Title: Once Upon A Time
Disclaimer: I don't own anything. At all. If I did, I'd have more money then God and would never have canceled BtVS and Angel.
Summary: A teenage girl is given an impossible destiny. She's taken away from everything she knows and everyone thinks she's dead. Eight years later, she's back, and in for one hell of a fight.
Distribution: Just ask if you want to use this.
Spoilers: All of Buffy and Angel. Through GoF, and some minor ones from OotP, and even smaller ones from HBP.
a/n: Thank you Moonjava, Lorien's Lady, Moony'sMate, Jenna Summers, marcus aure1ius, Heain, perceval, Tanydwr, NixiNox, manticore-gurl071134, Vld, Allen Pitt, sparky24, Kat Hawkins, chicklepea, angel-cordy, AnimeHanyou39, gabrieldarke, clcountry, ozma914, DramaQueen4eva, VaMpEdChiK, and goddessa39 for reviewing. All of you are super awesome! Wow- that sounded really stupid, didn't it?
To coffee, do you mind not using my story as your own personal message board? I did not flame you, it was advice that I hope you take. You really must be incredibly rude to just write something like that. If you had taken the time to read more then the Prologue, you might have noticed that the whole story isn't written like that, just the first chapter, and that the first chapter was deliberately written that way for effect.
Dutchgirl- thank you. I've got to agree with you on that.
JenniferS1- Thank you. I don't want to turn Alisandra into a Mary Sue, which means you can rest assured. As you'll soon read, not everyone will like her- in fact, most people will dislike her. I figured she would have an attitude quite a bit like a mixture of a Buffy-version of Cordelia (minus the funny) and Harmony.
I really have to recommend clcountry's Merging With the Traffic. It's funny, occasionally sad, and chock full o' Cordy. It's also really well-written, and actually achieves the (rather monumental) feat of making you hate Wesley (the younger version, who really does seem to have acted like Percy).
Ozma914's Xander's Job is a great read, too. It's also got a healthy dose of Cordelia, but it includes Tara, Buffy, Angel, Xander, Willow, Kennedy, and just about every other Scooby.
I'm surprised no one picked up on the few little hints all through the last chapter about Alisandra. Also, I wonder if anyone noticed any foreshadowing on the possible pairings front. No, none of them involve Buffy. So, whoever can figure out one of the more obvious tidbits about Alisandra or the pairings before I post Chapter Fourteen gets a cookie. Here's another hint: think back, oh, five years for one of the answers.
And if anyone guesses what's been hinted at in this chapter, you get two cookies.
Bonus points to everyone who knows where I got the school's name.
The 12 step program will be making a comeback in (the much longer) Chapter Fourteen, too, since this is just a bit of filler to make up for not being able to update. Unfortunately, I couldn't log-in to my account for a while, and I'm still on vacation, which means update are going to be slow until school starts up again and my friend start hounding me for more. This chapter is going to be continued from where I left off at the end in Chapter Fourteen. Think of this as the first half of a two parted super-chapter. Okay? Good.
Now, remember, if you review, I update. So, the more reviews I get, the happier I will be, and the happier I am, the faster I update. And, I'm assuming if you review you'll be happy if I update, and happy reviewers want to review more. See the pattern here? Review. Make me happy. Make you happy. Make everyone happy. If you review, you'll help further world peace, one hotheaded author at a time.
Please review!
Everything was so dark.
Chaos.
Things weren't as they should be.
The balance was realigning.
Soon, the world will change.
Soon.
The Coven in France
Twenty miles outside Bordeaux
Delphina grumbled to herself as she brushed her hair in front of the mirror. Alisandra always got everything she wanted, because Alisandra was beautiful, powerful, and smart. No one had ever noticed Delphina with Alisandra around. Delphina was just "Alisandra's roomie" or "that girl who lives with Ali". Now, Alisandra got to go to England, too. Life just wasn't fair.
Delphina had always wanted to go to England and see the country. It sounded so glamorous, almost as much as New York did. But Alisandra got to go there first. Alisandra had always gotten to do everything first. Why, she'd even been in this room first, being a whole seven months older. Both girls had shared the room since they'd been born.
