DISCLAIMER: All Buffy and Angel related items are owned by Joss Whedon, etc, etc. No copyright infringement is intended.
SPOILERS: Everything up to the "Buffy" season 5 finale and "Angel" season 2 finale.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This fic was actually written quite a while ago, but I figured I'd post it here as sort of a test run -- this is my first post to FF.net.
Roots
Angel: "So where're you going, Lindsey? Back to your roots?"
Lindsey: "Something like that."
-- Angel, "Dead End" (Season Two)
He couldn't believe he had come back here. After all these years, after the way he'd first left, after all the dreams he'd envisioned for himself, here he was again. Lindsey brought his '56 pickup truck to a halt just on the outskirts of the town and craned his neck to read the words on the sign that lay smashed on the road. It wasn't that he'd never read those words before, but for some reason he felt like reading the sign would make his return more official, less surreal.
'Welcome to Sunnydale.'
Lindsey finally made out the words on the sign and snickered to himself as he thought about all the times he'd wanted to obliterate that sign. Looks like someone had finally beaten him to it. Lindsey leaned back into his seat and ran his fingers through his hair, exhaling and wondering what in the hell he had been thinking coming back here. When he first left LA, he had just gotten into his truck and started driving, not really caring where he ended up. He crashed in a motel just outside of the city for about a week, sorting things out in his head and, he hated to admit it, brooding. But he realized he couldn't stay in that motel forever and once again got into his truck and started driving. He had been somewhat shocked to discover nearly forty-five minutes later that he was on the highway that led directly back to his hometown. Sunnydale, California, aka the Hellmouth.
Taking a deep breath, Lindsey started his truck once again and headed into town, deciding to drive around aimlessly and take in the sights, or lack thereof as was most often the case. Looking around, he noted that things hadn't really changed much, except for...was that the old high school? Lindsey did a double-take as he drove past the charred remains of Sunnydale High. He wondered to himself what had happened there, and more morbidly, how many people had been killed in the process. Maybe in the ten years since he'd first left, people had started waking up and realizing what sort of town they really lived in. Then again, looking at the crowds of people standing around outside the Bronze--still the hotspot in town, he noted--he realized they were still as oblivious as ever.
Shaking his head, Lindsey drove onwards. In a few minutes, he came across the main graveyard in Sunnydale and found himself peering into the darkness for any signs of danger, more specifically of the undead kind. He could still remember the day he'd first run into a vampire...
Lindsey slammed on the brakes when he spotted a rather petite young woman wandering through the graves. From his distance, he couldn't tell whether or not she was a vampire, but from the furtive looks she was casting into the shadows all around her, he doubted it. Lindsey wondered if she was lost or just plain stupid. Wandering around a graveyard at night was bad enough, but wandering around a graveyard at night on the Hellmouth was just plain suicidal.
His fears were confirmed when he spotted three men stalking towards the woman from behind. Realizing that those guys *were* vampires, and obviously intent on snacking, Lindsey grabbed a stake from his glove compartment and ran towards the woman, cursing along the way. He wasn't quite sure where the sudden impulse to help came from, but he didn't question it.
"Look out! Behind you!" Lindsey yelled at the woman--a redhead--as the vampires came within striking distance. He was shocked to his core when he saw the woman whirl around and face the vampires, her eyes completely devoid of color, and unleash a ball of flame upon them, turning all three of them to ash within seconds. Lindsey found himself speechless.
"Thanks for the warning," the woman turned to him after the vampires had crumbled, this time her eyes a beautiful shade of green. Lindsey was taken aback for a moment by her sheer beauty. His eyes roamed over her form, and he found himself wondering how a woman that looked so beautiful, so innocent, so delicate, could be capable of...*that.* Hell, he better than anyone else should have learned by now that appearances are more than deceiving, but after leaving Wolfram & Hart, he had sort of assumed he would be leaving all of that behind. Guess he'd been wrong.
"Uh...thanks," Lindsey finally managed to collect his thoughts and smile at the woman.
Willow looked the man over. He seemed almost in a daze--not that she could really blame him after seeing her little magick show--and a little disheveled. He was pretty cute, too. She immediately started to try and come up with a rational explanation for what had just happened, but as she looked into the man's eyes, she got the feeling that he wasn't at all surprised by what he had just seen. It was then that she noticed the stake he gripped in his hand. Guess he was enlightened after all.
