Angel wearily shut the door behind him as he crept into the bedroom. He was trying to be quiet so as not to wake Willow up, but the point became moot as he saw her sitting in a chair by the mostly dead fire.
Her lids were obviously heavy in her pale face, but she had not yet succumbed to sleep. Her velvet dressing gown glowed softly in the flickering light, as did her luminous eyes.
"What's happening, Angel?"
"Why aren't you in bed?" he asked.
"Is it so bad that you can't even tell me?"
He moved towards her, falling into the chair beside her own. "Well, my dear father is, as ever, his old charming self. He's been gathering forces for a few weeks now, and his liegemen are bringing their armor out yet again. The messenger that arrived today barely made it out of the country alive."
"Has the king declared war?"
"No, that would be too obvious. He's getting ready, and while there is always the chance he plans on attacking another country, I needn't mention that no one thought that was much of a possibility. None of the other countries on his borders would ever resemble anything like a threat." He rubbed his head violently.
"So what are we going to do?" Willow's voice was almost a whisper.
"Well, we're going to get ready ourselves. We're going to hope it has nothing to do with us and prepare the country for war with my father..." with a sudden movement, he stood and hurled a tiny table that had been next to his chair across the room. It landed in a sadly splintered heap by one of the closets, and Angel could almost hear Willow trembling as he braced himself against the fireplace mantle. The room was silent but for the crackling of the logs, and he struggled to regain control.
"I'm sorry," he said finally.
Willow looked at the back of his head. She had rarely seen him so angry.
"This was what I was supposed to prevent. My whole point for being here was prevention of another war. Your people loved me as much for the peace that I represented as for anything else. And now? Now mothers have to send their sons off to war again. Wives will lose their husbands, children will lose their fathers, all because one father in particular has no sense of honor." His fists clenched again.
"You don't really think that, do you?" she asked after a moment.
"That my father has no honor? I certainly do."
"No, that's not what I meant. You don't really think that the people of this country only love you for the treaty?"
He shrugged noncommittally. She stood and walked up behind his tense back.
"People don't love you for anything, Angel. They love you. They think you're the greatest thing since...well, me."
He chuckled quietly, and considering it a success, she went on. "They love you because you are the opposite of everything they ever imagined you to be. They love you certainly because you are handsome and charming, but also because you are kind and polite. They love you because you love me and my family, and they love you because they can tell you have a good heart. They love you for your love of Garwin, they love you because you are nothing at all like your father. They may fear and hate him, but you are his antithesis, and they adore you for becoming such a wonderful man in spite of his parentage. Furthermore, I am their princess, and they love you because...I love you."
He turned to face her then, but backlit by the fire, she couldn't read his expression.
"You really think everyone knows how we love each other?"
'Do we know how we love each other?' Willow thought. But she couldn't find any words to return to him.
"Do you really think they aren't all resenting me right now?"
"I think the aftereffects of a soul tortured for a century are affecting your judgement. My father has accepted you as a son, and most of the people who you think are judging you have already forgotten that you were any relation to Aylmar. All that they know is that they trust you."
"Trust me?" he muttered.
"Completely. Like I do." She dropped her eyes, but looked up sharply as Angel seized her by the shoulders.
"Why do you trust me?"
"Why do I have any reason not to?"
They were locked in time for a moment, the embers of the fire washing them both in a dull red. His hands instinctively clutched at her shoulders, and neither seemed capable of releasing the others' gaze. Whether it was the stress of a long and disturbing day or something less easily defined, they seemed to think they would be able to find the answer if they stared at one another long enough.
It was the sound of a servant walking briskly down the hall that ended the moment. Angel released Willow's shoulders as if he was in a daze, while she pulled her dressing gown tighter around her.
"Well, I'm tired," she said finally. Moving blindly towards the bed, she crawled under the covers, willing her heart to stop beating so fast, trying to convince herself that only the threat of imminent war was capable of causing her such distress. Her husband, meanwhile, dressed for bed, damping the fire and blowing out candles. He laid down beside her with a sigh.
"I had forgotten how tired humans get," he remarked.
"Right."
"Well, goodnight-"
"Angel?" She cursed herself for a weakling, but she was beyond the place where she might have cared how embarrassed she might be in the morning.
"Yes?" he answered. She blamed her fatigue for the fact that she thought his voice sounded hopeful.
