Disclaimer: As ever, I don’t own the copyright, Joss Whedon, the WB and Mutant Enemy do. This is just fanfic, no infringement intended.
Warning: NC-17 Spike/Willow Read at your own risk.
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Spike groaned. His control was really going to be tested by this. But he had long passed the point where he could deny her anything.
"Alright, baby," he said, and kissed her. "Then open for me." Willow smiled wickedly and opened her thighs. Spike settled himself between them, and reached to find her sweet, wet core. He guided just the tip of himself inside her, easing in almost, but not quite to the thin barrier he was beginning to actively hate. Willow sighed softly, relishing the feel of him, velvet softness over steel strength. She could tell he struggled to control himself, and realized that he desperately wanted to push further into her, that he wanted to seat himself fully inside her body.
And that he wouldn't because she hadn't given him permission. Because her first time was supposed to be with either the boy she loved or the boy who loved her.
Except, Willow realized in a moment of stunning clarity, that her feelings for both Xander and Oz weren't what she had tried to tell herself they were. She no longer idolized Xander as she had before. She had learned his failings, had learned things about him --his attraction to shallow Cordellia, his betrayal of Buffy when she went to stop Acathla-- that she disliked intensely. But she hadn't quite fallen out of love with him, either. And Oz had seemed exactly what she needed, the love that any girl in her right mind would be thrilled to have as her own. Oz was so cool, so charming, so deep, and so devoted to her. But Willow realized she loved Oz's love for her more than she loved Oz himself.
Neither boy ever called her "little girl" in a way that made her heart race and her blood sing. And neither Oz nor Xander moved her, neither of them aroused her, neither of them could satisfy her like the demon who made love to her so tenderly, so sweetly, so savagely, yet protected her from his own dark desires.
Willow realized that her first time should be with someone who thought she was beautiful, and tempting, and a glory...and could still put her pleasure and her well-being before his own needs. So she opened her thighs further, shifted her hips slightly, invitingly, and pulled Spike into a kiss. He took her mouth again, but instead of coming further into her body, he withdrew, easing back again, but not any further than before. Then he repeated the actions, slowly withdrawing and reentering her, but not far. Not nearly far enough. Willow could feel that she would reach another climax just from this sweet torment. But that was no longer enough for her. She broke their kiss.
"Spike?" she began, "All those things we still haven't done?"
"Mmmmm?" His eyes were closed in fierce concentration.
"Can we still do them, after?"
He went still, his eyes opening. "After what?" he asked.
"After you take me," she said softly, her gaze holding his.
"Willow," he said as softly, once again looking at her with puppy-dog eyes. Looking at her like she was something precious, that needed to be protected and cherished. "You aren't thinking, love," he said, trying to reason with her. "You're too heated. I can't do this to you." She would have none of it.
"Yes. You can. Because if you don't I will die."
"Willow," he began again.
"I will die, Spike," she said and pulled him into another heated kiss. With a groan Spike devoured her mouth like a starving man, and he was, he realized, starved for her. This was what he had wanted, wasn't it? Why was he hesitating? She couldn't have made her own needs more clear. But he still felt that she deserved more, deserved better, deserved someone who loved her.
And then she broke the kiss again, and looked at him with those huge doe-eyes, so vulnerable, so tender, so full of need. "Please," she whispered, and he could not, could not resist that plea. Spike pushed farther into her, pressing against her maidenhead. She stiffened slightly at the discomfort and he went instantly still. Maybe she would have second thoughts now. But she didn't. Willow lifted her hips slightly, taking him in further, despite the pain he knew he caused her.
It was too much. Knowing that it would be easier on her if he got it over with swiftly, Spike whispered, "Sorry, little girl," and took her mouth even as he drove himself into her, past the virgin barrier, seating himself inside her to the hilt. He caught her startled cry against his mouth, held himself still until her tight passage eased around him, accepting the invasion of his flesh into hers.
And then she moved, lifting those long, slender legs of hers to wrap them around his waist, and take him inside even deeper. Spike groaned against her mouth and began to move again.
God, she was sweet. Buffy had been a fire to burn in, and his consuming love for her had grown out of the ashes of their passionate hatred. Dru was a dream of dark beauty, the temptation that seduced him into the embrace of death. The fire she offered burned cold, indeed.
But Willow was innocent joy and wholehearted rapture. Tender warmth without the fear of ashes. She welcomed him into her body with a seductive innocence that he found intoxicating, enthralling. And the feel of her --tight and wet and responsive-- was pure delirium.
