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TRAVELER Author: Phoenix Disclaimer: The characters are not mine, obviously…They belong to Joss W., ME, UPN and such and such. If they were mine would they ever end up where they are now? Don’t think so! Feedback: Yes, please!! Pairings: W/T (duh), might develop X/A later. Rating: not sure but lets be on the safe side; PG13. For angst and maybe some language. Summary/Explanation: There are two AU’s. The first one is nearly the same as the TV series, except for the end of the 6th session and after that, at the end of ‘Seeing Red’, it was Willow who was shot instead of Tara and Buffy never got shot. Warren was running from the cops at the time he barged into the backyard, Buffy and Xander were talking in the house. Everyone was in the house so he was just shooting at the house, one bullet struck Willow upstairs at the same time cops got Warren. So the Dark Witch theme didn’t happen. The second AU is very different. Okay…English is my second language and this is my first fanfic ever, so cope with me. “” Speech <>Thoughts *Flashbacks* PART 1 Tara Maclay was sitting on her bed, looking out the window. If someone saw her from a distance they would have just thought that she was just admiring the Autumn view. But for anyone who knew her, it was a totally different story. She wasn’t looking at anything, she was just staring at nothing. All the light gone from her eyes. “Tara!! Tara are you home??” The voice made Tara come out of her trance and face the bedroom door. A bedroom full of memories, where she and Willow talked, hugged, kissed, became one. The room once full of joy, quirkiness and happiness, was now empty of anything but memories. The furniture was nearly the same, plus some new pictures and minus the carpeting. It hadn’t changed that much. But still it was different. “TARA!!” Tara got up and out of the room, she made her way down the stairs and to the kitchen, where stood Dawn, shouting…very loud! Tara smiled a little. “You know Dawnie, I think every Tara in the 10 mile radius will come here now.” She said, giggling a little. Dawn gave her a sarcastic smile “Yeah haha very funny, if you don’t like me shouting you should have answered sooner!” Tara laughed again, and held up her hands in a ‘I surrender’ manner “Fine, fine. So what’s up? I hope all this shouting was not because you wanted a peanut butter sandwich.” “No…I was just going to tell you that we have a Scooby Meeting in 20 minutes. Buffy send me to come get you.” Then she mumbled to her self “I was gonna ask for the sandwich after I said that.” Tara smiled again “Okay, but you didn’t have to come all the way here, you could have phoned you know..” she said with a smirk. “Hey, don’t look at me, it was Buffy’s idea! We were walking to the Magic Box after she collected me from school and I was telling her about this gorgeous new guy at the school. With the most, cutest brown eyes and the loveliest smile…”Dawn said going off to her Dream-land, “…and the way he walks and talks and eats…” Tara lifted her eye-brows and smirked. Now she knew why Buffy send her here instead of calling! She could bet on it even!! Ohh...Buffy was soo in trouble! Dumping the Guy-Crazy sister on her! By the time she re-focused on Dawn, she was still talking about the same guy! “…And drinks and runs and the way he says ‘wassup chick’, he is sooo romantic! And…” Tara just had to cut in between…”Umm...Dawnie? Honey is there a point to this?” “Oh?…oh yea, so I was speaking and suddenly she turned to me and said to come and get you!” she thought. “Okay, I’ll put my shoes on and we can go.” With that she made her way upstairs.
Dawn’s smile faded once she was alone. She sat down on one of the kitchen chairs and looked out to the back-yard. She didn’t know why but she hated that backyard. she thought lamely. But she didn’t want to worry anyone with her feelings. Everyone was still hurting. After 6 months and still, it hurt her so much. But she wasn’t complaining, hurt meant remembering, and she never wanted to forget.
Tara came back downstairs and Dawn put her smile back on. “Ready?”. “Ready.” Tara replied, and they headed out to the magic shop for yet another Scooby meeting.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
At the Magic Shop, Buffy was killing some time training with Giles before Tara and Dawn arrived. Anya was counting her money and Xander was…well…Xander was reading a Spiderman Comic book hidden inside a ‘Demonology’ book.
