~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
~Part: 6~ Gallantly Streaming
Too slowly, Willow's eyes adjusted to the dark area near the loud river where her daughter had stopped screaming. Coming upon the scene was like waking up from a nightmare to realize that your bedroom is on fire and there's no way to get past the flames. The mixed drink of urgency and hard rock adrenaline was something she hadn't experienced in years. Fear in its purest form. The forced scary montages of modern-day horror movies with their typecast actors had nothing on this scene, which even stripped of sound and color was more terrifying that anything the Hellmouth had spewed out in the years she'd spent in Sunnydale. Only this time, Buffy Summers would not save the day.
Angel stood about six feet from the bank of the river, sopping wet. He was cradling his left arm against his chest and growling. In full vampire mode, his yellow eyes were trained on a thin, wiry-looking man with a Bill Gates haircut and a lethal smile. A ragged army backpack, not regulation, just purchased from a surplus store, lay open at his feet to reveal a small arsenal of weapons including several pointed wooden stakes. The purple glint of insanity was in Byron's eyes as he pointed a .22 with rock steady resolve at Alexa.
Alexa's eyes were locked fearfully on the man with the gun. She clamped her lips shut and her chest rose and fell with the quick breathing of her racing heart. A wet spot on the front of her nightgown was evidence enough of her terror.
"Oh, God!" Willow cried out in desperation. Byron instantly turned the gun on her, revealing that he wasn't as in control of the situation as he thought.
"Nobody move!" Byron shouted.
Angel moved to make a mad grab for his daughter. In the dark it was hard to ascertain distance and he cursed loudly as he stopped in his tracks still out of arms reach, like someone had just shouted "red light" in a child's game. His child, his only child, faced death. Death, at six years old. No amount of honesty about life could have prepared his precocious baby for such a horror. The "what-if" situations were enough to make him want to forget about the gun trained on Willow and sink his teeth into the madman's jugular vein, damn the consequences.
Byron sidled closer to Willow, his hand very steady on the gun. He smelled of humid river and dirt, probably from cowering in the woods for hours, waiting like a lioness for a zebra. Only the river moved, burbling merrily, unaware of the tension above its banks.
"Hello, Willow," Byron began conversationally, as though she'd just breezed in the door from her lunch break. "I was going to haggle for the answers I need, your daughter for your time travel secrets. But I'm now feeling that getting to watch your brains splattered all over this picture perfect landscape would be just as satisfying. They're on my tail now. May as well give them something to really charge me for."
Her brain revolted at his stark imagery but she had no idea what to do. It wasn't like talking a man off a ledge. There was a very real gun with very real bullets pointed at her head. Angel was immobile, torn between the decision to run forward and protect his daughter at the expense of threatening her safety. She wanted to tell him to forget about her, to just shove Alexa out of the way and then tear Byron Mead limb from limb, but her tongue felt paralyzed like novocaine and she couldn't speak. One base thought scraped its way out of her mouth and landed at his feet with an anticlimactic thud.
"You're mad."
"Mad or not, I'm the one with the gun."
Inarguable logic.
"You're not the only one with a gun."
The sing-song voice came from Alexa's mouth but the tone, the easy confidence and playful attitude sounded exactly like Buffy Summers. Willow craned her neck around Byron and gaped at her daughter, wanted to laugh at the utter absurdity of it. Alexa braced her feet shoulder width apart, her little stomach protruding from the uncomfortable angle and heavy pistol which she held in both hands and aimed at Byron's heart.
"Fucking brat!" Byron spat angrily. "You don't even know how to use that! You can't even hold it, much less shoot the damn thing."
"How do you know?" Alexa taunted him with a sassy confidence Willow and Angel both prayed wouldn't get them all killed. Trusting the Slayer was one thing. Trusting their very bold but mostly sheltered daughter was another story in another language. In the not so distance, sirens began their thready wail of warning.
"You wanna play with guns, little girl?" Byron sneered, his soggy breath hitting Willow's nostrils. "Let me show you how it works!"
He cocked the gun. Willow tensed up and heard a single shot but felt no pain, only warm blood splashing her chest and trickling down her arms. Too surreal to scream.
