It was only her first night here and already everything felt different.
Cadet Willow Rosenberg gazed out the bedroom window while her roommate slept in the bed across the room. Tomorrow was the big day, her first day of classes, training… her new life.
Yet, she couldn’t sleep.
Fear kept the sleep at bay, like it always did.
Though, it was a different type of fear from what she usually felt. She was scared because she wasn’t scared. The fear stemmed from her feeling no fear.
Translation; she felt safe here.
Her first night here, her first night away from Giles, from California, and she couldn’t remember a time when she had felt more safe. She could look out into the darkness and know for a fact that nothing could reach her here.
Demons, vampires, and monsters didn’t like the military.
She had looked it up in one of Giles’ books. The entire existence of the preternatural world hinged on their presence being known by only a small number of people. If the general public knew, if the military knew, there would be mass hysteria and they would be hunted down and killed.
A single man alone was not a threat to a vampire.
But many men? Thousands of highly trained, skilled, men were. Men with guns, tanks, jets, weapons… THEY were a threat to the underworld in its current state.
And that was why she felt safe here.
If she was allowed, she could walk outside right now and not have to fear for her life. No demon could get her here, nothing of that world would filter through as long as she was apart of this… this…
Sanctuary.
She already loved it here. The second she stepped onto the campus everything changed for her. It was like she was being given a second chance, a chance of a life free from the horrors that plagued her nightmares. Free from her past. Something Giles and the other didn’t understand.
They thought she was making a mistake.
But how could she be making a mistake? How could it be so wrong if she felt like this? Free. Safe. Full of hope. There was nothing wrong with this. At all.
It was why the fear of losing this was almost as paralyzing as her fear of the dark.
She couldn’t go back out there. Ever. No matter what promises Angel and Giles made, it would never be safe for her. They could never protect her. There was only death outside this sanctuary. Around every corner, in every shadow, was death. Sunnydale was now abandoned but the death wasn’t going to stop just because the town had. It would just move to other, more populated, areas.
Willow believed her friends were the ones making a mistake.
They were still going to fight.
She knew that. Sooner or later, when the hurting stopped, they would continue Buffy’s work. Faith was the only Slayer now, it was up to her to protect the world.
Giles, Angel, and Cordelia were going to stand with her and fight.
Willow couldn’t.
She didn’t even want to.
Willow had done her part and she knew there was no reward for it. Fighting for the good guys meant nothing. Faith would die one day, another Slayer would be called, then she would die, and then there would be another.
Never ending.
No matter who helped, the Slayer would die.
Willow wasn’t going to watch another Slayer die, she wasn’t going to watch her friends die. Willow didn’t even understand why they were bothering to fight. It made no difference. All it meant was death. And the Powers That Be? God? Whatever Higher Beings there were… they didn’t care. Not a bit. They didn’t care that three of the most wonderful people, to ever walk the Earth, died. They wouldn’t care about anyone else.
Why would they care when there were always more Slayers, and other warriors, to fight their battles? The Higher Powers didn’t give a fuck about anything.
But here? The Air Force?
It was different.
Here, they cared about everything.
They took care of their own, that was what General Kerrigan had told her when she had been called into his office. It was in that room where Willow felt the most significant of all changes. The General had asked to see her because of her Sunnydale past. At first, Willow had been scared the Air Force were going to refused her entry, but it was the opposite. The meeting had been to welcome her. The General had told her that she was not alone here. Even though her parents had died, she still had people to turn to.
A family.
The Air Force would be her family.
She had spent two hours talking to him, and in that time Willow fell in love.
With the Air Force.
The General had eliminated any doubts she had, and by the time she walked out of there, she was more sure than ever that this was what she wanted, and that she never wanted to go back to California ever again. This place was everything she needed.
It was then and there she vowed to do everything in her power to make sure she never had to leave.
There was no going back.
She’d rather die.
Maybe one day she would change her mind, but for now, Willow vowed to never go back to that world. This was her home now, this was her life.
Her love.
“Hey, Cadet Rosenberg?”
Willow found herself grinning at the title. It was kind of geeky the way she got a kick out of it, but everyone was calling everyone else ‘Cadet’. It made her warm inside when she heard it. She turned to her roommate, she could just make out Melanie’s silhouette in the dark. “Having trouble with the lights out concept?” there was laughter in her voice.
Guess she wasn’t the only one who couldn’t sleep, though Melanie probably was too excited, not too scared, to sleep.
She moved away from the window. “Just a little. Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“Get some sleep, you’re going to need it for tomorrow.”
Yeah, she would. Tomorrow was the first day of her new life and she couldn’t screw it up. Reluctantly, Willow crawled into bed, pulling the sheet around her, her mind already thinking of everything she would have to do.
She would have to be smarter, faster, and stronger than everyone else. Willow couldn’t allow herself to fail. She had to push herself harder than all of the others, make sure there was no reason to send her back to the hell she had come from.
She could do it.
She had to.
There alternative was too horrifying to imagine.
Snuggling down into the bed, she snaked her hand under her pillow and felt around for the picture she had hidden there. It was the one picture she had brought with her.
It was a picture of the four of them, the only one Willow had left, of Buffy, Oz, Xander, and herself.
She could barely make out the faces in the moonlight, but she didn’t need the light to see the picture. It was memorized in her mind. God, she missed them all so much. She wondered if they were happy where they were? If they could see what she was doing? If they understood why?
Most of all, she wondered if they forgave her?
Probably not, but one day they might, after she had made amends for everything that had been lost because of her. Maybe then they would forgive her, and not hate her for what had happened.
Maybe then she would forgive herself.
Wiping away her tears, Willow brought the picture to her lips and kissed it, silently saying goodbye.
Tomorrow was a new day.
New life.
New world.