Fiction- MiM01-Frustration Rises

Title: Memory In Motion

Chapter Title: Frustration Rises

Author: Restive Nature

Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to BtVS. They belong to Whedon & Mutant Enemy. I also do not own the rights to Supernatural. They belong to Eric Kripke and The CW.

Rating: PG-15

Genre: Crossover

Type: Humor, Angst

Pairing: DaddyDean/ WeeWillow

Summary: Through a magical mix-up, Willow ends up in the Impala, disoriented, terrified, facing the barrel of a gun and somehow... only six years old.

Spoilers/ Time line: Post series for Buffy and late season one of Supernatural.

Feedback: Always welcome!

Distribution: Ask first please.

A/N: This is a challenge response to pezgirl's The Little Demon Hunting Challenge at the Twisting the Hellmouth site. Challenge is as follows-

late season one- before Dean gets hurt and the car crash
Buffy: post-season 7

A fight with a troublesome demon end with Willow being de-aged and thrown into the Supernatural reality and into Dean's car.

Must have:

Willow being between 4 and 13
Willow not having her memories
Willow still being a witch

Memory In Motion

Chapter One

Frustration Rises

“Over here Mara!” Willow called out, trying to hold back the demon that had cottoned on to the groups plan to launch a pre-emptive strike on it's coven. The patriarch of the group, planning a sort of power upgrade by ingesting the bodies of several humans that it had deemed worthy, had somehow found out about Willow and the few young witches that she was mentoring, as well as her lover Kennedy, a relatively newly awakened Slayer, planning to put a stop to the mischief.

“Yeah, yeah,” the girl, the latest addition to the group grumbled as she ran, carrying an armful of candles. Willow winced as the demon got a swipe in, wondering where the hell Kennedy was. Normally she would have been right at Willow's side for the spell casting, not trusting the other's to protect her soon to be wife. But an argument a few nights ago, had been allowed to fester and grow, instead of being discussed and a solution found. Willow sort of had the idea that Kennedy wasn't going to change her position on her thoughts about Willow's magic use. But this situation, fighting alone, it was something that she was turning to more and more, not relying on Kennedy to have to save her.

After the fall of Sunnydale, Willow had embraced the fact that she could not refrain from magic altogether. Nor could she use it for every day things, like she had before. So she went the only route that she had deemed acceptable. She used the magic as much as she had to to save innocents and that alone was all. Helping for the greater good. She had a self imposed rigid structure to ensure that she wouldn't go down that bad road again. And that was what Kennedy had been upset about. In the crux of the problems they had argued about, it was almost central to every argument that Kennedy had made.

Kennedy had wanted to be Willow's everything. As Tara had once been for her. Oh, she hadn't put it that way, but that was what it boiled down to. Kennedy was jealous of the people in Willow's life. She could accept the original core Scoobies, because they were too well established to be routed out. And her parents, because after all, family was family and nothing could change who you were related to by blood. Even if in some cases, you might not know it. But the newer people, like the coven in Devon, and the practitioners she had found in South America, where they were just setting up a recruiting station now. Those were the people that Kennedy had targeted for her wrath.

Willow had tried to point out that Kennedy had people in her life that she relied on for things too. But Kennedy had maintained that the Slayer was built to work alone. To fight and conquer and win the day, to then come home at the end to her significant other. To be the alpha, the lead, the one that everyone else always listened to. And anytime Willow brought up Buffy, and the way her friend had set the Slaying rules, the Council and the world on it's ear, Kennedy got even more defensive. And Kennedy's reponding answer was always Faith.

Faith! Willow could snort mentally to herself still at the thought of the formerly dark Slayer. Even Faith had needed other people's help. And a helluva a lot of it. A Watcher, Buffy, Angel, Wes, Giles, friends, the penal system, all of that and more before she had finally grown enough to be an effective weapon for good. Granted, Faith hadn't started out with the best life before she had received her Slayer powers.

“Mara!” she barked, distracted just enough that the demon managed to slip past her defenses, catching her slightly unaware in a choke hold, lifting her from the ground, until her feet were dangling.

“Yeah, yeah!” the girl snapped back as she fell to her knees to start the power circle with the candles. Willow wanted to use her telepathic abilities to warn the girl that doing so on an undefined circle line was going to let the spell get out of hand. But the lack of oxygen to her brain that she was experiencing interfered with that function. She was better off to concentrate on a nonverbal spell that would get the demon off her.

“You know, Willow,” the girl complained, not even noticing that her supposed beloved mentor was being choked to death not even five feet from her, all because she was so eager to prove herself in her chosen field. “It's not like I don't know what I'm doing here. I managed not to get dead for months before you showed up!”

Willow refrained from rolling her eyes. That had been sheer dumb luck on the girl's part. And where were the others? Surely they couldn't have had that much problem with the rest of the clan. They weren't as powerful as the patriarch. He was the one that held the power and doled it out when necessary.