Alexa screamed though, like a banshee, and dropped the pistol she'd just fired. Angel dove in like a raven and snatched up the gun, pointing it at Byron's head as he curled protectively on the ground, groaning in icy pain from the gunshot wound to his belly.
Willow immediately unfroze and ran the few steps over to her daughter, scooping her up in her arms and holding her with trembling arms, her tongue loose enough to murmur soothing words in the soft mother-language she'd learned to speak. Timeless crooning that unfortunately failed to comfort her traumatized child.
Local and state police arrived minutes later, as did an ambulance and a superfluous fire truck.
Willow remembered smiling, right before she lost consciousness, noticing that the lights to finally invade their darkness were red, white, and blue.
"Patriotic," she observed, and fainted dead away.
~Part: 7~ Recovery
The thrumming of her migraine headache faded away like the last chord in a concerto. Willow opened her eyes. Her eyelids hurt from being squinched shut for so long and she couldn't believe she'd had two migraines in one week. Ugh.
From her position on the hospital bed she could see two pairs of feet outside the doorway. One wore black leather boots. That had to be Angel. The other wore navy blue dress shoes with a no-nonsense heels. She didn't see Alexa's little feet anywhere. She'd been drifting in and out of consciousness all day with pain tightly squeezing her skull, but she always had the presence of mind to call out for Alexa. Angel usually answered her and she sank back into gray oblivion.
This time, though, sleep was not ebbing in to claim her and she ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth, cleared her throat, and called out.
"Angel."
Angel immediately stepped inside her drab hospital room followed by a woman wearing a crisp navy blue suit with a snowy white blouse. Her brown hair fell loose around her shoulders, held back on each side with a plain barrette. Before she flashed her badge Willow knew she was a FBI agent.
The deep-seated concern on Angel's pale face worried Willow until she guessed she was the cause of the concern.
"Are you feeling better?" he inquired, kissing her forehead and linking his fingers with hers. They felt strong and cool against her dry, hot ones. If he lingered a bit with the kiss, nobody noticed.
"Where is Alexa?"
"Your daughter is with some of our federal agents right now," the woman in the navy blue suit informed her.
"Alone? Being questioned? Angel. I want to see her."
"She's fine. She's just outside, beating them all at poker," the agent smiled wryly. Willow visibly relaxed. "Smart kid. I'm special agent Janet Frake. I know this is all very sudden, Ms. Morgan, but I need to ask you a few questions."
"All right," Willow conceded.
Janet pulled a chair over and sat down with a tape recorder on her lap. They went through the formalities of the investigation and then she began asking questions. The basic ones were easy. Willow repeated what she'd told the Las Vegas PD about her relationship to Byron Mead, the previous kidnapping attempt, and other small details about him. She didn't know much. In retrospect, she berated herself for putting him into the "gutless and harmless" category and said as much to Janet, who shook her head.
"I probably would have thought the same thing. This whole case is so cut and dry we never saw it coming. Usually there are repeated patterns, stalking, threatening notes, that sort of thing. Mr. Mead went from eclectic recluse to homicidal maniac seemingly overnight."
"Sometimes it's just one thing that sets people off," Willow said tremulously.
"Exactly. In this case, we believe it may have been Mr. Mead's dire financial situation. We found a ransom note in his truck for two million dollars. He was certainly bold, if nothing else."
"Wait. Was?"
"He'd dead," Angel told her softly.
Dead? That meant that Alexa?Willow instantly had a flashback of Alexa pulling the trigger and Byron's blood splashing onto her. Someone had washed away that evidence and she dropped her head back on the lumpy pillow, momentarily stunned like a moth flying into a porch light at full speed.
"He was shot by one of our agents trying to flee the emergency room this morning," Janet added quickly. "Your daughter was not to blame and we've made sure she knows that."
"Thank God," Willow breathed.
Angel shared her relief. Alexa's quick thinking had saved the night but left her a complete mess for an entire day while Willow drifted in and out of consciousness. If Byron had died from Alexa's bullet the FBI would be probing even deeper into their lives. Angel shuddered to think what would happen to them if they found out the many bizarre truths associated with their seemingly normal family. Alexa might never be the same happy little girl who was about to win her third hand of 5- card stud out in the hallway.
