When Fred was six, she checked out a book on science from the library. It was relatively simple, and she read it cover to cover in just under an hour.
That wasn't what mattered. What mattered was the fact that she went back, and checked out all the others. Legs crossed, sitting on the couch, she said, "I want to be a scientist," and meant it. Her mother stroked her hair.
"Is that right, dear?" she said absently. Winifred Burkle nodded emphatically.
"I want to answer all the questions in the world," she said.
~.~
When Fred was thirteen, she had her first kiss. It was awkward, and they bumped noses before managing to find each other's lips. His name was Walter, and afterward she couldn't remember why she'd kissed him.
She broke up with him shortly after, and in return he spread a rumor that she was a lesbian. Fred could have cared less. She started going by Fred all of the time instead of just most of the time, and let them make of that what they would.
She took a test for gifted children and scored very high. No one was particularly surprised. "That's our Fred," said her father proudly. "She's a genius."
~.~
When Fred was fifteen, she tried weed for the first time. It wasn't love at first sight, but she kept coming back for more anyway. She liked the way it made her feel; liked the way her brain seemed to wander. It felt good, things at once fuzzy and clear. Things seemed to make sense when she was high, and at the same time nothing did.
Sometimes she felt like she could change the world. It was a pleasant feeling.
~.~
When Fred was seventeen, she applied to colleges and got into every one. She fretted for weeks, threatened to close her eyes and point at a map. Her father suggested she not go at all. (He was joking. Mostly.)
Her friends were less than helpful. Most of them were staying close to home, going to in state schools if they were going at all. Fred wanted something new. Somewhere bright and dazzling and open-minded.
"It's a big decision," her mother said. "You're going to be spending the next four years of your life there."
California looked nice.
~.~
When Fred was twenty, she declared as a history major. Then she took a physics class.
It was like the science book that first time. A whole new world, whole new questions. New ways of looking at things and understanding. She couldn't look away, more caught up in this than in the other glitz of the city around her. The professor was kind. He thought she had promise.
When the portal opened in front of her, Fred thought of her mother. Her mother who used to think that every two months her Winifred was falling into devil worship.
What would you think now, she wondered, and fell.
~.~
When Fred was twenty-two, she saw a slave's head explode. They were trying to run. She was hidden, had slipped away a couple months ago, and was only coming back for food. The slave threw off his handler and made for the forest.
One press of the button and his head was gone, and there was a splatter of blood on Fred's face, tangy in her nostrils. She wanted to scream, she wanted nothing so badly as to scream. Her world had gone upside-down and inside out and it wasn't anything like the rabbit-hole at all.
Fred kept trying to make sense of it, find the rules, but all she had left were equations and physics and useless, stupid girl.
Sometimes this seemed more real than the other life, the one where she had been Fred, where she had been free and really, truly alive.
She tried so hard to remember everything, but it was slipping away every day.
~.~
When Fred was twenty-five, someone came to her rescue.
Fred had never been really big on fairy stories, but she knew the general rules, about handsome men on white horses that saved the princess from monsters. She wasn't a princess, but a handsome man on a horse had saved her.
She wasn't really so surprised when he turned out to be a little bit of a monster.
When Fred was twenty-five, she found her way back to Los Angeles with bright lights nearly blinding and a man who was a monster but still a hero. It didn't really make sense, but nothing did, so she just floated. Things would come together.
She wrote them down, though, just in case she started forgetting again. And if it turned out to be real, so much the better.
~.~
When Fred was twenty-six, she fell in love. In a room in the back of an enchanted ballet, she kissed Gunn, and wondered if life wasn't a little bit of fairy tale after all.
Then Wesley turned against them, and Connor was gone, and Connor was back but Cordelia was gone and Angel was gone, and she was the one holding it all together.
When she knew what had happened, understood that the snake had been living under their noses for months, she remembered how it felt to be truly angry.
~.~
When Fred was twenty eight, she'd helped end world peace. She'd killed demons beyond counting. And Wolfram and Hart drew them in and swallowed them up. Fred could feel it, but she didn't want to know. It was changing all of them, driving Angel more and more often into dark moods, planting knowledge and who knew what else in Charles' brain.
It was killing her.
She could feel it. Turning her inside out, crushing her insides to mush. Angel was going to save her, she told herself. Wesley will find a way. Spike…
But Fred knew better.
Wesley was holding her, and she could feel him, nearly trembling with tension. A week, was that all it had been? Why couldn't it be longer?
Why couldn't it, she thought, just for a moment, be one of the others? And then was ashamed of the thought.
She'd been trying so long to answer all the questions in the world. To know all the meaning and understand the way things fit together, the why and the how. She meant to change the world and she'd barely even started.
She'd meant to build something with the man holding her like he could keep the parasite within her at bay.
Just one question she wanted the answer to, now:
"Wesley, why can't I stay?"
~.~
At twenty-eight, Winifred Burkle died. Her soul burned, and something new was birthed in her flesh, in her shell.
It rose up and looked with disdain on all the world.
No more questions.