"Marie, let me in!" Angel pleaded.
"Your Majesty, let the healers do their work-"
"I need to be with her!"
"You can't help her now. Just wait a little while longer-"
"Marie, please!"
The door opened, and Angel clutched Marie's hand tightly. His eyes were wide and anxious, and every muscle in his body was unnaturally strained.
The midwife smiled reassuringly. "Her Majesty the Queen is quite well-"
"May I come in?" he begged, looking very unlike the stoic monarch he had been for the past year. Gone was the poise borne of crown and throne.=20 He looked like a terrified young man.
"Right this way, Your Majesty."
He followed her nervously, craning his neck to see his wife and his-
"The Prince is very healthy, Your Majesty." The midwife curtsied, then left him alone with his family.
Willow looked exhausted but happy as she held their newborn son. "Angel, come look at him," she invited him.
He knelt beside the bed, looking at the infant in bewildered awe. "What a miracle," he whispered softly. He stroked Willow's hair absentmindedly. "Do you know, the councillors are already holding meetings over what to name him?"
"Well, I had thought about that," Willow began.
"Tell me," he urged her.
"Back in Sunnydale, before Buffy ever came, Xander and I had a friend named Jesse. The master turned him into a vampire before the Harvest, and Xander staked him." Angel squeezed her shoulder, encouraging her to continue. "We promised each other that whoever had a son first-"
"Would name him Jesse?"
They shared a smile, and Angel nodded, looking back at their sleeping child. "Prince Jesse. I like it."
"The councillors can figure out his twenty-four other names," Willow dryly noted.
Angel laughed, then leaned forward to press a tender kiss to her lips.
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Tears coursed down the Queen's cheeks, and the King kept his arm around her waist, he himself under the sway of equally strong emotions.
"She looks so beautiful," Willow whispered in his ear.
Angel nodded, incapable of speaking as he watched Garwin slide the ring onto Dalenna's finger.
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Willow woke up to find her husband's side of the bed empty.
"Angel?" she called out.
Suddenly, a loud laugh came out from the king's dressing room, and he dashed out, leaping into the bed to land beside his wife.
"What's going on?" she asked bemusedly.
"Look," he said excitedly, pointing at his head.
"I don't really-"
"Gray hair, sweet wife of mine! I have gray hair!"
"And this excites you?"
"Willow, I lived for two and a half centuries without ever getting any older. Gray hair was a secret fantasy of mine for years."
She laughed as she understood. "So, how do you want to celebrate?"
He thought for a moment. "Oh, I know. Let's make a national holiday!"
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Prince Jesse bounced on his uncle's knee with glee.
"Uncle Garwin, higher!"
He complied with a laugh, and Dalenna dropped a kiss on her husband's head.
"Shouldn't your father be doing this?" The fond look on Garwin's face belied the exasperated tone of his voice. He was one of his nephew's favorite playmates, an honor he greatly appreciated.
"Can't," Jesse replied in the laconic manner once characteristic of his currently absent father. Garwin looked at his wife, and she shrugged.
"Why not, princeling?" Marie asked from her spot next to the fire. Jesse's face was wreathed in smiles as she said the familiar nickname.
"He's looking for his crown."
Garwin stopped bouncing his giggling nephew. "He lost his crown?"
"Well..."
"Jesse, do you know something?"
The boy's hazel eyes twinkled. "It's underneath my bed," he whispered.
Garwin laughed until his stomach hurt, and Jesse found himself being tickled mercilessly by his Aunt Dalenna. Marie remained in her chair with a smile on her face, knowing that she should go tell Willow, but putting it off for just a minute more as she watched...
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"Thayne, what's wrong?" Angel asked.
The ex-soldier looked startled. "Oh, oh, nothing, Your Majesty."
Angel rolled his eyes. "Thayne, you look like you're in mourning, your face is so gloomy. Also, you only call me Your Majesty when you're distracted. Has someone you care for died?"
"No."
"So you're in love, then."
Thayne looked shocked. "How did you-"
"You're not as subtle as you think. Besides, you've been brooding as much as I used to, and I recognize the symptom. Who is she?"
