(no subject)
Title: D.I.Y.
Author: learnedhand_dj
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: Whatever the fanfic equivalent of PG-13 is now.
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer is owned by various corporate entities, and it is only their decision to ignore this type of thing that allows me to continue. They could shut me down in 1 minute flat if they so chose.
Summary: A lesson is learned, then lost.
Pairing: None shown, but W/O, W/X, and C/X are referred to.
Author’s Notes: This is my entry for jadedcynic's I Will Remember You fic-a-thon. My assignment was to come through for southernbangel. I hope I’ve done okay. (Her specific requests are at the end of the story.) And yes, I know this fic was due on Sunday. It's still Sunday somewhere, right?
According to the IWRY transcript that I read, that episode starts the day after Pangs, and I think it’s safe to assume that Pangs takes place on Thanksgiving Day. So, the redone 24 hours goes from 9 a.m. on Friday to 9 a.m. on Saturday.
For anyone who doesn’t know, D.I.Y. stands for Do It Yourself. Oh, and this story hasn’t been beta’d or anything, so please forgive any errors.
*******************************
Willow sat on Oz’s bed, with her back to the door, and folded his t-shirts. She’d been using them again, and wanted them neat in case he came back before the next time she needed them.
Not that she’d been wearing them. No. She would look at them, hold them, sniff them, sometimes even dance with them. But she would never wear them. The t-shirts only belonged on one person, and she was going to make darn sure no one else wore them until he was back to wear them himself.
Willow was folding the last one when she heard a knock on the door. As she spun around, part of her mind realized it must have been a knock on the door jamb, because the door was open.
Most of her mind, however, was focused on who was standing there.
Oz.
She took a moment to soak him in. He looked thinner, if that was possible, with a bit of a tan. His hair had grown out enough to fall over, and it was what she presumed to be his natural brown. He was smiling, and staring at her, with more obvious emotion than she could remember seeing from him before.
Oz cleared his throat, and without taking his eyes off her, asked, “May I come in?”
Willow wanted to burst into tears, she was so happy. She wanted to leap across the bed and throw herself at him. She wanted to scream in excitement. A part of her wanted to yell at him for leaving, but she tamped that part down. Despite all her wants, what she really did not want to do was scare him away again. So she decided on a casual, friendly approach.
“Sure. It’s your room, after all.”
“True,” was the only reply Oz got out, because as soon as he crossed the threshold into his room, he found himself wrapped up in a fierce Willow-hug.
Mmm, he feels strong, Willow thought to herself. She’d justified the hug as being something friends do after not seeing each other for a while, but she realized she’d have to let go if she wanted to rely on that reasoning. It was one of the hardest things she’d done in a while, but she managed to let him go. She took his hand, and led him over to the bed, where they both sat, facing each other.
“So,” Willow began, suddenly nervous. What if he doesn’t want to see me, she thought. What if he met someone else? What if he’s just back to get his stuff? What if...
“So,” Oz answered, with understanding in his eyes. “I’m back.”
“Back? You mean ‘back’ back? Or ‘picking up your stuff’ back?” Willow tried to keep her tone friendly, but ended up sounding both needy and hopeful.
“If you count as ‘my stuff,’ then yes, I’m back to pick up my stuff,” Oz answered.
In her excited state, it took Willow a moment or two to work out what Oz had said. Once she did, she wasn’t sure whether she should be happy or mad. She went with both. “You want me to go with you? As in, leave? What about school? Y’know, taking classes, getting a degree, getting into the right graduate program? I am kind of working on my own stuff here. Please, don’t get me wrong, I want to be with you, but why can’t you stay here?”
“Because,” Oz said, with a patient tone that Willow had always found charming before, but it now felt a little condescending. “I still have things to work out. I want us to work them out together.”
Even after taking a moment to puzzle that through, Willow was still confused. “I thought the reason why you had to go was because you needed to be away from people to work things out. If I’m with you, that means you’re okay with people, so why do we have to be away from everybody else?”
Oz’s smile seemed to grow wider, impossibly wide. “Because,” he growled, as he suddenly sprang forward and pinned Willow to the bed. His jaws started to elongate, and hair started to grow all over his face. The hands holding Willow’s shoulders to the bed changed to claws, with nails that bit painfully through her shirt.
Willow was in shock. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. Oz’s head came down to Willow’s ear, and he ground out a few more words before his change was complete.
“Because you’ll be just like me.”
As Oz bit into Willow’s shoulder, she finally started to scream.
*******************************
Willow sat up suddenly, disoriented. As soon as she realized she was screaming, she stopped. It took her a few minutes, but she figured out where she was.
Dorm room. Alone. Day after Thanksgiving. Day 17 without Oz. Creepy Oz-related nightmare number 7 just completed. This was the first one that made her wake up screaming, though. Just as well Buffy’s not here, she thought.
Willow sighed for what she guessed was probably the millionth time this month, give or take a few hundred thousand, and she thought back to why Buffy wasn’t there.
Buffy had not taken Xander’s revelation well last night. Not that Willow blamed her; after all, if she found out that Oz came back and...
Willow mercilessly clamped down on that line of thought. When Oz comes back, he will have worked his issues out, and the first thing he will do is come and see her. No other possibilities need to be entertained. At least not while awake, said that part of her that was mad at Oz. Again, she tamped that part down.
Actually, Willow thought that Buffy’s reaction had been surprisingly level-headed, all things considered. After pumping everyone at the table for as much detail about Angel’s recent activities as possible, she calmly announced that she would be going to visit her father in Los Angeles that very night. She pointed out that because she had cooked, it was up to the others to clean up, freeing her to go and pack. And because Giles had provided the location, the flatware, the cookware, and frankly, most of the food, he was excused from cleanup as well, which meant he could drive her over to the dorm to pack, and then drive her to the bus station.
Anya objected, of course, spouting off about anti-capitalist tyranny and forced labor without compensation, or some other such thing. Xander obviously felt guilty about spilling the beans, so he hushed Anya and told Buffy that everything would be taken care of.
Once Anya stopped complaining about having to clean up and started discussing the role-playing possibilities (something about the uptight head butler and the young maid; Willow tried hard to not listen), Willow announced that if it was all the same with everyone else, she’d tag along back to the dorm with Buffy and Giles. Xander gave her his best puppy-dog eyes and asked about helping clean up, but he dropped it almost immediately when he saw the look in her eyes. Ahh, Xander, Willow thought to herself. How could so much astute observation be mixed in with so much cluelessness? He can tell almost immediately when I’m in pain, but usually has absolutely no idea what caused the pain. And I’ve got the mental scars from my Xander-crush to prove that, she thought with a snort.