He tried to keep his movements gentle, needing to give to her, needing it to be as good for her as it couldn't help being for him. Every instinct told him to forget gentleness, to just plunder her willing body, to drive into her relentlessly, even at the expense of her pain, knowing that pain could be overridden and turned to rapture. But he couldn't pay back her yielding, trusting sweetness in such coin, so he forced himself to make love to her with the tenderness she deserved. He could do this, now, for her.
But not for long.
It hurt, Willow realized. But not too much. And the pain was easing. Spike was being so tender, so gentle, his rhythm so easy inside her. She knew he was still holding back, and that was okay for now. She needed his tenderness, needed him to be gentle.
But not for long.
The pleasure he had given her before was nothing compared to the feel of him joined to her own body, stroking inside her, filling her, stretching her. Willow was devoutly grateful that she had decided to have her first time with someone who could be so devastatingly gentle, so ruthlessly tender. Every nerve in her body was thrumming in rapture, the sensations building, with exquisite slowness, to the peaks she recognized from before.
Except that this was so much better, so much more profound. The slow buildup wasn't enough, she realized. She needed him, craved him, and she needed to fulfil his own needs. Willow lifted her hips to meet his slow, steady strokes, matching his rhythm, accepting the pace he set. For the moment. But slowly, gradually, she showed him with her body, showed him with heated, fierce kisses, showed him with her nails scraping down his spine that gentleness wasn't enough, and that he didn't need to hold back, not for her.
That she needed his force and his will and his passion. She needed him to meet her as fiercely as she offered herself to him. And when his kisses turned more demanding, when his pace increased and his thrusts lost their gentleness, when he stopped holding back and drove into her with all the power at his command, Willow met him, mated him, matched him.
And it was Spike who lost control. Spike who became mindless and needy, who cried out in passion and spilled his cold seed into her virgin depths. And feeling that, Willow found herself falling over the precipice again, surging against him fiercely, feeling her passage tighten and release around his manhood in the most incredible, uncontrollable contractions she had ever experienced.
Her orgasm seemed endless, seemed like dying, seemed like the most glorious moment of her life. Willow shattered around Spike, shattered for him, and knew that everything in her life was being shattered and reformed into patterns that might mimic, but would never be identical to, the patterns her life had held before.
She didn't come back to earth right away. The pleasure had been too sweet, too intense. Thinking to spare her his inert weight, Spike tried to move away from her. That got her attention.
"No," she said fiercely, tightening her legs about his waist once more, wrapping her arms more firmly about his neck. Willow couldn't bear to lose him just yet. She craved the feel of him inside her, even though he was sated. Spike thrilled at her need, and allowed himself to be pulled back into her embrace. Seemingly, she had no regrets. For the moment.
Spike kissed her gently, his intention to sooth rather than arouse. She sighed contentedly against his mouth, then returned his kisses, with soft, replete, tender kisses of her own.
"I love you," she whispered against his mouth, and he felt one moment of amazingly possessive joy, one moment of bone-deep, masculine gratification, before he told himself that it was only her completion that made her say that; that Willow was so drowsy and enervated by her release, she wasn't even aware of what she said. So he said nothing, himself, but deepened the kiss.
Willow accepted the sweetness of the kiss, even with the bitter that Spike had not responded to her declaration. For she was very aware of her words, and they had not been spoken idly. She had foolishly made love to a demon, foolishly tried to play innocent lover's games with a creature destined to devour innocence. And she had lost hers. Not merely innocence of the flesh, but her emotional innocence as well.
Somewhere between the first tender kiss by her bookcase and the shattering rapture of her final fulfillment, Willow had fallen in love with Spike. Despite his murderous past. Despite knowing that he was a demon wearing the body of a man he had murdered more than a century before. Her mind knew those things, but her heart rejected them, convinced they were not the entire truth. Willow had been in love before. She knew the symptoms and the signs. And she knew one more thing.
This was nothing like her desperate love for Xander or her sweet, affectionate love for Oz. She was in love with Spike in a way that was more terrible, more absolute, more consuming. And altogether more glorious.
And she knew, as well, that he could not, did not, and never would, love her as she loved him.
Spike loved Drusilla. Willow wasn't too surprised that he occasionally took other lovers
--one hundred and fifty years of fidelity was a pretty tough standard to hold to, she supposed-- especially as Drusilla had seemingly favored Angel over Spike for a while. So Willow had no illusions about her place in Spike's heart; it was small and secondary. But she was grateful that she had a place in it at all.
