Heroes and Lovers
by als
Chapter 12 — Intervention
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'Something isn't quite right here,' Willow thought quietly as she regained consciousness. She slowly opened her eyes in an effort to figure out precisely what was wrong, only to find herself floating in a vast, white void that stretched out around her as far as the eye could see.
"Okay," she said softly, wincing as her words seemed to echo like thunder through the utter silence. "This certainly isn't what I was expecting..."
As if in response to her uttered thoughts, the world seemed to shift around her. Willow blinked furiously and gasped in shock as she suddenly found herself sitting comfortably at the table in the old Sunnydale High School Library. Only, it couldn't really be the library, since they had blown that up along with most of the rest of the school on graduation day.
"What the heck is going on here?" she asked aloud.
"That is an excellent question, and I suppose it's as good a place to start as any," came a soft-spoken masculine voice from Giles' office. A moment later, a strange man stepped into view. He was about same height as Giles, but his frame was more defined, giving a definite impression of a lean athleticism. He was dressed casually, a pair of faded blue jeans and a plain white T-shirt, with a light-weight, knee-length, grey coat over it. His face was angular, his sharp features neither overly masculine nor particularly feminine. A mane of thick, curly fiery red hair hung about his face, reaching all the way to his shoulders. Only the masculine quality of his voice distracted from the overall sense of androgyny his appearance engendered.
"Who are you?" she gasped in obvious shock. "How did I get here? And where is here anyway? This can't be real. We destroyed the library when we stopped the mayor!"
"Very perceptive as always, Willow," the man responded as a soft smile spread across his face. "This is not, in fact, the library. This is a kind of meeting place where you and I can talk privately, without the problems that would arise if I were to manifest on your plane of existence."
Willow blinked as she digested the man's words, "Okay, that doesn't really clarify much at all. Who are you?"
"My name is Gabriel. I'm here to talk to you on behalf of... my employer. She is rather displeased with the way the Powers that Be have dealt with you and wants me to," he paused for a moment as though considering what to say next, "enlighten you about a few things."
Willow stared intently at the being standing before her. Whatever Gabriel was, he clearly wasn't human. On the other hand, however, she really wasn't getting a demon-y vibe from his presence either, which begged the questions of 'what was he' and 'could she really trust him?'
'Well,' she thought suddenly, 'there's only one way to know for sure.'
She took a deep breath and opened her mental shields, reaching out toward Gabriel with her empathic senses. As her awareness brushed against him, a powerful, comforting feeling of home and family flooded through her. She sighed softly at the warmth of his presence and was quickly satisfied that Gabriel had no intention of deceiving or harming her. Reluctantly, she pulled back her senses and closed off her mental shields so that she could properly focus on the conversation at hand.
Nodding her acceptance of his words, Willow spoke softly, "Okay, what do you want to talk about?"
Gabriel walked casually to the table, pulling out the chair next to Willow and turning it to face her before settling down on it gracefully. His soft smile never wavered as he began, "You've been helping the Slayer for going on four years now, child. Why do you fight in this war?"
The question startled her, "Because it's the right thing to do. The Slayer is just one girl. She shouldn't have to face the fight alone. No one should."
His eyes twinkled with concealed mirth as Gabriel continued, "So, the fact that you're in love with the Slayer has nothing to do with it?"
"Even if I weren't in love with Buffy," Willow countered, blushing furiously at Gabriel's pointed comment, "or even if, Goddess forbid, something should happen to her, I couldn't turn away from the fight. Not knowing what I know now."
Gabriel nodded, his smile widening, "You have a good heart, Willow. I can see why the Boss likes you so much."
"Your Boss likes me?" she asked, her curiosity aroused by the statement. "How does your Boss even know me? I'm nothing special..."
"Actually, my Boss knows more about you than even you do. She's been watching you since the night you were conceived. In her own way, you're the closest thing to a daughter she'll ever have and she loves you dearly." As he spoke, his smile turned sad and he abruptly changed the subject, "Why did you choose to become a Champion for the Powers that Be?"