But this time, Xander knew exactly what caused her pain. Heck, everyone knew what caused her pain. So after one more hushing of Anya, and the transfer of Spike from his chair to being chained in Giles’ tub, Willow, Buffy and Giles all headed to Stevenson Hall. Not long after that, Buffy and Giles left for the bus station, leaving Willow there alone to wallow in her pain.
Well, Willow admitted to herself, it’s not that they left me here to wallow in my pain on purpose, it’s just that they had somewhere else to go. Still, it would have been nice to have some distraction...
The phone rang, startling Willow out of her reverie. She picked up the handset, and managed a gruff, “Hello?”
“Hey Wills, I didn’t wake ya, did I?” Xander asked. “I know you college kids sleep late and all, but it’s past 10, so I thought it’d be okay.”
Willow looked over at the clock, and was surprised to see that it was 10:07. Boy, wallowing takes a lot out of a girl.
“No, you didn’t wake me, Xander. I’m up. Why the call?”
“Well,” Xander began, changing to a sheepish tone, “you remember all that cleaning up that was supposed to happen last night? Well, um, Spike got a little antsy, and that took some time, and then Anya got a little distracting...um, I mean, distracted...and then the tryptophan kicked in, and so...”
Usually, Willow would finish Xander’s sentence in this kind of conversation, but she wasn’t exactly in a usual Willow-y mood. If Xander wanted her help, she wanted him to say it himself.
After a few awkward moments of silence, Xander finally continued. “Um, Willow?”
“Yes, Xander?”
“Are you okay?”
“No, Xander, I’m not okay.” Willow tried to stop there, but her anger at being asked such a stupid question overwhelmed her. “My boyfriend left me 17 days ago, I don’t know when he’s coming back, my friends don’t seem to understand that I’m in real pain here, and I keep dreaming about him coming back and hurting me more, and last night I dreamed he bit me, and I just want it all to stop! It hurts so much, and I just want it to stop!”
Willow was in tears and yelling by the time she was done. She hadn’t wanted to say all of that, and she certainly hadn’t wanted to start crying again, but Xander’s ridiculous question had ticked her off. How could he even think she might be okay? And here she was, thinking how observant he was earlier. If even Xander thought she might be okay, then it was true. No one had any idea what she was going through.
Xander said something that Willow didn’t catch, and then she heard a click. She kept the handset to her ear as she tried to get her crying under control, but it wasn’t until she heard, “If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and try again. If you need help...” that she realized Xander had hung up.
She quickly hung up the phone before the annoying “you left the phone of the hook, idiot” beeps kicked in, and tried to remember what Xander said before the click. After racking her brain for a few minutes, Willow decided it couldn’t have been that important, or she would remember it, and she tossed herself back onto her bed to commence with the day’s moping and wallowing.
She was still on the bed a few minutes later when someone knocked on the door. She was tempted to tell whoever it was to go away, but it might be something important (like Oz, a small part of her whispered). And after her experience with Spike, she certainly wasn’t just going to tell whoever it was to come in, daylight or no daylight. So, despite her total lack of desire to do so, Willow dragged herself out of bed and cracked the door open to see who it was.
“Hey, there,” an obviously out-of-breath Xander said, looking up at her from his position, bent over at the waist with his hands on his knees. “I figured we had to get those stolen bicycles back to campus anyway, so I rode one of them over. Whew! I don’t remember being this tired after riding them last night!”
Willow quickly opened her door the rest of the way, and pulled Xander in.
“What are you doing?” she hissed as she closed the door behind them. “Talking about riding stolen bicycles in the hallway all loud and spectacle-y, with the dramatic breathing and all. Are you trying to get me in trouble?”
Xander looked defensive when faced with Willow’s irritation, but hearing her reason for it made him visibly relax.
“Um, Will, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but everyone else on your hallway’s gone, except for those two Chinese students at the end of the hall that don’t speak English anyway, or not so I’ve noticed. Not that I’ve been noticing them, or checking them out, or thinking that the shorter one is kind of cute, or anything like that. Nope. Not me. Merely makin’ an observation, that’s all.”
Xander looked disappointed that his humor got nothing more than a faint smile.
“Okay, I guess,” Willow grudgingly said. “Just be careful, huh? With these random commando guys running around, the walls might have ears.”
“Y’know, Willow, in most places, I’d figure you meant the place might be bugged. But here on Chez Hellmouth, I’m compelled to ask: you don’t mean actual ears, right?”
Xander looked pleased to get at least a snort out of Willow this time.
“Of course I don’t mean that, Xan. If the walls had actual ears, you’d notice them.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Xander replied. “You’d be surprised at the things I miss.”
“Not so much,” Willow muttered as she turned and headed back towards her bed, any lift in her mood gone.
When Willow sat down on the edge of her bed, she turned back and saw Xander still standing just inside her doorway, looking at her inquisitively, as if trying to figure out a puzzle. She didn’t like that look. She was not a puzzle to be figured out. What kind of friends wouldn’t just know what she was going through?
Her irritation shone through as she snapped, “Well? What do you want, Xander? Why are you here?”
Willow’s words seemed to startle Xander out of his thoughts, and he walked over and perched in front of Willow on the side of Buffy’s bed as he responded, “What I want could take all day, so let’s not get into that. Why I’m here? You know why I’m here, Will.”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t ask, Xander,” Willow said, unable to keep the snippiness out of her voice.
Xander took a deep breath, and looked like he was steeling himself for something unpleasant.
“Willow, you said you just wanted it to stop. I couldn’t let you sit here alone with thoughts like that running through your head.”
Willow looked Xander in the eyes, to see if he really thought she was that stupid. Apparently, he did.
“Xander,” Willow ground out through clenched teeth, “I would never, ever do something that stupid. Then I wouldn’t be here when Oz comes back. And he will come back. I know he will.”
Xander’s body lost most of its tension during Willow’s answer, and he seemed not the least bit concerned with Willow’s obvious anger at his line of thought. “I’m so glad to hear that, Will. I know you’ve been taking this kind of hard, and we haven’t had a chance to talk about it, so I didn’t know if you still thought he was coming back or not. I mean, if you thought he wasn’t coming back, then...”
“But he is coming back,” Willow interrupted. “So there’s no reason to talk about him not. Yes, it hurts. It hurts like hell. But I will be here for him when he comes back. I’m not going anywhere.”
Willow seemed to almost deflate, her strident tone gone in a flash. “But it hurts so much, and I do want the pain to stop. I feel like someone carved out my insides with a melon ball scoop.”
Xander winced. “Ow. Nice imagery. But I know what you’re going through, we’ve all been through it...”
Angry Willow was back, just as quickly as she’d left. “What do you mean, ‘we’ve all been through it?’ Since when did you become the relationship expert? What love of your life left you for no reason, even though she said she still loved you? You have no idea what I’m going through.”
Willow could see that Xander was getting angry, but she didn’t care. He needed to realize he had no idea what he was talking about.