She continued to kiss him and then to deepen the kiss. She was rewarded when, in a very few minutes, he grew hard for her again, swelling inside her tight sheath until she was once again filled with him.
"Yes," she crooned, lifting her hips to his. "Please, Spike."
God, he loved the way she pleaded, the way she yielded, the way she felt and tasted and moved, Spike thought, as he moved inside her once more. He was grateful Dru had been in one of her moods tonight, driving him from her side with recriminations about Angel's return to the Slayer. The idea that the fool in the cemetery could have been first with his Willow, could have forever blighted her sweet responsiveness and uninhibited sensuality was distasteful to him. He was very glad he had been around to prevent it. And even happier that he had decided to walk her home.
Spike rolled over with her in his arms, startling her for a moment, until he reminded her: "I had other things to teach you, remember, little girl?" Her eyes widened, and she smiled down at him.
"I like the things you teach me, Spike," her voice was caressingly soft, making him swell even harder inside her.
He taught her gently, how to shift her position, how to take charge of their rhythm, how to maximize her own pleasure while she sat astride him, finding out the delicious difference in the angle and depth of his penetration into her yielding flesh. He taught her how to move, how to let the sensations build. He taught her how it felt to have his hands on her breasts while she rode him, or how it felt to have his finger press against her clit while she increased her pace. He taught her how to judge when he was too close, and drop him down so that he stayed hard for her longer, and increased her own pleasure.
And finally, he taught her how, for a woman, climax got sweeter, and harder, and longer each successive time, so that she was weeping when he plunged into her deeply, spilling himself, bringing her to her final, shattering release, so that she spun out of control and he had to surge up, holding her against his chest, rocking her, comforting her as she shattered unendingly and it became too much, and she lost touch with the world.
When Willow opened her eyes, she was lying on her side, under the quilt, wrapped in Spike's arms. She could see the clock on her bedside table behind his shoulder. How odd. It was barely 4:00 a.m. Her life had been changed forever in such a short time.
"Spike?" she asked drowsily.
"Yeah, baby?"
"I...it's 4:00 a.m. and..."
"And you need your beauty sleep," he sighed, not really wanting to leave her.
"No. I want to know...how late can you stay?" Dawn was a few hours away yet, but it was entirely possible he needed to get back to Drusilla well before then. Willow hated to think about that.
So she was relieved when he chuckled, and told her, "As long as you'd like...provided you close the damned blinds in a few hours."
"You mean, through tomorrow?" Willow was almost afraid to hope for so much.
"At least. Just how long will your parents be away, anyway?"
"Now, how did you figure out...never mind. I guess it was pretty obvious. We haven't exactly been quiet. They'll be away until Monday night."
"How very convenient," Spike said smilingly, and began to nibble on her shoulder.
"For me. But what about you? Won't..." she hated to bring this up, but knew she couldn't avoid it. "Won't Drusilla be worried?"
"Ah," Spike sighed. He had known that Dru would have to come into their conversation sooner or later. Willow deserved to know how things were.
"The truth is, Dru would just as soon I not show up for a few days. She's in a bit of a pet."
"A pet?" Willow asked. Spike laughed wryly.
"Yeah. Dru wasn't exactly pleased with me, tonight. She's still perturbed about my helping Buffy stop Acathla. And she's very, very perturbed about my part in getting Angel out of Hell before she could do it herself."
"Because she was planning on leaving his soul where it was and just getting Angel's body and his demon out?" At the surprised look he gave her, Willow hurried to explain herself. "Buffy told me that much. But I don't understand about Drusilla. If she's angry about how you helped Buffy, and if she, well, if she wanted Angel, then why is she with you?"
Spike sighed again. This was the difficult part, explaining the complexities of vampiric relationships, further complicated by the intricacies of Dru's madness.
"Because for damn near one hundred and fifty years I've been her lover and her protector. Without Angel, she needs me. She'll forgive me a lot," Spike said. Willow continued to look puzzled. He went on.
"You have to understand how it is with vampires, little girl. Fidelity isn't our strong suit. Darla and Angel had been together for over a hundred years when he found and took Dru. Darla enjoyed the way he tormented Dru. She even helped him plan things, got him into the convent.