Alisandra had always been the star of the coven. She had been bright and beautiful; able to do a spell the moment she set eyes on it. For her part, Delphina had never been good with magic- especially healing spells. Those were the hardest.
Delphina had never been as dreadfully perfect as Alisandra, whom everyone had always seemed to like. In fact, Delphina strongly suspected that she was the only person on Earth who wasn't completely entranced by her. And oh, wasn't it hard? The two roommates had been raised so closely they might as well have been sisters. Well, if sisters loathed each other, anyway.
"Delphina, the class is meeting out in the courtyard," Cyrille, a girl just a year older then Delphina, shouted into the room as she made her way to their class with Madam D'Aubigne.
Delphina put down her brush with a small glance at the wholly unsatisfying reflection in the mirror and left her room.
Room Number 311
The Phoenix Dorm
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Somewhere in Northern Scotland
Harry and Ron shifted in front of the mirror nervously.
"Why are we making such a big fuss about this?" Ron asked, straightening his collar.
"Because we want to make a good impression," Harry replied, trying to get the cuffs of his robes to lie flat.
"Harry, she's seen us eat, I don't think there's any chance of a good impression left," Ron laughed.
The dark-haired wizard rolled his eyes.
"You know why we're doing this, so don't be a prat," he said.
"I still think we should just get her presents," Ron responded.
"But what would we get her?" Harry snorted, "She doesn't exactly seem like the bookworm type any more."
"Perfume? Robes? Candy?" Ron suggested, "Something that says "We're sorry we were prats and we want to get to know you better?""
"Well, she did always love that fudge from Honeydukes," Harry began.
"And they did just come out with that new Super Fudge Pack," Ron said slowly.
"And it wouldn't hurt to have her happy and axe-free, would it?" Harry asked with a slow grin.
"Not at all, Harry, not at all," Ron agreed, eyes twinkling, as they left for Hogsmeade.
Apt. 201
1421 Shipley Terrace
London, England
Buffy paced around nervously and looked at the clock sitting on the kitchen counter for the sixteenth time. Where were they? They were supposed to have arrived twenty minutes ago. The Slayer rolled her eyes. Harry and Ron had probably been sidetracked at some crazy Quidditch store or something equally insane. She smiled softly as she remembered the times at Diagon Alley and in Hogsmeade, when Harry and Ron had kept trying to drag her into Quality Quidditch Supplies for "just ten minutes, 'Mione".
She spun around as two loud pops sounded behind her.
"What took you two so… long? What's all that stuff?" she said, surprised, as Harry and Ron came into view, arms full of "stuff".
"Uh, we got you presents," Ron explained, waiting for her reaction.
"And the only reason the fudge is fat-free was because the lady at Honeydukes said we should never buy a girl something calorie-covered and expect her to eat it," Harry added on hurriedly, remembering an unfortunate misunderstanding with Cho Chang in his Fifth Year.
Buffy spied a card dangling from one of the fudge boxes in Ron's hand and tugged it off lightly.
"'We're sorry we were prats and we want to get to know you better'" she read with a laugh, "Well, I guess that's Step Number Two, then."
"Step Two?" Harry questioned blankly.
Buffy nodded.
"It's all part of my Twelve Steps To Fixing Friendships Program," she informed them, "Step Number One was Don't Kill Each Other. Step Number Two is say "I'm sorry I was a prat and I want to get to know you better."
Ron looked at her like she was mental.
"And what's Step Three?" he asked.
"Not sure yet," Buffy replied brightly, "I think that there's going to be much drunken fun involved, though."
"Drunken fun?" her two companions echoed blankly.
"Duh," the blonde rolled her eyes as if this should have been obvious, "And then we all make with the wild orgy-ing and I get to find out if anyone's a stevedore in bed."
Harry and Ron exchanged bewildered looks as Buffy continued on.
"I still don't know what a stevedore is," she remarked, "Do you think it's something good?"
Surprisingly, Ron was the one to find his voice first.
"Er, you're not serious about this are you?" he asked her.
