Paradise Dreams (1a/?) PG

TITLE: Paradise Dreams
NAME: Ivy Gort
E-MAIL: Ivy Gort@xxxxxxxxxxx
RATING: This part PG
SPOILERS: All Of Buffy
PAIRING:W/K-this part. But hey, what pairing do I normally write?
SUMMARY:10 years after Chosen, Willow recieves a distrubing phone call from Giles.
DISCLAIMER : I don't own them, I just like tortureing them.

ARCHIVING/DISTRIBUTION: Wiffy Board only right now. When its finish just ask.

FEEDBACK : Please! It really helps me.

BETA: Ann Marie who else? P

NOTE: This is the story I play with when Finding the Slayer and The Island are stuck. Most of this first part was written two months ago. Another part was written three weeks ago. This I post (not ready for prime time ) little snippets of things on the Wiffy Board just to play.

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Paradise Dreams

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"You have no idea what happened to her?" Willow gripped the phone tightly. She turned toward Kennedy as the Slayer lay sleeping soundly in their bed. The bleak early morning light shinning through the frost-covered windows of their Beacon Hill home.

"No, none. The Seers have spent the better part of the past two days trying find out." Giles' voice sounded tired and drawn, hopeless. Willow closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath trying to settle her nerves. Trying to make sense of what Giles was telling her.

"Tell me again, please," she pleaded, she couldn't make sense of what Giles was telling her. She walked toward the window and leaned against it. The cold from the window was chilling her and helping to clear her mind.

"After Sharon and Gail were killed, Buffy took a full patrol out on Friday." Willow thought back, Friday ? this was Monday how could that much damage have happened in just two days? "Willow?" Giles' voice broke into her thoughts. "Are you there?" She sighed and pulled away from the window. Tea, she needed some tea, if she was going to hear this again.

"I'm here Giles, just walking downstairs to get some tea. The servants aren't awake this early." Servants, Willow Rosenberg with servants. That still boggled her mind. Of course they were in the employ of Kennedy, whose family was richer than God thanks to the Council. The old Council from before America was a country. They had financed her ancestor's trip to America and had helped start their first business.

"Right then, should I continue?" Giles voice was clipped. Willow could hear the emotion in it, whatever had happen to Buffy, he was worried. Horribly worried. Buffy was the strongest of them all; she was the leader to all the Slayers and had become a symbol to them. As the years passed Buffy had grown into her role as Slayer Prime, the First Slayer, as they liked to call her.

The light was already on in the kitchen when Willow entered, with the teakettle filled and on the burner of the stove. She looked up from her thoughts, surprised to see her assistant already awake.

"Good morning Miss Rosenberg, your office I presume?" the bright-faced girl asked. And added, at Willow's questioning look, ?I heard the phone. Whenever it rings this early it's never good news." Willow hated calling Kennedy's servant's maid or butlers so she referred to them as assistants.

She nodded to the young girl and then headed toward her office. "Giles I'm going into my office, why don't we conference call and that way you can also transfer the data you have so far."

"Good idea, I'll get the techs to set up a live feed so you can see for yourself." Giles broke the connection. Willow entered the room and absentmindedly opened the cabinets of the dark mahogany chest that held the conferencing center. The 48-inch plasma screen was already booting up with the test pattern, the symbol of the new Council of Slayers and Watchers. A stake and sword crossed over an open book. She knew the symbol well because she had designed it. She was the

second-in-command of the Watchers. Giles was the first -in-command. She absentmindedly walked over to the large windows that looked out over the snow covered grounds.

"Professor Rosenberg are you ready?" a stuffy British voice asked through the feed, startling Willow. She looked up to see yet another bright fresh face on the screen. And she wondered when did she get so old? Not that she was really old in years, she just felt old.

"Yes, John, please continue," she told the tech distractedly as she sat down at her huge red oak desk and faced the screen. It was only then did Willow realize that she was dressed in her pajamas. A full grown woman, much less professor of Magical Arts, should not be seen wearing Dumbo pajamas, but there she was in them.

