IS ANYONE ELSE CONFUSED?
DISCLAIMER: I don't own the characters of BTVS or W.I.T.C.H. and I earn no profit in writing this.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This takes place in the same continuity as 'I'm Done' but is not a sequel and stands alone quite well. If you have any comments or preferences, please don't be shy. RandR.
She hummed as she walked along the road, not having any real notion of where she was going, but happy to be moving again without pain or that bizarre tug-of-war she seemed to have been the focus of. Something about the way that had resolved itself troubled her, but she couldn't quite remember what it was. The humming also seemed odd, not simply because it was a strange thing to be doing under the circumstances, but because she could not immediately place the tune.
Will could only muster a vague sense of unease about her situation, rather than the full-blown panic she felt she should be experiencing. And what is that tune?
That question occupied her until something more interesting came into view. Six people appeared, at first as barely distinguishable figures on the horizon and then as somewhat familiar figures. Three of them were definitely known to her. Too happy to see them to worry about consequences, she rushed forward to meet them.
As she moved closer, the fog suddenly lifted from her mind and a number of pertinent facts hit home immediately. Unfortunately, something else hit her at the same time.
"Oh thankgoodnessyou'reokay!Weweresoworriedthe-"
"AAAHHH!!!!" Will began to flail as something unseen threw itself at her and wrapped her in a pair of thin, but surprisingly strong arms. Backpedaling in an attempt to get away, she only succeeded in tripping over her own feet and the unseen feet of her assailant.
"Oh! Sorrysorrysorry! I forgot I'm still invisible." Will sat up, staring at the source of the voice.
"Hay Lin?"
"Yeah, it's me. Sorry. I'm just excited to see you're alright!" The two untangled themselves, Hay Lin's invisibility complicating matters in unexpected ways. "Ow! That's my hair!"
By the time they got to their feet, the others had reached them. Will's face lit up at the sight of her mother. "Mom! I'm so glad to see you!"
"Likewise, honey," her mother answered, taken aback by the enthusiastic greeting. "Are you alright?" She pushed her daughter back and examined her at arm's length, checking for damage.
"I'm fine," she assured them and then turned to Matt to give him a hug as well. "It's great all of you came after me, but could someone fill me in? I've been kinda out of it." She glanced at the two teenage girls and the red-headed woman. Matt hastened to make introductions and then began to fill in the blanks for his girlfriend. What they knew and what they had deduced. They finished with a description of the spells Willow had cast to disrupt the affect of the Stone of Threbe and to find her. "Wow," Will breathed when she had taken it all in. "I'm really glad you came after me."
Matt blinked and stared at her in growing confusion. Will wasn't reacting as he had expected, and something just seemed off. "Are you sure you're alright?"
"Yeah," Hay Lin put in, "you seem really cheerful."
"Why wouldn't I be? I'm me again, my own person, not just a…OH! Will!" She turned to the others, wide eyed. "We have to go after her; she went the other way, following that other pull."
Her response was a collective blank stare.
Will huffed impatiently. "I split up to follow both pulls which was… just weird. Not that I'm complaining, mind you," she hastened to add. "I love being real again, but we have to go after Will. She went the other way!"
"Uh, honey," her mother stepped forward and placed a hand on her forehead. "Are you sure you're feeling alright?"
"Yeah," Willow added, "cause you're making a lot of… not sense."
"There was just one pull at first," Will explained patiently, "no doubt the stone, then another one started, the one that stopped when I saw you guys." She looked at the witch, "Your spell, right?" Willow nodded, although puzzled that her locator would 'pull' at the subject of the spell. "I couldn't follow both, and it was really starting to hurt, then something sort of went 'snap' and I was out. I went one way; she went the other. Simple. Weird, but simple."
Susan Vandom turned to Willow with look of stark confusion. The witch shook her head. "Nuh-uh! There is no way my locator spell could have caused THAT."
"Wait a minute," Hay Lin's voice emerged from thin air next to her, causing Willow to jump slightly. "Your 'own person?' 'Real again?' I know who you are! You're the altamere. But I don't get it. I thought you were dead."
"Yeah," Will nodded, then shuddered. "That was unpleasant."
"What are you talking about?" Susan shouted to get their attention. She didn't understand much, but she was fairly certain she had just heard her daughter say she had died at some point.
"It's okay, mom," her daughter gave her another hug.
