fic: All the Things I've Become (1/3)
Title: All the Things I've Become (1/3)
Characters: Willow Rosenberg, Daniel "Oz" Osbourne, Buffy Summers
Relationship: Oz/Willow
Rating: PG-13
Words: 2,994
Disclaimer: I don't own anything in this unofficial fanwork, nor do I claim to or profit in any way. I also don't own IHOP.
Summary: After Season 3, Oz accidentally infects Willow with lycanthropy. Divided into 3 chapters, each depicting one night of Willow's first full moon as a werewolf.
A/N: The first part of my entry for werewolfbigbang! This was my first Big Bang ever, and a lot of fun to participate in! Thanks so much to my wonderful artist (and beta) bluefire986 who did a lovely job with the art and who was a genuine pleasure to work with! Check out her entire art post here.
It had been a new moon on Graduation, and lycanthropy had been the last thing on anyone’s minds. Even Oz, whose thoughts never strayed from the wolf for too long, was distracted and worried, too busy making nervous jokes to give himself time to worry about everything. He wasn’t sure if he’d make it to see the summer, much less its first full moon, and Willow was even less sure. Neither teen wanted to be pessimistic or fatalistic, but, even so, every moment felt like Damocles’ sword hung suspended above them. They focused on the task at hand, striving to push out panic with each breath, putting their all into everything they did, researching, keeping watch, and making love like it was their last chance.
Two weeks later, once everyone had moved past the “Oh God, oh God, we’re all gonna die,” train of thought, thoughts of lycanthropy reasserted themselves like a flu that had very nearly been cured. Oz needed a new cage, Willow wanted to do Oz-Watch solo, and Xander wanted to make wolf jokes nearly constantly. Moving Oz to a new, unexploded cage was stressful, but it had nothing on the intense panic and tension the Ascension had, so, for as much as Willow fussed over the move, nobody was really all that worried.
Willow flitted around the crypt that had been outfitted to contain Wolf-Oz. It was dirty and cold and the stale, still air reeked of dust and age, but Willow had very nearly made it homey. Instead of privacy towels, since she figured she’d seen him all already, Willow had arranged tired old bedding and ratty towels in a makeshift bed in the corner of the cage, the mess of fabric looking like an oversized bird nest, painted in clashing shades of blue and green and pink. She’d set up a small table and chair facing the cage, piled with books of varying widths and a UC Sunnydale course catalog. There were two coolers tucked under the card table, one filled with cans of Coke and small snacks for the girl, the other with raw meat for the wolf.
On the other side of table, right below Willow’s shoulder, so she could grab it with a moment’s notice, sat a tranquilizer rifle, ugly and abrasive and unwanted beside the vibrant coolers and book covers. Oz did his best not to look at the rifle as he walked across the open floor behind his girlfriend; every time he saw it, the tranq gun reminded him just how dangerous he was and just how big a risk Willow was taking for him.
“IHOP, again?” Oz asked instead, watching the back of his girlfriend’s head.
“I’m not saying we have to make any decisions now, but, yes, IHOP.” Reaching her flimsy little card table, Willow neurotically began straightening and re-straightening her pile of books.
“You always want to go to IHOP,” Oz murmured, coming up behind her and putting a hand on her shoulder. She was nervous, her shoulders tight and unbelievably tense. He didn’t blame her. He was half terrified, and he wasn’t the one staying up all night to watch his boyfriend snarl and drool.
“Because it’s delicious, and they have crepes with strawberries for me, and eggs and bacon for you. And I like it, and we always go there, it’s a tradition and I like tradition, and-”
Oz tugged on her hand until she faced him and then he pulled her in for a kiss, cutting off her babble as suddenly as turning off a faucet. “Okay,” he responded, keeping his forehead pressed against hers. “IHOP in the morning. But now, I think I’d like to kiss you.”
