Sunnydale High School, the concepts of the Slayer and the Watcher, and the characters of Buffy, Willow, Xander, Giles, Cordelia, Angel, and Oz are the property of Joss Whedon, the WB Television Network, 20th Century Fox, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, and Sandollar Television. The rest is mine.
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Part One
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It hadn't been one of Oz's better gigs. He'd gotten lost in the second verse of "Dead In Time," and had to fudge it for the rest of the song. And then, although they'd both agreed to try the new harmony vocals on the chorus of "Spent," Devon had decided not to anyway, and Oz thought it had sounded horrible. He'd ignored Devon's insistence for an encore, and had packed up and stalked out immediately after the set was over. Let Devon find his own ride home, he thought, fuming.
Reflecting on the gig as he drove home from the Bronze, he refused to believe it had anything to do with Willow's absence. Sure, it was the first gig she'd missed since they'd started going out two months previously, but she probably had a good reason. Saving the world was more important than a gig anyday. At least she'd missed the crash-and-burnage. He'd give her a call when he got home, and they'd share a good laugh about it.
Thoughts of Willow calmed him down, and he was considerably less upset by the time he pulled his van up in front of his house. The windows were dark, meaning his parents still weren't home from work. He opened the door and stepped down onto the street.
"You messed up my favorite song, Oz," came a voice from the lawn.
Oz walked around the front of his van and his heart stopped. Standing on the shadow-dappled front lawn of his house was Angel, Buffy's vampire ex-boyfriend. Willow had been talking about him for weeks, her voice full of fear. If he was here, it was a fair chance that it wasn't to critique Oz's performance. Play it cool, Oz told himself.
"Yeah, um... sorry," he said.
"'Dead In Time,'" Angel continued. "I think it's the name. I just have a thing for songs with the word 'dead' in the title."
"Cool," said Oz, trying to be non-chalant while attempting to figure out how to get past Angel and into his house. "It's always good to meet the fans." Dammit, why did the full moon have to be last week? He sidled around his van, his back pressed up against it.
"Well, I'm afraid this isn't just a social call," said Angel, his voice full of mock obsequiousness. "See, I've decided I have to kill you."
Oz swallowed. "I'm sorry to hear that. I really hadn't planned on dying tonight, though, so..."
Angel cut him off with a chuckle. He looked up at Oz with a smug grin on his face. "You're so *cute*," he laughed. "I thought about killing Willow, you see, but I figure that killing you will probably just destroy Willow. And that's gonna hurt Buffy worse than anything else I can think of." Angel shrugged. "Sorry, man." Then his face shifted, and Oz was looking at the face of a demon. With a snarl, Angel sprang at Oz.
Oz leapt to one side, and as he landed on his stomach on the lawn he heard Angel smack into the side of his van. He hoped it was Angel's head he'd heard. He scrambled to his feet and sprinted for his front door.
Just ten more paces. Five. Three.
Then something landed on his back, driving his body down onto the pavement of the walkway. His head connected with the stones, and he saw stars.
Dazed, he was dimly aware of being turned over, and looking up into the face of an animal. Angel. Then the vampire's face ducked out of his line of vision, and he felt sharp fangs prick the flesh of his neck.
Suddenly everything was crystal clear. As he felt his life's blood being pulled out of his body by the sucking of a warm, wet mouth on his throat, Oz's last thought was that he wasn't going to get to call Willow after all.
* * *
Willow Rosenberg's big eyes reflected pools of bluish light from the computer screen in front of her, upon which scrolled line after line of Latin.
Somewhere in the back of her head, she was vaguely aware that it was night, that she could have gone with Buffy and Xander to the Bronze tonight, that there was some other reason that she should have been there. But that afternoon she'd been rummaging through the files that Ms. Calendar had left on her computer before Angel had killed her, and she'd come across some damaged file fragments with the extension ".rit" on them. Something had clicked in her brain, and she'd become convinced that ".rit" stood for "ritual." She'd started working on repairing and restoring the fragments, and everything else had receded into the background.
