Title: Replacement 3/?
Author: Brekkia
Contact:
Date: 5/2/02
Spoilers: Through The Gift then goes AU
Summary: Willow takes up Slaying after The Gift.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: None
Category: General
Distribution: I guess if you want it that badly... Just send 19.95 to... I kid. Ask and ye shall receive.
Feedback: Constructive criticism always welcome. Praise abjectly sought.
Disclaimer: It all belongs to Joss, Mutant Enemy, etc., etc., etc. I just let them have all the fun Joss won't. I own nothing except my twisted mind, which you really don't want. Please don't sue.

Replacement

"You smell really, really bad."

Willow opened her eyes to see Dawn sitting beside the bed in a palm chair. Bright sunlight pushed through the sheer curtains covering the windows behind Dawn and it gave her long straight brown hair a slight autumnal sheen. Groaning, Willow sat up and pressed her back against the headboard.

"Didn't get a chance to shower," Willow replied while smacking her dry lips. She winced at the sticky foul taste in her mouth. Yeeck, two day old morning breath!

"Xander offered to give you a sponge bath—you know like they do for coma patients in hospitals."

Willow smiled. "I bet he did. I miss anything?"

"Nope. Run of the mill slayage. Spike and-and the Buffybot took care of it."

"That's great, but I was asking about you."

Dawn quirked her mouth to the side then bowed her head. "You don't have to keep asking me if I'm doing all right."

"Why shouldn't I?"

"You have more important stuff on your mind."

Willow placed her forefinger under Dawn's chin and lifted the girl's head. "I honestly can't think of anything more important than you."

Dawn's smile grew then went away as she leaned to the side and picked up Willow's 'I'm a real Witch in the mornings' coffee mug from the top of the dresser and handed it to her.

"Here."

"Ah, cheers!" Willow gratefully accepted the cup and quickly began downing its heated contents.

"So how did the demon hunt go?"

"Swell. I did the immaterial spell twice. Showed that Holderack who's the boss."

Dawn beamed. "It was a Holderack! I knew it!"

Willow scowled playfully. "Let's not gloss over the fact I pulled off the immaterial spell. Twice."

Dawn turned her eyes upwards. "Big whoop. You've been practicing for a month, of course you pulled it off!"

"Fine, trivialize my wondrous accomplishments."

Dawn rolled her eyes again.

"Your eyes are going to get stuck that way one of these days."

"Sure they will, stinky."

"Ouch! I can take a hint. Shower time for Willow."

Willow was sitting at the kitchen table wearing a sky-blue terry cloth robe with cloud patterns floating all over it. Her hair was damp from the shower she'd taken, but was quickly drying. Dawn stood with her back to the coffee maker facing Willow, while waiting for a fresh pot to finish percolating. She had on a red-in-black v-knit shirt Willow found vaguely familiar. The top hung several sizes too big on Dawn. The hem came down over her contoured black jeans all the way to her knees.

"Amy came by," Dawn said.

Willow barely looked up from her book on Modern Philosophy that was lying open on the table in front of her. "Amy? How's she doing?"

She didn't see Dawn shrug because she'd already refocused on the book.

"I don't know, she was acting kind of weird."

Willow looked at Dawn more attentively this time. "Weird?"

"Yeah. She wanted to know if she could borrow some of your magic supplies."

"That doesn't seem very strange. Did you let her have them?"

"Yeah… do you mind?"

"No."

"Anyway, it wasn't that she wanted to borrow the magic stuff that worried me, but the way she was acting--kind of desperate."

Willow looked off to the side thoughtfully. Admittedly she hadn't given the recently de-ratted witch much regard lately. The last time she'd seen Amy was months ago, before Tara moved out.

Willow looked back up at Dawn.

"I'll go see Amy today and find out what's going on with her. I should have kept up with her more. It can't be an easy transition going from years of ratdom to human, she could probably use a friend right now."

"You think she wants to be around people who know what she's been through?"

"Maybe."

"I think I'd want to get away from anything that reminded me," Dawn trailed off and she turned back to the coffee maker.

Willow stared at the girl with concern, even in her caffeine-deprived state Willow didn't need to ask the girl to finish her thought.

"Dawn--"

"Sook called. Said he wants you at the Dojo today," Dawn said quickly, her back still turned.

"He always wants me at the school. Dawn--"

Dawn turned back to Willow and in her right hand she gripped the coffeepot by its handle. Dawn had a big smile on her face as she refilled Willow's cup. It was sad to Willow how believable that smile was, it completely hid how Dawn was really feeling.

"I'm going to the mall with Amber and Emily. Maybe catch a couple of movies, okay?"

Willow didn't get a chance to answer because the fifteen-year-old had set the pot down on a rag on the table, grabbed her purse, and rushed out the back door.

"It's not your fault," Willow quietly told an empty kitchen.

