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 Two
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He fought.
He fought his way upwards. Wood strained, groaned, and snapped under repeated blows.
He fought.
Kicking and punching his way upwards, he clawed through moist earth.
He fought.
New strength flowed through him, a powerful feeling he'd never known before. New drives, unfamiliar motivations, fresh hunger consumed his thoughts.
He fought.
And finally, his hands broke through to cool air. He scrabbled his way up and pushed through until his head broke the surface and he felt cool night air against his skin. Black clumps of earth cascaded off him, down through his line of vision, through which he saw he was not alone. There was a girl there, fresh, warm, vital. There was food for him here.
He roared.
* * *
Oz roared as he caught sight of Buffy, and Buffy stood unable to move for a full five seconds. She couldn't understand why she couldn't make herself just stake him. She'd staked Ford, and he'd been her first love. She'd staked Theresa, who'd been a friend.
But this was Oz. Willow's Oz. And what Willow had said was still too fresh in her mind to dismiss it. She was waiting here to kill Oz while she'd proven unable to kill Angel. The truth hurts, sometimes.
Then Oz charged, snarling, barrelling into Buffy and knocking her over. She twisted away and managed to evade his grasp, but Oz got to his feet as quickly as she did. His face was twisted with rage and hunger, and his demonic visage made it easier for Buffy not to think of him as the same Oz who'd helped them in so many situations over the last few months. No, she told herself. This is the demon that killed Oz. The demon I unleashed.
Her self-pity was interrupted as Oz ran at her again. Again he cannoned into her, knocking her down, this time by a tree. Had she been standing two feet further back, her head would have smacked into the tree's trunk. As it was, she felt a protruding root digging into her back as Oz tried to pin her shoulders to the ground. Buffy kicked up with her legs, throwing Oz up and over her head. He slammed into the trunk of the tree and slid to the ground, dazed.
Buffy ran over to finish him off, but he lashed out with one hand. His claws caught her on the upper chest, which was exposed by the tank top she wore, missing her throat by only a few inches. With a cry she fell backwards, and Oz took advantage of the opportunity to sprint away from her and out of the cemetary.
Buffy touched her chest and felt the warm, sticky wetness that indicated that Oz had drawn blood. But it didn't seem fatal, and if she didn't take care of Oz soon, it *would* be fatal for someone. With a grunt of pain, she picked up herself up off the ground and ran after him.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, out of breath and lightheaded, she ran into the Sunnydale High library. As she hoped, Giles was there, hunched over a book at the central table.
He looked up as she burst through the double doors. "Buffy, you're bleeding," he said as he stood up, his voice full of concern.
"Later," she gasped. "Oz is a vampire."
Giles took off his glasses. "Good God."
"We need... we need to find him," Buffy said. "I followed him... as far as the courtyard... but I lost him there." Something was wrong. It shouldn't have taken her this long to catch her breath.
"Well, um... uh, how did he... "
Buffy knew what he was going to ask and cut him off. "Angel." She spat the word out.
"Ah. Yes. Um, well, that would mean that he's... er, infected, if you will, with a piece of... um, of Angel's demon."
"And that means... that he'll follow Angel's M.O."
Giles nodded. "Yes. At least until he's, um, fed, and the demon's personality merges with his own."
"Willow," Buffy breathed. And then fell down.
"Buffy!" The Watcher was at her side in an instant.
Buffy's eyelids fluttered open. "I'll be fine," she said in a weak voice that was almost a whisper. "Go... to Willow's. Stop Oz."
"But..."
"Go!" The effort was too much, and Buffy slumped to the ground, unconscious.
Giles looked at the Slayer's tiny form sprawled on the floor of the library, then grabbed his leather satchel and bolted out of the library.
* * *
Willow was sleeping, but she was far from peaceful. A small crease formed between her eyebrows, and her lips parted in a tiny frown. She let out a tiny moan and shifted restlessly in her bed.
Her dreams were clearly not happy ones.
Oz peered through the window at her, and bared his jagged fangs in a grin.
* * *
In her dream, Willow was supposed to be the ultimate fighting champion. She stood in the middle of the ring, with three vampires grinning at her. Looking down, she saw that she was wearing this form-fitting black unitard... thing that hugged her figure far too tightly and that left her arms and legs bare. She squeaked and wrapped her arms around herself, trying to hide, but it didn't feel like it was doing any good. Outside the chicken wire that formed the boundary of the ring stood Buffy, Xander, Giles, and Cordelia, staring in at her. Her friends were chanting, but it wasn't her name they repeated.
"Vam-pires... vam-pires... vam-pires..." they said in unison. They were rooting against her!
Willow felt out of place. She didn't know how she'd gotten into this situation. She didn't know how to fight. She didn't *want* to fight.
"I just want to go home!" she wailed. Vampires and spectators laughed at her.
Then the vampires started to advance on her. Not knowing what else to do, Willow burst into tears. The laughing from outside the ring got louder.