Now she sat entranced, watching as the Latin contained in one of the repaired files flashed on the screen. It was just as she had hoped -- Ms. Calendar had found out how to restore a vampire's soul! This was great! All she had to do was repair one other file, and she'd be able to go to Buffy and Giles with what she'd found.
A bitterly cold wind blew across her, breaking her out of her trance. It wouldn't do anyone any good for her to catch cold before she could figure this all out, she thought. She got up and walked over to close the window.
Then Willow stopped, remembering. The window hadn't been open. She shuddered and checked that the window was locked, and returned to the humming computer.
* * *
The moping was getting old, Xander decided. Buffy had been moping for weeks. She'd moped as he'd dragged her out of her house and over to the Bronze for what he figured was some much-needed fun. She'd moped all through their time at the Bronze. She'd moped while Xander crowed with delight as Oz flubbed the entire last half of a song. And she was still moping as they walked past Weatherly Park on their way home. It was a balmy April night. They should be happy. But Buffy was moping, as usual.
Okay, sure, he reflected, she had been inadvertently responsible for Angel losing his soul, which had led to the deaths of Theresa Klusmeyer and Ms. Calendar and probably a bunch of other people, as well as months of apprehension and looking over their shoulders. That would get anybody down. But how long was this going to go on?
"I'd say 'penny for your thoughts,' but they look like they're going for about a dollar, and I spent my last cash at the Bronze," he said, hoping a joke would shake her out of her funk.
Buffy looked at him with the haunted look he had gotten far too used to over the last two months. For a moment she didn't say anything. Then she made a visible effort to brighten up. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to ignore you."
"Oh, hey, no prob, Buff. I mean, I'm used to women ignoring me. Hell, Cordy ignores me even when we're in the broom closet together."
Buffy wrinkled her nose. "Yuck. More information than I needed there, Xander."
Xander smiled. It sounded like she was beginning to snap out of it. They turned the corner and he caught sight of Oz's van parked on the street. Oh, that must be where he lives, Xander thought. Terrific.
It wasn't that Xander was jealous, per se. He didn't think of Willow like that. It was just... he didn't trust Oz. Yeah, that's what it was. I mean, the guy was a werewolf! How could Buffy and Giles just let him hang around Willow all the time?
They heard a grunt from behind the van, followed by a thump. A year of being the Slayer's sidekick had gotten him all too familiar with that sound, and a knot formed in his stomach. Apparently, Buffy had reached the same conclusions he had, because she took off at a run across the street. Xander followed her.
As he rounded the van, he saw Buffy tackle a dark figure on the lawn. A snarl indicated to him that it was a vampire. Then he heard the all-too familiar mocking chuckle of Angel.
"Hey, you're just in time, Buff," the vampire said. "I left you a little present. Well, actually, it's not for you, but..." His words were cut off as Buffy slugged him, hard. He kicked up with his legs, throwing the diminutive Slayer off his prone form, and stood up. "I love the smell of trauma in the morning," he said, and ran off, laughing, into the night.
Meanwhile, Xander had knelt down by the vampire's victim. He turned the body over and recognized instantly the still form of Oz. "Oh, man," he breathed. "Oh, man." He checked the side of the boy's neck for a pulse, but didn't feel anything. Maybe he was doing it wrong. Please, let me be doing it wrong, he prayed.
Buffy ran back up to him, having lost Angel's trail in the night. Xander looked up at her. "It's Oz," he told her.
Even in the darkness of the night, Xander could see her go pale. "Oh, no," she said in a barely audible whisper. "Oh, God. Is he..."
Xander shook his head.
Buffy's hands flew up to her mouth. "Oh no oh no oh no oh no..." she mumbled, taking two steps backwards before running off into the night.
"Buffy!" Xander called after her. Even for the Slayer, it wasn't exactly safe to be running through Sunnydale at night. And now he was alone, too.
Xander couldn't shake the feeling that his whole world had just come to an end.
