FIC: Moon Dreams I - Wolf Moon Rising (7/7)

["another_soul_lost" <anotherlostsoul@xxxxxxxxx>]

Title:  Moon Dreams I (7/7)
Disclaimer:  Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy and a lot of other people own
the show and all the characters.  The plot and the story are mine. 
This cannot be sold or used for profit in any way, shape or form. 
Please don't sue me, because I really don't have anything to take.


* * * * *

I wish that I could say that my first ever charter flight had been a
memorable occasion, but sadly it wasn't really.  The plane that we
were taking was a small, yet very comfortable, Learjet owned by my
grandfather's charter company.  Unfortunately, my exhaustion won out
over my excitement at the prospect and I was asleep before we'd even
gotten airborne.

By the time my uncle woke me up, we were already on the ground at a
small airport just an hour or so from my grandfather's estate.  I'm
sure that the drive would have been quite beautiful during the day,
but even with my improved night-vision, the darkness leached the color
from my vision, rendering the world a symphony of gray tones.  Growing
quickly bored with the view, I found myself tensely fidgeting in my
seat, my anxiety at meeting my grandfather gnawing at my insides.

"How are ya holding up kiddo?" Uncle Jack asked in a light tone as he
steered the oversized SUV down the winding rural road.  

"Oh, I'm doing alright I guess," I replied in a forced voice, "If you
ignore the fact that the butterflies in my stomach have butterflies in
their stomachs."

Uncle Jack chuckled softly.  "You've got nothing to worry about
Willow.  You'll get the hang of this werewolf thing in no time at all
and be back in Sunny-D before you can miss it," he said with a smile
in his voice as he tried unsuccessfully to reassure me.

I sighed, wishing that was the source of my discomfort.  "That's not
really what's got me worried, Uncle Jack," I said quietly, half-hoping
that he wouldn't hear me.  A quick glance confirmed, however, that he
did hear me, as his face slid into a concerned frown.

"What is it, Willow?" he asked in blunt concern.

"I don't know if you realize it or not," I snapped testily, "but I
don't know anything about mom's family.  I've never even met Grandpa
O'Connell and I have no idea what to expect.  I mean, what do I say to
a man who seems to have completely ignored my existence for the past
16 years?"

A stunned silence filled the car as the miles continued to creep past.
I immediately felt bad about having snapped at my uncle, but how was
I supposed to feel?

Several minutes later, Uncle Jack finally broke the silence.  "Sheila
never explained to you why dad kept his distance from you guys?"  

I could smell the bitter scent of his anger on the air around me as he
spoke.  There was old pain here, the kind of pain brought by emotional
wounds that never really heal.  I swallowed hard, realizing suddenly
that I was dredging up something unpleasant for my uncle, and that
there was more going on here than I knew.

I wished desperately that I'd just kept my mouth shut, that I'd tried
harder to ignore the elephant in the room that apparently only I could
see.  But it was too late now, there was no way I could close the can
of worms I had just opened.  "What didn't she explain?  Why has
grandpa ignored us, ignored me, for so long?" I asked softly, letting
go of my frustration.

"Damn it," he swore softly.  "I thought you already knew kiddo.  If I
didn't I would never have asked you to come here, not without
explaining first."  He sighed and took a deep breath before he
continued, "What do you know about your mother and father's marriage?"

I shrugged before rattling off the short version, "They went to
college together, worked together closely throughout grad school, fell
in love and got married&"

A sharp snort of amusement from my uncle cut me off.  "Well, that's
definitely one version of what happened."

"And I suppose you have a different version?" I shot back, annoyed.

"Yeah, I do.  One that covers a number of facts that they didn't
bother to tell you," he snapped, equally annoyed.  "My version also
has the advantage of explaining why you've never gotten to know your
grandfather."

It was my turn to sit in quiet shock.  The emotions I could smell
rolling off my uncle screamed to my rational mind that there was no
way I was going to like what he was going to tell me.  Whatever he had
to tell me was something that my parents had deliberately kept from
me, and I had a sinking feeling that whatever it was, it was going to
unpleasant if not downright painful to hear.  Did I really want to
hear it?

No.  I really didn't want to know what he had to tell me.  But I also
couldn't walk away from this.  Not now that I knew there was something
I didn't know.  The morbid curiosity aroused by this would drive me
mad as I fabricated scenario after scenario to try and explain what
had been so terrible it warranted my mother lying to me about it.  And
a part of me was certain that whatever reasoning I invented was bound
to be worse than the simple reality of it.  