In the Training Room, Buffy jumped and gave the ‘evil-bag-man’ a spinning kick. This promptly made Giles loose balance and fall on his butt. Which is never a good thing.
“Buffy! For the thousands of time! Please feel free to inform me when you are going to kick this bloody bag hard so I can hold on to it tighter!!” he said frustrated.
“Wops! Heheh sorry Giles, forgot…again” said a actually not-so-sorry Buffy, with a faked apologetic voice.
“Indeed, you did!...Okay Buffy, lets cut it here before anyone gets hurt, which is always me. And wait for Tara and Dawn to return.”
“Oki Giles!” said Buffy cheerily. And Giles swiftly exited the room shaking his head and mumbling something about ‘behind surgery’. Buffy looked at the man she considered her father with a smile and walked towards her changing section of the room. The smile didn’t fade from her face but did take a more sad form. She knew she was not the only one who thought of Giles as a surrogate father. All the Scooby Gang did. First to Dawn, Xander, Willow and herself. Then to Anya and Tara, the newest members by like 3 years. Actually to think about it Dawn was the newest member, thought Buffy.
As she finally finished dressing she looked around the training room, so many memories. She shook her head and closed her eyes as her smile faded. She took a deep breath and opened her eyes again. No one had to hear about her hurt now. She was Buffy, the vampire slayer. She could take on anything. She will deal, she would deal… she repeated inside her head. She put her smile back on and entered the shop part of the Magic Box she repeated to herself. replied her mind.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Anya looked around at her friends. The friends who still took her in even after they learned she was back in the vengeance. She continued pretending to count her money while looking at each one of her friends. How well they had slipped into the little roles they gave to themselves. The I-am-okay-nothing-is-wrong poses that they did whenever they were around each other and how the smile slipped, when they thought no one was looking.
Anya didn’t need to look, she was a Vengeance demon in the end, she could feel it. Grief, Self-Blame, Shame, Longing, Helplessness and the Pain. She could go on with the list but there was no need to. She knew the exact moment her friends thought about ‘it’, the event that affected all of them so much.
Buffy’s smile would waver for a second. All the light in Tara’s eyes would just disappear, Dawn would completely lose her smile to put it back on in a few seconds. Giles would always ask a bit louder than usual for someone to get on that ‘dratted machine and make it work’, like he was expecting something. Xander would always put his right hand in his pocket, where Anya knew there was a yellow crayon, and would wrap his fingers around it. She sometimes wondered what was so important about the crayon. Must have meant something…and she would pretend to count her money, and think.
How interesting she wouldn’t have even thought of this affecting her. But she wouldn’t lie to herself, she had no tact after all, but she would work on it now, she didn’t let anyone know, that she knew, now did she? That was tact right? she though.
She looked up to the door bell jingling, and saw Tara and Dawn entering. She slipped in to her own role. “Oh…its you and here I though it was more money giving customers.” She said in a bored voice.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tara and Dawn walked over to the table. Tara looked at Xander with suspicious eyes. He was after all laughing while reading a ‘Demonology’ text! “Um…Xander, what did Superman do this time.”
And as always Xander bit the bait; “Its not superman, its spiderm….DAMN!” He said as he realized he was caught. He sheepishly looked at Giles, who was giving him the evil eye.
“Weren’t you suppose to be looking for a Letmas Demon?” asked Giles.
“uh…yea I was…but this was a new issue comic and it was…uh…okay shutting up now.” He said when he saw the explanation was actually getting him into more trouble.
As this was happening Tara was sitting at the corner, looking at nothing particular, her eyes empty of their usual beautiful light.
She thought of 6 months ago. She always did. She told herself millions of times that dwelling on the past was not healthy. All she did was trying to come up with different outcomes, and what if’s.
What if she returned earlier or later? What if they didn’t get up? What if…what if…what if.
Everything was just playing over and over in her head.