"I'm sure you want to get this all behind you as soon as possible, Ms. Morgan, but there is one more question I have to ask."
"Okay."
"Is there any substance to Byron Mead's claim that you can travel outside of space and time?"
Willow laughed, exhilarated.
"Absolutely not! It's scientifically impossible and I told him that when he first accused me of it. I'm sorry I can't play Mulder to your Scully, but Byron Mead is- was- just a sad, crazy man."
Janet nodded and shrugged her shoulders, pressing 'stop' on the tape recorded with one manicured nail.
"We figured as much, but I had to ask. Thank you for your help, Ms. Morgan. Angel."
Janet left as unobtrusively as she came, truly the non-threatening professional.
"Now will things go back to normal?" Willow whined. Angel, whose fingers still twined with hers, offered her one of his sexy little grins that made him seem imminently more kissable, not that he needed help in that area.
"Depends on what you call normal."
"Let's go home. I can't decide what normal is until I brush my teeth and take a bath in that huge tub with the built-in candle holders."
"Done," Angel promised, trying not to picture her in the tub.
Hard.
It didn't turn out to be the exotic fantasy he imagined all the way home that left him so distracted he missed the dirt road turn off and had to back track ten miles. Willow brushed her teeth, washed her hair in the sink, and then invited Alexa to join her in the piles and piles of bubbles. Angel heard their giggling all the way downstairs. Was this normal? His daughter and his not-wife goofing off in the bathtub while he slouched in a chair, reading Dostoyevski?
Alexa's feet pounding down the stairs was fast becoming one of his favorite noises. She ran to his chair and clambered up on his lap, smelling of baby powder, and pushed his book aside so she could plaster his face with kisses. Angel tucked the book next to him and let himself enjoy her unmitigated affection. His heart swelled with her love, thinking that no man could desire any other blessing than this. It didn't hurt his ego, either.
"I just came to say goodnight," she said airily and curiously ran her hands over the silk shirt he wore.
"You wouldn't be--- stalling?" he asked. Willow had previously accused Alexa of that operating tactic.
"Me?" Alexa asked mock-innocently. On cue, Willow's beckoning voice floated down from the balcony.
"Night, Daddy."
Her trip upstairs was markedly slower and Angel smirked. Stalling.
When Willow did not immediately join him in front of the fireplace Angel went looking for her. She wasn't in Alexa's room but he lurked in the doorway for a minute to watch her sleep. The bathroom was empty and still a little steamy, the peach towels neatly folded back on the racks.
Assuming she'd retreated to one of the guest bedrooms, Angel turned to his bedroom, at the end of the hall. Thus seeing her on his bed was a welcome surprise. Her red hair was piled on top of her head, dry strands falling down to tickle her face. Her nightgown was short for summer, forest green satin with spaghetti straps, and might have been seductive if she was draped against the bedpost instead of stretched out of her stomach with her legs swaying gently, her face buried in the wildflower guide he kept on his bedside table. She still managed to make him catch his breath, earnest and inquisitive Willow combined with the hint of creamy bosom he could see from his vantage point.
"Hi," she murmured absently, engrossed in nature. After a few minutes she reluctantly closed the book and set it aside. It was impossible not to notice he had not budged from the doorway once he'd shut the door. "What?"
"I'll just- I'll just go down the hall," he offered. "Just let me get a few things."
"Oh." Willow sounded disappointed. "I thought maybe you'd wanna stay here and make love to me."
Angel dropped Dostoyevski on his foot.
"Ow."
"Or not. Sorry," Willow said sheepishly.
"No! No, I want? you're serious."
"I love you." Willow felt completely bare to him by that statement and the way his eyes seemed to pierce through to her soul, almost hungering for her to say it again. "Angel, I love you."