Like it or not, I had to know the truth.  My voice was emotionless as
I finally broke the uneasy silence that had settled over the car. 
"Tell me."

"Your mom was friends with Ira throughout college, but she never dated
him, never saw him romantically, and never even seemed interested in
him that way," Uncle Jack swallowed uneasily.  "And then she surprised
the hell out of the pack and suddenly up and married him without any
warning and without telling any of us."

"What?"  I gasped out suddenly.  I had expected the story my uncle
would tell to me differ somewhat from what my mother and father had
told me down through the years, but this wasn't even remotely close to
what I thought I knew.

Uncle Jack just nodded and continued his story, "Ira had always been
interested in your mother though.  You could smell the attraction in
the air whenever he was around her.  When it turned out, your mother
was pregnant with you when she married him things seemed to make a
little more sense."  He sighed softly before continuing.  "The pack
came to the conclusion that he must've finally gotten up the nerve to
ask your mom out, one thing lead to another and he did the right thing
by marrying your mother after knocking her up."

I nodded my head slowly and tried to process what my uncle was telling
me.  I had long known that my mother was already rather pregnant with
me before she married my dad, but it had never occurred to me that the
pregnancy may have been the reason for the wedding.  Although, given
my mother and father's very strict views on the importance of a
two-parent family, it would make perfect sense.

My uncle had fallen silent for a few moments as though considering
what to tell me next while I digested his words.  I looked at him,
watching closely as he seemed to ponder something.  Finally, he seemed
to reach a decision and spoke again.  

"Nobody in the pack liked your dad, kiddo.  There were a lot of
different reasons for that, but mostly, he came off as an arrogant,
condescending prig who felt like he knew better than anyone else.  Dad
and Ira clashed constantly, over every little thing, when it came to
you and your mother."  

I wasn't really surprised by that fact.  If nothing else my father had
a tendency to rub people the wrong way, but something bothered me
about this.  A discrete sniff of the air around me revealed that it
was heavily laden with anxiety, both mine and Uncle Jack's.  It
occurred to me that there was something else that he knew, something
he had chosen to leave out.  I narrowed my eyes at him, concentrating
on what he was telling me, hoping that I could read between the lines
to hear what he didn't want to say.

Uncle Jack let out another sigh before answering.  "Your grandpa tried
very hard to be a part of your life, Willow, despite the fact that he
and Ira didn't like each other very much.  Your grandpa didn't believe
that your mother had married Ira because she loved him and he argued
long and hard against them staying together.  After you were born, the
arguments only got worse."

He trailed off for a few moments before continuing.  "Finally, in the
midst of a heated argument between Ira and your grandpa, your grandpa
lost his temper and Changed.  Needless to say that didn't go over well
at all.  It was the absolute worst possible way for anyone to find out
that werewolves exist, something we'd been careful to keep Ira from
finding out.  Afterward, he cut off all contact between grandpa and
you.  He wasn't about to let a `monster' like your grandfather any
where near his daughter."

`And the fun just keeps on leaving,' I thought morosely.   If dad
reacted that badly to my grandpa being a werewolf, how on earth was he
going to deal with it when he finds out that I'm a werewolf?  I could
just imagine how much fun that conversation wasn't going to be.

"Your grandpa never gave up trying though," I heard my uncle say, his
voice penetrating the funk of my thoughts.  "He has stacks of birthday
and Christmas cards he's sent you down through the years, Willow.  All
of which your father returned unopened."  Uncle Jack turned toward me
and gave me a sad smile, "Whenever your mother talked to him, he asked
about you, whenever I would come and visit, he would practically
interrogate me about you when I got back.  He always tells us that one
of the biggest regrets he has is that he's never gotten to know you,
Willow."

In the wake of that revelation, my anxiety seemed to recede.  No
longer was it laced with fear of rejection or unpleasantness.  My
grandpa wanted to get to know me.  He wanted to be a part of my life
and that knowledge left me an entirely different set of anxieties.  

`What is it that Uncle Jack's not telling me?' I wondered suddenly, as
my brain ran off on an entirely different tangent.  I ran the
conversation back through my mind again, looking for something,
anything that might hint at what he might be hiding.  I felt my wolf
stir within me, felt it focus on the words as I played them back
through my mind.  