And ? she just didn't care.

"Send the data you have to my computer but I want to see the streaming video now," she ordered the I.T. junior Watcher on the other side of the Atlantic.

"Willow I feel I must warn . . . " Giles' face appeared where the tech was a few seconds ago.

"I want to see her Giles, I need to see her." Willow braced herself for what was to come up on the screen.

"Very well." Giles nodded to someone off the screen and then his face was replaced by a view of a room. The white sterile walls were splashed with red. In the middle of the picture was an intense, silent struggle. A piecing scream made Willow jump as the sound came online a second later. Three Slayers were trying to hold Buffy still long enough for a doctor to give her an injection. Blood was running freely from two of the Slayer's noses and the third Slayer looked as if she had a broken arm, but still they all held on to the Slayer Prime as if their lives depended on it ? and maybe they did. Tears of grief were flowing freely down the young Slayer's faces. Willow recognized them as the latest Called. If the blood on the walls was any indication, then it was at least the second fight they had with Buffy.

Willow's gaze was then drawn to Buffy's face and she inwardly cringed because it was locked in the rictus of insanity. The Senior Watcher in Command of the Americas forced herself to look into her friend's vacant, staring eyes, and nearly broke down into tears as she saw Buffy's normally bright hazel eyes devoid of the spark that was always in them.

As she listened she began to understand the screaming, "No, please no. No, please no." Over and over again. One of the young Slayers was finally able to capture one of Buffy's flailing arms, the thick manacle of the broken tie down still around the wrist, and using all of her strength she held it still long enough for the doctor to dash forward with his injection. The injection seemed to momentarily enrage Buffy, she was able to kick off one of her captors, only to have two others hold her tighter until the drugs started to work. Willow knew the drugs that they were using well; she had experimented with the combination. Buffy should have been unconscious in a matter of seconds, and yet, almost a minute later she was still weakly struggling with two of the Slayers.

After a few more minutes the Slayers were able to restrain Buffy enough to chain her back to the bed in a 5-point restraint harness. Willow watched as the drug continued to sap the Slayer Prime's strength. She stopped her struggles and just lay still, staring at nothing or something that only she could see. Still whispering "No, please no. No, please no. "

Giles' face came back up on the screen. "She's been like that since she woke up yesterday. The rescue party found her unconscious next to the body of her second-in-command, the others are missing." Giles took off his glasses and started cleaning them. Willow was numb; she couldn't believe what she had seen.

"It has to be a spell of some kind?" Willow asked still trying to sort through the image of her best friend's face.

"The seers say there is no taint of magic, it appears that Buffy's mind has simply fractured." Willow couldn't move. She couldn't speak. She felt a growing sense of dread at Giles' words. They began to echo around in her head. Insane. No, she can't be insane. She was the strongest of them all.

"I'm coming." Willow didn't know she had decided to fly there until she said the words.

"Willow your duties . . . " Giles started, only to stop when Willow raised her hand.

"My duties be damned Giles, Buffy needs me, now." Willow felt the tears that she had been holding back start to pour down her face. She knew what they did to violently insane Slayers. They had to; it was the only way to keep the people of the world safe. Somehow she had to help Buffy; the fight wasn't going well for the Slayers. It seemed like evil just kept getting stronger while the Slayers died around them. Buffy was their heart and soul in this fight, if she died this way, to be put down like a rabid dog, then the fight would drain out of everyone.

"I'll be there by tonight," Willow told him. "I want everything downloaded to me when I get to the plane, all the reports you have on this "big bad" she was tracking everything--" With that she cut the connection before he could protest further. She knew that this could be a trap to get the two most important people of the council together in one place. But none of it mattered. If Buffy didn't recover the fight would be over.

And her fight with Kennedy about going to England, to Buffy, would be just beginning. Kennedy always hated Buffy, was always jealous of her relationship with Willow. It had been better in recent years with Buffy in the Untied Kingdom while Willow stayed in the Americas, but it was still there, just under the surface. Well, she didn't have the time or energy to fight with the "brat" as Kennedy liked to call herself.