Thayne sighed. "Merchant Goodman's daughter."
"I know the one. She makes, as an old friend of mine once said, googly eyes at you every time you enter a room. So what's the problem?"
Thayne shook his head. "I am in no way assured of her regard. Besides, her father would never allow her to even look in my direction."
Angel shrugged. "Okay. I'll make you a Duke. Anything else?"
His fair companion blinked in shock. "You- you would do that? You could do that?"
"Of course."
"I don't know. Can I ask her to marry a man such as myself, flawed and scarred?" He looked at his left arm, his arm that had never really healed properly after its encounter with Aylmar's sword. His right arm was as dextrous as ever, but his left hung uselessly by his side.
"Thayne, that arm is evidence of your remarkable valor and loyalty. She'll be honored to marry you." Angel paused, then smiled slyly. "Your Grace."
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Jesse paced like a caged animal. "What's taking so long?"
His father tried to soothe him. "It will be alright. Just sit down."
"I want to go in!"
The queen pulled him into a chair. "Jesse, darling, everything is going to be fine. She is going to be fine." Willow looked up and exchanged a fond look with her husband.
"Mother, couldn't you go in? They would let you go in and see her, wouldn't they?"
She smoothed down his frazzled hair. "The midwife is taking good care of your wife, sweetheart. It won't be much longer."
Angel watched his wife, so graceful, so lovely, and his son, so inherently elegant and handsome. He remembered how frantic he had been on the day of Jesse's birth. Actually, he had behaved in a very similar manner for the births of all of Jesse's royal siblings...
A baby's cry was heard through the ornately carved door, and Jesse's face broke into a broad smile.
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Angel was old.
He wasn't just old in years, anymore; he was old in body. At last.
His reign over the kingdom had already spanned decades. His first gray hair had been followed by the rest, his handsome face had become mapped with wrinkles, and it had been a long time since he had really been able to remember the taste of blood.
Willow was no longer the adventursome teenager she had been upon arriving in their royal world. She was utterly a queen. Age could not diminish her fair beauty, though her fiery hair had become considerably more washed with white.
But the really amazing thing, the omnipresent condition, was that they were in love. For forty years they had loved each other without reserve. They knew each other completely, and their souls seemed to work in harmony.
Their children had grown into adults in the presence of their love, their friends admired and imitated it, and even the laws enacted during their reign were affected by it. They shared good and bad memories from two worlds, they suffered and rejoiced together, and their love continued to grow.
One fine summer morning, they strolled though the palace gardens arm in arm. Various members of the royal family were scattered through the manicured lawns and the carefully tended paths, and the King and Queen walked together in love.
They paused next to a fountain, and Angel bent down to place a gentle kiss on Willow's smiling lips.
"Grandma! Grandpa!" a voice interrupted.
They looked down to see one of their youngest grandchildren beaming up at them.
Angel stooped to ruffle his hair, as grandfathers often do.
"I saw something in the woods," the boy said with wide eyes. "It was pretty."
Willow smiled. "Why don't you go back to your mother, and we'll see what it is."
The boy impulsively hugged her knees, then ran off down the path. His grandparents both laughed, then headed towards the spot the boy had pointed out.
Angel walked ahead into the small grove of trees, Willow following close behind with her hand clasped in his. The trees had unusually thick foliage, and very little light filtered down between their branches.=20 There was an almost solemn hush, and Willow was surprised that she couldn't even hear any birds singing.
"What do you think it was?" Angel asked her.
"Perhaps a deer? I don't think he's ever seen one before. He would probably think a deer was pretty." A gentle breeze ruffled her skirts.
She froze.
"Let's go back." Her voice sounded odd, choked, and... frightened. She pulled on Angel's hand, and he looked at her in surprise.
"Why? What's wron-"
But it was too late.
They saw it at once, that slash of emptiness, that swirling opening into time.
"No," she whispered.
He gathered her into his arms, pressing kisses into her fragrant hair, whispering frantic words of love. They tried to back away, but they knew it was futile, and the breeze became a howling wind, and then everything was black.