Rating: FRM (Fan Rated Mature-for mature readers only) (This rating is meant to cover the entire trilogy, though this part is actually only FRT-13)
Summary: It has been one year to the day since Angel's decision to keep Willow with him and Drusilla. Willow POV
Feedback: Please. I really need to know that I have readers and I also like knowing just what those readers think of what I write.
Distribution: If you have permission to archive The Faceless Clock Trilogy, you may have this. Otherwise, please ask first.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. It all belongs to Joss and a bunch of other people who are not now and have never been me.
Author's Notes: This part was written in answer to the time_fiesta challenge in the fanfic_fiesta community on Live Journal. However, the trilogy as a whole is dedicated to Susi, in honour of her birthday this past Tuesday.
Author's Notes 2: Thanks must be given by me to Tonya for her unwavering support and encouragement. She is a far better friend than I deserve and I cherish her.
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Willow hated clocks, calendars...any reminders of the passage of time. Anything that made her aware of how long it had been since she'd been ripped out of her own life and forcibly made a part of Angel's life instead.
She had heard Angel talking to Drusilla and the staff of their latest luxurious prison that morning, making plans for a party. A party. What a joke that would be. A formal, festive event for three, only one of whom was happy about the event being celebrated. Angel was planning an Anniversary party. It was now a year to the day since she had "joined" his family.
A year had gone by, a year without her friends, her family, her computer. Oh, how she missed her computer. Sometimes, Willow would awaken from a dream and find her hands moving as if over a keyboard, her fingers itching to feel the plastic keys once more. She had begged Angel for a computer once, even suggesting that he could watch her while she used it, to make sure she did nothing to contact her friends. But he had refused, instead declaring that she was lonely and needed to spend more time with him instead. Apologizing for leaving her alone too much.
That had made her laugh bitterly inside her mind. The only time she *wasn't* lonely was when he left her alone. His presence reminded her of the friends she missed, the family she had always wanted to spend more time with, even the enemies whose cruelty she would gladly endure in place of Angel's 'love', a love that made her hate Angel more with each passing day, even as it became harder and harder to avoid him, to escape his touch, to just be *alone*.
She knew Angel was aware of her antipathy and revulsion, despite the artful way he maneuvered himself around her remote behavior and her cold words, despite the mannered artifice and stilted politeness that coloured all his speech and actions towards her, keeping her from lashing out at him through his iron-willed ability to keep everything so surreal that Willow was too confused and stupefied to react as she wanted to so badly...by screaming at him, by breaking every expensive vase and priceless *objet* she could lay her hands on...maybe even by staking him.
But she knew that she would never do any of those things, no matter how desperately she wanted to. She was trapped, both physically and mentally, in the gilded cage Angel had built for her. Too conditioned to being a prisoner to make any useful effort to escape or even protest her confinement.
Willow wondered if Drusilla found the passage of time as oppressive as she did now, or if it was different for the vampiress. Was she as disheartened as Willow that, after all these months, Angel showed no signs of tiring of his doomed passion for a girl whose body he could never enjoy and whose heart he could never win? Was she ever weary of taking to her bed a man who never made the slightest effort to disguise his preference for another? Day after day of sharing her bed with someone whose only use for her lay in the sexual release she could give him had to be painful for Drusilla, didn't it?
Wearily, Willow shrugged off her thoughts. These were questions to which she would never know the answers and, as such, were useless to ponder. Her conversations with Drusilla were infrequent and would never be anything but polite, brief, and awkward, no matter how much longer this pathetic, inescapable farce of a life lasted. But, as she turned on her heel to go back upstairs to her room and wait for Angel to "surprise" her with news of the 'party', Willow wondered if requesting that all clocks and calendars be removed from their residence might meet with more success than her request for a computer. If she had to remain here forever, she might at least be spared the knowledge of just how long forever could be.
End Part One