A/N: Okay, apologies all around. I know this took forever, but finals kicked my ass, and I'm getting ready for a new job posting and training for basic, and it's all very exhausting. Hopefully the next one won't take so long! However, I think because there was such a long gap of time between this and the last chapter, there might have been a shift in tone. Hopefully this is where things'll start getting good. So I hope you guys will bear with me a while longer! Enjoy.

There sure was a lot of meat in Romania.

Oz and Willow, through whatever luck it was that befell people like them, had managed to locate what had to be the most terrifyingly dilapidated hole-in-the-wall quick service restaurant the country had to offer. There were nicer, cleaner establishments as little as two or three miles deeper into the inner-city, of course, but those mainly catered to tourists. Local eateries in the slums had no such luxuries. It was within walking distance from the Cuza household, though, and was in fact the first place Oz and Willow had come across in their flight; that alone bumped the place up to the pair's first choice. It was a narrow, crackerbox building with apartment housing upstairs, boasting only four tables and a mismatched collection of chairs. The heavy stench of grease had long since been absorbed by yellowed, aging walls, and the floor was inlaid with cheap, peeling linoleum that seemed in desperate need of a good mopping. There were no menus. The one on duty chef had demanded their orders, and Oz, with his limited proficiency in Angry Balkans Dude, communicated their desire for cooked foodstuffs in return for currency as best he could. The result was identical plates of unidentifiable meat product.

Willow did not begin to care. She had gulped down an apple on her way out the door first thing that morning, but she had since been subsisting only on the coffee her new companion had brought her earlier in the day, and her improvised spell had badly drained her energy reserves on top of it. Willow was hunger. She devoured the contents of her plate indiscriminately, and god help her, it was delicious.

"I bet this is one of those secret places sophisticated foodies blog about," Willow mused around a gravy-sodden gulp. "Like, the big list of eastern European dives where only rich hipsters and natives get their chow on."

"There's a list of those?" Oz asked.

Willow shrugged.

It was the most he had said since they'd arrived. Not that Oz was normally a chatterbox, but The Situation (as Willow was rapidly starting to think of it) was weighing heavily on his shoulders. He had spent the meal staring into his meatballs with his brow furrowed, as if they could give him guidance. Anxiety tugged at the edges of Will's mind. His discomfort was hers.

Not knowing what to say, she pushed one of her own remaining meatballs listlessly around her plate. It was a mess. A bad one. She couldn't buy more than a few days before Xander would get nervous and make damn sure Elena's problems became the problems of the slayers at large. And yes, okay, maybe that was the right way to go here, but Willow wasn't sure. They weren't dealing with a big bad. This was a 14-year-old girl with a relatively normal life, and if she could be spared, it wouldn't be right dragging her into the Buffyverse. Once you're in it, you're in it; once you know, you know. There's no undoing it. No way to be 14 ever again.

And anyway, none of this was even technically her business. This was Oz's matter, and he needed to call the shots. Willow had invited herself in, and there were complexities at work that she didn't understand, not being a werewolf. It would be a mistake to try and take over. He looked stressed enough as it was.

Then, a thought struck Willow. Oz took off from Sunnydale, and for six long years, he lived a quiet, comfortable life among a cloister of gentle monks. It was as close to normal as a man like Oz could get. Then, ho ho, here comes Uberwitch, crossing his path like a damn black cat, and bang, mysterious possible possession marauding as garden variety lycanthropy. Maybe it was her. Maybe she brought trouble with her wherever she went. The notion froze the breath in her lungs, and Willow gasped.

Oz glanced up. "You okay?"

She quickly turned the gasp to a cough and bent over sideways, one hand over her chest for effect. Oz's eyes grew wide with alarm, but Willow took a swig out of her waterbottle and waved him off.

"Went down the wrong pipe," she croaked. "No big deal."

Alarm faded to concern. He didn't look happy, but he didn't look ready to leap over the table and perform the Heimlich maneuver, either.

"So..." Willow began once her pulse had returned to normal. "Got a plan cookin' in all that silence?"

It was Oz's turn to shrug. He had returned to his meal, but he was chewing very slowly, very thoughtfully. The man even masticated with intent. Not for the first time, Willow found herself wishing desperately for a glimpse inside his head. She never would, ever, but it was so hard to know what he was thinking, and so hard to find the patience to deal with it. This wasn't how things were done in the Slayer Corps. People just.. spoke. Freely and often.