She smiled back at him, a bright, beautiful smile, and said, "It's not often that you see someone willing to help here," she indicated the stake in his hand, "most people usually run off in the opposite direction."
"Really? Well, I guess I'm not quite used to the customs here yet," Lindsey tucked the stake away into his back pocket.
"Are you new in town?" the woman started to walk out of the graveyard and motioned for him to follow. Lindsey did. "Actually, no. I kind of hate to admit it, but I grew up here. It's been awhile since I've been back, though."
Willow smiled at the comment, "Well aren't you just the regular custom-breaker. 'Cause it's also not often that people come back here once they've left."
"What can I say?" Lindsey shrugged, "I like to live dangerously."
Willow snickered at his off-hand comment, wondering briefly to herself if there was more to those words than he was letting on, and replied, "Well this is certainly the place to do it. By the way, I'm Willow." She extended her hand and Lindsey took it immediately, "Name's Lindsey."
He and Willow came to a stop next to his truck, and Lindsey lifted an eyebrow in confusion at the look of amusement on Willow's face. "Is there something wrong with the truck?" he asked.
Willow let out a full-blown laugh, a sound Lindsey found distinctly pleasing, and lifted a sign off the back of his truck. "You really do like to live dangerously, huh?" She held the sign out to him, the words "Cops suck" printed neatly across it. Lindsey mentally cursed Angel, but quickly found his ire being replaced with amusement as Willow continued to laugh. "I guess an...acquaintance...of mine decided to pull a prank," Lindsey found himself laughing along.
"He must have one hell of a sense of humor," Willow placed the sign--face-down--into the bed of the truck.
"Ugh, that's debatable."
"Not one of your favorite people?"
"No, not really. We clashed a *lot* over the past couple of years, but I guess we came to a type of understanding right before I left."
"That's nice," Willow stated almost absent-mindedly. Lindsey looked into her eyes and noticed an expression of sadness that had come suddenly and replaced the laughter of just moments before. "Would you..." he hesitated, not really sure why he was even asking but knowing that he wanted to get to know this woman a little better, "would you like to get a drink or something? I know it's really late, but--"
"I'd love to," Willow smiled at him again, the sad look in her eyes still visible, but deliberately masked. "I've been out p--, er, walking around for a while now, and a drink sounds like a great way to unwind."
"Great," Lindsey motioned for her to get into the truck, then suddenly realized that he didn't quite remember where to take a lady for a drink. "Um...you mind picking the place? My memory's a little rusty."
Willow grinned at him and sat in the passenger seat, "No problem. I know just the place."
***
"Well, well. You know, Willow, I'm really flattered, but I have to let you know that I'm not that kind of guy," Lindsey joked with his companion as she led him to the front door of her house.
Willow laughed and smacked Lindsey lightly on the chest before turning to unlock the door. "That's really too bad because I could have showed you one hell of a good time," Willow winked at him and stepped inside the house. Turning back to face him, she said, "Do you mind if I don't offer you a formal invitation...?"
Lindsey smiled at her and replied, "Oh, you wound me! Do I look like an undead bloodsucker to you?"
Willow made a grand show of scrutinizing every inch of him, and Lindsey found himself suddenly becoming self-conscious. "Hmm, no...you're much too cute to be evil," she finally concluded.
Lindsey couldn't help but blush at her comment. "Ahem," he cleared his throat and stepped inside the house. "See? I'm part of the living."
"That's good to know," Willow said as she led him to the kitchen.
"Of course I get the idea that even if I wasn't, you'd have no problem dealing with me," Lindsey followed her once again and took a seat at the table.
"Ah, you mean with the--"
"Magick display?" Lindsey lifted an eyebrow and gave her a reassuring smile as she sat down across from him. "It's okay, I know all about that kind of stuff, growing up here and all."
Once again, Willow found herself mentally evaluating the man before him. She wasn't normally the type of girl to just let anybody into her house, especially some stranger she had just met in the middle of the night, but there was just something about him that put her at ease, made her want to be around him, made her want to get to know him.
"Oh, how rude of me!" Willow shot up out of her seat suddenly, "what would you like to drink?"
