[btvs] when all else fails 2/9
For the proper author's header, please refer to part one
Chapter Two:
Perhaps it had been the innocent and naivety of youth that had led Willow to believe that Buffy would survive the final match against the Master. There was no way in her eyes that Buffy could actually fail to destroy him. After all, she had faced an ancient vampire in LA and walked away. To Willow, this was just another ancient vampire that was going to meet the pointy end of Buffy’s stake before Buffy and her friends, Willow included, walked off into the bright California sunshine.
It wasn’t until she stood in the once comforting space of the A/V room surrounded by a dead bodies and a babbling Cordelia grasping her hand. Willow had felt as if she was frozen to the spot, her eyes glued to the bloody handprint on the TV screen where cartoons were playing. Her world had suddenly shifted and she started to wonder if Buffy could actually defeat the Master with ease.
Later that day when Giles, Jenny and Miss Calendar had started to purify the library to prevent the Master from opening it, and Angel and Xander had raced off to back up Buffy, Willow had shivered in fear. And in that moment as she stood there, blankly staring at the table where she had sat at with her friends, she wondered how she had ever been able to think lightly of what Buffy did, of what she helped Buffy to do. They had sent Buffy off to meet Death at the tender age of sixteen and there was no guarantee that she was going to come back unscathed, if she even came back.
When the library doors had burst open, Willow had barely even noticed the longhaired boy that played guitar every now and then at the Bronze. It wasn’t until Miss Calendar had thrust a page of Latin spelled out phonetically in her hands that Willow had come to and realize the situation that they were in. She looked at everyone in the room, Cordelia, Giles, Miss Calendar and the boy whose name she couldn’t remember. Tonight they might all die if they weren’t careful.
Before she could really process it, Miss Calendar, no Jenny, started leading them into a ritual. Cordelia and Willow started to chant the words on the paper that had been handed to them, Cordelia’s voice full of fear and worry, Willow’s voice becoming stronger and stronger with each word. Giles began to barricade the doors while Jenny and Oz drew circles and shapes with chalk on the floor around Willow and Cordelia.
There was no time left to think about Buffy or Xander or Angel, not when it seemed as if every vampire ever made in the history of Sunnydale was trying to force their way into the library either through the flimsy swinging doors that led in from the school or the back fire exit that led out from the school. Cordelia’s hand reached out and grabbed a hold of Willow’s as both girls continued to chant the Latin words. Their voices grew louder as Oz now started to move around the circle that he and Jenny and drawn with incense in his hand and his own voice chanted other Latin words.
It wouldn’t be until hours later when the sky was washed with golds, reds, pinks and yellows with the coming dawn that they would find out that Buffy lost her battle and the Master was free. They had managed to prevent him from opening up the Hellmouth with a complicated ritual that had consecrated the ground. It would be days later when Giles actually took the time to question Xander and Angel about what had happened that night when they had gone off to follow Buffy. Neither of them spoke much of that night, their voices were tight with unshed emotion and their words to the point.
It became obvious in the days that followed that Angel blamed Xander for Buffy’s death. Although Willow would always wonder what could have happened if Xander hadn’t been frozen in place with shock and horror. What would have happened had he had reacted more quickly. Could Buffy have been saved? Could she have been resurrected and then could she have managed to save the day? Or had the Master taken too much blood from her or had he broken her neck beyond the abilities of Slayer healing? All Willow knew was the very little that Angel and Xander had told them: the Master had escaped his prison after Buffy had gone to face him. The Master had left her lying face down in a pool of dirty water while he had gone to wreak havoc on Sunnydale.
After that night, Xander had never been the same. He had become hollow and empty as if his whole world had come crashing down because of his inability to act. No one had been able to soothe his conscious and ease his pain. After that night, he treated Willow as if she was made of glass even as he was continually pulling away from her. As the Master continued to enjoy his newfound freedom, Willow found herself growing closer and closer to Angel in the weeks that followed Buffy’s death. A part of her had felt as if she was betraying her dead friend, but at the same time, she knew how short life was and Angel was the only one she could turn to.
Giles had been too wrapped up in the weight of his own grief and his responsibilities to the Council to help her overcome her grief. Although she had started to grow closer to both Jenny and Cordelia, she wasn’t really close enough where she felt comfortable confiding into either of them. And Oz was just too silent, too nerve-wracking for her to be around. When she was around him, Willow often felt like she was visiting a shrink that her parents had sent her to in the hopes that she would work out any issues. He never said anything and even if she had been able to overcome that feeling, he seemed more focus on comforting Cordelia.
