When Willow was finished, drained finally of everything and anything she could think of to say, when she had also added what she thought might be pertinent details about how dead Buffy had been--notes of bodily trauma, no pulse, no breathing, unresponsive to attempts to resuscitate her, and many, many other minutiae, Willow came back to into her body feeling more than a little off-balance, horrified that she had managed to pull such a detailed and coherent account out of herself. And frightened that eventually (today being the first of many steps toward this end) that was all this story--this part of her life--would become; an account, a tale, something dry and unemotional. At the thought her stomach turned in on itself. She closed her eyes and waited for Angel's reaction, his questions. Perhaps, his tears.
She waited, and then she heard the legs of the chair he had been sitting in push back. When she opened her eyes he was already standing. He took a step away from behind the desk.
He spoke. "See that Willow gets home."
Willow looked to Gunn, who nodded in response to Angel's order, but said nothing.
Was this really happening? Was Angel really walking away from her, his back retreating without a word, without explanation?
She did not know what her expectation had been, but it surely was not this. Was not anything like this; days stretching out before her, waiting, waiting, going slowly mad, desperate to tell someone about this cancer of grief and loss and confusion she now held inside, this thing that was slowly killing her, consuming her life. Desperate to tell this person, Angel, someone who could understand, who had lived so much longer, seen so much more. This person who could tell her something, anything, say words and add some meaning, alleviate some pain. This person, closest in the world to Buffy. This person Buffy had loved. Angel, whom she had sent to Hell and still her love for him tormented her even across that distance. Buffy's Angel.
And this, this was how he treated her, Buffy's Willow? The woman who had given him back his soul? Given it back so he could feel something in moments like this, so he could care, so he could love Buffy. Forever. That's what a soul did, right? Made you human, made you fragile and vulnerable and made you care and hurt and cry and connect with other people. And this, this was how he chose to use it? Gift, curse, it was all the same, Willow thought, her own mortal soul no different, complicated gift/curse that it was. She remembered the glowing orb of Thessala, the pain and exhaustion she had waded through to save Angel from the demon that was Angelus. The soul she had conjured for him--for Buffy. So he could love Buffy. Goddess, where was his damned soul now?
His shoes ground into the hardwood floor as he walked toward the doorway and out of the room. Willow's eyes went black until she could no longer see the room, as though a rolling black-out or eclipse were falling unscheduled over the Hyperion. Wind from nowhere swept in tiny cyclones around the office, papers lifted off the desktop, Gunn's jacket snapped around him, and in the whistling she heard a tormented voice in her head like a chant, but only she heard it, shallow and magical.
Gunn swallowed as though he were about to speak.
And Angel pulled the door open to leave, as though nothing had changed.
Willow stood from where she had been sitting and spun to face the doorway, her right arm extended, palm out. In an instant the wind fell silent, was sucked entirely from the room, and the doorknob pulled violently out of Angel's grasp and slammed shut so firmly that the echo of it played in the foyer like rival strikes of Thor's hammer. She could hear the office go very still, and even the sounds of Gunn's breathing disappeared. The black veil did not lift from her eyes, but she knew Angel still had not turned to face her.
"Walking out that door," she spoke slowly, her voice ancient, gravelly, and hateful--nothing like Willow--"would be a mistake."
Angel did not speak and he did not turn around.
It did not seem possible, but the black of her eyes deepened, and across the room she felt more than knew that Gunn was beginning to think about whether he would have to intervene. Though on whose behalf she could not discern.
"Apologize to me," she demanded of Angel, still in that foreign-to-her-own ears voice. "Tell me you're sorry that I had to wait here, alone. For days, not knowing where you were. Tell me you wish it hadn't been that way. Tell me." The unnatural wind was starting to pick up again. "Tell me." It whistled and settled around her, pulling at her clothes, disturbing her hair. But her black, black eyes did not blink.
No response.
Willow's hand went out a second time, and as it lifted so did the chair in which she had been sitting. She took a step toward Angel and the chair levitated and careened into the wall, smashing to bits. "Tell me."