“No complaints here,” Willow murmured, slipping a hand to the back of his head and pulling him in close enough to kiss. She knew they were cutting in close, but she very nearly didn’t care. She could almost feel sundown approaching, which would strike her as weird if she was thinking about anything except Oz, but she wanted Oz now. She didn’t want to spend her night watching him through a set of bars, not when she had just gotten used to spending nights in his arms. Willow kissed him desperately, pressing her body tightly against his. She hated letting him go for anything, especially the wolf.
“I’ve gotta go,” Oz breathed against her lips, words slipping out between kisses. “The wolf.” Willow didn’t answer, just began inching her way towards the cage, letting Oz shuffle with her. Oz had a hand in her hair and one sliding up and down her back, and she wasn’t ready to let go.
They had made it to the cage, standing in the open doorway, when they pulled apart. Oz was on one side of the bars, Willow on the other.
“I hate leaving you like this,” he murmured, reaching to tuck loose hair behind her ear with the hand that wasn’t holding hers as tightly as he could. He sounded just a little heartbroken to Willow’s sensitive ears.
“I know,” she murmured, cupping his cheek in one palm. “I do too.” It was necessary, she knew, and she repeated that like a mantra. She could already see the moon in his bright blue eyes, and knew the change was on its way. She pressed one last kiss to his mouth before smirking at him, trying to lighten the mood, just a little. “Now strip down, honey.”
Oz chuckled, though his laugh was nothing but dark and humorless, and handed her his shirt and pants.
He backed into his cage, but Willow caught his wrist before he could retreat into the dark shadows hiding the corners of the cage. “I love you, Oz,” she promised, staring hard at him until he answered.
“I know.” He quickly kissed her before pulling away and backing into the cage. “And I love you.”
“I know.” Willow gave him a little wave that managed to make him crack a smile and took hold of the cage door. Just as she began to swing it closed, Oz collapsed to the floor, panting and growling at her to hurry.
It was useless, though, because on the other side of the bars, Willow had collapsed as well, gasping for breath as the pain of stretching and growing and changing started.
“Oz,” she gasped, but he was too far gone to hear her, and, within seconds, she was too far gone to do anything but howl.
There were very few things Oz liked more than waking up next to Willow, and most of those things had to do with her anyways. He was less sold on waking up in the middle of forests, as he had learned the hard way a year and a half ago, but it was alright, because Willow was here this time. Oz smiled lazily, pressing a kiss to his stirring girlfriend’s head, before realizing that waking up in the woods with Willow was very much of the bad.
“Hey, you,” Willow murmured, her voice honey thick from sleep.
“Don’t look now,” Oz whispered, “but I don’t think this is your bedroom.”
“Is it yours?” she giggled, turning to nuzzle into his shoulder, her eyes still lidded.
“Maybe if I redecorated ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ style.” Oz was starting to piece everything together, and it was making an extraordinarily upsetting picture. Last night was a full moon, he was pretty sure, so that meant he’d wolfed out. He must have broken out of his cage last night. And if Willow was here too, there was no good solution to the question at hand.
Oz sat up suddenly, nudging Willow on his way. “No need to be all speedy quick, mister,” she grumbled, finally looking at him with open eyes. “It’s not like...
“Oz?” her voice trembled a little bit. Clearly, she’d put things together a little more quickly. It figured, this was the one issue he’d never been able to be direct and straightforward about, the one topic he’d always skirted around. “This is... I’m not sure what happened, on account of the last thing I remember being collapsing before I could close the cage, but I have a pretty good guess.”
“Does it involve howling at the moon?” Oz hedged, and Willow nodded slowly. He sank back down onto the woodland floor, covering his face in his hands.
“God, Willow. I’m so, so sorry. I never... I...” Oz’s voice was muffled by his hands, but somehow managed to sound cripplingly guilty.
“Hey,” she soothed, running her fingers through his hair, combing the tiny bits of grass out. “It’s not your fault, Oz. I don’t blame you for any of this.”
Oz didn’t respond to her words or her touch, he just lay on the ground, covering his face with his hands and hating himself more than he’d ever hated anything.