Xander took what Willow assumed was meant to be a calming breath, and said, “I didn’t say I’d had the same thing done to me as you. I said I knew what you were going through. The pain. I know all about the pain.”
“You know nothing of my pain!” Willow shouted, truly incensed. “You have no idea how much this hurts! You can’t know! You haven’t been with someone as long as I’ve been with Oz. Anytime anyone’s left you, it’s been your fault. You’ve never felt anything like this before, so don’t tell me you ‘know all about the pain!’”
Xander was shaking, literally shaking with anger by the time Willow finished. But he didn’t shout back. His voice was low and measured, which Willow knew meant that he was well and truly furious.
“I’m going to give you a pass on some of that, Will. But not all of it. You obviously need more than a shoulder to cry on right now. You need someone to tell you the truth. Now that I know you’re not going to hurt yourself, I’m going to give you that truth. And don’t say another word until I’m done.”
“First, about me, and my pain? You know better than to question me about pain. If you’d just stop thinking about yourself for one damn minute, you might remember that I’ve been dealing with more pain since I was kid than you can even imagine. I’ve been hurt, really hurt, by everybody I’ve ever cared for at least once, and I can tell you that it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference what the source of pain is, it hurts just the same.”
“Second, about anyone dumping me being my fault? That’s a little self-serving, don’t you think? There were two of us tangoing at the time, as I remember. But I didn’t blame you, and you didn’t blame you, so somehow that makes it my fault? I don’t think so. We both made a stupid, colossal mistake. Both of us. The difference was, you got to keep your boyfriend, and your best friend, and you knew somewhere in the back of your mind that I’d still be there if you needed me. I lost my girlfriend, and my best friend, and I knew that you wouldn’t be there if I needed you.”
Xander took a deep breath and continued. “Sure, you’ve got pain. But you’ve got a best friend who sleeps in this very bed who had her boyfriend take off on her for her own good, just like yours did. You can talk to her about what you’re feeling, and know that she felt the same thing. You can look at her, and know you’ll be okay eventually. That doesn’t take the pain away, only time does that, but it makes it easier to bear. But me? I had no one. I lost my girlfriend, and my best friend, and I had no one to turn to. No one to look to and see that it would be okay, someday. I had work through all that by myself. So I did.”
Willow found she had nothing to say as Xander stood up and headed for the door. He turned, and his angry gaze bore into her as he continued, “So stop pretending you’ve got the world’s biggest heartache, and that no one can possibly understand your pain. We all know how hurt you are. We’ve all been hurt. And we all got through it. So will you. It takes time. Friends can help a little. Distractions are good. But you’ve got to get over the idea that no one understands. You keep that up, and all you’re going to do is push everyone else away, which’ll just make everything that much worse.”
Xander’s eyes and tone finally softened a little, and he shook his head slightly as he reached for the door handle, “I love you, Wills, I really do, but you’ve got to stop thinking you’re the best at everything. Sure, you’re a super brain, but odds are there is someone out there smarter than you. Sure, you’re getting to be pretty good with the spells and such, but there are stronger witches out there than you. And sure, you’re in pain right now, but there is someone out there in more pain than you. Once you’re satisfied with being the best Willow you can be, instead of the best of everybody, I think you’ll be a lot happier. I’m gonna go now. We’ll be at Giles’, cleaning up. Come over when you’re ready.”
And with that, Xander opened the door and left, leaving behind a shell-shocked Willow with a lot to think about.
******************************
By mid-afternoon, Willow had processed most of what Xander had said. She grudgingly admitted that she was not the all-knowing Queen of Pain. She could not know how much pain other people had been in, so she couldn’t know if her pain was more or less than theirs. Once she accepted that, everyone’s behavior around her made much more sense. If she couldn’t know how much pain they had been in, how could she expect them to know how much pain she was in? They were trying to help, probably based on their own experiences with their own pain.
She felt a lot better about her friends, and didn’t think she’d be likely to lash out at them again any time soon, but that still hadn’t helped the source of the problem: her pain. She really, really, really wanted the pain to stop.
One thing Xander had said kept going through her mind. “There are stronger witches out there than you,” he’d said. She’d been thinking for a little while about trying a spell herself to get rid of the pain and get Oz to come back, but Xander was right. She had to stop thinking of herself as being the best person anywhere at anything. If she wanted this done right, she needed to go and find herself a stronger witch.
The problem was, where? The people she’d met through the magic shop were nice enough, but little more than dabblers. She was planning on trying out the campus Wicca group, but doubted they were much more advanced than she was. That left only one alternative, one she dreaded using. She’d have to be careful with her wording, but hopefully she could find out what she needed to know without tipping him off.
With a sigh, Willow realized she had no choice. She decided to wait until the next morning, because she really didn’t want to run into Xander just yet if they were still cleaning up. Still, she would do it. She would go see Giles.
*******************************
Willow was relieved to hear nothing but soft music as she approached Giles’ door at 8:15 on Saturday morning. That meant there was probably no one else there, as Giles tended to turn his stereo off whenever anyone else was over. She knocked lightly, and smiled to herself as she heard Giles stumble over to the stereo and turn it off before coming to the door.
“Good morning, Giles!” Willow said with forced cheer as soon as the door was opened. She held up the bag in her left hand as she crossed the threshold and entered the apartment. “I bring doughnuts!”
“Um, yes, well, good morning, Willow. Nice to see you up and about so early,” Giles responded as he shut the door and headed over to the table behind his couch where Willow had put down the doughnut bag. “Despite having a refrigerator full of leftovers, doughnuts sound much better than a turkey sandwich for breakfast. Any jellies?”
“Giles, would I come to see you without jellies? Please,” Willow said in a teasing tone, as she reached into the bag and pulled out the chocolate croissant she had chosen for herself before heading toward the couch.
Giles headed into the kitchen to get napkins, and called out, “Although that does beg the question of why you would come to see me at all.”
As he returned with napkins, Giles quickly continued, “Not that I’m not very pleased to see you, and not that you are not welcome here at almost any time. But you must admit that you usually don’t come to see me for a purely social visit.”
“I should do that more,” Willow responded after swallowing a mouthful of chocolate croissant. “We should all do that more. We’re all in college now, which removes a lot of the ick factor about hanging around with the school librarian outside of school, and you’re not the school librarian anymore anyway, so there’s really no reason not to. See you socially, I mean.”
“Thank you, Willow, I think would be a very nice thing,” Giles said with a smile as he took a seat. “But that’s not why you stopped by today, is it?”
Willow shook her head, and mentally berated herself for losing control of the conversation. It was hard enough for her to be tricky with Giles in the first place, at least about something important. When he was the one directing the discussion, it was just about impossible.
Giles looked at her with some curiosity, and asked, “Is it the dreams?”
