Willow opened the door quietly, fearing silently that it would emit a squeak and awaken the occupants of the building. After what seemed to be an eternity, she managed to open the door wide enough for to slip through. Glancing about her, she tiptoed slowly towards the grand staircase in the next room. She stole a glance at her wristwatch, noting that it was well past two in the morning. "Good," she thought to herself. "Everyone should be asleep."
She deftly ascended the staircase, testing her weight on each of the steps so as not to land on a squeaky board. Once she finally reached the top, she stole down a short corridor to a room at the end. Quickly opening what she knew would be a well-oiled door, she practically ran into the room, closing the door carefully behind her.
She looked around at her familiar surroundings. She checked her watch again. Had it been only two minutes since she last looked? It had seemed like hours. Finally, she sighed, content that she had managed to sneak back into her house without being caught. She had spent the evening and well into the morning in the graveyard with Buffy, Giles, and Xander, hunting Vampires. Under Giles' and Buffy's expert instruction, both she and Xander had learned to be acceptable fighters and were now journeying with them on their nightly Crusade against the Vampires. They had managed to work out an excellent cooperative system. Xander and Willow both carried powerful water rifles loaded with Holy Water in order to keep the Vampires at bay. While they were writhing in pain, Buffy would pounce upon them, stake in hand. Giles was along almost solely to observe, though he carried with him extra stakes as well as Holy Water ammunition for Xander and Willow.
This nightly routine, which had begun only two weeks ago, was quite taxing and physically exhausting. As Willow changed out of her hunting clothes and prepared for bed, she resolved to sleep late the following morning. It was, after all, Saturday.
Before bed, she decided to check for new additions to her favorite recreational website, a fanfic page dedicated to X-Files stories. She sat down in front of what Giles commonly referred to as her "idiot box". Typing up the address quickly due to familiarity, she quickly scanned for new submissions. Finding only one, something about Mulder, Scully, and Vampires. She chuckled softly to herself as she read it, noting the most blatant of the falsehoods , such as Vampires sleeping in coffins.
Once she was finished, she prepared to shut down, but then changed her mind. She decided to play a little game of internet roulette. She scrolled to the bottom of the page until she found the fanfic webring tag. On a whim, she clicked on the "goto a random fanfic site" link. She had tried this more than once before, and never found a site that interested her. She didn't really expect to find anything of interest tonight. She most definitely did not expect what she did find.
The address of the site at the top of the screen was http://slayerfanfic.com. The loading had temporarily stalled, before loading the actual page. She glanced at the title at the top of the page, which read: "The Slayer's FanFic Archive". Smiling a bit, she waited patiently for the rest of the site to load.
When the image finally loaded, the smile fell instantly from her face. On the screen had appeared images of Willow, Buffy, Xander, Angel and Cordelia. Shocked, Willow drew in a quick breath and quickly jotted down the address so that it would not be forgotten, then shut down her computer, terrified.
She lay down on her bed, the palms of her hands pressed into her eyes. "There must be some kind of an explanation," she decided. She resolved to investigate further the following day. As she lay on her bed, the exhaustion of the night's work pressed in on her, and she fell into a deep sleep.
Her dreams that night were haunted by primal fears. Paranoia and modesty reigned in her subconscious. It terrified her that all around the world people might have access to her daily life and most intimate secrets. What frightened her even more was the possibility of one of their enemies discovering this vault of knowledge and exploiting any weaknesses evidenced by the texts.
In her darkest dream of the night, she stood still in the middle of what looked to be a coliseum of some sort. All around her she could hear voices shouting at her, though when she looked, she could see nothing. The voices had several different undertones coursing through them. Some leered at her, others worshipped her, and yet others advised her. Unable to take it anymore, she closed her eyes and silently began to scream.
* * *
The following morning, as soon as she awoke, her curiosity got the best of her. She quickly showered and dressed, then had a light breakfast of cereal and orange juice, then nearly ran back up to her room. She slipped into her chair and turned on the computer, waiting impatiently for it to finish loading. Once it finally completed this task, she logged onto the internet and typed in the address she had written down.
Mentally crossing her fingers, she waited for the opening page to load. Once it was finished, she scanned the options. Her choices were to view the stories by title, author, category, principal character or newest submissions. On a whim, she chose category, then episode transcripts. It was here, she reasoned, that she would find out whether or not this site was truly dedicated to them.
She noted that they were all transcribed by someone using the pseudonym AleXander. She chose the first episode, something entitled "Welcome to the Hellmouth", and began to read. It took her almost three hours, but she managed to read through all of the transcripts and confirmed that they were indeed about her and her friends.
Willow leaned back in her chair and stretched her stiff muscles. She rubbed her aching eyes and sat back to consider what her next course of action would be. After much deliberation, she finally decided not to show this to her friends until much later.
Resolving to read on, she again leaned forward and brought up the authors' list. Spying near the top the stories written by the archive's maintainer, she selected the name and began to read. She read slowly through the story "Gone...", which described, in great detail, events leading up to and including her being made into some form of Vampire hybrid, leaving with Angel for Europe in the hopes of finding the Rom, the gypsies who had cursed Angel with his soul.
Frightened by this terrifying image of her dark future, she read several of the sequels written about her disappearance. In one, written by someone using the handle of J.J., she read of her time in Europe, searching for the Rom, and using her new Vampiric abilities to rescue Angel from a Master Vampire named Colombine.
In another, she read about how her friends in Sunnydale, having suffered greatly by her disappearance, finally went and sought her out and together they conquered a demon named Falen. In yet another sequel she read about how the Anointed One had gained control over her and used her as a weapon against Buffy.
Finally growing tired of reading such dark stories, she moved onto some others. She chose another story by Anya entitled, "Tinsel and Strings". It sounded innocent enough. As she read through it, she chuckled to herself as she read about her friends bemusement at her purchasing a G-string for Oz as a Christmas gift, which turned out only to be a musical accessory. She sighed, "This Anya has an excellent understanding of us. Although, I'm not that naïve, I would have known what they were thinking."
She decided to go back to the stories archive and pick one at random. Her choice was entitled, "Temptation", written by someone named Sharon Jacobs. As she read through it, she was shocked. Surely what she was reading was fabrication. In the story, a wizard of some kind had come to Sunnydale offering to grant wishes in exchange for assistance. Buffy's wishes had been that her parents got back together and that Angel would become human. That was understandable, but what she read about Giles was frightening to her. According to the story, Giles had had fantasies about her since he met her, though didn't act on them because of the large age distance. His granted wish was that he would become eighteen again so that he could become romantically involved with Willow.
What shocked her the most is that the author made Willow a pathetic, desperate, naïve, submissive little girl that agreed to become involved with the new, young Giles. She felt like crying. "How can people see me this way? I'm the responsible one around here," she thought.
She finished that particular story and moved on, scanning the titles for anything of interest. She happened to glance at her wristwatch some time later, and was startled to realize that it was almost four in the afternoon. Glancing once more at the technological terror on her computer screen, she shut her computer off.
She stood there silent for a while, trying to decide how to tell the others about this discovery. Still shocked about it herself, she had no idea how they would take it. She decided that they would need to know anyway. It would not do to leave them in the dark about this. She decided at all costs to keep Xander from reading "Temptation", however. She smiled slightly at the anticipation of Xander's reaction when he learned that he was being referred to as a "slayerette".
Crying softly to herself, she picked up the receiver to her telephone. She called Buffy, Xander, Giles and Ms. Calendar and told them to meet her at the library. Collecting the sheet of paper on which she had written the website address, she ran through her mind how she would give them this news.
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