"Dru was with Angel when she found me. Which didn't bother Angel at all. He became my mentor, taught me all the things that Drusilla was too weak to do herself, and which he excelled at. The four of us were quite the ménage à quatre for a long time, believe me. And very often, more than that.
"When I became a vamp, one of the things I enjoyed most was how much easier it made seduction. The first few years, I found a new bed every night. Although I ended every night in Dru's. So, it isn't exactly unheard of for me to...stray."
Willow took that in. It did not make her happy. She had to accept Drusilla; Spike had been her lover more than a hundred years before Willow was even born. But she wasn't sure she could bear it if he taught other girls the things he had so tenderly taught her. Knowing she shouldn't ask, but unable to stop herself, she said, "So, Drusilla is used to you going off...like this?" Willow tried to keep her voice nonchalant, but he heard the unasked question. The demon in him was indifferent to her pain; but the lover in him ached for it.
Spike pulled Willow into his arms and kissed her. "I told you, that stuff happened when I first became a vamp. It grew old after a few decades. I haven't gone off from Drusilla since the turn of the century," he said truthfully. "She left me after what happened with Angel. And while we were apart...there was someone else." The same someone else who had been his unwilling bride for a millennium in Hell, but Willow was not to know that. The other demonesses he had enjoyed in that undone time didn't matter. Except that Willow herself had been one of them. But that was something else he could never tell her.
"And, she came back to you after you rescued Angel..." Willow began.
"Because she didn't have a choice," Spike completed the thought. "But she's not always, um, stable. So I'm persona non bloody grata for the next few days."
So there it was. Spike would not be teaching anyone else the lessons she wanted him to keep for her alone. She would only have to share him with Drusilla. Willow could deal with that. "Lucky for me," she purred now, responding to his last remark. Spike laughed and rolled her beneath him.
"No, little girl," he told her, "Lucky for me."
He kissed her, and the next time was as hot and hard as the earlier times had been sweet and gentle. And Willow's climax this time came so quickly that he was able to make her reach another and another before he was ready to join her.
He made love to her until she was weak and pliant, unable to leave the bed to shut the blinds against the coming daylight. Spike took care of that detail. And then he took care of more important matters.
Over the course of the next few days, Willow found out a number of delicious things his naked body could do to hers. Some of them would have left her inviolate, but she enjoyed them much, much more in her thoroughly wanton state.
That weekend was an idyll; a few phone-calls assured Buffy and her other friends that she was okay, just a little under the weather and in need of some rest. Oz wanted to play nursemaid, and she was surprised, and a little saddened, that it was so easy to lie to him, so easy to persuade him to stay away for a few days.
So easy to deceive him with her other, demon, lover.
Willow stared unhappily at the phone as she settled it back in the cradle.
"What's wrong, love?" Spike asked gently.
She could tell him that she hated lying to Oz, to her friends. But that was her burden, not his. She would deal with it later, when she had time to sort out her thoughts and feelings. Not now, not when they only had a few days.
Not when she might have to live on the memory of those days for the rest of her life.
So she smiled at him, and said, "Nothing, Spike. Nothing's wrong at all." Another easy lie. Spike smiled back and took her into his arms.
She had a few precious days and a few heavenly nights. And she didn't want to waste a moment of them. Neither did he. So she paid eager attention to every lesson he gave, becoming an avid pupil, excelling in this, as in every other subject to which she ever turned her hand.
Willow did not forget her other plans, the reason she had encountered Spike in the cemetery in the first place. On Friday and Saturday nights, she made sure she recited the charm over the earth from Mr. Winston's grave. She had other preparations to make: cutting out a series of paper hearts, soaking them in herbal decoctions, also properly charmed, that stained the papers light greens or golds or earthy browns. Then, each heart had to be set out to dry, before being labeled with the name of the person it was supposed to represent, and another charm said over all.
In order to convince Angel to take the results seriously, Willow had cast a pretty wide net. She had cut out hearts for all of them: Angel, Buffy, herself, Xander, Oz, and Cordy. She added Spike and Drusilla because of their relationship to Angel, and then, after a moment's hesitation, Giles and Jenny. She was pretty sure how that would go, and showing him another couple destined for each other might help convince Angel that the spell was accurate.
Now, all she had to do was wait for the night of the new moon.
Which would also be her last night with Spike. Willow pushed aside that thought, and returned to her thoroughly rumpled bed.
