Part 7

The next morning found Willow staring in the mirror, the obvious signs of a restless night on her face. She had been awakened often with images of Angel being tortured and she felt as if she was taking in some of his pain. It had hurt, knowing that he was going through that torture because she hadn’t been able to find the spell for his soul sooner, even though she knew logically that she did the best that she could.

Sometimes, when his tormentors had finally left him alone, probably so that he could heal only so they could torture him all over again, Willow could swear that Angel would look directly at her. His eyes pleading forgiveness for his actions as Angelus. Willow would try and comfort the sobbing man. Try and give him added strength to help him get through his ordeal. And it had only been the first night.

Willow carefully applied her makeup, hiding any evidence of the distress that she had been feeling. She knew her friends were already worried about her because of her reaction yesterday to the spell that she had performed and she didn’t want to deal with their concern over the fact that she hadn’t been able to sleep.

Willow entered Section and walked over to her station, grateful to see that Birkhoff was not in his normal seat. She wasn’t sure what she would tell him if he asked her more about what had happened the night before. She hated lying to him, he meant so much to her, but she didn’t think she had any other option. She had never told anyone in Section about the real reasons she was so good at fighting, not only with her hands, but with a staff and crossbow. She just let them assume that it was self protection against the hazards that seemed to be a normal occurrence in her hometown. (Yeah, they were self defense all right, just not against humans.)

This brought her thoughts back to Angel. She didn’t blame him for what had happened when he had lost his soul. That wasn’t her friend Angel, that was the demon that was Angelus. She knew the differences between the two more than anyone, even Buffy. That was one of the reasons why she had continued searching for the spell to restore his soul, even after she had been taken by Section. She wanted to give her friend his life back. But now that life was in torment and it hurt her more than anything.

"Willow?" Nikita asked, scaring the young girl who was lost in her thoughts. "Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you," Nikita said, "I tried calling you but your mind must have been on something else."

"Yeah, you could say that," Willow replied.

"What were you thinking about?"

"Just a friend," Willow answered, not even thinking about it.

"Really, anyone I would know," Nikita was intrigued. While Willow had told them a little about her life before Section, she knew that there were things that the normally open girl was keeping to herself. Nikita wondered why Willow felt the need to keep her past a secret. Granted, Section was generally full of people with secrets, but Willow was a normal teenage girl before coming here. What could be so awful that Willow didn’t feel like she could tell the others?

"No, no one that I’ve told you about," Willow answered.

"Really, who then?"

Willow didn’t know what to tell Nikita. She was afraid that if she kept everything inside, she would probably go mad, but she wasn’t sure how to tell anyone about Angel, without sounding like she was already completely off her rocker. Nikita could see the indecision on Willow’s face.

"How about we talk about it over coffee?" She offered.

"I’d like that," Willow replied, meaning it. She and Nikita had become almost like sisters. The blonde woman accepted everything about Willow, happy when she noticed the changes that were taking place in the young witch since she had joined Section. Willow stood up and followed Nikita as the two headed to the cafeteria in silence. Willow took the time to think of exactly how she would explain her relationship with the souled vampire. The two poured themselves some coffee and found a seat away from the others.

"So who were you thinking about back there when you were ignoring everything around you," Nikita probed. "Was it a man?" Willow blushed slightly at the innuendo in Nikita’s voice.

"Yeah, he’s a friend from Sunnydale that I miss a lot," Willow began. "His name is Angel."

"Angel," Nikita said, a smile crossing her lips. "Interesting name." Willow nodded her head as she looked down at the mug in her hand.

"It fit him. His full name was Angelus, ‘man with the face of an Angel’ and boy did he. He was so handsome. Half the girls at the Bronze would have done anything to date him." Willow looked up at Nikita and the operative was surprised at the sadness that was in her eyes. " He had these brown eyes that could look into the depths of your very soul if they turned their gaze on you. He disappeared about a month before Section had recruited me."

"What happened?" Nikita gently asked. She knew that Willow still missed her friends and life in Sunnydale, but the way that she talked about Angel gave her an indication that she had a particular fondness for the man. Nikita hoped it wasn’t because Willow was in love with him. It would hurt Birkhoff if the red head had those kind of feelings for someone else.

