Red

By Meggie

Discaimer- I Don't own Willow etc. Joss does.

* 65 years have passed *

Willow sat straight up in her bed. It used to be her and Oz's bed, but he had died one year ago. She began to remember the day he died...the day they all died...

It had been a warm, sunny day, a decievingly sunny, bright day. Giles, who was well into his 90's? She had never bothered to ask, but he had been very old for a watcher, had found information about vampire who went around killing all the Slayers and her friends (that is if she had friends ) and family for thousands of years and never once had tired of it. Buffy hadn't been concerned until Oz had turned up dead. Giles had told them all to be careful, very careful. Willow had gone home that day and cried herself to sleep. Buffy had gone to Sunnydale Elementry School the next day as was her normal routine to help teach kindergarden. She loved working with all the children and the job gave her wonderful flexability. She was one of three aids the teacher had hired and this enabled her to continue to slay. Giles had once told her it was a record for a Slayer to live so long.

That night Buffy had gotten a call telling her to meet them (whoever them was) at the warehouse on Alington Ave. The next comment had come as a shock to her and she had to grab the table the phone was on to steady herself. "Buffy, I'm fine. Please just let me die here. You have been a wonderful Slayer..." came a familer British voice, which was then promtly cut off. They had Giles, whatever they were, they had HER Watcher and they weren't going to as so much as scratch him and she'd make them pay. After Merrick, it had been so long, but she still remembered the day when he had killed himself or gotten himself killed, at the moment she was near tears and didn't care which one it was, it was not going to happen to Giles.

She had grabbed a bunch of stakes and marched over to Alington Ave. Then a voice, Giles's voice, screamed in pain. She had run into the building that the sound seemed to eminate from and gasped in horror. Giles was already dead. He lay on the floor at her feet, a tape recorder plugged into the wall a few feet away played what she guessed were most likely his last moments and she shuddered at the thought of just how loud he had screamed. His last moments were not happy ones, but then again neither would hers if she didn't start fighting. There were too many of them, vampires that is. They surounded her. In moments she was tied up to a chair that was chained to the wall. A phone was lifted to her mouth and ear. Xander was on the other line. "Buffy? Oh God Buffy! I'll get Willow and Cordealia and we'll be right over." Then the line was dead. She had tried to tell them no, don't come. Instead stay far away from here, but she knew it was useless. 10 minutes passed. Then 20. The vampires jumped up just as she heard a door open. Two actually, Xander and Cordealia walked in one door and a large, evil looking vampire, probably the brains of this opperation stepped into the room from another. Instanly Cordy and Xander were tied up next to Buffy. "Okay, how 'bout we get this show on the road. The Slayer, her friends and family gone, all of them!" Buffy was about to say something about Willow, but more vamps came in with matches and sticks, logs and other burnable things and set them at her feet. Then all but one vampire remained and struck a match, laughing as Buffy and her friends and the already dead Giles burned. Buffy was sobbing and yelling " I'm so SORRY Xander! I'm SO SORRY Corealia!" Then she said a silent prayer for Willow, so that she would at least survive the ordeal, but never got to finish. Buffy felt her neck become engulfed in flames and she screamed in pain. Then Angel came to her mind like a cry of hope. She wondered if he was still alive. She had never married, she had been temped to do so, like with Riley. Riley Finn, Buffy Ann Finn. She had liked the sound of that, and in her late twentys he had asked her to be his bride. But at the same moment she thought she seen Angel in the shadows and had run after him and away from a confused Riley. She never found out if it was Angel. Last time she had seen him had been 20 years ago. She wished that for one moment he could have been human. Once, when they were talking he had said something about how he really did become human, yadda yadda yadda. "Then why don't I remember it?" She had asked him. "Because I asked for my demon back. I'm no use to you and the world with being able to fight," he had told her. Now her memory flashed for moment and it came back to her. He had been right, there had been a day that was snatched from her memory until now. They had shared peanut butter and ice cream together. And that kiss on pier. Wow! What a kiss. Now she was sobbing. Angel had been hers. And she had spent her life avoiding him, trying to forget whatever they had shared, but now, in her moment of death, she thought about him and only him. "Oh Angel! I love you!" She whispered, but then it was all over. Death had it's grip firmly on her and she gulped in her last breath of air. "Angel !" she screamed and went limp.

Willow had recieved the call from Xander and he had told her that if she'd just please come, he'd love her forever. She'd walked slowly, head still reeling from Oz's death. Then she heard it, them actually. The screams. She saw the vampires and ducked into an ally. When the voices were long gone, she looked around the corner to see the warehouse where Giles was supposed to have been in flames. And heard their screams. And heard the screams of Giles fade out, the tape player bursting into a ball of flames. But Buffy, Xander and Cordy weren't there, not anymore. They were in heaven, sobbing along with Willow as she watched the place burst into it's own little Hellmouth. They sobbed for what had happened, and for what could have been.

