Rating: FRM (Fan Rated Mature-for mature readers only)
Summary: A year after his life with Willow and Drusilla began, Angel muses on what it all means and who he has become..
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 is the last part of the trilogy and, like the previous two parts, it is dedicated to the remarkable Susi. I also need to thank Tonya for her indispensable guidance and her improbable and much-appreciated willingness to read fics in the middle of the night in order to placate a horribly insecure and panicky author!
Author’s Notes Two: This is also dedicated to all the wonderful people who sent me feedback on this story. I would thank you each by name, but I’m a ditz and might leave someone out. So, rather than unintentionally slight one of my beloved readers, I shall simply say thank you to all of you; you know who you are, and you know that I am more grateful than I can ever tell you for your encouragement and support!
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Angel smiled as he dressed. Doing up his cufflinks and fastening his collar button, he was filled with a sense of delightful anticipation. Of course, he already knew what Willow would be wearing, he had picked out her dress, her shoes, even her jewelry himself. But he never failed to be delightfully surprised at how lovely she was every time he saw her. His memories and imagination couldn’t hold a candle to her actual beauty, and Angel could hardly wait to see how stunning she would be in her evening gown and emerald necklace and earrings. He had bought the jewels for her as a gift only yesterday, along with the dress, and he knew she would be a vision in them.
Of course, Willow was nowhere near as pleased by his gifts as he wished she were; she never was. Angel accepted that, at least for now. And at least she had stopped asking him to buy her clothes like the ones she had worn back in Sunnydale, those mousy, shapeless garments that had hidden her beauty completely. Willow accepted his presents uncomplainingly now, at least; that was progress.
Willow accepted everything about her life anymore. And while Angel knew it wasn’t because she was learning to love *him*, he knew that it *did* mean she accepted that he loved *her*, and that he would never let her go. And that was certainly a step in the right direction.
It would take time, he realized, and time was something he had in abundance. But it was not only *having* time that made him so comfortable with the achingly slow progress of his courtship of Willow, he had discovered. It was the reawakening of his vampiric *sense* of time, that sense that was so different from the human perceptions that he had taken on along with the soul and all its guilt, that sense that was now a part of him again, along with so many of the other traits he had suppressed in his doomed effort to transform himself into a human being once more.
Oh, the soul was still very much a part of him, that was certain. But Angel no longer saw having a soul as being antithetical to being a demon. He was a vampire with a soul. Both parts of him were real and true and he didn’t have to be ashamed of either; and this knowledge gave him a sense of wholeness and freedom like nothing he had ever known, in spite of the fact that his life with Willow and Drusilla necessitated restrictions and subterfuge that might make some see him as anything *but* free.
He knew it was Willow who was, all unwittingly, responsible for his glorious new sense of self, and it only made him love her more. Even in Sunnydale, she had always accepted that he was a vampire with an ease that still stunned him when he remembered their earliest encounters. He could still see her glancing at the window that he cast no reflection in and asking him how he managed to shave. She had never seen the soul as being separate from the demon the way Buffy always had, the way he had always thought he wanted to be seen. But not now, now he reveled in who he was, enjoyed experiencing all the contradictions and dichotomies that were each a part of him. And it was all because of the feelings the glorious little redhead had awakened within him; the vampiric sense of possession and ownership combined with the soul’s gentler desire to protect and care for her had fused the two warring halves of himself into a triumphant whole.
He was more grateful each day to Drusilla for bringing them all together, even though he didn’t return his Childe’s affections at all. The sex with her was thrilling, unfettered as it was by any of the restrictions of being with a human and any of the restraints he had used to allow his soul to place on his carnal appetites. And it freed him to love Willow the way his eighteenth-century sensibilities told him she *should* be loved...purely, chastely, and with all his heart, without his sexual needs getting in the way. He was so pleased that Willow hadn’t given herself to Oz before becoming his, that the werewolf hadn’t awakened any baser appetites within her that would make their life together more difficult when Willow finally began to return his love.
Someday, perhaps, he would find a way to undo the clause in his curse that kept his soul in jeopardy so that he could be with Willow completely. But he was in no hurry. He might not be perfectly happy, Angel thought to himself as he put on his jacket and left to escort Willow to the lavishly decorated dining room to enjoy the party he had arranged for her, but life was perfect, nonetheless.
The End