"They intervened to keep me from becoming a vampire. Becoming their Champion was the only way for me to stay in the fight," she replied with a shrug. "I just wasn't ready to let go yet."
Gabriel's smile faded away in an instant, replaced by a hard, angry look. "If that's what they told you, then they lied to you, Willow. The only thing that the Powers that Be actually did to you was bind the majority of your powers so that you wouldn't be a threat to their plans."
"What do you mean?" Willow frowned as she tried to make sense of Gabriel's words and understand the sudden shift in his emotions. "I was dead when I woke up in that crypt, if they hadn't intervened..."
"If they hadn't intervened," Gabriel interrupted forcefully, his anger coloring his tone, "and cloaked you from us, you would have woken up here and found me waiting to explain to you what happened and what you are, instead of waking up in a crypt in a body that was prematurely revived and hadn't recovered fully." Gabriel let out a great sigh and Willow felt his anger drain away before he continued. "Willow, you were never in danger of dying permanently from Spike's bite or of becoming a vampire, because you were never completely human to begin with. All that your supposed death did was to activate the non-human part of your heritage prematurely."
"But, I can too become a vampire! It happened to the other me, when Anya granted Cordy's wish, and I saw it. A skanky vampire version of me!" Willow protested. "So how can that be if I couldn't be turned in the first place?"
"The wish that Anyanka granted changed the very fabric of reality, Willow. It reshaped it to match her twisted vision of how things would have turned out," Gabriel fought to repress a grin as he answered her. "Like everyone else in Sunnydale, the demon had no clue that you were anything more than just another human, so that is what you became in the other universe."
As Willow sat there, staring at him with a shocked look on her face, Gabriel studied her for a moment before diving into an explanation. "Willow, a few months before your mother married Ira Rosenberg, they had a terrible fight and broke up briefly. Your mother was in a really bad emotional place as a result. A few weeks before they got back together, your mother met a man and for the first time in her life reached out to someone for comfort."
He sighed again, as though he was dredging up painful memories, "The man fell in love with your mother and they had a brief and passionate affair. I think, had things gone differently, perhaps your mother would have fallen as deeply in love with him as he did with her. The day after you were conceived, the man was hit by a bus outside his apartment building and died instantly. Your mother was devastated and turned back to Ira for comfort. She never realized you weren't Ira's daughter."
"What?" Willow's voice was hoarse and pained as she forced the word through her throat. "So who was he? What was he, a demon of some kind?"
"No, Willow, there's nothing demonic about you at all. Your father was a Seraph, Willow, a celestial being of great power, sometimes called an archangel in your world's mythology."
As Willow sat there, slack-jawed and staring blankly at the man sitting across from her, trying desperately to grasp what he had said, her mind raced. 'I'm not Ira's daughter at all,' she thought, 'that might explain why I look almost nothing like my mother or father. And it might just explain why he was always so distant... though not really, because I don't think he really knows, seeing as he's listed on my birth certificate... and now I'm even babbling in my head, but I must have heard him wrong...'
"I'm what?" Willow finally managed to ask a short while later as her internal babbling ground to a halt.
"You're the daughter of a Seraph," he repeated.
The sadness in Gabriel's eyes as he answered her was almost too much to bear. In a moment of revelation, everything suddenly became clear to her and her jaw dropped open in shock. "You!" she exclaimed quietly, her voice filled awe. "You're my father!"
* * * * *
"What do you mean it's complicated? Complicated how? Is she even still human?" Angel asked, completely oblivious to Buffy's attempts to steer the conversation back to the topic of Spike and Drusilla.
"Oh, for the love of..." Buffy muttered angrily before snapping at Angel and Doyle, "Alright, already! Shut up and sit down and I'll give you the short version so we can get back to the really important stuff."
Doyle immediately sat down and managed to look properly chagrined by the obvious rebuke. Angel, on the other hand, stood there dumbfounded for a moment before finding a seat.