"Okay?" Matt interrupted looking as if he were completely lost and not liking it one bit. "You just said you died! And that you're… not you?' He stepped forward and stared at her intently, looking for differences. "What is this about, Will? What's an altamere? What are you?"
"I'll explain everything, but we gotta hurry." The altamere turned away, trying to hide the hurt, pushing aside personal concerns in order to focus on the current crisis. "Come on, listen while we walk." Not waiting for them, she turned and headed off the way she had come. After a moment, the group got itself moving.
"I'll start," Hay Lin offered. "I know it's kind of a touchy subject for you." The altamere nodded. "There are times when, as Guardians, we need to get away unnoticed for a while. That can be kind of hard, so we have this spell that lets us create astral drops, sort of temporary copies of ourselves. The astral drops can be left in the park or in our rooms or wherever we need to be. Handy. Well there was this one time, when Will needed to be in two places at once. Minor emergency. I won't bore you with the details," she offered, her words coming faster than normal. Yan Lin glanced toward the source of the voice and wondered what sort of trouble the girls had been getting into when she wasn't watching.
"So, Will made an astral drop. What none of us knew was that the hag was watching her. As soon as Will left, she went to the astral drop and did a little mojo, changed it… I mean her… into an altamere."
"Which is?" Willow asked.
"Basically, a better copy," Yan Lin supplied.
"Gramma!" Hay Lin reprimanded glancing at Will, who had stiffened at those words. "That's not nice." She looked back at Susan. "Really, there's more to it. An altamere, unlike a drop, has all of the original's memories and feelings, is real. Alive in a way a drop isn't." She walked a little faster to catch up with the copy of her friend. "She's just as much Will as the original."
"Didn't you say she died?" Maria asked, getting the story back on track.
"Yeah… well… You see the old hag tried to convince her that the original Will was a threat to her, that she would kill her. Things got kinda confused before we got it all straightened out. When the hag, who was watching from the shadows all creepy stalker-like, realized they weren't going to do away with each other, she attacked. Will…uh… this Will, shoved the original out of the way and took the hit for her." She shuddered. "Lightning bolt. Looked like it really hurt."
"Didn't tickle," the altamere provided without turning around. The stress in her voice made Susan frown in concern. She knew that tone and hated hearing it; it meant her little girl was hurting, using sarcasm to hide her feelings.
"Y-you saved my daughter's life?" Susan asked, still trying to sort out the explanation in her own mind, but fairly certain that this wasn't her daughter, regardless of how much she looked and sounded like Will. She wasn't sure how to feel about that.
"Of course," the altamere stopped and turned to face her. "It's what sisters do, isn't it?"
"There wasn't anything we could do for her," Hay Lin continued, "but Will decided she had to save something. So she used the Heart of Kandrakhar to absorb… her into herself, so she could keep her memories alive. I guess she kept more than that alive, though."
Susan Vandom stared at the copy of her daughter, conflicted in ways that, only an hour ago, she could never have imagined. What was she supposed to do? The copy was waiting for her to react, but she couldn't. She didn't know how. Finally, she sighed. "I…don't know how to deal with this, and we have more important things to worry about, don't we?"
The altamere looked unhappy, but she nodded. "Okay, but I want you safe." She looked at the others. "Can you get her home before-"
"Forget it," Susan cut her off. "I want my daughter back, and I'm getting her."
"Mom! This is dangerous."
"Exactly," Susan countered.
"I don't want to have to worry about you if it comes to a fight. Please."
"At least," Willow interrupted, having already lost this argument with the older woman, "hang back out of sight. The sorceress might attack you to distract us."
Susan couldn't argue with that logic. She nodded. "I will, but I need to know what's happening."
That, it seemed, was as much as she was willing to do, and the altamere decided to leave it at that. There was no time to take her home anyway. None of them knew how close the sorceress might be, and at her urging, everyone picked up the pace. She would have preferred to transform and fly, but Will had the Heart, and she doubted it would have worked anyway. She tried to shove worries about her… Will's… mother… to the back of her mind. She didn't even glance at Matt, not wanting to see the look on his face. Don't think about it. There would be time to sort all of that out later.
"Question," Maria said, drawing their attention. "How do we find her? I don't think we should try the tracking spell again and beyond the point where you, ah, split up, how do we follow her?"
That brought everyone up short. "How do we find her, then?" Susan asked, trying to keep the panic out of her voice.
"I think I know a way," Hay Lin answered after a moment's consideration.
