As the hours continued to pass the doctors gave them regular updates. Willow had responded well to the surgery and the medication being relentlessly pumped into her system. So far all signs pointed towards her making an eventual full recovery, but they were keeping her in an induced coma, to give her body a chance to adjust to the shock it had sustained.
In the end it was three full days before she woke.
During that time Buffy practically lived at Spikes apartment. Knowing what her daughter must be going through Joyce allowed it, but stayed in regular contact.
Buffy would spend whole hours just lying in Spikes arms, using the strength he gave her to think about her friends, about how much things had changed, about the past, about the future.
To Buffy’s surprise Xander also spent a great deal of his time in Spikes apartment. Cordelia, not particularly close to either Willow or Oz, had tried to comfort him but hadn’t been able to really understand what he was going through. Buffy understood though, and to a certain extent, so did Spike. So the three of them banded together, in a quiet cocoon of mourning and thought.
Spike surprised her with the way he treated Xander. He still wound him up, but he did it in such a way that it was obvious he was just trying to make Xander feel more normal. Spike appreciated the way Xander stuck by his friends, no matter what. And the fact that he had grudgingly accepted the relationship between Spike and Buffy meant more to Spike then he would let on. Though the two men were not yet friends they were coming closer to it.
They were all in deep shock, and a little denial, over Oz’s death. He had been such a quiet, and yet such a steady presence in their lives. None of them had really known him that long, or that well, but he had still been a Scooby. One of them.
And now he wasn’t.
Giles would pop by a couple of times a day, sometimes with Anna and sometimes alone. They would go to the hospital and sit in Willows room, stroking her hand, talking to her. Letting her know in any way they could that they were there for her.
The first time they had seen her, so pale, and so covered in tubes and bandages, it had been the kind of shock which didn’t get easier.
Her recovery would take a long, long time.
There had been a story in the paper about Oz’s death. It had been stated that a young couple, on their way home from a night out, had been attacked by a gang (no doubt a drugged up one). The boy had died as a result of the attack, and the girl had sustained life threatening injuries. The gang in question hadn’t been apprehended.
Buffy had actually rolled her eyes when she’d read the article, still a bit disbelieving that the police were trying to blame everything bad that happened in Sunnydale on these mythical gangs, even when the evidence screamed a different story.
Buffy and Spike also took this time to fill the others in on Willows altered being.
Xander had reacted badly, not willing at first to believe that his best friend was now a kind of demon. He had stormed off, and Buffy had found him later, crying by Willows bedside. The bandaging on Willow’s shoulder had been pulled aside, exposing the bite mark which marred her, and confirming the truth of Buffy’s claim.
Giles had reacted a little better. There were still many ‘dear lords’, and even a few ‘bloody hells’ but meeting and getting to know Anna had altered Giles perspective on a few things. Willow’s change in circumstances, whist an awful turn of events, wasn’t seen by him to be the end of the world, as it would have seemed before.
It took a great deal of talking for the two men to be completely reconciled, but in the end they realised that the fact that Willow was alive, alive and almost whole, was really all that mattered.
They would deal with what happened next, like they dealt with everything.
When the news came that Willow was finally awake Buffy was felt a mixture of emotions. She was so glad that Willow had finally come around, but she was scared too. Scared of the conversation they would have to have.
Spike offered to come to the hospital with her. Despite the strain his leg had underwent the night he had run to Buffy it was now, finally, completely healed. But Buffy, though touched, wouldn’t let him. This was something she and Xander needed to do alone. Willow was their best friend, from the beginning they had been in it together. They had to let Willow know that this hadn’t changed.
The minute Buffy got to the ward Willow was on she knew something was wrong. Nurses were rushing about, panicked and flustered, and a doctor was leaving Willows room. He was incredibly pale, and had a nasty looking burn on his arm.
Buffy ran straight over to him, a frantic Xander by her side. “What’s happened?”
The doctor was clearly dazed, and shook his head vigorously, as though to try and clarify what had happened in his own mind.
“Are you – you’re friends of Miss Rosenberg?”
Buffy nodded, “Yes, we were told she’d come round, what’s happened?”