She reached over to the intercom, "Megan, call the car I'm going to London. I'll change on the plane." That decision made she got up and just put on her heavy coat and boots. The plane would be ready for takeoff by the time she got to it and she always had a change of clothes in it. Dumbo pajamas or not, she was going to London right then because she knew that Buffy needed her.

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Kennedy woke to an overwhelming sense of dread. They had spent an incredible weekend at the Keys, a little Slaying, a little loving, and then a long exhausting flight home. She looked around the room for her lover of the past 10 years and couldn't find her. That shouldn't have sent her Slayer sense skyrocketing into the red, it wasn't unusual for the Wiccan to receive early morning calls that she took downstairs in her office.

Kennedy took a few calming breaths, trying to do that Zen crap that Giles and Buffy were always talking about. As she cleared her mind she reached out for her lover ? only to find ? nothing. Willow's magical energy could set off her Slayer alarms from miles away, much less if the witch was still in the house. Panic filled Kennedy causing her throat to contract as she tried to force air into her lungs.

"Hey, you get your ass here!" She shouted as loud as she could with the little oxygen as she had. Immediately Chloe appeared at the foot of the large four poster bed.

"You rang?" the First asked with a smirk. "You know, one of these days one of your servants will hear you and you'll have to kill them ? again." The Evil being smiled. The First then walked to the side of the bed and sat down where Willow should still be sleeping.

"Where is she?" Kennedy demanded forcing the word through gritted teeth. "Our deal, or should I say my GREAT Grandfather's deal, never included our loved ones. They were always to be protected!" She got up out of bed and stood facing the source of evil with clenched fists.

The First waved away her protests with a flick of the wrist. "And she will be protected. Did you think it was easy to figure out a way to neutralize her and not kill or permanently damage her in anyway?" The First changed form, out of the body of the young Slayer she had convinced to kill herself all those many years ago, and into the form of the monster it was, its voice becoming deeper and more menacing. "Our fight does not go well; the army of Slayers is winning. The only reason they hadn't won by now and spread their insipid goodness to the Four Corners of the earth is because they are so emotionally weak. I kill one or two and it paralyzes scores of others with grief."

"That's not my problem!" Kennedy screamed and stood facing the hideous creature that was the benefactor behind all her family's wealth and power. "I have honored you, I have worshipped you, I have done everything you asked, because I know I must obey. That blood oath my parents made me take when I was seven forced servitude on me! But so help me, if you break your oath then I'm free!"

The First changed forms once again, into her Grandfather. "The trap has been set. There is nothing you can do about it now. Your lover won't be hurt--much--but she will be out of the way along with that pesky little bitch."

Kennedy always hated this form of the First the most. She remembered her Grandfather?s foul breath, as he would pin her small hands above her head, she could almost feel the pain again, as he would drive into her. She may be a Slayer, she may have all the power now, but he had it then, and she would never forget what would happen when she disobeyed him. The First rarely used this form, knowing the power it had over her, how she would instantly cringe away from it. Kennedy hated herself more now than at any other time in her life. She hated the fact that this kind of evil knew her so well that all it needed to do was change forms and she would obey it just to make the memories stop.

"You will never be free of me." Her Grandfather's voice echoed in the large room. The First went back to its monster form. "Just like you will never be free of me. The last of my forces are poised. They will hit as soon as the Witch is neutralized and the word of the way the Slayer Prime died is spread. We, you and I, will strike them at their heart while my forces kill the rest."

Kennedy dropped her eyes in defeat. "Yes. I will obey."

"Good, my honored servant," the First told her almost kindly. "Now you have the role of the indignant lover to play. Do it well for if you fail me in this task, like you did ten years ago when you allowed the Slayer Prime back into the house, your love will die. And you will spend eternity begging for my mercy."

"As your wish, so is my command." Kennedy mumbled the phrase by rote. And the First left in a soundless pop.

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TBC in B

Bright Blessings,