avrelia

I tried to write some other stuff, but found myself thinking of Anya, and – this thing got written. It is the first half, and the second will follow shortly, and I have no idea what it is – some kind of a character study.

There was a young woman long ago. She lived in a village somewhere on Scandinavian Peninsula. Her name was Aud.
She was quick and smart, sweet and loving, thrifty and practical. She loved her merry and loud husband, Olaf; she bred rabbits.

She had a strange way of talking and an unconventional sense of humour. People in the village didn’t understand or like her. She didn’t understand or like other people. There was nothing particularly unusual in it. Aud wasn’t bothered much by it, either. As long as she had love of her husband Olaf, she was happy.

Apparently, Aud and Olaf understood love differently. Olaf didn’t see anything wrong about getting it on with a plump bar maiden. Aud did.

Magic wasn’t a forbidden knowledge then and there. Vengeance was a respectable custom, and sometimes, an obligation. Aud turned Olaf into troll, proving a significant talent and ingenuity with magic.

Her work didn’t go unnoticed. She was offered a new – job, life, self. She became Anyanka. She became vengeance. She slides across centuries, happy with her demonic powers, her demon world – where she actually feels belonging, where everything makes sense to her. Her powers not only make her an accepted member of the demon world, they allow her to play whatever role she has to in the human one: highlands, high society, and high school – she looks at place everywhere. She picks up information, languages, and ideas along the way and makes them hers, but nothing distracts her from what she sees as herself – vengeance.

And, oh, is she good at it! Another vengeance demons, her friends and rivals look up to her (which leads to several unpleasant moments – like the one in 1850s, during the Crimean War,) she can bring the darkest out of every woman, and then embellish it some more. She is respected, feared, and confident in herself.

On the hindsight, probably, she shouldn’t have come to Sunnydale. But she never hides away from a difficult case, all previous encounters with Slayers didn’t do her any harm – the ability to teleport comes in handy – and the girl, her potential client was hurt and furious, and Anyanka couldn’t leave her unattended.

It began quite well, and then, somehow went horribly wrong. She was posing as a new girl at school, she and her client had a good rapport, as usual, they chatted, she commiserated – and seeing the perpetrator around, laughing with two girls, one red-haired – the other side in the wrongdoing, and the blonde, with a strange air around her, she cannot but appreciated the taste of her client. It was very stupid of her not to recognize the slayer at once, of course. She must have been distracted by the perpetrator, Xander, a very nice-looking boy. Pity, he was due to die horribly from the granted wish.

But when the wish was declared – neither the perpetrator, nor his red abettor was mentioned, but the blonde girl. And, much to Anyanka’s surprise and delight, the strange wish produced incredible results – a brand new world.

She has a dim recollection of this world, and what happened later, because world returned to the previous state – only she lost her amulet, her source of power. She became human, a teenage girl in an American high school on the hellmouth.

She was stripped of all her powers; even her name - she couldn’t use her demon name in all its glory; she didn’t fit anywhere again. The demon world is a nice place for a demon, but toward a human, even formerly demon, it is merciless. She didn’t like being a human; she sucked at it the first time around. The demon life was easy and glorious, the human – lonely, pathetic, and weak. At least she still had her material assets, but that was the only thing that worked for her.

Nobody paid any attention to her, and she didn’t connect to anybody at school, even to her former client – as soon as the initial reason for their interactions was gone, none could find a topic to talk about. Humans were stupid and pathetic; Anya was bored at school, but couldn’t get anywhere else. She didn’t know where to go, or who she was, so she just stuck around.

A ray of hope was her attempt to use Willow – that redhead friend of Xander – to make a spell to bring her amulet back. To Anya’s chagrin, she lost not only her demon powers, but also that little magic power that she used to have as a human. She needed help to do a simple spell. And, of course, the spell went wrong. Everything in her life went wrong recently.

Then there was an apocalypse pending, and, being a clever a sensible person, she left the town.

Only… she kept thinking about it – about Sunnydale, and the Slayer and her friends, and nicely-shaped Xander, who didn’t back away from her at that silly dance event, who didn’t back away from the apocalypse and stayed with his friends, even though she explained to him how tiny their chances were and offered to leave the town with her.

So she found herself heading back to Sunnydale.

Over the next years her life becomes Xander-shaped. She looks at human world and sees Xander. She still doesn’t understand most of the usual human conventions, or the human behaviour in general, but she desperately tries to fit in. Turns out that her knowledge of the demon world and past events, other bits of information acquired over the centuries were useful to his group of friends, and thus earned her some kind of a place there.