![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoggedTitle: Holding Her Own (10/10)
Author: snogged
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon and Co. own the characters of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I don’t.
Pairing: Willow/Angelus, Willow/Tara, Willow/Angel (friendship)
Word Count: 2330
Overall Rating/Highlight for Warnings: FRAO/NC-17; *angst/dark themes, character death, drug use, crude language (including sexual swearing) violence, sex*
Setting: Set Post-Season 5 of BtVS/Season 2 of AtS.
Summary: Still struggling with Buffy's death, Willow gets an unexpected visitor that brings a whole new set of problems to Sunnydale.
Beta(s):![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
angelskuuipo and velvetwhip . All other mistakes are mine.
A/N: Several years ago, I started a WIP that never went further than the first chapter. This is my attempt to fix that. Enjoy!
A/N 2: This story is completed and chapters will be posted weekly.
Previous Chapters
Featuring artwork byrua1412 any spikesredqueen
***
Even though it meant scrapping her plan to make him explain everything before she began her own rambling session of asking intensely personal questions, Willow discovered that she could no longer stand the monotony of counting worn spots on the carpeting.
There were seven and most of them looked like burn marks from the cigarettes Spike had sworn he wouldn’t smoke while in the house. With the jumble of thoughts in her head, however, it was difficult to draw imaginary lines between them in order to find nifty connect-the-dots pictures. Not that it mattered. It wasn’t an activity she should have been stuck doing anyway since Angel had been so gosh-darn insistent on getting her alone in a room with him. If he wasn’t going to start talking, then she was just going to have to take the bull by the horns.
“I’ve always found that when you want to have a conversation with somebody, it usually helps to start with ‘sorry I tried to kill you’,” Willow said curtly, lifting her head to cast him a sidelong glance. She knew that it came off sounding snippy, but she didn’t care. She had spent the last seven minutes waiting for him to do what he said he was going to do and instead he had just laid there like the proverbial bump on a log.
If he wanted her forgiveness, he was going to have to work for it. Getting over the hump between them was going to take a whole lot more than magic or miracles. It was going to take blood, sweat, and tears. Well, maybe not blood...because that could lead to serious badness. But the rest was still okay.
When he didn’t react to her, she slowly turned her head to meet his chocolate brown eyes. To her relief, she saw pain and regret resonating behind his irises. They were the sort of emotions you’d expect to see someone with a soul display…provided they weren’t Hitler or Jeffrey Dahmer or something. Not that Angel was a sociopath. He was the complete opposite, really; the epitome of a hero and a champion. Of course, there was that the whole problem where he did sort of have to share his body with one…
“I’m sorry you got hurt, Willow,” Angel replied softly, finally, attempting to shift position to see her better but being unable to because of the chains’ restrictions. “But I promise that I won’t hurt you now.”
“If you think that’s going to get me to convince Spike to give up the key, then you’ve got another think coming, Mister. Your drug-induced happy fest may be over, but I’m no dummy,” Willow huffed, finding it difficult to believe that just because Angel wasn’t flashing her a growly face or making the perverted comments frequently found in his alter-ego’s repertoire that everything was 100% hunky dory. As far as she was concerned, better safe than sorry until further notice. Angel was staying chained.
“I know,” Angel said, offering her the tiniest ghost of a smile. “I always liked that about you. It’s not often that you find a sixteen-year-old girl who understands the philosophical concepts of Nietzsche or laughs at a decent joke about James Joyce’s drunken escapades.”
It was disarming to hear him bring up the past, to mention things that had once given them a connection outside of him being Buffy’s boyfriend and her being Buffy’s best friend. But instead of making her feel better, it felt more like he was putting a Band-Aid over a bullet hole. It felt like he was trying to keep their conversation superficial, instead of dealing with the hidden part of the iceberg that had actually driven a hole through their friendship.
“I’m not sixteen anymore, Angel. And unless Angelus came after me because he has some secret crush on James Joyce and wanted to take revenge on me because of a giggle or two, I don’t really want to hear about it.”
