Title: All it takes
Author: soavezefiretto
Rating: K
Summary: Do you remember the first time Angel had Willow in her arms? Well she does. Willow remembers everything.
A/N: This is a work in progress.
I have a strange weakness for Willow/Angel friendship-which-could-be-more. I just started watching from S1 again, and this is a retelling of some of the scenes where they are actually in the same shot together, and some other scenes that I make up as I go, mostly from Willow's POV. There may be some Angel POV in the future. Kinda angsty, not surprisingly so.
Disclaimer: No infringement intended.
I. A dream, a nightmare
I woke up in your arms, and I didn't know it was you. That was the first time.
You smelled so good. At first, I thought I was waking up home, in bed, and my mum was baking cookies. Except my mum didn't really bake, like, ever - and you didn't smell like cookies either. You just smelled - good. Familiar. You smelled like home. Some wonderful, unreachable, perfect dream home.
Or that's what I named it, years after. And I do believe that maybe, maybe, I was the only person in the whole world who ever felt like that in your arms. Well, except your son. But he was too young to know, and then he was gone.
What did she feel? Pain, I suppose. I never asked her, and she never talked about it. She talked about a lot of things, but never about that: how it felt, really, to be in your arms. And I was grateful. I would have listened, of course, I always did. But this way, I could keep it to me. That little thing. That cookie-feeling.
(I can see you smile now, that little smile you gave me sometimes that wanted to be pained but couldn't. That smile that wanted to be mortified that you'd ever be associated with cookies, that someone would have cookie-feelings about you - but wasn't. It was thank-you smile.)
It's not like I was in your arms very often. It was not my place to be, I understood that. But that first time... feeling your arms around me - well, one arm. Your grip was not hard, although you had to support most of my weight. You made kind of a railing with your arm, for me to lean on. My imagination made it warm, and human, and alive, although you were neither. I only remember it like that because I know you now. What did I know then? Nothing of life, or death, nothing of me, nothing of what was to come. I could have died then, we all could have. Imagine the waste, the futility - imagine the bliss, to have escaped all that came after.
But there was your arm around me, very real. A promise. I was not grateful, or relieved. I was - touched. No one can be touched by you and stay the same. You would say it goes with the job, maybe say something about being a creature of the night (although that would be more like a thing Spike would say - you are so alike, sometimes...) but you'd look at me and know I didn't mean that. You could always read my eyes. And you would know that you had touched my soul with yours. You knew then. Did you?
I dreamed of you that night. When I woke up I told myself I'd probably been dreaming about Xander, to justify my blush. But I knew I was lying. That was the first time.
The nightmares came next. I had forgotten by then. I'd had a vague idea of finding that janitor Giles told us about and thanking him for saving our lives, but I had no clue how I would speak to a janitor, and that was a fundamental impediment. My life back then included vampires, witches, math exams and boys who didn't look at me, but a janitor was a grown man, and facing a man (a man who was not Giles, whom I would never have considered a man anyway, not then) all on my own was too alien a thought. (I knew, with my bones, that it hadn't been a janitor, that it had been you, but that thought was even scarier than talking to a janitor.) So I chose to forget.
Until I stepped into the basement again. As it is with nightmares, I knew something horrible was going to happen, and not knowing what it was made it even more horrible. But I said the words anyway, because you always do, even in nightmares, especially in nightmares, knowing it will do no good: "I am not afraid." And while I said it, in that second, I thought of you. I didn't think "Angel" though, or "Buffy's vampire not-boyfriend" - I gave you a private name, the one only I know. I've never told you that name, I haven't told anyone. I remembered how your arm felt around my waist, how I had leaned against you, still half drugged from the gas, how you didn't let go until you'd made sure I was safe. How I reached out for you, fearing the emptiness I'd feel.
And, for a moment, the spell was almost broken - almost.
Then things happened very fast, and, in the blink of an eye, it was the end of the world. The first of many to come. When it was over, I found I was standing by your side again. We were not looking at each other; she was the centre of everyone's attention. Prophecy girl. Party girl. The most beautiful girl ever. I felt you being pulled towards her, and I was at peace. Because that moment, standing beside you, that was enough. That moment that you took, out of your longing, and your hand that brushed mine quite unintentionally as you stepped forward to join her, that was all I needed. That was all it took.