Disclaimer: They aren't mine.

Author's Note: I had this idea for a story, but unfortunately, that story idea didn't include much of a plot. I have the end all in my mind, but the middle of the story is kind of... well, non existant. So, this is just the beginning part of a potentially never to be finished story. Be warned, it's plotless and fluffy.

Undercurrents
By: Northlight

Part 1


The first thing that Willow noticed when the blinding and disorienting light faded was that she was sprawled across a hard male body. After prying her clenched eyelids open, the second thing that she noticed was that body belonged to Angelus.

She gave a startled shriek and awkwardly threw herself off of him while the highly annoyed vampire growled at her. Angel rose to his feet and towered above Willow, his game face firmly in place. His arms shot down towards her, easily grabbing her. He held Willow firmly and drew her upwards until they were eye to eye. "What did you do?" Angelus growled menacingly as he glowered at her.

'Eeep!' Willow's eyes were unwillingly held in place by Angel's intense gaze. 'He's going to kill me!'

When his question was met by incoherent stammers, Angel roughly shook Willow. Her head snapped back with the force of his movements, and Willow quickly buried her understandable terror. "I-- I--" Willow began unsteadily. A deep breath later, she was ready to begin again. "I didn't do anything!"

Angel's hands tightened around Willow's arms, making her flinch in pain. He ignored her slight whimper. "If you didn't do anything, how did we get here?"

"Here?" Willow questioned, wide eyed. 'What does he mean here? What happened? Where's Buffy?!' Terror rapidly began to spiral through Willow as she realized that she was... someplace, alone, with Angelus.

"Stop snivelling!" Angel hissed. Still holding onto her, Angel spun Willow around so that she was no longer looking at his face. The view that now met her startled eyes was decidedly unexpected.

They were standing on an immense plain of lush green grass which reached out as far as Willow could see. The fields of grass were unbroken by any dwelling or structure, making their location all the more frightening to her. She was alone with Angelus, and not only wasn't Buffy there, no one was!

"This is a nightmare," Willow muttered, not even realizing that she had spoken her thought out loud. "Strange landscape, Angelus, no Buffy, what else could this be?"

"Believe me, things are about to get a whole lot worse unless I find out what's happening here!" Angel snarled. He swirled Willow back around to face him, making her vision swim at the sudden and quick change of view. One hand abandoned it's position on her arm to clutch her face. Holding her steady, Angel studied Willow's face intently. Not finding what he had been looking for, Angel tossed Willow aside with a growl of disgust.

Sprawled on the ground once again, Willow slowly backed away from Angel. He was pacing back and forth, low curses escaping him with each thud of his feet on ground. Relieved, Willow noticed that his face had shifted back to it's human form. That went some small distance to assure her that Angel wasn't about to sink his fangs into her... at least not at the moment.

She was frightened. 'Terrified is more like it!' Keeping an uneasy eye on the pacing vampire, Willow cast her thoughts back over the events which had brought them to this point. There was nothing in her recent history to account for her sudden trip here, wherever here was. 'Unless this really is a dream.'

But Willow knew that whatever this was, it wasn't a dream. Ever since Angel had reverted to the whole soulless demon thing, Willow's dreams tended to include her painful and terrifying death at Angelus' hands, or the deaths of her friends. As strange as this situation was, it didn't fit into her nightmare category.

'What else could account for this, though?' Willow wondered. The last thing that she remembered, she had been at the library with Buffy, Xander and Giles. They hadn't been doing anything in particular as things had been rather calm around Sunnydale. 'And there was no Angelus in sight. Probably because it was still sunny outside.'

That thought alerted Willow to something that her earlier panic hadn't allowed her to completely absorb. Wherever they were, it was sunny. 'Sunshine, and Angel's still here!'

Not wanting to draw the vampire's attention back to her, but still immensely curious, Willow finally spoke. "Um... Angel?" she said tentatively.

Angel's look of surprise at her soft words was quickly replaced by one of annoyance. "What do you want, Willow?" She was glad, if a bit surprised, that he answered her without any growls or snarls to accompany his words.

"The sun's up."

"What?!" Angel turned his face upwards, blinking against the glare of the sun against his eyes. The small sliver of Angel that had longed to see the sun since his humanity had been lost to Darla in an alley all those years ago was quickly squashed by the demon inhabiting his body. 'It's just sunlight. Big, bloody deal.' He casually shifted his attention away from the glowing orb hovering in the violet sky overhead.

