Everything Changes 2

 

            I hate hospitals, always have. Despite earning a sort of catharsis by defeating the demon that killed my cousin, I never really got over my childhood fear of them. Plus, in my time as the Slayer I saw so much death and suffering in hospitals to put me off them for life. I remember waiting anxiously for my Mom to go through surgery in one, not knowing whether she was going to live or die, only to end up battling a vampire in the hospital morgue in front of her dead body just a few months later. I remember Faith, pale faced, battered and bruised from the fight I gave her, hooked up to all those machines, comatose and caught in the turmoil of her subconscious dreams; Riley, weak and defeated, in the military hospital; Tara disturbingly confused after being brain-sucked by Glory. I remember the smell of antiseptic and sick people, the way laughter and voices were muffled in the depressive atmosphere, but footsteps always echoed eerily down empty corridors as doctors and nurses, too busy to talk, too anonymous to care, rushed by. I remember the white walls and floors of the oncology ward that evening when I went to visit Willow.

 

            All hospitals are like labyrinths, it’s a fact of life, and I must have asked at least 12 people for directions before I found the ward I was looking for. I clutched a bunch of flowers in my hand, which were now looking decidedly wilted. God knows why I brought them, it had just seemed like the right thing to do. But I hadn’t known what to put on the card. ‘Get Well Soon’ was grossly inappropriate and I couldn’t exactly go with ‘I’m sorry you’re dying’ either. In the end I settled for a simple ‘Love Buffy’, and stood stupidly clutching the bouquet in front of the nurses’ desk wandering how on earth to introduce myself.

 

            “Uh, hi,” I stuttered at the busy charge nurse. “I’m here to see one of you patients.”

 

            “Name?” she asked without looking up.

 

            “Buffy Summers,” I supplied.

 

            She lifted her head, staring at me as if I was stupid. “Name of the patient.”

 

            “Oh, oh,” I could have kicked myself, I felt like such an idiot, but decided to blame it on nerves. I’d thought about it for a long time last night and decided I didn’t care what Willow had done in the past, or who she was married to now, I just wanted to make things right with her before she died, and I hoped more than anything that she would be able to forgive me. Plus Angel was bound to be there with her as well, which was always enough to engender a certain amount of anxiety in me.

 

            “Willow Rosenberg,” I corrected myself, pausing only after I said the name to wonder whether it was right or not. Maybe she changed her name after she got married, took Angel’s surname, assuming, of course, Angel even had a surname. “She’s in room 668?”

 

            “Straight down the hall, third on your left,” the nurse pointed. “She’s had a tough day, so you won’t be able to stay long.”

 

            I nodded, half glad of it, then proceeded to follow her directions. I reached 668 far to quickly and paused to gather my nerves before knocking on the door. Angel answered it within seconds, the strain on his face obvious, but lifting somewhat when he saw who it was. He nodded almost imperceptibly, giving me the ghost of a smile before stepping aside to let me into the room.

 

            “I’m glad you came.”

 

            I smiled briefly at him, then walked past, turning to see Willow sat up in the hospital bed as I did so. The shock was immense – she looked so utterly different, both from the girl I had known and the woman I had seen a couple of days ago. The long, curly hair was gone, obviously a wig, replaced with a bright blue headscarf. Her normally pale skin was now completely ashen, not even a few stray freckles present. And upon review, her tiny frame, which I had thought slim and attractive dressed up in an evening gown, appeared painfully thin in a hospital robe cocooned by blankets.

 

            “Buffy!” she exclaimed, her voice sounding hoarse and cracked, her throat obviously sore from throwing up. “It means so much that you came. I’m so sorry about the other day – ”

 

            “No,” I shook my head. “I’m the one who should be sorry. I was such a bitch. I had no right to talk to you like that.” I glanced over towards Angel as I spoke, but he was already melting out of the door, leaving Willow and I to talk in peace.

