Title: Souls Switch.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything, not the Buffy, not the Star Wars, and I barely own the plot.

Rating: PG, just to be on the safe side.

Author's Note: No Willow/Kennedy. I don't go in for statutory rape and I don't care if the girl said she wouldn't be a slayer. If she's 18 or older, she wouldn't have been one of the potentials. That is Whedon canon, established with that test of the slayer. When she was 18, the Council kills them with their little "test". If you haven't seen the Buffy season ender, this does have a major spoiler within. I doubt there are any significant SW spoilers, from any of the movies. Or books/comics based on the SW universe.

656

Life has its cycles, Willow thought numbly as she stared out at the world with her new eyes, and I always seem to be at the bottom of the heap.

Willow's body felt odd-and not in the 'get better soon because I'm only ill' kind of way. Her head felt all cotton woolly and she couldn't tell why this would be so. This feeling had never happened with any of the spells she's performed, not even the restoration ritual on Angel. There was no funky taste in her mouth as though she'd been having a heck of a drinking binge.

But she never drank.

Well, not since her brush with the dark side had messed with her self-control and her self-respect. Drinking lead her down a path she didn't like to contemplate. A dark and frightening path she'd already had a brush with and desired to see no more of.

Besides, she wasn't going to drink before performing such a powerful, life altering spell.

And the scene before her was too vibrant, too realistic, to be a mere drunken delusion. Hands resting on the railing before her, she could only gape and wonder if she'd been socked hard in the battle. Vaguely, she recalled exiting the principals' office and seeing Caleb waiting just outside the school.

Caleb.

She shivered at the name and resisted the urge to hug herself, though she was in desperate need of the warmth. Honestly, she was a grown woman (kinda); she should be over such things. This Caleb was a creature of evil, much like any other. He wasn't worth getting upset about.

They were such easy words to say, really, and so much harder to believe when that evil had been forced upon her. The man frightened her in a way she couldn't explain.

Not to herself and not to anyone else, they all had their own particular demons to face and fight. He seemed to be hers to face alone. His power reached out to her on a level she couldn't protect herself from.

And he wanted something from her. Something she feared and was unwilling to give to him. Therefore, he sought her in the fight, full of an unnatural determination to strike her down.

Had he succeeded in his plan? Had they failed in their attempts to share the power, the authority of the Slayer and save their world? If that were true, why would she find herself in such a peaceful place?

Well, Giles ought to know. Thinking about him, she wondered where he was. Stretching out her senses, she felt a sharp pain stab her mind and shatter its barriers, just a bit.

Okay, she thought dimly, I'm ready to wake up now.

"Padawan," a reproachful voice scolded. "I am most disappointed in you and your actions. How you could go before the Jedi Council and disgrace me in such a manner, I do not understand. You know how important this is to us, to the future of us all. I already explained this to you. You assured me that you understood what I needed to do."

Whirling about to face the intruder, she felt an unfamiliar weight smack her in the thigh. Looking down, she noticed the metal, cylindrical container resting there.

That was all she noticed.

Dimly, she heard his voice still speaking to her but all she could see was that her chest was flat. Completely flat as though there was nothing of any real significance resting there like before. Now, she knew that she had never been busty like Cordelia or Anya, but this was just ridiculous. She had some chest to speak of.

Mother Goddess, she thought, panicking, what has happened to me?

"Why did you do it?" The question was spoken gently, as though he had finally realized the very real distress of the youth before him.

Willow returned her attention to him and bit her lip, sucking on the blood reflexively when she cut it. "I'm sorry?" she tried, leaning back against the railing. Her eyes widened as though trying to convey her genuine regret for upsetting this man, her true innocence in any wrong doing except what he accused her of-and to study him better.

He was one of the tallest men she'd ever seen in her life and he had longer hair than she'd seen on any man in a while. Not that she'd seen many men with long hair, she thought idly. The people in her world tended to be more demon oriented, than human oriented anyway.

His movement stopped her study cold and she shrank away from him, afraid of what he would do. He stopped and watched his student warily, clearly startled-and hurt by the action of his padawan.

Something was not right about this and, with a gentle touch of the Force, he reached out to brush against her mind. "Ah," he gasped, hands flying to his head as he was thrust away forcefully, almost viciously. The pain had him on his knees, trying to pull in on himself.

"Oh, goddess, I'm so sorry." Willow rushed forward and rested a hand on his head. Soft words came from trembling, unsure lips and the man on the ground felt the pain recede immediately. She didn't know what else to do for him and she couldn't figure out what had happened to her voice.

Surely her spells didn't render her this hoarse of voice? Why would she sound so unlike herself? She sounded almost like…a guy.

Standing up abruptly, he interrupted her thoughts. Clasping the thin arms, he shook Willow, almost roughly. Though she could feel that he was holding back, not releasing his full fear and anger out. "What have you done to my padawan?"

"Nothing," she squeaked, eyes wide as she stared up at him. It was the first time in a while that she had felt so frightened by someone she could read as a gentle man. "Honest. I haven't done anything."

656

Hearing the sounds of battle, the padawan blinked in shock. The eyes widened as they saw a tall, grinning man before him. In his hands, a weapon much like a saber pulsed with heat.

The youth jerked back but found that he couldn't move. For the first time in his memory, he felt disconnected from his own body. Even the familiar smell of danger could not compel him to move.

This danger did not feel the same and the man before him held him as surely as if he'd been chained down.

