Title: Purple Streaks Up the Path
Author: Lola Ravenhill
Rating: PG
Category: Story, Angst
Keywords: Williamfic
Spoilers: None, really, but know that William was put 
 up for adoption
Summary: Every boy's got a quest....

The muse decided I had to write this. There are
 things in it that not all readers will like, but I go
 where the muse pushes me. Please, no flames if
 you don't like what happens. I just wanted to give
 some more sensitive readers forewarning.

Archiving: I'll send to Gossamer and Ephemeral. 
IWTB, Touchstone, and Spookys can all have it. 
Anyone else, please ask me first. 

Disclaimer: Will and Joy belong to CC and Co. 
Morwen MacGuire is mine.

Feedback: is treasured. Send it to 
RhiaRamsay@aol.com or 
LolaRaven@zilmamebrika.org

Thanks to Peggy for helping with Morwen's last name.


Purple Streaks Up the Path
Lola Ravenhill


The thirteen-year-old boy picked himself up from his 
prone position on the ground and ran after the thirteen 
year old girl. It was really odd. He remembered a 
feeling of falling, then blackness, unconsciousness, 
and then back to awareness. He'd fallen down a sharp 
slope littered with brownish red dirt and rocks, but now 
he was on a street that could be anywhere in suburbia. 
It wasn't anyplace near where he lived however. He 
lived in a small cottage in rural Wyoming with his 
second foster mother and the girl he was currently 
running after.

"Hey, Joy, wait up!" he screamed, sneakers scraping 
on the asphalt. Joy came to a halt and spun around. 
She looked a lot different from when he last saw her 
in the forest. Her jeans and t-shirt were replaced 
with baggy black cargo pants, combat boots, and 
a green tank top that looked more than a little worse 
for wear. Her light brown hair for some reason now 
had fluorescent purple streaks running through it, 
and her right hand was wrapped around a large stick 
that was almost as tall as she was. The stick seemed 
to come directly off of a tree; it was still rough and 
barky, with little twigs and some bugs crawling on it.

"What is it, Will?" she asked, placing her weight 
on the walking stick.

"What's going on here?" Will asked, bending down 
to brace his hands on his knees and catch his breath. 
"Where is here, anyway?" He looked around at the 
nearly uniform, suburban standard houses. All of them 
appeared empty and silent. Not a thing was moving 
aside from a few shuddering leaves, Will, and Joy.

Joy looked around, squinting in the bright sunlight. 
"I'm not quite sure of the where, but I have a strong 
feeling as to why we're here."

"A feeling?" Will whined, straightening up.

"Yeah, a feeling," Joy fired back, looking him in the 
eye. She had hit her growth spurt first and now stood 
at 5'5", only slightly taller than he was. Will was 
waiting for his own growth spurt so he could inevitably 
tower over her. "It's more than you got right now."

Will winced, shoving his hands into the pockets of 
his baggy jeans. She had a point. Will didn't have 
the slightest idea what was going on. He ran a hand 
through his red hair, sprinkled with gold from the 
sun. "So what do you feel?"

Joy glanced up at the sky, then her eyes fell to 
Will's face. She traced his features for a moment, 
locking onto his eyes. "I think we have to find 
your parents."

"My parents are dead." The Van Kamps had died 
in a car accident when Will was ten, leaving him to 
live with Morwen, his neighbor and the only person 
who would take him in after they died. Joy had come 
to live with them a year later, her mother also having 
passed away.

"Not those parents," Joy insisted. "Your real ones. 
The ones who gave birth to you." Those were the 
parents that Will wasn't supposed to know about. 
The Van Kamps had never told him he was adopted, 
but they didn't have to. He'd already known. Will 
was special in that way. Sometimes, if he was really 
in tune with things, he could get glimpses into the 
lives of his birth parents, see what was happening 
to them, what they were thinking. He knew they 
missed him dearly, and loved him so much. The 
one thing he didn't know was how to get in touch 
with them.

"I haven't been able to find out any ideas as to where 
they are," Will sighed, looking around at the empty 
houses again. "Especially not now."