"Ah, well, when I asked you out I had originally had some type of alcoholic beverage in mind, but..." Lindsey trailed off as Willow pulled out a beer from the fridge and handed it to him while simultaneously getting a can of caffeine-free Sprite for herself. "Beer okay?"
Lindsey nodded and accepted the bottle, raising an inquisitive eyebrow and indicating her Sprite. "Oh, well I don't drink--bad associative memories," Willow stated as she sat back down. "Look, I'm sorry if you feel uncomfortable here. I guess I made some big assumptions bringing you to my house--"
"It's okay," Lindsey cut her off, "I like the privacy." Truth be told, he had initially wondered why she had brought him here, but sitting here across from her, he found that he much preferred to be here, alone with her, than in some crowded bar.
"I'm just going to be living here for a little while," Willow began talking suddenly, her eyes reflecting that sadness again, "I normally live in the dorm on campus, but the past few weeks have been pretty hard on my friends and me, and I guess I just figured that I'd feel more relaxed here at home during the summer."
She purposely left out the part about Tara's suddenly asking Willow for some privacy just days after Buffy's death. Initially, Willow had hovered all she could around Tara, wanting to make sure she was alright, needing to help in some way, needing to find some way to get her mind off of Buffy. But Tara had promptly told her that she had some issues of her own to work out, and that she needed some time to herself. Willow offered to leave the dorm and stay at her parents' house for the summer, and Tara agreed it was a good idea. Her words had stung, but it all seemed to mesh in with the fresh pain of Buffy's death and Willow just added it to the growing heap of things to be mournful about.
"What happened?" Lindsey asked, his curiosity peaked. Guess he'd always be a lawyer at heart.
Willow looked at him for a moment then sighed, "My best friend was killed."
"I'm sorry," Lindsey mentally kicked himself for asking. Honestly, he should have known. This was the Hellmouth, after all.
"And really, people die here all the time. I know that sounds awful--"
"You don't have to worry about offending me," Lindsey reassured her.
"--It's just that this time, it was...well...it was my *best friend.* She's been my whole world for the past five years. I guess I'm just not sure how I'm supposed to live without her."
"We all have that syndrome, I guess," Lindsey shrugged his shoulders slightly, "some type of crutch that we're so used to leaning on that, once it's gone, you feel sort of...empty."
"You've lost someone, too?" Willow looked at him and finally recognized that dazed look as disillusionment.
"You could say that," Lindsey sighed, "the law firm that I used to work for. They hired me fresh out of law school, and for the past couple of years, I've done nothing but work my butt off for them. I don't know, I guess somewhere along the way I figured they were all I needed to make my life complete. I ended up confusing their goals with my own, and it was only recently that I realized that I didn't want to be a part of their world anymore. So I left."
"And now you have no idea what you're going to do with your life?" Willow asked him.
"None whatsoever," Lindsey took another gulp of his drink.
"Is that why you've come back? To rediscover your roots, start back at square one?"
Lindsey smirked inwardly at Willow's echoing of Angel's words and replied, "Something like that. I guess I just figured that I started on this road when I first left Sunnydale to go off to college, so maybe if I came back, I could pick some other road."
"One that leads out of Sunnydale again?" Willow questioned. She didn't really know why she should care whether or not this man stayed in town or not, but she found herself wishing that he would stick around.
"Is that a request for me to stay?" Lindsey countered suggestively.
"Pfft," Willow waved him off, "and pollute this town with *lawyers*? We've got enough baddies as it is."
"Hey, no lawyer jokes," Lindsey warned her playfully, "or I may have to pull out some witch ones."
"Witch?"
"That's what you are, isn't it?" Lindsey found that he couldn't keep himself from dragging the conversation back to the night's earlier events.
"Well, I dabble in magick, but I wouldn't necessarily call myself a witch," Willow replied.
"I see. Well, whatever you call yourself, I sure wish I had had some skills like that when I was growing up here."
"Ran into a lot of vamps?"
"And an assortment of other creatures that go bump in the night. Actually, I met my first vamp when I was fifteen."
"Really? 'Cause I remember meeting my first vamp around that age, too. Maybe it's just a high school thing."
"You know, I think you're onto something there. This is gonna sound weird, but I drove past the old Sunnydale High on my way into town...what happened there?"
