Author: mkcrl120
Disclaimer: All the characters mentioned in this story belong to Joss Whedon or Mutant Enemy or some other people. I own nothing and wrote this just to get it out of my system.
Summary: Set at beginning of season 6. Things might seem slightly AU to begin with, but everything will be explained as the story continues.
Author's Note: Okay, this was an idea that I'd had about 3 years ago, it was originally going to be part of the Ultimate Slayer story-arc, but as I've given up the original idea for that and made it a lot smaller arc (in the hope that I may someday finish it). I've decided to go ahead with this anyway... it's similar to What The Hellmouth Happened in that regard... I'm gonna use both of these stories when I take a break from the major plotline that goes across most of the other story arcs. Confused..? Try being me, when I came up with all this... (where it's all for one story remember??? Man I was stupidly ambitious there...)
Era Of A New Dawn - 1/?
Willow was ready. She'd researched what she'd had to do, she'd obtained the necessary ingredients even going so far as to locate a local 'dealer' named Rack. Now she was facing the only part of this process she'd been regretting since she'd originally figured out which was the safest way to do it.
The only way to trust that what she'd get back wasn't some horrible twisted version of what she'd been hoping to achieve.
She'd realised this was something the other's probably wouldn't have agreed to. They'd have said it was unnecessary given the current situation. But she knew once it was done, they'd all be secretly happy. No matter how upset they may appear when they first find out.
'Assuming this is successful.' She accepted, realising that the possibility of failure was another reason for keeping it from her friends. 'If this doesn't work... or it doesn't work correctly...' She let that thought drift off, refusing to allow any negativity to cloud her mind. 'I need to stay positive, I need to stay focused if this is to work.'
This was it. Willow was finally ready.
'Or at least, ready as I can be...' she admitted silently to herself.
With that final thought and one last deep breath, she drew the knife up and then slit the deer's throat.
Later that same evening.
Willow sat alone in the graveyard next to Buffy's grave.
She surveyed her handiwork. Glancing across she made note of the candles mounted on candlesticks that had been firmly imbedded into the ground. Placing the Urn of Osiris at the place where she'd eventually sit facing her friend's grave, she finished her final preparations.
Lighting each of the wicks she quickly sat behind the urn and began the ritual.
Pouring the fawn's blood into the urn, she used the incantation that would call on Osiris.
Dipping her finger into the poor creature's blood she marked her face as the diagram in the chronicle had shown.
Ignoring the sickening reminder of her earlier deed, she continued the chant and poured the contents of the urn onto the earth within the circle.
As she finished her ritual and as the last drops of the sacrifice's blood hit the soil beneath her, she felt the initial bursts of power flowing through her.
She was hit with extreme pain as her skin became flayed seemingly unable to contain the power within. Her only thought was how it felt like there were beings crawling beneath her skin, but she strained her way past that in order to say the last line, the line that if successful would pass this power onto her deceased friend and force them back into the land of the living.
She screamed in pain, waiting for the endless torment to stop.
Suddenly she had a new feeling, not of pain this time but of something undefineable.
'It feels like I'm going to be sick.' She realised, as her throat began regurgitating motions. What confused her was that her stomach appeared to be calm and unaffected.
The things inside her felt like they were definitely heading towards the blockage in her throat.
'No!' she corrected herself as she struggled to breathe. 'They're causing the blockage.'
Unable to control the vomitting motions for any longer, she bent double and tried to force whatever it was out of her airway. Now she wasn't as focused on Buffy's life but on the possibility of the end of her own.
'The fawn was the sacrifice!!!' She silently willed herself to shout out, unable to get anything out of her vocal chords than a gurgled coughing sound.
'Not me... not me...' She cried, truly scared for her life now.
And then finally it was over, the blockage had now reached her mouth and painful though it was, she was now able to expel it.
Or rather, it exited under it's own power.
'A snake.' She thought in disbelief as she looked through her tear-soaked eyes. 'A living snake?' she realised as it began to crawl away.
Satisfied that it seemed to be over. She moved away from the sacred circle containing the urn and the still-burning candles. Once certain she was far enough away to cause no further harm to the ritual, she bent over and tried to vomit out the taste of snake that her mind was unable to ignore any longer.
'Glad none of the others were here to see this.' She thought as she was sick for a second time. 'Even if they were with her... the other one.' The one she could never see as anything other than a second hand replacement.
Recovering for the time-being, she casually looked over herself. At the large cuts decorating her arms, she assumed the skin on her face was in a similar state. At the pieces of vomit sticking to both her hands and to her top. She could only imagine how red and sore her eyes must be looking.
"This wasn't the welcoming committee I hoped you'd see." Willow muttered to herself, glaring at the grave as if demanding it to release her friend.
As she collapsed onto the ground, completely spent for the moment. She idly wondered how the others were doing on patrol tonight.
"Maybe they'll be finished and at the Bronze soon, that way we can both get cleaned up and show them the big surprise." She reasoned as she lay back and tried to catch her breath.
About ten minutes later.
Her eyes opened, but nothing came into view.
She tried breathing out but her throat felt dry, sore and unused.
She could instantly tell she was lying down, and that her whole body felt like it'd been hit by something hard.
'Possibly even a truck.' She joked to herself.
Everything ached, but somehow this reminded her more of immediately after she'd healed rather than immediately after she'd received an injury.
'Coma..?' She thought to herself, as she tried to analyse what her body was telling her. She couldn't thnk of anything else that could account for this much damage.
'And I'm blind..?' She panicked, reaching her hands up to her face and rubbing her eyes, upset as she discovered that it didn't help her vision at all but partially relieved to discover that they were still present.