“Oz!” Willow cried, “Are you even listening to me?” There was no response, so Willow grabbed both of his hands and forced them away from his face. She kneeled over him and leaned down to look him in the eyes.
“Oz, listen. We can get through this. I’m not saying it’s not going take some getting used to. I mean, I’m probably gonna start panicking and freaking once this all sinks in, but that’s not the point. The point is that we’ll be okay. Okay, yeah, werewolf, but, you’re here, and I’m here, so it’ll all be alright. You’ll help me out. We’ll be just fine, Oz.”
Willow leaned down and kissed him lightly. “We’ll get through this, Oz. Together.”
“How?” Oz croaked. Looking down at his thousand yard stare, Willow almost wanted to cry; his eyes were filled with so much misery and self-loathing and fear that it was a wonder he was still functioning. “I made you a monster. Just like me.”
“Don’t say that! Don’t tell me you’re a monster when we both know that you’re not. We know about monsters, we fight monsters, and you’re not one of them. Every night that you lock yourself in that cage, you prove that.”
“I’m not human. And neither are you now.”
“It doesn’t matter!” Willow burst out, on the verge of tears. “None of that matters! Alright? What matters is that I love you, Oz. So, so much. And you love me, right?”
“Always.”
“So, sure, maybe now we’ll both turn hairy and snarly 3 nights a month, but at least we’ll be together. I was going to spend those three nights with you anyways, but now, at least I won’t be on the other side of the bars. And, yeah, I guess that somebody else will have to wolf-sit and we might have to reinforce the cage a little and, okay, Xander might say a few nasty things to you, but it’ll all work out.
“Just, don’t run away from this, okay? I don’t want you to feel guilty and awful and stuff. I just want you to be here, with me. Okay, Oz?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Oz whispered hoarsely, actually meeting her eyes for the first time all morning. “No promises on the guilt, but I’m not leaving you. Not ever.”
“Good,” Willow grinned, leaning down to kiss him. She knew that he was nowhere near close to being okay with this, she was really still processing it herself, but she was willing to believe things would be okay. They’d adjust, they’d cope, and they’d be in love. And, when Oz kissed her back, bringing his hands up to cradle her face, she truly believed that, just maybe, this didn’t have to be a bad thing.
A little over an hour later, Willow and Oz had made it back to the spare clothes in his van, and Willow had gone on to Buffy’s.
“Willow! I thought you’d be out with Oz. Is something up?” Buffy asked when she came to the door.
“What do you mean? Nothing’s wrong!” Willow exclaimed a little frantically, checking all over for bruises or cuts or a giant flashing sign reading WEREWOLF.
“No need to wig,” Buffy laughed, waving her friend in. “Just wasn’t expecting you. Or the grass in your hair.”
Willow flushed and her hands flew up to her hair. Sure enough, little bits of grass and clover were caught between strands of hair like confetti. “Oh, I, um...”
“No need to elaborate,” Buffy cut her off, smirking. “I don’t think I need to hear any stories that involve that much grass in your hair the morning after your boyfriend went Wild Thing on you, especially not when you’re blushing that hard.”
“Buffy!” Willow hissed, completely embarrassed and flushing an even deeper shade of red. Buffy just smiled innocently at her, troublemaker that she was, and headed into the kitchen.
“So, what’s up, Wills?”
“I kinda have a favor to ask, if you don’t mind or anything.”
“Shoot!” Buffy smiled, climbing up onto the kitchen counter and clutching a glass of milk.
“Would you mind wolf-sitting tonight?” Willow asked quietly, staring at her feet. Just over an hour ago, her feet had been paws, furry and rounder, with all of the bones shifted around. She hadn’t seen it, could barely remember the change, but she could imagine what she must have looked like, growling and savage.
“No sweat,” Buffy nodded, quickly pulling Willow’s attention away from her recently transformed feet. “Why can’t you?”