Willow, who had taken a gulp of her drink at that very moment, found herself sputtering as she heard his question. "Uh, well, you know," she coughed out, "there was this attack at graduation, and uh--"
Lindsey's sudden laughter cut off the rest of her hasty excuse. "Another fire ball?"
"For your information, no, it was not a fireball. It was about a ton of explosives."
Lindsey's face grew incredulous at her statement. "You're kidding me."
Willow shook her head. "But we kicked the guy's butt."
Lindsey let out a whistle, "I'll bet."
"Hey, you're the one that asked."
"Ugh, so that was me, huh?" Lindsey attempted to lighten the mood, "But, and I'm probably going to regret asking this, too...why do you do it?"
"Do what?" Willow looked at him in confusion.
"Stay here and help people. I mean, I get the feeling that you could have left, too. Gone to any college in the country. Why'd you stay here?"
"You know, I remember being faced with this question before."
"Really?"
"Yeah, from my friend, the one that, well, you know. Anyway, she was a..." Willow pondered briefly over the possibility of explaining about Slayers, but decided against it. "She had a lot of fight in her. She was a good person, really brave, really strong. She sort of made it her mission to kick demon butt."
"Funny, I knew someone like that, too. But go on."
"Anyway, we both stayed here, me because I realized that I wanted to do something meaningful with my life. And what better feeling can you get, when you think about what you've accomplished, than knowing that you've helped someone? That the world is still the way it is because of your influence. That people are still alive because of your actions. I guess I wanted to help fight the good fight."
"And now that your friend is gone?"
"It makes me want to fight even more. She died doing the job she believed in the most--fighting evil. I'm not going to let her death be a waste. I plan on continuing her fight."
"Even if it takes *you* to your grave?" Lindsey knew that he was pushing the issue, but he couldn't help it. He'd spent his whole life believing in looking out for number one, and it had landed him in a place like Wolfram & Hart. Now, sitting here before him was a young woman who had, at such a young age, with so many opportunities out there for her, committed her life to a war she couldn't possibly win, selflessly sealed her own fate in order to change the fates of others. A few weeks ago he would have blown her off as yet another idealist, but now, for some reason, what she said seemed to make a perverse sort of *sense.*
"Boy, you really are the lawyer," Willow accused him, "I mean, they say lawyers have a tendency to by selfish, blunt, crude--"
"--I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you," Lindsey cut her off, internally flinching at each accusation. "It's just that...I guess I'm sort of being forced to reevaluate everything I used to believe in." He looked at Willow, her expression unreadable, and waited for her to say something. When she didn't, he sighed and stood up. "I guess I should be going now." He was at the door, his hand placed over the knob, when he heard her call out to him.
"Lindsey, wait," Willow, came up behind him and turned him to face her. "I'm sorry, too. I didn't mean to accuse you. Everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, their own paths."
"Problem is, I don't think I have a path anymore," Lindsey looked into Willow's eyes and saw compassion radiating from them. He smiled to himself and wished briefly that he could just stand here for a while, looking into her shimmering eyes, and forget about all his problems.
"Everyone has a path," Willow smiled at him, "it just seems like you picked the wrong one."
"Oh, and *I'm* blunt," Lindsey scoffed.
Willow snorted and continued, "But that doesn't mean that you can't start over. Find the right path this time."
Lindsey felt his heart skip a beat as he asked, "If I stayed in town, took your advice, started over, tried to find a new path, would you help me?"
Willow's breath caught in her throat at his question. His eyes burned with such an intense need for answers, for something that would finally help him resolve an internal battle he had obviously been fighting for some time now, that Willow found her heart going out to him, felt the stir of emotions long buried. "I will," she promised. "Anything you need from me, all you have to do is ask."
Lindsey smiled at her, a genuine smile full of warmth and thankfulness, and leaned forward to plant a soft kiss over her lips. Willow was momentarily taken aback by the action, but before she could react, Lindsey had pulled away. "Thank you."
With that, Lindsey turned and walked out, leaving Willow smiling slightly as she placed a finger over her lips. If she didn't have a girlfriend... Willow shook her head to clear herself of that line of thought and closed the door as she saw Lindsey get into his truck. As her thoughts drifted back to the kiss, she wondered what exactly she had just gotten herself into.
As Lindsey drove off, he smiled at the memory of Willow's lips against his. Maybe rediscovering his roots wouldn't be so bad after all.