Feeling someone watching him, Angel turned to meet Willow's eyes. Seeing that he had caught her watching him, she flushed and quickly turned away. Angel looked at her uneasily. There had been something... odd in her eyes when she had looked at him. He hadn't liked it. But then again, he didn't like anything but blood, death, and planning the destruction of the world.

Angel resumed his pacing and snarled curses. 'What is this place? And how the Hell did I get here, and more importantly, how do I get out?' Angel didn't like being surprised. Surprise led to mistakes and weakness. The demon liked being in control of the situation that he was in, and he wasn't in control here.

Angel's pacing was interrupted by Willow yet again, only moments after he had resumed it. "Angel?" she whispered urgently. "Someone's coming!"

He resisted the urge to growl at her, and rather shifted his attention the way that she was pointing. His eyes widened slightly at the sight which met them.

A woman was coming towards them, daintily picking her way through the grass. Her skin was suffused with a pale golden light that clearly proclaimed that whatever she was, it wasn't mortal. And to Angel's stunned amusement, she wore an impractical dress such as he hadn't seen in quite a while.

She came to a stop before Angel and Willow. "Hello!" she proclaimed cheerfully. "Sorry I'm late, hope that you don't mind any."

"Um... Not at all," Willow said uncertainly. 'This is strange...'

Angel didn't bother with the pleasantries. "Who are you and why did you bring me here?" the question was emitted as a warning snarl specifically designed to produce maximum terror in whoever was on the receiving end.

The woman merely smiled indulgently at Angel's vampiric display. "No need for that, Angel!" she reproached him. "My name is Amaranth, and you are here because I need your help."

"You need our help?" Willow asked disbelieving. "I don't see why. I'm... well, I'm just me. And Angel here isn't the helping kind of guy anymore. You would have been better off asking for help from Buffy or Giles."

Amaranth shook her head at Willow's response. "No, they wouldn't have done at all! You see, we need special help." Seeing the skeptical gazes leveled at her by her two guests, Amaranth quickly continued. "For this matter, we needed someone 'Dark' and someone 'Innocent."

Angel snorted. "That sounds like some really bad fairy tale. Embodiment of darkness of innocence-- you couldn't have thought up something better if you were going to drag me over here?"

Willow nodded, but remained silent. She wasn't about to irritate someone who had the power to bring them to this strange place in a matter of moments. 'But I've got to agree with Angel, even though that's pretty weird in itself. This does sound like some sort of Disney movie or something.'

Amaranth glared at Angel, insulted. "This is no laughing matter, young man! And as 'fairy tale'like as this may seem to you, it is the truth! We need the two of you to retrieve something of great importance for us."

"Why us?" Willow asked, "after all, you seem pretty powerful. Why do you need someone dark and someone innocent to help you?"

"I really haven't the foggiest," Amaranth shrugged. Her sunny smile had returned at Willow's question.

"Well I don't care why you need us," Angel snapped, his teeth gnashing. "I don't help people, and I'm not about to start with you!" He glared at her defiantly.

"You don't seem to understand the fact that you have no choice. If you don't help, you don't get out of here."

Willow winced at the curse Angel let out upon hearing that bit of news. She almost expected his next actions. With a growl, Angel launched himself at Amaranth. His hands wrapped around her neck, and squeezed hard enough to hurt a normal person.

Amaranth merely shrugged his hands off of her, leaving Angel stunned. "No more arguing! Go!" she stated implacably.

With a last, hateful glare at the woman, Angel began to trek away from them. Willow hesitated beside the woman for a moment. "What exactly are we looking for, and how do we go about finding it?" she asked.

Amaranth looked slightly surprised, and Willow wondered if she hadn't actually expected that question. "You'll know it when you see it," she answered unhelpfully.

'Not as much information as I was hoping for," Willow thought with disappointment. She began to follow after Angel when another thought struck her. "Wait a second! You expect me to go off with Angel-- an evil vampire?! He's been out to kill us for months! What will stop him from killing me? And what happens when he gets hungry? And--"

"No need to worry about any of that, Willow," Amaranth stated calmly. "Though the demon still controls Angel's body, he will be constrained to the extent where he will not injure you. Now go, before he gets to far."

With a last look back, Willow raced after Angel's retreating form.

End Part 1