Rating: R
Warning: Rape. Not explicit. But it is the subject of this story.
Summary: Willow finds Angel at the mansion shortly after his return from Hell
Feedback: Please. Its important to know if people are reading my work. Please don't make me beg!
Distribution: If you have permission to archive my previous fics, 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 dedicated to every person who sent me feedback on Home. You are all, each and every one of you, splendid people and I love you madly! It's because of you that I wrote this sequel. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your encouragement!
Author's Notes Two: Thank you Emmy, you are a great beta and an even more wonderful friend. Thanks are due to both you and Tonya, for talking me through a very bad night.
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Angelus. No, not Angelus. Angel. With his soul. Angel. Angel is doing this to her.
The first moment she feels fear is when they are in the bedroom. Strange that she didn't feel it sooner. Didn't feel it when she first found him, naked and chained in the living room of the mansion. Beaten and scarred and emaciated. Feral and confused and barely human. Perhaps her relationship with Oz made her unwary, gave her a fool's confidence in her ability to deal with this animal creature.
Or maybe it is too many years spent in Sunnydale, where only the occasional burglary is committed by humans, where the line between the good guys and the bad guys is marked by the presence of a soul. Sure, Willow watches the news, watches it every day, in fact, but the crimes and atrocities she sees happening outside this town seem alien and unreal, and far removed from the world she knows. Here in Sunnydale, those with souls don't torture and rape. That's the provenance of soulless demons...demons like Angelus. But not Angel, never Angel.
He has his soul. She knows this because she nearly died to give it back to him, suffered nightmares of his torture in Hell until she broke down and got her family doctor to give her the pills that drugged her into deep, dreamless slumber and let her pretend that her sleeping visions had been nothing but nightmares. The normal nightmares that a girl on the Hellmouth who just happened to be the best friend of the Slayer would have.
She knows he has his soul because she could feel it pulling her to the mansion that morning, causing her to actually cut school without so much as a stomachache as an excuse. It is the undeniable presence of his soul that made her so comfortable with him, that led her to go to Willy's to get him food, to unlock his chains, to feed him, bathe him, and tend to his many wounds. To talk to him, to try to coax him back gently into humanity, to pity him, and even cry for him when she saw the extent of the torture he had endured in the numberless scars all over his body, when she heard his pain in the growls and whimpers that were all the speech he could muster.
It is this pity, she is sure, that has undone her. That and her foolish belief in the purity of the soul, in its magical ability to imbue its host with morality and goodness. Her naivete, stunning in its pervasiveness, has undone her. Brought her here, to a torment as certain and horrible as that she would endure at the hand of the most soulless of demons, perhaps even worse, since it is corroding her ideals along with her pride and her sense of self.
She tried to get away, is still trying, not that it is doing her the least bit of good. From the moment she brought Angel here, to his bedroom, she is now sure her fate was sealed. But she still must keep trying to resist, even as the futility of her efforts becomes a certainty even to one as optimistic as she has always been. A pair of rose-colored glasses, undimmed by an awe-inspiring array of opponents over many years and many battles, shatters. And Willow can almost hear the glass falling to the pavement where she is sure she lies broken, right alongside those crystalline shards.
She hears the sound of fabric tearing and realizes that Angel is ripping the shirt from her body. A ludicrously inappropriate thought crosses her mind- 'I liked that shirt'- providing a blessed, yet all too brief distraction from the reality of what is about to happen.
Willow is not so naive that she doesn't realize what Angel's intentions are. What they have been since he pulled her to the bed and covered her with his naked body. He is going to rape her. And there is nothing she can do about it. Why? She wonders. She has only been kind to him. She has fed him and tended to him and done her best to make him comfortable. Why is he doing this? It was Buffy, not her, who sent him to Hell with his soul. The soul he still has, even as he kisses and licks the flesh of her neck. The soul that she gave him.
The thoughts of 'if only' reverberate in her mind, driving her to near madness. 'If only I had gone to school.' 'If only I hadn't unchained him.' 'If only...if only...if only.' And Willow screams, trying to drown out her own inner voice before it tortures her into insanity.
She feels his hands and his mouth roaming over her body and tries to remember when her skirt and panties were removed. She must have been caught up in the inner turmoil that is as terrifying and agonizing as what is happening to her body. For a brief, mad moment, she is across the room, watching as Angel spreads the legs of a pale girl on a bed, the stranger's face twisted in agonized horror as she screams and pleads for the creature between her thighs not to do this. To let her go.
Then, with a blinding flash of white-hot pain, she is yanked back onto the bed and back to reality. She is the girl on the bed, hers are the anguished cries and supplications falling on deaf ears. She is the girl whose body is being brutally violated. Her perceptions become odd and disjointed, no doubt a result of the agony she is going through. Her bra has been ripped open, the straps still hang from her shoulders. The mattress is soft and luxurious. Angel is purring and stroking her face.
This last observation sends Willow's mind reeling and then it shuts
down. She can't think anymore. Not with this tender gesture making its
way into a brutal and terrible violation. She can't make sense of it. So
she doesn't think. And she doesn't move or scream any longer. She simply
waits for it to be over. Whatever that will mean.
The End