THE END
SPOILERS: Everything up to the "Buffy" season 5 finale and "Angel" season 2 finale.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This fic was actually written quite a while ago, but I figured I'd post it here as sort of a test run -- this is my first post to FF.net.
Roots
Angel: "So where're you going, Lindsey? Back to your roots?"
Lindsey: "Something like that."
-- Angel, "Dead End" (Season Two)
He couldn't believe he had come back here. After all these years, after the way he'd first left, after all the dreams he'd envisioned for himself, here he was again. Lindsey brought his '56 pickup truck to a halt just on the outskirts of the town and craned his neck to read the words on the sign that lay smashed on the road. It wasn't that he'd never read those words before, but for some reason he felt like reading the sign would make his return more official, less surreal.
'Welcome to Sunnydale.'
Lindsey finally made out the words on the sign and snickered to himself as he thought about all the times he'd wanted to obliterate that sign. Looks like someone had finally beaten him to it. Lindsey leaned back into his seat and ran his fingers through his hair, exhaling and wondering what in the hell he had been thinking coming back here. When he first left LA, he had just gotten into his truck and started driving, not really caring where he ended up. He crashed in a motel just outside of the city for about a week, sorting things out in his head and, he hated to admit it, brooding. But he realized he couldn't stay in that motel forever and once again got into his truck and started driving. He had been somewhat shocked to discover nearly forty-five minutes later that he was on the highway that led directly back to his hometown. Sunnydale, California, aka the Hellmouth.
Taking a deep breath, Lindsey started his truck once again and headed into town, deciding to drive around aimlessly and take in the sights, or lack thereof as was most often the case. Looking around, he noted that things hadn't really changed much, except for...was that the old high school? Lindsey did a double-take as he drove past the charred remains of Sunnydale High. He wondered to himself what had happened there, and more morbidly, how many people had been killed in the process. Maybe in the ten years since he'd first left, people had started waking up and realizing what sort of town they really lived in. Then again, looking at the crowds of people standing around outside the Bronze--still the hotspot in town, he noted--he realized they were still as oblivious as ever.
Shaking his head, Lindsey drove onwards. In a few minutes, he came across the main graveyard in Sunnydale and found himself peering into the darkness for any signs of danger, more specifically of the undead kind. He could still remember the day he'd first run into a vampire...
Lindsey slammed on the brakes when he spotted a rather petite young woman wandering through the graves. From his distance, he couldn't tell whether or not she was a vampire, but from the furtive looks she was casting into the shadows all around her, he doubted it. Lindsey wondered if she was lost or just plain stupid. Wandering around a graveyard at night was bad enough, but wandering around a graveyard at night on the Hellmouth was just plain suicidal.
His fears were confirmed when he spotted three men stalking towards the woman from behind. Realizing that those guys *were* vampires, and obviously intent on snacking, Lindsey grabbed a stake from his glove compartment and ran towards the woman, cursing along the way. He wasn't quite sure where the sudden impulse to help came from, but he didn't question it.
"Look out! Behind you!" Lindsey yelled at the woman--a redhead--as the vampires came within striking distance. He was shocked to his core when he saw the woman whirl around and face the vampires, her eyes completely devoid of color, and unleash a ball of flame upon them, turning all three of them to ash within seconds. Lindsey found himself speechless.
"Thanks for the warning," the woman turned to him after the vampires had crumbled, this time her eyes a beautiful shade of green. Lindsey was taken aback for a moment by her sheer beauty. His eyes roamed over her form, and he found himself wondering how a woman that looked so beautiful, so innocent, so delicate, could be capable of...*that.* Hell, he better than anyone else should have learned by now that appearances are more than deceiving, but after leaving Wolfram & Hart, he had sort of assumed he would be leaving all of that behind. Guess he'd been wrong.
"Uh...thanks," Lindsey finally managed to collect his thoughts and smile at the woman.
Willow looked the man over. He seemed almost in a daze--not that she could really blame him after seeing her little magick show--and a little disheveled. He was pretty cute, too. She immediately started to try and come up with a rational explanation for what had just happened, but as she looked into the man's eyes, she got the feeling that he wasn't at all surprised by what he had just seen. It was then that she noticed the stake he gripped in his hand. Guess he was enlightened after all.