She felt so all alone.
Then she heard a voice. "Willow!" it said. She looked around frantically as the vampires backed her into a corner of the ring. "Willow!" the voice repeated. It sounded familiar. It sounded like...
"Oz!" she cried as she sat up in her bed, suddenly awake. She was in her room. She was wearing her nightshirt. There were no vampires. And no friends, either. And Oz was dead. A string of swear words she would never dare to utter out loud passed through her mind, and it made her feel a little better.
"Willow!" Her head whipped around as the voice from her dream repeated her name. It was coming from the outside door, and it still sounded like Oz.
She got up and padded barefoot over to the door, and pushed the curtain aside to see Oz looking at her through the window. A wave of numbness passed through her, and she shivered. "Oz?"
"Willow! Let me in!" Oz said, his voice urgent.
"But... but you're dead!"
He shook his head. "No... no I'm not. It was, like, a near-death thing."
Could it be? Willow's head spun. She wanted to open the door... but what if...
"C'mon, Willow, let me in!" he repeated. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she was able to make out further details... like the streaks of soil that lined his face and suit.
Suit?
Then she knew it was all real. The funeral, the burial. And that could only mean that Oz was a vampire.
"No." She said, letting the curtain snap back into place and walking backwards from the door. Irrationally, the thought passed through her head that maybe if she was really quiet, he'd go away.
But Oz started banging on her door. "Willow, let me in!" he growled, his voice growing rough and animalistic. "Let me in!"
"Go away!"
There was a snarl from behind the door and the banging stopped. Then she heard Giles voice. "You heard her. Go on, get out of here." Willow rushed back to the door and pulled the curtain aside to see. Giles was standing where Oz had been a moment before, holding a wooden cross at arm's length. Oz was cowering before it, hissing. Giles' other hand rummaged through the leather satchel he wore.
Oz bared his fangs and hissed again, then turned and ran away into the night.
Giles turned. "Oh, er, Willow. Hello," he said, catching sight of her face in the window. "I... uh... are you all right?"
She nodded, then opened the door. "How did you know?" she asked.
"Buffy sent me."
"Buffy." Willow said the word as if it were a curse.
"Yes, Buffy," Giles repeated, clearly not comprehending. "What's the matter?"
"Well, if you look at it, this is sorta all her fault."
"Now look here... Buffy is lying on the floor of the library... " Then he caught himself. "My God, Buffy! Um... I'd better go and take care of her injuries."
"Buffy's injured?" Willow asked.
"Yes. Rather badly, it seemed. But she insisted that I come and make sure that Oz didn't... um, get you. Will you be all right?"
Willow nodded. "Yeah." Giles turned to leave, but stopped when Willow said, "Giles?"
"Yes?"
"Take care of her."
"I will." With that, the Watcher walked off.
Troubled, Willow returned to bed.
* * *
She dreamed again.
The sky was a deep, dark blue, and strange white lines rose up from somewhere beyond the horizon. She stood transfixed. Something about those white lines looked so familiar.
Then a figure walked towards her. It was backlit by the light from the strange white lines, so she couldn't make out any features for several minutes. At last the figure came close enough for her to see it.
It was Oz.
"No..." she mumbled, but she found that she couldn't move. Her feet were rooted to the spot.
"No, hey, it's okay," Oz said gently. As he came closer, she could see that his face was... well, it was normal. It was him. "It's me," he said, and she knew that it was, it really was.
"Oz," she breathed. "You... I mean... you're... "
"Yeah." He was standing right in front of her now. "But listen. You gotta stop blaming Buffy. It really isn't her fault." His voice dropped to a whisper. "You *know* it isn't."
"Oz, if it wasn't for her..."
He cut her off. "If it wasn't for her, maybe some other vampire would've killed me. Maybe... maybe Devon would have plugged in the mike wrong and I would've gotten electrocuted." He smiled at her, and she felt tears welling up in her eyes. Oz and the sky and the strange white lines all became an indistinct blur. "We don't know what's gonna happen. All we can do is make the most of what we have while we have it. Don't throw what you have away, Willow. Don't throw away that friendship."
Willow knew he was right. Oh, god, the things she'd said. "But... but how..."
She felt his hand on hers, placing something in her hand. "You know what you have to do," he said.
She tried to hold on to his hand, to keep him from leaving again, but it was to no avail. His hand grew cloudy and indistinct in hers, and when she finally blinked her vision clear, he was gone.
Looking down, she saw what he'd left in her hand. It was a pair of glasses... it was *her* glasses, actually, the goofy little pair of glasses with the red plastic frames and the Flintstones on the earpieces that she'd worn when she was eight. There was no way they'd still fit.
But when she put them on, they fit perfectly and comfortably. She didn't even know they were there, which was weird because they'd been horribly uncomfortable when she'd had them originally. She peered through them and gasped.
The white lines had resolved into huge, crystal clear lines of Latin text scrolling against the dark blue background of the sky.
She knew what she had to do.
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