There must have still been an innocent and naïve girl underneath the battle weary Willow because she started to fall in love with Angel in the weeks that followed Buffy’s death and funeral. And somehow beyond all belief, Angel seemed to be falling in love with her. Something that amazed Willow to no end, after all for the duration of her life, she had always been in the shadow of much prettier girls. Before Buffy, there had been Cordelia. The two had never really been friends, but Jesse had worshipped the ground that the cheerleader had walked on. Willow had simply been his sounding board, his shoulder to cry on when Cordelia had been particularly cruel. In many ways, when Buffy had first come to town, Willow had taken on a similar role for Xander and it had hurt because unlike Jesse, she had loved Xander. But for once, Angel saw her for her and he didn’t care about her horrible fashion sense or her nerdy ways. And for the first time in what seemed like years, Willow was happy. Someone wanted her for her and not as a pale and poor substitute for the prettier girl.
Despite the fact that the Master was on the loose and raising an army with the Anointed One, Willow felt as if everything was going to be okay in the end. When the Council finally sent Kendra to Giles to take on the Master, Willow had the belief that Kendra would succeed where Buffy had failed. On the eve of the final battle with the Master, she had decided that in the off chance that she has wrong that she didn’t want to die a virgin. Angel had been resistant at first but in the end, her clumsy and artless seduction of the vampire had led to the two of them passionately entwined in his bed in his tiny apartment.
It had been Jenny who had told her the truth of what her actions had done, of what Willow had unknowingly unleashed on Sunnydale. Yet Angelus had surprised them all by working them as an unwilling ally in the final battle against the Master. No one had known how much Angelus had hated the Master and when they had gone into battle, it had been Angelus who had brought down the Master and then proceeded to pick up the reigns of control when he had brutally murdered Kendra.
The final battle against the Master had ended up costing them all. Giles had been cast out from the Council for his repeated failures. Willow was never sure of the full story, but she knew that there had been many accusations coming from England in the days after the Master had fallen. Accusations of Giles using two Slayers in order to further his own advancement in the Council along with the fact that he had started to build his own civilian army to bring down the Council. He had been ordered to return to England immediately or he would be cut off from the Council. In the end, he had decided to be cast out from the Council, despite the fact that there had been a Giles in the Council since the time of the Norman Conquest of England.
While Giles had been battling the Council, Xander had come up with a plan to destroy Angelus. Ever since Buffy’s death, Xander and Angel had blamed one another for their failure in saving the blonde Slayer. Neither would say why they blamed one another, and in the end it had been written off to the long-standing jealousy that the teenager and the vampire shared. When Xander had tried to tell her, Willow hadn’t wanted to hear that perhaps Angel, the vampire that she had fallen in love with, the same vampire that Buffy had trusted, might not be as good as he had always let everyone believe he was. So without a word to anyone, Xander had taken off to fulfill his plan to bring down Angelus and to exact vengeance against him, he had done so without breathing a word to anyone.
It wasn’t until Angelus had sent the Anointed One to her Willow’s house, that Willow was even aware that Xander had been missing for three days. She had cried when she realized just how out of touch she had become with her former best friend and self-absorbed they had all become. Yet in the end, she had dried her tears and taken the child vampire’s hand and let him lead her straight to Angelus and to Xander.
She doesn’t remember much about that night, or the series of nights that followed, after she had arrived at an ornate and crumbling mansion on Crawford Street where Angelus and Xander were. Willow only has vague memories of that time. She can remember Xander hoarsely yelling at her to run while she still could and of Angelus smirking at her before his hands were upon her body and he made a mockery of what she had shared with Angel. Every now and then she will have nightmares of those three nights but when she wakes up screaming and covered in sweat, she can never really remember what happened.
All she remembers is waking up in Giles’ apartment three days after the Anointed One had taken her to Angelus. She was confused and in pain, yet the only mark on her was on her inner thigh, an A carved into her flesh that burned and ached. While she had laid in Giles’ bed recovering, Giles and the others had decided that their only chance was to leave Sunnydale and to take the risk of contacting the newly called Slayer in Boston, with or without the Council’s permission. There was a Hellmouth to protect from another homicidal vampire with visions of an apocalypse dancing around his head.
While they decided that they would flee from Sunnydale, it was decided that Xander, although still very much alive, was a lost cause. And so on one bright and sunny morning, a mere four months after Buffy had met her end, Giles, Jenny, Cordelia, Oz and Willow had escaped Sunnydale and had put as much distance between them and Angelus as they possibly could. It had been decided that they would wait to fight Angelus on their terms instead of on his.
On to part three.