Sample for Wesley from piecesofthem
Time moves quickly, in retrospect.
Oh I’d been in love with Fred for years. Maybe even from the first time I saw her, holding up a bloodied hand and luring Angel away from us. I don’t know, nor does it matter now. But the years between back then and the here an now, seemed to move so slowly. In hindsight, they moved rather quickly.
I tried to get closer to her, tried to get her to see that I loved her. Love her. But everytime something got in the way. Work, an axe, a ballet, Gunn, Connor, Lilah, Jasmine, work again…shooting my father. The iron never seemed hot enough, no matter what Cordelia said. In the end I had just give up. Ready to be content that she was happy, even if that meant letting her go with another man.
But did it have to be Knox? I’d rather see her with Gunn, at least then I’d known that she was well taken care off.
It was Fred who completely threw my routine that I had settle in of track. By giving me a ‘signal’. One that took me totally by surprise and had me gaping at her with confusion. After that though, things sped up even more.
Gunn was the first to slap me on the back and mutter something about ‘’bout time, yo’. Lorne just rolled his eyes and wanted to know what took us so long. Angel never really bought a clue until it was almost to late.
He didn’t get why I shot Knox, thought I just did it because he was a rival. It took Fred hitting him upside the head, literally, before he got it. Knox had been trying to kill Fred. Had been attempting to have some former goddess, some ancient one, to take over her body. I could’ve lost her and… God, I don’t even want to think about it.
Save to say, this old one named Illyria, was returned to the deeper well. Guarded even better by this Drogan person. Her time had come, and past and nothing happened.
Everything happened to us though. Time sped up like a whirlwind. Because of what nearly happened to Fed, Angel was trying to push. He wanted us gone and tried everything in the book. Tried being a bastard and push us away, gave us back our memories to do so. Yes, it was a shock to realize what I really was, the things I’d done, the things I’ve been capable off.
But I’d see this tactic in Angel before and didn’t need his protections. I’d pledged myself to his cause a long time ago and I wasn’t going to let him down again. I especially felt that way after I got my memories back. I owed him. I owed his son. And Fred stuck with me, bless her. By now she knew how to handle Angel almost as well as Cordelia could.
Then he tried to scare us way, tried to fire us, tried pleading. Something was wrong, we both knew it. Fred and I. But we didn’t know what. The phone call from Giles was unexpected. He needed help with a translation, needed it to defeat the first. The First Evil.
It was Fred who figured out that Angel had called Giles and begged him to take us away from here. Giles had only been to eager. I was still angry at both of them for that, ruling and deciding about our lives as though we were nothing but mere children.
In their eyes perhaps we were.
The translation was simple, certainly not in need of my expertise to figure out. It contained the spell Willow would need to defeat the First, or at least take him down enough not to be a thread for a while. The end result the spell was a thousand new Slayers all over the world being activated. The price of the fight was life.
We lost a few people on our side. I didn’t know them well, or at all, but the Sunnydale gang grieved them. Fred and I had stood there, my arm around her, as the schoolbus with what was left over from the so called Scoobies moved away of what was left of Sunnydale.
They were all there. All except one. We found her on a hill, just outside of Sunnydale.
“Hey,” I said, approaching her carefully.
“Hey,” Willow murmured, not looking at either of us. “I nearly ended the world here, y’know.”
Frowning, I glanced around me, eyes meeting Fred’s as she did the same. There was a half risen temple and I remembered Giles telling us about what happened last year. Why Willow looked so lost and why she was so afraid of doing this spell.
“But you didn’t,” I pointed out.
“No,” she shrugged, slowly turning to look at us. Her eyes first met mine, and then slid over to Fred’s. “Totally wasn’t lack of trying. Its just that… I don’t know anymore. Don’t know who am I, or-or where I belong.”
Fred and I exchanged another glance and smiled ruefully. “Well that makes three of us,” I said, giving Willow a small smile as well.
“And what are you gonna do about it?” she wanted to know.
Getting up I held my hand out for her to pull her up. “We go and look,” I said, pulling her up as she hesitantly took my hand. “How does Cairo sound?”
She blinked and looked at me confused. “Cairo? Why Cairo?”
“Why not.”
Of course there was a reason I wanted to go to Cairo in particular, and probably a lot of other places after that. I just hadn’t told either of them yet. They were both bright though, I’m sure they could guess.
“I don’t wanna be like a third wheel,” Willow said, glancing from me back to Fred.