Angel nodded. “You want to know why he came after you.”
“Is that something you can tell me?” Willow asked. She knew that the Gypsy curse had always made it so Angel would always be haunted by the damage he had wreaked as the Scourge of Europe, but she didn’t know if the drugs he had taken had somehow created a weird sort of dissociative effect that turned Angelus into a separate personaility that Angel had no link too.
“I think so,” Angel replied, trace amounts of hesitancy in his tone.
“Good,” Willow responded quickly. “Because I’m not really sure I get it. I mean, he admitted to going back to Los Angeles to get more Ecstasy so why didn’t he just go after Cordy, or Gunn, or Wesley, or even that Fred person? They were right there in the same city he was so there were all sorts of ample opportunities. And yet he came here instead. Why me, Angel? Why did he pick me?”
Her throat felt thick after that, making it hard to swallow down the lump that had formed there. Angel’s face was nearly unreadable and she felt adrift in the pregnant pause that followed, just waiting for him to answer.
“Because of who you are.”
“Who I am?” Willow repeated, arching an eyebrow. “Care to be vaguer?”
Angel shook his head. “In his eyes, you’ve always been the trophy innocent, always been someone he’s wanted to add to his collection of broken dolls.”
“I thought Drusilla was the one with the doll fetish,” Willow said, confused.
“She was,” Angel admitted. “But each one of those dolls represented something to him too. Each time Drusilla cooed to them, each time she sang of their sorrow, Angelus would feel a disturbing kind of pride. He imagined the souls of past victims screaming behind those plastic eyes and ersatz smiles, calling out to him through Drusilla as they writhed in their own personal hells.”
Try as she might, Willow couldn’t prevent herself from thinking about all the things Angelus could have done to her if Spike and the gang hadn’t shown up in time and it felt like pressing the “refresh” button on her horror. He could have easily broken her down and with Rack around, he could have literally shoved her into some porcelain figurine instead of just buying into the make-believe of his crazy vampire childe.
Except that her gut was telling her that there was more to it than that. Angelus had insisted that she would be the one to give him the ultimate happy and if his end goal was to just smash her into bits, then what was the point of him picking her? There were lots of girls in the world he could do the same thing to, but out of all of them, he had chosen her to be the One.
Plus, now that she thought about it, after he had numbered off his disgusting list of things that made him happy, Angelus had gone out of his way to make her dream the dream that she couldn’t get out of her head. The dream that had her believing that “Bisexual now” was a more accurate description of her sexual orientation. What sort of psycho killer did something like that?
“I’m still not feeling like this mystery has been solved, Angel. What aren’t you telling me? Or better still, what aren’t I asking you?” Willow solicited, hoping it would be enough to nudge him towards the specific answer she was looking for without being blunt enough to mention the words “sex” and “dream” in his presence. Talking about sex in front of Angel was like waving a candy bar in front of a diabetic. It might not kill them, but it was just plain mean.
Shadows passed over Angel’s face, darkening his eyes as understanding sunk in. “That dream was a lie, Willow. The images he made Rack pour into your brain were to seduce you, to bring you over to his side. He knew it would work because....” An odd flush of color appeared below Angel’s cheekbones that looked almost like he was blushing but not quite because vampires couldn’t exactly do that. “Because of my memories of you.”
“Memories?” Willow asked, gulping down a boatload of oxygen as she considered what that could mean. Angel was Buffy’s and just because Buffy was six feet under, it didn’t give Angel permission to be having thoughts about having her. It was wrong. “What kind of memories?”
“Mostly, your hands on my bare skin the night you took care of my injuries. I could feel Angelus there with me that night, roused by his own bloodlust. He crowed with delight at your virtue and uncertainty, felt victorious when he felt the barest hint of desire stirring inside of me from the way you touched me,” Angel confessed.
