velvetwhip (velvetwhip) wrote in red_magic, @ 2007-07-30 12:38:00 |
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Entry tags: | fic, velvetwhip, willow/angel |
Fic: Runaway Train Wreck (Part 12 of The Secret) Willow/Angel R/FRM
Title: Runaway Train Wreck (Part Twelve of The Secret)
Previous Chapters Can Be Found Here:
http://gabrielle.magical-worlds.us/view
Author: Gabrielle
Rating: FRM/R (this chapter, the fic as a whole is rated FRAO/NC-17)
Pairing: Willow/Angel
Summary: The web may stretch, but the threads never break.
Feedback: Please. I would love to know if anyone is still reading this story.
Distribution: If you have permission to archive the previous chapters of this fic, you may have this. Otherwise, please ask first.
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: It has taken a long time to get here, but at last we have reached the end. I want to thank lilbreck, both for inspiring the story to begin with and for extraordinary service to this fic and its author. She is a rock in the truest, grandest sense of the word and a muse with a unique accent. Second, I want to thank purplefeen for all she has done for me, for keeping me going, and for being Feen...an amazing thing to be, let me tell you. I also want to dedicate this story to emnorth, whose praise has always humbled me and whose work inspires me; to angelstoy who never fails to make me smile; and to kitty_poker and sexymermaid, whose friendship is a gift. And in closing, thank you to each and every reader who has stuck by this story, I can never begin to express my gratitude for your support.
Runaway Train Wreck (Part Twelve of The Secret)
Rachel Lewis was 23 years old. She was born in Pasadena, California and had graduated summa cum laude from Cal Tech with a degree in computer science. She was unmarried, had no children, and was working for a large computer company in a position that required her to do a good deal of traveling.
Rachel Lewis was 4 months, two weeks, and five days old. She was born in a motel room in Portland, Oregon from the ashes of sixteen year old Willow Rosenberg, who had never been nearer to Pasadena than watching the annual Rose Parade on television. She had never been to college, let alone graduated summa cum laude. But then again, none of that really mattered. After all, the company she worked for, the ones renting her a lovely suite in a business hotel in Phoenix, Arizona? They didn’t exist either.
World Information Recovery Systems. It had a nice ring to it and that was what was important. As long as the checks cleared, her bills were paid, and her identity was secure, that was all that Willow - Rachel, she needed to remember who she was now - cared about. Who was she really working for? She didn’t know and it didn’t matter. Once in a while, when she couldn’t sleep, she would find her thoughts straying to why exactly she was breaking the security codes of this company or that organization, why she was tracking down this information or that memorandum, but not often. She was a machine at her work, much like the computer she used, and it was best to stay that way.
Phoenix was the third city she’d lived in since leaving Sunnydale, the fourth if you counted Portland, though she doubted a two day stay following a too-long bus ride could be called ‘living’.
She’d never forget that bus trip, the terror she’d felt each time the bus stopped, the way she’d huddled down in her seat, afraid to look out the window or meet the eyes of her fellow passengers. Luckily, most people on buses seemed to be like she was: sad, anonymous, desperate to get somewhere - somewhere else, somewhere better. Of course, it was likely that none of them was fleeing an obsessive vampire and a town full of memories of being raped by yet another vampire, but Willow had certainly seen pain on some weary faces and she figured that whatever they were running from was probably as bad in its own way as anything she’d endured. Like her, they had eyes full of the dream of forgetting...and full of the fear of not getting away.
But she had, she had gotten away, the card from the shadowy recruiter she’d met a year ago in her pocket. Angel hadn’t followed her and each breath she drew of air untainted by the bitterness of the Hellmouth made her feel human, gave her a sense of hope. It would be a long time, she knew, before she would believe she was free, but the promise was there and it was a dizzying high.
It stayed that way. Months after that first clandestine meeting with the man who she now only knew as a voice over the phone, whose first name might or might not really be Mark and whose last name she was never told, she was alone, all alone. No Angel with his demonic hold over her and his twisted desire to possess her. No Buffy and Xander and Giles to judge her. No Oz to remind her of what might have been and what she’d never have again: love - simple, sweet, and pure. Nothing, that was what she had, and it felt...surprisingly good. There was a certain safety and wholeness in the lonely life she now led that was comforting, because for the first time in a life that had always been lonely, she had no wants or expectations.
It didn’t hurt to be ignored by parents she no longer had and would never see again, because she chose not to see them. It didn’t hurt to be shunted aside by her friends, because they weren’t her friends anymore: she had abandoned them. And it didn’t hurt to know that she was never going to share her life with someone, be a wife, have a family. She’d gotten a glimpse of what fate had in store for her and she had made the choice to sacrifice the blasphemy she’d been offered.