Willow had walked home somberly that night, drowning herself in fear and sorrow.

Willow sighed. Remembering that day was like remembering hell. Hearing Buffy's screams of pain, and then her calling out to Angel. Fresh tears welled up in her eyes. But that's not why she woken up in the first place. She had thought she had heard the door to her simple apartment open violently. Then fast paced steps that seemed to be getting closer. Then her bedroom door opened. Spike stood there, looking young and healthy and...She pushed those thoughts out her mind. She was almost eighty, what would he want with her? She gulped, sudden fear engulfing her.

"Hello Pet."

"Sspike." Willow was shaking all over. Spike sat down on the bed next to her.

"You've been thinking about suicide, haven't you luv?"

" How do you know?"

"I can see it all over your face. See Luv, I was thinkin' we could make a deal..."

"Deal? What kind of deal?"

"I'll give you immortal life."

"But then I would be the demon. I don't want that Spike, and you know it."

"But I've found a way around that, there's this spell."

"I haven't been a spellcaster for long and..."

"No, I'd do the spell. Look Red, take it or leave it. Everybody's dead and from the way it looks, you're not too far away."

"But you said it was a deal. What do want from me?"

"Just your company. That's all I ask. You'll be yourself. You know I'd never hurt you." Spike had tried for sincere, but ended up with mildly trustworthly. He'd loved that little red-head since the day he had seen her. She was always so darn, innocent? No, that wasn't the word for it. She was Willow, kinda reminded him of a little dog who begged you to throw a ball, but she had a darker side to her too. She looked darn good in leather and had a nice figure when she chose to show it off.

Willow stared at him. She really liked him and those nice tight pants he always happened to wear. She sighed, Spike was right. Nobody was left, they had all died while she had been taking her time to help out. Being with Spike would be a nice alternative from just dying. But in a way it was the same thing, she would be dead either way.

"But how do I know you won't just kill me?"

"Oh bloody hell Red! I've been lonley ever since your damned Slayer killed Dru years ago."

"Spike, I..."

"Just say it! You'd rather die, which you will soon anyway, than live forever with a vampire right? I know when it's time to stop blabbering like Xander and leave..." But Spike was stopped by Willow, her hair pink from her old age setting in, but her red still shown through. She looked like she had been dying it and it had come out looking like a punk rocker's. She leaned in and kissed him, not tenderly like the stolen moments that had happened a hundred times before, but she kissed him like she knew she could hold onto him forever and savor the life he now offered her. "I'll take that as a yes, then?"

"But now I'll have to look like I'm eighty forever." Willow sort-of whined in her cute Willow-ish way.

"Spells, Red, spells. We'll find one to make ya young, I'll turn ya, and that'll be that." Willow slung her feet over the side of the bed and crept over to a small chest of drawers. Spike wondered for a minute if she meant to kill him right then and there, but instead she returned with an old dusty volume. The cover read "Spells : The Wiccan's Guide To Magick." She placed the book onto the bed and sat down beside Spike. He began leafing through the yellowed pages and soon found the youth spell. Willow shook her head. He bookmarked the page and continued on, finding a small to spell to restore the soul of a vampire and then on the same page one to enable a vampire to walk into the sunlight. Perfect, Willow would have her guilt free soul and we'll both be able to walk around during the day. He tapped Willow on the shoulder, and deciding not to awaken her from her nap, bookmarked the other page and went around shutting all the blinds in the house, he didn't want to become ash in front of Willow's eyes, and then turned on the TV. Finding soap-operas and talk shows on, he settled on a talk show called " My Son/Daughter Thinks He/She Is A Vampire!" Spike laughed at the thought. "I'll turn ya into a real vampire," he said at the TV.

Willow woke up again. *What a dream!* But then she found the spell book laying on her bed, opened to a spell to give a vampire it's soul back. She sat up and wondered if Spike really planned to just kill her, but why would he go through all that trouble just for a meal? Or maybe he wanted to toy with her, promising the gift of immortal life, and then kill her slowly. *No! Bad Willow! Everybody's not out to kill you, well, maybe Spike is, but better to try. She walked over to her bathroom and shut the door. A shower would be nice, Spike's probably gone anyway. Either off to the Magick Shop and gone forever. She stepped into the steaming water.