Joy shrugged, and smiled. "I don't know either. 
But I figure two kids with our special abilities can 
manage to find something." She stretched out the 
palm that wasn't wrapped around the walking stick, 
and Will pressed his palm against hers. A little jolt 
ran down each of their arms, and the dried leaves 
on the ground began to swirl around them, encasing 
them in a mini-whirlwind of sorts.

They pulled their hands apart, and the leaves fell 
into little piles around their feet. "So where do we 
begin, oh great guide woman?" Will asked.

"I'm not your guide; I'm your partner," Joy said. 
"But I'm thinking that we start out on this road that 
we landed on, and see where it goes." She waved 
behind him. "There's no place to go but forward."

Will twisted to look behind him. The road ended 
maybe a hundred yards behind him, with vines and 
branches from the surrounding forest spilling out 
onto it. The forest reminded Will of just about every 
ominous forest described in fairy tales, to the Wizard 
of Oz, to the Simpsons. It wasn't a pleasant looking 
place, and it seemed to be pushing them further down 
the road. "Well, let's get going then."

Joy smiled, nodded, and the two began walking up 
the road.

 * * *

Joy woke up with a start, and grimaced. She reached 
through her thick, golden brown hair to rub the 
annoying kink out of her neck caused by sleeping 
in an uncomfortable chair for far too long. She glanced 
at the still form of the boy in the hospital bed, and she 
felt her heart sink somewhere below the sterile 
linoleum on the floor.

She heard people talking behind her, and she strained 
her ears to hear them. "Ms. MacGuire, I honestly 
don't know what is going on. Physically, William 
is fine. He will recover from his bodily injuries, and 
according to the scans we've done, there's no damage 
to his brain from when his head hit the rock. I have 
no good reason for you as to why he won't wake up."

Joy glanced over the back of the chair and saw 
Morwen's back to her, with her long dark curls 
looking frizzed out and tired. "So there's no brain 
damage?" she heard her ask.

"As far as I can tell, no. However that's not a 
definitive answer. The only way we will be able 
to tell the extent, or if there is any at all, is when 
William wakes up," the doctor said.

Morwen sighed, and Joy turned back around to 
look at Will, still lying motionless in the bed. 
"So when will he wake up?" Morwen asked.

The doctor waited for a moment, then spoke. 
"He should have woken up already. The anesthesia 
is out of his system; there's nothing being used to 
keep him in an induced coma. Because of this, I can't 
give you an estimate. It could be tomorrow, it could 
be a week from now, it could be months from now."

Joy heard the two walk out of the room, and she 
slipped off of the chair. On stocking feet (her shoes 
had been kicked off days ago into the corner of the 
room) she crept to the bed and scrambled up onto it. 
She reached out and brushed some lank red hair off 
of Will's forehead. "Please wake up," she whispered.

There was no response. Joy bit her lip and reached 
out again. Her fingertips lightly rested on Will's 
forehead. She sucked in a lungful of air and 
concentrated hard. There was a connection between 
her and Will; if she could reach out to him, maybe 
she could bring him back. The telltale tingles raced 
up her arm.

She could feel him there, but there was something 
blocking him. Not a person, but a job. A quest, 
almost. "When you finish what you gotta do," Joy 
whispered again, "please come back to me."

Will didn't respond, but Joy was pretty sure that he 
got the message.

 * * *

And somewhere, two kids continued walking up the path......

 * * *

End notes: I know some of you out there are going to 
be mad at me for putting William into a coma, but this 
is an idea I just had to get out of my system. It's 
actually based on the plotline from a TV show I used 
to watch years ago (extra brownies to anyone who can 
guess what show it is). To reassure people though, I 
have no plans of killing Will off. He'll come out of it 
eventually, I promise.




"I'm still young, and I'd like to stay that way, 
cause growing up won't make 
everything okay."
 Responsibility, MxPx

"If I had been around when Rubens was painting, I would have been revered as a fabulous model. Kate Moss? Well, she would have been the paintbrush..."
 Dawn French

"I'm not dumb. I just have a command of thoroughly useless information."
 Calvin, Calvin and Hobbes