A voice, low like a growl, issued from Angel's throat. "Grief does strange things to people, Willow."
Thinking it a challenge, a stick of the wooden chair leg leapt into Willow's still-outstretched hand and she advanced upon Angel's turned back. "You don't even begin to know the half of it. Tell me!" she screamed in an equally low growl, "Tell me that you're sorry, You--loved her--that--Buffy--" And a force from within sent her flying at him, but Angel turned at the last possible moment and caught the wrist of her hand that held the make-shift stake. The wind in the room blew wild, sparks now alighting here and there dangerously close to large quantities of paper.
Finally, Angel spoke. "Is this what you want to see, Willow? Huh? This?"
And as he revealed his face to her, the black of her vision began to lift and her rage lost steam. He had a terrible grip on her right wrist, so much so that she couldn't be sure the tears coming again to her eyes were not from that pain rather than the one inside. His face was fading back and forth with each phrase he spoke, pong-ing between the human visage she had grown to know as his and the demon mask of his vampire self, as though he could not control the transformations nor hold the demon side back.
"This, is anger, Willow." His arm now shook where he held hers. Tightly, too tightly. "This is anger and pain and fear and loss and anything else that's eating you and me from the inside. Take a good look." He choked out the last line.
"Take a good look," he offered again, and his face was swallowed by the demon, but the demon's eyes wept tears as no demon should, and then the eyes were Angel's and the face was Angel's, but the growl that came out of the throat was the demon's and just as her now-clear eyes could focus on one countenance it would already be morphing into the other.
And then he let go of her, and it was not until then that she realized that he had been holding her off the ground, levered by his grip on her. She stumbled slightly in coming into contact with the floor, but recovered her balance quickly enough. The wind was gone, as were the flying sparks and the air no longer held a tinderbox-like feeling. No more explosions.
But it was not over. She would not let it be.
"Tell me," said Willow, her voice haggard-sounding now, tired, magic-less. "Tell me you're sorry. Tell me you loved her--loved her, too."
Angel walked to the corner with the shattered chair parts and began picking through the larger ones and putting them into the trash can.
His action put his back to them, still Willow could feel that his face, his very being, was still struggling to endure the chaos her news had brought on.
"How could I have not?" he answered, facing the trash can, letting the wooden shards fall from his hands and reverberate dully, like dirt on a coffin. "I'm sorry, Willow. Sorry. She was the best of everything." His voice dropped and she thought she heard him mutter, "peanut butter. Chocolate." He took a step back, still hiding his face from view. "Did someone say that at the service?" he asked the air in front of him. "Someone should have said that..." but he couldn't finish, his exterior had shifted again and his foot came back and the trash can went flying into the desk and the leg of the desk (which had perhaps always been wobbly) gave way and the desk tilted, and the papers on it sloughed off onto the floor, magnifying the original mess by twenty.
Gunn had side-stepped just in time, and he walked with purpose to the spot where Willow stood, swaying and near-exhaustion.
"Let's give him some space," Gunn explained under his breath, his arm guiding her out of the rapidly dismantling office and through the door to the foyer where the rest waited.
Willow watched as Gunn pulled the door to and then turned to face the others. All three were standing as though ready for battle, armed to the teeth. Wesley had even found a large metal shield. In one hand (the other held a crossbow and there was a wicked-big knife and can of mace at her waist) Cordelia was holding a giant hub-cap-shaped axe out to Gunn (Willow could hardly think how her slim classmate was even managing to lift it), and the new girl, the one with long brown hair, had rescued a rotten piece of wood from somewhere in the hotel, its tip covered in rusted nails, and was brandishing it with no small amount of pride.
"I must say," she chirped to no one in particular, "it is always good to have a cudgel in hand; for demons or three-legged Horhkvah." She leveled it at Willow like one would a machine gun or rifle and yipped, "pow-pow-pow."
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...to be continued...the final chapter to come...
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Disclaimer: Willow etc. belong to someone else.
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