Title: Run Baby Run
Author: iridescentZEN
Pairing: Willow/Angelus
Disclaimer: Characters are not mine.
Category: Post-Series (btvs/angel), dark!fic Summary: Running never seemed to save anyone.
Author's notes: Thank you to velvetwhip (Gabrielle) for reading/e-mailing/and offering suggestions despite our mutual headaches. Thank you to KallieRose for the beta and the kind words. The title is from track 02 on "Bleed Like Me" by Garbage.
It was pure coincidence that Angel and Willow's paths crossed. The alley was like every other alley in Los Angeles. Dumpster, garbage, litter, rats. The dangerous mojo that was in the air, alerting humans that there might be something evil lurking in the dark recesses behind cardboard boxes and broken glass.
Willow was a shivering, dirty mess. Angel wasn't even supposed to be there. Wouldn't have been there if the bah'rinsces demon he was chasing hadn't run that way in an effort to not be killed.
It didn't save him.
Running never seemed to save anyone.
Angel didn't know how long he stared at her, but he knew it was long enough that it was rude. It was strange to see her the way she was. Large black eyes, and black veins trailing across her face. The track marks of a magic junkie.
Not Willow. Not her. Not this.
Help her, Angel's conscience urged. That's what I do. I help the helpless. Remember?
Something made him hesitate. Maybe if he called Giles. Or Buffy? Someone had to be looking for her, right? Then why is she out here with her back against the cold brick of the building behind her, bleeding and scared?
What happened? Angel's brow furrowed as he watched her try to stand up. Her girlfriend got murdered. She murdered her murderer. Tried to end the world. Yeah, he heard it all, but she reformed. Gave him the gift of his soul for a second time without protest.
Willow redeemed herself in the eyes of the Powers That Be. The key to the world being saved was Willow.
All of that didn't add up to the scene before him.
Drawn to her lips, Angel watched as she licked at the chapped surfaces, seeking relief even if it only lasted seconds. It looked as though she was trying to say something to him. In fact, he could swear that she was telling him to run.
That couldn't be it though. Could it? It wasn't his first reaction. He stood firm even against the bowels of Hell as he watched his friends, his soldiers, die one by one. When the dust cleared and the inky black of night began to lighten to the gray of dawn, only Angel and Spike were still standing.
They were as dead as their friends. It didn't count, and it wasn't fair. He lost everything, and he was bitter about it.
Angel's dark brown eyes were fixed on Willow, narrowing with anger. If there was any chance at all of saving Fred then Willow was the one person in the world who could have done it. But she was busy. She wasn't available. She was off in the Himalayas, not a care in the world. Then he remembered all the good that she had done, and she couldn't have known.
Giles probably couldn't contact her. Probably couldn't even do a locater spell. Besides, the Willow he knew would exhaust herself trying to help Fred. Then again, the frightened woman in the shadows was not the Willow that he knew.
The idea of Willow telling him to run, especially in the state that she was in, was ... sad. She didn't look capable of swatting a fly at the moment, and he was certain she was tapped out magically.
Oh, the magic hummed around her like an entity, but for the moment she was as harmless as a puppy.
Years living as Angelus made him knowledgeable in all things demon. In all things evil.
It didn't take a village to burn a witch.
All it took was one accusing finger pointed at her.
Resentment still bubbled beneath his flesh. It was hard to make it simmer when it was constantly at a boil. Gypsies. Witches. The same thing. Curses were stupid. He didn't kill those people. Angelus did. They should have staked him and been done with it. Stupid witches. Trigger finger with the magic, they don't bother to think things through. Act now, pay later. Isn't that what Buffy told him about that girl who got switched with her mother? A mirror to defeat a powerful witch? Sentencing her to an eternity inside a trophy? It was sad, but caution was obviously thrown to the wind.
It almost always was with witches.
They were dangerous, he would give her that. They were mercurial and more powerful than he ever imagined.
Willow, in the state that she was in, telling him to run? It made him bristle with offense. But he cared about her; he owed her. Besides, he helped the helpless. And she needed help. At full power though? He might have heeded the warning. She didn't have to blink to turn him to ash.