Forcing herself to be calm, she tried to analyse what she knew so far.
'And how I know it..?' she wondered idly as she counted off information that she'd come up with so far.
She knew how it felt to heal from things, she knew what a truck was, she knew what a coma was and she knew she ought to be able to see.
"What else am I supposed to know..?" She screamed, the fact that her brain felt heavy and confused adding to her hysteria.
And from somewhere in the back of her brain, she knew her name. She was going to work out what else she knew about herself, when something else registered with her.
Something like the lack of sight. Something that just didn't feel right.
"Help?" She said aloud again.
"Help." Quieter this time. "Anyone..?"
"Hellpppp!!!!!" She screamed, adding further pain to her vocal chords.
Something was off with the sound, and now she realised it, something was off with the air too.
'Stale... and smelly...' She figured, for the moment ignoring the hazy feeling in her head and how she knew these things, but instead trying to concentrate on working out what it all meant.
Instinctively she carefully reached out with her hands, letting out a small sob as her hands hit a wooden surface barely inches in front of her.
She became more hysterical as she reached around her, quickly discovering that she was completely trapped inside a wooden container of some sort.
Idly her mind tried to remember what sort of person she was, why her first thought in every circumstance was to wonder what had happened to her.
Why was she sure that she was the sort of person who might get hit by a truck, or end up in a coma, or be maimed.
Or as the current case seemed to be, possibly drugged and kidnapped.
What worried her more was the casual calmness she'd felt come over her when she'd figured the most likely explanation was that she was merely kidnapped.
"Merely kidnapped!!!" She screamed again before realising that this might attract her kidnappers attention.
She calmed further at the thought that maybe she wasn't blind, maybe she was locked in a dark container, or maybe the blindness was only a temporary side-affect of whatever had been used to knock her out.
Well whatever crate she was in, it didn't feel like she was being transported anywhere. And there was no sounds coming from outside the crate.
'How can I know if I'm moving or not?' She silently argued with herself. Shrugging it off as unimportant, she decided she'd have to go with instincts until her memory came back. Until then she'd have to concentrate only on the facts that she did know.
Her name was Buffy.
For some reason she seemed more at ease with thinking about something being done to her, than she'd have thought was normal.
'Surely normal people would freak out about something like this?' She thought, her mind catching a fleeting glimpse of a memory of a pyschology course she was sure she'd taken. And at the back of her mind was a nagging feeling that she'd really really hated the person teaching it. Realising she was going off track again, she began to revise what she did know about herself.
Her name was Buffy.
She was oddly at ease with certain aspects of this scenario.
And considering no-one had appeared at her shouts, this might be her best chance of escape.
Reaching out she began to analyse the wood in front of her, running her fingertips over the surface, desperately searching in the hope she'd be able to find a catch or a lose nail that might allow her to push this container open.
A minute or so later and she still hadn't found anything.
As time had progressed and she'd become more and more certain that this was if not airtight then damn near so. There had been no drafts or breezes anywhere that she could discover.
No holes to work her way to in order to get fresher air.
Holes that she could have possibly made bigger.
Tears had started to run free the more and more she believed she was going to die in here.
Alone.
Without any friends.
'Did I even have friends..?' She asked herself. 'Anyone who could be looking for me? Possibly even coming to save me?'
Crying further she started to get images of people that'd cared about her. She wasn't able to put names to the blurry pictures, but she was starting to get feelings associated with them.
People she cared about and who cared about her.
'Is this my fate..?' She wondered. 'The worst that they could think of. Locked away, possibly in an airtight container with no memory of my life.'
Unable to do anything else and frustrated at the world she screamed as she lashed out and banged on the panel that was locking her in.
"Let me out!!!!"
She spat the foul taste out of her mouth. "Ptah."
Confused as to what it was she reached her hand up to her mouth, and discovered some small rocky crumbly fragments spread over one cheek.
Idly she reached out with her right hand to where it had struck the smooth wood.
It was now split. She could work one of her fingertips through the gap, not far but as she did she hit resistance in the form of this material.
It seeped through the slightly larger gap and more of it landed on her neck and shoulder. She reached up with her left hand and brushed it off trying to ignore the squirm factor when bits went down her top and rested on bare skin.
'Soil.' She panicked as she recognised what it was. 'They buried me alive!!!'
While that worried her slightly, she was more concerned with her inner voice. That instinctive tone that had been with her, filling her in with information on things that she felt she ought to know but didn't. It was that voice that had pointed out the blindness, that which had first noticed the echo and decided that the air tasted wrong.
The voice that now seemed happy that she wasn't dealing with concrete.
Having nothing else to trust she pulled both hands back and banged on the panel again. Splitting it further, causing more soil to fall onto her person.
'Harder... Harder!' The voice seemed to tell her.
Something inside her felt that it felt disgusted with her, ashamed of her actions. And for some strange reason she echoed that feeling herself.
She felt like a little girl throwing a temper tantrum.
She pulled her arm back and punched. She was pleasantly surprised to discover her fist had easily penetrated through the wood and had become elbow deep in the soil beyond.
Pulling it back she ignored the worms and other insects that seemed to fall through this much larger arm-sized hole.
Gritting her teeth she continued to punch forcibly with each arm until she was able to sit up.
Determined now, she realised it was no longer a matter of being trapped or being drugged. Even the blindness was something she'd simply have to deal with later.
Now it was just a matter of distance.
End chapter 1
A/N2: Yes, I know nothing looks particularly AU-ish yet - but it should by the end of chapter 2...