"I'm kinda hoping Elena and her family will reach a peaceful consensus and pack her up before we get back," he admitted. Willow nodded in wistful agreement. It wasn't likely, but it was a nice thought. "I don't suppose you could mojo them all into being reasonable."

Willow's head snapped up, and an unfamiliar heaviness settled over her. He didn't know. Great Goddess above, she had forgotten that someone, somewhere didn't know. It felt... it felt wonderful and liberating and horrible in equal measure. Part of her was relieved. Shame still hung thick and heavy around Willow, and the idea that Oz didn't know, didn't think of her like that – of course she liked it. Of course she did. His memory of the girl in the Eskimo outfit costume wasn't tarnished by all the things she had done. It occurred to Willow that Oz was probably the last person alive capable of remembering her that way without the taint of who and what she really was. The thought was comforting and horrifying all at once.

Opening her mouth to respond, Willow hesitated, and then decided to sidestep the issue entirely. No need to drag old demons out into the light.

"I could," she admitted, "but it's best not to. Messing with someone else's will is tricky. Messy, even."

The man who had changed so little, in some ways, shot her a tired smile. "Just kidding."

Oh.

Of course he was.

Dammit, Willow.

"You've gotten really good, though, huh? At this magic thing."

Willow nodded. This Magic Thing. If she ever wrote an autobiography, that would be the title. "Yeah. You could say that. Have to be careful, though. Everything comes at a price."

Oz met her eyes with something she couldn't name. He was so fierce, so wild, and his single-minded intensity poured into her, hot and strange and mystifying. He saw more than she gave him credit for, maybe. She suddenly hated him for it.

She turned back to her meal.

Dusk was falling outside their horrible little eatery. They'd have to get back soon and make sure Willow's spell had done its job. She was confident it had, though, and between the force of her mojo and the Cuza's vacuum-sealed light-proofed cave, Willow was certain Elena would be fine. But a light-provoked transformation. That was strange. Werewolves were bound to the cycle of the moon, but they changed whether the light touched them or not. In some cases, they changed entirely at will, moon cycle be damned. The actual light served no practical function.

It sort of reminded Willow of Swan Lake. Princess Odette, if she recalled her Russian ballet correctly, was cursed to live as a swan, and could only resume her human form at night, when moonlight touched her feathers. What they had on their hands was a weird inversion of the classic story. It had been so long, though. Willow couldn't remember the details. She had last seen the production in high school, if the Don Bluth movie didn't count, and she was pretty sure it didn't.

But... wait. Wait, wait. The ballet was just a ballet, but the story was taken from Russian folk lore, Willow was pretty sure. With just a couple hundred miles dividing Russia and Romania, there was a lot of fairy tale overlap. That was a big gap to account for, sure, but...

Mind flying ahead of her hands, Willow dug through her purse and unearthed her phone. Thank the gods for modern technology; seconds later she was googling the story's origin, eyes flying across the screen.

"Hey," she said, "hey, I think-"

A shudder cut her off.

Oz and Willow locked eyes. They could both feel it. The surly Romanian cook continued to putter around the back as if nothing was happening, but the energy over Dristor had been pulled unnaturally taut, like a rubber band ready to snap. Magic was being done. Big magic. And it was close.

They leapt to their feet in unison. Willow barely remembered to grab her purse before they ran out the door, leaving half-eaten mystery meals behind. It was a good thing the cook had demanded payment up front; they weren't stopping for anything, and he seemed like the sort to chase down bill-skipping tourists.

So they ran. It was later than Willow had thought. The sun had already disappeared behind the horizon, and chill was setting once more into the air. The sky was still shot through with beams of pink and orange, but it was fading fast, and the streets were uncomfortably empty. No cars. No people. No stray dogs, even. The only sounds were made by Oz and Willow themselves; their boots slapping the pavement, their ragged, uneven breath. Willow's hair was getting long again and it streamed out behind her, lovely but dull in the dimness. The unnatural tension was growing. Getting worse. It made the hair stand up on the back of her neck. It made her want to scream.

Instead, she ran.

When they reached the Cuza's tenement, all seemed well. That was the tip off. It was too still, too calm, too perfect, like someone had hit the pause button on a security feed. The air around the building shimmered with wrongness, and Willow had to fight the overwhelming urge to walk away, to go do something else.

"What is it?" Oz gasped. He sounded like the wind had been knocked out of him.

"Wards," was Willow's grim response. "Strong ones. Ward of Misdirection, I think. Someone pulled a whole lot of energy out of the air to make anything that happens in this building unnoticable. People won't even want to approach it. Great security."