 

            “You did,” she smiled and reached over to touch my arm, IV tubes trailing from her hand. “You had every right. I think if you’d turned around and married Oz or – ” she broke off, pain in her eyes and I could tell she was thinking about Tara. “Well,” she carried on with a small shake of the head. “I would have been pretty pissed.”

 

            “It wasn’t that I was mad at you,” I tried to protest, then stopped, realising Willow could still tell when I was lying. “Okay, maybe I was – a little. But mostly I just didn’t understand it.”

 

            “And now that you’ve seen me like this you do?” Willow asked quietly.

 

            “I-I… That’s not what I meant,” I stuttered guiltily.

 

            “It’s okay, Buffy,” she interrupted with a sigh. “I may be sick, but I’m not blind. I know Angel doesn’t feel that way about me. I know it’s not bells-ringing, earth-moving, soul-losing kind of stuff.”

 

            “I’m sorry,” I said again, feeling completely inadequate. All I’d done so far was apologise to Willow and it hadn’t made anything better, my words couldn’t change a thing.

 

            “Don’t be,” she responded almost immediately. “I-I’m not sure I feel that way about Angel either. I mean, I love him,” she smiled to herself, something I recognised all too well from myself – an Angelsmile, the type that came over you just when you thought of him.  I felt a sudden pang inside, it had been so long since I’d had one of those. “You’d be crazy not to.”

 

            I met Willow’s gaze and grinned, suddenly sharing a girly bonding moment with her again. “Utterly insane. I mean, all those muscles. And his butt is totally to die for.”

 

            “Hey, keep your eyes to yourself,” she teased back. “That’s my husband you’re talking about.”

 

             The reality of the joke sinking in, I fell silent, the awkward atmosphere of the room reasserting itself until Willow spoke quietly: “He still loves you, you know.”

 

            I shook my head. “It’s been too long.”

 

            She laughed, trying to keep the sound light, but nonetheless failing to hide the undercurrent of pain beneath it. “Believe me, Buffy, I’m his wife, I know this sort of thing.”

 

            I looked up at her, suddenly knowing that despite everything I went through as the Slayer, despite the number of demons I could kill or iron bars I could bend with my bare hands, which one of us was the stronger person – inside where it mattered more than anything else. “How do you do it?” I asked. “How can you be with a man you know doesn’t love you completely?”

 

            Willow smiled, a wisdom in her eyes I’d often seen in Angel’s. Perhaps they weren’t too bad a match for one another, after all. “Because I know that I can trust him, that he’ll always be here for me no matter what, and sometimes that’s enough.”

 

            She turned even paler then, something I hadn’t imagined possible, clutching her arms protectively over her stomach.

 

            “Willow?” I ventured nervously, terrified by the expression of agony on her face. “Are you okay?”

 

            “Fine,” she answered in a strangled whisper. “Just need the basin from the side…”

 

            I hurriedly passed her a kidney shaped bowl from the top of the locker by the bed, becoming nauseous myself as she wretched over it, before gathering my senses and pressing the call button for the nurse. Several staff members appeared in the room, ignoring me as they gathered around Willow, one rubbing her back gently as another drew some drugs out of a vial in her pocket and injected them into Willow’s IV line. Unable to watch any longer, I backed out of the room, leaving the sound of Willow vomiting behind me.

 

* * * * *

 

            I caught up with Angel standing next to the nurses’ station, sipping machine coffee out of a polystyrene cup and talking quietly with one of the doctors. I waited ‘til he’d finished then walked hesitantly up beside him.

 

            “Hey,” he greeted me, sounding very tired. “Everything go okay with Willow?”

 

            I smiled awkwardly. “I think so. She didn’t look too good though. She was kinda puking up when I left her – some nurses are with her, though.”

 

            He nodded. “They want to do more tests, check how far the tumour’s spread, maybe change the drug treatments she’s on. The doctor was just going to see her now, they’ll be a while – do you – ” he paused awkwardly. “Do you want to go get a cup of coffee from the cafeteria or something? This stuff tastes like pond water.”

