Disclaimer: I don’t own anything form the BtVS universe that belongs to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy.
Summery: What if Willow isn’t who she claims to be.
An: This is something that I have been playing with in my head for a while and finally decided to write down. I hope you will enjoy it. And a big thanks to my wonderful betas Zoë and Cyndur.
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~Part: 1~
1636... somewhere in Europe
A man was standing in a window, looking into the dark as the rain fell down on the glass. His skin was pale and his hair a dark brown, almost black where it fell down his back. A door was opened and the man turned his startling blue eyes towards the servant that had just entered the room.
“My Lord, it’s a girl,” was all he said before hurrying away already haunted by the master’s eyes.
The man turned to once more look out the window before walking out the door the servant had opened. The man continued down a corridor that seemed as dark and scary as the rest of the house. Everyone that he passed parted to leave him with a free path to follow. If they, for some reason didn’t know who he was, it showed in the way he carried himself. Power and grace radiated off of him. It made his already handsome features seem almost god like.
He finally came to a stop in front of a door that he quickly pushed open and strode in. This room, unlike the others was well lit and homely. In the middle of it was a large bed, and on it laid a very beautiful woman. Her hair was red and her skin had the same milky white colour as the man’s. Her green eyes locked with his as she reached out for him with a shaking hand. He took her hand and sat next to the woman on the bed. Turning his head, he looked over to the side of the room. The woman followed his eyes.
“She is the last and most powerful of our kind. You must take good care of her, and always keep her safe from those who might want to hurt her.”
“She is beautiful. One day her beauty will even match yours.” The man murmured turning back to the woman on the bed.
“Promise me Sean …p…pr…promise,” she whispered weakly.
“I promise.”
“Tell her I will always love her.” These were the last words that left her mouth as she died.
Sean sat for the longest time, just staring down at his wife, before a noise from the side of the room drew his attention. Walking over there he could see his daughter had awakened. He knew she would have a hard life in front of her. Not only was she the only woman in his and his sons lives, but his wife was the only one that he knew that could even begin to fathom what kind of powers his youngest had, and how she would be able to control them. He might not look a day over thirty, but he was starting to feel his years catching up to him, even though he knew it was impossible.
After the baby started crying, he decided that the future could wait now that he had a baby to take care of like he had promised his wife. To honour her memory, he would name the girl Willow after her favourite tree in the garden.
1700…
It had been raining all day, and Willow was absolutely bored. Her father was out of town on business, and her two older brothers, Mark and Lucas refused to play with her. They loved her, she knew they did. But they were boys, and boys needed to do boy things sometimes. And the fact that she could kick their butts kind of ruined their pride. They were the eldest, and as elder brothers it was their job to watch over their sister. Willow didn’t understand why it had to be that way, but her father had said so, and she would listen.
She had never known her mother, but her family said that she was a wonderful and very beautiful woman. If Willow had her way, she would be like that too. Her father always told her that if she put her mind to it she could do what ever she wanted. Of course he said that about a lot of things, like dancing and painting. But she still hadn’t mastered those.
Willow really loved her family. But she got lonely and her father had forbidden her to ever go in to town, or even talk to anyone outside of their home. Willow understood, really she did. She was 64 years old even if she looked like a 13 year old. Her father told her that as she got older she would be able to choose how old she would want to look. He himself had seen centuries, and looked like he was thirty. Her brothers looked like they were in their late teens and early twenties. Not to mention their pail skin and that they drank blood for food. Well it wasn’t like she needed it. She, like her mother before her could drink it, but they didn’t need it to survive like her father and brothers did. After her mother had died, her father had stopped buying real human food. Therefore, Willow had never really eaten anything else but blood.
She was pulled from her thoughts as a bright flash of light caught her attention.
“Fire”! There was a large group of people throwing fire at their house. She had to find her brothers.’
Willow ran out of her room to find the hallways filled with running and screaming servants, but nowhere could she spot her brothers. All she could do was follow the people out and hope for the best. Her father would be home in the morning, and he would know what to do.
As she ran, Willow started to note that some of the servants had disappeared. Turning her head around, she stopped dead in horror at what was behind her. There on the floor were servants dead or dying. A sudden bam made her jump as a servant running around a corner was hit with what looked like a wooden stake fired from somewhere. The servant instantly turned to dust.
Now Willow knew she had to get out of there. Maybe if she ran into the woods and stayed there until the next morning she could go in search of her family then? Yes, she would go and hide in the woods. Hopefully, none of the attackers would notice her in the chaos.
Willow ran to a wall and crept in the shadows like her brothers had showed her when she was stalking her prey. She easily made it to the woods where she ran to a tall tree and scrambled up to hide amongst the leaves. While sitting there listening for any threatening sound, she fell asleep.
When she woke up again, it was midday, and she carefully climbed down the tree and made her way back home. What she saw frightened her. There was noting left of her house, only ashes. There was not a trace of her family, and she could only hope that they had survived.