When she return to Willow that night. *Can’t you just be kissing me right now?*
How they spend 2 nights together researching and well other important stuff. * well, I have an evil scheme of my own*
And the morning *Your eyes are so blue…*
She blinked several times. She remembered little detail for some reason. From her point of view of course. That didn’t mean she understood. Willow had given up magic for all of them. She was okay now. They were talking about finally putting on some clothes and joking about.
**********
*I had worn a blue top, and Willow had a white shirt on. It was such a lovely day. Willow was walking towards the window, I was right behind her. As she reached the window, there were noises, like fire works but more rapidly. I saw Willow look out the window and gasp. I was two steps behind her. She turned to me quickly and took a hurried step towards me. She grabbed me by the shoulders and I…think she was going to push me to the ground, I closed my eyes and readied my self for the fall, I heard a last shot and some shouts outside, felt a little tremor as Willow trembled for a second and I waited for the push and the fall. But it never came.
I opened my eyes again and looked into her emerald green eyes, she looked right back at me. She blinked once and looked so deep into my eyes, her eyes open with wonder as if she never saw my eyes before. ‘Your eyes are so blue…’. I wanted to smile at the comment, kiss her deeply for that innocence. But she suddenly tripped and leaned on me. Something felt so warm on my shirt. I think her knees gave away because she became limp so sudden, I balanced her weight and lowered us to the floor. I think my response was automatic, I didn’t really know what was happening. I laid her to the floor and just looked at her for a few minutes I guess...Her eyes were still open, I reached over and closed them, if she was sleeping the light would disturb her.
I don’t remember what happened then. I was just sitting there watching her…sleep. Then there were people in the room, pulling me away. I looked around and saw Buffy she was leaning against the door, Xander was next to her on his knees. They were both just staring. I just looked, there was no sound, nothing had sound. I turned around to look at Willow, but someone was blocking me, I tried to focus on the man, paramedic…I think, or cop…not sure. His lips was moving, I think he was talking to me, I ignored, looked back at Buffy and Xander again. They were the same. Then Dawnie came running stopped at the door and started shaking her head, just shaking and shaking. Lips moving saying something over and over again. She backed away from the room until she came upon the wall and slid down. Sorry Dawnie…got to check on Willow, she was sleeping you see. I turn to see the peoples activities had slowed down. Some of them were shaking their heads and looking at their watches, writing things on papers. Now they were removing tubes form Willow. Why did they put them there at the first place anyway. How long has it been?
That’s all I remember before the darkness came over me*
**********
Tara blinked a few times again and looked back at the gang. They seemed to be still discussing Xander’s Demonology vs. Spiderman situation. Anya looked at her a minute and Tara smiled at her, Anya smiled back.
“So guys!” interrupted Buffy “Are we going to talk about our two new problems or not?”
“Oh yes, certainly Buffy, indeed lets focus” agreed Giles.
“Oookay. Wanna start with the apocalyptic one or the minor ‘damn-I-missed-a-demon-last-night!’ one?
“I vote for the minor one” voted Xander “no need to worry our silly minds 5 minutes earlier then we should.”
“Yeah why not” everyone agreed.
“Oki! The reason why I asked Xander to check ‘suddenly disappearing demons’, which he was obviously not, was as you can guess some ugly ass demon pulled the disappearing act on me last night. Only with the help of a light show.”
Giles nodded his head “Buffy can you tell us exactly what happened?”
“Of course” Buffy said with a ‘I was gonna anyway’ tone. “Okay I was patrolling and after dusting like 3 vamps, I come across this gross and huge gray-ish Demon. We fought a little, It seem to have a bit difficulty and I think it knew that I was sooo gonna kick its hairy ass…”
Xander interrupted “It had a hairy ass???”
“Ew” said Dawn
Buffy rolled her eyes and sighed “NO! I was just going with the flow, okay? No hairy ass, its just a saying!! Anyways if it did have a hairy as I would sooo not even kick that thi…”
“Dear Lord! Can we please not talk about this demon’s buttocks! And Buffy please continue with the story!”
“Chill…Gee, so anyways I was going to kick his as…”
“BUFFY!!!”
