Disclaimer: A Sequel to Anya's Gone. The Characters mentioned and named in this story are the property of J. Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Warner Bros..etc, etc. No infringement is intended.
Willow chanted a short phrase over and over, sprinkling around the edge of the ceremonial circle of the Hellmouth a mixture of wine, burdock, and blood that had been prepared for her. When she finished, she stood in the center of the circle, at the heart of the Hellmouth. Her arms raised, she called out:
"Sun and Moon, O Powers divine,
Ancient as the power of Light, Ancient as the
power of Night.
Life and Death, Cyclic and Everlasting - I bid
Thee hear Me now!
I admonish thee by the Powers that be come instantly
unto Me.
Render forth thy Power to My will.
I compel Thee by the sacrifice of the Slayer's
blood.
Viris Divinae Venite!"
While Willow spoke, the very air seemed to change. It sang with the incredible forces she was invoking. A swirling wind whipped Willow's long auburn hair about her face, and she looked more supernatural spirit than substantive being. By the time she finished she was practically shouting and her last words echoed and reverberated like a clap of thunder.
The earth rumbled in reply.
The whole cavern quaked violently. The earth and rock above the Hellmouth fissured, breaking apart to create an opening to the naked sky. Willow looked straight up and saw the sun and moon in the last moments before the apex. A few more seconds and the moon slipped into position directly in front of the sun.
In full eclipse, the sun's light was not entirely diminished. The moon haloed by the corona of the sun gave off light of a grayish quality. Not quite pure, not quite corrupted, it was yet strong enough to destroy a vampire.
A normal one anyway.
And the light filtered down through the chasm, hitting exactly the outline of the Hellmouth over which Willow stood. Her upturned face was bathed in the ghostly light and with her eyes closed and her lips slightly parted she seemed to be caught up in a mystical ecstasy.
In safety far away from the light that streamed down, Colin's eyes suddenly widened in disbelief as Willow's body seemed to take the light within herself. She was glowing and the brightness seemed to build then explode as Willow herself started to radiate the light, pouring out of every pore of her body and filling the cavern.
*~*~*~*~*
Angel was getting more and more frustrated, not to mention more and more afraid. He had been looking in all the possible places that Colin could have secreted Willow. He hadn't seen anyone. No guards, no patrols. It was all too easy to make his way around the tunnels. It didn't bode well because meant the main forces of the Anointed One must all be where Buffy and Giles were.
Angel was already doubling back on his way toward the main cavern when suddenly the earth began to quake around him. Dust flew everywhere as the tunnels groaned with the weight of maintaining their cohesion. Then just as suddenly it stopped.
< What was that?!? > Angel thought wildly as he started to run even faster. He was a few meters away from the main cavern when he spied Xander making his way to the same spot.
Above ground, Xander had come to for the second time that day with a splitting head-ache and with a groggy awareness that he had been ditched with a vengeance. But determined he had dragged himself down through the caverns to arrived just as Angel did.
"Angel!" Xander exclaimed. "Willow told me you were dead. What's going on?"
"Willow! Is she with you?" Angel demanded shortly.
"No. She-she knocked me out and came down here I think to rescue Buffy and Giles. She was planning something. I don't know what but….."
Another smaller tremor rocked the tunnels around them, cutting short Xander's explanation. The two men looked at each other and immediately headed for the entrance.
Angel was about the step through the passageway into the cavern when a blast of light made him instinctively slam himself against a shielding wall of stone. Xander, not so hampered by the this, stood at the entrance and viewed the scene below with shocked awe.
*~*~*~*~*
Again the earth shuddered, but Willow was unaware of anything around her. Her being was focused on the light which filled her and drifted along within every cell, her body becoming nothing more than a conduit for the light. Once the light built inside her at a critical mass, she released it. Consciously, she directed it toward the Hellmouth. Attuned with the light, Willow could feel it slamming against the Hellmouth with all the might of her desire to destroy it. And like a living thing the Hellmouth groaned at the assault until it finally fell before the primeval force of the light which sealed the Hellmouth for all time.
Simultaneously, however, the light from Willow also flowed out across the open cavern, discharging in every direction. And the vampires within the cavern cried out as one in fear and then in pain as the light blazed through them, turning them into cinders. Like dominoes they fell against the touch of the spreading light.
Amidst all this, Colin, the Anointed One, registered astonishment, anger, and then…fear on his child-like face. Then he cried out once, more in frustration of having been thwarted than from pain, before he too joined the other vampires in their total destruction.
The moment the Anointed One fell, Willow began to falter and the light started to fade.
Unharmed and standing now surrounded only by ashes, Giles went unimpeded to where Willow and Buffy were. He bent down to check on Buffy who was regaining consciousness. She was weak with the loss of blood but otherwise unhurt. Meanwhile, Xander made his way down from the entrance toward them.
But it was Angel, freed from danger of the light, who raced down across the cavern with inhuman speed just in time to embrace Willow in his arms as she staggered out of the light encircled Hellmouth.
"Willow!?!" Angel said urgently.
She gazed up at him, her eyes going wide with recognition. She tried to speak, but it was then that her body gave out completely. She sunk slowly down to the ground. Angel, holding onto her body was pulled down with her. They settled on the floor with Angel cradling her like a small child, her head and back supported by his arms, her body across his lap.