She smiled back at him, a bright, beautiful smile, and said, "It's not often that you see someone willing to help here," she indicated the stake in his hand, "most people usually run off in the opposite direction."
"Really? Well, I guess I'm not quite used to the customs here yet," Lindsey tucked the stake away into his back pocket.
"Are you new in town?" the woman started to walk out of the graveyard and motioned for him to follow. Lindsey did. "Actually, no. I kind of hate to admit it, but I grew up here. It's been awhile since I've been back, though."
Willow smiled at the comment, "Well aren't you just the regular custom-breaker. 'Cause it's also not often that people come back here once they've left."
"What can I say?" Lindsey shrugged, "I like to live dangerously."
Willow snickered at his off-hand comment, wondering briefly to herself if there was more to those words than he was letting on, and replied, "Well this is certainly the place to do it. By the way, I'm Willow." She extended her hand and Lindsey took it immediately, "Name's Lindsey."
He and Willow came to a stop next to his truck, and Lindsey lifted an eyebrow in confusion at the look of amusement on Willow's face. "Is there something wrong with the truck?" he asked.
Willow let out a full-blown laugh, a sound Lindsey found distinctly pleasing, and lifted a sign off the back of his truck. "You really do like to live dangerously, huh?" She held the sign out to him, the words "Cops suck" printed neatly across it. Lindsey mentally cursed Angel, but quickly found his ire being replaced with amusement as Willow continued to laugh. "I guess an...acquaintance...of mine decided to pull a prank," Lindsey found himself laughing along.
"He must have one hell of a sense of humor," Willow placed the sign--face-down--into the bed of the truck.
"Ugh, that's debatable."
"Not one of your favorite people?"
"No, not really. We clashed a *lot* over the past couple of years, but I guess we came to a type of understanding right before I left."
"That's nice," Willow stated almost absent-mindedly. Lindsey looked into her eyes and noticed an expression of sadness that had come suddenly and replaced the laughter of just moments before. "Would you..." he hesitated, not really sure why he was even asking but knowing that he wanted to get to know this woman a little better, "would you like to get a drink or something? I know it's really late, but--"
"I'd love to," Willow smiled at him again, the sad look in her eyes still visible, but deliberately masked. "I've been out p--, er, walking around for a while now, and a drink sounds like a great way to unwind."
"Great," Lindsey motioned for her to get into the truck, then suddenly realized that he didn't quite remember where to take a lady for a drink. "Um...you mind picking the place? My memory's a little rusty."
Willow grinned at him and sat in the passenger seat, "No problem. I know just the place."
***
"Well, well. You know, Willow, I'm really flattered, but I have to let you know that I'm not that kind of guy," Lindsey joked with his companion as she led him to the front door of her house.
Willow laughed and smacked Lindsey lightly on the chest before turning to unlock the door. "That's really too bad because I could have showed you one hell of a good time," Willow winked at him and stepped inside the house. Turning back to face him, she said, "Do you mind if I don't offer you a formal invitation...?"
Lindsey smiled at her and replied, "Oh, you wound me! Do I look like an undead bloodsucker to you?"
Willow made a grand show of scrutinizing every inch of him, and Lindsey found himself suddenly becoming self-conscious. "Hmm, no...you're much too cute to be evil," she finally concluded.
Lindsey couldn't help but blush at her comment. "Ahem," he cleared his throat and stepped inside the house. "See? I'm part of the living."
"That's good to know," Willow said as she led him to the kitchen.
"Of course I get the idea that even if I wasn't, you'd have no problem dealing with me," Lindsey followed her once again and took a seat at the table.
"Ah, you mean with the--"
"Magick display?" Lindsey lifted an eyebrow and gave her a reassuring smile as she sat down across from him. "It's okay, I know all about that kind of stuff, growing up here and all."
Once again, Willow found herself mentally evaluating the man before him. She wasn't normally the type of girl to just let anybody into her house, especially some stranger she had just met in the middle of the night, but there was just something about him that put her at ease, made her want to be around him, made her want to get to know him.
"Oh, how rude of me!" Willow shot up out of her seat suddenly, "what would you like to drink?"
