RATING: G
CONTENT: Some Willow angst, nothing really bad. Suitable for all age groups and stuff.
SPOILER WARNINGS: Um... I'd have to say Becoming part two. Other than that, nope.
SUMMARY: Willow dreads knowing what happened to Buffy after the events of Becoming.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own these characters. That would be Joss' territory there. Well, Joss and everyone else who works with this show. Please don't sue me. I own nothing, you couldn't get anything out of me anyway.
Willow sat at her computer desk, tapping away on the wood with the eraser of her pencil. She knew she should be studying, but she just couldn’t shake the feeling that something was horribly wrong. Buffy hadn’t shown up at school at all that day, and they had all known that something had to have happened at the mansion the night before. Problem was, no one knew what.
Going to Buffy’s was pointless, since she doubted her head injury would make the walk or drive too dangerous. Besides, her parents had confined her to her room to make sure she got enough rest. So why not just call? What could it hurt?
She knew it could hurt. A lot. No one knew if Buffy was even alive. And if she called and found out that she had not come home, they would have to face the fact that they might never see Buffy again. So did she really want to make this phone call? Was it worth it?
Maybe Buffy was sitting in her room right now, wondering if she should call Willow about what had happened last night. The phone would ring, she would pick it up, hear Willow’s voice and say that she was just about to call. They had done it a hundred times before.
Or maybe she was still at the mansion somewhere, and Giles and Xander just hadn’t seen her there when they went back. Maybe she had had to kill Angel and stayed there for privacy. Maybe everything had gone well and she and Angel were there together. Maybe Buffy had died-
Why did she keep coming back to the negatives? She was just going to drive herself crazy thinking about this. Pondering the what ifs and worst case scenarios were not going to help this situation any. Willow picked up the phone and dialed.
After three rings she heard the phone pick up, and then a very tired, “Hello?” on the other end.
“Hi, it’s Willow,” she said, as cheerfully as possible. “Is Buffy home?”
There was silence for a minute, and Willow’s heard nearly stopped altogether. She had been right by thinking negatively. The worst had to have happened, and Joyce was just thinking of the best way to say it.
Finally Joyce responded. “Um, Willow, Buffy left home.”
That thought had never occurred to her. Suddenly a flurry of thoughts raced through her mind. What if Buffy had just never come home, and she was actually dead somewhere or hurt- “She what?”
“She ran away. She left and didn’t come back.”
“Are you sure?” Willow said, excited. “I mean-”
“She left a note,” Joyce said. There was a dead quality about her voice, as if she had cried about it too much already to actually feel anything about it anymore. And that was scary.
“Oh, well...” Willow tried to think of the most polite way to end the conversation without leaving it at a horrible end. “Um, thanks.”
Willow gingerly placed the receiver back in the cradle. There wasn’t a sound in the room. Absolute silence. She didn’t feel anything for a minute, except for the icy cold feeling in the pit of her stomach. Somehow it didn’t feel right to cry about it, even though she had just lost one of her best friends.
And Buffy was just that. She was the first person Willow could really confide in about Xander, or Oz... When Buffy knew she was going off to her death, she listened to Willow talk about what it was like to find those dead bodies in the AV room. When she had just learned that her boyfriend had once again turned into a homicidal bloodsucking maniac, she put that aside to let Willow cry about Xander and Cordelia and how unfair it all was.
Even being around Buffy had changed her. Back when they had first met, halfway through sophomore year, Willow had been a shy little wallflower who couldn't talk to a guy without freezing up entirely, who would slink away at the mere sight of Cordelia. Maybe Buffy hadn’t done anything specific to change that, but the whole slaying experience had changed her. She had even killed a vampire, for Pete’s sake! Willow had never felt like she really belonged anywhere; she was just there, part of the scenery. She had a place in her group. In her head she still referred to them as the Slayerettes, and now that was gone.
Their leader was gone.
Willow didn’t think about it, just picked up the phone again and dialed. “Xander?” she said when she heard the phone pick up. “It’s me.”
“Hey, Will,” Xander said from his end of the line. “What’s up?”
“Um, can you come over here?” she said. “I think we need to have a talk.”
He paused, but didn’t question it. Maybe he had heard the teensy little crack in her voice. But whatever it was, he just said, “Okay. I’ll be right there,” and hung up.
Willow stood from the chair at her desk and walked on over to her bed. She curled up on it, hugging a pillow to her chest, and she waited for Xander to arrive.
end