Fic: What Comes Next (Willow, PG)
Title What Comes Next
Character Willow
Rating PG
Word Count 650
Prompt for voleuse at genfic_minis, who wanted academics, bad weather and books, but not magic or overwhelming angst. I hope this angst is under control enough for you!
It is raining as Willow’s train leaves Taunton. The train’s large windows are blinded by rivulets of water, flowing and joining to blank out the outside, a wall of translucence. Willow can’t see the countryside she’s passing as the train works its way through Somerset, Wiltshire and beyond. A shame. She’s only been through this part of England once before, and then she was barely conscious. (Giles almost had to feed her and button her coat.) Now, Willow is very conscious, and slightly bored, and wishing she had brought something to read.
Willow was a reader, one upon a time. A true booklover. Books opened the door to new worlds. Curled quiet with her escape-of-choice, living in Narnia, or Gormenghast, or Sweet Valley High, come to that.
But then Buffy came, and Giles, and the library had a new purpose. New worlds opening wherever Willow looked. Gormenghast seemed totally passé. Sweet Valley High had vampires in the halls. Books were everywhere still, but it wasn’t the same. They became tools for knowledge and power. Research was a matter for fear, frantic deadlines meaning life or death for the community they tried to protect, scrabbling through reference works to find desperate answers.
So books lost their magic. (Ironic, huh?)
Books mattered less and less, except for what they could give her. Till one day, she took the books and drank them dry of their dark magicks.
Willow doesn’t like to remember what happened -falling girl; fleeing man; white shirt screaming in the face of death; friends bleeding bruised dying; earth breaking; goddess rising; one man slumped skinless on the thorned ropes she wove -
No.
Willow doesn’t remember what happened.
There was a day and a night and another day, when things happened. Then she cried, in Xander’s arms, and on the airplane, and in the car and till she arrived at-
The place she isn’t going to talk about any more; any more than she thinks about what came before it. The place where the witch-women were. The good, loving women who kept her caged while she stormed; and tamed her when she raged; nurtured her when she withdrew-
But they didn’t know what to do with Willow on the day she left her room. When she said, “You know... If I were an alcoholic, you wouldn’t have sent me to rehab in a bar.” And left-
Not stomped out in a tantrum, please note. That’s not the Willow who is now. (Not that it was ever Willow, unless the magic was with her).
And so Willow left, for the real world. Rented an apartment nearby. Took help in finding a temp job. Asked Giles for advice about her future. Accepted some money from him to help her achieve it, too, which she feels lousy about and will repay.
Couldn’t go back home. If life with the Coven was like living in a bar, life in Sunnydale was more like owning a distillery or a bottling plant - endless temptation on tap.
So Willow looked for another way. Looked back, to find when she’d been happy. Where she’d felt at home. And this, if this works - which it has to - is her answer.
Willow is passing the rainy journey in imagining what she’s about to face. The voices, the questions...
“So, Ms Rosenberg... why do you want to study at the University of Cambridge? You completed two full years at the University of California, Sunnydale. Why are you not planning to finish your degree there?”
She’s not worried about the other questions, the many which will follow and test her commitment, intelligence, potential and all the other things academics look for in their students. Those, she’s always had.
It’s the second question that scares Willow. And she will not answer, “Because I was evil, and I can’t go back, and this is how I choose to go on.”
***
Character Willow
Rating PG
Word Count 650
Prompt for voleuse at genfic_minis, who wanted academics, bad weather and books, but not magic or overwhelming angst. I hope this angst is under control enough for you!
It is raining as Willow’s train leaves Taunton. The train’s large windows are blinded by rivulets of water, flowing and joining to blank out the outside, a wall of translucence. Willow can’t see the countryside she’s passing as the train works its way through Somerset, Wiltshire and beyond. A shame. She’s only been through this part of England once before, and then she was barely conscious. (Giles almost had to feed her and button her coat.) Now, Willow is very conscious, and slightly bored, and wishing she had brought something to read.
Willow was a reader, one upon a time. A true booklover. Books opened the door to new worlds. Curled quiet with her escape-of-choice, living in Narnia, or Gormenghast, or Sweet Valley High, come to that.
But then Buffy came, and Giles, and the library had a new purpose. New worlds opening wherever Willow looked. Gormenghast seemed totally passé. Sweet Valley High had vampires in the halls. Books were everywhere still, but it wasn’t the same. They became tools for knowledge and power. Research was a matter for fear, frantic deadlines meaning life or death for the community they tried to protect, scrabbling through reference works to find desperate answers.
So books lost their magic. (Ironic, huh?)
Books mattered less and less, except for what they could give her. Till one day, she took the books and drank them dry of their dark magicks.
Willow doesn’t like to remember what happened -falling girl; fleeing man; white shirt screaming in the face of death; friends bleeding bruised dying; earth breaking; goddess rising; one man slumped skinless on the thorned ropes she wove -
No.
Willow doesn’t remember what happened.
There was a day and a night and another day, when things happened. Then she cried, in Xander’s arms, and on the airplane, and in the car and till she arrived at-
The place she isn’t going to talk about any more; any more than she thinks about what came before it. The place where the witch-women were. The good, loving women who kept her caged while she stormed; and tamed her when she raged; nurtured her when she withdrew-
But they didn’t know what to do with Willow on the day she left her room. When she said, “You know... If I were an alcoholic, you wouldn’t have sent me to rehab in a bar.” And left-
Not stomped out in a tantrum, please note. That’s not the Willow who is now. (Not that it was ever Willow, unless the magic was with her).
And so Willow left, for the real world. Rented an apartment nearby. Took help in finding a temp job. Asked Giles for advice about her future. Accepted some money from him to help her achieve it, too, which she feels lousy about and will repay.
Couldn’t go back home. If life with the Coven was like living in a bar, life in Sunnydale was more like owning a distillery or a bottling plant - endless temptation on tap.
So Willow looked for another way. Looked back, to find when she’d been happy. Where she’d felt at home. And this, if this works - which it has to - is her answer.
Willow is passing the rainy journey in imagining what she’s about to face. The voices, the questions...
“So, Ms Rosenberg... why do you want to study at the University of Cambridge? You completed two full years at the University of California, Sunnydale. Why are you not planning to finish your degree there?”
She’s not worried about the other questions, the many which will follow and test her commitment, intelligence, potential and all the other things academics look for in their students. Those, she’s always had.
It’s the second question that scares Willow. And she will not answer, “Because I was evil, and I can’t go back, and this is how I choose to go on.”
***