It was my wolf that heard the almost imperceptible quaver that had
colored my uncle's voice when he'd mentioned that things got worse
after I was born.  Whatever it was he was hiding, it had something to
do with my birth, or something that happened afterward, something that
brought the fight between my dad and my grandpa to a head.

"You're leaving something out," I stated flatly, trusting my
burgeoning instincts were pointing me in the right direction.  "There
was something about my birth, something that happened that changed
things, wasn't there?"

"Damn it, Willow," he swore softly, a faint hint of amusement coloring
his voice, "You aren't supposed to pick up on things like that so
quick.  What gave it away?"

"I could smell your anxiety when you were deciding what to tell me and
what not to tell me," I started, the edges of a smile tugging at my
mouth as my uncle nodded thoughtfully in response.  "And my beast
caught something in your voice when you mentioned it got worse after I
was born."

"You're sharp, kiddo," he said with a distinct note of pride in his
voice.  "Maybe too sharp, I mean you're a pup, just over a day past
your first Change and you're already in tune enough with your wolf to
catch that?"

I felt my beast rumble happily in response to his praise, and a slight
flush of pride rose in my face.  Until I realized what he was doing. 
"Stop trying to dodge the question," I said with a grin.   "What's the
big secret?"

"Caught that too, huh?" he asked with a slightly disappointed tone in
his voice, before sighing deeply.  "The thing is, I can't tell ya
that, kiddo.  I want to, and I think you deserve to know, but there's
only one person who has the right to tell that secret and I'm not it."

`The plot thickens,' I thought with a sly smile.  After all, I do love
a good mystery, especially the kind where nobody dies if I don't
figure it out in time.  And compared to the kind of mysteries I'd been
dealing with on the Hellmouth the past few months, this one was
downright tame.

"So whose secret is it to tell?" I asked

"It's your mother's," he said after a moment.  "Only she can tell you,
because as far as I know she's the only one who knows the whole
story."  His expression was serious and closed off as he revealed that
fact to me, but it quickly lightened as he spoke again, "Now, how
about I fill you in on some family history that you can't get from
just anyone?"

I couldn't help but grin at the obvious attempt to change the subject
and lighten the mood.  Maybe getting to know my mother's family wasn't
going to be quite so bad after all.

* * * * *

When my uncle called my grandfather's place an estate, he really
wasn't kidding.  The house and the grounds, collectively called Bear
Point, have apparently been in the O'Connell family for nearly 200
years.  Of course, it didn't start out as a grand manor house, it
started out as a trapper's cabin, but over the years it's grown into
something that would make Cordelia Chase sit up and take notice.  Not
that I really care what Cordy thinks or anything.

The week that I spent there was amazing.  In addition to being the
family home for the American branch of the O'Connell clan, it's also
the home of my grandfather's pack.  I was surrounded by fellow Weres,
mostly wolves but also a couple of bears and other, more exotic
animals, the entire time I was there.

It wasn't an easy time though.  From the time that I woke up each
morning until I fell asleep exhausted each night, I was kept very
busy.  It was quickly established that I had an extraordinary amount
of control over my beast, so the largest part of my time was spent
mastering the ability to Change at will.  I managed to impress my
grandfather's pack, however, and by the end of the week, I could
manage a wide range of partial transformations at will.

When I wasn't practicing Changing or working on finding a good balance
between my newly awakened wolf-instincts and my human mind, I was
getting to know my grandfather and the extended family presented by
his pack.  It was strange how quickly and easily I was able to connect
with grandpa.  Within a matter of just a few days it felt as if we'd
been close for my entire life, I couldn't imagine things being any
other way.

The day before I was supposed to go back to Sunnydale, my grandpa and
his pack had 2 surprises for me.  First, they accepted me and my pack
as part of their clan, without even meeting the rest of the
Slayerettes.  My pack and I were welcome at Bear Point anytime and if
we ever needed it, my grandfather's pack would be there to help us.

The second surprise was that my grandfather had decided that he wanted
to make up for the 16 years of holiday and birthday presents he'd been
unable to buy me because of my dad.  What ensued was a quick flight to
Seattle, followed by a shopping spree that left me with an entirely
new wardrobe to take home with me, one inspired by my newfound,
wolf-driven self-confidence.

As I boarded the plane to return to Sunnydale, I knew I was a changed
woman.  Willow Rosenberg, the shrinking violet was gone for good,
replaced by Willow the wolf and life in Sunnydale would never be the
same again.







"It's a good fight, Buffy, and I want in."
"I kinda love you."
Buffy & Willow, 'Choices'

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