Buffy laughed.
"God, no," she said, "well, except for the stevedore part. The point is, I got you guys out of the apartment and on our way to the best place on earth."
Sure enough, the presents had "mysteriously" been left behind in the loft and Harry and Ron were now walking on either side of Buffy.
"The best place on Earth?" Harry repeated. "And where is that?"
"You'll see," Buffy replied vaguely.
Twenty minutes later, all three of them were standing outside a medium-sized store with the words, "The Cookie Palace," written in curly letters on the front.
""The Cookie Palace"," Ron read. "What the bloody hell is this?"
"Heaven," Buffy answered. "Or close enough, and I should know- what with the having been there and all. Come on."
Harry looked at her curiously, but refrained from commenting and followed the other two in.
Once inside, he saw that the store wasn't a store at all. Or it didn't look like one. The whole place was very bright and colorful and there was a long counter in the front where a blue-shirted woman smiled and asked them,
"Welcome to the Cookie Palace, can I interest you in a room?"
A room? Harry wondered. What is this, some kind of motel?
He traded startled glances with Ron, who mouthed the word room? to him, but Buffy ignored them both, even though she had obviously seen them.
"No thanks," she said instead, "We've already got one. Um, the name's Buffy. I made an appointment? You know, I was the person who made with the ramblyness and babble last night?"
The woman smiled.
"Oh, yes, I remember you. Wait just a moment while I call someone to take you down." She said.
They stood there for a few seconds until another, brunette, smiling woman came out of the long hall behind the desk and said,
"I'm Molly, and I'll be your Cookier for today, follow me please."
"Cookier?" Harry and Ron both repeated as the quartet walked down the hall.
"Cookier," Molly nodded, "I'll be your cookie cooker, get it?"
Buffy snorted lightly.
"And here I thought our puns were bad," she muttered.
"They are," Harry assured her.
"Ha ha," Buffy said.
Molly took a key out and opened one of the doors scattered along the hall. The two wizards blinked as they stepped inside and looked around at the large, white industrial Muggle kitchen.
"Weird," Ron breathed.
Buffy snorted, remembering just how incredulous the redhead had been of Muggle technology.
"Here at the Cookie Palace we offer full-range, state of the art kitchens fully equipped with all of the ingredients necessary to make any type of Crazy Cookie you'd like," the self-admitted "Cookier" informed them, reciting with a robotically perky voice.
"If you have any questions, just press this little button, and I'll be right over." The possibly inhuman woman finished before leaving.
"Right then," Ron asked, turning to Buffy, "I'm going to ask again. What the bloody hell is this place?"
"It's a cookie factory," the Slayer replied happily.
Harry looked at her.
"Er, Her- Buffy," he corrected himself hastily, "None of us actually know how to cook, do we?"
"Nope, but me and Dawnie found this place a little while ago and I figured we just have to check it out since there's been much of the birthday party hintage going on."
"Oh," her companions said.
"Besides," Buffy continued, "We get to eat all of the "ingredients necessary to eat any type of Crazy Cookie I'd like"."
Ron perked up at this, and the two wizards went over to join the blonde where she was standing at the counter, flipping through a plastic three-ring binder.
"What's that?" Harry asked.
"It's a cookie catalogue," Ron answered, reading the heading of the front page. "Blimey, these nutters really love their biscuits, don't they?"
"So do you," Buffy laughed. "God, unless I have Old-Timers, you inhale your food instead of chewing it."
Harry laughed as the newly dubbed "Food Inhaler" blushed.
"Ooh, look, a Snow Cookie," Buffy said, "Let's try those."
The trio studied the picture of the "Snow Cookie" intently. It looked like a miniature snow man, with round cookie balls for the body, twisty red candy bits for the arms, M&M minis for the buttons, eyes, and mouth, and a piece of orange frosted cookie for the nose.
"We're supposed to make that?" Ron asked dubiously. "Is there a spell?"
"Nope," Buffy said, using her own version of the "Resolve Face". "No-magic. We're gonna bake this thing the normal way."
"Which is…" Harry trailed off.