Spike heard the noise up stairs and wandered up to see if Willow was up yet. She made a cute little old lady, heck, Willow made a cute anything. Spike opened her bedroom door which he had left closed. The bed was empty, but the bathroom was closed and the light was on inside. Then he heard her voice and burst inside. Willow was taking a shower. Spike was blushing, that is he would have been if vampires could blush. Once Red was a vampire he'd miss her blush and decided he'd have to find a spell to fix that too. Willow had heard the door open and peaked her wet head outside the curtain to find what was going on. She spotted Spike standing there with a sheep-ish grin on his face. She pulled the curtain closed and looked down at herself. She looked like a raisin, an old wrinkly raisin and wondered why Spike had come back for her. She also wondered why he hadn't left the bathroom yet.

"Spike, I know you're here and that's fine and all, but..." she trailed off, loosing her thoughts as the door slammed shut. She finished washing what was left of hair and reached for a towel, but didn't find one. *Goddess, not now please, not now* The one time she had forgotten to grab to a towel, there was a wonderfuly handsome vampire just outside the door. *Darn it* Willow sighed and opened the door a crack and wenged her face into it.

"Spike?"

"Sorry Luv, didn't mean to walk in on you like that, just thought something was wrong. Can't loose the reason I came back to Sunnyhell for to death."

"Oh, no that's fine," Willow stared in amazement at Spike. "I was just wondering if you could, um grab me a towel. I can't seem to find in here. There's some in the hall closet."

"Sure Red. " Spike left the room and came back with a fuzzy blue towel. Willow had picked them out on her and Oz's honeymoon in the Carribean. She knew it was only tourist a trap, but had bought them because of the little red crabs embroidered in the front. At the time she hadn't noticed it, but over the crabs, the word "Red" was also embroidered, how odd considering the fact that that was Spike's nickname for her.

"Here ya are Red," Spike said, looking away as he handed her the towel.

"Thanks, and um, I hate to be a bother to you."

"Nope, no bloody bother at all." He realized he had a said that in a mean way and looked back a Willow.

"Spike, I..."

"Didn't come out right."

"Oh," Willow said nonchantly as she closed the door and toweled off. She wrapped the towel around her and opened the door again. Spike was sitting on her bed. She walked out and stared at him until he noticed her.

"Here Luv, while you were in there," he said motioning to the bathroom, " I picked out a nice vampire outfit." He held up a a pair of leather pants and a halter top. "Spike, I haven't worn those clothes since highschool and even then Buffy bought them for me as a gift."

"The spell Luv."

"Can't I at least put on something?"

"Don't want to a wait a moment longer."

"Fine, how do we proform the spell?"

"Gotta swallow this mixture. Made it when you fell asleep."

"I wasn't asleep, I was..."

"Yeh, yeh, just drink it." He handed the small bottle to toweled little old lady in front of him and she gulped it down. All the lights blinked off and then back on. Spike at his Red standing front of him.

"What?" Willow was peeved, either the spell worked or she was dinner. She hoped the latter.

"Come 'er and kiss me luv!" Spike drawled.

"So I take it the spell worked?"

"Gotta get some clothes on Red, not that I'm loving you in the towel, but youth is fleeting, even in spells." Willow walked back into the bathroom as Spike found the spell to give Willow her soul. He would chain her down to the bed, turn her, then give her a soul. Willow walked back out.

"On the bed." The word had come out in a sing-song voice.Spike was almost in heaven, Red would be his forever. *Ooo, kinky.* Willow found herself thinking. *Bad Willow! * She scolded her self.

Willow climbed on the bed and Spike chained her wrists and ankles down. He leaned in close to her and kissed her. Then he whispered into her ear " Last kiss before you're mine." With that he kissed he neck and then bit her. Feeling she was about to faint, Spike slit his wrist and let the droplets of blood flow into her mouth. All that was left to do was wait.

The sun rose an hour later and Spike rechecked all the windows and doors, then sat back down the couch. Within minutes he fell asleep.

Willow woke up that night chained to a bed, fighting, struggling to get free. She sighed and suddenly felt hungrey, hungrey for blood she realized. Panic and a bad case of the wiggins was over rided by a strange calm force.

Spike had awaken when he had heard that Red was up. He raced up stairs to find Willow, still chained but struggling to be released.

"Red?" He was answered by a growl that even he found to be minorly irksome to him and wondered why. Then he found the spell book and opened to the soul page. Using an orb he gave Red her soul back.

Willow stopped struggling and looked at Spike. She was still chained. "Spike?It's Willow, got a soul now, kinda hungrey, possibly needing to be kissed by a certain platinum blonde sire." Spike laughed as he unchained his love.

The End

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