Willow was thrown. How did Giles know about her nightmares? She hadn’t told anybody about the nightmares, other than Xander, and that wasn't the kind of thing he would tell other people after he'd found out she was okay. After a brief moment, she realized this was her opportunity to regain control of the conversation. “How do you know about the dreams, Giles?”
“Oh, terribly sorry. I presumed Xander would have mentioned that. Before hurrying out of here yesterday morning, Xander told me that he needed to see you, because you’d been dreaming about Oz hurting you, and that night you had dreamed about Oz biting you. I told him on his way out the door that I would be available to help you if need be, and I presumed that was why you were here. Did Xander tell you none of this?”
Willow winced a little as she thought about her conversation with Xander. “Actually, Giles, we jumped straight to yelling at each other pretty quickly. We never did talk about the dreams, or him telling you about what I said, or anything like that.”
“Yelling at each other?” Giles asked incredulously. “That hardly seems like the type of thing Xander was planning on when he left, and quite honestly, I expected better of him.”
“Oh, no, Giles, that’s not his fault. The yelling, I mean. It was totally my fault. And I was the one doing most of the yelling, really. Xander checked to see if I was going to hurt myself or anything first, but then I said some, well, mean things, and Xander decided I needed some truth.”
Giles narrowed his eyes, and asked, “What do you mean, you needed some truth?”
Willow gathered her thoughts for a minute, trying to work out the best way to get this conversation where she wanted it to go. She decided full disclosure of what Xander said, with a half-truth about her reaction, would be the way to go.
“Well, first of all, he pointed out that just because my pain is mine, it doesn’t mean that it’s a bigger, badder pain than anyone else’s. He told me that only time can help the pain go away, but that friends and distractions can reduce the time it takes. He also told me I had to admit to myself that I’m not the best at everything. I think he thought that I was thinking that my pain was the biggest one ever as part of my being the best at everything world-view.”
Giles seemed to take a moment to puzzle through what Willow had just said, and then he looked at her with a penetrating gaze and asked, “And do you believe him?”
Willow sighed, hoping she wasn’t going over the top. “Yes, I do, Giles. And actually, that’s why I’ve come by, though we can talk about the dreams later, if you want. As part of my acceptance that I’m not the best at everything, I want you to help me find a teacher.”
Now Giles looked confused. “You want me to help find you a teacher? Are you not at an institute of higher learning, which, the last I heard, tended to be full of teachers?”
Willow allowed herself a small chuckle. She’d forgotten how much work keeping up appearances could be, and hoped she didn’t sound too eager. “I don’t think I can find the kind of teacher I’m looking for there, Giles. I want a witch teacher. A spell coach. A Wicca guide. Whatever they’re called, I want one of those.”
Giles nodded at her, which Willow took as a sign to continue. “I mean, I’ve been doing fine on my own, learning spells from books, but I can’t help but feel I’m missing something. After all, they don’t just hand out books at the beginning of a semester and tell the students to read them and report back for the final. Or, if they do, I’ve never heard of it, and I’m pretty sure that would be a very popular course. Anyway, if I need an instructor for my schoolwork, why wouldn’t I need an instructor for my witch work?”
At this point, Willow noticed that Giles was almost beaming at her, which was not the reaction she’d been expecting. “Willow, I am very, very pleased to hear you come to this conclusion. I’d thought you might be looking for something like this at some point, so I took the liberty of contacting a coven I know in Devon, and they suggested the names of several possible instructors for you within an hour’s drive.”
“Really?” Willow asked, getting excited herself. “That’s great! I was worried you’d need to call around or something.”
Willow paused as she thought about the ramifications of what Giles had said. “But if you’ve had these names for a while, why didn’t you give them to me right away?”
“I wanted to,” Giles answered, “but my contact at the coven told me very specifically that I could not provide you with the names until you asked for them. It seems that one of the basic tenets of the Wicca tradition is that someone must want to be taught, and must actively seek their teacher out. If I were to take a guess as to why, I would think that needing to be told to go to training instead of asking to go might indicate a lack of purity of intent...”
As Giles rambled on, Willow thought furiously about what this meant. She would be given a list of names, all presumably witches more powerful than she was. These were going to be full-blown Wicca instructors, which would mean they might not be willing to teach her the spell she needed for the right price. That shot down Willow’s first plan.
Still, it’s not a total loss, Willow thought. I’ll just check out everyone on the list, and select the one that I think I can most easily work around. Then, I’ll either get her to teach me the spell that I need, or I’ll go through her library and find it myself.
Willow was startled out of her internal strategy session when Giles thrust a piece of paper at her, looking at her expectantly. Realizing it must be the list of instructors, Willow took it with a smile, and soon excused herself and headed back to Stevenson Hall.
Willow glanced at the campus clock as she walked, and noticed that it was almost 9. If I borrow my mother’s car, Willow thought as she climbed her dorm's steps, I should be able to meet most of the people on the list by the end of the day. If I see the ones I don’t get to today on Sunday, I’ll be able to pick someone right then and get this started.
Soon, Willow thought as she reached for the front door handle. Soon, I will have Oz back, and everything will be right again.
The campus clock struck the first chime of 9, Willow’s hand touched the door handle, and everything changed.
*******************************
Willow sat up suddenly, disoriented. As soon as she realized she was screaming, she stopped. It took her a few minutes, but she figured out where she was.
Dorm room. Alone. Day after Thanksgiving. Day 17 without Oz. Creepy Oz-related nightmare number 7 just completed. This was the first one that made her wake up screaming, though. Just as well Buffy’s not here, she thought.
Willow sighed for what she guessed was probably the millionth time this month, give or take a few hundred thousand, but before she could get started thinking about why Buffy wasn’t there, the phone rang. Willow picked up the handset, and managed a gruff, “Hello?”
“Oh, hi, Buffy. How’s L.A?...Already?...Yeah, I guess I could meet you there. When does the bus get in?...11:30?...Okay, I’ll see you then....Don’t worry, it’s no problem. Bye.”
Willow glanced at her clock, and was surprised to see that it was already 9:55. Even though Willow wanted nothing more than to stay in bed and mope, she didn’t have the energy to explain to Buffy why she wouldn’t be able to meet her at the bus station. Besides, she sincerely doubted that Buffy would have accepted moping as a legitimate excuse.
Resigned to her fate, Willow dragged herself to her closet, grabbed her towel and toiletries, and headed to the shower.
Twelve minutes later, the phone rang in Buffy and Willow’s room.
No one was there to answer it.
Again, this fic was for southernbangel. Her requests were as follows:
Character/pairing you want focused on: Willow
Kind of moment you want lost (self-revelation, ‘shipper, etc.): self-revelation, something to do with Oz and her misery over him leaving
Up to three other characters you want in the story: Xander, Giles
Up to four prompts to include: a dream, a best friend talk with Xander, chocolate
Author: learnedhand_dj
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: Whatever the fanfic equivalent of PG-13 is now.
