Title: Nice and Easy
Author: Spike's Heart
Email: spikes_heart@yahoo.com
Pairing: None
Rating: PG
Setting: Pre-All Roads Lead To Rome, Post BtVS - Chosen
Disclaimer: If they were mine, I'd treat them nicer than Joss ever did.
Feedback: Yes, please!
Archive: Ask me, nicely.
Warning: None
A/N: It's my therapy session, my issues.
Summary: Willow reflects on her life.
Nice and Easy
When Willow awoke to a clear blue sky and brightly shining sun, she decided to take advantage of an all too rare occurrence. She packed a straw basket with all the essentials for a picnic lunch, loaded her small, orange ragtop Volkswagon, and headed out. She had been visiting Giles, in Bath… but he was chairing yet another round of meetings, trying to organize the new Slayers Academy as well as the revamp the Watchers organization. It just meant she had no commitments and could spend the day reading in the countryside. Nice and easy.
Heh, she thought to herself. Nice and easy. So many different things that phrase has meant to her over the years. When she was a sophomore at Sunnydale High, her schoolwork was nice and easy. No trouble for the little geek she was. Personal life sucked beyond the telling of it. Except for Xander, she had no real friends until Buffy arrived.
Nice and easy in her college years; well, her relationship with Tara blossomed, and things between them were nice and easy… they just fit well together. Nice and Easy also allowed her to brighten up her red hair a shade or two. Just to rev up the tone a bit, and she always got a chuckle out of buying the brand.
When all hell broke loose, under the guise of Glory, her magicks made things nice and easy. Always looking for a shortcut, something to ease the way; to show Buffy she could help. To do things better than… well, Giles, she thought. She wanted to show that she was a grown up, and talented and special.
Then Buffy took a swan dive off the tower. Nothing was nice and easy after that.
Stretched out on her blanket, on the warm grassy plain, looking up at the cloudless sky, Willow remembered it all. How she reveled in her leadership when it all started. Strong Willow, telling everyone what to do, where to go, how to survive. Got the Buffybot up and slaying, just a few odd programming glitches that sent Spike into varying degrees of depression or rage. She still feels twinges of regret at that… she had found it so nice and easy to wind the vamp up; make him pay for ever having made the bot in the first place. For assuming he had a right to hang with them, or have a relationship of ANY kind with Buffy. Now that he had paid for their lives with his, she could only mourn the lost chances at true friendship.
Leadership weighed her down, far too soon after assuming Buffy's mantle. Had to make things easier, make them like they used to be… when Buffy was their leader. Nice and easy. Easier, anyway. Arrogant witch that she was… everything was so clear then.
Willow frowned… even to herself, it all sounds so insanely stupid now. Resurrection. Giles was right. She could admit it, now. Rank, arrogant amateur. Couldn't live life as it unfolded. Had to make everything nice and easy. Turned it into a freakin' disaster.
Buffy suffered for her conceit, as did everyone in turn. An unhappy Slayer made for a miserable entourage.
These days, thanks to the help of the coven in Devon, her new responsibilities towards the Watchers and Slayers… Willow has learned the true meaning of inner peace.
She places her hands on the cool grass, takes a deep breath, and lets the past go. These days, she takes things nice and easy.