Spike did let her out of bed occasionally. Long enough to get food that she needed, and that he enjoyed. Long enough to find out the interesting possibilities presented by a roomy kitchen. Willow had no idea how she would ever face her family across the breakfast table again. But that hadn't been her chief concern when Spike had bent her over it and driven himself inside her from behind. The polished, smooth wood of the table had pressed against her breasts and he had been so deeply inside her, the force of his penetration driving her hips against the edge of the table, placing exquisite friction against her vulnerable clit. She had climaxed almost at once. And then he had made her climax again.
He was also very tolerant of human hygienic needs. The shower had been an absolute revelation. He had soaped her body under a slow, warm, spray, and when she was slippery and wet, he had braced her against the shower wall, lifted her in his arms until she could wrap her legs around his waist, and had thrust into her while he stood up, and gravity forced her down on him until he was so deeply inside her she thought she would die.
But she realized, in that moment, that was how she wanted to die: in Spike's arms.
And that someday she very likely would. Willow kept that realization to herself; like the unrequited "I love you," it ran too deep. Instead, she lost herself in the moment, in the incomparable ecstasy of her demon lover's embrace.
As the days slipped past, Willow wished she could find a spell to stop time; but she knew just enough about magic to know that time was too powerful a force to bend lightly to mere sorcery. Maybe the strongest demons ever, maybe Satan, or someone like that, might, possibly, maybe, be able to affect time. But that was something that was completely out of her league.
And so, Sunday followed Saturday, and dusk followed dawn, until it was the night of the new moon, and time for Willow's spell.
"Don't you want to do this in front of them?" Spike asked curiously. "I mean, if you're trying to convince Angel that he's meant to be with Buffy, shouldn't he see that you actually cast the spell, instead of rigging the results?"
Willow smiled at him. "What a thing to say! Angel knows I would never do that." Never lie to him. But wasn't she going to be lying to all of them, now? Another thought to be pushed aside, to be dealt with later. "Anyway, I want to see if it works, first. I mean, I didn't have much time to practice this one, like I normally do. I started it, like about an hour after I found it. If it doesn't work, I'll try again next month. If it does, and Angel doesn't believe me, next month he can watch me."
"Sounds fair."
"Thank you," she smiled at him. Willow set out the things she needed, and began the casting. It was a fairly simple procedure. Spike watched from the comfort of her bed, as Willow bent over her desk and murmured the enchantment. For a moment, the paper hearts were utterly still. And then they began moving.
Willow stared at the patterns that spread themselves unforgivingly before her view, and wished to God she had never found the spell.
She had what she wanted: Angel's and Buffy's names were overlapped, the colored papers bleeding into each other, turning a valentine-heart-red that simply couldn't be mistaken for anything other than True Love.
But the price of seeing that particular stain was to see the other stains that surrounded it. Sure, she had expected Giles and Jenny to match, and was happy that Giles' heart indicated he would have another chance at True Love. But she had also expected Spike and Dru to match as well, Spike's involvement with Willow herself notwithstanding. And she had expected--oh! she had been so sure!-- that Xander had to be hers. Unless her growing feelings for Oz were destined to grow far more.
But the patterns revealed were not those of happily-ever-after. They were the patterns of bittersweet yearning.
Xander's paper heart turned white as it touched Buffy's on the other side from Angel's. And Dru's did the same thing touching Angel's paper heart. White for Oz touching Willow --I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Willow thought--, white for Cordy touching Xander, white, unbelievably white, for Spike touching Buffy. Oh, God, ...while we were apart...there was someone else, he had said. Hadn't she wondered about Buffy living with him? How could she bear it, now that she understood? The irony cut her like a knife; Willow had feared to see her own heart turn white with longing because the man she loved was in love with her best friend.
She just hadn't realized it would be Spike for whom she would always long.
"What's the verdict, then?" he drawled in that sexy, British accent that she now knew would always act upon her like a caress.
"Oh, no verdict," Willow said, amazed that she was able to keep her voice perfectly calm. She casually passed her hand over the patterns, so that they became once more bits of colored paper and no more. But the picture they had formed was indelibly burned into her mind's eye. Willow knew she would see it forever. "I must not have done the chant right," she lied. "Maybe I started the first one too late. It was probably after midnight when we got back from the cemetery that first night."
"Sure it wasn't just that no one matches?" Spike said, half hoping it was. Except that he knew, how bitterly he knew, that Buffy and Angel unquestioningly matched.