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer is owned by various corporate entities, and it is only their decision to ignore this type of thing that allows me to continue. They could shut me down in 1 minute flat if they so chose.
Summary: A lesson is learned, then lost.
Pairing: None shown, but W/O, W/X, and C/X are referred to.
Author’s Notes: This is my entry for jadedcynic's I Will Remember You fic-a-thon. My assignment was to come through for southernbangel. I hope I’ve done okay. (Her specific requests are at the end of the story.) And yes, I know this fic was due on Sunday. It's still Sunday somewhere, right?
According to the IWRY transcript that I read, that episode starts the day after Pangs, and I think it’s safe to assume that Pangs takes place on Thanksgiving Day. So, the redone 24 hours goes from 9 a.m. on Friday to 9 a.m. on Saturday.
For anyone who doesn’t know, D.I.Y. stands for Do It Yourself. Oh, and this story hasn’t been beta’d or anything, so please forgive any errors.
*******************************
Willow sat on Oz’s bed, with her back to the door, and folded his t-shirts. She’d been using them again, and wanted them neat in case he came back before the next time she needed them.
Not that she’d been wearing them. No. She would look at them, hold them, sniff them, sometimes even dance with them. But she would never wear them. The t-shirts only belonged on one person, and she was going to make darn sure no one else wore them until he was back to wear them himself.
Willow was folding the last one when she heard a knock on the door. As she spun around, part of her mind realized it must have been a knock on the door jamb, because the door was open.
Most of her mind, however, was focused on who was standing there.
Oz.
She took a moment to soak him in. He looked thinner, if that was possible, with a bit of a tan. His hair had grown out enough to fall over, and it was what she presumed to be his natural brown. He was smiling, and staring at her, with more obvious emotion than she could remember seeing from him before.
Oz cleared his throat, and without taking his eyes off her, asked, “May I come in?”
Willow wanted to burst into tears, she was so happy. She wanted to leap across the bed and throw herself at him. She wanted to scream in excitement. A part of her wanted to yell at him for leaving, but she tamped that part down. Despite all her wants, what she really did not want to do was scare him away again. So she decided on a casual, friendly approach.
“Sure. It’s your room, after all.”
“True,” was the only reply Oz got out, because as soon as he crossed the threshold into his room, he found himself wrapped up in a fierce Willow-hug.
Mmm, he feels strong, Willow thought to herself. She’d justified the hug as being something friends do after not seeing each other for a while, but she realized she’d have to let go if she wanted to rely on that reasoning. It was one of the hardest things she’d done in a while, but she managed to let him go. She took his hand, and led him over to the bed, where they both sat, facing each other.
“So,” Willow began, suddenly nervous. What if he doesn’t want to see me, she thought. What if he met someone else? What if he’s just back to get his stuff? What if...
“So,” Oz answered, with understanding in his eyes. “I’m back.”
“Back? You mean ‘back’ back? Or ‘picking up your stuff’ back?” Willow tried to keep her tone friendly, but ended up sounding both needy and hopeful.
“If you count as ‘my stuff,’ then yes, I’m back to pick up my stuff,” Oz answered.
In her excited state, it took Willow a moment or two to work out what Oz had said. Once she did, she wasn’t sure whether she should be happy or mad. She went with both. “You want me to go with you? As in, leave? What about school? Y’know, taking classes, getting a degree, getting into the right graduate program? I am kind of working on my own stuff here. Please, don’t get me wrong, I want to be with you, but why can’t you stay here?”
“Because,” Oz said, with a patient tone that Willow had always found charming before, but it now felt a little condescending. “I still have things to work out. I want us to work them out together.”
Even after taking a moment to puzzle that through, Willow was still confused. “I thought the reason why you had to go was because you needed to be away from people to work things out. If I’m with you, that means you’re okay with people, so why do we have to be away from everybody else?”
Oz’s smile seemed to grow wider, impossibly wide. “Because,” he growled, as he suddenly sprang forward and pinned Willow to the bed. His jaws started to elongate, and hair started to grow all over his face. The hands holding Willow’s shoulders to the bed changed to claws, with nails that bit painfully through her shirt.
Willow was in shock. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. Oz’s head came down to Willow’s ear, and he ground out a few more words before his change was complete.
“Because you’ll be just like me.”
As Oz bit into Willow’s shoulder, she finally started to scream.
*******************************
Willow sat up suddenly, disoriented. As soon as she realized she was screaming, she stopped. It took her a few minutes, but she figured out where she was.
Dorm room. Alone. Day after Thanksgiving. Day 17 without Oz. Creepy Oz-related nightmare number 7 just completed. This was the first one that made her wake up screaming, though. Just as well Buffy’s not here, she thought.
Willow sighed for what she guessed was probably the millionth time this month, give or take a few hundred thousand, and she thought back to why Buffy wasn’t there.
Buffy had not taken Xander’s revelation well last night. Not that Willow blamed her; after all, if she found out that Oz came back and...
Willow mercilessly clamped down on that line of thought. When Oz comes back, he will have worked his issues out, and the first thing he will do is come and see her. No other possibilities need to be entertained. At least not while awake, said that part of her that was mad at Oz. Again, she tamped that part down.
Actually, Willow thought that Buffy’s reaction had been surprisingly level-headed, all things considered. After pumping everyone at the table for as much detail about Angel’s recent activities as possible, she calmly announced that she would be going to visit her father in Los Angeles that very night. She pointed out that because she had cooked, it was up to the others to clean up, freeing her to go and pack. And because Giles had provided the location, the flatware, the cookware, and frankly, most of the food, he was excused from cleanup as well, which meant he could drive her over to the dorm to pack, and then drive her to the bus station.
Anya objected, of course, spouting off about anti-capitalist tyranny and forced labor without compensation, or some other such thing. Xander obviously felt guilty about spilling the beans, so he hushed Anya and told Buffy that everything would be taken care of.
Once Anya stopped complaining about having to clean up and started discussing the role-playing possibilities (something about the uptight head butler and the young maid; Willow tried hard to not listen), Willow announced that if it was all the same with everyone else, she’d tag along back to the dorm with Buffy and Giles. Xander gave her his best puppy-dog eyes and asked about helping clean up, but he dropped it almost immediately when he saw the look in her eyes. Ahh, Xander, Willow thought to herself. How could so much astute observation be mixed in with so much cluelessness? He can tell almost immediately when I’m in pain, but usually has absolutely no idea what caused the pain. And I’ve got the mental scars from my Xander-crush to prove that, she thought with a snort.