"Can you break it?"

"Like a piggy bank."

Strong as these strange wards were, Willow was still Willow. It only took a few moments. She reached out along the protected bubble, searching, grasping for the crack. The point of weakness. It was difficult to force so much energy to do something it didn't want to do, and all she had to do was release it, like poking a pin into a water balloon. With a mighty, thunderous crack, she did just that, and the spell came crashing down.

The Cuzas' door had been broken through. It was a gaping, splintered wreck. Even from the courtyard, Willow and Oz could now hear the screaming inside. They ran.

Four strange men stood inside. They were tall, thin and dark, wild-looking and fierce, but in an entirely different way from the werewolf by Willow's side. There was a gauntness about them. A reckless hunger. They froze at the interruption and everyone shared a tense glance; one of the men held Mr. Cuza by the throat, knife in hand, while one covered him, another bore down on Elena, and the fourth was exploring the stage of Willow's last spell.

A heartbeat passed. No one moved. Suddenly, an order was barked, Willow saw the knife slide into Elena's father. Blood spilled across the weathered floor. Mr. Cuza took a final, gurgling gasp of life, and there was nothing but the fight.

It happened quickly. Too quickly to make sense of. Everyone flew into action at once, hair whipping, boots pounding, screams ripping through the evening stillness. Oz let loose a bone-rattling howl; when had he changed? Willow didn't know. He was on the man that held the knife, ripping out his throat with a vicious snarl, while Mr. Cuza's lifeless form slumped glassy-eyed to the floor. The air was thick with the coppery stench of fresh blood. Elena was crouched in a corner, shaking and sobbing incoherently, and her grandmother had thrown her frail arms boldly across the child. It was the only protection she had to offer. One of the men lurched towards them, but with a crack of red-hot magic, Willow tore him away.

It came as a surprise when her body went rigid with the strike of a magical counter-attack. Normally when Willow hit something, it didn't hit back.

Caught off-gaurd, she found herself skidding across the floor. An upward glance was filled with the approaching form of the fourth assailant, the one that had been poking around the site of Willow's last casting. In his upraised hand he clutched something long, jagged, old and off-white, and she knew instantly that it was not an artifact she wanted to tangle with. Before he brought it down upon her, Willow screeched the ancient phrase that pulled the air around her taut in a momentary shield. Her attacker ricocheted with the force of it.

"Oz!" she screamed. "Oz! We have to go! Elena! Get Elena!"

One of the men had torn the grandmother off the girl and thrown the old woman against the corner of a wall. She now lay motionless and broken, a pool of blood around her head. Some distant part of Willow thought it looked like a halo. Oz had dispatched her murderer like a dog worrying a rope; his disembodied arm had somehow landed on the other side of the room. Willow tried not to look at it. She scrambled to her feet, slipping in someone's blood as she did, and somehow summoned the strength to lash the final two attackers in their place, her arms shaking with the effort.

Oz, human again, hoisted Elena over his shoulder and booked ass. (Literally, Willow noted – his clothes were in a shredded pile near the doorway.) It gave Willow a moment to peer into the eyes of the violent ringleader. Something horrible gazed back. He stood there, clutching his instrument and memorizing her face, emanating hatred in hot and horrible waves.

Willow couldn't look away. For a moment, just the fastest of heartbeats, she thought she was looking at herself.

She ran.

Snagging her purse on her way, Willow stumbled out the splintered doorway and tripped her way down the stairs two and three at a time. She landed hard, twisting her ankle, but kept going. Oz had planted Elena in the courtyard and was turning to run back into the fray, but Willow gestured for him to stay put. With shaking hands, she pulled out a jar of pre-prepared herbs and began drawing three interlocking circles around her allies. Her power wouldn't hold them for long, being divided like this. They had only seconds. She dropped to the ground and began raising the energy necessary for a transport spell.

A clatter from the bloodied apartment unit told them all the attackers had broken free. But it didn't matter; the earth was trembling. The circles began to glow with amber tinted resonance. Willow felt the tug that meant she would soon be hurtling through a homemade temporal fold, and through all the chaos and panic, she felt a tingle of victory rushing through her veins. They'd done it. They were going to get away.

"Willow!"

At the last moment, Willow glanced up. Elena was crouched on the patchy grass, arms around herself, screaming. Dusk was just gone. Moonlight, weak and watery but moonlight all the same, was washing over the courtyard, and Elena was changing.

And then they were gone.