Author: Hannah R. H.
E-Mail: hannah1971@aol.com
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel & Co. belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, UPN and the WB Network. No copyright infringement intended.
Summary: Some things are just inevitable.
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It was said with a long, shuddering breath that would have broken the heart of anyone who heard it.
"Angel."
The only one who heard it had no heart to break, however, and so Willow was left abandoned in the playground, watched only by a demon that was once a friend. The fear knifed through her with sharp pains, making her breaths labored.
"Hey, Willow," Angel said with cold informality as he stepped out from behind the jungle gym. "Out kind of late, aren't you?"
Her eyes jumped back down the path she had walked. Just far enough. No one to hear. No one to save her.
The milk she carried in the plastic 7-Eleven bag slipped from her grasp and dropped to the hard ground. White flowed from the seams and drenched the trampled grass, spreading and soaking into the dirt. She saw Angel smile, and her fear turned warm and liquid, diffuse, through her limbs.
"I guess it is ... late," she said quietly. The sun had gone down only half an hour before ... but half an hour was long enough. Angel looked rested, as if he had just risen. "How did you find me?"
"I've been watching you, Willow ... just you," he answered. "Sundown to sunrise. Waiting for the moment that I knew would come."
"Watching me," she echoed. Willow realized immediately what had killed her--the belief that the demon couldn't be everywhere at once. One trip to the corner store, right after sundown, would be anonymous enough to offer her protection. And now, for the price of a carton of milk, she had given herself to Death.
A brief wave of nausea washed over her. She closed her eyes, breathing deeply, and when she opened them again, he was standing in front of her, inches away. She hadn't heard him move, but then, she never did. She looked up into his face, still impossibly handsome and deceptively kind.
He smiled. "It's been so pleasurable, watching you. Seeing you laughing, dancing ... living. You were the one I wanted, right from the start, before that Calendar witch. You knew that, didn't you?" His eyes were bright and sharp. Willow didn't know how to answer him, but then he continued, "I just killed her because I had to, not because I really wanted it. You were the one I wanted first. You're the one I've been hungering for."
She blinked, gauging her reaction to his words. She skipped past the self-recrimination for her stupidity, past the sadness for a wasted life, past the anger that Buffy wouldn't be there to save her. Willow felt the fear draining from her, like the milk soaking into the trampled ground, to be replaced by something numb and soulless. She nodded, then, without emotion.
"Buffy thought it would be Xander," she responded, not an accusation but a statement of fact. Her flesh was suddenly cold, and she shivered. "But I knew."
"Yes, it was inevitable." Angel nodded, approving, then shook his head at her earlier statement. "Xander!" he scoffed. "What a waste. I'll kill him like I killed the gypsy, without a thought, like stepping on something crawling and slithering on the ground. He thinks I hold real animosity toward him, but Willow, he's not even worthy of that." He looked at her then, and his dark eyes pierced through, seeking her soul. "You're different, though--more than worthy."
Willow's soul, or whatever it was that made her different from Angel, had retreated within her, and she heard her voice from someplace outside, away. "Angel--why me?" She wanted to hear him say it.
"Willow," he chatised mildly. "That question is beneath you. You know why."
Her heart thudded slowly in her chest, and she swallowed. He knew.
Inevitable.
"I never wanted Buffy to know," she said dully, pressing down the feelings as they threatened to emerge.
His voice was cold comfort. "She didn't. What was there to know? You loved Xander and that werewolf. I loved her." He spat it like a curse. "She never saw what I did--those glorious moments when your wasteful insecurity would drop away, when you'd realize those boys were beneath you, and you'd watch me. I may have been burdened with that soul, but the demon in me would feel you watching." He chuckled. "You should have been born a gypsy yourself. You could have burned me with those eyes. You're a flame, Willow--you draw me to you."
He reached out to stroke her hair, and she shuddered under his cold fingers.
"Buffy will die soon, after I've killed everyone she cared about. But I will end this as I begin it, by drinking the blood of someone who loves me."
She didn't know if he was taunting her, and she realized it didn't matter anymore. Only one thing did. "I don't want to be a vampire, Angel. Please."
"Shhh ... You won't be," he assured her. "Just a little pain, my beautiful girl, and then it's over." His hand passed from her hair, brushing her cheek before it dropped to her shoulder. He rubbed his thumb over the pulse in her neck. "Come sit with me, over here, on this bench. Let me touch you."
She let him lead her to the bench, near the swings that she and Xander had used as children, and he sat close to her, closer even than she would have let Xander or Oz sit. Angel's hands passed over her face, smoothed her hair, stroked the milky white skin inside her arms. She felt the void that the fear had left, and the calm inevitability of the end.
"You burn, Willow."
He leaned toward her, his face already changing, and she opened her arms to embrace Death.
The End