"We have a lot to talk about," Angel reminded her. Then he mentally kicked himself in the ass. There, on his dark velvet bedspread, lay the woman of his dreams and his reality wearing nothing but dark green satin, telling him she loved him and asking him to love her back in every way and he said What? Could he be any more insensitive? What about, 'Willow, I love you too'? Perhaps just going over there and kissing her? Belatedly, he realized his stupid mistake and grimaced.
"Do you want to talk or do you want to have sex?"
Angel figured that he'd botched the perfect scene already so he may as well go for broke.
"I want to know what happened to make you think that what Spike did was your fault. What hold does he have on you that you still have nightmares? When we make love I don't want anything between us, including past secrets."
"Fair enough," Willow sighed reluctantly, rolling over and scooting to the edge of the bed, dangling her legs. Her toes barely touched the oriental rug on the floor. Angel sat down next to her and noticed for the first time that while her fingernails her bare, her toenails were painted red like her hair.
It was very cute.
"I do love you," he assured her, tucking hair behind her ear. God, how he loved her.
"I might cry," she informed him.
"I might too."
Willow told the story to her lap as looking at Angel's face would be unbearable if he decided to despise her for her mistakes. At this point she figured him to be understanding and loving, but there was still a niggling section of doubt that settled like sediment to the bottom of her heart.
"I underestimated Spike just like I did Byron Mead. I'm far too trusting even after things I've gone through."
"I love that about you." Angel was incredulous that she would see her trusting nature as a character flaw. It wasn't like con men were swindling her out of her pension or coercing her to buy swamp land. Willow smiled a little and blushed, but kept her eyes downcast.
"When Spike came back to Sunnydale and told us Drusilla had been killed, he seemed more mellow."
"He kept to himself, didn't challenge anyone for leadership," Angel remembered. "Go on."
"We all got lax. Buffy's mom chatted with him in her kitchen all the time, trying to cheer him up. He was just, I don't know, lonely. One night he lurked outside my bedroom. I didn't invite him in. I didn't know he was there, actually, until a few days later when he confronted me, demanding to know about the time travel stuff I'd discovered. He later confessed he'd been spying on me for weeks. I told him I hadn't tried it out. That there were still bugs in the operating system but he was so persistent. He wanted me to go back in time and save Drusilla and nothing could sway him from that hope."
Willow stopped, recalling how he'd leaned against her balcony doors in his beat-up duster, conversationally detailing what he'd do to her friends if she refused.
"Did he threaten you?"
One nod.
"Threaten Oz?"
Another nod.
"Bastard."
Willow's next words came out in a rush, broken occasionally by a quick stutter or breath Angel liked to think of as her own personal cadence. It required superhuman effort to keep his hands from reaching out to comfort her as his heart ached with compassion.
"I failed the first time. Burned a big hole in the grass in Westfield cemetery by the back gate. And I told him I'd go back and refine my research and we could try again but he left in that same quiet melancholy. That was the night he trapped Oz under the full moon and?"
Willow could not bring herself to rehash the rest of the story. He knew it, anyway. Knew how long and hard they all fought only to be overpowered by sheer numbers in the end.
"None of it would have happened if I hadn't failed. Or if I lied, told him it was just a joke or a fantasy project for school. But I was so proud of my little discovery."
"It's not your fault."
Willow wrapped her arms around herself to shut out the cold, wanting desperately to believe him.
"You've been holding onto that lie for nine years, Willow. It will be a long time before the truth reaches your soul even if I say it a hundred times a day. Which I will. It's not your fault. Spike was a vampire full of hate and death and what he did to you was inhuman, the act of a monster. He could have done the same thing even if you succeeded- he's that merciless. I know, because I trained him. Not your fault."
"If you hadn't burst in and staked him he would have made me a vampire. He said. When he- he held me down he said he was going to make it hurt as much as possible so there'd be more blood to lick off me and that when he turned me I'd be begging for more pain."
"Oh, God, Willow."
"I'm fine. No, really, I've done the whole trauma therapy thing, I just needed you to know everything. The-the reason I still wake up screaming."
She still hugged herself. If he touched her, she'd probably start bawling.
