main character(s): Willow, mention of Oz, Spike
disclaimer: I hold no legal rights to any character from Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel the series - both were created by Joss Whedon.
distribution: Jinni, Paula, Wic, NHA, WLS, anyone else ask.
note: Jinni's weekly poetry challenge #9. Set just after Wild at Heart in season 4.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"He
was my north, my south, my east and west;
My
working week, my Sunday best;
My
noon, my midnight, my talk, my song.
I
thought that love would last forever, ... I was wrong. "
-- W.H. Auden, 'Song IX' from 'Twelve Songs'
* * * * *
Willow remained on the bed, a slow trickle of tears seeping down from her eyes to dampen her hair and the pillow beneath her head. She didn't bother to wipe at them, there would just be more. Besides, she didn't quite care if they were there. Who would see them? Buffy was out at a party, and Oz...
Oz was the reason that she was laying here, her eyes seeping tears.
Not that it was something he'd done alone. No, it had been a combination of Oz and that nasty, skanky singer, Verruca. The bitch. In this case, it was literal - Verruca was another werewolf. Or had been, before Oz had killed her. But that wasn't why Willow felt so... broken.
Oz had slept with Verruca. They'd had wild, wolfy sex. Twice - well, two nights of it, anyhow. He'd claimed that it was to keep her from hurting anyone, from killing people while she was the wolf.
Nobody had kept her from hurting Willow. Oz hadn't even kept her from trying to come after Willow. Not after she'd walked in on them naked in the crypt that Oz used to confine his wolfy self after they'd had to blow up the high school.
And now Oz was gone. He'd just... left town, vanished as soon as he'd changed back and found pants.
He hadn't even bothered to say goodbye.
Everything inside felt cold, half numb and half bleeding pain. She couldn't sleep, her mind just replaying bits and peices of That Day, from finding them naked, to her near-vengeful casting, to Verruca attacking, Oz and Verruca fighting, Oz nearly killing her, and Oz just... running away. Her eyes hurt from all the tears, and she hadn't been able to eat - everything tasted flat, like ashes.
Buffy and Xander weren't certain what to do about this, so they were elsewhere. Probably with their special someones. Probably happy and smiling and feeling special and attractive and loved.
Her hands clenched on the striped sheet as she pictured them. They were out being happy, being loved, while she was here, alone in a dorm room. The only light was coming in through the window, the harsh, cold light of the moon. It wasn't full anymore, but had moved into the slow withering that followed. Waning moon. Dying moon. The moon that had held so much power in her life for the past two years.
The moon was dying. Where was Oz, was he safe? Did he think about her, did he care at all about the place that he'd left, the lives that he'd touched? Did he know that he seemed to have ripped her heart out and taken it away with him? Would he care?
Her eyes fluttered closed as she tried to picture Oz, driving away in his van. The moon would continue to shrink, becoming a tiny sliver and then nothing. The New moon, the dark moon. Often associated with dark magic, with death, with birth and rebirth.
What if there was no rebirth? What if there was no starting over after this hideous, horrible ending? Oh, the moon would come back, it always did. The moon was governed by science, by orbits and gravity and eclipsing shadows, not by pain and grief and magic. No matter how many people equated the moon to magic, and symbolism.
Opening her eyes, Willow glanced over, towards the dying moon. "I want this pain to end. please?"
The moon did not answer, not that Willow had expected it to. She'd just wanted to speak her desire, if that was the right word. She didn't feel strongly, nothing seemed quite capable of doing anything strongly. It was as if she was floundering in pain, breathless and hurty-numb and exhausted.
Someone pounded on the door. Had Buffy forgot her keys? Been too busy thinking about Riley and how wonderful things were to think about how to get back inside? That would be typical of Buffy, actually. "Come in."
The door was practically kicked from it's hinges, and flung into the wall with a soft crunching. Backlit by the bright hall lights, a figure stood with a billowing long coat and almost glowingly pale hair stood. Perhaps a heartbeat or two later, he was inside, heading towards the beds with a growl.
Spike was in her dorm room. This was not a good thing.
Willow managed to shrink into the corner, her body shaking. Spike was here, Spike was growling. "Wh-what do you want?"
"Got a message for your friend the Slayer. It's all about her friends and their idea of hospitality." He was still growling, his eyes golden and angry as he looked at her.
"What friends?" Willow was looking at Spike, still shaking, now realizing that she could still be afraid. Was this it? Was she about to die?
"The ones in camouflage, you." He glared at her, and then stopped. "Sod this, I don't feel like explaining it all to you."
He moved towards her in an eye-blurring lunge, and then he was on top of her, pinning her to the bed with one hand to either side of her. The position was ironically, horribly close to an act of intimacy, and she could feel the lean muscles of his legs against hers. He had a tiny scar on his neck, just underneath his jaw.
And then his cool lips were at her throat, his tongue sliding over her racing pulse. It felt almost nice, or at least, it might have felt nice if Willow hadn't been so hurt and frightened. That was right before his sharp teeth slid into her skin, with a series of tiny popping sensations, and she could feel the blood gushing out. Willow let out a tiny whimper.
Willow didn't understand why Spike whimpered as well. It was her throat that had been bitten, her blood pouring out, pouring into his mouth. Her skin ripped open and protesting, her heart trampled and shredded. But he slid his arms around her and under her, pulling her closer to him as he drank.
She would have thought that it would hurt more, somehow. But she was feeling cool and numb now, the pain of her torn skin washed away by the flow of blood and the steady suction of his cool lips. The light had dimmed - was the moon dying? No, she was dying.
Something inside of her seemed to stir, to flutter about like a hummingbird on the wrong side of a window. She was dying! There were so many things that she'd never had a chance to do, places that she hadn't gone. She'd never gone overseas, or white water rafting. She wouldn't have a chance to be a wife, a mother. No more chances for anything.
The fluttering something seemed to break free, and at last, nothing hurt anymore. She felt a bit uncertain when she realized that she seemed to be floating, and looking down at herself, held against Spike's body, with his face at her throat. Her own head was tilted back, eyes wide and unseeing pools of green, her mouth parted as if in surprise.
Where had all the light come from? The moon wasn't that bright, was it? Everything felt very light, as if she was floating, and then. it was hard to describe. It was as if the dorm room, and Willow on the bed in Spike's arms was blurring and dimming, like a movie fading out of focus. Except that it was everything around her blurring away, blurring into a sort of gray light.
With a possible swallow - did she have a throat to swallow with? Willow tried to prepare herself. It seemed that she'd sort of gotten her wish after all. The pain of Oz and college and. well, life was over now. Her life was over. Now, she was about to discover what really happened on the other side. Maybe she'd see Jesse again?
The End