“You mean you…” Willow stopped, unable to say the rest of her thought out loud. This whole Angel-having-feelings-for-her thing? Wasn’t exactly jiving with her decision to stay with Tara. “You know I’m with Tara, right? That I love her? That I’m very much not going to be leaving her anytime soon?”
“Of course I know that,” Angel replied. “I don’t expect you to. Just know that Angelus used me too, abused the knowledge he had from me to get under your skin. It’s what he does.”
She wanted to tell him that nothing he went through could possibly match what had been done to her, Tara, and Dawn, but she didn’t. She couldn’t bring herself to say anything because she could only imagine how tough it had to have been for him to reveal the red-haired skeleton hiding in his closet after all these years.
“It’s why he sucks,” Willow replied sullenly.
“You won’t have to deal with him again,” Angel promised. “And as soon as I’m free, you won’t have to deal with me either. I’m going back to Los Angeles.”
“I guess that’s for the best,” Willow said, her heart stinging just a little. Even though it was going to be harder to look at him for awhile given his admission, she couldn’t help but wish he’d stay around just a little more. It was going to take more than one chat for them to really resolve the issues of what Angelus had done and the truths it had revealed. “You’ve been doing good things there. Saving lost souls and all that.”
“And Fred could use me,” Angel said, throwing one more excuse onto the pile. “I’m sure she’s still having a hard time adjusting.”
Willow nodded. “Of course.”
Then she paused, a flash of an idea lighting up her brain. It was one she surprisingly hadn’t considered before, though she was really starting to wish she had. It made perfect sense and it would give Angel something to distract himself with. Plus, the experience of going up against Rack and Angelus had taught her that she was capable of doing the sort of seriously big magic she would need to pull this currently hypothetical fireworks show off.
“But what if there was a reason for you to stay?”
“Willow…”
Willow froze, hearing something in the way he sounded out the syllables of her name. He thought she was referring to him staying around so they could…so he could… No...nononononono. That wasn’t what she wanted him to think at all.
“I’m not talking about me, Angel,” Willow said hurriedly, nipping his suspicions in the bud before they caused any more trouble between them. “I’m talking about something else, something bigger.”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” Angel answered.
As her excitement increased, Willow blurted out: “I mean- we’re going to bring Buffy back from the dead. I’m pretty sure that portal that she got sucked into sent her to a dimension of chaos and doom. And I know that you were in hell and came back all beasty and animal-like so I was thinking that if you were here, you could help get her all assimilated into the world and stuff.”
“Willow, I know your heart is in the right place, but…”
“Don’t,” Willow interrupted. “I know this is a big crazy endeavor, but I know I can do it. I just don’t want her to be alone, you know? Yes, she’s the Chosen One, the one girl in all the world, but you know as I well as I do that there are things in this world that no one should have to do on their own.”
Angel shook his head in agreement, realizing exactly how important this was to her instead of arguing about it. “Fine, I’ll stay.”
“Good,” Willow replied, grinning broadly at the thought of reuniting the original Scooby Gang.
Coincidentally, just as the notion crossed through her mind, Spike appeared in the doorway, flanked by Dawn, Xander, Tara, Anya, and Giles. There was the unmistakable scent of nicotine lingering in a cloud around the blond, but there was also a feeling of something else. Something that made Willow believe that they would march into this new battle and emerge victorious.
“Are you ready?” Dawn asked, just as Spike crossed the floor, a set of keys dangling from his fingers as he went to unlock Angel from his bindings.
Willow knew in her head that it wasn’t a loaded question. That Dawn was merely asking if they were ready to leave. But as the locks clicked open and Angel started stretching his limbs, Willow couldn’t escape the questions in her own head.
Was she ready to stand side by side with Tara and Angel knowing how they both felt about her? Knowing that they still had a long way to go before everything between them would be fine?
Was she ready to bring Buffy back from the grave and deal with whatever consequences that might entail?
Her final answer was: yes.
Especially if it meant that she would finally have everyone that mattered most to her at home safe and sound.