But this time, Xander knew exactly what caused her pain. Heck, everyone knew what caused her pain. So after one more hushing of Anya, and the transfer of Spike from his chair to being chained in Giles’ tub, Willow, Buffy and Giles all headed to Stevenson Hall. Not long after that, Buffy and Giles left for the bus station, leaving Willow there alone to wallow in her pain.
Well, Willow admitted to herself, it’s not that they left me here to wallow in my pain on purpose, it’s just that they had somewhere else to go. Still, it would have been nice to have some distraction...
The phone rang, startling Willow out of her reverie. She picked up the handset, and managed a gruff, “Hello?”
“Hey Wills, I didn’t wake ya, did I?” Xander asked. “I know you college kids sleep late and all, but it’s past 10, so I thought it’d be okay.”
Willow looked over at the clock, and was surprised to see that it was 10:07. Boy, wallowing takes a lot out of a girl.
“No, you didn’t wake me, Xander. I’m up. Why the call?”
“Well,” Xander began, changing to a sheepish tone, “you remember all that cleaning up that was supposed to happen last night? Well, um, Spike got a little antsy, and that took some time, and then Anya got a little distracting...um, I mean, distracted...and then the tryptophan kicked in, and so...”
Usually, Willow would finish Xander’s sentence in this kind of conversation, but she wasn’t exactly in a usual Willow-y mood. If Xander wanted her help, she wanted him to say it himself.
After a few awkward moments of silence, Xander finally continued. “Um, Willow?”
“Yes, Xander?”
“Are you okay?”
“No, Xander, I’m not okay.” Willow tried to stop there, but her anger at being asked such a stupid question overwhelmed her. “My boyfriend left me 17 days ago, I don’t know when he’s coming back, my friends don’t seem to understand that I’m in real pain here, and I keep dreaming about him coming back and hurting me more, and last night I dreamed he bit me, and I just want it all to stop! It hurts so much, and I just want it to stop!”
Willow was in tears and yelling by the time she was done. She hadn’t wanted to say all of that, and she certainly hadn’t wanted to start crying again, but Xander’s ridiculous question had ticked her off. How could he even think she might be okay? And here she was, thinking how observant he was earlier. If even Xander thought she might be okay, then it was true. No one had any idea what she was going through.
Xander said something that Willow didn’t catch, and then she heard a click. She kept the handset to her ear as she tried to get her crying under control, but it wasn’t until she heard, “If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and try again. If you need help...” that she realized Xander had hung up.
She quickly hung up the phone before the annoying “you left the phone of the hook, idiot” beeps kicked in, and tried to remember what Xander said before the click. After racking her brain for a few minutes, Willow decided it couldn’t have been that important, or she would remember it, and she tossed herself back onto her bed to commence with the day’s moping and wallowing.
She was still on the bed a few minutes later when someone knocked on the door. She was tempted to tell whoever it was to go away, but it might be something important (like Oz, a small part of her whispered). And after her experience with Spike, she certainly wasn’t just going to tell whoever it was to come in, daylight or no daylight. So, despite her total lack of desire to do so, Willow dragged herself out of bed and cracked the door open to see who it was.
“Hey, there,” an obviously out-of-breath Xander said, looking up at her from his position, bent over at the waist with his hands on his knees. “I figured we had to get those stolen bicycles back to campus anyway, so I rode one of them over. Whew! I don’t remember being this tired after riding them last night!”
Willow quickly opened her door the rest of the way, and pulled Xander in.
“What are you doing?” she hissed as she closed the door behind them. “Talking about riding stolen bicycles in the hallway all loud and spectacle-y, with the dramatic breathing and all. Are you trying to get me in trouble?”
Xander looked defensive when faced with Willow’s irritation, but hearing her reason for it made him visibly relax.
“Um, Will, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but everyone else on your hallway’s gone, except for those two Chinese students at the end of the hall that don’t speak English anyway, or not so I’ve noticed. Not that I’ve been noticing them, or checking them out, or thinking that the shorter one is kind of cute, or anything like that. Nope. Not me. Merely makin’ an observation, that’s all.”
Xander looked disappointed that his humor got nothing more than a faint smile.
“Okay, I guess,” Willow grudgingly said. “Just be careful, huh? With these random commando guys running around, the walls might have ears.”
“Y’know, Willow, in most places, I’d figure you meant the place might be bugged. But here on Chez Hellmouth, I’m compelled to ask: you don’t mean actual ears, right?”
Xander looked pleased to get at least a snort out of Willow this time.
“Of course I don’t mean that, Xan. If the walls had actual ears, you’d notice them.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Xander replied. “You’d be surprised at the things I miss.”
“Not so much,” Willow muttered as she turned and headed back towards her bed, any lift in her mood gone.
When Willow sat down on the edge of her bed, she turned back and saw Xander still standing just inside her doorway, looking at her inquisitively, as if trying to figure out a puzzle. She didn’t like that look. She was not a puzzle to be figured out. What kind of friends wouldn’t just know what she was going through?
Her irritation shone through as she snapped, “Well? What do you want, Xander? Why are you here?”
Willow’s words seemed to startle Xander out of his thoughts, and he walked over and perched in front of Willow on the side of Buffy’s bed as he responded, “What I want could take all day, so let’s not get into that. Why I’m here? You know why I’m here, Will.”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t ask, Xander,” Willow said, unable to keep the snippiness out of her voice.
Xander took a deep breath, and looked like he was steeling himself for something unpleasant.
“Willow, you said you just wanted it to stop. I couldn’t let you sit here alone with thoughts like that running through your head.”
Willow looked Xander in the eyes, to see if he really thought she was that stupid. Apparently, he did.
“Xander,” Willow ground out through clenched teeth, “I would never, ever do something that stupid. Then I wouldn’t be here when Oz comes back. And he will come back. I know he will.”
Xander’s body lost most of its tension during Willow’s answer, and he seemed not the least bit concerned with Willow’s obvious anger at his line of thought. “I’m so glad to hear that, Will. I know you’ve been taking this kind of hard, and we haven’t had a chance to talk about it, so I didn’t know if you still thought he was coming back or not. I mean, if you thought he wasn’t coming back, then...”
“But he is coming back,” Willow interrupted. “So there’s no reason to talk about him not. Yes, it hurts. It hurts like hell. But I will be here for him when he comes back. I’m not going anywhere.”
Willow seemed to almost deflate, her strident tone gone in a flash. “But it hurts so much, and I do want the pain to stop. I feel like someone carved out my insides with a melon ball scoop.”
Xander winced. “Ow. Nice imagery. But I know what you’re going through, we’ve all been through it...”
Angry Willow was back, just as quickly as she’d left. “What do you mean, ‘we’ve all been through it?’ Since when did you become the relationship expert? What love of your life left you for no reason, even though she said she still loved you? You have no idea what I’m going through.”
Willow could see that Xander was getting angry, but she didn’t care. He needed to realize he had no idea what he was talking about.