"Now then," Buffy's voice carried a hard edge to it as she spoke. "Here's the deal, Spike came to my dorm room and Willow invited him in without even checking who was at the door. He drained her and tried to turn her into a vamp, but the Powers that Be intervened. They took Willow somewhere and prevented her from becoming a vampire. Instead, they gave her some nifty powers of her own and sent her back as a Champion to help me guard the Hellmouth." She took a deep breath before continuing, "I found Spike the night Willow disappeared, he claimed to have killed her, I lost my temper and staked him. A few days later, Willow appeared in Giles' living room and we got filled in on what really happened. In the few days since she got back, we've started training and patrolling together."
Buffy looked Angel in the eye and her voice softened as she finished her explanation, "The night she got back, she told me that she loved me for the first time. And you know quite well how I've always felt about Will, Angel." The souled vampire finally managed to look properly ashamed of his behavior at those words. Buffy's voice went hard again as she continued, "And now everyone is up to speed on Buffy's love life, so can we get to the part where we're figuring out how to stop whatever Spike and Dru are up to?"
Without really acknowledging the barb in Buffy's voice, Angel spoke up, "First we need to know what it is that Drusilla is planning. The magic that can be used to raise a vampire as a ghost is only temporary, and as a ghost Spike isn't exactly a threat. An annoyance, maybe, but not a threat."
"Things may be worse than you realize, Angel," Giles said quickly, before anyone could continue. "I found a reference to an ancient ritual that could be used to make Spike corporeal again and at the same time render him invulnerable to harm."
"Invulnerable? How invulnerable are we talking here, Giles?" Buffy asked, the concern immediately evident in her face.
"Well, uh," Giles began, stammering slightly, "there's a reference to the ritual having been completed once, and the vampire was eventually defeated, but I haven't been able to learn anything more than that yet. It could simply be that the ritual renders the vampire immune to its usual weaknesses, while leaving it vulnerable to something else. But honestly, all I have so far are vague references and speculation." The Englishman grimaced slightly and began cleaning his glasses. "However, the volume that was rumored to contain the ritual has been lost for over a thousand years, so there's nothing to indicate that Drusilla..."
"She left the crypt with a book in her hand, Giles," Buffy interrupted softly. "And I'd be willing to bet that it was either this lost volume, or something that'll tell her where the book she needs is."
"Oh, dear lord," Giles said as he collapsed into his chair, deeply unsettled by the implications of Drusilla having the book.
* * * * *
With her awed pronouncement, the sadness in Gabriel's face lightened, replaced by a proud, paternal smile. "Yes, Willow, I'm your father."
"But," she asked suddenly, "how is that possible? I mean, you said you died and I didn't think angels..."
"I wasn't a Seraph at the time, Willow," he interrupted before she could start babbling. "I did something very bad a long time ago, and as punishment I was exiled to your plane to live as a human being until I learned what it really meant to be human. For almost a thousand years, I was born, lived and died over and over again with no knowledge of who or what I really was." He smiled sadly before he continued, "It was your mother that finally taught me that lesson, so when I died I was restored to my place as a Seraph. As a gift to your mother for helping me, the Creator allowed you to be conceived, the child of a Seraph and human."
"So, you're saying that you are..." she began, trying to comprehend what she was being told.
"A Seraph or an Archangel if you prefer the more common term," he replied, an amused grin settling onto his features at her obvious difficulties in coming to terms with the reality of her heritage.
"Okay," she began slowly, "let me make sure I've got this. You're a Seraph, an Archangel, one of the most powerful, immortal servants of the 'One True God' of Christianity and Judaism?"
"Yes and no," he answered with a chuckle. "I serve the Creator, the deity responsible for fashioning the prime reality that makes up your entire plane of existence and the principal power of good in the universe. She is not, however, the 'One True God'. That is merely a part of various religious dogmas. Think of it as a kind of mythology, there's some truth in there, but a lot of it was way off base, fashioned by humanity to suit their ideals of how things should be."