“Okay Giles…gee. So he suddenly pushed me back and I landed on my as…” Buffy looked at Giles who was giving her the evil-eye “I mean I fell down, and suddenly he creates out this gooey looking blue stuff form a hole in its hand, makes it a ball and throws it at himself. The gooey stuff gets stuck on him and starts shining while growing. Like gross kindda thing…umm…oh oh like in Matrix where Neo was going to go to the Real World after the pill stuff and he touched the liquid mirror stuff and it was….all like covering him! Yeah like that but this was a lot more gooey and shiney blue and more uncool.”
Everyone nodded except for Giles who was all confused. He turned to Tara for explanation. Tara saw his confusion and explained “So basically the goo covered it. From head to toe.”
“Oh…”Then he turned to Buffy “Couldn’t you just say that” while pointing at Tara.
“Whatever” said Buffy “So as soon as the goo completely covered him he was…poof…gone”
“Hm…”Giles took off his glasses and cleaned them. “That is quite familiar”, he said and got up to go to book case. Where he looked for a certain book “A-ha” he exclaimed when he found it. He sat back down at the table and started flipping the pages. He stopped flipping them and held out the book for Buffy to see “Is this it?”
“Oh yea that’s the ugly!”
Xander leaned in to have a look and sat back down “True, ass not hairy”
Giles glared at him and the others laughed.
Anya looked at it “Oh! That’s a Traveler Demon. It can Travel though Alternative Universes!”
“How” Tara asked “I thought the Alternative Universes shifted a lot.”
“Well it is given three of them and it can only travel between those ones, special gift. The Carrier Liquid helps the crossing over, anything it touches and covers will directly pass to the directed Alternative Universe.” replied Anya.
Everyone looked at her for a second.
Anya rolled her eyes, “Carrier Liquid is the gooey thing!”
“Oh!” Exclaimed Xander and looked at Dawn. “Oh!” Exclaimed Dawn and looked at Buffy. “Oh!” exclaimed Buffy and looked at Tara.
Tara just looked back “What? I had guessed that already!”
“Yeah, only you guys are brainless!” Said Anya
“Anya!” exclaimed Tara and Giles. “Go easy on them, they don’t need to hear the obvious!” continued Tara, smirking.
“Hey!” Exclaimed the ‘brainless’ Three.
And they all laughed.
PART 2
The traveler demon was pretty pissed off. Of all the three universes it has been given, it probably had the worst three!!. It couldn’t even eat children in peace. One of the realities had a Vampire Slayer, one of them had a Demon Hunter and when he thought the last one was safe, there was the other trouble, a powerful Witch. If it could do more than grunting it would have probably been swearing his ass off. It had barely escaped from the Vampire Slayer first and ran to the one with the Demon Hunter, just its luck he was right in front of it. He used his second Carrier Liquid to go to the third one. Now a mighty demon was hiding in the bushes because it had run out of Carrier Liquid. It had to wait another 24 hours for its body to produce another one. With no other defenses it had no intentions of getting caught. It guessed it was safe for now since half an hour ago it saw the Witch, who was covered with a hooded cloak, was confronting 3 other vamps and hadn’t seen one behind her, therefore getting hurt before burning them to ashes. She had staggered out of the cemetery.
This was getting tiresome, it had to do something about this. Suddenly it had an idea, it smiled and got out of the bushes to find some delicious rat to eat.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The wounded figure walked up to her house’s porch slowly and opened the door. Grunting a little, she forcefully closed the door.
“Wilma…”she said weakly “…I’m home”. Of course as usual no one answered back. She was sure the wounds on her back were still bleeding a little but she didn’t care at that moment. She looked around the big house, she thought. She remembered times when the house was a lot fuller than this. And now it was just her and her loneliness.
She limped to the living room and sat on the couch slowly. “Casa de Summers” she said “with no Summers in it.” She leaned down and from under the couch took out the first aid kit. She could only heal minor wounds when she was wounded so she hoped nothing was too deep. She slowly unfastened her cloak she wore to hide her identity; she couldn’t bother with idiotic demons trying to hunt her at home. It was better that no one saw her. Flaming red hair fell from underneath the hood of the cloak. Emerald green eyes followed the black cloak as she put it gently on the table. She sighed and cleaned her wounds with fresh water. She then did a simple healing spell for the open wounds, she only had enough energy for the serious ones tonight. She would take care of the bruises some other day.