"Like this," Buffy said importantly.
She turned around and faced the counter, on which small bowls of ingredients were arranged. Harry and Ron looked on expectantly.
"Um, what do I do?" she asked uncertainly.
Rupert Giles was not having a good day.
First, the Head of Operations in Sydney had phoned in to say there were "complications" involving the arrival of several new Slayers. What exactly those mysterious "complications" were, he didn't want to say. However, the Slayer would be expected to fly in sometime next week. Which would be exactly three weeks after the school year had started up at the Watcher and Slayer Academy.
Then, Emily had told him that his car still hadn't come in from the mechanic's shop where it was being de-slimed after an encounter with a slime spitting Snoltork (a name which had caused several of his so-called "adult" charges to giggle) demon, which meant he couldn't take the Annoying Little Brat (also known as Alisandra) to the school and Coven in Devon for another day.
On top of that, Alisandra was now in his office, whining about something or the other.
"Ugh, I need new clothes!" she was ranting, "I'm going to look like some sort of French Country Wicca-wannabe at school!"
Giles sighed, and noticed Dawn slipping in through the open door and rolling her eyes.
"Bad news," he told the teenager, ignoring Alisandra's outrage at, well, being ignored. "We can't leave until tomorrow."
"What?" Dawn groaned. "We were supposed to leave two weeks ago!"
Giles got up and went over to her, bending low and whispering so Alisandra couldn't hear them.
"I know that, and I'm dreadfully sorry that you're missing all of this school, Dawn, really I am, but the Queen of the World over there," here, the Watcher's voice turned sarcastic, "Just can't live without one more shop full of clothes. I'd stop her from using Council funds, but that would mean she'd be in my office all day long on one of her extraordinarily long-winded rants."
"But that wasn't long-winded or a rant," Dawn smirked.
"Of course it wasn't," Giles agreed, glaring at her affectionately. "I never rant. I merely…"
"Talk for a really really long time about stuff?" the Key supplied.
"Talk for a really really long time about stuff," Giles agreed, defeated. "Oh dear Lord, I'm a ranter. I might even be a Quentin Travers in the making."
"Ah, don't worry, you'll never be Travers- you have too much hair," Dawn said comfortingly, "Oh, and you're taller! Of course, when you get that old, you might shrink." She added as an afterthought.
"Thank you, Dawn," Giles said dryly. "Just for that you can take Alisandra shopping while I yell at that insufferable Australian and come up with my next… rant."
"Giles!" Dawn whined.
Obviously, the monks had given her the Summers' pout and whine combo, Giles reflected, Bit stupid of them. Didn't they know how dangerous that it? Of course, they might have thought it would work on Glory, but she was a bloody god! And if someone that… tacky can withstand the pout, I can. Or not.
"You have full credit card access to make up for this," Giles bargained, "Just keep her away from me."
The pout retreated as an ecstatic expression found it's way onto the youngest Summers' face.
"Really?" Dawn shrieked loudly, forgetting to whisper and so drawing Alisandra's attention away from herself for once. "Giles, you're awesome. And- And in no way resemble Quentin Travers. At all. And oh my god, Buffy's going to be so jealous!"
"Do remember to buy her something," Giles requested, massaging his ears- really, how on earth did Americans learn to shriek so loud? "Seeing as she has in fact averted the apocalypse…s. The apocalypses."
"Fine," Dawn agreed, but not without a smile, "but I'm so stopping by those twin people's place and getting something really horrible to use on Asses'Sandra."
Giles gave her a stern look.
"You know, just because Buffy seems to have some sort of agreement with the wizards and is making strange pastries with them does not mean you can wander into some mystical part of London where you've never been before and rely on the directions of two redheaded idiots who you spent half the night flirting with," he said. "And now that that's out of the way, Buffy can't kill me when she finds out, so make sure you pick something up for me to use on that little brat as well."
"Will do," Dawn promised. "Hey, Queen Bitch! You going to come shop with me or not?"
Alisandra glared at her.
"How many times have I told you not to call me that?" she demanded.
"Obviously not enough. Everyone says I got Buffy's attention span," Dawn smirked.
