Season Finale was about!
Archives;
Let me know, and spell my name
right.
Spoilers;
Up to the Sixth Season finale. You have
been warned!
Feedback;
Oh pul-leeze!
Rating;
PG-13 for
now, later chapters may change.
Summary;
And older, wiser and
sadder Willow makes a wish…
Life; Version
2.0
By Kirayoshi
"It was long ago, and it was far away,
But still it
seems so very hard,
And if life is just a highway,
Then the soul is
just a car,
And Objects in the Rear View Mirror
May appear closerthan
they are."
--Meat Loaf
"Objects In the Rear View
Mirror"
Prologue;
All she could do was weep.
The
Magic Box was leveled. Warren and Rack were dead. Dawn and Buffy
were nearly killed.
And she was the one responsible.
All she
could feel were Xander's arms around her, the sting of her tears, and the
terrible black hole where her heart used to be. Tara was dead.
She had become a killer. She reveled in the anger, the fury, the power
that flooded through her being, firing her synapses, fueling her body.
Now, she had crashed hard. She knew that any access to that kind of
power, even a fraction of what she wielded tonight, would kill
her.
And she doubted that anyone would mourn.
Xander,
maybe. Wasn't he the one who talked her down in the end? He
still believed that the sweet innocent Willow of his childhood was still
within her, under that nest of black hair, behind the obsidian eyes of the
monster that she had become. How could she tell him? Innocent
Willow had died the moment the bullet entered Tara's body. There was
nothing left now. All that remained was a hollow husk that bore the
shape of his friend.
She lifted her head and looked at Buffy.
The Slayer had her arm around Dawn protectively, eyeing Willow suspiciously,
as though waiting for her to strike again. That confirmed it, thought
Willow. She had officially lost her best friend. Sure, she'd
forgive her, eventually, but she wouldn't trust her again. And how
could Willow blame her? After all, she had tried to destroy the world,
dammit! How can you just forget that?
The realization thatshe
had lost her friend stabbed at her, hurting more than the loss of her
lover. She could only curl up in Xander's arms and weep again.
She was peripherally aware of Giles and Anya, surveying the remains of the
Magic Box. She felt more lost than ever; here she was, surroundedby
the people she loved most in all the world, and knowing that she had lost
their trust, possibly forever. She had no idea what was going to
happen tomorrow, except that she would only know a world of pain and
anguish. A world that she had earned.
"Oh, Goddess," she
murmured into Xander's chest. "I wish I could just erase everything
I've done. I wish I could just go back to where it started and change
everything."
So quietly she spoke that she didn't believe that anyone
could hear her. But one person did. One person turned toward
Willow's crying figure, and regarded the fallen wiccan with hooded,
unreadable eyes. One person considered Willow's plaintive wish, and
came to a decision.
"Done," Anya
whispered.
========
"Okay, Willow," the vaguely familiar voice
urged her on. "Just breathe in, and out. In…and out."
The scent of jasmine and patchouli flooded her nostrils, both exotic
and as close as home. She became aware that her surroundings had
changed. She didn't feel Xander's arms around her, her eyes felt dry
and her body felt somewhat stronger than it had seconds ago. She
opened her eyes and glanced at the room around her.
She was sitting
in a lotus position on the floor what looked like a living room. The
table lamp was dimmed, and a circle of candles was arranged on the floor in
front of her. She took her eyes away from the flickering candle
flames, lifted her head, looked at the person who was speaking to her, and
panicked.
She sat casually in front of Willow, her hands gently
laying at her sides, nearly lost in meditation. Short black hair
framed a pretty face, her features bearing a Romanian flavoring.
Willow squeezed her eyes shut for a second and reopened them.
The woman before her suddenly opened her eyes, and furrowed her brow in
concern. "Willow?" she asked. "You okay?"
Willow couldn't
speak, she could barely think. She could only stare at the person
sitting before her. With supreme effort, she simply said two
words;
"Miss Calendar?"
The warm, caring face of her computer
teacher smiled at her. "Yes, Willow?"
Willow gasped hard.
"Omigod, omigodomigodomigod! This can't be happening. I'm
dreaming, that's it. Or I'm dead. That's gotta be it, I'm
dead. Except that, for all I've done, I'd be in Hell, wouldn't
I? No way I'd be here. I mean Jenny made it to Heaven,
right? No way I'd make the cut, not after--"
"Willow!" Jenny
Calendar grabbed Willow's arms, in a desperate attempt to halt her panicked
babbling. "Willow, get a hold of yourself! What are you talking
about?"
"Miss Calendar…" Willow stammered, desperately stifling the
tide of fear that threatened to overwhelm her. "Wha-what's
happened? Are you real? Are you alive?"
"Yes, Willow,"
Jenny tried to assure the redhead. "It's alright. You were in a
deep meditation trance for a moment. Dreams and visions are not
uncommon under such circumstances."
"Miss Calendar," Willow gasped
urgently. "What is today's date?"
Jenny glanced at Willow, her brows
knitting furiously. "Uh, today? It's the thirteenth of
February."
"What year?" Willow demanded.
"Year?" Jenny
frowned. "1998."
"Oh…my…god…" Willow immediately rushed to
Jenny's bathroom, turned on the light, and gazed into the mirror. A
gawky face gazed back at her, long stringy red hair hung down her back,a
pronounced widow's peak outlined her forehead. "Ohmigod, I haven't
worn my hair like this since…"
Willow shuddered. 1998.