“I, uh, I’ll be there,” Willow stammered, avoiding eye contact studiously. “Only...”
“Will?” Buffy was starting to feel more than a little worried about her best friend. Willow was fidgety and distracted, gaze absent and voice hollow. Her mind was clearly somewhere far away, in a less than awesome place. The look on her face reminded Buffy of Angel when he would get mired down in years of memories of blood and death and savage joy. Willow wasn’t prone to brooding over anything, much less the dark past as a soulless killer that she didn’t have, and her ongoing brood was really giving Buffy a wig.
“I changed.” With a quickness, Willow focused, fixing Buffy with a haunted, baleful stare. She looked trapped, like a caged animal, and Buffy couldn’t help but sympathize; she knew intimately the feeling of being trapped, of bound into a role by things beyond her reach.
“You...changed?” Buffy blinked, trying hard to fit the whole story together, but it seemed like Willow was skipping whole pages of dialogue.
“Last night. I changed,” Willow whispered, and once again, Buffy was struck by the wild, animal-like desperation in the redhead’s eyes. “Into a wolf, Buffy.
“I’m a werewolf, now. It’s the only plausible solution, though, yeah, there are logical holes you could fly a spaceship through. And, I’m trying really hard to deal, because Oz is really freaking out, big time, but I’m not sure if it’s working. Buffy, does it sound like it’s working? Because I think I’m babbling again, and I’ve gotten so much better at that, but I really, really don’t know what to do.”
“Oh my God,” Buffy whispered, staring at her best friend with wide eyes. She hadn’t seen a bombshell like this coming, not for the life of her. Maybe she should’ve; maybe she should have realized just how contagious lycanthropy was, maybe she should’ve talked to Willow about it when she started sleeping with Oz. Maybe she should’ve done something, anything, but she hadn’t, and now her best friend was the latest victim of the darkness that clung to Sunnydale like a skin. “Will...”
“I love him, you know,” Willow continued on, pacing and twisting her hands around each other and darting her gaze to Buffy and away, as if she was keeping watch on a threat, or a hunter. “And it must have been so much worse for him, because he was alone his first time, and I’m not. I have him, and that makes it better, but...”
Willow broke off and froze in the middle of Buffy’s kitchen. She turned to face Buffy, making real eye contact for the first time since she’d arrived.
“Buffy, I’m so scared,” Willow whispered, and, Buffy hoped she was imagining it, but her eyes were different than they’d been the day before; darker green speckled with gold, pupils dilated in fear. “Oz isn’t dealing well at all. He blames himself and he’s all angry and broody. I didn’t even know Oz could brood! He barely listened to me when I told him I didn’t blame him. Oz never not listens!
“And I don’t know what we’re going to do. I don’t even know if the cage can hold two wolves! I want to be with him, always, but I don’t know what will happen when we’re both wolves. We’re out of control, and I don’t know what we’ll do. What if we get out? What if--”
“Willow!” Buffy shouted, making the werewolf jump. “Breathe. You’ve got to stop panicking. Everything is going to work out. Okay, so werewolf, but you’ll be okay. Oz survived, and he’ll help you through it. And you guys won’t be alone, you’ve got me and Giles and Xander and probably even my mom in a pinch. You guys will work it out, together, like always. So stop panicking, okay? Yes, it’s new and scary, but you were already a witch living on the mouth of hell. What’s a little lycanthropy on top of that?”
“You’re right,” Willow forced through gritted teeth, taking a deep, labored breath and hissing as she exhaled. “Freaking out isn’t going to make anything better.”
“No, it’s not,” Buffy smiled encouragingly, “but you’re doing fine, Wills. And nothing’s going to change for the rest of the month, okay? You’re still my best friend, even if you are going to get furry tonight.”
“Thanks, Buffy,” Willow smiled weakly, leaning her head against the Slayer’s shoulder and letting Buffy wrap an arm around her.
“Any time, Willow.”
Chapter Two. Chapter Three.
Master Post.