"If you wouldn't mind, could you maybe, um, hold me? It's just been a pretty unpleasant day, and I wouldn't even ask, except that I-"
She stopped talking as his arm slid around her waist. Forgetting about consequences and repercussions and embarrassed pauses, she nestled closer and closed her eyes. The feeling of his gentle kiss in her hair was the last thing she was aware of before she fell asleep.
****
There are some dreams that are so unutterably lovely, it seems like a crime to abandon them for real life. Willow was having one, and she was near frantic not to wake up. Nothing extraordinary was going on in the dream. In fact, anyone else would have thought it dull. She and Angel were sitting together in front of a cheerful fire, neither one saying anything. She was dimly aware of Garwin dancing in the periphery of her vision, and she was almost certain she saw Giles playing chess with Marie. Yet none of it interested her, and she was content to just lean against Angel's velvet-clad side.
He kissed the top of her head and she smiled. Then he kissed her cheek and she held her breath. Then he kissed her jaw, and only the small detail that they were married (even in her dreamscape) kept her from being frozen in guilt. Dream Willow could have pulled away, but just like her dreaming counterpart, it had been too long and she had thought about it too much to not be a little more willing than might be expected when he tilted her chin and kissed her tingling mouth.
****
Angel was fighting his father in his dream. He slashed and stabbed with his sword, the king constantly losing ground. Then the sun rose in all its fiery glory and Aylmar exploded into dust, his sword falling uselessly onto the blood-stained battlefield.
Angel stood proud, knowing that the sun was some sort of metaphor and had not in anyway robbed him of his inevitable victory, actually feeling regal as his troops cheered behind him and the opposing army surrendered. Then a white horse galloped up to his side and he saw that Willow had somehow materialized on the front lines. She dismounted gracefully, running up to his side.
"Oh, Angel! You did it!" she gazed up adoringly into his face. Ostensibly, it was the typical sort of manly dream that gets made into foolish books and worse movies, where the hero conquers all available evil and gets the beautiful girl. Yet, even in his dream, even though he could see that his army was celebrating success by playing tag and occasionally tripping over the bodies of their dead foes, the only thing he could see was Willow. And for all the overly typical parts of his dream, the real hero was her.
And she touched his bruised cheek and avoided his wounded side and he carefully gathered her in his arms, making sure she would not be crushed by his armor, and kissing her almost made the war worthwhile.
****
Sometimes parts of the real world get incorporated into dreams. The sounds of alarm clocks and talking people, instead of waking up the dreamer, merely involve themselves into the random storylines created by the subconscious. So, it can't be said that this instance was too much different...
Everyone has resided between dreams and reality, and most often they want to stay in the dream, unless the reality they are slowly waking to is more interesting. And here appears the curious dilemma of the morning. How could Willow be expected to choose between the dream Angel's kiss and the lips of her suddenly real husband? On the one hand, her dream could not compare with the genuine article. On the other, she didn't have to worry about what to say to dream Angel later, once she was fully awake.
Opting for indecision, Willow ignored both options. Believing herself capable of blaming it on sleep, she found herself awake, wrapped in her husband's arms, and being kissed with a fervor that one would not expect from sleepers.
Furthermore, since they agreed about so many things while conscious, it seems logical that Angel had chosen the same path. An irritating part of his brain insisted that he was extremely awake, that no dream could contain so much tactile delight. Yet he had no inclination to stop and apologize, and if all had been done in sleep, there could be no question of fault. To finally feel her kissing him back was the sort of gift he was very well able to accept from his dreams.
****
Willow and Angel had already experienced the intrusions of servants on their personal lives, and that interesting morning was to be no different. For as it became increasingly obvious (and simultaneously denied) that neither was asleep, a maidservant-in-training in the hallway dropped a tray stacked high, and the resulting crash and shatter caused both prince and princess to jump in surprise.
'Good morning' seemed inappropriate.
Sleep was long lost, but coherent thought was not long functioning, and it took a moment for their situation to register. It took a moment to notice their entwined legs, their lack of breath. It took a moment to notice Angel's hand gripping the small of Willow's back, her hand entwined in his hair and her other hand clutching tightly at his nightshirt. (While it is true that only one of Angel's hands has been accounted for, neither participant permitted themselves to admit that it was resting where it was, so perhaps it was never there to begin with, and need not be mentioned.)
"Oh," Willow said.
"Um," Angel replied.
In a flurry of sheets and blushes, husband and wife escaped from their bridal bed.
****