A Time to Mourn...A Time to Rejoice

PART ELEVEN

It was Oz.

Oz the werewolf. Oz the musician. Oz her boyfriend. They looked at each other, their gazes fixed. And Willow remembered. Remembered playing in the schoolyard with Xander, remembered Cordelia laughing at her clothes, remembered researching till all hours of the night with Giles, remembered Buffy.

Remembered Oz.

Willow felt as if she would faint, and looked away. She'd lived eight years as Mary Anderson. She had eight years of memories that were entirely disconnected from the first eighteen. Having the two suddenly joined together was unsettling, confusing. Strange. Raising her head, she saw that Oz had stopped his futile efforts to kill the demon, and was instead coming towards her, his eyes alight with a kind of painful hope. She moved towards him, almost in a daze. Then the demon's hissing intensified further, and her attention was dragged away.

To Buffy. The blonde slayer was still on the floor, unmoving save for the tiny rocking back and forth.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she kept repeating. "I should have gone. I should have saved you. I could have stopped them. It's all my fault. Oh, Willow, Willow!" Willow crouched down beside her old friend, her lips curving involuntarily as she remembered the good times the two of them had shared. Playing 'anywhere but here', dancing at the Bronze, doing homework together.

"Buffy. Listen to me." Buffy carried on, oblivious to Willow's presence. Willow's resolve face came into play. "Buffy! Stop that! Willow's alright. I'm alright." Still Buffy showed no signs of comprehension, but she had stopped rocking and crying, which Willow figured had to be good. "Buffy, listen to me. It's me. I'm Willow. I'm here, and nobody's hurt me. Or exsanguinated me," she added. "And, okay, eight years not knowing who I was, but that wasn't your fault! None of this is your fault. You might be the Slayer, but you're not omnipotent."

Buffy looked into the face of her new friend, and saw the truth. Willow wasn't dead. She was alive. She was here. She was safe. Well, as safe as anyone could be just before they were dragged into Hell. Leaving aside the guilt issue, Buffy concentrated on the fact that Willow wasn't dead; wasn't blaming her. Okay. She could deal with some half-witted wannabe demon. I mean, she was the slayer an' all. She leapt up (dislodging Willow in the process) and renewed her attack on the demon. The demon, who had been getting along quite nicely thank you, and was nearing the end of his whole hissing routine, didn't expect to be clobbered by the slayer he thought he had disarmed with his cunning Jedi-thought-tactics, and stopped hissing. While the sudden stop of a disorienting and loud hissing would be considered in most people's books a jolly good thing, in the demon's book, it was rated very definitely as A Bad Thing. You see, the problem with the demon's dragging-the-whole-world-into-Hell plan was that there was a time factor involved. Random demons couldn't just pop into this reality on a whim. There were rules, protocol. If you had a prophecy, there was a certainly leniency. But woe betide your evil plans if you stayed too long without actually fulfilling said evil plans. The hissing routine had actually taken nearly half an hour. There wasn't enough time to start again. The demon's plans were screwed.

The demon wasn't happy at this. In fact, the demon was about ready to blow his top. But the demon did actually possess common sense beyond that of your common-or-garden demon. He was a demon with brains. And he wasn't prepared to have those brains splattered about a library by a 5'2" slayer. He made a graceful retreat back into Hell.

And all was calm.

And anti-climactic.

***************

Giles looked at the young woman sitting on the floor. It was Willow. It really was. He hadn't been able to believe it when he heard her talking to Buffy, but as he watched her and Oz looking at each other, he realised that it was true. Willow had come back. There were a hundred questions to be asked, but at the moment all he could concentrate on was the reappearance of his friend. A thought occurred to him. She must have known; must have realised that she was Willow. The way she reacted to Buffy - there hadn't been any surprise. How long had she known her identity?

Willow. She was dead. Xander had spent so long trying to accept the fact that she was actually gone that he found himself resenting the fact that she had turned up again. If it was Willow. But as he looked over Cordy's shoulder to where his oldest friend was exchanging meaningful looks with Oz, he realised that it couldn't be anyone else.

Well, the demon was gone, and peace was at last restored - temporarily - to Sunnydale, CA. Another good day's slaying, Buffy congratulated herself. Okay, so she'd been a bit of a basket-case there for a while, but she'd dealt. Thanks to Willow. Willow who was now eyeing up Oz like there was no tomorrow. Hmm, time for a quick exit on the part of the gang. Giles looked as if he was about to break into question, and Xander also looked about ready to get in the way. Buffy had a mushy heart.

***************

Willow and Oz barely noticed the others surreptitiously leaving what remained of the library. They were too busy drinking in every atom of the other's appearance. It had been eight years, and for every day of those years Oz had missed Willow. He missed her as much now as he had done then, and suddenly, his girlfriend was returned to him. Alright, she was older, and had dark hair, but Oz knew better than anyone that the colour of your hair has nothing to do with your personality.

He didn't want to rush her, though. She was a different person now. She wasn't an innocent eighteen year old schoolgirl anymore. She was an adult. She had made her way in a world without her friends. That had been her decision. Oz wondered briefly why she'd come back, then realised that she couldn't have left by choice. No, when Mary Anderson had materialised in the library - the others had told him about it - she'd had no idea that she was their dead friend. Ex-dead friend.

Willow watched warily as Oz sat, seemingly deep in thought. What was he thinking? She'd never been able to tell. Was he blaming her? For not coming forward when she realised who she was? For leaving in the first place?

"I couldn't remember anything."

"I figured that."

"Oh."

There was a pause. Willow grinned faintly as she remembered feeling exactly the same when she approached Oz on Buffy's seventeenth birthday.

"So, you're still, um, doing the band?"

"Yeah."

"Oh."

There was another pause.

"So, do you have another girlfriend?"

"No."

"Good. I mean, not good in a 'you don't have a girlfriend' way, 'cause that's bad, I mean everyone wants a girlfriend, right? I mean, obviously, girls don't, that is unless..." Oz smiled. Nope, it was still Willow.

"Willow, be quiet."

"What? I mean...ohhh"

***************

Giles cast a querying look at Buffy as she brought her head back round the library door. "Well?" Buffy smiled. Actually, she grinned. Very much in the way that the cat-with-cream grinned.

"They're happy. Let's go get a burger. I'm starving."

Down in the darkness something stirred...

The demon might have been defeated once, but there was always next time. And there were other hellmouths. He just picked the wrong one. It was a mistake any demon could make.

THE END

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