Her fingers flew across the keyboard, the delicate tasks of outwitting security programs and breaking into sites not even supposed to exist coming easily to her. The simple and formulaic nature of her work made it easy to lose herself. It required caution and attention and a scientific kind of thought, but it shut down the more complex and emotional side of her mind and was a better vehicle of escape than any Greyhound bus ever built. Once she had even wondered if that was what made it so easy for her to avoid asking the tough questions, gratitude quite an antidote to curiosity, but even that subject wasn’t one she really felt compelled to understand.
She wasn’t curious about much these days. Despite her diligent efforts to avoid any news from the home she’d left behind, she hadn’t escaped a television bulletin about a gas explosion destroying Sunnydale High, but she’d changed the channel quickly and heard little else. She hadn’t been able to stop herself from checking the obituaries online, but her relief at not seeing Xander, Buffy, or Giles listed among the dead didn’t fill her with the expected swell of nostalgia. She was glad they were alive, but she had no interest in seeing or speaking to them again and she had no desire to know the real reason the high school had gone up in flames. When she’d left, they’d feared the Mayor was up to something evil and she could only assume this might have had something to do with him. Then again, maybe it didn’t. It really wasn’t important. After all, she reminded herself, Rachel Lewis had never been to Sunnydale.
The knock at the door seemed serendipitous. She’d just finished sending the latest batch of random - at least to her - information to her employers and her stomach reminded her that she had yet to eat today. This must be the groceries she’d sent down for.
Of course, she knew better even before she rose from her chair. You could take the girl out of Sunnydale, but you could never take Sunnydale out of the girl, especially not when a vampire’s claim remained in the form of two faint, pink scars.
It was Angel.
It didn’t occur to her to wonder how he’d managed to find her. However it had happened, it had, and now it seemed as if all that running had been for naught.
She knew she mustn’t open the door. She didn’t want to open the door. For a brief moment she wondered if it were possible for her to jump out of the window. But her room had no balcony and the windows weren’t easily broken. She had no time to make any true escape. So she walked carefully to the door and turned the knob. He was inside the moment she did.
He shut the door behind him, his eyes never leaving her as she backed away, trying to keep a careful distance. Why wasn’t the furniture in hotels made of wood anymore?
“Willow.” Angel’s voice was low and even, but not calm. Willow wasn’t so long away from him that she couldn’t still sense what bubbled beneath the surface. He was angry. Very angry.
“Angel. So, what brings you here?” She hoped against hope that a casual, innocent approach might be disarming enough to give her at least a little bit of an edge.
“What were you thinking?” The tone in his voice was more commanding than before...and more menacing. “Leaving Sunnydale like that? Without me? Without even telling me where you were going?”
“You don’t own me, Angel.” Now it was Willow who was angry. Four months as her own woman, at least for the most part, had emboldened her - perhaps foolishly so - and she hated being treated like a piece of property.
He smirked for a moment before his face resumed its usual inscrutability. “Don’t I? That mark’s still there, Willow; it will always be there. You belong to me, you need me. There’s no one in the world who can understand you, who knows what you’ve been through, who can accept you, but me.”
For a moment, there was silence, then he spoke once more. “When you were hurt, and alone, who was there for you, Willow? Who took care of you? Who took the pain away?” His voice was softer now, almost pleading. He was sizing her up, changing his approach. The feeling of being prey that she thought she’d escaped took over her as if she’d never been free of it. She wanted to cry.
“You’re mine, Willow.”
Before she could take another step back, he was in front of her, his hand on her cheek and she was lost. Helpless and trapped, looking at the door as if she was gazing at a ship sailing out to sea, a ship that was leaving her behind as it made its way to some magical destination, a destination she was not bound for anymore.
It was all so familiar, but somehow different and more terrifying than it had ever been. His hands against her skin as he removed her clothes, the careful but deliberate way he carried her to the bed...none of it was separate from who they were anymore, from who she was betraying - not just Buffy, but herself; no longer was it detached from ownership, from lust. The way his lips felt against her breasts, his fingers inside her - none of it made her feel clean, as if the taint of the rape was, however briefly, removed from her being, the way it used to do. Instead she felt shame and self-hate, as much as she had in the factory, maybe more so since she felt even more that this was her own fault, that, wittingly or no, she had offered herself to Angel.
But there was no escape, she knew, so she gave herself over to joyless ecstasy. She’d been kidding herself all these months. Not for one moment had she been loose from the bonds of Angel’s web; the threads had stretched, but never broken, and now she’d been pulled back tighter than ever. For this tiny fly, there would be no more dreams of soaring free.
The End.