"An--Angel?"
Had his ear been even a couple of inches further away, Angel doubted he would have been able to make out what she said.
"I thought…you…were dead." Her struggling words came out in short bursts.
"No, I'm here. Right here, Willow," he murmured holding her even closer.
"Is . . .is everyone. . . alright . . .?"
"Don't worry. Everyone's fine. Just fine." With the backs of his fingers brushing lightly over the curve of her cheek, Angel tried to sooth her.
"Good…I - uhh!" Willow stopped suddenly, her voice dying in a low awful rattle at the back of her throat. She felt her very essence being rent from her. Although she didn't need to breathe, her chest heaved as if she were trying to draw breath, draw the life back into her body.
Desperate, Angel could only watch her. With a terrible certainty Angel understood what was happening. She was dying. Right here in his arms. And there was nothing he could do about it.
< NoNoNoNoNoNoNoNo! > Angel's mind was filled with incoherent pleadings with God or Fate to not take Willow away from him.
"Wills!?" Xander said hovering frantically behind Angel.
Angel hadn't even noticed that Buffy, Xander, Giles had gathered right next to him. He tore his tortured gaze from Willow's face to glance at Buffy and Giles, who were equally aware of what was happening to Willow and their faces showed their impotent sorrow. Only Xander didn't know what was occurring and why.
For a moment Willow subdued the almost seizure-like spasms and the tension eased from her body. Yet inexorably Angel felt her slipping away and he was powerless to do anything about it. He shut his eyes tightly. He wanted to succumb to the weakness. The panic. The fury churning inside him. But right now he had to be strong for Willow's sake. So instead Angel focused on all the things he should say to her, things he should have said to her before this, things that he had waited to tell her until the 'right' time. He had to tell her now before it was too late.
Angel opened his mouth, but whatever words he had ready were lost as Willow stopped him.
Trembling, she stretched her fingers towards his face, able only to reach his lips, her strength extending just that far. Lightly she caressed him with the tips of her fingers. With this gesture it was as if she were trying to tell him that the words he had been about to utter were superfluous and entirely unnecessary; that she understood all that had been unspoken between them. A single tear, for all the things that might have been, made its way down the side of her face as she looked up at him steadily. But all the while she smiled, just the corners of her mouth turning up and in her expressive eyes shone all the passionate honesty of her love for him.
The love that she had tried to keep secret was no longer hidden. It was there for him to see unabashedly. In these last moments Willow abandoned her pride, her fear of rejection to give him this gift.
Then her hand dropped from his lips, the last of her strength consumed. Willow fought for a moment longer, to hold on to life, to not leave him. But the pull on her soul became too great.
She looked over at Xander, Buffy and Giles and finally back at Angel, whispering, "I love you."
Then Willow was gone.
Part Sixteen
My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me.
As these that twice befell
Parting is all we know of heaven
And all we need of hell.
-Emily Dickinson
Angel gathered Willow's lifeless body close to him. Wrapping one arm around her body, his other arm cradled her neck and tucked her head beneath his chin. Angel was beyond tears, beyond any expression of grief. He just sat there with his body curled around hers and his face buried in her hair.
"She can't be dead! She's not," Xander stated in a flat tone, not accepting that what his eyes told him was true.
Since Willow was a vampire, she didn't breath, she had no pulse and her skin was without the warmth of a human body. So the absence of those things weren't what told them all that she was dead. It was her eyes. Her eyes, still open, were without the animating quality of Willow-ness. They were blank, glassy, vacant.
They were dead.
Unable to bear it, Angel took one last look at her blue-green eyes and then swept his hand over them, closing them forever. He laid her gently on the ground and stood then, staring down at her silently.
Behind him, the rest of the group stood in absolute silence as the impossibility of all this was still filtering through them.
Buffy had had only moments to focus on dispelling the dizzy fog from her body after she gained consciousness before all her attention was transferred to a fading, dying Willow. She wished she was still unconscious. That all this was a bad dream. But no. The obvious reality was that Buffy had failed her friend for the final time. < Dear god, it should have been me, > she thought. Instead of rescuing Willow, it turned out that Willow had rescued them all, sacrificing her life to do it.
Seeking comfort and refuge from the battering of her own thoughts, Buffy instinctively leaned against Xander.
Despite everything some stubborn part of him clung to hope, turning to Giles Xander argued, "She's a vampire and she hasn't turned to dust. There has to be something we can still do!"
"She was unlike any other vampire we've ever known," Giles replied mournfully. "Those differences may include a different kind of-of death for her."
"I don't believe it. I won't!" Xander rasped but his words echoed with a hollow air of despair. Yet he refused to cry, as if in the belief that should he shed tears it would make this nightmare all the more real.
"Xander…" Buffy pleaded through her tears.
"No! SHE CAN'T BE DEAD!" Xander kneeled down and desperately shook Willow's body. "Willow! Wake up! Willow, please…"
Although Giles turned away unable to watch the outpouring of Xander's anguished denial and Angel, seemingly locked in his own inner world of pain, merely watched impassively; Buffy couldn't stand silently by a moment longer waiting for Xander to crumble.
Choking on her own tears she grabbed him from behind. Xander struggled for a moment before submitting to Buffy's embrace. Turning around in her arms, he buried his face against her neck.
His sobs came then, ragged and terrible.