The doctor continued shaking his head, “I’m not quite sure. When she woke up she was asking for someone, Oz? Who I believe is the young man who was unfortunately killed the night she was attacked?”
Buffy nodded again, growing impatient.
“Well one of the nurses told her that he had... passed away... as gently as she could of course, and she, Miss Rosenberg, seemed to go into a sort of – a kind of – fit, I suppose is the best word. She knocked many of the nurses down... some how... and tried to leave the ward. We had to sedate her.”
Buffy looked towards the closed door of Willow’s room, and then at the doctors clearly sore and blistering arm. “How did that happen?”
The doctor followed Buffy’s gaze and flinched as he turned his arm. “I honestly don’t know. When I was trying to give her the sedative she – she grabbed my arm, and then it was burning. If I didn’t know it was impossible I would say she did it some how.”
Buffy shot Xander a nervous look. “Well, obviously that’s impossible. Maybe you came in to contact with something that gave you like a major bad reaction or something?”
The doctor looked uncertain. “Maybe...” He looked at Buffy again, and then around the room to see if they were being listened to. “I was also wondering, and this is going to seem like an odd question, but what colour are Miss Rosenberg’s eyes?”
Xander raised his eyebrows, “They're green, why?”
The doctor suddenly seemed both relieved and nervous, and still more than a little twitchy. “That’s what I thought when they first opened. It must have been a trick of the light then.”
Xander, who had been with Willow the night she had done the spell to reinsert Angel’s soul, had an inkling of what the doctor was talking about. Buffy, who had never really watched Willow when in the pull of magic, didn’t. “What was?”
The doctor gave her an embarrassed smile, “It’s nothing, really. It’s just for a minute... back there... it looked as though her eyes were – they were – well, black. Obviously my imagination. The sedation will last a couple of hours, but if you wouldn’t mind sticking around I think it would be a good idea for you to be here when she wakes again. A friendly face, having someone to talk to who knows what happened, she needs those things right now.”
Buffy nodded, “Sure, we’ll wait in her room with her.”
The doctor was clearly relieved, and after giving Willows room one more nervous look he excused himself and went off to take care of him arm.
Xander and Buffy went to get a coffee before beginning their stint of waiting out Willow’s sedation. Buffy took the time to ask Xander what he thought the doctor’s interest in Willow’s eyes was all about. “D’you think it’s a werewolf thing? Like her eyes are gonna be black from now on?”
Xander shook his head uneasily. “I think it’s a witch thing Buff. I’ve seen it happen before. When Will’s doing a difficult spell the magic kinda... I dunno... takes over or something. And her eyes go black.”
For some reason Buffy found herself shivering. “Do you think she did that to the doctors arm?”
Xander shrugged, “She may have done, without meaning to. Finding out the guy you loved died after trying to kill you... that’s gotta be one hell of a mind bend. She was bound to react strongly.”
Buffy nodded, thoughtful. “I wish we’d been here when she woke up, so we could have told her about Oz and not have some stupid nurse blurt it out before she was prepared.”
Xander, thinking of how panicked the nurses had looked, and the trace of fear he had seen in the doctors eyes, couldn’t quite agree.
They spent the next two hours waiting quietly in Willow’s room for her to come round. They tried to talk of other things, but it was impossible to concentrate on anything for long. Especially when Willow would occasionally stir.
When her eyes finally opened it was so quick, they were opened so instantly and so widely, that Buffy was taken aback.
“Wills?” Xander whispered the word, leaning forward in his seat so he could take her hand. Willow didn’t acknowledge his voice or his action. Her eyes instead turned until they landed on Buffy. Buffy, though relieved by their green colour, was shocked by the coldness that lay within them. Pain and anger warred within Willow, and it was as of yet uncertain which one she would let win.
When she spoke her voice was hoarse from lack of use but there was no escaping the venom which laced it. “Is Oz dead?”
Buffy nodded, feeling a stab in her gut when she saw the expression which crossed Willow’s face. She mimicked Xander’s action, leaning into Willow and taking her other hand.“Will, I'm so, so sorry. We’ve been so worried about you.”