"Angel, run," she whispered, still trying to stand up on shaky legs and get her bearings.
The smell of her blood was thick in the air, and it was only then that he ran his eyes up and down her body, seeing the small spikes embedded in her shoulder, in her back and in her arms.
She must have summoned an Alkesh, a notorious witch-hating demon with a porcupine-like defense mechanism. Never good. And though the demon spikes were not deadly, they were excruciatingly painful. "Come on," he offered, placing his black trench coat around her shoulders, "Let's get you cleaned up."
Only Willow shrugged the coat off, her curled up fists hitting at his chest with far more strength than a tapped out witch should have. "Run!" she screamed, tears falling from her unfocused eyes. "Please, Angel. Please ... just leave me. Leave me here. You don't understand. I can't control it anymore. I know what's going to happen, and you have to run."
That's when he punched her just hard enough to knock her out cold. It hurt his hand, his soul, but it was a necessary evil. The last thing he needed was to walk the dark streets of Los Angeles to his car with a screaming, protesting woman.
It wouldn't do any good to give the LAPD a reason.
If there was another way, he would have taken it, he assured himself.
Right?
When Willow woke up her reality shifted. She had gone from a magic junkie to a clean, normal girl. That just happened to have a reservoir of magic so full inside her that she would drown if she didn't open the dam.
She used to be this normal girl who went to college and never missed a class. And one who regularly helped save the world.
Not one who denied it.
Who yearned to be gone from it.
She felt like that girl she used to be, who only let someone she loved enjoy her body. That painfully shy girl, who would never whore herself for the magic. That girl she was before she got so deep in the magics one painful little step at a time. She helped Buffy, saved the world time and time again. Did a spell that had her so high, she wasn't even sure she would ever come down. Activating every potential slayer's power.
Honey, I am the magics.
Willow knew that no matter how much she felt like that girl she used to be, she wasn't. That amount of magic, good or not, froze its way through her body like dry ice. When the numbness wore off, she was full of rot, full of pain. She could only feel the flame when the magic sparked. Only felt the heat when it wrapped her in its insulated cocoon. That normal girl ... just wasn't normal anymore. The magic swirled beneath her skin. Depleted only hours ago, it was now replenished and more powerful than before. She was an overcharged battery.
Acid was going to spill over, and someone was going to get burned.
The dark purple percale sheets felt too warm against her naked body. She ached in every place possible, and it bothered her that she didn't know how she got there or where she was.
Willow didn't move, remembering the razor like spikes of the demon that had ... reacted poorly to being summoned. Magic always had consequences, and abusing it made that more so. Still, that kind of pain was something she wasn't used to anymore. There were blurry memories of the last few months lurking within her, but half the time she was lucky if she remembered her own name. It took real concentration when she tried to figure out why she had bruises or why she burned between her legs.
The last thing she remembered was pain, and then there was darkness.
"Oh. Willow, you're up. Um, I hope you don't mind that I tended to your wounds," Angel said, from the leather chair beside her bed where he was sitting. Her eyes widened incredulously when it finally registered who she was with.
"Angel?" she asked, like she didn't really believe he was there or real. Like there was a better chance of her being struck by lightening than ending up being rescued by him.
"Willow," he replied back, deadpan. "I brought new bandages for your wounds."
Angel pointedly looked away from her intense gaze. Her hair had turned back to mostly normal if you counted two inches of dark brown roots, then streaks of black through strawberry red.
"Why?" she asked, holding the sheet up to her chest as she brought herself to a half mast sitting position.
Ignoring the question, Angel poured some antiseptic on a wash cloth, and placed it on her shoulder where three small holes were. Like he expected, she didn't even blink at the pain.
Angel felt a chill in the air as his flesh came in contact with hers. An ominous silence covered them, only broken by the short rasps of her breathing. The wounds on her body that had started closing up, suddenly sprang blood like fresh injuries.
The fat globules of blood reeked of darkness, of something that made his fangs itch and started a low burn of desire in his belly.
