Fic: Prompt#11 Sunrise (Willow/Angel) PG/FRT
Title: Sunrise
Author: Gabrielle
Pairing: Angel/Willow
Rating: FRT/PG
Word Count: 604
Prompt #11: Free for All. Location: the mansion
Summary: Angel wants to remember what a sunrise is like.
Feedback: Please. It is always cherished.
Distribution: Here, my LJ, and at my site only
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: This has been previously posted. I hope no one minds.
Sunrise
It was a cliche, in a way, but coming back from Hell made Angel think about life. It made him think about who he was...and who he used to be. And about all the things that, as a vampire, he would never know again. Things he hadn’t allowed himself to think about for so long. Now that he’d been restored and resurrected from eternal damnation, though, from a place where he shut down to protect himself and didn’t allow himself to remember anything, he couldn’t stop thinking about even those human experiences he once shut away in the back of his mind.
He wanted to believe that his decision to talk about those things with Willow was spontaneous and utterly random, that he was in the mood to talk and that he would have opened up to Buffy had she been there. But he knew that wasn’t true. He knew that Willow was the only one he would have ever spoken of these things with. Because she was the only one who truly accepted what he was. She took him at face value. Was comfortable with what he was. A vampire. A demon. She accepted it. The same way she accepted that Xander was a perpetual clown and that Buffy was the Slayer. She just took these things to be a part of the fabric that made each of them who they were. That was her nature.
So he opened up to her one night, as he took what he acknowledged later to himself was a shallow pretext and walked her home from the Bronze. He asked her about sunrise, what it was like, what made a sunrise beautiful, what did it feel like to watch one.
She was surprised. But she answered. Haltingly at first, her words jumbling together in the confused way they always did when a question caught her unawares. But Angel was patient, redirecting their steps to take them to the mansion instead of her house, while she struggled to find her focus. She didn’t seem to mind when she found herself at his door instead of her own. And she warmed to the topic at hand; the fire he started in the large stone fireplace seeming to inspire her and call forth her memories.
She spoke of sunrises she had seen recently and how welcome they seemed after a terrifying night. She spoke of the way sunrises looked in different seasons and locations. The colours they held and the way the golden light of morning would creep up slowly, quietly giving the world a soft glow. Making everything seem hopeful and serene, even when the night before had shown you that the world was anything but.
She recalled how, as a child, she used to think the sun literally rose from a secret hiding place where it slept through the night. And how her parents had chided her for her foolish notions and given her a book that told her the facts. He wished he could throttle her parents for the way they had tried to coldly extinguish the charming fancies of her imagination. And he cheered the strength of those same notions for somehow maintaining some hold upon her despite being assailed by science and parental disapproval.
After awhile, she became aware of just how long she had been talking and her voice faltered, a blush creeping across her pale cheeks as she looked at him with her eyes wide and her red hair framing her face. It was at that moment, he realized years later, that he fell in love with her. She looked like a sunrise.
The End.
Author: Gabrielle
Pairing: Angel/Willow
Rating: FRT/PG
Word Count: 604
Prompt #11: Free for All. Location: the mansion
Summary: Angel wants to remember what a sunrise is like.
Feedback: Please. It is always cherished.
Distribution: Here, my LJ, and at my site only
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: This has been previously posted. I hope no one minds.
Sunrise
It was a cliche, in a way, but coming back from Hell made Angel think about life. It made him think about who he was...and who he used to be. And about all the things that, as a vampire, he would never know again. Things he hadn’t allowed himself to think about for so long. Now that he’d been restored and resurrected from eternal damnation, though, from a place where he shut down to protect himself and didn’t allow himself to remember anything, he couldn’t stop thinking about even those human experiences he once shut away in the back of his mind.
He wanted to believe that his decision to talk about those things with Willow was spontaneous and utterly random, that he was in the mood to talk and that he would have opened up to Buffy had she been there. But he knew that wasn’t true. He knew that Willow was the only one he would have ever spoken of these things with. Because she was the only one who truly accepted what he was. She took him at face value. Was comfortable with what he was. A vampire. A demon. She accepted it. The same way she accepted that Xander was a perpetual clown and that Buffy was the Slayer. She just took these things to be a part of the fabric that made each of them who they were. That was her nature.
So he opened up to her one night, as he took what he acknowledged later to himself was a shallow pretext and walked her home from the Bronze. He asked her about sunrise, what it was like, what made a sunrise beautiful, what did it feel like to watch one.
She was surprised. But she answered. Haltingly at first, her words jumbling together in the confused way they always did when a question caught her unawares. But Angel was patient, redirecting their steps to take them to the mansion instead of her house, while she struggled to find her focus. She didn’t seem to mind when she found herself at his door instead of her own. And she warmed to the topic at hand; the fire he started in the large stone fireplace seeming to inspire her and call forth her memories.
She spoke of sunrises she had seen recently and how welcome they seemed after a terrifying night. She spoke of the way sunrises looked in different seasons and locations. The colours they held and the way the golden light of morning would creep up slowly, quietly giving the world a soft glow. Making everything seem hopeful and serene, even when the night before had shown you that the world was anything but.
She recalled how, as a child, she used to think the sun literally rose from a secret hiding place where it slept through the night. And how her parents had chided her for her foolish notions and given her a book that told her the facts. He wished he could throttle her parents for the way they had tried to coldly extinguish the charming fancies of her imagination. And he cheered the strength of those same notions for somehow maintaining some hold upon her despite being assailed by science and parental disapproval.
After awhile, she became aware of just how long she had been talking and her voice faltered, a blush creeping across her pale cheeks as she looked at him with her eyes wide and her red hair framing her face. It was at that moment, he realized years later, that he fell in love with her. She looked like a sunrise.
The End.