Willow tugged her hand away from Buffy. “Really? You’ve been worried about me? Why Buffy? Because you killed my boyfriend? Because you killed Oz?”
Buffy shrunk back; stung by the way Willow was looking at her, as though she was a stranger. “No Willow, I - we’ve been worried because Oz almost killed you.”
Willow looked away from Buffy, and stared up at the ceiling. A tear slid down her cheek. “I wish he had.”
Xander squeezed Willow’s hand. “Don’t say stuff like that, please Will. You have no idea how much we’ve worried about you, how much you scared us. I know Oz is... gone, and I know I can’t ever understand how that feels, but – but we’re still here Wills. Me and Buffy, and Giles. Your friends. We’re still here and we love you. And we’re not going to lose you.”
Willow laughed a humourless laugh. “Oh, you love me? Great. Call me peachy with a side of keen then.”
Buffy shook her head, “Willow, we get that you’re hurting, we get that there’s nothing we can do to make that better. But we’re here for you.”
Willow’s eyes swung back to Buffy’s, and Buffy could see the black growing within them. For the first time in her life Buffy was scared of her friend.
“Like you were there for Oz?”
Xander couldn’t help the way his voice rose. “Willow, Oz was a werewolf. He killed people. He almost killed you, and he nearly killed Buffy. You can’t blame her or Spike for what happened!”
Willow seemed to ignore the first part of this speech, other than flinching slightly. “Spike? What's Spike got to do with it?”
Buffy looked at Xander, reluctant to say anything further. Unfortunately Willow worked it out on her own.
“Spike killed him? Spike killed Oz?”
Her eyes were most definitely black now.
Buffy tried once more to clutch at Willow’s hand. “He had to Willow, he had to. Oz was going to kill me. I would have died, and you would have died. And Oz would have gone on to kill other people, innocent people. Spike didn’t have a choice.”
“What about Angel Buffy? “
“Angel?” Buffy was confused by this turn in the conversation.
“Yes Angel. He killed people, plenty of them. He killed people we knew, people we cared about. And you let him get away with it for so long, because you loved him, because you couldn’t bear to let him go.”
Buffy nodded slowly. “You’re right. I let him get away with it. Many innocent people paid the price for my mistake. I live with those lives on my conscience Will, Miss Calendars especially. I’ll have to live with knowing I could have saved them for the rest of my life. Could you live with that many lives on your conscience? Cos I’m telling you now Will, it’s hard. And in the end I was ready, If not for Spike I would have killed him. I would have killed the man I loved.”
Buffy watched with aching relief as the black turned once more to green. Willow suddenly dropped her strong facade of anger and broke down as the pain, and the truth, became too much.
“Oz was innocent. He really was. He didn’t ask for any of this... he didn’t know what he was doing. It was my fault... it’s my fault he’s dead.”
Xander rubbed Willows arms and tried his best to calm her racking sobs. “Will it’s not your fault, how could it be?”
Willow shook him off. “It is my fault. I got... I got chains so that when he transformed he couldn’t get out... couldn’t hurt anyone. But I did it wrong... I did it wrong and he got out and I couldn't get him back, couldn't stop him...and now he’s dead!”
Buffy found herself brought to tears in the face of her friend’s agony. “What happened Will? How did it come to this?”
When she was able Willow began to talk. Her chest was constricted by the crippling pain and sharing the secret she had carried with her felt like the only way of relieving some of the pressure. Her voice was a dull monotone, crackling with an undercurrent of mingled sadness, bitterness and hurt.
“You probably don’t remember, but a couple of months ago Oz went down south to stay with his cousin. While he was there he got bitten. He didn’t realise what it was that attacked him, or how lucky it was he wasn’t more hurt. He just thought it was some sort of giant, mangy dog. But then he got back and he started to feel weird. Different. He was getting headaches and his senses were going haywire. He didn’t tell me about it. Not then anyway. We were all so busy dealing with Angel and Drusilla, and he didn’t think it was important anyway. But then you went to hell to get Spike back, and the full moon came. Oz went missing for three days. At first I thought he’d just gone off for some space, cos the weeks before had been pretty intense, you know? I thought it was weird he didn’t tell me, but I didn’t think anything could be seriously wrong.” Willow stifled a threatening sob and carried on. “Then he came to my house. He was so... so scared. I’ve never seen him like that. He said he’d woken up in a clearing on the outskirts of Sunnydale. He couldn’t remember anything, couldn’t remember where he’d been or what he’d done. But when he'd come round he wasn’t wearing any clothes, and he was covered in blood. It wasn’t... his blood.”