“Mara,” she gasped, trying to get the girl's attention.

“Don't rush me!” the girl whined as she called flame to light the candles. A bad sign when she should have had a lighter in her pocket. Or even matches. Instead she was taking shortcuts. And making excuses to herself that it was okay. “You always rush me. Every time you tell me, take my time, do it right. Well now that I am,” the girl turned to finally address Willow face to face, after having lit the candles and saw the predicament the older witch was on. “Oh! Oh crap! Right, uh... Filiolus o tener audio volo,” the girl squeaked out.

'Gods young, listen to me?' Willow automatically translated in her head and winced again. All this time trying to pound it into the girl's head that speaking Latin didn't immediately translate into a spell. Especially an unfocused spell like she was starting with. Too many variables and too much could go wrong. And which Gods were Mara trying to summon? Every religion had the old and the new. As lights began to swirl around the area, indicating that dang it, someone really was listening, Willow's consciousness began to fade. She was barely aware of Mara's voice rising as she completed her on the fly spell.

With a commanding clap of her hands, Mara finished, fully expecting the demon to just be gone. And truly, she no longer heard it's heavy, growling snarl as it had choked Willow. She was just pushing off her knees, to climb to her feet as Kennedy, leading the few warriors they had, as well as the other witches, ran into the area.

“Willow!” the eldest of the Slayers in South America, the only one to have fought in the final battle of Sunnydale, screamed out. She rounded on Mara, her fist clenched tightly around the sword that she preferred to carry into battle. “What did you do?” she shrieked at the young witch. The sword extended to where Willow... had been...

“Oh shit,” Deanna breathed out as her sort of friends and somewhat colleagues swarmed around and then past her, kneeling to look at the scorched ground.

“Some spell took her,” Rennie glanced up at Kennedy and then glared hard at Mara. “What spell did you use? I can't imagine Willow would go with a demon if she relocated it to somewhere safer.”

“I uh...” Mara began, her eyes darting between Kennedy and the senior witch, second in power to Willow in this continent's main coven.

“You tell her!” Kennedy hissed. “Tell her so we can bring Willow back! Now!”

The girl gulped and glanced down at the circle she had cast. She knew, Willow had warned her, but she hadn't listened. And now, she was really in for it!

MiM~MiM~MiM

Dean Winchester stormed from the hospital that he'd been casing, for more reasons than one. He'd had that bastard of a witch not feet from him, that shtriga, and there was nothing that he could do about it. He knew, his gut twisting with it, that there was a way to kill it. But the alternative to all of the methods that they were used to using, he and Sam, learned at their father John's behest, this was one of the worst. Having to use a kid as bait to draw the life sucking ancient witch into their trap, it wasn't an idea that filled him with puppies and rainbows and that happy crap.

But now, having failed once, when he was young, just a boy in most people's estimation, but not the world he lived in, Dean now had a second chance. And he had to find a way to convince his brother of that. Because he would never be able to live with himself, with the guilt, if this thing continued to feed on innocent children.

Saving anyone's life was preferable to letting them be hurt. But having been the victim of the supernatural as a child himself, kids would always have a special place in Dean's heart. Their innocence, their ability to trust, it had to be protected, because regular life was enough to beat that out of a person as they grew up. He climbed into the family's '67 Chevy Impala, pulling the door shut behind himself, mentally reviewing what they would need to have to safely attack this bastard.

The doctor! He should have seen it right away, but hadn't. Caught up in old horrid memories that he couldn't escape. A time when he failed, when he had almost lost Sammy and had forever lost his father's trust. That trust was a thing he'd been trying to earn back every day of his life. And now he had the chance to redeem himself in his father's eyes. In his own eyes. He leaned forward to insert the key into the ignition, but before he could start the car, a blinding flash of light caught him off guard. He simultaneously cringed away from the light, holding up his right hand to protect himself from the flash, while his left hand was automatically reaching for the Rutger under his car seat.

When the light died and he was swiveling around to see what the hell had happened, he heard a small voice pipe up.

“Oh no! Oh no. Not good. This is not good!”

He saw a small, redheaded girl in one of those jumper dresses and a turtleneck, her eyes wide, as her feet tried to find purchase, just barely achievable on the messy floor mat, on the passenger's side of Dean Winchester's beloved car.

No, this wasn't good at all. Dean belatedly realized that he held the pistol, when he saw the girl's eyes narrow in on the point of the barrel, her green eyes nearly crossing.

“An' it just got worse. Oh no!” The little redhead began to hyperventilate and Dean winced, wondering briefly if the shtriga had been able to read his mind or some shit like that when he'd been in the hospital. Was this some sort of distraction? There was one thing that he did know. The kid was right.

Things just had gotten worse.

Chapter Two- Murphy's Law or Something Like That