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Title: Penance: The Next Best Thing
The sun was burning, climbing higher into the sky, when they tumbled onto the bed together. Sunlight trickled into the room -- the scene of a hundred secret rendez-vous, witness to the withering demise of dreams -- painting skin browned by sun in shadow and light. Her hands splayed out across his chest, devouring the feel of warm flesh. Her hand paused over his heart, searching out the feel of its steady rhythm. "Willow," he gasped, warm breath soothing across skin yet untouched save for the phantom gasps of the dead. His hands skimmed across her body, shaking with the power of his need for her, trying to drown his guilt in the feel of her response. "Don't stop," she pleaded. Her voice ached, lost and needing. It tugged at him, memories of times past and chances lost, of lives built out of darkness and regrets. He kissed her hard, tongue lashing against hers, forcing her words back into her heart. She loved the warmth in him. Sometimes, feeling Angel move against her, all she could sense was the utter lack of intrinsic warmth in him. And her mind would scream then, terror and disgust melding together in a never ending wail as she felt the death in him. He lacked the blend of scents unique to life. When she buried her face against him, she could smell something almost musty. Sometimes, when the death in him loomed large before her, she tried not to think that it was the scent of decay held at bay only by whatever power animated him. Manufactured scents covered the emptiness beneath them. Hungry kisses turned tender, nearly sorrowful when his lips met her neck. His mouth paused over the puncture wounds marring the flesh stretched across the graceful column of her neck. When Angel hovered above her neck, Willow waited for the pleasure-tinged pain, dreading the times when lost to his own needs, the pain predominated. Now, gentle lips brushed feather light across the marks.
He lay on his side, curled against her. His arm was draped over her, and she held his hand against her. "I love you, Wills." His lips pressed against the base of her neck. "I know." She listened to the sound of her own breath trickling past her lips, followed a moment later by his. "I love you, too, Xander." Her thumb traced against the hand she held caught against her stomach, infinity, a circle looping over itself. "Any woman who would willingly leave you is a fool... Anya will come back. She'll see the world, just as she wanted, and she'll see that there's nowhere better than being in your arms." "I hope you're right. As strange and irritating as she can be... I _need_ her." He sighed against her. "And you... you deserve better than this, Willow." "I can't think of anything better than you," she told him softly. Her future couldn't see beyond Angel, so she found her salvation in the dreams of her past. His arms tightened around her. She could read the emotion in his very movements. With Angel, even while looking into his eyes, an unreadable darkness stared back out at her. Beyond the wanting, the constant need, she sometimes wondered if there was anything left inside of him worth saving. "That isn't what I meant," Xander murmured reprovingly. "Your life, it should be more than this. Whenever I looked at you, I saw something, Willow. There was a future for you, something bright and strong... When people speak of the unlimited potential the future holds, it's you that they talked about." She closed her eyes, burrowing deeper into the pillow. "And now?" she asked reluctantly. He paused. "It's like watching a drowning person. And you're so far out in the deep end, I can't figure out how to reach you and pull you back towards land." Her fingers wound through his. "You don't have to save me, Xander. I... I've learned to live with this." Xander's voice was hoarse when he spoke again. "No, I don't think you have. Otherwise, we wouldn't be here right now. You can leave him, you know. There are people in the Council willing to take Angel, to take care of him. You can get your life back." Willow's breath fluttered. "I know. I thought about it... but the thing is, Xander... I don't know what my life is anymore. Sometimes I hate Angel so much that I can just _feel_ it burning in my chest, but when I think about life without him there... I'm at a loss." "Oh, Wills..." She turned around in his arms, her eyes meeting his. Willow cupped Xander's cheek fondly, smiling at him slightly. "Don't be sad for me, Xander. I couldn't stand that anyone else suffer for my life." She moved forward and caught his lips, willing him to release the burden that was hers alone to bear.