"Don't move," Angel said in a low voice. She tensed up, waiting for him to flick a bug off her shoulder. Instead, he pried her arms apart and gathered her into his embrace, cradling her tightly against his chest. She shuddered but did not find tears to shed. His arms around her were the stamp of peace and she didn't need the tearful release. She relaxed against him, fitting her head in the soft place between his shoulder and his neck, wrapping her arms around his torso.
Here was absolution.
~Part: 8~ Safe
"Does it bother you that I'm a vampire?" Angel asked when they finally pulled apart. "I don't mean in general. I mean? in bed."
"I'm not going to be having Spike flashbacks, if that's what you're worried about. Is that what you're worried about? You can still? you know, right?"
"Hell yes, I can. And yes, Spike is what I'm worried about. I will take your word for it that you're healed, but I still do not want to hurt you. We're in love, and we share a remarkable little girl, but I feel like a virgin on his wedding night."
Willow giggled at his consternation, kissing him lightly on the lips.
"Are you always this considerate in the bedroom?" she teased, looking coquettishly up at him with her radiant green eyes, willing him out of his brooding state.
"Yes," he said immediately, returning her kiss. With one hand he cupped her face and looked into her eyes, trying to seek any form of resistance or reservation for the consummation of their love. Finding nothing but trust and -dared he hope?- lust swimming in the green pools, Angel kissed her a little more forcefully, not lingering, just a quick kiss full of the passion he'd show her later. For now, he wanted to gauge her response.
"I love you," she whispered in response.
"I love you back."
* * * *
Angel woke up around noontime, so said the clock above the mantelpiece of his bedroom fireplace, and his first thought was of Willow, thankful she was right about the permanency of his soul. A swirl in the sheet was all that remained of her and he figured she must be downstairs with Alexa.
Good.
That gave him time to conspire with his decorator, who loved a challenge. There was only one thing that would give him satisfaction now, and that was to seal his family in one of those wedding things humans were so into. Barring homicidal maniacs, nosing FBI agents, or the Apocalypse, it shouldn't be too hard to pull off, as long as he had 'Kate Walker, Detail Woman' working on his side. She'd absolutely "freak out", as Willow would say.
He got out of bed, pulled on black pants, and stumbled sleepily over to the phone. They'd stayed up most of the night and Willow must be more tired than he was. They'd have to figure out a plausible childcare scheme without making their daughter so nocturnal she couldn't make friends in town. In the meantime, they'd learn the art of naps.
The thought of napping with Willow put another smile on the vampire's face.
"Katherine Walker's Decorating," said a sunny voice on the other end of the line.
"Kate, it's Angel."
"Hello!" she exclaimed, louder than necessary. Angel groaned.
"Sorry," she amended. "It's just that after the scare we heard about after the Fireworks the other night, everyone's dying to know what is going on with you!"
Angel smiled again. Kate would never come right out and say it, but her mouth was watering for the entire scoop. She was a thirty-four year old mother of three with her own decorating company based right in downtown Cedar Valley. Her husband Dan was a music professor at the college. Angel changed her flat tire on his first trip into town and they'd been friends ever since.
When he hired her to furnish his entire house with no limit to the budget and a special plea to use as many local artisans as possible, the residents of the college town garnered him instant respect. Kate also made sure the residents understood he was very private and sensitive about his "medical condition." Photosensitivity was not a common malady but they were willing to be sympathetic because he didn't interfere with town politics, didn't have Hollywood starlets flying in and out of his property, and didn't compromise the landscape around his large log home. Also, they loved his mystery novels, locally published and distributed.
"Kate, I will personally tell you every detail of the hell that my family and I have been through if you promise to do two things, and do them by this evening. It's a big favor."
Kate, who didn't know he had a family, covered the mouthpiece of the phone and mouthed 'he has a family' to her assistant.
"How big?" she asked suspiciously. He had that tone in his voice, the one where he was about to launch a ridiculous plan and trust her to pull it off. The last time he'd asked her to handle something it resulted in the entire horticulture department at the college turning part of his property into an experimental wildflower reserve.
"I need to you tell everyone you know what I'm about to tell you, and then I need you to plan a wedding and invite the entire town. No press, no outsiders. Just Cedar Valley."