"Willow!" Faith didn't even finish the warning and launched herself at the frozen redhead witch. The two tumbled away from the flashing weapon and rolled away. Pushing herself up, she extended a hand and hauled Willow to her feet, not noticing how the girl shook in reaction.

Behind them, they could hear Caleb's anguished cry as his life ended faster than he had wished it. "Faith! Will! Let's blow this joint before it blows!" the voice above them warned.

Dazedly, the redhead stumbled after the one called Faith. On some level, the person trusted the girl who had risked her own neck to save this one. In the midst of all the physical chaos, a similar battle was being waged within that numbed mind.

"Where in the stars am I?" The question came and almost stopped before it had been formed as the speaker heard the high voice.

A voice that he knew was not his own.

The brunette either didn't hear or didn't care, she just shoved the redhead onto the bus. Stumbling towards the back, all the padawan could feel was an aching hole within where once a complete sense of connection resided. The utter lack of the Force's constant and comforting presence left him shattered.

Bereft.

Alone amidst a sea of people who were strange to him, with whom he could not connect with.

Feeling an utter loss of warmth and certainty, the loss of all that had truly mattered in life. All that he had known for years, gone in what seemed to be a breathless second in time. Gone for a purpose he could not determine without the Force's help.

Master? He tentatively called out, feeling the closeness of the body trapping him within its physical structure. A physical structure he had been taught to ignore, to overlook, for they as Jedi were more than flesh and blood. They existed on another plane of life entirely, though they dwelt in the world of men.

No answer.

A feeling of utter claustrophobia filled him and he shivered. He'd never thought of himself as the claustrophobic type. If pressed, he would've thought of himself as a normal Jedi.

Wrapping his arms about himself, he felt something on his chest shift. A weight he'd never felt before rested slightly above his hands. Glancing down, he couldn't prevent the gasp of utter shock and horror that passed his lips as he saw the rise of something that he'd never seen on his own body before.

He almost reached up to feel them, to make sure that they weren't some kind of injury he'd sustained but stopped. Part of him realized that this was not the time for such an intensive study. The other half knew what they were for he had studied human anatomy.

Well, he thought, somewhat hysterically. That explains the voice. I have suddenly become a woman. But for what purpose has this been done? And how would such a thing be accomplished? Is this some Sith trick? If so, what could they possibly gain from this? Separating me from my Master and the world that I know so well?

Looking around, he wondered half-heartedly if this was some delusion. Some kind of trick his guilty mind conjured up to punish him for what happened earlier at the Council meeting. Stars only knew his conscience could bear down upon him and bring up the craziest of scenarios.

But then, why would he go this far? He supposed that it have been his Master or one of the Council who wanted him to learn a lesson. Shaking his head, he rejected that answer as feasible, no matter how tempting it sounded. It would be nice to believe that the Force was capable of such things. But he knew better than to believe that.

He had studied their teachings and writings extensively, much to the disappointment of his mentor. Well, he thought with a bit of resentment, he couldn't help it if he was more of a reader than a doer. Closing his eyes for a moment, he shook his head. This did not help him. So, he knew that there was nothing in the works that revealed that the Jedi or the Sith would be able to perform such a feat as this.

Even if it was only a mind trick, the thought traitorously trickled into his mind. Neither side could accomplish it. This was something that dwelt outside their own perceptions of the world and its workings.

Besides, looking about him curiously, he could see that it was too realistic to be a vision. Or something created by artifice. He stared out through a curtain of long, red hair at the people he was with, mouth open in wonder as he took in their clothes and demeanor.

This whole thing with the fighting was nothing new to them. They were battle-hardened warriors, much like those of the old legends. Oh, how he had adored reading of the elder time, how their order had come to be. He had not thought to see such people in his lifetime.

Those words stuck in his mind, for the irony struck him. The reality of this experience was that this was not in his lifetime at all. This was the lifetime of another. A young woman named Willow.

A whisper of a groan escaped his lips as he wondered what would happen to the poor unfortunate girl who was trapped in his body. He only hoped that she would not be mistreated, that his Master would protect her.

His behavior went unnoticed until a young man with brown hair and an eye patch over one of his brown orbs glanced back. Exchanging a few words with the group he was with, he stood up and walked carefully to the back. Faith and the blonde woman with her, looked back at them both suspiciously and he had the ridiculous feeling that he was stripped bare before their eyes.

A big smile graced his face and he moved to sit down by her, slinging an arm over her shoulders. Though he didn't want to, knowing that the young man would take it wrong, the padawan couldn't help but stiffen slightly.

Such casual intimacies had been discouraged by the leaders of his order and he didn't know how to react to it now. It was especially hard because he could somehow feel how hurt he'd made the young man feel.

For a moment, a wounded look crossed the young man's face before it cleared away. "Hey, Wills. This is me. You don't have to be so upset over your use of magic. If you hadn't, we'd all be dead. The old balance was broken, it needed fixing. That's why you did what you needed to do. We aren't going to hurt you, Will, you know this. This is us, you don't have to be so guarded."

"But I do," he contradicted him, keeping to a softer tone of voice. It was less startling to his ears and kind of soothing. The face lifted and stared into the brown one steadily, trying to convey the sincerity of his statement. "Because I do not know any of you. Stars know that I wish I did, it would be of great aide to me if I knew you."

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So, who do you think Willow's changed lives with? I have my own opinions on that but am curious as to who you think she is now. And it is safe to say that she is a main character in the movies, but not the comics. The only one I've read is the one with Mara Jade. And she doesn't quite fit the bill of the story.