She was so tired she didn’t even try to go upstairs to bed; she just lay down to the couch.
Looking at the ceiling she remembered the days she didn’t have to do this alone, where she too had a family and friends. Of course being the best friend of the Chosen one was never a walk in the park but she was just the witchy side kick then. All of her friends, they were strong together.
She had started practicing magic 3 years before she had met Buffy, she had found a book about Wiccan principles and was in love with it at the moment she read the whole book. It seemed so right for her. Xander and Jesse were never interested in the craft but they liked to watch and encourage her on it.
Then the Summers family had moved to Sunnydale. Buffy became their friend immediately and the vampires and demons entered their world as well. They had won Joyce, Dawn, Giles and Buffy into their ‘family’ but they had lost Jesse. It was hard loosing your childhood friend, but they had coped.
For 3 years everything was good with the gang, then after high school graduation, Xander had gone to find himself and never returned, he did call to say that he was in Brazil and was staying though. That was the last time they heard from him and it was hard but they were happy that he was happy and safe. About 1.5 years later they had learned that Dawn was actually a ‘key’ and Joyce had brain tumor. Joyce didn’t survive the illness.
Trying to keep Dawn from Glory, Buffy had made Willow promise to protect Dawn and Sunnydale if anything happened to herself. A week after that speech between the best-friends, Buffy had sacrificed herself for Dawn and the World.
After the funeral Giles and Willow got though to Hank Summers in Spain and he had come and collected Dawn to take her with him to Spain. After the Tears of goodbye, Dawn had left. Willow had left like she let Buffy down with her promise but Dawn would be safe with her father. Two weeks after Dawn’s departure, Giles was called back to England by the Council. Willow had done the thing expected of her and told Giles that she would take care of Sunnydale that he could go. And again with the tears of goodbye.
A year ago Giles had called Willow to let her know that Faith had been killed in the prison and they had found the new slayer in England and started training her. Apparently she was a bit on the slow side for learning things. Ken…Kentucky…something…ah…JFK was too cocky as Giles put it lightly and certainly not ready for a real combat yet. Giles told Willow that unless something ‘happened’ to her that they will not be sending Kentucky to Sunnydale. Kentucky was the back up plan.
Now for about one and a half years she was still alone, living at the Summers Residence, going to UC Sunnydale and working part time at a computer company to pay her expenses. Willow Rosenberg was utterly and completely alone. Of course some of the people she met along the way were still around. Angel, Cordy and Weasly were in LA and, in many phone calls, had asked her to join them, but she had promises to keep and she would keep them as long as she could.
There was Oz, whom she had no idea where he was, and several ex-girlfriends that didn’t even last for several months. So they were out of the question. There was Riley, Buffy’s ex. But she didn’t know where he was, although she had sent a magical shovel after him to hit him on the head once. Hey she had warned him, he should be grateful that she felt pity and did not include the full disclaimer! There were names there and here but really none of them was an option.
thought Willow . Then she turned around and tried to fall asleep. It was tiring to be alone.
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The traveler demon happily munched on its ‘rats’, as it thought of a way to create at least one safe Alternate Universe for itself. Sending one of the ‘trouble makers’ to another AU seemed like a good idea. That way it would roam free in one of the Universes.
It couldn’t send the Demon Hunter to another one because, he always hunted with a bunch of other people that seemed to be helping him. The same problem was with the Slayer’s Universe as well, she too slayed in packs meaning it couldn’t replace her either. That only left it with one option. Send the Witch away to one of the AU’s. She seemed to be alone while hunting, it was its best guess anyway. So the witch it was.
It would do it tomorrow night when she always went out to hunt; it would try to sneak behind her. She wouldn’t even know what hit her. It made a giggle-like sound and continued devouring its meal.
TBC...if you guys want me to.
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