 

             I didn’t answer straight away, knowing I should just walk out of there right that instant and not get involved. I’d made my peace with Willow, I could even come back on other days sometimes and visit with her. But Angel I needed nothing more to do with, spending time with him like this was a bad idea; it could only end up hurting all of us. I should just say my goodbyes and go and get on with the rest of my life.

 

            “Sure,” I answered brightly. “Coffee sounds good.”

 

            The coffee wasn’t actually all that good, it came as black as treacle with only those little plastic pots of non-dairy, low-fat, zero-taste creamer to whiten it. I tipped about six into mine, along with three heaped spoonfuls of sugar, while Angel drank his black. The caffeine seemed to do him some good, though, the exhausted lines on his face smoothed out and he became more talkative, relaxing with me.

 

            “I guess we became friends when I went to Sunnydale to help with the Hellmouth,” he started telling me about him and Willow. “Faith wasn’t really coping there on her own.”

 

            I nodded, I’d heard she’d been let out of prison shortly after I left Sunnydale, and far from being upset I was kind of glad she took over Slayer-duty there, it helped rid me of some of the guilt of moving away to LA. But it didn’t exactly come as a surprise she’d been struggling, I remembered what it had been like to be the Slayer and how important it was to have friends to help you through. Faith didn’t have that, she didn’t even have a Watcher, so no wonder she’d got into trouble.

 

            “Willow called me,” Angel continued. “She was feeling pretty lost too. I don’t think she ever got over the guilt of the things she did.”

 

            I cringed at the memory. “It was awful, Angel. She was out of control. I mean, Willow was always so gentle, so timid and suddenly it was like she flipped. She was this conduit for black magic and we couldn’t do anything to stop her – no one could.” I shuddered to myself, suddenly transported back to that time and not only the horror of suddenly seeing my best friend turn evil, but also the flashback to Angelus, the time when someone else I loved turn on me in exactly the same way. I had forgiven him, though, I remembered guiltily, why then did it take me so long to forgive Willow?

 

            “You managed to get through to her in the end,” Angel reminded me. “She just couldn’t handle the guilt afterwards.”

 

            I frowned. “I didn’t exactly make it any easier for her.”

 

            “No one expected you to. You were going through your own problems. But,” he shrugged. “She needed someone, someone who’d been through that. And Faith wasn’t much help – it was still too difficult, too raw for her – so I guess I stepped in. We became friends.”

 

            I smiled, glad that while I had been working my way through therapists, too busy hating myself and my father to give much consideration to anyone else, the people I loved were taking care of one another, making sure they were all okay.

 

            “Then came the next big apocalypse,” Angel sighed loudly interrupting my thoughts. “We nearly called you, but Giles said it was too soon, you wouldn’t be ready to deal with something like that yet. Anyway, in the end we dealt. Willow researched, even practised some controlled magic. Faith and I fought and we won. Afterwards I got my shanshu, became human – ”

 

            “Then you came to see me,” I continued the story, filling in the blanks. “And I sent you away.”

 

            “I never blamed you, Buffy,” he said fairly. “Giles was right, you weren’t ready.”

 

            I nodded, almost on the verge of laughing. “Our timing pretty much sucks doesn’t it?”

 

            Angel ignored the comment, instead picking up where he left off. “After that I just started spending more and more time with Willow. She basically taught me how to be human again, you know, the little things like eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or going roller-blading.”

 

            “You went roller-blading?” my mouth fell open in amazement.

 

            His expression darkened. “One time only – never again, since it also helped me to relearn the fun human trait of bruising.”            

 

            This time I did laugh out loud, the image of Angel falling on his ass in roller blades just too much for me. God, I’d forgotten how good it was just to be in his company. Just simply to hang out with no strings or heartbreaks. For so long Angel and I had been synonymous with just this big ball of existential angst, but it hadn’t always been like that. There had been moments when we were just two people talking and having a good time. Like now.