"For tonight?!" Kate screeched in a most unladylike manner.
"Can you do it?" Angel wanted to know.
Three seconds of silence passed while Kate deliberated the unbelievable request, and then he had his answer.
"We'll see you just after sunset in the same place we had the fireworks," she said confidently. "But you need to let me have your bride two hours-no, three hours before then, and Angel?"
"Yes?" he said, grinning again. He knew she could do it.
"This better be one hell of a story."
~Part: 9~ Pour the Light
"You realize, of course, that as soon as everyone hears this there's no way I can pull it off without the entire press corps breathing down your neck," Kate placidly informed Angel when he'd finished his incredible tale.
"No press," Angel said darkly.
"If you really want to romance the girl, try something completely different. No crowds, no press, no marching band."
"Marching band?"
"It crossed my mind," Kate admitted sheepishly. "And what if she says no? Women can get funny about planning their own weddings. A seemingly normal woman can suddenly become a crazed wildebeest."
"Really?" Angel sounded incredibly nervous. Life on the Hellmouth taught him to take the mention of fantastical creatures seriously.
"Not literally," Kate laughed.
"Oh."
"This is what we'll do. You go and propose to the bride. I'll pick her and Alexa up an hour before sunset and then you meet us at the Stone Chapel on campus, you know where that is? Just show up. I'll take care of everything else."
"Spare no expense."
"My three favorite words," Kate said, and Angel could hear the smile in her voice.
* * * *
Willow waited alone in a small chamber in the front of Stone Chapel, her only companions a stack of red hymnals and some metal folding chairs. A brass desk lamp provided a warm light that nonetheless revealed a good amount of dust in the intricate curves of the old worn chair with its red velvet cushion. She couldn't take her eyes off the blues and purples of the stained glass window, wondering what it would look like with the full power of the sun behind it. She hadn't been in a chapel before in her life, much less stood and contemplated the artwork of stained glass and the dull lead bars in between.
Smoothing the front of her dress down, the diamond on her left hand caught the light and sparkled. She couldn't take her eyes off of it, remembering how passionate Angel looked as he slipped it onto her finger. He wasn't nearly as nervous seeing her at the chapel as he was earlier when he proposed.
He'd shooed Alexa into the kitchen and then immediately led Willow back up to his bedroom where he wouldn't have to worry about sunlight piercing any part of him. As soon as the door shut behind her he got down on one knee and asked her to marry him. She sank down beside him, answered yes, and fell into his arms. Several hot and wet kisses later, he asked if she would be willing to marry him in three hours time.
Willow smiled, remembering how she had just said "whatever" and pushed him to the carpet, straddling him and grinding her hips against his. Then his words registered and she wrenched her mouth away from his.
"You mean tonight?" Willow asked, looking at him incredulously. Their clothes were twisted around and her hair was a wild mess of red that fell down and tickled his face as she half leaned over him. Angel groaned and grabbed her hips, needing her to either stop moving or never stop. Talking, however, was not on the forefront of his mind.
"Yes," he panted. "Sunset, at the Stone Chapel on campus. My decorator friend Katherine Walker is going to see to all the details and pick you up around 6:30. Now can we?"
Angel's half-sentence was punctuated with a groan as Willow got up, straightened her flowing orange and henna-colored skirt, and offered him a hand up. Her beaming face almost made up for the frustration in his loins. Almost.
"Gonna make an honest woman out of me?" she smiled. He looked a little confused at how she could go from passionate lover to excited wedding-planner girl in so little time, but he'd soon figure it out. As a consolation, she kissed him sweetly and promised to be a beautiful bride.
"Of course you'll be a beautiful bride," he frowned. No question in his mind. Willow glowed from his proposal, his kisses, and his insistence that she'd look beautiful in the white dress. "But please don't ever tease me like that again," he pleaded in a low voice, tucking in his shirt with a little more force than necessary.
Willow had the grace to blush and look a little ashamed from leading them both down that path with Alexa waiting patiently in the kitchen getting into God knows what.
"I'll make it up to you later," she whispered, leaning up to kiss him again.
