fic: All the Things I've Become (3/3)

[tiny_white_hats]

Title: All the Things I've Become (3/3)
Characters: Willow Rosenberg, Daniel "Oz" Osbourne, Buffy Summers, Xander Harris, Rupert Giles
Relationship: Oz/Willow
Rating: PG-13
Words: 3,718
Disclaimer: I don't own anything in this unofficial fanwork, nor do I claim to or profit in any way.
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.




There was just about nothing Buffy wouldn’t do for her friends, but this had just crossed the line. Without a backward glance she stole from the crypt, racing up the stone staircase as if chased. Spending the previous night with a mating pair of werewolves had been a uniquely horrifying experience, and Buffy was in quite a rush to avoid repeating it. She was sure Willow and Oz wouldn’t mind if she ran across the street to the 24 hour diner to get a coffee and to wait for an end to the wolf-sex, and what they didn’t know really wouldn’t hurt them.

Being entirely more responsible than Giles gave her credit for, Buffy went immediately back to the crypt as soon as she got her coffee, electing to drink it near the entranceway, where she could keep an eye on the wolves, or at least ensure they couldn’t get anywhere if they made a break for freedom, and still steer clear of any unwelcome sights or sounds. It sounded fairly quiet from where she was but Buffy didn’t really trust that, still suffering minor league trauma from the events of the previous night. Really, she would do a lot for her friends, but sitting quietly while they had loud wolf-sex in a cage in front of her was way too much to ask once, let alone twice. Besides, it wasn’t like they could escape without passing by her anyways, and Buffy was more than ready to fight a werewolf or two. Wolf sitting was even more boring than routine patrols, and all this sitting and waiting was putting her on edge, as if there was something else, something far more important, that she was supposed to be doing.

Buffy elected to wait until she had finished her coffee before she reentered the crypt, satisfied that she’d spent a long enough time to allow the two wolves to take care of business and to fall asleep. Creeping down steps like a thief, Buffy took care to slip like a shadow, wary of awaking either wolf. Even with Slayer hearing she couldn’t hear anything, for which she was profoundly grateful, which meant either both wolves had given into sleep or that something was terribly wrong. Always an optimist, Buffy decided to go with her first guess. As she reached the bottom stair and entered the crypt, Buffy realized just how wrong she had been.

Abandoned, the cage door swung desolate, pulled free from its moorings by the same wolves who must have bent the cage bars out of shape and created their own opening. There were no wolves inside, nor anywhere else Buffy could see; just a warped skeleton of a metal cage, empty like a rib cage.

“Oh, no,” Buffy whispered, fist tightening around her empty coffee cup like a snake, squeezing it until the Styrofoam snapped, breaking into chunks. “Oh, God no.”

Fast as thought, Buffy sprinted from the crypt, leaving the shattered cup in shreds on the stony floor, stopping only to grab the tranquilizer rifle. There were no tracks outside of the crypt, no trails of trampled bushes and no frenzied howls of wolves to guide her steps. There were just rows of undisturbed graves around her and acres of wild forests around those, a whole world for Willow and Oz to lose themselves in. It was Buffy’s job to find them, and save them from themselves.

So she ran. Buffy spent the night as a hunter, tracking even the barest hint of a
trail, tirelessly beating her feet against paths she was forging herself. She ran through the sunrise, watching sunlight leak through the leaves like melting copper, feeling her heart sink with the moon. She had been too late, one step behind all night, and now it was done. Willow and Oz were human again, and if she had let anything happen, they would have to live the rest of their lives with what they had never intended to do.

Slowly, with a heaviness in her limbs, Buffy turned her path towards Giles’ apartment. She had bad news to deliver.



This whole waking up naked in a forest thing wasn’t exactly something Willow wanted to get used to. Nevertheless, here she was again, like déjà vu. If not for the fact that she must have run free last night, waking in the woods would be nice, her wolf senses slowly painting her a picture of the forest before she even cracked her eyelids. When she did open her eyes in the hazy, dawning light, it was like sensory overload; bitter tang of dirt and the crunch of a twig beneath her hip, as the sound of hundreds of squirrels and chipmunks and ants rustling through underbrush and the green glow of the forest, weak morning light filtering though mist and dew and leaves, surrounded her. It was glorious out here in the world, in a way Willow was nly just beginning to appreciate, alive in the way the ordered streets and homes of Sunnydale never could be. She could hear Oz’s heart beat as clearly as she heard him breathe, hear the funny hitch in his breath as he woke and hear his deep, restful breaths fall into sync with her own.

“We got out,” Oz announced in lieu of a greeting, pulling Willow out of her wonder as sharply as a kick.