"Oh," Willow said simply, digesting his words. "Wait, the Creator is a She? I thought your God was, well, you know, not a Goddess?"
Gabriel gave a hearty laugh at that, unable to conceal his amusement at the particular details that his daughter seemed to be latching onto as she tried to come to terms with his revelations. "Technically, the Creator is neither male nor female, carrying aspects of both. Many of the older earth-based religions, including the roots of the Wiccan tradition you follow, grasped this fact and honored the male and female aspects separately as God and Goddess. She, however, prefers a female form and female modes of address. After all, she is, quite literally, the mother of everything."
Willow nodded thoughtfully as she considered what her father was telling her. "So, whether they realize it or not, the people who spent centuries burning witches for being evil were worshipping the same deities as the people they were burning and just didn't realize it?"
"Ironic isn't it?" Gabriel asked sadly. "Humanity is every bit as capable of atrocity as the demons that prey upon them. The only difference is that they are also capable of showing such love that it can even make the Seraphim weep. Such is the nature of free will." A slow smile spread across Gabriel's face at that final thought, "And that brings me back to something else you need to know, Willow."
"Huh?" she asked, confused by this sudden turn of events. "What brings us back to where? I think you lost me..."
"Would you like to know why the Powers that Be went to such lengths to deceive you and keep you from the full knowledge of your heritage?" Gabriel's smile turned to a sort of hard edged, almost predatory grin, "Would you like to know what it is about you that terrifies both the Demon Lords and the so-called Powers beyond reason, Willow?"
"I don't get it," Willow answered softly. "Why would anyone be afraid of me?"
"In the beginning, the Old Ones seized control of your plane of existence Willow, and made it their Hell for eons before the forces of light defeated them. Most of the Old Ones were merely powerful Demon Lords, but a few of them, like Illyria and Cthulu, were true Elder Gods, beings as vast and powerful as the Creator herself," as he spoke, the smile fled from his face. "The Creator and the few other Elder Gods who were not allied with the Old Ones rallied the lesser Powers, beings you would call Gods and Goddesses to battle the Old Ones. The Creator and her Seraphim led the forces of light and the war raged across the plane for millennia before the last of the Old Ones was driven out."
There was a haunted look in Gabriel's eyes as he continued, "At the war's end, all of the remaining Elder Gods, good and evil, entered into a Covenant. Under the terms of the Covenant, the Elder Gods and their servants, which includes the Seraphim and the True Demons, are forbidden from interfering with the mortal plane." He sighed and looked slightly disgusted by what he was saying. "Instead, only the lesser Powers and their agents may act directly in the mortal world, and even they are restricted to using agents and Champions to fight their war. The Covenant also forbids any Power from directly interfering with the exercise of free will in the mortal plane."
"Wait a second," Willow interrupted suddenly, "if True Demons can't interfere than how come the mayor was able to ascend? Didn't he become a True Demon?"
"Not exactly," Gabriel answered with a hard smile. "True Demons are truly immortal, as an Ascended Demon, the mayor was ageless but could still be slain. He assumed the form of a True Demon and if he had survived long enough to gain control of them, he would have had the full power of a True Demon, but he wasn't actually one. It's a technicality. One the Infernal Powers are happy to take full advantage of."
"Oh," she responded simply. "Okay, but what does that have to do with me?"
"Your very existence, Willow, takes advantage of the very same technicality," Gabriel stated bluntly, a sly grin spreading across his face. "Because you are part human, you are not bound by the Covenant even though you have the full powers of a Seraph at your disposal. You are an unconstrained free agent in the war between good and evil, answerable only to your own, very human, conscience and that terrifies both sides more than you can imagine."
"But I'm not powerful at all!" Willow protested abruptly. "I mean, it seems like anything I do winds up with me overtaxing my abilities and rendering myself useless. In fact, I'm beginning to feel more like a hindrance to Buffy than a help."