Willow was tired of standing but didn't want to wrinkle her dress. Angel had bucked tradition by sneaking in to see her before the ceremony, sliding the cool platinum band with the diamond on her finger and saying something about it being "right." He looked dark as night in his black tuxedo with the black shirt underneath, his hair still wet from his shower and carefully styled with a few spikes in the front.
Willow stared at him, then down at the huge diamond and wondered how he'd managed to acquire jewelry like this post-sunset when all the stores were closed. She would just have to chalk it up to the mysterious ways of Kate Walker, who had already managed to come up with several wedding dresses for her to try on, specially written vows for their situation, and a sleek gray Mercedes to drive her to the church. She radiated calm and surety to counter act Willow's nervousness. Angel kissed her cheek and fairly flew out of the room to avoid Kate who lurked around making sure he didn't try to get in. She smiled, thinking of how her lover could do anything he wanted, pretty much, including fall in love and get married in under a week.
Reflecting on the many slap-dash weddings she'd seen in Vegas, where such events were a nightly event that often included an Elvis impersonator, Willow smiled wryly.
"We're just crazy kids," she said under her breath, feeling the full irony. They were not children. One year in either of their lives would be more than a lifetime of events for most people. Sort of like soap opera characters who were always in and out of precarious situations, only theirs were real and Alexa would never be cast off to be raised by grandparents.
Kate finally opened the door and her daughter Marlee peeked out from behind her. Willow was doubly glad that Alexa had begged to stay with the Walker's this first night and spend days there the rest of the week. At night, Dan would drive her over to the cabin and they could spend some quiet family time, but it was nice to know that they could be alone on their wedding night. Willow spent an entire half hour talking to Alexa about her feelings about staying with strangers, the incident with Byron Mead fresh in her mind. What child wouldn't be rightfully clingy? But Alexa shook her head and looked at her mother with the stubborn stare she'd thought was Angel's alone.
"You look radiant," Kate praised, holding the door open. Marlee just stared at her with wide blue eyes and fidgeted with her basket of blood-red rose petals. She was to be flower girl while Alexa stood at the altar with Angel, her own decision. She wanted to be his best man when she found out he didn't have anyone to stand up with him.
"I'll stand up for both of you," she announced decisively and could not be swayed. She also chose her own dress, a sleeveless dress that flared out at the bottom and was her favorite color, red. She wore a coronet of red roses, as did Marlee.
Kate led Willow to the back of the church and an unobtrusive mixed quartet in the balcony began to play a hauntingly beautiful piece of music. Willow didn't recognize the tune but it slipped out of her mind when she saw how Kate and her husband Dan had decorated the church. The threadbare aisle carpet had been stripped back to reveal the dark and varying stones and hundreds of ivory candles lined the center aisle. Their glow led up to the altar where the simple wooden cross had been removed and replaced with hundreds more candles, all shapes and sizes, some in silver candlesticks, others in low glass holders. Anywhere there was a flat surface, Kate had placed some type of candle. The stones reflected the light in a thin color, like the inside paleness of a block of ice but the church was neither drafty nor cold. It was filled with July warmth and the fragrance of roses and candle wax. Willow felt tears sting her eyes at the sheer volume of light, the flickering etherealness of the candles and the man she loved waiting for her at the end of the aisle.
Spontaneous or not, this was what she wanted.
Marlee walked down the aisle and scattered red petals onto the cool stone floor. Willow walked slowly and proudly down the aisle to the swelling music. Her silk sheath was white and fell from her shoulders, clinging to all her curves and hollows like a pouring glass of champagne. The white roses tucked into her upswept hair matched the bouquet she carried in her steady grip which was loose enough for her to see her sparkling ring, if she ever looked down.
At the front of the chapel Angel waited in black, silent and still as the first day she'd met him. The dark passion in his eyes was for her, the love pouring from those same intense orbs meant for her alone, for always. Willow felt ghostly fingers dance up her spine and goose bumps break out underneath her stockings.
His hand was dry and cool when he grasped her right hand, his face typically solemn to hold back tears.
"I love you," he whispered as they turned to face the Justice of the Peace.