 

            “Then,” he sobered up again. “Willow started feeling ill. She asked me to come to the hospital with her while they did the tests, and when they diagnosed cancer she spent the whole night crying in my   arms. They thought they could treat it then, but it was still all pretty traumatic, what with the surgery and the endless chemotherapy. Willow needed a lot of support back then,” he shifted awkwardly, the conversation suddenly becoming difficult for both of us. “We became…close.”

 

            I wanted to ask whether he fell I love with her back then or not, but I realised the answer was something I never wanted to know. For Willow’s sake I wanted her to be with someone who felt more for her than friendship and pity, but for my own I wanted to believe I was still the only person Angel had let into his heart. Really, I finally concluded, it was better to let some things between Angel and Willow stay private. 

 

            “She went into remission, and…and we broke up for a while,” he looked anywhere but towards me, lost in his own memories. “Then the cancer came back, only much worse – incurable this time. It was Willow’s idea to get married. I think she wanted to make sure I’d always be there, that I’d never leave her again.”

 

            “When she needn’t have bothered, right?” I asked softly, with a little bitterness. “You wouldn’t have left her, anyway. Not as long as she needed you.”

 

            Angel shook his head and a long silence stretched between us. Eventually he looked up and fixed me with a concerned look. “Are you okay?”

 

            “Coffee’s cold,” I avoided the question. “I should be going, anyway – it’s getting late.”

 

            He nodded. “Sure – but you’ll come back again, won’t you?”

 

            I smiled. “Yeah, yeah, I will.”

 

            He scribbled down some numbers on a piece of paper and handed them to me. “Call anytime.”

 

            I tucked the paper in my purse, then did the worst thing I could have possibly done – the worst and the best. I reached over and hugged him. His arms slipped around me like they’d never left and I whispered in his ear. I missed you.

 

            “I missed you too,” he murmured back, his face in my hair. Then we parted and I walked away, planning when I could next find the time to visit the hospital.

 

* * * * *

 

            Over the next few months I started seeing more and more of Willow. Sometimes Angel would be there and we’d talk in hushed voices, shooting each other furtive looks, and other times it was just Willow and me. We easily became friends again again, the years of distance and separation slipping away. Occasionally one of us would mention the past and a painful silence would descend, but we soon learned just to focus on the good memories and ignore all the other difficult stuff. The future too was pretty much a taboo subject, since Willow didn’t have one and romance was a topic neither of us wanted to dwell on, so we talked about literature and art, TV and politics, science and current affairs, what the celebrities were wearing in the magazines, anything really that didn’t cut too close to the heart of the hurts left still unresolved between us. I forgave her unreservedly, even loved her unconditionally again, but couldn’t bring myself to ever renew the intimacy we’d had in high school and college. We were grown-ups now, recognising the limits on our friendship, but cherishing it nonetheless.

 

            I took her back to the store where she worked and picked out a dress for the benefit she and Angel were going to together. It was to raise money for cancer awareness and Willow was a guest speaker. She said in her speech that dying wasn’t so bad, as long as you knew your life had been worthwhile, and thanked everyone who she’d loved for making it so. I cried when she’d finished and held her in a long hug. I couldn’t believe I was going to lose my best friend so soon after I’d found her again.

 

            Sometimes Willow would be too sick or tired to talk. Then I’d read to her, or just hold her hand, until she drifted off to sleep. And later Angel and I would slip away together, sometimes for coffee or a meal, other times just to sit in silence and leave unsaid all the things we wanted to tell one another. One day I was invited around to Angel and Willow’s home for dinner, somewhere I’d been avoiding up until then, it being just too hard to see firsthand the life that they shared together. But Willow had been so insistent I couldn’t refuse and arrived promptly on time wearing my smartest dress and offering a bottle of wine I was convinced was expensive enough to go beautifully with any meal.

