A New Revelation: A New Revelation
by Kendras Ghost
The Bronze was loud. Very loud. And very, very busy.

Inside the Bronze, an energetic band named Dingoes Ate My Baby was on stage, performing one of their more lively sets. Young people of all shapes and sizes swirled together on the dance floor, while others sat together at tables, all of them laughing and chatting with their friends.

And none of them had a clue that they were sitting (literally) on the mouth of Hell.

Sitting alone in the shadows of a dark corner that barely faced the stage, Willow sighed and set her cup down. She wasn’t really paying attention to the music. Her attention was focused solely on one thing.

A red-haired, male, guitar playing shaped thing.

Willow sighed again, and tucked an errant strand of her soft auburn hair behind an ear with one pale, graceful hand. She winced suddenly as she remembered the stricken look on his face the last time she had seen him. The look had been one of utter shock.

Willow closed her eyes and gritted her teeth together for a moment, forcing herself to replay the entire scene over again in her head for the thousandth time since that night.

The night that she and Xander had been captured by Spike. The night that they had been alone, together in the basement. The night that they had been caught.

The night that she had wrecked the best thing in her life.

She guiltily remembered their last stolen kiss together. Xander, lying on the bed, weak and helpless. Herself, worried and afraid. The spark of passion as their lips touched, made all the more intoxicating because of the danger they were in.

Then Oz and Cordelia, bursting through the door, mid-smooch.

She remembered Cordelia’s beautiful face, bleached white in shock and fury. And she remembered Oz’s stunned and bewildered expression. It had cut through her, more painful than a thousand knives. She remembered the way his eyes had looked.

His warm green eyes, filled with love and concern as he rammed the thick basement door open. The warmth she had always seen there slowly dulling to ice as the impact of her betrayal set in.

Willow opened her eyes and glanced at Oz. He was on stage, his eyes were now closed and his brow was slightly furrowed in concentration as he deftly strummed his guitar. A lock of red-brown hair fell carelessly against his left temple.

He didn’t know that she was here. No one did.

Buffy was on a long patrol tonight. Giles probably assumed that she would be either dutifully researching some arcane prophesy, or at home studying, like a good little girl. She hadn’t even really spoken to Xander in days. And Cordelia was in the hospital.

Willow’s slender fingers absently traced geometric figures on the table.

After her shock had worn off, Cordelia had fled.

Willow clutched her teacup with trembling hands.

Cordelia had made a hasty exit from the room, unwilling to cope with Xander’s disloyalty. Her eyes, blurred with unshed tears, had been unable to see where she was going. She had stumbled through a gap in the decrepit floorboards, and then…

“I…fell,” she gasped, as we all looked down in horror at the metal pole that had impaled itself through her midsection.

Then the look of grief on Xander’s face as he held her hand…

Willow smiled bitterly. She knew now that what she and Xander had had together had only been caused by the surging of their hormones, and not by something more.

The music stopped abruptly, and Willow looked up in alarm.

The band was taking a break.

Willow watched as Oz slipped his guitar off of his shoulder and carefully leaned it against an amp. He quietly stepped down off of the stage, avoiding the throng of girls clustered around Devon, the lead singer.

Willow thought he looked tired. She licked lips suddenly gone dry, and raised her cup, then set it down. Without taking a sip, she repeated the action again, without removing her gaze from Oz.

He wove through the crowd, heading towards the beverage counter, his eyes forlornly searching through the crowd.

Suddenly, he was moving in her direction.

Willow panicked.

Oz made an abrupt shift to the right, ultimately arriving at the beverage counter on the opposite side of the room.

Willow sighed in relief and quickly drained off the last of her tea. She fidgeted nervously. She hadn’t quite figured out exactly how she was going to apologize to Oz yet. Until then, she had decided it would be better for the both of them if he saw her as little as possible.

But her eyes, still full of regret and smothered longing, followed his every move.

She watched as Oz tapped his fingers anxiously against the counter as he waited for his drink. He looked around the room searchingly for a moment, then quickly dropped his gaze. He ran a hand nervously through his hair, then rubbed his neck tiredly, and resumed tapping.

Willow’s eyes narrowed jealously as a girl sidled up to Oz and began chatting.

The girl was small and fair-haired, well bronzed by the sun, and built athletically. She as little resembled the pale, delicate, red-haired Willow as did the sun resemble the moon.

Willow couldn’t hear their conversation, although she felt a sharp stabbing pain as something the girl said made him laugh.

But a few heart-rending moments after the girl had apparently introduced herself, Oz just smiled regretfully at her as she nodded understandingly and waved goodbye.

Willow allowed herself to fee the tiniest sliver of hope as Oz looked hopefully around the crowd again. She blinked and looked down at her hands, which had been clutching the teacup hard enough to turn the knuckles white.

She smiled faintly, and relaxed her grip on the teacup. Willow sucked in a nervous breath and stood up.

Then she began to walk towards Oz.


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