A noise from behind her made her turn just in time to see a fully grown man running right at her. She did the only thing she could and let her instincts take over as her father had told her to. She stepped out of the man’s way just in time. As he ran past her, she caught his neck in her hands and twisted. The man fell to the ground dead, and all Willow could do was stare at her hands. She had never killed a human by herself before, only small animals, but never humans. Her father said that she would have to decide for herself as she got older if she wanted to become more like him, or if she wanted to live like a human. So he had never asked her to kill a human. Now looking down at the man, she knew that her family was not here anymore, if they were even alive. And she had best get out of here before anyone found out what she had done.
Willow took one last look at what she once called her home before running off into the woods again.
1996… Sunnydale
After Willow left, she had spent decades looking for her family, having never really given up on them. But she had never found any trace of them. So she finally stopped looking altogether. She had wandered the world as a human. Seeking jobs where she could get them. Over the years, she had gotten wiser and more powerful than ever. She learned how to control her powers, and what she could do with them. Ageing had been one of the easiest things, followed by de-ageing.
Willow had learned early on to be careful of who she could trust, and to chose her friends carefully. If she took lovers, they were usually kept in the dark, and never lasted for very long. The one time Willow thought she had found her true love, after only five years together, he was taken away from her.
She had also tried to be as a human at times, always keeping an eye and an ear on the demon world. She heard of many powerful demons and vampires like the scourge, and of various slayers, but she always kept her distance if she could. One time in Rome she had run in to the scourge, but had been fortunate enough for her to go unnoticed by them. Angelus and William the Bloody were both handsome and powerful in their own right, but she preferred to keep to herself.
Willow once found out through the help of one of her many sources, that she was a myth in the demon world. There were stories told of her beauty and her power. It was said that the one to have her as a mate would be able to rule over the world.
That had made Willow laugh. That they actually thought that it would be that easy? She new she had power, but only she was able to use it. And the only way they would have the power to rule the world, would be if she helped them willingly, which she couldn’t see herself doing. That was one of the biggest reasons as to why Willow stayed away from the demon world.
Sometimes Willow got lonely, and then she usually turned herself into a young child and went to an orphanage were she would stay or get adopted into a new family until she grew up and left. She never forgot her real family, but this was as close to it she could get. This was what she had done in the early 1980’s in a city called LA. She had been there for almost a year when a couple came in. They were both psychiatrists, and thought they needed a child to make their family complete. They apparently found that Willow would fit in perfectly and adopted her.
It turned out that the Rosenberg’s put their work before Willow, but she didn’t mind. It gave her a bigger freedom and she didn’t have to play the innocent child all the time, although she still felt lonely. But that changed with a yellow crayon in kindergarten. She had just broken her yellow crayon when a boy with the kindest eyes offered her his. That was the start of a wonderful and beautiful friendship.
Xander was the first person that she had been really close to since her first love died. After she and Xander started school, they met Jesse. Together, they became the three musketeers. Willow had but one problem she noticed as they got older. That the other girls got crushes on boys, and Willow who was used to older and more experienced men didn’t find any of the boys attractive. So, instead of attracting unwanted attention to herself, she pretended to be in love with the boy she called her hero, Xander. He of course had no idea, and that was the way she liked it. The other girls started to tease her, but she didn’t care it wasn’t like they knew the real her. Nobody, not even Xander knew her.
It was the first day of school in 1996 when all that she had worked to keep her distance for finally caught up to her.
~~*~~
Willow had woken up early. She loved school and all that came with it. Her brothers always used to tease her about asking too many questions, but her father said that if you never asked, then you never got any answers. For as long as she could remember, reading had been one of her favourite past times. When the libraries became public, she started to spend as much time as she could, reading books and learning new things.
Willow, had at an early age learned how to read, because if you couldn’t read you could never learn, and that meant that you were like the workers and the common people, and that was something that her father would never accept. Therefore, she and her brothers spent lots of their time in her father’s library, either with him or one of their many tutors.
Once, you were labelled successful and wealthy if you had knowledge, but today you were labelled a geek. Willow was one of the smartest people in Sunnydale, something that made many of the people her age look down upon her. In fact, the only one’s that didn’t were probably Xander and Jesse.
Xander and Jesse, they were another reason that she couldn’t wait to get to school. Both of them had gone to camp over the summer, and had just gotten back, and she couldn’t be more exited to see them and hear about their summer.
Willow had spent the summer travelling with her parents. Yeah that was a shock, they usually didn’t give her much thought, but this summer they were going to Europe to lecture on family. That meant that they had to show off their own, so Willow had to tag along. She didn’t really mind that they were dragging her along. When they lectured she went out and visited places she hadn’t seen in ages, plus some new ones that either weren’t there before, or had escaped her knowledge.
Now skipping her way to school (yes she was skipping, had to keep up her innocent act) Willow couldn’t wait for the day to begin.
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