A/N: Ok, I really should be updating some of my other stories, but I tried to last night and nothing came to me and then I just started writing this and decided to post it. Please review if you like it, because I need to know I'm not the only one enjoying it. I won't update unless I have at least 5 reviews for this one chapter, so please, make it happen .

Disclaimer: I can't think of a witty way to say I own nothing to do with the characters in Buffy so I'll just have to settle with saying that I own nothing to do with the characters of Buffy. Twice.

Rating: PG (or whatever the new equivalent is) for now. However I'm going to be moving it up to an R soon, but you will have warning.

Harsh Existence - Chapter 1

She looked into the mirror and what was reflected back at her was a shadow of her former self. She had aged quickly, far too quickly for her age and she doubted that this aging process would slow down at all, well not naturally anyway. Even if she was aging quickly, it didn't mean she was ugly, far from it, he wouldn't have kept her this long if she was. She stared back at the hollow eyes that followed her where ever she went until she blinked and looked away from the mirror.

Turning away from the mirror she looked around her room. Her room? That was a joke, nothing was hers, it all belonged to him and it always would. A large king sized bed dominated the center of the room, its black silk sheets were tucked neatly under the corners of the matress, there wasn't a crease in sight.

The rest of the bedroom consisted of a writing desk, which had her writing equipment layed out neatly in a straight row, all of the pencils sharpened to a point of perfection. Opposite the desk was a dressing table, and there was also a walk in wardrobe, a large bookcase and a door to her ensuite bathroom.

Taking one last look in the mirror she stood up from her cross legged seat on the floor and looked around the room once more. It never looked like a real bedroom, no matter how much time she spent here, perhaps it was the fact that it was so neat and tidy, there was never a single thing out of place. Whenever she had spare time alone in her room the first thing she would do was to tidy it, picking up random pieces of rubbish, items that had rolled off her desk and, of course, clothes. There were always clothes on her floor, he wasn't patient enough to place them neatly in a pile, they always landed on the nearest space of available floor.

Patience. Something he didn't posses any of, or not nearly enough. Patience is a virtue, only problem was he didn't care about any kind of virtue, he lived a simple enough life as he had explained to her many times before. Want. Take. Have. Such an easy way to live, and it was an easy lifestyle that suited him, only problem was the people that were affected by the choices that he made, not that he actually cared enough to stop and think about them, but she did.

That was her problem, he said. She cared. She tried not to, as he had said many times before, why should she? The people she cared for her never gave her a passing thought so why should she spare her thoughts for them? She couldn't help it, but she didn't know why. He did. He said it was because she was so kind, so innocent. That's why he liked her. Innocence. Something very few people have for very long, but something so many people spend their lives searching for.

She walked over to the bed and smoothed out an imaginary crease before sitting down on the smooth silk. Her life was so complicated yet so simple at the same time. Do as he says. Should be simple enough, only it wasn't, not always. Sometimes it could be, those few times when he would lead her into an oblivion and she didn't have to have any thoughts. He could keep her in that oblivion if he wanted to, he could break her, bend and mould her completely to his will. But he didn't. He said he liked her how she was. He liked that her mind hadn't changed, not really, she still thought about everything, every little action, even though most of these thoughts caused her pain.

And that was why he let her keep her thoughts to herself, mostly. Sometimes he would make her share, if he was bored. But most of the time these thoughts stayed in her head causing her more and more pain. He liked her pain, the way it reflected on her face. She hid a lot of things from him, or at least tried to, but her pain was one thing she could never conceal from him for long, and when she tried to hide it? It either amused him further or angered him beyond reason, it all depended on what mood he was in.

His moods were always so hard to decipher, just when she thought she'd worked out his current mood, it changed, just like that. He said he liked to keep her on her toes. Then he'd laugh and say he prefered her on her back. She didn't find his jokes funny, others did, but she could never find the humour in them.

She hated him. That was one thing she knew for certain, that was the simple part of her life. That was, however, where her clear, straight mind ended. After that there were endless shades of grey that just went on and on. She wanted him, craved him, needed him. She knew she shouldn't, but it was so hard not to, he was her world, there was nothing else other than him. Or so he said, but she knew otherwise.

He could be nice sometimes, so sweet, gentle and caring. She knew he didn't care about her, she wasn't stupid or naive enough to think anything else, but when he had those moments she accepted whatever kindness he had to offer, it may not be real, but it was real enough for her and if it meant that she could spend a night with him holding her and stroking her hair as she cried herself to sleep, who was she to complain? Not that complaining would get her anywhere.

She knew the rest of her life, and possibly her death, would be spent with him and she knew that her life would never return to how it used to be. Despite her bleak outlook on life she hadn't broke as many others in a similar position to her had. She had never stopped fighting, she gave in plenty of times, but occasionally she'd just remind him that she was still in there, beneath the exterior that was seen by many others as nothing more than a doll, a pretty doll, but still just a doll.

She distantly heard a door slam downstairs. That gave no sign to his mood, he slammed doors all the time. She knew it was him though, she could hear the others in the living room below her, complaining at the loud noises he produced where ever he went. She could practically see the roll of his eyes as he explained that closing doors quietly was no fun.

She had picked up a good sense of hearing over the years, much better than the hearing of your average human, but she had had to. It was no fun being caught unaware, she had learnt that lesson the hard way, several times over. She heard him stomping up the steps, that wasn't a good sign, it usually meant that he had been ordered to do something he didn't want to do, and when he was in a bad mood things never turned out well, at least not for her.

She stood up once more and smoothed out the bed until no one would have known she had even been sat on it and slowly bent her knees until she was kneeling on the floor with her head raised. He never made her bow her head, unless of course he was punishing her, trying to impress someone, or of course, if he was bored.

Her posture was immaculate, she'd had enough practise at it in the past two years that it came as naturally to her as breathing and she could hold it for hours if she had to.

The door slammed open and she realised that she had been right, he was in a bad mood. He wasn't angry, he was easy to deal with when he was, she was normally knocked unconcious within five minutes. But today he was calm and collected, and when he was calm she knew she should worry and he knew the exact thoughts that were going around her head at the moment as his face spread into a large smirk.

He snapped his fingers and pointed to the ground next to him. She lowered her hands to the ground and crawled slowly over to him. Of all the things she had been through since she had arrived crawling was still the one that managed to humiliate her the most which, considering what she had been through, could be seen as rather stupid. He knew it as well, which was exactly why he made sure she crawled on her hands and knees to him as many times as possible each day.

As she reached his feet she lifted her arms back up off the ground and returned to her kneeling posture. He looked at her for a moment longer before taking a peice of her hair and tugging it harshly towards the door and letting it drop as he strode out the room with her crawling at one pace behind him.

And so began another night of pain and humiliation for William the Bloody's pet, Willow Rosenberg.