Angel was prowling the mansion, his body tense with frustrated anger, when Willow returned. She stood on the threshold, drawing in a steadying breath as if a deep enough intake of air could force the anguish in the pit of her stomach to dissipate. Once, in a time long lost to experience, she would have called Angel's movements graceful. While still a little girl, teetering at the margins of her future, the ease of his movements, the power evident within him, would have made her flush with guilty appreciation. When she could stand to watch him now, he reminded her of a caged animal, pacing the length of it's pen, pausing to shake at the bars of his cage with impotent rage. She saw the violence in his movements, a strength and anger burning within him strong enough to shatter her before he even noted that he was clawing her apart. Willow sighed, the last vestiges of the peace she had found in Xander's arms dying beneath the weight that descended upon her when she thought of the burden she had taken upon herself as a duty. Her eyes peeled open to meet Angel's hard gaze. She fell back a step unconsciously, survival instincts honed over the course of human evolution urging her to escape. Willow had learned long ago that retreat, a visible homage to her fear, served no purpose other than to excite the predator masked in human form. "Angel?" Willow ventured cautiously. Her throat was dry, her hands damp at her sides. She shuffled back another step, driven backwards by the look in his eyes. Instincts broke free, and she was running. She could hear her breath tearing by her ears. Mortal. Weak. _Slow_. Even running, Angel barely made no sound. His silence unnerved her, drew the unexpected fear within her to new heights. Was he following? How close? She imaged his fingertips closing in on the back of her shirt, stilling her flight, captive to his superior strength. She had been running an eternity, air burning in her lungs, her calves aching, heat exploding beneath her ribs. She didn't even make it to the mansion's main entrance before cold fingers wrapped around her upper arms. Willow distantly heard herself screaming as she was whirled about. Angel slammed her against the wall, knocking what breath remained within her from her body. Willow blinked back her tears. "Angel? What are you doing? Let me _go_!" she choked out around her fear. "_Mine_" he growled. His knee pressed between her legs, as his fingers pressed against the marks on her neck. "You. Are. _Mine_." Her voice trembled. "You're frightening me, Angel. Put me down. Please." He grabbed her chin, holding her head still. His eyes bore into hers. "Tell me. You are mine." Willow swallowed. She was his though he didn't know her, though he didn't love her, though he didn't even _care_. Her life was his, her body was his... sometimes, she thought that he would not stop until even her soul could not be claimed as her own. "_No_." He cocked his head, dark eyes watching her. "Mine." Was this truly what she had told Xander she could not imagine her life without? Had she so lost a sense of herself that being a possession was safer than standing on her own? "Not yours," Willow hissed beneath her tears. His hands spasmed against her upper arms before Angel released her. He stepped back slightly, studying her reddened, tear streaked face quizzically. "I love you." Willow stiffened. Her hand cracked across his face before she could reign in her impulse. Attacking an angered vampire was not one of top ten routes to surviving an encounter. "Don't you dare, you greedy, grasping, son of a bitch!" Willow seethed. She hated him, she _hated_ him! "You don't love me. You don't have the right to love me! Any whore willing to warm your bed could do what I do here. Sometimes, I wonder if there's anything left in that head of yours... and sometimes, I think that Angel, the _real_ Angel, is lurking inside of you -- too fucking cowardly and weak to pull himself together and stand on his own two feet. You don't love me, Angel. You want someone to take care of you, make your decisions for you, make your cursed existence _easy_." She gasped, the words that emerged as a choked scream burning with the resentment and pain that had gnawed at her for years. "When you got out of Hell, I thought that I needed to atone for my part in destroying you. Maybe this wasn't about me. Maybe you'd already wasted all your chances, and all that you deserved was the staking that everybody so wanted to give you!" She pushed away from the wall, inches from the door, and ran. The sunlight wrapped around her, safe. She didn't stop running until the mansion slipped out of sight. ~end~
Admission time, when I came up with Penance, this was as far as I got
in terms of development. So now, not surprisingly, I'm at a loss. There's
three ways I can play this: Northlight,
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