"Ah, well, when I asked you out I had originally had some type of alcoholic beverage in mind, but..." Lindsey trailed off as Willow pulled out a beer from the fridge and handed it to him while simultaneously getting a can of caffeine-free Sprite for herself. "Beer okay?"
Lindsey nodded and accepted the bottle, raising an inquisitive eyebrow and indicating her Sprite. "Oh, well I don't drink--bad associative memories," Willow stated as she sat back down. "Look, I'm sorry if you feel uncomfortable here. I guess I made some big assumptions bringing you to my house--"
"It's okay," Lindsey cut her off, "I like the privacy." Truth be told, he had initially wondered why she had brought him here, but sitting here across from her, he found that he much preferred to be here, alone with her, than in some crowded bar.
"I'm just going to be living here for a little while," Willow began talking suddenly, her eyes reflecting that sadness again, "I normally live in the dorm on campus, but the past few weeks have been pretty hard on my friends and me, and I guess I just figured that I'd feel more relaxed here at home during the summer."
She purposely left out the part about Tara's suddenly asking Willow for some privacy just days after Buffy's death. Initially, Willow had hovered all she could around Tara, wanting to make sure she was alright, needing to help in some way, needing to find some way to get her mind off of Buffy. But Tara had promptly told her that she had some issues of her own to work out, and that she needed some time to herself. Willow offered to leave the dorm and stay at her parents' house for the summer, and Tara agreed it was a good idea. Her words had stung, but it all seemed to mesh in with the fresh pain of Buffy's death and Willow just added it to the growing heap of things to be mournful about.
"What happened?" Lindsey asked, his curiosity peaked. Guess he'd always be a lawyer at heart.
Willow looked at him for a moment then sighed, "My best friend was killed."
"I'm sorry," Lindsey mentally kicked himself for asking. Honestly, he should have known. This was the Hellmouth, after all.
"And really, people die here all the time. I know that sounds awful--"
"You don't have to worry about offending me," Lindsey reassured her.
"--It's just that this time, it was...well...it was my *best friend.* She's been my whole world for the past five years. I guess I'm just not sure how I'm supposed to live without her."
"We all have that syndrome, I guess," Lindsey shrugged his shoulders slightly, "some type of crutch that we're so used to leaning on that, once it's gone, you feel sort of...empty."
"You've lost someone, too?" Willow looked at him and finally recognized that dazed look as disillusionment.
"You could say that," Lindsey sighed, "the law firm that I used to work for. They hired me fresh out of law school, and for the past couple of years, I've done nothing but work my butt off for them. I don't know, I guess somewhere along the way I figured they were all I needed to make my life complete. I ended up confusing their goals with my own, and it was only recently that I realized that I didn't want to be a part of their world anymore. So I left."
"And now you have no idea what you're going to do with your life?" Willow asked him.
"None whatsoever," Lindsey took another gulp of his drink.
"Is that why you've come back? To rediscover your roots, start back at square one?"
Lindsey smirked inwardly at Willow's echoing of Angel's words and replied, "Something like that. I guess I just figured that I started on this road when I first left Sunnydale to go off to college, so maybe if I came back, I could pick some other road."
"One that leads out of Sunnydale again?" Willow questioned. She didn't really know why she should care whether or not this man stayed in town or not, but she found herself wishing that he would stick around.
"Is that a request for me to stay?" Lindsey countered suggestively.
"Pfft," Willow waved him off, "and pollute this town with *lawyers*? We've got enough baddies as it is."
"Hey, no lawyer jokes," Lindsey warned her playfully, "or I may have to pull out some witch ones."
"Witch?"
"That's what you are, isn't it?" Lindsey found that he couldn't keep himself from dragging the conversation back to the night's earlier events.
"Well, I dabble in magick, but I wouldn't necessarily call myself a witch," Willow replied.
"I see. Well, whatever you call yourself, I sure wish I had had some skills like that when I was growing up here."
"Ran into a lot of vamps?"
"And an assortment of other creatures that go bump in the night. Actually, I met my first vamp when I was fifteen."
"Really? 'Cause I remember meeting my first vamp around that age, too. Maybe it's just a high school thing."
"You know, I think you're onto something there. This is gonna sound weird, but I drove past the old Sunnydale High on my way into town...what happened there?"