"Ugh!" Alisandra groaned. "Why do I need a freaky-haired guard like her? I'm way more powerful than that mini Slayer wannabe."
"But obviously not powerful enough to stop a couple of assassins without Buffy's help," Giles pointed out with a carefully hidden smile.
Alisandra sniffed and left the room, heels clicking annoyingly.
As she walked out, Giles whispered to Dawn, "Your hair looks much better then the nest growing out of her head."
"Thanks, G-man," Dawn said, running out before…
"Dawn, don't call me that!"
Dawn ducked into the store and looked around nervously, checking to make sure Alisandra hadn't followed her. Or Buffy hadn't magically appeared out of nowhere to catch her running off alone (not that Alisandra was any protection). Thankfully, she was alone. Well, except for all of the customers. And salespeople. And anyone else who had decided to hide from evil, annoying, Harmony knock-offs with badly died hair. Okay, so maybe she wasn't alone, but at least she wasn't with Alisandra.
Convinced that she was in a bitch/witch-free zone, Dawn pulled out a wrinkled piece of old, leathery paper. No, wait, Fred had called it parchment. She pulled out a piece of parchment and studied the hastily scribbled directions on it. So, she had to turn left and make a right at the fork onto Charing Cross Road.
The teenager looked around once more, shoved the parchment back into her pocket, and hastily ran out of the shop, ignoring the suspicious looks the salespeople gave her on her way out. She wasn't so successful with ignoring Giles' words about her flirting with the twins.
After all, that had been incredibly rude of him! She had not been flirting with either one of them. All she had done was joke with them; laugh at their jokes- like everyone else, well, maybe not Mrs. Weasley- and talk to them about… everything that had ever happened to her that Buffy wouldn't kill her for saying. Oh crap, she had a crush on the twins. Buffy was going to kill them, and then kill her after.
And it wasn't like she even had a chance with either of them. They were way older then her. It was just they were both really cute, and funny, and smart, and were totally cooler then Riley and Angel (not Spike, though, Spike taught Dawn how to play kitten poker, therefore he was awesome), and had really long boy eyelashes. Eek, she was going to be the biggest spaz at their store, wasn't she?
Once again, Dawn made an emergency stop into a store, this time without the Fear of the Queen Bitch. The store was small, yet ultra chic, and Dawn had just seen The Outfit in the window. Now, as every teenage girl knows, The Outfit if the perfect, to die for, (literally, if you live on a Hellmouth) ensemble of the year. It's the dress, shirt, skirt, or occasionally pants that go together like something off of a runway. And Dawn had just found hers.
"Eahh!" Dawn shrieked, right before she ran into the store.
Thirty minutes later, Dawn walked out of the store as the proud owner of the Christian Dior baby blue strapless minidress, matching sandals, and purse she was now wearing. In the spirit of the moment, Dawn decided to forgive Giles for being right and bless him and all of the other Watchers for the Council Credit Card. Besides, after putting up with Alisandra for two and a half long weeks, she should totally be allowed to buy a few of the designer goodies Alisandra had gotten, right?
Her old clothes had been thrown out, but not before the teenager had remembered to grab the parchment with directions on it out of her pant pocket. Now she looked at it again and started off for Charing Cross Road. There it was! The little pub smashed between the big bookstore and the music shop called The Leaky Cauldron.
Bad name for a pub, Dawn thought. What if people don't want to eat out of leaky cauldrons. Wait, wasn't Willow always saying that no one uses cauldrons?
The brunette brushed that thought aside and opened the battered door. Squinting a bit as her eyes adjusted to the dim light, Dawn immediately gulped. No one here seemed to be wearing anything resembling normal clothes, and she could have smacked herself in the head when she remembered that all of these witchy-types wore robes. Oops.
Keeping her eyes firmly trained on the parchment, Dawn skittered through the dingy pub, trying to ignore the mixture of curious, incredulous, and downright unfriendly looks that were coming her way. She had made it all the way outside when she stopped, bewildered. The directions had said Go outside through the backdoor and one of us will be waiting for you, so where was the "one of them"?