"Oh, yes," she assured him. "When there aren't any matches, the paper turns yellow. That means that you have a destined True Love, but he or she isn't one of the ones in the spell. And if you don't have a destined True Love, the paper turns blue." That at least was true.
"Well, that fits," he said. "And what does it do if you have more than one True Love?"
His tone was deliberately light, but she knew his secret now, and understood what he was really asking. His question was perhaps intended to show that such a thing rather put paid to the idea of True Love at all. But the human heart, Willow was learning, was a far more complex creation than that. Even when it belonged to a demon. "The paper splits in pieces, Spike," she said. "And when each piece finds its match, the pairs draw together again."
"Ah. I should have known."
And so should I, she thought. Aloud, she said, "It doesn't matter. Now that I know what I did wrong, I'll just try it again next month." And next month, I'll only try it for Buffy and Angel.
"You are not going back to the cemetery alone," Spike said flatly.
"Of course not," she told him easily. "You're coming with me." Willow smiled, turned and walked back to the bed. "But right now, it might be nice if you came, with me." His own smile was wolfish, as he reached up to pull her down into his embrace. Willow closed her eyes to better savor the feel of his mouth suckling her breast. She was so wet for him. And of course, he knew that, loved that. Spike reached a hand between her thighs, caressing her clit, slipping his finger along the damp cleft beneath it, following the path into the tight, secret passage of her body. Willow moaned, her head falling back, as she pressed herself tighter to him.
"Spike," she said languidly. "The idea was for you to come, too."
"Oh, I will," he raised his head from her breast to tell her, and the heat in his voice made up for the chill of his flesh. "I promise, I will." Willow parted her thighs wider, twisted in his arms to pull him down so that they tumbled together onto the bed, and proceeded to see that he kept this particular promise.
Hours later, Willow stared across her room to a window that was open on the black of a moonless night. She had no excuse to keep Spike by her side any longer. And every reason not to: her parent's were supposed to be getting back soon. They had called her from the road. And she had tried to keep her voice normal while Spike, grinning wickedly, had decided to kneel at her feet and pull her hips to his mouth, slipping his tongue inside her so deeply her legs went instantly weak, unable to keep her standing. Only Spike's supporting hands on her hips had kept her from crashing to the floor.
She blamed her uncontrollable moan on a static charge from the carpet. Her mother had accepted that --and really, how could she possibly imagine the true reason?-- and, reassured that everything was all right, had hung up. Willow had dropped the phone and surrendered to every wicked thing Spike demanded of her.
But her parents had been no more than three hour's drive away, and that had been close to two hours ago. Willow gathered her courage and said what she had to say.
"You have to leave."
"Yeah. I know, pet," Spike said gently, looking at her with those puppy-dog eyes. "Don't much want to, though."
"And I don't want you to go," she agreed.
"But it's never about what we want, love. That's the thing, little girl," he said quietly. Willow thought of the pattern of hearts.
"You're right," she said, then smiled, a little sadly. "But I'm so grateful for what I have, it seems, well, greedy, to ask for more." He looked at her with those puppy-dog eyes holding a tenderness that was so close to love that the difference almost didn't matter, and she went willingly into his arms.
Her parents were coming home, and Willow knew her idyll was ending. But she also knew that what was between herself and Spike was only beginning. Sooner or later, her friends would find out about this, and the knowledge would change her friendships forever. There would also be danger from Drusilla, she was pretty sure, despite what Spike said about vampires and fidelity. And there was more danger to Willow herself. Loving Spike the way she did, the way she now knew she always would, opened her up to a temptation Buffy seemed immune to.
Someday, Spike was going to want to take her blood along with her body, and Willow was pretty sure she was going to let him. She hoped desperately she could make her friends understand. That when the time came, they would use the ritual they had learned at such cost, to restore Willow's soul.
And then, maybe Buffy wouldn't have to kill Spike, or even Drusilla. Maybe Willow could be the Slayer's guarantee that no human lives would ever be endangered by them again.
The future had always seemed bright to Willow. Bright and full of promise. Now it seemed frightening, and uncertain, the promises dark. But there were some fears that you accepted, if they were the price you had to pay for the love that was as necessary to your life as air to breathe.
Held in the arms of her demon lover, yielding to his tender kiss, Willow knew that her love was strong enough to face any fear, overcome any obstacle. It wasn't a perfect love, but she didn't need perfection.
She only needed her beloved to watch over her with those puppy-dog eyes, and to hold her, forever, in his arms.
The End (for the moment)