"That's because of what the Powers that Be did to you, my child," Gabriel's smile faded and turned sad. "Instead of empowering you to become their Champion, they used a powerful binding magick on you to strip you of almost all the gifts your heritage entitles you to. They left you just enough of your abilities to leave you barely more powerful than a strong human witch. And they did it because they were afraid you might interfere with their plans."
"I don't get it though!" she exclaimed, growing frustrated with the situation. "If I'm helping the Slayer and fighting the good fight, why would they want to hinder me? Why weaken me to the point where I can barely help at all?"
"Because, Willow, the Powers that Be are only interested in one thing, maintaining a balance between good and evil. They don't want either side of the conflict to 'win', not that that's even possible as long as free will exists," Gabriel explained simply. "Of course, the Powers that Be aren't big fans of free will anyway. They constantly gripe to the Creator that 'lower beings don't deserve free will.' That's why they use the whole idea of destiny and prophecy to push people around and make them do what the Powers want."
Willow frowned deeply as her father continued to explain. "You see Willow, the Powers that Be prefer to act behind the scenes and manipulate people like puppets on a string. And most folks don't have the strength and force of will to ignore their manipulations. Your heritage, however, automatically puts you beyond their direct manipulation. Even the Creator can only directly interfere with your life with your permission."
Gabriel's grin widened, "Up until your powers manifested, they had implied permission because you didn't know you could forbid it. When you died, they had to trick you into giving them permission to take your powers away, which they did. And they did it, because they don't trust you to play by their rules, which is good, 'cause you don't have to play by their rules if you don't want to."
Willow nodded thoughtfully, considering what her father was telling her. "What about the Creator? Does she trust me to do the right thing with these gifts?"
"She has faith in you, Willow," he answered with a proud smile. "That's why you're in this situation to begin with."
"Can I undo what they did to me?" she asked tentatively.
"You gave up your power willingly, if unknowingly, Willow. There is nothing you can do to fix it," Gabriel's voice and face were suddenly neutral.
Willow frowned again, considering what she had been told. 'If there's nothing I can do, then why did they bother to tell me all this?' she wondered. 'Unless...'
"Is there someone else that can undo it?" she asked abruptly.
The sudden smile that split her father's face was almost blinding, "Yes, there are a number of beings that are powerful enough to unbind your gifts. All you would need to do is find one and ask them to." He winked at her, before continuing, "By asking you give them permission to interfere."
"Hey," Willow suddenly realized what her father was getting at and something didn't add up. "If you can only interfere with my permission, why are you able to come here and explain all of this to me?"
Gabriel batted his eyes innocently at Willow, "You asked, and I quote, 'What the heck is going on here?' didn't you? That gave me implied permission to explain everything, since you weren't overly specific." He grinned widely, "The Creator doesn't have any issues with exploiting the same loopholes and technicalities that everyone else uses to get around the rules."
Willow laughed aloud at that. "Well then, since I assume we're having to play this part a little more strictly by the rules to keep the Powers that Be from protesting..." Gabriel grinned and threw a quick wink at her, acknowledging exactly why he'd been cryptic and evasive about unbinding her gifts.
"Father," she asked formally, "will you please undo the binding that the Powers that Be put on me and restore my full powers as a Seraph?"
Tears welled up in Gabriel's eyes as Willow openly acknowledged him as her father for the first time. "I will, my daughter, and gladly. When your gifts are unfettered, you'll wake back up on the mortal plane where you belong with all of the powers of a Seraph and the knowledge of how to use them."
Gabriel stood up and stepped close to Willow, "The other Seraphim and I cannot interfere in your world, Willow. But we are your family, and if you ever need advice or even just want to talk, call out to us and we'll be there for you as much as we can." He smiled, softly and leaned over, "I love you, Willow, and no father has ever been prouder of their child than I am of you. In the name of the Creator, I release you from these bonds of deceit."
She closed her eyes as the illumination in the room began to grow and felt her father place a gentle kiss on her forehead. She shuddered slightly as rush of power flooded her body, causing her to draw in a deep breath as the gifts of her heritage were restored to her.