FIN
Author: snogged
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon and Co. own the characters of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I don’t.
Pairing: Willow/Angelus, Willow/Tara, Willow/Angel (friendship)
Word Count: 2330
Overall Rating/Highlight for Warnings: FRAO/NC-17; *angst/dark themes, character death, drug use, crude language (including sexual swearing) violence, sex*
Setting: Set Post-Season 5 of BtVS/Season 2 of AtS.
Summary: Still struggling with Buffy's death, Willow gets an unexpected visitor that brings a whole new set of problems to Sunnydale.
Beta(s):
angelskuuipo and velvetwhip . All other mistakes are mine.A/N: Several years ago, I started a WIP that never went further than the first chapter. This is my attempt to fix that. Enjoy!
A/N 2: This story is completed and chapters will be posted weekly.
Previous Chapters
Featuring artwork by
rua1412 any spikesredqueen***
Even though it meant scrapping her plan to make him explain everything before she began her own rambling session of asking intensely personal questions, Willow discovered that she could no longer stand the monotony of counting worn spots on the carpeting.
There were seven and most of them looked like burn marks from the cigarettes Spike had sworn he wouldn’t smoke while in the house. With the jumble of thoughts in her head, however, it was difficult to draw imaginary lines between them in order to find nifty connect-the-dots pictures. Not that it mattered. It wasn’t an activity she should have been stuck doing anyway since Angel had been so gosh-darn insistent on getting her alone in a room with him. If he wasn’t going to start talking, then she was just going to have to take the bull by the horns.
“I’ve always found that when you want to have a conversation with somebody, it usually helps to start with ‘sorry I tried to kill you’,” Willow said curtly, lifting her head to cast him a sidelong glance. She knew that it came off sounding snippy, but she didn’t care. She had spent the last seven minutes waiting for him to do what he said he was going to do and instead he had just laid there like the proverbial bump on a log.
If he wanted her forgiveness, he was going to have to work for it. Getting over the hump between them was going to take a whole lot more than magic or miracles. It was going to take blood, sweat, and tears. Well, maybe not blood...because that could lead to serious badness. But the rest was still okay.
When he didn’t react to her, she slowly turned her head to meet his chocolate brown eyes. To her relief, she saw pain and regret resonating behind his irises. They were the sort of emotions you’d expect to see someone with a soul display…provided they weren’t Hitler or Jeffrey Dahmer or something. Not that Angel was a sociopath. He was the complete opposite, really; the epitome of a hero and a champion. Of course, there was that the whole problem where he did sort of have to share his body with one…
“I’m sorry you got hurt, Willow,” Angel replied softly, finally, attempting to shift position to see her better but being unable to because of the chains’ restrictions. “But I promise that I won’t hurt you now.”
“If you think that’s going to get me to convince Spike to give up the key, then you’ve got another think coming, Mister. Your drug-induced happy fest may be over, but I’m no dummy,” Willow huffed, finding it difficult to believe that just because Angel wasn’t flashing her a growly face or making the perverted comments frequently found in his alter-ego’s repertoire that everything was 100% hunky dory. As far as she was concerned, better safe than sorry until further notice. Angel was staying chained.
“I know,” Angel said, offering her the tiniest ghost of a smile. “I always liked that about you. It’s not often that you find a sixteen-year-old girl who understands the philosophical concepts of Nietzsche or laughs at a decent joke about James Joyce’s drunken escapades.”
It was disarming to hear him bring up the past, to mention things that had once given them a connection outside of him being Buffy’s boyfriend and her being Buffy’s best friend. But instead of making her feel better, it felt more like he was putting a Band-Aid over a bullet hole. It felt like he was trying to keep their conversation superficial, instead of dealing with the hidden part of the iceberg that had actually driven a hole through their friendship.
“I’m not sixteen anymore, Angel. And unless Angelus came after me because he has some secret crush on James Joyce and wanted to take revenge on me because of a giggle or two, I don’t really want to hear about it.”