Xander took what Willow assumed was meant to be a calming breath, and said, “I didn’t say I’d had the same thing done to me as you. I said I knew what you were going through. The pain. I know all about the pain.”
“You know nothing of my pain!” Willow shouted, truly incensed. “You have no idea how much this hurts! You can’t know! You haven’t been with someone as long as I’ve been with Oz. Anytime anyone’s left you, it’s been your fault. You’ve never felt anything like this before, so don’t tell me you ‘know all about the pain!’”
Xander was shaking, literally shaking with anger by the time Willow finished. But he didn’t shout back. His voice was low and measured, which Willow knew meant that he was well and truly furious.
“I’m going to give you a pass on some of that, Will. But not all of it. You obviously need more than a shoulder to cry on right now. You need someone to tell you the truth. Now that I know you’re not going to hurt yourself, I’m going to give you that truth. And don’t say another word until I’m done.”
“First, about me, and my pain? You know better than to question me about pain. If you’d just stop thinking about yourself for one damn minute, you might remember that I’ve been dealing with more pain since I was kid than you can even imagine. I’ve been hurt, really hurt, by everybody I’ve ever cared for at least once, and I can tell you that it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference what the source of pain is, it hurts just the same.”
“Second, about anyone dumping me being my fault? That’s a little self-serving, don’t you think? There were two of us tangoing at the time, as I remember. But I didn’t blame you, and you didn’t blame you, so somehow that makes it my fault? I don’t think so. We both made a stupid, colossal mistake. Both of us. The difference was, you got to keep your boyfriend, and your best friend, and you knew somewhere in the back of your mind that I’d still be there if you needed me. I lost my girlfriend, and my best friend, and I knew that you wouldn’t be there if I needed you.”
Xander took a deep breath and continued. “Sure, you’ve got pain. But you’ve got a best friend who sleeps in this very bed who had her boyfriend take off on her for her own good, just like yours did. You can talk to her about what you’re feeling, and know that she felt the same thing. You can look at her, and know you’ll be okay eventually. That doesn’t take the pain away, only time does that, but it makes it easier to bear. But me? I had no one. I lost my girlfriend, and my best friend, and I had no one to turn to. No one to look to and see that it would be okay, someday. I had work through all that by myself. So I did.”
Willow found she had nothing to say as Xander stood up and headed for the door. He turned, and his angry gaze bore into her as he continued, “So stop pretending you’ve got the world’s biggest heartache, and that no one can possibly understand your pain. We all know how hurt you are. We’ve all been hurt. And we all got through it. So will you. It takes time. Friends can help a little. Distractions are good. But you’ve got to get over the idea that no one understands. You keep that up, and all you’re going to do is push everyone else away, which’ll just make everything that much worse.”
Xander’s eyes and tone finally softened a little, and he shook his head slightly as he reached for the door handle, “I love you, Wills, I really do, but you’ve got to stop thinking you’re the best at everything. Sure, you’re a super brain, but odds are there is someone out there smarter than you. Sure, you’re getting to be pretty good with the spells and such, but there are stronger witches out there than you. And sure, you’re in pain right now, but there is someone out there in more pain than you. Once you’re satisfied with being the best Willow you can be, instead of the best of everybody, I think you’ll be a lot happier. I’m gonna go now. We’ll be at Giles’, cleaning up. Come over when you’re ready.”
And with that, Xander opened the door and left, leaving behind a shell-shocked Willow with a lot to think about.
******************************
By mid-afternoon, Willow had processed most of what Xander had said. She grudgingly admitted that she was not the all-knowing Queen of Pain. She could not know how much pain other people had been in, so she couldn’t know if her pain was more or less than theirs. Once she accepted that, everyone’s behavior around her made much more sense. If she couldn’t know how much pain they had been in, how could she expect them to know how much pain she was in? They were trying to help, probably based on their own experiences with their own pain.
She felt a lot better about her friends, and didn’t think she’d be likely to lash out at them again any time soon, but that still hadn’t helped the source of the problem: her pain. She really, really, really wanted the pain to stop.
One thing Xander had said kept going through her mind. “There are stronger witches out there than you,” he’d said. She’d been thinking for a little while about trying a spell herself to get rid of the pain and get Oz to come back, but Xander was right. She had to stop thinking of herself as being the best person anywhere at anything. If she wanted this done right, she needed to go and find herself a stronger witch.
The problem was, where? The people she’d met through the magic shop were nice enough, but little more than dabblers. She was planning on trying out the campus Wicca group, but doubted they were much more advanced than she was. That left only one alternative, one she dreaded using. She’d have to be careful with her wording, but hopefully she could find out what she needed to know without tipping him off.
With a sigh, Willow realized she had no choice. She decided to wait until the next morning, because she really didn’t want to run into Xander just yet if they were still cleaning up. Still, she would do it. She would go see Giles.
*******************************
Willow was relieved to hear nothing but soft music as she approached Giles’ door at 8:15 on Saturday morning. That meant there was probably no one else there, as Giles tended to turn his stereo off whenever anyone else was over. She knocked lightly, and smiled to herself as she heard Giles stumble over to the stereo and turn it off before coming to the door.
“Good morning, Giles!” Willow said with forced cheer as soon as the door was opened. She held up the bag in her left hand as she crossed the threshold and entered the apartment. “I bring doughnuts!”
“Um, yes, well, good morning, Willow. Nice to see you up and about so early,” Giles responded as he shut the door and headed over to the table behind his couch where Willow had put down the doughnut bag. “Despite having a refrigerator full of leftovers, doughnuts sound much better than a turkey sandwich for breakfast. Any jellies?”
“Giles, would I come to see you without jellies? Please,” Willow said in a teasing tone, as she reached into the bag and pulled out the chocolate croissant she had chosen for herself before heading toward the couch.
Giles headed into the kitchen to get napkins, and called out, “Although that does beg the question of why you would come to see me at all.”
As he returned with napkins, Giles quickly continued, “Not that I’m not very pleased to see you, and not that you are not welcome here at almost any time. But you must admit that you usually don’t come to see me for a purely social visit.”
“I should do that more,” Willow responded after swallowing a mouthful of chocolate croissant. “We should all do that more. We’re all in college now, which removes a lot of the ick factor about hanging around with the school librarian outside of school, and you’re not the school librarian anymore anyway, so there’s really no reason not to. See you socially, I mean.”
“Thank you, Willow, I think would be a very nice thing,” Giles said with a smile as he took a seat. “But that’s not why you stopped by today, is it?”
Willow shook her head, and mentally berated herself for losing control of the conversation. It was hard enough for her to be tricky with Giles in the first place, at least about something important. When he was the one directing the discussion, it was just about impossible.
Giles looked at her with some curiosity, and asked, “Is it the dreams?”