Willow’s voice became a whisper as she recalled the events before she was taken. "It was the night of Buffy’s seventeenth birthday. Some unexpected party crashers showed up and Buffy and Angel got rid of them and what they had brought." Willow noticed Nikita’s confused face. "Buffy and Angel were sort of an item. Actually they were pretty much head over heels for each other. You could see it just by the way they looked at each other."

"By the way you are talking, it sounds like you were pretty close to Angel, also," Nikita mentioned. Willow smiled slightly as she shook her red hair.

"Not really. Angel is…well..Angel," Willow couldn’t find the right word to describe the vampire. "I don’t even think Buffy was all that close to him. There was a lot about his past that he didn’t talk about because of how he was then. But I never held it against him. It wasn’t who he was now and that was what was important to me. And it didn’t hurt that he had saved my life once or twice," Willow said nonchalantly, throwing Nikita off balance for a minute.

"What do you mean, saved your life?"

Willow hadn’t meant for that part to come out, but she hadn’t been able to help it. Reminiscing about Angel made her want to talk about some of the things that he had done for her. She searched through her memories for something that she could tell Nikita. "Well, there was this one time when I was in the school and got overcome from fumes that was coming from a gas leak. Another time was when a group of vam, gang members decided that they wanted to have a little late night fun. Both times, Angel came in like a knight in shining armor to save the damsel in distress."

"Sounds like a good man to have around," Nikita observed.

"He was..is," Willow amended. "I mean, we were never close, but there was a connection, not romantically or anything, just something that said that we were the same underneath it all."

"So what happened to him?" Nikita questioned again. She could tell that Willow needed to get something off her chest and was willing to be there for the girl that had grown to mean so much to her.

"Well, like I was saying, it was Buffy’s birthday and she and Angel had to leave to take care of something," Willow explained. "They got caught in the rain and, by the time they got back to Angel’s, they were both soaked. Well, apparently one thing led to another and the two of them, well, you know." Nikita watched as Willow turned an interesting shade of pink. Everyone in Section found it refreshing that Willow could still be embarrassed by some things considering the nature of the business that they were in. Willow took a deep breath and continued her story. "Well, anyway, that was the last anyone had seen Angel. He disappeared right after that."

Nikita’s heart went out to the hacker in front of her. She could hear the hurt that was in Willow’s voice as she thought about the disappearance of someone that apparently had meant do much to her.

"Have you tried finding him?"

"Yeah. And I thought I had succeeded last night," Willow said, without thinking. "But I was wrong."

"So we did hear right," Nikita stated. Willow looked up at the blonde, shocked. "Right before you passed out you said something. You said ‘Sorry Angel, I was too late.’ We didn’t ask you about it, because it became obvious that you weren’t going to talk about it. You know, no matter how hard you try, you are still a lousy liar when it comes to friends of yours."

"Yeah, well, I’m sorry about that," Willow apologized. "I just didn’t think that I could tell you exactly what I was doing. I was afraid that you all might think I was crazy."

"Crazy? Why would we think you were crazy because you were trying to help a friend," Nikita asked.

"I don’t know," Willow shrugged. "Look, can you just please do me a favor and not mention this to Michael or Birky. They’ll go all overprotective of me and I don’t think I can handle that right now."

Nikita nodded in understanding, "Sure thing Willow." Nikita looked at her watch. "We better get you back to your post. Don’t want anyone saying that you are slacking off or anything." Willow and Nikita laughed at that. It had become common knowledge that no matter what the problem was, Willow could figure out the solution within a few hours, if that long.

"Yeah, I guess so," Willow and Nikita headed back to her terminal. They parted when they reached her computer, Nikita going in search of Michael. Willow was surprised to see that Burkhoff was still not at his desk, but she figured that he must of been called into a meeting or something. She sat down and looked at the screen in front of her. She took out the address that she had found yesterday. The one that had the restoration ritual on it. As Willow had been talking to Nikita, she had figured out what she had to do. So Willow went to work trying to find a way to bring a person back from the pits of hell itself.