“Do you think we...?”

“Can’t tell,” Oz shrugged, sitting up and running one restless hand through his hair, which was already wild as a bramble patch. “We should head back, and find out.”

“Yeah,” Willow breathed, and suddenly the forest seemed so much darker and bleaker than before. This was a place where things died and burned and decayed, and the shadows seemed to grow now that she remembered this. This was a home, yes, but it was also a place where dead things were buried and a place where things were killed.

“Oz, do you think Buffy’s okay?” Willow asked quietly after they had been walking for a couple of minutes, voice soft amongst the sounds of their footfalls onto dead leaves and the warbling of late summer birds. “She was supposed to keep us from getting out, but she didn’t, not really.”

“I think she’s okay. Actually, I’m starting to suspect she may be indestructible.”

“Yeah, but Buffy wouldn’t have let us get out,” Willow worried, becoming more agitated the longer she thought about it. “Not if everything was okay.”

“She probably found something more exciting to worry about. After the first night she spent watching us, I almost don’t blame her.”

“Oz,” Willow hissed out of reflex, too worried to be truly bothered by bawdiness.

“Just relax, Will. I’m sure everything’s fine.”

“You sure?” she questioned, beginning to relax just a little.

“I sound pretty sure.”

“Well,” Willow laughed, “then you must be sure. Everything’s just fine.”



Their first stop was Willow’s to grab Willow’s clothes and the change of clothes which her parents didn’t know Oz kept in her room. Then they headed to Buffy’s. She was gone, her house empty as an unfilled grave, and upon realizing Buffy’s absence Willow’s heart began turning violently inside of her chest, wracked with worry for her missing friend. This had been her fleeting, unrealized hope, that Buffy was safe at home, unhurt and unharmed, and finding it empty had dashed it like a rowboat against rocks. Something had kept Buffy from watching over them through the night and from returning home with the dawn, and that was absolutely terrifying to Willow.

“Maybe she’s at Giles’,” Oz suggested coolly, far more relaxed than Willow felt.

“Okay,” she agreed, trying to force a calm that wouldn’t come. “Sure, that would make sense, Buffy being at Giles. Because he’s her Watcher, and he’s just so Gilesey and Watchery, so it would be a good place to go if something went wrong. Which seems to have happened.”

“Though I appreciate your enthusiasm, worrying won’t help any of us,” Oz pointed out, not unkindly, reaching over to thread his fingers between Willow’s.

“I guess,” Willow acquiesced, but she didn’t truly stop worrying until they crossed Giles’s threshold to find Buffy pacing anxiously across Giles’ floor before the Watcher and Xander.

“Buffy! You’re okay!” Willow exclaimed, rushing through the door to embrace her best friend. “You’re okay, right?”

“I’m okay,” Buffy nodded grimly, pulling away from the redhead to take a piece of newsprint off of the coffee table. She handed it to Willow, motioning Oz closer so that he could read, before collapsing into an arm chair with her head between her hands.

Willow made it to the headline before her relief faded as suddenly as if a switch had been flipped. ‘Body Found Mutilated, Local Police Mystified’ read the headline in thick black print, words stretched across the front page in reflection of the enormity of the situation.

“Was this,” Willow asked hesitantly, terrified beyond belief of the answer. “Was this us?”

Between her palms, Buffy nodded grimly, and Willow could only stare at the words, knees feeling weak and threatening to give way below her. She made her way to the couch before collapsing and tunnel vision overtook Willow without warning, her entire world narrowing down to her and the headline in her hands. It was moments before she remembered the rest of the room, and by that time chaos had already broken out.

It felt like most futile game in the world, sitting with Oz on Giles’ couch while everybody passed around blame like a time bomb, each of then grasping for it as if hungry for an explosion. Willow felt lightheaded and weak, she hadn’t eaten anything since the night before the kill, but around her conversation circled like vultures, each calling over the others competing for attention. Oz, as always, was the quietest in the room, head in one hand and face blank, so upset that even he couldn’t bury it.

“Look,” Xander raised his voice and both hands, his exclamation breaking through conversation like a rock through a window. “This was awful and terrible and very much like Sunnydale, we get it. But we can’t change that. So what are we going to do to prevent American Werewolves in Sunnydale: Part 2?”

“Good, yeah, Xander. Let’s be a little more casual about this,” Buffy snapped, eyes wide and slightly crazed. She looked desperate and strained, overstretched and overburdened. Buffy blamed herself because she had stepped away from her duty for just a moment and it was in that moment that everything went to hell. She had made one simple, easy mistake, the first in years of sacrifices and victories, and she was blaming herself entirely, as if this one red mark in her ledger was enough to damn her even after all the good she had done.