"Dearly Beloved," the woman began in a lyrical voice with a very slight accent that Willow couldn't place.
Dearly Beloved. Willow supposed she was addressing Alexa, Marlee, Dan, Kate, the unseen musicians in the balcony and Cole and Danny, the Walker's two other children who sat politely in the front row, a little awed at the proceedings. But in her heart 'beloved' defined the faces of her friends, cherished memories and love for them that grief could not quiet.
"?in the presence of God and these witnesses to join Angel and Willow in holy matrimony. The occasion of marriage is one of the happiest on earth but even in such celebration we will now pause to honor the memories of loved ones who could not attend in the flesh, but who are certainly present in spirit."
Willow fought back tears that may have been from joy or pain, or maybe both. A fresh wind blew through the church and fill it with laughter and friendship and she looked nervously at the candles to see if they would tip over in the wind. They glowed steadily, not even flickering from a tiny breeze.
Angel immediately looked down at her, understanding.
Shalom.
"Angel, will you promise to love, honor, and cherish Willow for eternity?"
"I will." His voice was low but clear and he smiled with his eyes
"Willow, will you promise to love, honor, and cherish Angel for eternity?"
"I will."
"May I please have the rings?" the Justice asked Alexa. She proudly held up a black velvet box in each hand. The woman then nodded to Angel, who took Willow's left hand, removed the diamond, and replaced it with a matching platinum band that had a swirled engraving on it. She couldn't see the design on the candlelight but it looked lacy and delicate to her.
"With this ring, I thee wed," he announced.
Willow repeated the gesture, sliding a band on his finger and saying the words that sealed their fates for eternity. The short ceremony was nearly over and she was very glad. There was little else to say. The promise to love, honor, and cherish covered all the bases and they would show each other with actions exactly the kind of care involved with love. No need for traditional promises or special music, religious formalities or bunches of flowers stinking up the altar with hothouse cheapness. The ceremony was as it should be, for them.
"By the power invested in me by the state of Colorado, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride."
Angel's lips lingered on hers, achingly sweet and full of promise.
The small band of witnesses cheered and the children let loose with a few cat calls, thus ending the fragile beauty that had cupped the ceremony in the palm of its hand. Willow smiled fully, bending to hug Alexa as Angel shook hands with the Justice. Then they stepped down from the altar and were greeted by Kate and Dan as the musicians played a lively tune.
"Here," Kate said, and Marlee and Cole lugged a table on wheels from around the corner. It held crystal champagne flutes, a bottle of champagne in a silver bucket of ice, and a smaller decanter of Sprite for the children.
"A reception for four adults is more like a dinner party," Dan explained, smiling. "I suggested to Kate that we toast to your marriage here in the chapel and let you go home and we can have you over for dinner sometime this week, after the dust has settled."
"Thank you," Willow said, and kissed his cheek. Kate beamed, Alexa and Marlee chattered like magpies about all the things they'd kept silent about during the ceremony, and Angel just stood and watched Willow blushing in her white silk dress.
"To Angel and Willow," Kate said, and raised her glass.
"Hear hear!" came the reply.
"May you live a long life filled with the happiness of family, the love of friends, and the passion of each other," she added by way of marital blessing. Angel kissed her cheek in thanks before downing the contents of his glass.
"I owe you one," he whispered in her ear.
"Honey, wait till you see the bill," she teased him.
"Goodbye!" Alexa piped up suddenly, holding hands with Marlee.
"So eager to get rid of us, love?" Angel chuckled and knelt to her level. Alexa leaned into him, resting one hand on his knee and pressing her lips to his ear.
"Marlee has a window in her ceiling and we're gonna stay up and look at stars all night until they go away and then play with her dogs. She has three dogs and two brothers and a fish named Flipper. So if you and Mama go home? see? But don't be sad, Daddy, I won't be gone from you long."
"No, you won't," Angel assured her, kissing her and straightening the crown of roses on her head, praying he would never cease to stand in awe of her.
"Shall we?" Willow asked her husband, holding out her ring hand. He stood and linked his fingers with hers and they walked together down the candlelit aisle, dark and light intertwined into one, forever.
The End