Author's Notes: I saw 'Super Symmetry' a few days ago. This is what came out of it. Kind of a dark, angsty Fred piece. I suppose it's a bit OCC, but I guess it's a matter of opinion.

(An Angel Fic)

Fred had always been a good girl. She had always minded her parents and tried to do right by them. In her youth she did well in school. She rarely drank, smoked, or cussed. She never partied or stayed out late.

She was a good girl.

Always a good girl.

Except in Pylea.

It scared her. Being called a cow, a slave. She was there for five years. Five years of struggle and insanity. The things she'd done to keep herself alive - she'd never told Charles or the others. She saw how they looked at her. To them, Fred was an Innocent. She was sweet and kind, loving to a fault. She was weak in that way. She had to be protected because she was too soft to protect herself.

This image had never bothered Fred. She embraced it, encouraged it, even. After Angel had rescued her from Pylea she didn't leave the room he'd given her for almost three months. She was afraid that if she left the safety of the Hyperion she'd be snatched up and gobbled by the monsters lurking right outside her door. She had been a trifle insane. There was no reason to deny it. She had been sick, she had needed protection.

Her sanity came back to her. It took a few months, but soon she stopped writing on walls and began to feel comfortable in her new surroundings. She grew to care about the people who had rescued her. They became her friends, her family. Fred knew it was important to be open with family, but she couldn't. Not after what she had been through.

So, Fred pretended. She smiled and she babbled and she acted nervous when she really wasn't. Fred was naturally shy and her small stature made it that much easier. She became the Damsel. She let them take care of her; let Angel - let them all see her - as a child, a little girl in the body of a woman.

It was wrong that she pretended, but she couldn't help it. Those years in Pylea had changed her. When she had left Texas, she had wanted - no craved - to be on her own. To finally grow up and be somebody. Now she realized it was so much easier to be nobody. Let the others think for her, let the others care for her. It was so much easier to lean on them rather than herself.

That was part of the reason why she'd turned to Charles Gunn. He wasn't unattainable like Angel. He didn't make her uncomfortable with his intense stares like Wesley. Charles was friendly and warm. He was dependable, reliable; he wouldn't ever hurt her. He talked to her, really talked to her. He took her out for tacos and lunch. He listened to her and she listened to him. He loved her, he watched out for her, he kept her from being alone. So what if he saw her as a dependent? So what if he and the others protected her like she was little more than a child? She was safe. She was happy.

Her new life didn't bother her, not until she found out about Professor Seidel. It had been his fault that she had been sucked into Pylea. He had done it because he couldn't stand the competition she would have brought to the Physics field. He was threatened by her brilliance. For that he destroyed her life.

He had stolen five years. He had taken them along her sanity, her trust, her security. For this Fred knew he should die. When she'd told Angel and Charles that she intended to kill him they looked at her like she'd suggested they go out and slaughter puppies together. Fred couldn't think things like that. Her innocent, little girl heart was too pure to contemplate atrocities like murder and revenge - no, not revenge - retribution.

To them, Fred was a good girl.

Except she really wasn't.

Not after Pylea.

Her friends had never asked what she had done to keep herself alive in that place and she had never told them. She never told them how she'd killed the ones who had bought her as a cow -in their sleep so as not to activate the collar she wore around her neck. She'd killed a human once, too, another cow, another slave. He had tried to rape her and she had stabbed him with the knife he hadn't known she carried around her waist.

She had felt badly about that - until she washed the blood off. He had tried to hurt her so she'd killed him. It was self-defense, nothing to get worked up over. That indifference frightened her at first. Then she realized she needed that indifference to survive. So, for the next four years she took what she needed, lived on what she could, learned what she was able to. She never stopped trying to find a way out, never stopped trying to get the math right. In the end she didn't need the math. Angel had swooped in on his imaginary horse and saved her. They all had.

She still had dreams - nightmares really - in which she burned the book that had transported her to Pylea. She hated that book. She hated libraries, too. She hated the Pyleans and her own helplessness. Every once in a while an unnatural rage would course through her and she wanted to scream, and cry, and hit things - people usually. She wanted to kill herself sometimes, but she was never brave enough to end it. As much as she feared life she feared death more. Feared dying alone in a cave with an unpleasant scent and having the animals come to pick at her remains. Feared dying without anyone finding out what had happened to her.

She buried that darkness when she left Pylea. She tried to forget the rage and go back to what she was before that evil place, but she couldn't. She wanted to so much - more than anything.

And then Professor Seidel came back into her life and she found out what he did to her.

Fred knew she had to make him suffer as he had made her suffer. She had chosen the crossbow. She'd never felt more alive than when that weapon was in her arms and the Professor was looking at her, his face contorted in shock and horror. She spoke to him. Her words were strong; her voice held no tremor. There was no babbling, no stuttering. Just hatred. Pure, unadulterated hatred.

And it felt good.

Charles hadn't wanted Fred to kill her former teacher. Out of love for him she decided not to - at least, not directly. She opened a portal to another hell dimension. He was meant to go through it and die there.

And then Charles came and ruined her plans.

He'd begged her not to do it. She had yelled at him, telling him he didn't know what it was like. He couldn't have known what she'd gone through.

"If you kill him, I'm gonna lose you."

Perhaps Charles had never had her to begin with. Fred only gave him the light. The darkness was hers and hers alone. She had hidden it so well he couldn't even imagine her having these thoughts. He couldn't imagine that she had a cruel streak, that a part of her wasn't pure.

Was that why he had done it? Was that why he'd saved the Professor from the portal only to kill him with his own hands? It was only when Fred had heard the neck snap did she realize that she'd done too good a job at pretending. Charles had killed a man to spare her, to preserve her moral purity. If only he had known that purity was long gone.

Charles thought she was upset because he'd killed the Professor. That was true, but not for the reason he assumed. Charles had taken away her victory. He had stolen her vengeance - her retribution. Charles thought he'd saved her. Saved poor, innocent Fred from her misguided self. He had damned himself to save someone who hadn't wanted - hadn't needed - saving.

She hated him a little for it, but what she hated more was the knowledge that she was too good an actress. Her friends refused to see the truth. Even Wesley, who had helped her find the portal spell, only saw the light. They ignored what she really was. They ignored the bitterness, ignored the darkness. They preferred to see the little girl, the Innocent, the victim, the damsel in the dark tower.

They didn't want to see Fred. They only wanted to see sweetness and light.