It would be so much easier if Willow could blame Buffy too, if she could believe that this was all because Buffy failed in her sacred duty, not because she and Oz were monsters, the things Buffy was sworn to hunt down. It would be so much easier to live with herself if she could yell at her best friend for not keeping them from breaking out or catching them, if she could be furious at Xander for being too freaked out by her change to help Buffy, if she could rage at Giles for worrying that Oz’s cage couldn’t hold the both of them but not doing anything to strengthen it. It would be easier if she could give away blame like passing out party favors, but she couldn’t, shackled to her guilt like a beast of burden. This guilt was her cross to bear, hers and Oz’s, because they had just been monsters, but now they were killers too, and where their paws and muzzles had been coated in blood, they were forever stained red.

“I’m not being casual, I’m being practical,” Xander shot back, temper as tense and quick as a rubber band. Willow wasn’t sure if he had adjusted to the thought of her as a werewolf, or her and Oz as a mated pair, but even if he hadn’t, Xander was far too stubborn to let his own discomfort stop him from helping his friends. “There’s gonna be another full moon in 28 days and, believe it or not, these two are gonna change again. So, either we do something about that or we don’t, but I’m thinking that we should.”

“Well,” Giles cut in before further argument could break out, “Clearly the cage we’ve been using thus far isn’t sufficient to contain two werewolves. We could attempt to locate another cage by next month and separate...”

“No!” Willow and Oz cut him off as one, both sitting bolt upright and wavering on the verge of snarling defensively. Willow blushed immediately after, taken aback by her own behaviour, but she didn’t back down, adamant that she and Oz not be separated.

“It wouldn’t work,” Oz answered lowly, voice eerily like a wolf’s growl. “We’d break out to find each other. It would just make things worse.”

“No,” I suppose you’re right, then. Attempting to keep a mated pair divided would hardly be a solution. Perhaps another cage altogether? Much larger in scale, and far sturdier.”

“Far away,” Oz frowned. “Away from people.”

“And near the woods, so if we get out we hunt there instead,” Willow added softly.

“And with heavier bars, so we can’t get out in the first place.”

“I’ll begin searching immediately,” Giles announced with the fervent dedication of the regretful. He was blaming himself as well, trying to make amends for his perceived crime the only way he knew how. “If we’re truly unable to find suitable accommodations, we can construct a cage ourselves in a cave. I believe the Sunnydale area has quite the network.”

“Well, okay then,” Xander nodded with an awkward finality. “That’s dealt with then.”

“Not really,” Oz responded darkly, “unless somehow we resurrected somebody without me noticing.”

“Oz,” Giles said softly, meeting the younger man’s eyes for the first time since he’d arrived. “You’re entirely correct. There’s a dead young man who wasn’t dead yesterday, and that will never change. There’s not a thing we can do about that, but we can take precautions to ensure that it never happens again.”

“But it happened,” Oz replied evenly, “and that’s the problem, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but it’s too late to remedy that. And I understand what it’s like to live with that on your conscience, and how terrible of a burden death is to bear, but I promise you, you will go on, both of you.”

“No, Giles,” Willow spoke up for the first time, rising to her feet to punctuate her statement. “You don’t understand at all. You know what it’s like to cause someone’s death and to have people die because of what you’ve done, but you don’t understand what it’s like to be a monster like we are. There’s no way you could.”

“Willow…”

“We killed him, Giles. He’s dead and we killed him, and that’s never going away. We’re going to live with this forever, and I don’t know how. This life isn’t what I wanted, what either of us wanted, but it’s what is, and we have to learn to live with that.

“I don’t know how, but, I do know that you don’t either, so please, please don’t tell us that you do, because I can’t hear that right now. Not when I woke up with blood under my fingernails.”

“We should go,” Oz stood up to join her, linking their hands together, side to side and facing the others as if opposing them.

“Maybe. Okay,” Willow agreed, plodding toward the door with footfalls heavier than rocks.

“Will, Oz,” Buffy called just as they reached Giles’ wide door. “I don’t think this was your fault.”

“Thank you, Buffy” Willow answered softly, “but you’re wrong.

“This was my fault.”



Willow had thrown up three times and brushed her teeth as many times already that morning, but she could still taste the sweetly bitter tang of blood in her mouth. It wouldn’t leave, lingering just as the newsprint image of a torn, bleeding body stayed frozen against her eyelids, gruesomely red. It was haunting Willow, this crime of hers, and it was still so much less than she deserved.

