Pairing: Willow/Spike
Previous chapters can be found here:
http://magical-worlds.us/gabrielle/viewstory.php?sid=28
Summary: Spike has left the hideout and Willow decides to get acquainted with the woman in the mirror. Willow POV.
Distribution: If you have permission to archive previous stories in this series, 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: To Emmy, for being such a speedy beta on such short notice, and such a great and giving friend; to Tonya for being so compassionate and wonderful; to Kat, my other beta extraordinaire ; to Feen, who has always encouraged me and supported this story (thanks again for the waist cincher and the purple garter belt ); and to everyone who has stood by me and this story despite having to wait so darn long for updates while my muse stays away for ages.
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Willow stared into the mirror. She hadn't expected to recognize herself and she was not disappointed. The woman who stared back at her was no one she knew. But, far from being frightened or depressed by that fact, the very unfamiliarity of the woman she saw gave Willow hope. For the Willow she had once been was incapable of dealing with the circumstances in which she now found herself. But perhaps this stranger who was now herself could find her way through this minefield of captivity and chaos. She certainly couldn't be any more frightened or helpless than the Willow who had been brought here from Sunnydale. So Willow kept staring into the mirror, trying to get to know this stranger, trying to <i>become</i> this stranger.
She started with her hair, still damp from the shower and comb-tracked. It was longer than it had been, and darker, the bright coloring she once used having long since been rinsed away, leaving dark auburn in its wake. It seemed thicker, more like a curtain. She could no longer picture it in braids, as she had at times been wont to wear it. It wasn't a little girl's hair anymore.
She skipped over her eyes, wanting to save the task of exploring them for last. Instead, she looked at her skin, its pallor fascinating her. But not only was her skin pale, it was almost translucent, and it stretched over her bones in a way that was both precise and delicate. Willow imagined she could almost <i>see</i> her bones through it. A part of her knew that these changes had been wrought by her being kept indoors in the dark and only being fed intermittently. But another part of her saw these changes as evolutionary, perhaps a consequence of her being taken as a vampire's companion and.whatever it was Spike saw her as, wanted to turn her into.
Moving down her face, she gazed at the mouth she saw in the glass next. Gone was the expression of loquacious and eager friendliness her lips had once all but sung with. In its place was an inscrutable immobility of expression that was the least familiar thing about the woman in the mirror thus far. This was not a mouth that spoke casually or spontaneously, but rather a gateway through which words passed only grudgingly and with sober consideration. A mouth that no longer smiled freely or laughed exuberantly. A mouth that spoke to her of little more than it spoke to Spike.
Then she took a long look at the cast of her jaw. She had always thought her jaw slightly weak before, but it wasn't now. The lines of her face were now harsh, her chin thrust a bit forward, and it almost looked as if she were grinding her teeth, so grim and resolute was her jaw line.
And now was the part she had put off, it was time to look into her eyes, to meet her own gaze and come face to face with the girl in the mirror. So Willow fixed her eyes on the eyes that stared back from the mirror and saw.nothing. Nothing but a blank, impenetrable wall of green and white. A wall that had nothing to say. A wall that refused to allow even its owner to pass and see beyond to the girl behind it. The girl who held Willow's life in her hands. The girl she was and yet wasn't. The girl she needed to know and couldn't. The girl in the mirror.her only ally, herself, and yet not. Willow wanted desperately to see what lay hidden beneath those green and white orbs. So she stared and stared 'til her eyes were all she could see. But it did her no good. In the end, she saw nothing more than that wall of eyes.
Now she could see why Spike called her his doll, for her eyes looked like the glass eyes in old-fashioned porcelain dolls. They shone in a ghastly simulacrum of humanity, seeming to open and close by some precision of craftsmanship rather than nature. Was the girl who owned those eyes her at all?
So Willow was afraid once again. Afraid to leave her fate in her own hands, because she didn't know who she was anymore, and yet having no other choice. She hoped someday she could look into the mirror and really <i>see</i> the girl looking back at her. But for now, it was a funhouse mirror image and that was all; reflected, distorted, unknowable.
There was nothing more to be seen in the glass, so Willow finished washing up and putting her clothes on. Spike had told her to be dressed and ready when he returned, and that he would be back much earlier than normal. He had told her he would have a surprise for her. And any changes with Spike had to be viewed with extreme trepidation. Now that they had had sex, a surprise could mean so many things, and the ones that came to her mind were frightening, despite his shockingly softened manner of the last day. He might mean to kill her now. He might mean to turn her now. A surprise could be anything with the volatile and quixotic vampire. But there was nothing she could do. No matter what, he would do as he pleased with her. It would do no good to wonder and worry about his plans.
Willow took one last look at her reflection before going back out into the main room to wait for Spike.
"Who are you?" she screamed.
But the girl in the mirror had nothing to say.
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