Xander went to interrupt but Buffy silenced him with a look.
“We didn’t know what to do... who to talk to... whether we should talk to anyone at all. But Oz was so scared. He was sure he’d done something wrong... something really wrong. I was going to talk to you, both of you, when Buffy got back. But then, as soon as you were back Giles told us about the werewolf... about the deaths... and I knew what was wrong with Oz. I just knew.”
Buffy took Willow’s hand again and this time she didn’t pull away. “Why didn’t you tell me Will? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Willows face was a horribly gray, and it was pinched so impossibly tightly with pain. “I’m not as strong as you Buffy. I’m not as brave. I’m not the slayer. I’m just a girl. I’m just a girl who loves –“ Willows thin voice cracked, “ – loved a boy. I couldn’t sacrifice him for the greater good, Buffy. I couldn’t. Whatever the cost I needed him safe, I needed him with me. He wasn’t a werewolf to me, he wasn’t a killer. He was Oz. My Oz. And now he’s gone.”
Willow’s eyes were brimming, overflowing. The way her heart was breaking was hideously clear to see. She looked at Xander, at Buffy, and she willed them to understand.
“Everything I did... the lying and the spells... I did it for him. To keep him safe. He was the first person - the only person - who ever made me feel... beautiful. Special. He wanted to come clean, to tell you what had happened and deal with the consequences. I wouldn’t let him. I made him keep it a secret. We were trying to find a way for him to control the – the wolf inside. We would have got there Buffy. We would have. In the end. But it was all for nothing wasn’t it? It was all for nothing. He’s gone. Isn’t he? He’s really gone.”
Willow cried then. She cried so hard she didn’t think she would stop.
Buffy and Xander stayed with her until pure exhaustion and pure pain carried her to sleep.
Over the next couple of days Willows condition stabilised, and Giles felt the time was right to tell her about the bite she had sustained and what it now meant for her.
For Willow the news didn’t come as a complete shock.
She remembered much of Oz’s fevered attack only too clearly; she knew she had been bitten.
She knew too that she must be a monster, because she felt like one.
For Willow the surprise came in the responses of her friends. They wanted to help her. She was on her way to becoming a demon now, as much of a demon as Oz had been, and she could potentially be just as deadly. But they weren’t turning their backs on her. To them she was the same person she had always been, and Willow was so grateful for that.
Giles told Willow of the coven in England as soon as they’d agreed to help, and she clutched at the opportunity with both hands. At the moment she was seeing everything through a blacked haze of painful grief. The thought of staying in Sunnydale, of walking the streets and seeing the places and people who would remind her of the one she’d lost, was a thought she couldn’t stand.
Willow knew now that she was to blame for Oz’s death. It was her fault, and hers alone. She should have had more faith in her friends, more faith in Oz, and less faith in her own powers of making things right. If she’d acted differently maybe none of this would have happened. It killed her to think it, it hurt her heart and darkened her soul, but she knew it to be true.
She needed to be somewhere else, to become someone else, just for a little while. Just until the hurting stopped hurting quite so bad.
The Rosenberg’s were told (by a man Giles hired to play a doctor) that Willow had sustained some very specific injuries and was being spent to a special hospital in England, one which could better serve her needs while she recuperated. It saddened Buffy to see how easily they accepted the ruse, how willing they were to let their daughter go. They loved Willow, that much was clear, but they were very far from being hands on parents. Buffy couldn’t ever imagine Joyce letting her be sent to a foreign country alone, and she was made freshly aware of just how amazing her own mother was.
As soon as Willow’s condition was advanced enough for her to travel she was gone, as the longer she had to spend with the coven before the next full moon the better.