After an hour of staring blankly at her psychology book, Willow gave up and left the breakfast table to get dressed for the day ahead.

Sook was going to work her hard today to make up for the lessons she missed while recovering from the Holderack slay. So Willow knew she had to dress for a sweaty and agonizing routine. She decided to wear a charcoal Hoodie over a gray athletic bra, black sweat pants, and a pair of white lo-tops.

Willow also packed a small sports bag crammed with bottled water, a couple of clean white towels, and a change of clothes.

But before she left the house, Willow wanted to run a diagnostic on the Buffybot. Xander had gotten fairly proficient at repairing any superficial damage the robot sustained after a night of patrolling, but he lacked the technical know-how to fix the Buffybot's micro-circuitry injuries. The bot, however, seemed to have come through another night of slaying without a scratch.

Sitting there in Buffy's bedroom watching the robot in "sleep mode", Willow could understand why Spike and Xander found it so hard to be around Buffy's cybernetic double. It was only recently that Willow could share the same space with the robot for more than a few minutes without breaking down into tears herself. Though utterly cheerful and guileless, the Buffybot would sometimes say something or do something that Willow found so Buffy-like it twisted her up inside. It would smile quirking its lips in a way the real Buffy used to, or laugh the way Buffy used to laugh. Dawn thought she was a constant and painful reminder of losing Buffy, but she wasn't. The Buffybot was.

Sometimes, when the impracticality of doing so didn't seem so great, Willow was tempted to do like Spike wanted and dismantle the robot.

The Dojo was a converted cellar—converted in the barest sense. Even now it was little more than a giant cinder block with no windows and just the one door. The cellar however was bigger than the two-room house Sook occupied above it. Built in the twenties, the cellar was used to store up to three hundred cases of smuggled Canadian whiskey during prohibition. So the cellar was fairly large, some two hundred feet wide and two hundred and ten feet long.

Two wire caged florescent lights lined the high ceiling, the light they cast illuminated less than half the space, and deep shadows pooled over the corners of the room. Ordinarily—or at least before the training sessions began—the cellar smelled dry and unused, and like cold concrete. An antiquated ventilation kept the worst of the aridity to a minimum and circulated clean air into the cellar occasionally.

Sook only made a few changes to the cellar, the most obvious could be found on the walls: Weapons. Four swords, two Kendo Bamboo training swords, a pair of very functional Tai Chi swords, and four wax wood Bo staffs were placed on their respective wall mounts. A Wing Chun dummy sat pushed up against the far wall, partially hidden by shadow. And finally three blue mats like you'd find draped across the floor in a gymnasium, covered the cellar floor.

The mat in the middle was the largest, measuring in at fifteen feet in width and another fifteen in length, the remaining two measured in at seven by six feet long.

It was on the middle mat that Willow and Sook sparred.

"Keep your guard up. Good. That kick wasn't high enough, again. Good. But you don't need to keep your eyes on the target all the time, just sensing an opponent can be enough."

"I can't believe you're telling me that! For months you've been saying, 'Keep your eyes on the target' and 'Never take your eyes off the target'. Now you're telling me to do the exact opposite?"

"Evolve or die."

Willow ducked under a roundhouse kick and then quickly blocked a snap front kick aimed at her stomach. Going on the offensive, Willow leaped backwards over the mat then forward into a flying right kick. Sook dodged, just barely.

"Nicely executed."

"High praise," was Willow's breathy reply after she landed behind Sook then aimed a back kick at his tailbone.

The small Asian man side-stepped the kick and spun around to face Willow, who was smiling proudly even though she was sweating so hard that it looked like she'd just came in from a monsoon, and her breathing was heavy. Her gray sports bra was soaked through and her pants like the training gi Sook's had on, was too black to show her sweat. Sook had his breathing well under control though, and only a thin film of moister layered his forehead. But it didn't matter to Willow how unruffled her Sensei appeared—this was the longest she'd ever lasted against him. Sook clasped his hands behind his back and smiled at Willow.

"Don't be so pleased with yourself, Ms. Rosenberg," Sook said with a faintly accented voice. What accent Willow still couldn't figure out.

Willow kept her stance. Reluctant to move her arms even to wipe away the sweat trying to flow into her eyes. She chose instead to let the sweat burn her vision briefly before quickly blinking it away. "It's been ten minutes since we started, Sensei, and I'm still on my feet."

Sook cocked an eyebrow. "And why do you think that is?"

Willow felt her smile waver. It was never good when Sook asked her questions. Questions meant he was going to make a point.

"Uh… I'm learning?" Willow answered hopefully.

Sook took a step towards Willow and she jumped in place. Her arms and fists vibrating with tension as she readied herself for an attack from her teacher.

Sook was the finest example of never judging a book by its cover Willow had even seen. Sook was a small man, barely an inch taller than she was. Whip thin, looked it even more so when he wore his black, loose fitting training clothes.