 

            Angel greeted me with flour spilled down his silk shirt and a harassed look on his face. It turned out Willow was having one of her worse days, but had refused to cancel dinner. She had been sat on the sofa all day ordering Angel backwards and forwards between the different dishes she had decided he should cook. Although the image amused me at the time, the minute I saw Willow I was shocked into complete seriousness. She looked sicker than ever and didn’t even have the energy to eat, instead sitting at the table in her pyjamas and robe watching Angel and try to carry on meaningless small talk through mouthfuls of food. Her face was drawn with pain and as soon as we’d finished dessert Angel insisted she go to bed, and she didn’t even try to object. It took two of her strongest painkillers to get her off to sleep and I knew the end was coming soon.

 

             “They’ve put her on morphine now,” Angel explained, sounding more worn out than ever. “The maximum dose possible. It pretty much means there’s nothing more the doctors can do other than to make her comfortable.”

 

            I nodded, knowing Willow had chosen to stop chemotherapy a couple of weeks back. Its symptoms just made her feel worse and the treatments weren’t having much effect on the progression of the cancer anyway.

 

            “They want to take her into the hospital soon,” Angel explained with a sigh. “But she wants to stay home.”

 

            “What about you?” I asked him softly as we sat on the sofa together, my voice dropping to a husky tone, my hand inches away from his thigh. “What do you want?”

 

            He looked at me for a long time, the hunger obvious in his eyes, then he edged away from me a little, collapsing back onto the couch cushions. “I want whatever’s best for Willow.”

 

            I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Even if it’s killing you to provide it.”

 

            He looked at me in confusion and I frowned. “C’mon Angel, you know you can’t go on caring for Willow on your own like this. You’re exhausted – you need some help.”

 

            He acknowledged it with a slight smile. “I’ve been looking into hiring a private duty nurse. Willow’s insurance will cover a couple of hours a week…”

 

            “I’ll do it,” I interrupted suddenly. “I’ll help you take care of her.” I’d been thinking about it for a while, I wanted to do more than just uselessly chat to Willow and hold her hand. I wanted to help, make a proper difference like I used to when I was the Slayer. I did suppose that nursing an invalid wasn’t quite as glamorous as killing vampires and demons, but it had to be a hundred times more rewarding than just working in a department store.

 

            “I can’t ask you to do that, Buffy,” Angel protested.

 

            “You didn’t ask, I offered.” I reminded him with a grin. “Besides, I want to, I care…about you both. Anything I can to help I want to do it.”

 

            “Thank you,” he smiled broadly. “W-we care about you too, Buffy. I don’t know what I would have done these past few months without you here.” I reached out to touch my face but backed out at the last minute, letting his hand drop away.

 

            I blushed uncomfortably. “Oh, you would have coped. You always do fine without me.”

 

            He shook his head. “I do nowhere near as well as anyone thinks. After…after you died, I was lost completely, I had no idea how to carry on.”

 

            I locked eyes with him, the wine from dinner making my head spin, or it could have been just Angel’s closeness. “Are you afraid you’ll feel that way when Willow dies?” I swallowed thickly, trying to clear some of the dryness from my throat.

 

            Angel didn’t drop his gaze from mine as he answered. “No. I’m afraid I won’t.” Then he must have leant down towards me, or I reached up towards him, or maybe even both – I’m not sure how it happened. But a second later we were kissing. His lips were sliding over mine and he tasted the same but different. Still uniquely Angel but warm instead of cool, musky and rich like red wine and black forest gateau instead of the coppery tang of blood. Changed but just as good.

 

            The kiss deepened and his hands twisted in my hair, my fingers dug into the muscles of his chest. My heart was pounding in my ears and my mind was washed blank of everything but the pure intoxication of the moment, the thrill of his body pressed up against mine. We broke away from each other, both breathless, panting and suddenly guilty.

 

            “I’m sorry,” Angel jumped as far backwards as the small sofa would allow. “I can’t do this. I won’t do this, not as long as…” he trailed off, amending his sentence. “I won’t cheat on Willow.”