Angel nodded. “You want to know why he came after you.”
“Is that something you can tell me?” Willow asked. She knew that the Gypsy curse had always made it so Angel would always be haunted by the damage he had wreaked as the Scourge of Europe, but she didn’t know if the drugs he had taken had somehow created a weird sort of dissociative effect that turned Angelus into a separate personaility that Angel had no link too.
“I think so,” Angel replied, trace amounts of hesitancy in his tone.
“Good,” Willow responded quickly. “Because I’m not really sure I get it. I mean, he admitted to going back to Los Angeles to get more Ecstasy so why didn’t he just go after Cordy, or Gunn, or Wesley, or even that Fred person? They were right there in the same city he was so there were all sorts of ample opportunities. And yet he came here instead. Why me, Angel? Why did he pick me?”
Her throat felt thick after that, making it hard to swallow down the lump that had formed there. Angel’s face was nearly unreadable and she felt adrift in the pregnant pause that followed, just waiting for him to answer.
“Because of who you are.”
“Who I am?” Willow repeated, arching an eyebrow. “Care to be vaguer?”
Angel shook his head. “In his eyes, you’ve always been the trophy innocent, always been someone he’s wanted to add to his collection of broken dolls.”
“I thought Drusilla was the one with the doll fetish,” Willow said, confused.
“She was,” Angel admitted. “But each one of those dolls represented something to him too. Each time Drusilla cooed to them, each time she sang of their sorrow, Angelus would feel a disturbing kind of pride. He imagined the souls of past victims screaming behind those plastic eyes and ersatz smiles, calling out to him through Drusilla as they writhed in their own personal hells.”
Try as she might, Willow couldn’t prevent herself from thinking about all the things Angelus could have done to her if Spike and the gang hadn’t shown up in time and it felt like pressing the “refresh” button on her horror. He could have easily broken her down and with Rack around, he could have literally shoved her into some porcelain figurine instead of just buying into the make-believe of his crazy vampire childe.
Except that her gut was telling her that there was more to it than that. Angelus had insisted that she would be the one to give him the ultimate happy and if his end goal was to just smash her into bits, then what was the point of him picking her? There were lots of girls in the world he could do the same thing to, but out of all of them, he had chosen her to be the One.
Plus, now that she thought about it, after he had numbered off his disgusting list of things that made him happy, Angelus had gone out of his way to make her dream the dream that she couldn’t get out of her head. The dream that had her believing that “Bisexual now” was a more accurate description of her sexual orientation. What sort of psycho killer did something like that?
“I’m still not feeling like this mystery has been solved, Angel. What aren’t you telling me? Or better still, what aren’t I asking you?” Willow solicited, hoping it would be enough to nudge him towards the specific answer she was looking for without being blunt enough to mention the words “sex” and “dream” in his presence. Talking about sex in front of Angel was like waving a candy bar in front of a diabetic. It might not kill them, but it was just plain mean.
Shadows passed over Angel’s face, darkening his eyes as understanding sunk in. “That dream was a lie, Willow. The images he made Rack pour into your brain were to seduce you, to bring you over to his side. He knew it would work because....” An odd flush of color appeared below Angel’s cheekbones that looked almost like he was blushing but not quite because vampires couldn’t exactly do that. “Because of my memories of you.”
“Memories?” Willow asked, gulping down a boatload of oxygen as she considered what that could mean. Angel was Buffy’s and just because Buffy was six feet under, it didn’t give Angel permission to be having thoughts about having her. It was wrong. “What kind of memories?”
“Mostly, your hands on my bare skin the night you took care of my injuries. I could feel Angelus there with me that night, roused by his own bloodlust. He crowed with delight at your virtue and uncertainty, felt victorious when he felt the barest hint of desire stirring inside of me from the way you touched me,” Angel confessed.