Oz was even worse, drowning in a guilt as thick and gruesome as blood. He was angry at himself and his wolf and his curse and the world that had strapped that burden across his shoulders, and all of that rage was burning him up inside, escaping him in fits and bursts of sparks. He was more expressive than Willow had ever seen him, leaking feeling like radiation, potent and destructive. His guilt was so strong it was palpable; guilt over their killing and over turning her into a werewolf and guilt
(self-loathing) over his own lycanthropy pulling him down like a riptide. As much
as she hated herself right now, she hated seeing Oz like this even more.

“We’re not going to let this happen again,” Willow said quietly, rolling on her side to face Oz where he lay on his back beneath a tree.

“Don’t you think once is already too many times?” he responded, staring fixedly at a single leaf above his head.

“Yes,” Willow replied sadly, “I really do.”

“Maybe we don’t belong here,” Oz said slowly after a pause. His words were slow, as if they we’re sticky, coming slowly out of his mouth like molasses, bitter and thick.

“What?”

“We’re werewolves, Willow, not people, as hard as we pretend otherwise.”

“So what are you saying? That we shouldn’t stay in Sunnydale because we’re monsters? This is the only place in the world where monsters aren’t a minority.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t be around people.”

“Somewhere without people? Oz, is that even possible? Humans are everywhere, and the places they aren’t are empty for a reason.”

“I don’t know. We can live it the mountains, learn to control the wolf,” Oz answered, desperation like a drowning man in his voice.

“Alone?” Willow reached out a hand to touch Oz’s arm, trying fiercely to get through to him. It was like he was lost in his own mind, trapped in an endless cycle of guilt and fear and self-loathing, becoming more desperate and afraid the longer he thought about it. “But what good is taming the wolf if we lose the rest of us? If we go out there and spend all of our lives wrestling with our wolves, how do we remember to be human?”

“I need to control it,” Oz insisted, adamant.

“We can do that here,” Willow soothed, running her hand up and down his arm.
“Giles knows stuff, he can help. And we’ll get a better cage, and Buffy will guard it, and this will never happen again.

“Oz, we can’t leave. Not now that we’ve done this.”

“I can’t control it, and I need to. First you, now this; I need to control it.”

“We have to stay. We killed someone and we have to pay for that. We need to atone. And that’s up to us to do ourselves, because the police think it was an animal attack and Giles won’t turn us in to the Watcher’s Council, so we have to serve our own punishment.”

“We took a life, Oz, and we can’t bring it back. But we can save other lives here, on the Hellmouth, and we have to do that. We have to make amends.”

“I know,” Oz said, taking a deep breath and letting his whole body relax into the earth. “I know. It’s just...” he trailed off, face tight as he searched for words. Then, he turned over to face her, and he looked more vulnerable than he ever had, honest emotion on his face.

“I’m scared, Will. I’m scared every day that I could lose control.”

“Me too,” she admitted, sliding her hand down his arm to intertwine their fingers. “But then I remember that you’re here to help me, and, well, it’s not so bad then.”

“Yeah?”

“I believe in you, Oz,” she answered simply. “You’re a good man, and you’re stubborn and you’re smart. You’re going to figure out how to control your wolf, and then you’ll help me. And we’ll do it together.”

Oz was quiet for a few long minutes, thinking deeply, so Willow watched him silently, stroking her thumb against his hand and his forehead smoothed out and his shoulders relaxed.

“I’m sorry I turned you,” he said finally. “I don’t know if I ever told you, but I am. I wish you didn’t have to live with this.”

“I wish you didn’t either.”

Oz smiled grimly in agreement, but didn’t answer for a few moments. “Some day,” he said finally, “we’ll realize that we couldn’t have changed this. That we’re not our wolves, just like those wolves aren’t Willow and Oz.”

“Maybe,” Willow agreed, “but not today.”

“No, not today.”

Oz fell silent again and Willow along with him for a few long minutes. There was a line somewhere, which demarcated the difference between the woman and the wolf, running through her like a river. Just as much as they were the same they were different, two souls shoved in one body, two halves of one whole. That was nearly impossible for Willow to wrap her mind around. And maybe that made her a monster, but maybe it didn’t, because Angel wasn’t a monster like Angelus was, and Buffy wasn’t a monster like Faith was. Maybe it wasn’t about what you were but about what you did, so instead of being complacent Willow was going to be a hero, save enough souls to fill this town, and mourn the one she had taken. Since it wasn’t waking up to find a dead body that would make her a real monster, it was laughing as she washed the drying blood off of her hands. It was about making choices, and Willow was choosing ‘no.’

“What do you say we go build us a cage?” she asked finally, feeling a few pounds
lighter.

“Lead the way.”

fin.

Chapter One. Chapter Two.
Master Post.