 

            “No, no,” I shook my head, still reeling from the kiss. “I understand. I’m glad. S-she deserves better than that.”

 

            He nodded carefully. “She does. Maybe…”

 

            “Maybe I should go, right.” I stood up to fetch my coat, suddenly afraid we had ruined everything. “Can I…can I still help? With Willow?”

 

            Angel thought for a moment before answering in the affirmative. “I think she’d like that.”

 

            I smiled tentatively. “I think I would too.”

 

* * * * *

 

            Willow lasted another six weeks, all spent at home being cared for by me or Angel. Suddenly the two of them became my life. I spent every evening after work with Willow, sleeping most nights in their guest bedroom. Angel and I would eat together, maybe watch a little TV or talk during the times Willow was sleeping, which became more and more closer to the end. We never mentioned the kiss, but neither of us quite forgot it either. Somehow, though, it ceased mattering after a while, there was something far more important going on around us.

 

            Willow was fading further away each day. She stopped being able to eat even with someone else’s help, so a nurse came and fitted her with a tube that delivered food into her stomach. She had an IV line too to give her fluids and drugs, and the bedroom she shared with Angel started to resemble more of a hospital. Angel started sleeping on the couch, or not sleeping at all, and sometimes the two of us would go out patrolling in the middle of the night, eager for vampires to kill just to work out some of the aggression we felt towards life an how unfair it could be.

 

            “I wish it was me,” he confessed to me over Willow’s bed, as she lay asleep, knocked out by drugs and pain. “It should be me. I’ve done so many bad things in the past, hurt so many people yet I’m here with a second chance at life and she doesn’t even get one.”

 

            I reached over to touch Willow’s cheek, instinctively knowing she only had a few hours left. The skin was fragile like tissue paper and frighteningly cold, the only sign of life her laboured breathing. “Sometimes you don’t understand fate,” I said sadly. “You just have to accept it.”

 

            Angel started to cry then, choked, silent sobs that I knew he’d been holding inside of him for months. I walked around to his side of the bed, my own heart breaking with unshed tears. I took him in my arms and we held each other until dawn came and sleep finally overtook us. When I awoke, Willow’s eyes were open. “Buffy,” she whispered, her first word in over 24 hours.

 

            “Do you need something?” I asked anxiously. “Water? More medication?”

 

            She shook her head, the effort clearly exhausting her whole body. “Just want to say…thank you,” she croaked out, her voice no stronger than a husky murmur. “Thank you and Angel for everything. Love you both.” She smiled weakly, her hand finding mine. “Look after him for me.”

 

            Her grip on my hand loosened, her face settled into a peaceful expression, and she closed her eyes for the last time.

 

* * * * *

             

            Things were awkward for a while after the funeral. I stayed a few days with Angel, helping him make arrangements and deal with the task of sorting through Willow’s things to give to charity. There was this horrible silence between us, as we each struggled to cope with our own guilt and grief. Even though we were sleeping under the same roof I felt further away from him than I ever had done, as if somehow Willow had been holding us together and now that she was gone there was nothing left. Then just as I was packing to leave I picked up one of the books I’d been reading Willow whilst she was sick.

 

            A piece of paper fluttered out. Curiously, I picked it up and unfolded it. It was a letter from Willow to both Angel and me, written before she died. The message was simple and to the point. Don’t be fools and walk away from each other again. Angel found me crying over the note, taking me in his embrace the second he read its contents.

 

            That night we went back to my apartment together and made love for the first time since my seventeenth birthday. It was painful and beautiful, and we both cried, but neither of us have ever regretted it. We’re still together now, learning to love one another a little more and a little differently everyday. Making new, happy memories to replace the old painful ones, but never forgetting the people that brought us here.

 

            A while ago I found out I was pregnant. A little girl, according to the scan. We’ve decided to call our daughter Willow. I think she would have approved.

 

   THE END

 

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