“You mean you…” Willow stopped, unable to say the rest of her thought out loud. This whole Angel-having-feelings-for-her thing? Wasn’t exactly jiving with her decision to stay with Tara. “You know I’m with Tara, right? That I love her? That I’m very much not going to be leaving her anytime soon?”
“Of course I know that,” Angel replied. “I don’t expect you to. Just know that Angelus used me too, abused the knowledge he had from me to get under your skin. It’s what he does.”
She wanted to tell him that nothing he went through could possibly match what had been done to her, Tara, and Dawn, but she didn’t. She couldn’t bring herself to say anything because she could only imagine how tough it had to have been for him to reveal the red-haired skeleton hiding in his closet after all these years.
“It’s why he sucks,” Willow replied sullenly.
“You won’t have to deal with him again,” Angel promised. “And as soon as I’m free, you won’t have to deal with me either. I’m going back to Los Angeles.”
“I guess that’s for the best,” Willow said, her heart stinging just a little. Even though it was going to be harder to look at him for awhile given his admission, she couldn’t help but wish he’d stay around just a little more. It was going to take more than one chat for them to really resolve the issues of what Angelus had done and the truths it had revealed. “You’ve been doing good things there. Saving lost souls and all that.”
“And Fred could use me,” Angel said, throwing one more excuse onto the pile. “I’m sure she’s still having a hard time adjusting.”
Willow nodded. “Of course.”
Then she paused, a flash of an idea lighting up her brain. It was one she surprisingly hadn’t considered before, though she was really starting to wish she had. It made perfect sense and it would give Angel something to distract himself with. Plus, the experience of going up against Rack and Angelus had taught her that she was capable of doing the sort of seriously big magic she would need to pull this currently hypothetical fireworks show off.
“But what if there was a reason for you to stay?”
“Willow…”
Willow froze, hearing something in the way he sounded out the syllables of her name. He thought she was referring to him staying around so they could…so he could… No...nononononono. That wasn’t what she wanted him to think at all.
“I’m not talking about me, Angel,” Willow said hurriedly, nipping his suspicions in the bud before they caused any more trouble between them. “I’m talking about something else, something bigger.”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” Angel answered.
As her excitement increased, Willow blurted out: “I mean- we’re going to bring Buffy back from the dead. I’m pretty sure that portal that she got sucked into sent her to a dimension of chaos and doom. And I know that you were in hell and came back all beasty and animal-like so I was thinking that if you were here, you could help get her all assimilated into the world and stuff.”
“Willow, I know your heart is in the right place, but…”
“Don’t,” Willow interrupted. “I know this is a big crazy endeavor, but I know I can do it. I just don’t want her to be alone, you know? Yes, she’s the Chosen One, the one girl in all the world, but you know as I well as I do that there are things in this world that no one should have to do on their own.”
Angel shook his head in agreement, realizing exactly how important this was to her instead of arguing about it. “Fine, I’ll stay.”
“Good,” Willow replied, grinning broadly at the thought of reuniting the original Scooby Gang.
Coincidentally, just as the notion crossed through her mind, Spike appeared in the doorway, flanked by Dawn, Xander, Tara, Anya, and Giles. There was the unmistakable scent of nicotine lingering in a cloud around the blond, but there was also a feeling of something else. Something that made Willow believe that they would march into this new battle and emerge victorious.
“Are you ready?” Dawn asked, just as Spike crossed the floor, a set of keys dangling from his fingers as he went to unlock Angel from his bindings.
Willow knew in her head that it wasn’t a loaded question. That Dawn was merely asking if they were ready to leave. But as the locks clicked open and Angel started stretching his limbs, Willow couldn’t escape the questions in her own head.
Was she ready to stand side by side with Tara and Angel knowing how they both felt about her? Knowing that they still had a long way to go before everything between them would be fine?
Was she ready to bring Buffy back from the grave and deal with whatever consequences that might entail?
Her final answer was: yes.
Especially if it meant that she would finally have everyone that mattered most to her at home safe and sound.
FIN