Willow was thrown. How did Giles know about her nightmares? She hadn’t told anybody about the nightmares, other than Xander, and that wasn't the kind of thing he would tell other people after he'd found out she was okay. After a brief moment, she realized this was her opportunity to regain control of the conversation. “How do you know about the dreams, Giles?”
“Oh, terribly sorry. I presumed Xander would have mentioned that. Before hurrying out of here yesterday morning, Xander told me that he needed to see you, because you’d been dreaming about Oz hurting you, and that night you had dreamed about Oz biting you. I told him on his way out the door that I would be available to help you if need be, and I presumed that was why you were here. Did Xander tell you none of this?”
Willow winced a little as she thought about her conversation with Xander. “Actually, Giles, we jumped straight to yelling at each other pretty quickly. We never did talk about the dreams, or him telling you about what I said, or anything like that.”
“Yelling at each other?” Giles asked incredulously. “That hardly seems like the type of thing Xander was planning on when he left, and quite honestly, I expected better of him.”
“Oh, no, Giles, that’s not his fault. The yelling, I mean. It was totally my fault. And I was the one doing most of the yelling, really. Xander checked to see if I was going to hurt myself or anything first, but then I said some, well, mean things, and Xander decided I needed some truth.”
Giles narrowed his eyes, and asked, “What do you mean, you needed some truth?”
Willow gathered her thoughts for a minute, trying to work out the best way to get this conversation where she wanted it to go. She decided full disclosure of what Xander said, with a half-truth about her reaction, would be the way to go.
“Well, first of all, he pointed out that just because my pain is mine, it doesn’t mean that it’s a bigger, badder pain than anyone else’s. He told me that only time can help the pain go away, but that friends and distractions can reduce the time it takes. He also told me I had to admit to myself that I’m not the best at everything. I think he thought that I was thinking that my pain was the biggest one ever as part of my being the best at everything world-view.”
Giles seemed to take a moment to puzzle through what Willow had just said, and then he looked at her with a penetrating gaze and asked, “And do you believe him?”
Willow sighed, hoping she wasn’t going over the top. “Yes, I do, Giles. And actually, that’s why I’ve come by, though we can talk about the dreams later, if you want. As part of my acceptance that I’m not the best at everything, I want you to help me find a teacher.”
Now Giles looked confused. “You want me to help find you a teacher? Are you not at an institute of higher learning, which, the last I heard, tended to be full of teachers?”
Willow allowed herself a small chuckle. She’d forgotten how much work keeping up appearances could be, and hoped she didn’t sound too eager. “I don’t think I can find the kind of teacher I’m looking for there, Giles. I want a witch teacher. A spell coach. A Wicca guide. Whatever they’re called, I want one of those.”
Giles nodded at her, which Willow took as a sign to continue. “I mean, I’ve been doing fine on my own, learning spells from books, but I can’t help but feel I’m missing something. After all, they don’t just hand out books at the beginning of a semester and tell the students to read them and report back for the final. Or, if they do, I’ve never heard of it, and I’m pretty sure that would be a very popular course. Anyway, if I need an instructor for my schoolwork, why wouldn’t I need an instructor for my witch work?”
At this point, Willow noticed that Giles was almost beaming at her, which was not the reaction she’d been expecting. “Willow, I am very, very pleased to hear you come to this conclusion. I’d thought you might be looking for something like this at some point, so I took the liberty of contacting a coven I know in Devon, and they suggested the names of several possible instructors for you within an hour’s drive.”
“Really?” Willow asked, getting excited herself. “That’s great! I was worried you’d need to call around or something.”
Willow paused as she thought about the ramifications of what Giles had said. “But if you’ve had these names for a while, why didn’t you give them to me right away?”
“I wanted to,” Giles answered, “but my contact at the coven told me very specifically that I could not provide you with the names until you asked for them. It seems that one of the basic tenets of the Wicca tradition is that someone must want to be taught, and must actively seek their teacher out. If I were to take a guess as to why, I would think that needing to be told to go to training instead of asking to go might indicate a lack of purity of intent...”
As Giles rambled on, Willow thought furiously about what this meant. She would be given a list of names, all presumably witches more powerful than she was. These were going to be full-blown Wicca instructors, which would mean they might not be willing to teach her the spell she needed for the right price. That shot down Willow’s first plan.
Still, it’s not a total loss, Willow thought. I’ll just check out everyone on the list, and select the one that I think I can most easily work around. Then, I’ll either get her to teach me the spell that I need, or I’ll go through her library and find it myself.
Willow was startled out of her internal strategy session when Giles thrust a piece of paper at her, looking at her expectantly. Realizing it must be the list of instructors, Willow took it with a smile, and soon excused herself and headed back to Stevenson Hall.
Willow glanced at the campus clock as she walked, and noticed that it was almost 9. If I borrow my mother’s car, Willow thought as she climbed her dorm's steps, I should be able to meet most of the people on the list by the end of the day. If I see the ones I don’t get to today on Sunday, I’ll be able to pick someone right then and get this started.
Soon, Willow thought as she reached for the front door handle. Soon, I will have Oz back, and everything will be right again.
The campus clock struck the first chime of 9, Willow’s hand touched the door handle, and everything changed.
*******************************
Willow sat up suddenly, disoriented. As soon as she realized she was screaming, she stopped. It took her a few minutes, but she figured out where she was.
Dorm room. Alone. Day after Thanksgiving. Day 17 without Oz. Creepy Oz-related nightmare number 7 just completed. This was the first one that made her wake up screaming, though. Just as well Buffy’s not here, she thought.
Willow sighed for what she guessed was probably the millionth time this month, give or take a few hundred thousand, but before she could get started thinking about why Buffy wasn’t there, the phone rang. Willow picked up the handset, and managed a gruff, “Hello?”
“Oh, hi, Buffy. How’s L.A?...Already?...Yeah, I guess I could meet you there. When does the bus get in?...11:30?...Okay, I’ll see you then....Don’t worry, it’s no problem. Bye.”
Willow glanced at her clock, and was surprised to see that it was already 9:55. Even though Willow wanted nothing more than to stay in bed and mope, she didn’t have the energy to explain to Buffy why she wouldn’t be able to meet her at the bus station. Besides, she sincerely doubted that Buffy would have accepted moping as a legitimate excuse.
Resigned to her fate, Willow dragged herself to her closet, grabbed her towel and toiletries, and headed to the shower.
Twelve minutes later, the phone rang in Buffy and Willow’s room.
No one was there to answer it.
Again, this fic was for southernbangel. Her requests were as follows:
Character/pairing you want focused on: Willow
Kind of moment you want lost (self-revelation, ‘shipper, etc.): self-revelation, something to do with Oz and her misery over him leaving
Up to three other characters you want in the story: Xander, Giles
Up to four prompts to include: a dream, a best friend talk with Xander, chocolate