But Willow was under no illusions when it came to Sook; he was as dangerous as they come.

"You are." Sook knodded as he began circling her, his hands still behind his back. "In fact you may be able to challenge a second degree black belt at this point… But…"

"But?" Willow echoed, turning in place to keep Sook in her sights.

"I'm not a second degree anything."

Willow had time to let out a tiny yelp before she hit the mat face first, and that was about it. The left side of her head was mashed hard into the mat as Sook's knee dug into the back of her neck, while he gripped her right arm at the wrist and around her elbow and twisted her limb out vertically behind her back. Her sweat soaked-skin stuck to the thick plastic of the heavily padded mat.

Gritting her teeth, Willow bit out her next words.

"You were holding back."

She didn't make it a question.

"Yes, obviously."

"To prove a point."

"Yes."

"Which, naah!" Sook applied pressure to her contorted arm. "Which… is?"

"Why don't you tell me."

"That you're the Master?"

"Close, but no. Guess again," Willow could hear the amusement in Sook's voice, but she hurt too much to feel indignant. She tried to relax instead, hoping to lessen the strain placed on her shoulder. Because the pain made it hard for her to think, and she needed to focus. Sook would dislocate her shoulder again if she failed to give him the answer he expected.

"I-I… I'm not," Willow managed and then screamed. Sook was slowly bending her arm the wrong way even further.

"You're not what?"

"A master."

The pain in her shoulder vanished—replaced by a throbbing numbness that spread throughout her whole arm. Willow didn't even feel it when her arm fell uselessly to the mat with a wet smack. Sook's knee went away as well and a soreness she didn't know existed flared down her spine.

"You figured it out on the second try, that's something, I suppose," Sook said, though he sounded less than pleased. "I had to dislocate both of Mr. Harris' arms before he got my point."

Willow bent her legs so that her knees were under her stomach and tried to bring her upper body away from the mat, using her head and then her good arm as leverage. The bare parts of her body peeled away from the mat noisily like one long tear of Velcro, only the sound her flesh made was wetter. Her right arm hung lamely at her side, the back of her hand sliding against the ground as she sluggishly raised herself up.

When she managed to straighten up, her legs still folded under her, Willow craned her neck and looked at Sook who stood on the edge of the mat to her left watching her with no expression.

"You did that to Xander? When?"

Sook clasped his hands behind his back again and shrugged. "During your nap time."

"Why?"

Sook's eyes widen marginally when Willow's powers swelled. She knew Sook was sensitive to magic and wasn't surprised that he was reacting. She also didn't care.

"Why did you hurt him like that!" Willow rose to her feet gripping her right shoulder. She still couldn't feel her right arm, but the rest of her felt unencumbered and infused with strength.

Sook shrugged once more and smiled. "He's come far physically, but as with all neophytes who gain a little skill and a scrap of knowledge, he's become… arch. I'm afraid the young man doesn't learn as easily as you do."

Willow let the power she'd gathered ebb, but only a bit. "I don't like it when my friends get hurt, Sook."

"I told you what my teachings would entail, and Mr. Harris as well."

"But that's only for students you're training seriously," Willow shook her head, "and Xander never agreed to that."

"Mr. Harris changed his mind."

"Xander," Willow said under her breath like his name was a curse—the colorful metaphoric kind.

"I wouldn't worry about your young friend. As I said, he has progressed far. Further than I thought him capable of going. Come, let's see about your arm."

"Promise me you won't kill him," Willow demanded as Sook inspected her arm. She and Sook stood in the center of the center mat. Sook was in front of her, his closely shaven head bowed while his long, slender fingers tenderly inspected the aching muscles in her right shoulder.

"Your arm will be fine in several minutes," he said without looking away from Willow's shoulder.

"Master," Willow started carefully, keeping her voice dry, calm and nearly toneless, "don't make me come after you."

Sook lowered Willow's arm and gave her a blank stare. "I'll do as I will."

Willow didn't know much about Sook Jian, she in truth didn't even know if Sook Jian was his real name, but she trusted him not to kill her during their training sessions. A feat she knew him very capable of doing, both physically and quit willingly. Sook had no qualms about killing, not even when it came to those he'd decided to school in his arts.

Willow trusted him with her life, but that trust only went so far.

She certainly had no intention of entrusting Sook with the life of her best friend in the world.

Willow tried to keep her expression as bare and lacking in emotion as the one she saw on Sook's angular face. "I understand. And I'll do what I will."

They spoke no more about Xander or Sook's hurting him. It wasn't a conversation she wanted to have with Sook anyway—she might as well go shout at a brick wall for all the good it'd do her. No, it was Xander she had to talk to. Though Willow had a feeling that may be just as futile, but she'd give it a go anyway. Loving Xander meant she had to at least try and talk him out of exposing himself to the not so tender mercies of one of the most ruthless assassins the Order of Taraka ever produced.