The day before Valentine's Day. Frantically she summoned her memories
of that terrible time; Angelus was loose, and Jenny was trying to find a way
to restore his soul.
"Uh, maybe we should wrap this session up
early," Jenny offered, "and I can give you a lift home if you want.
We'll have to pick this up two days from now, as I have to go to the library
tomorrow night. I think I may have a means of restoring Angelus'
soul."
Angelus. Library. Valentine's Day.
"NO!"
Willow shouted. "Miss Calendar, you can't go to the library
tomorrow!"
Jenny opened her eyes in mock surprise. "And why
not?"
"Angelus is gonna be there! He's gonna kill
you!"
Jenny crooked her eyebrow in concern, reminding Willow of Mr.
Spock. "How do you know that? Did you have a vision during your
meditation?"
Willow stood before her mentor, not knowing how to
explain what was happening. She was crying outside the Magic Box,then
she was sitting opposite her first instructor in magic, reliving her first
meditation, her first true lesson in magic…
Where it all
started.
The tumblers clicked and with the discovery camea
strange euphoria. "She must have heard my wish," she whispered, half
to herself. "She granted my wish."
"Who granted your wish,
Willow?" Jenny asked. "C'mon, girl, you're scaring me."
"Uh,
wha…Oh, sorry," Willow stammered as she recalled the woman standing next to
her. She saw the worry creasing her forehead, and decided to attempt
the truth. "Miss Calendar, you're not going to believe this, but I
know that Angelus will kill you tomorrow. Because for me it happened
four years ago. I lived four years since then, I've seen so much,done
so much…and now I'm here, and…and I can change things."
Jenny sighed
deeply, and regarded Willow with a motherly concern. "Okay,
Willow. Maybe you'd better sit down. I'll get some of that Earl
Grey stuff that Rupert gave me for my birthday, and you can start from the
beginning." Willow accepted the offer silently, making her way to
Jenny's couch on unsteady legs, and waiting for Jenny to return from the
kitchen with two tea cups and a kettle of hot water. She poured the
water into the tea cups, letting the tea from the bags stain the water
reddish brown, and sat down in her favorite chair, opposite Willow.
"Okay, Willow. Start at the beginning. How do you know that
Angelus is going to kill me tomorrow?"
Willow breathed in, then out,
and started to speak. "Cliff Notes version; from 2001 to 2002, I made
some mistakes. Big ones. I abused my magic, got some friends
hurt, Buffy got really hurt…and at the end of my rope, I wishedthat I could
go back to where it started, and change things for the better.
An..someone heard me, someone with real power, and granted my wish.
So, here I am, at the time I started learning magic, and I guess I got a
chance to make up for my mistakes."
Jenny nodded patiently. "I
see. And you remember my dying tomorrow?"
"Yeah. It was
the inscription over the library; Latin, something like, 'Enter, all who
thirst for knowledge' or something like that. He took it for an
invitation, and killed you before you could find the spell to re-soul
him." Willow stared at Jenny with pleading eyes, desperate to read any
sign of understanding in her level features. "You gotta believe me,
Miss Calendar! You died, and Giles went all vengeance-y and…Buffy
blamed herself for everything and ran away over the summer, and
Kendra…"
"Willow," Jenny rose her voice to calm her down, "I believe
you. Look, maybe you'd better spend the night here. You cancall
your folks and tell them you're at a friend's, sleeping over."
"My
folks?" Willow mused. It's been a long time since she even thought of
her parents as anything but an afterthought. She struggled to remember
her folks' phone number. "Uh, yeah, sure. But are you okay with
having me over tonight?"
"Hey, it's no problem," Jenny smiled
reassuringly at Willow. "The sofa folds out into a hide-a-bed.
Tell you what, I'll order some pizzas, we'll watch Thelma and Louise, it'll
be fun. And tomorrow, we'll talk to Buffy and Giles, and get to the
bottom of this."
Willow sighed with relief. Jenny Calendarwas
as warm and giving as she had remembered her. "Thanks, Miss
Calendar. I appreciate it. Just promise me you won't go to the
library tomorrow?"
Jenny chuckled at Willow's earnestness. "I
promise. How about this; I'll go the day after tomorrow, and I'llonly
go in broad daylight. No way I'm letting Angelus get the drop on me,
not with your advanced warning. Now then," she added as she reached
for her phone, "how do you like your pizza?"
That evening, Willow lay
down on the sofa sleeper, staring at the ceiling of Jenny's living
room. She could scarcely credit her good fortune. From the most
hopeless moment in her life, feeling abandoned by friends, loved ones and
family, when even her own self revolted against her, she now found herself
reliving a more innocent time. But she was innocent no longer.
She knew too much. She knew what Jenny would unleash if she continued
her magic lessons.
She knew exactly how Drusilla would kill
Kendra, how Faith would betray her friends, how a brain tumor would claim
Joyce, how Buffy would sacrifice her life to save her sister, how Tara would
die in her very presence.
No.
A grim
determination filled the vacant spot that was her heart. Where there
was hopelessness, Willow now felt resolve. It wasn't gonna happenthis
way. Jenny would live. Kendra, Joyce, Tara, they all would
live. She had a second chance, to make everything right
again.
And she was going to use it.
TBC…if you're
interested.
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