Willow's eyes were green when she fixed them on Angel, who despite everything, was trying to quell the flow of blood. "You should have run."
"What?" he shook his head. "You're not making any sense," he said, watching with growing concern as the inky veins that had faded earlier were now thicker and darker upon her face. The air around them crackled, wind howled in his ears but the windows were shut.
Have I lost another soldier, another friend to darkness?
Angel tried to walk away from her, to take a moment and figure out how he was going to proceed, but he felt like he was stuck in a riptide being pulled in to the ocean that was Willow.
Their lips met briefly before Angel even had time to wonder how he got there, and her hands were everywhere they shouldn't be; her magic was overwhelming, her taste unbelievable, but Buffy's face, her sixteen year old baby face and not her twenty two year old Immortal loving face, lingered behind his closed eyes.
Buffy.
The one true love of his life. The only person in the world who could give him one true moment of happiness.
"No guilt," Willow admonished, her voice distorted like a ghost that was caught on tape and amplified. There was a crooked smile on her face.
Just like that, Buffy was gone. And there were Willow lips, and Willow tongue. She was holy water, burning holes through him like the demon he was, but he felt like she should be burning too.
Because it wasn't right.
No matter how unbelievably good it felt.
It was downright sinful.
Willow's touch was thrilling and powerful. His senses were somehow enhanced just by being near her, like she was the drug ecstasy actualized in human form. And he remembered what ecstasy had done to him the last time. What had very nearly happened.
With a sinking feeling in his gut, Angel realized that he didn't care.
Not a bit.
In his mind he knew at this point that he was a willing victim.
The black shirt he was wearing was in tatters around his waist, and he moaned when her hand connected with his chest, jolting his entire body with an electric shock when her palm laid flat against his stimulated flesh.
The skin beneath her hand sizzled.
Angel stiffened, a look of unbridled bliss slowly forming across his face. It was reflected in hers as sparks of himself traveled to her. He was being taken in by osmosis, and never given back.
Is this sex? he wondered, If it isn't, what is it?
There was nothing in the vault of Angelus in his mind to let him in on exactly what was happening.
Angel was touching her then, his hands gently cradling her head when Willow felt like she took too much. She backed up until she met the cold wood of the headboard, and his fingers tightened painfully in her hair, but she still didn't take her hand away.
Willow couldn't break the connection.
It was a true moment of happiness, magically induced but still true, still real.
Only Angel wasn't there anymore to enjoy it, because she had sucked him clean out of his shell.
Bye-bye now.
"Hey, wow," Angelus was in full game face, "Willow. Long time, no see." Yellow orbs trailed her body completely nonplussed by the sparkling hand still siphoning the smallest remnants of soul from him, "Naked and in my bed. You sure do know how to show a vamp a good time."
Willow was incapable of running. Even if she managed to break the magic connection, he still had her pinned to the headboard.
Besides, running never seemed to save anyone.
"Anything you want to say before I kill you? Like maybe, I'm sorry for giving you that disgusting soul, Angelus. That would be ... swell. I'll kill you anyway, but it would still be swell."
Oh, he wouldn't be killing her anytime soon. He owed her. It wouldn't be pretty. Besides, it was so much fun playing with his food.
Maybe he'd keep her around. Not to forgive her. But it wasn't like Darla was around, and Dru was unstable. Angelus was not a solitary vampire. He needed a pack. A mate. Someone to hunt with. The darkness in Willow called to him. She was a different witch than the last time they met.
Very different.
She had a whole new flavor.
Angelus felt like he could finally have a mate that suited him, that he could be proud of. The power inside her was raw. Completely evil, the door keeping all that shut would be unhinged. It didn't hurt that she was more beautiful black eyed and deadly.
It sounded like a good time to him.
They would definitely take the time to travel the world, picking off what was left of her friends one by one. It might horrify her now, but in a few weeks she'd be bored out of her mind and begging for someone familiar to kill.
Willow cringed when he bowed his head to her neck, licking the salty beads of sweat from her skin.
"I'm sorry Angel," she said, as she felt the tips of his fangs against her throat, "You should have run."
End.