Summary: How Angel gets back- done a million times, I know, but this fits in the show.
Rating: PG
Feedback: Sure- but don't make me cry.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Buffy had left a month ago, and though she would never admit it, Willow had stopped hoping she would return. She kept up her optimistic front for her friends- making the "past tense rule" and others like it, but she knew her friend was gone.
There is a saying- "If you hope for nothing, you'll never be disappointed." Willow sometimes regretted that she couldn't live that way. Her hopes were always so high, that when such a huge bout of failure came around, she felt totally crushed. Willow had really hoped that she could restore Angel's soul, keep him from awakening Acathla, and have him live happily ever after with Buffy and her Slayerettes. Instead, although she had a suspicion that he had gotten his soul back, everything else was ruined. Buffy never even told them what happened, so no one knew the end of the story. As far as Willow could guess, since Angel had disappeared, he had gotten his soul, been sent immediately to hell, and Buffy had run away. Willow still remembered hoping that the two had run away together...
But no. Her life lay in shattered cliched ruins, and she didn't know how to fix anything anymore.
*
Willow sat in Buffy's bedroom, still unchanged in the weeks following her disappearance. She tried to imagine what her friend had been thinking, why she had needed to escape. Willow stood up and walked around the room, remembering so many times she had been there. Why had she been abandoned by her first best friend and confidante? Whatever Buffy had felt while leaving couldn't be as painful as what Willow was feeling now.
She immediately chided herself, being incapable of even thinking something that sounded slightly unkind. Absentmindedly, she sat at Buffy's nightstand. She looked at her reflection, her red hair, her fair skin, so unlike the Slayer.
So beautiful, but only the mirror knew so, because Willow would never believe it.
For no particular reason, she opened the drawer next to her. It held little things that reminded her of Buffy- combs, butterfly clips, holy water, Buffy's claddagh ring...
Buffy's ring?
Willow took it out and looked at it, wondering how a love so strong could ever end in such pain. She tried to imagine how Angel had looked when he had given it to Buffy. Why was a love so strong forced to self-destruct? How must Angel have felt, standing at Acathla's feet, not knowing that he had regained his soul only to go immediately to hell.
Willow's forehead creased in displeasure. She couldn't believe that a love like theirs could end, could be broken. She needed to believe that love could overcome insurmountable obstacles, or life was practically not worth living. Take the ring- a symbol of love so powerful. Surely it must be infused with some of that power...
Willow froze.
Then she smiled.
*
Willow began learning the history of the claddagh ring, of the love and possession that it represented. Some had attributed special powers to it, but nothing was very fully explained. There was supposedly some sort of tremendous bond between people wearing matching rings- a bond unaffected by distance, magic, or even different realities. All was very ill-documented, but Willow became more and more convinced that the ring was her key to finding Angel, wherever he was.
Willow decided that Giles would probably know a bit more about hell vortexes than herself, and went to try and glean some information.
"So, Giles, what do you know about getting people out of hell? <Very
subtle.>" Fortunately, he was somewhat distracted. "Why?'
"Well, you know, I've just been reading about it lately..." "You wouldn't
be trying to release Angel from hell, would you?" <Okay, not that distracted.>
She tried to look distressedly confused. "I'm just, you know, interested.
We live on the Hellmouth. Hell! And, what if, people got, um, stuck?" she
replied lamely. He gave her a long look, then shook his head.
"In any case, Willow, you wouldn't be able to release Angel from Hell."
Her hope wilted.
"Oh?"
"You see, in order for someone to return to earth, there must be some
sort of pathway for them to cross back. Some link." Her hope looked back
up.
"Well, why wouldn't Angel have that?" "Angel was a demon- Hell is his
element." Her hope fell over again. "But his soul-"
"Was gone already, and I doubt he got it back again before Buffy killed
him. Even if he did, it probably wasn't enough. You see Willow, Angel's
strongest ties were evil, like those of obsession and hatred. Those sort
of 'bonds' simply fade in hell, because they blend in with the surroundings.
