Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters I just borrow them for a while and put them right back where they belong.
Many thanks go out to alwaysjbj who beta'd this for me and encouraged me to have the nerve to post it. You are a godsend! Thank you!
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Her palms were sticky with sweat and she felt her stomach clenching in a way that she hadn’t felt in about three years. The halls looked the same, and there was that smell. There had to be a special disinfectant that no where else in the world wanted to use except good ole public schools. She exhaled slowly, vowing to take only the most necessary of shallow breaths.
She knew that this wasn’t the same high school that she had been tormented in, and calling upon hidden reserves of inner strength Willow straightened her shoulders; with her spine poker straight, she tried to project the same calm, cool air of self assurance that Buffy did. On her, though, it always seemed a bit askew, like her old pattern tights and chunky cable knit sweaters. She felt like she was mismatched and out of style.
She knew that she looked good, Anya had gone out of her way to say so... one thing that Anya was good at was telling the bald, unvarnished truth. It should have boosted her confidence, but instead it made her feel like she was an imposter.
She heard the old voice in the back of her head telling her that she was just pretending to be cool. That she would always be just shy of being a complete reject. Despite her best efforts her head hung low as she started to wander further into the building.
Little snippets of her high school life kept flashing across her mind. She still remembered the cutting remarks that Cordelia and the Cordettes used to throw at her. Their scathing remarks about her being shy, brainy, and a geeky little dork had made her feel so insecure; an insecurity that still hovered to this day, hiding just below the surface.
It had been easier for her to talk to her teachers than to anyone her age. Jenny Calendar and Giles had been perfect examples of how she would chatter on happily in their presence, and yet as soon as someone “cool” came in she would be reduced to stuttering and saying the most idiotic things. She had known she was spazing out, but couldn’t help herself-the words would just come pouring out of her mouth before she could do anything to stop them.
She thought about how desperately she had been in love with Xander. Living through him being hopelessly in love with Buffy had been so painful. When he had asked her to walk him through those trial runs of asking Buffy out it had all but broken her heart.
A small part of her had always wondered, if Buffy hadn’t known that she’d had a crush on him, would she have gone out with Xander when he asked? In high school this question had had kept her up at night. It made her feel small and a little mean that she was secretly glad that Buffy knew, and that she hadn’t been forced to watch her two best friends start dating. Looking back now at the fears that had haunted her through high school was almost enough to make her smile, Xander and Buffy together would have lasted about as long as a Popsicle in hell. While she was going through it, though, it had been very hurtful, and her inner smile died at the painfully recalled memory.
Buffy had handled the difficult situation very well. She had tried to spare Xander’s feelings while trying, for Willow’s sake, not to attract his attention in the first place.
Then the unthinkable had happened...Xander had ultimately betrayed the “I Hate Cordelia Chase Fan Club”, of which he had been one of the founding members, by dating THE Cordy of Hatred. The two of them were always together; until Xander had finally opened his eyes and noticed what had been in front of them all this time-her. Only after dating Oz had she become even remotely interesting, but not interesting enough for him to actually break up with Queen C.
The sneaking around and kissing Xander was something she would always remember with shame. Even now, after time and distance, she couldn’t look back on those weeks without a feeling of remorse and a deep sense of self-loathing. She had tried to chalk it up to the fact that it had been Xander, who she had always been in love with to some extent. But that excuse hadn’t washed well with age and now she lay the blame exactly where it belonged, on her own selfish desires. To have Xander giving her all of that attention, after craving it for so long, had just been so unbelievably flattering.
He had finally been interested in her and after seeing him go after Buffy, Cordelia, Faith and countless others it had been so exciting that he had been willing to risk losing Cordy in order to kiss her. She had known it was wrong, she just hadn’t cared that it was Cordelia that she was hurting. Maybe secretly she wanted to hurt her a little after all of the mean things that Cordelia had done to her. That, however, was no excuse for having done something that she had clearly known was wrong. Making excuses for her own behavior had lead to her doing other even more unforgivable thing in the future.
Feeling even worse now than she had when she’d entered the building Willow tried to shake it off. She had promised herself that she would never go back to the horrors of high school and, this wasn’t the high school that she had actually gone to... Although, eerily, it looked the almost the same.
Walking down the hall she stumbled as she heard two people off to the right start laughing, she fought to overcome the immediate and all but overwhelming urge to go running off to the nearest bathroom to cry.
Her face flamed as she tried to remember all of the centering techniques that she had learned with Giles at the coven house. She felt all on edge and brittle, as if the wrong word or look would shatter her. and wondered why it was that this place, and all of the bad memories, could still bother her after all this time and all she had been through since then.
How she had let Buffy talk her into coming to a football game was beyond her now. All that, “It’s going to be fun...”, “It’s Alumni night, and let’s face it, we’re a good percentage of the Alumni that made it through graduation...” and the emotion charged clincher, “Dawnie really wants you to go...” She had felt the pressure and caved in, just like she always did.
Well there was no help for it now. She put on her resolve face and headed to where she thought Buffy’s office was located. There was still time to go grab a cup of hot chocolate at the concession stand before the game started. Nothing and no one came between her and the chocolate. She felt herself begin to perk up...
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In the girl’s bathroom there was a flurry of activity. The mirror had been scrubbed clean until no trace of the symbols that had adorned it remained. Black sand had been swept up along with the rope of rue that had been laid down to guard against intruders coming into the spacious bathroom.
A wicked smile played across her face as Amy gathered all of the supplies that she had brought, stuffing them into the garbage can by the door. It hadn’t been the grand revenge that she had been hoping for... No complete mental breakdown but it was a start, and she had definitely been on the right track. Willow’s feelings made her very vulnerable indeed. Why the silly little redhead even cared what other people thought was a question that the former rat just couldn’t figure out.
There had been a moment when she had felt pure terror as Willow had thought to flee to the bathroom; the barrier that was meant to keep the casual person out wouldn’t have slowed a witch of Willow’s caliber for even a second. Thankfully Willow had, for once, decided to be strong. How ironic was that?
All in all, though, she thought that it had been a complete success. Willow hadn’t even suspected for a moment that she was being influenced. It hadn’t really occurred to her that she would get this far without being detected. Willow was such a stupid, trusting fool who far too often left her guard down, she smiled to herself, her features twisted with bitter contempt.
After Amy had found out that Willow had so much power available to her that she could instantly have turned her back from being a rat, rather than keeping her that way for years, she had begun to plan ways to make the other witch pay for her negligence. It didn’t matter that Willow had tried. What mattered was that she hadn’t tried hard enough.
This was just the beginning of her planned guerrilla type warfare--there would be no open battlefields for her war against Willow, not unless she wanted it to end very much like Waterloo. Strike small, strike hard, cut and run that was the way to win this war.
The small year book picture that had been blacked out slowly with a marker during the spell-casting was still taped to the mirror; the caption beneath it read ‘Willow Rosenberg’ in clear bold type. Sighing in exasperation Amy ripped it from the mirror and stuffed it roughly into her purse. It was the little details like this that were going to make or break her campaign. Applying a thin coat of lip gloss Amy reached into her purse once more for her colored contacts, at the same time burying the photo deeper into her purse. It wouldn’t do for her to go to the football game with pitch black eyes...
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