Title: Tomorrow 10/?
Author: Madsdog
Disclaimer: If I just owned Willow's body, Dawn's hair and Giles' voice to sing me to sleep... okay... none of it's mine- those bits belong to the actors and the rest is Joss' and Marti's (Tara-killers) and Love Letter #1 belongs to Red
SPOILERS: UP UNTIL THE END OF 'TWO TO GO'
She stared at him, feeling his words penetrate her, sink through her skin to burn her heart. She'd been ready to deny whatever he said, any excuse. But this...
"What?"
"I'm married." She focussed on the hard look in his eyes. The look she'd had to work so hard to penetrate all that time ago. He hid everything behind those eyes. Behind Blue Eyes. Inanely she thought of when they'd walked in on him singing at The Espresso Pump a year and a half ago. She loved his voice, and to hear him performing while the other women in the room drooled... never had she found it harder to keep their relationship silent than in that moment. His eyes weren't even blue. And what he'd just sealed behind them broke her heart... or it broke that she wasn't behind them with him. No emotion passed onto his face and suddenly she realised what was going on. He was protecting her. Something big was going to happen and he didn't want her to be a part of it. He'd done it before; it was annoying and sexist, but at the same time it thrilled her in a purely feminine way. True he'd never gone quite to this extreme before, but that he'd try that hard to protect her... he could have chosen a better way, but it was kind of sweet.
The pain in her face hurt more than anything he'd ever felt... that he'd caused such pain only added to it. Shutting himself off, he almost looked away, unable to take what he deserved. He watched her eyes as her head raced. The pain was replaced by a pleading and then a resolve. Momentarily they clouded in memory, before the pain was there again. Suddenly they shone in a kind of realisation and then a feminist's love. He'd seen the look before: when he tried to shield her from something, and he knew what she'd convinced herself. Knew that he'd have to break her heart twice in a matter of minutes.
"You're lying."
"When have I ever lied to you?"
"When you think I'll get hurt."
"I'm telling you the truth. I'm packing. I'm leaving to return to my wife." She searched his face desperately for something- anything that would tell her why he was doing this. For a fraction of a second his eyes shone and she was struck by the realisation that he was telling the truth
"No." She tried to forget what she'd just seen, to tell herself it wasn't true. "No."
"Willow..."
"How long?" She had to know. Had to know how long he'd been lying to her.
"Fifteen years."
"Fifteen- you bastard."
"I didn't know." The idiocy of the words struck him as he watched her eyes glow.
"You didn't know you were married?"
"No- I knew. I just-"
"You just what? Conveniently forgot so you could go through your mid-life crisis with someone half your age?" The fact that she'd brought up the age thing showed him how much he'd hurt her- how much she was trying to hurt back.
"They told me she was dead."
"When?"
"Seven years ago."
"And then they shipped you over here, right?" Don't tell me- only watchers who are out of the program can train a slayer." He nodded, confirming her suspicions. "And now that you've told them you want out of their little farming business, she's suddenly reappeared." What she was implying angered him in a strange way... that he'd let himself be played like that... that she thought The Council could manipulate him that easily... but he knew she was right.
"I'm so sorry."
"What's her name?" Confusion entered his brain.
"What?"
"Her name. What's her name?"
"Eliza."
"Pretty." He had no idea how to react. She was usually so passionate, so emotionally charged, that he didn't quite know what to do with the vagueness that had entered her voice.
"If you say so. Will-"
"Tell me you don't love me."
"I can't-"
"Tell me you love her."
"I feel noth-"
"Then why?"
"I have to Willow."
"But why?"
"She's my wife. It's a manufactured marriage with no soul, yes, but it still means something."
"More than what we have?" He turned back to his boxes before answering.
"We can't have anything."
"No, I don't accept that. Because we do."
"You have to accept that." Picking up a box he began to descend the stairs. She followed him and watched as he retrieved his jacket from a chair-back.
"Where are you going?"
"I'm leaving." He looked at her, conveying the finality of the second meaning of his words.
"I love you."
"It doesn't matter." Inside she screamed, outside she sobbed and somewhere in the middle burned with hatred. He lifted his hand and the three combined.
"Remove that ring and not only do you never see me again, the past three years never happened."
Long and hard they looked at each other; pleading, begging, burning, loving, hating. Saying goodbye. Finally he turned and walked from his own apartment, and she broke down on the chair behind her, crying the tears of a heartbroken woman and never once removing her eyes from the ring left on the table in front of her.