Only a pure bond can survive Hell and remain strong enough to bring someone
back. Furthermore, the bond has to be rooted in a tangible object, and
since all of those conditions are so nearly impossible to meet, what you
are suggesting never happens. It will certainly never happen to Angel."
He was a bit overexcited, but in the meantime, Willow's hope had gotten
up, brushed itself off, and begun to smile. Giles' prejudice against Angel
made him believe what he said, but Willow and her hope departed hand in
hand.
*
Willow looked into Giles' lead about a pure bond anchored in a tangible object releasing someone out of hell. She was a bit daunted by what she found, and began to doubt that even Angel's love for Buffy would be strong enough. Furthermore, she didn't know if the claddagh ring was infused with the necessary power. To top it all off, she wasn't sure she had the ability and experience needed to work the spell.
Then she remembered what Angel had looked like every time he saw Buffy.
And she kept going.
Willow spent a lot of time with the claddagh ring, organizing the power it contained, shoring up weak spots, making sure the bond would hold. What she didn't know is that the only thing that made it possible to fill in the gaps was her own love. Her love for Buffy, even her love for Angel, her love for love, with her generous and open heart, she filled the ring to overflowing.
One day late in August, Willow prepared herself for the final incantation. All her research, faith, and, of course, love (sort of a theme of the spell), had come down to this one ritual.
She held the ring and began to chant. There was no magical paraphernalia, just her and the ring, forming a bridge into Hell. She felt a tugging at her heart, and though she continued to say the words, she thought she could see a glowing strand extending from the ring to... Angel, and the hell where he was trapped. She couldn't see Angel or hell, but the ring began to burn in her palm, and her cheeks felt warm. The spell was almost over, and the heat grew, but Willow was more discomfited by the pressure she felt from the gathering of power. She said the final words, and something went wrong. Instead of Angel appearing before her, everything, the immense heat, the light, and the strand- all of it seemed to twist and descend into the center of the ring. There was a flash, and the ring cooled.
Willow sank to her knees and cried.
*
Willow gathered up the texts she had used for her research, tired and saddened that all had been for nothing. She closed one book, and since she didn't read the more obscure Latin dialects, she didn't understand the line about "returning to the original cursed site of damnation...
*
Willow returned the ring to Buffy's drawer, and never told anyone that she had failed Angel yet again.
Some weeks later, after Buffy had returned home to her ecstatic friends and mother, she found the ring again. She had dreamt about that ring so many times- it was almost as if she felt an electric shock when she picked it up. Or maybe that was sentimentality- it was probably just static electricity.
After the fiasco of Scott Hope offering her another claddagh ring, one of friendship, Buffy decided it was time to forget her vampire lover. Well, not forget, but accept his death and try to reclaim a life among humans.
Before her date with Scott, she took Angel's ring, the symbol of their love, and returned to the mansion. She returned to the place where she had sacrificed her love to save the world, though the world seemed empty without him. As she entered, she approached the place where Acathla had stood, the place where she had betrayed her soulmate and damned him to hell. She returned to the cursed site of her worst nightmares.
Buffy set down the ring, and tried to set down her love with it.
She left.
Suddenly, the power within the ring, not only the power of eternal love but all the power of Willow's carefully wrought spell began to spring out. Elsewhere in Sunnydale, Willow awoke with a start. With the final condition of the ritual being met, all of the love and light trapped within the ring burst forward, causing a flash, a flash going the opposite way of the one Willow had witnessed in August. The mansion shook with power and sparkled with light, and suddenly a pathway snaked into Hell, a pathway meant for only one traveler.
His journey over, he was hurled to the ground, and slowly the light disappeared with the ring that had contained it.
He shook on the floor, lying naked and tormented, bestial and confused.
But still loved. Loved enough to escape from Hell itself.
The End