The goodbyes were horrible. Xander in particular hated the thought of having the best friend he’d so nearly lost being so far away and going through so much practically alone. He and Willow clung to each other until the very last moment.
Buffy parted from her with just as much difficulty. Willow seemed suddenly older somehow, the effects of grief had shaken her foundations. She was not an awkward geeky teenager anymore, but a woman struggling to come to terms with a world of darkness. It pained Buffy to see it, but being forced to grow up quickly was something she understood.
Spike too had come to say his goodbyes. At one point he managed to have a moment alone with Willow, though detaching Xander had been a struggle. They looked at each other, long and hard.
Spike spoke, and when he did his voice said far more than his words. “I’m so sorry Red. I really am. Believe me, if there had been another way I would have taken it. I would’ve done anything to spare you this. I’ve been where you are, I know how it feels to lose someone you love so violently.”
Willow nodded. She’d wanted to hate Spike, to be able to lay all the blame of Oz’s death at his door. She wanted to hate him and have the pleasure of some day getting revenge. But she couldn’t. It wasn’t just because hate, like every emotion other than pain, seemed to have been banished from her body, it was because she knew that really it wasn’t Spikes fault. If she had been in his position she couldn’t say she wouldn’t have done the same. If it had been Buffy, about to kill Oz, Willow couldn’t honestly say she wouldn’t have taken Buffy out. That knowledge scared her even as it hardened her a little more inside.
“I know you understand Spike. And...thank you, for trying to help. I got your answer phone message; I should have listened to it. I shouldn’t have taken your memory away. I went about everything so wrong. I don’t blame you for what happened to - to Oz Spike, I blame myself.”
Spike could see the truth of her words. The guilt was eating her up as much as the grief, and it was awful to see. Acting on impulse Spike didn’t say anything aloud, but in his head he said a small incantation.
Within Willows chest a small ball of warmth suddenly blossomed, taking the edge off the cold which had consumed her since the night of Oz’s death. She smiled a small, awestruck smile. She looked at Spike with some of her old colour in her cheeks. The temporary relief from agony was as unexpected as it was wonderful and her words were heartfelt. “Thank you.”
Spike smiled a little in return. “You’re very welcome Red. Look after yourself yeah?”
Willow tried to smile back, and looked over to where her two best friends stood. “I’ll try to. And you... you look after Buffy ok? I’d ask you to look after Xander too, but somehow I don’t think that will happen.”
Spike chuckled. “Me and the whelp might surprise you. I’m not sayin I could ever put up with more than an hour in his company, but we might end up goin for the odd game of pool. Stranger things have happened. And as for Buffy...” Spike found his eyes drawn to the girl in question, and they burned with the intensity of all he felt for her. “I’ll look after her Red, til the end of the world”.
Willow saw the love on Spikes face, love which also radiated from Buffy, with a tainted mixture of sadness and bittersweet pleasure.
It was at that moment Giles interrupted, to say that their plane was ready to board.
Giles had decided to go with Willow to England as soon as her going was confirmed. She was almost as much of a daughter to him as Buffy, and he knew she needed someone from her old life with her to help her adjust to a new one. He wouldn’t be staying that long, he needed to be back in time for the beginning of the school year, but until then he would support Willow in any way he could.
Anna had left for home some days before, but only after both she and Giles had made it fairly clear to everyone that she’d be back. It was still very early days between them, but after Jenny Calendar's death Giles had never expected to meet anyone else who could make him feel... the indescribable way he felt. It was especially surprising to him that the someone in question was a demon, the type of person that he once would have condemned to death without thought.
Anna was a part of his life now, it just remained to be seen how big a part she would become.
As the overhead speakers announced again that the plane would soon be departing, the three original scoobies exchanged a last, lingering hug.
After the past few weeks some things would never be the same. But no matter what happened, some things always would.
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Chapter End Notes:
Some of you are probably thinking, 'didnt this girl say that this fic only had three chapters left to go, thousands of chapters ago?' some of you are probably asking 'why does she so consistently lie to us?'. Originally it was only three chapters, but they were massive ones so i broke them down. the next chapter really is the last one though! I'm just having a last edit and then it will be up. thanks masses to everyone whose read and reviewed!