As if in answer to her question, the solid brick wall behind the became not-so-solid as a large archway appeared in front of her and a tall red-haired man stepped out.
"Hey, Dawn," Fred- it was Fred, right? Wait, there was the little scar on his cheek he'd pointed out. Yep, it was Fred- said.
"Um, hi Fred," Dawn squeaked, inwardly cursing. She sounded like a twelve year old!
Fred looked at her, then paused, "Look at you, all dressed up. Got a date with some poor prat later?"
"Wha-? No. I'm unfortunately date-less. Kinda sucks," Dawn said, trying to relax as Fred led her through the archway.
And then they were in Diagon Alley and all thoughts of clothes, twins, boys, and the lack-of the last two fled from Dawn's mind.
"Whoa."
Queen's Academy for Watchers and Slayers
Thirty miles from Dartmouth
Devon, England
"Okay, don't forget to hand those papers in tomorrow and read up on Basic Transmogrifications in Magicks of the Goddess tomorrow. Only, don't try to do anything on page 31 because… it wouldn't be of the good. There would be blood, and guts, and other icky things," Willow warned, standing up as her class filed out.
She followed them out and began to walk down the sunlit hallways of the school. She walked out of the main building and into the small patch of woods that bordered the school to the East, humming slightly as she went.
Giles had asked her to fill in for one of the teachers from the Coven who was currently stuck in a coma-like vision quest, trying to find out more information about Anya's vision. Naturally, the Wicca had been happy to agree, and found herself hoping that the Seer stayed in her vision thing a bit longer. Teaching classes for the past two weeks had been fun, especially since the school was only half a mile away from the Coven's main building, if you knew the right shortcuts to take.
Harlan's Wood (so named for a rather unfortunate Watcher-In-Training who had met with a sticky end in those same woods thanks to an incident involving a vampire and some badly thrown branches) was actually a very nice place to be. There was something alive about this place, as if you couldn't help being surrounded by life. During her recovery with the Coven, Althenea had taken her out to the woods to meditate quite a bit, saying, "It's a good place to think, and thinking is good. You think here, therefore you are good."
There had been something comforting about hearing that at a time when she had needed assurance of that very thing. Now, Willow made it a habit to sit in the woods and meditate on her own for half an hour or so.
So she rolled a small blanket out on the ground and sat down on it, leaning her back against a broad tree and looking up at the sky.
Find your center.
Willow searched inside herself, searching for the things that made her Willow. It wasn't the Magicks, though that was a part of her, it was the bits and pieces of her that had been there since she'd been born in some weird way. The energy swirled as she found it. The ability to love. Xander. Buffy. Tara. The ability to be strong when she had to be. Power that was inside. The little Willow things and the big Willow things, all meshed together.
But now, as always, there were little disturbances in her aura- a sign that she was troubled. And she was. Thoughts of why Buffy had lied to them all were still there. The what-ifs and the how-could-she's. There were so many questions tied to this whole big mess that Willow didn't even know where to start. Then there were still slight worries over Xander and Anya, even though she was in support of them this time. Tara would always hover in her mind like a ghost, and there were just as many questions about Kennedy.
But, most of all, there was a sense of disturbance everywhere. It was around Willow, it was in Willow. She probed it in her mind and the witch realized that it had been there for ages, but she hadn't noticed it very much when she was surrounded by hundreds of other auras mixing with her own energy. But here, here in the isolation of the "Thinking Place", Willow could feel something bad. It was pushing at everyone and everything. Waiting. Watching. Lurking in the shadows.
Even though no one could see it, a frown marred the features of the meditating Wicca as she delved into her own subconscious, trying to figure out what was hiding inside of everyone. She searched and looked inside, working past old issues to find the source of an external problem. That was when she saw it. It was dark and pulsing and… Wrong. So, so, wrong. There was just something alien about it that made both inner Willow and physical Willow recoil.
Then it stared at her and she screamed. She screamed and screamed as it reached into her brain.
And outside her mind, the body of Willow Rosenberg stay perfectly still, eyes frozen wide in horror.