Willow, who had taken a gulp of her drink at that very moment, found herself sputtering as she heard his question. "Uh, well, you know," she coughed out, "there was this attack at graduation, and uh--"
Lindsey's sudden laughter cut off the rest of her hasty excuse. "Another fire ball?"
"For your information, no, it was not a fireball. It was about a ton of explosives."
Lindsey's face grew incredulous at her statement. "You're kidding me."
Willow shook her head. "But we kicked the guy's butt."
Lindsey let out a whistle, "I'll bet."
"Hey, you're the one that asked."
"Ugh, so that was me, huh?" Lindsey attempted to lighten the mood, "But, and I'm probably going to regret asking this, too...why do you do it?"
"Do what?" Willow looked at him in confusion.
"Stay here and help people. I mean, I get the feeling that you could have left, too. Gone to any college in the country. Why'd you stay here?"
"You know, I remember being faced with this question before."
"Really?"
"Yeah, from my friend, the one that, well, you know. Anyway, she was a..." Willow pondered briefly over the possibility of explaining about Slayers, but decided against it. "She had a lot of fight in her. She was a good person, really brave, really strong. She sort of made it her mission to kick demon butt."
"Funny, I knew someone like that, too. But go on."
"Anyway, we both stayed here, me because I realized that I wanted to do something meaningful with my life. And what better feeling can you get, when you think about what you've accomplished, than knowing that you've helped someone? That the world is still the way it is because of your influence. That people are still alive because of your actions. I guess I wanted to help fight the good fight."
"And now that your friend is gone?"
"It makes me want to fight even more. She died doing the job she believed in the most--fighting evil. I'm not going to let her death be a waste. I plan on continuing her fight."
"Even if it takes *you* to your grave?" Lindsey knew that he was pushing the issue, but he couldn't help it. He'd spent his whole life believing in looking out for number one, and it had landed him in a place like Wolfram & Hart. Now, sitting here before him was a young woman who had, at such a young age, with so many opportunities out there for her, committed her life to a war she couldn't possibly win, selflessly sealed her own fate in order to change the fates of others. A few weeks ago he would have blown her off as yet another idealist, but now, for some reason, what she said seemed to make a perverse sort of *sense.*
"Boy, you really are the lawyer," Willow accused him, "I mean, they say lawyers have a tendency to by selfish, blunt, crude--"
"--I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you," Lindsey cut her off, internally flinching at each accusation. "It's just that...I guess I'm sort of being forced to reevaluate everything I used to believe in." He looked at Willow, her expression unreadable, and waited for her to say something. When she didn't, he sighed and stood up. "I guess I should be going now." He was at the door, his hand placed over the knob, when he heard her call out to him.
"Lindsey, wait," Willow, came up behind him and turned him to face her. "I'm sorry, too. I didn't mean to accuse you. Everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, their own paths."
"Problem is, I don't think I have a path anymore," Lindsey looked into Willow's eyes and saw compassion radiating from them. He smiled to himself and wished briefly that he could just stand here for a while, looking into her shimmering eyes, and forget about all his problems.
"Everyone has a path," Willow smiled at him, "it just seems like you picked the wrong one."
"Oh, and *I'm* blunt," Lindsey scoffed.
Willow snorted and continued, "But that doesn't mean that you can't start over. Find the right path this time."
Lindsey felt his heart skip a beat as he asked, "If I stayed in town, took your advice, started over, tried to find a new path, would you help me?"
Willow's breath caught in her throat at his question. His eyes burned with such an intense need for answers, for something that would finally help him resolve an internal battle he had obviously been fighting for some time now, that Willow found her heart going out to him, felt the stir of emotions long buried. "I will," she promised. "Anything you need from me, all you have to do is ask."
Lindsey smiled at her, a genuine smile full of warmth and thankfulness, and leaned forward to plant a soft kiss over her lips. Willow was momentarily taken aback by the action, but before she could react, Lindsey had pulled away. "Thank you."
With that, Lindsey turned and walked out, leaving Willow smiling slightly as she placed a finger over her lips. If she didn't have a girlfriend... Willow shook her head to clear herself of that line of thought and closed the door as she saw Lindsey get into his truck. As her thoughts drifted back to the kiss, she wondered what exactly she had just gotten herself into.
As Lindsey drove off, he smiled at the memory of Willow's lips against his. Maybe rediscovering his roots wouldn't be so bad after all.
THE END