* * *
It was a worried Willow who showed up in the library the next morning. She'd been working on the ritual the previous night until almost one in the morning. At length, she'd been forced by closing eyelids and neck fatigue to call it a night and go home for some sleep. It was only then that she remembered that she'd missed Oz's gig at the Bronze. When she'd gotten home, it was too late to call Oz, but she'd resolved to apologize to him the next morning. But when she got to school, he hadn't been waiting for her on the bench in the courtyard, and Willow got nervous.
She had come to the library both to report her findings about the soul-restoration ritual, and to see if anyone had heard from Oz since last night. But her questions froze in her throat as she walked into the library to see Buffy and Xander and Giles sitting at the central table with stricken expressions on their face. All three snapped their heads up to look at her as she walked in, and Buffy's eyes started to fill with tears.
"Hey, guys," she said, a note of trepidation creeping into her voice. "W-what happened?"
No-one said anything. At length Buffy got up and walked over to her slowly. Willow saw an internal battle playing out on Buffy's tear-streaked face. Buffy came to stand in front of her friend, and opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
"Buffy, what is it?" Willow asked.
Buffy closed her mouth and her lower lip began to tremble. At last she whispered, "I'm sorry," in a voice soaked with emotion. The Slayer started to sob and ran from the library.
Her eyes wide with fear, Willow turned to face the men. Xander was running to the door as if to follow Buffy, and Giles had turned away.
Willow ran up to Xander. Taking his hands in hers, she looked up into his eyes. "Xander, what happened?" she asked in a voice full of desperation.
Xander's face had a dark expression on it, and he couldn't look her in the eyes. "It... it's Oz. He... " Xander paused and took a deep breath. "Buffy and I ran across Angel last night. He was at Oz's house. He... Oz is... "
He didn't need to finish. Willow knew. In that one horrible moment, she felt her heart explode into a billion jagged shards, each one piercing her soul until all feeling had bled into nothingness.
She fainted.
* * *
Oz's funeral had been a brief affair. There were no more than thirty people there, family and friends. Oz's parents, a few other relatives, the members of his band, and of course the Slayer and her friends. Willow sat in the third row, staring at the casket and not hearing much of anything. A priest had made a few perfunctory remarks, and Devon had sung a song. And then they all followed the hearse to Sunnydale Cemetary, where Oz's casket was lowered into the ground and Willow had walked home in a slow spring drizzle.
She was back at the cemetary now. She hadn't been able to bring herself to talk to Buffy or Xander, and she couldn't just sit around, so she started walking through Sunnydale, and as the sun went down she found herself here in the cemetary. Unconsciously she made her way to the spot she'd just been that afternoon, and she found that she wasn't alone.
Buffy was sitting there, staring sadly at the new headstone. "Clyde Osbourne, 1980-1998," it read simply. Funny, Willow had never even asked him what Oz was short for. She assumed she'd get around to it sooner or later. Now she never would.
A twig snapped under Willow's foot, and Buffy's head snapped around, a stake raised. She relaxed as she saw it was Willow, and she lowered the stake, wiping tears from her eyes. "Willow," she said. "What are you doing here?"
Willow regarded Buffy coldly. "Waiting to kill him again?" she said.
Buffy flinched as if struck. "What?"
"You're ready and willing to stake my boyfriend, even when you can't kill your own, huh?" Willow said. A part of her couldn't believe that she was talking this way to her friend, but that part of her was strangely detached. It was like she was watching herself from a distance.
"Willow, I didn't kill Oz."
"Maybe you didn't actually end his life, but if it wasn't for you, he wouldn't be dead!" Willow was yelling now. "And he is! He's dead!" With that she flung herself at Buffy, knocking the Slayer down. The two girls tumbled through the grass in the dark cemetary, Buffy trying to grab Willow's wrists as Willow tried to hit the Slayer repeatedly. At last, Buffy succeeded in flinging Willow off herself, and stood up. Willow got up slowly, glaring at Buffy through tear-stained eyes.
"Xander was right," she said. "I'm sorry I ever met you." Willow turned and ran from the cemetary.
She was out of earshot, and couldn't hear a stunned Buffy say softly, "So am I."
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