Oz stirred the tea bag in his mug as he watched the afternoon sun play in the leaves. He watched the way it dappled the leaves' shadows and the way it threw golden patterns on the grass. 'Beautiful,' he thought. Sometimes when he was sitting there, on the front porch of his cousin Jordy's house, he wondered if such beauty was possible in the simple way that the sunlight drifted down upon the earth, the simple way it brought light the scant hours before the moon rose. He took a perfunctory sip of his tea and then brought down the cup upon the whitewashed railing. The clanking noise it made as porcelain met aged wood echoed.



There was a satisfactory silence on the street. He was all alone, and that was the way he preferred things. He had always favored being solitary than being surrounded by people. He could sort things out better, then, when there was no one else but him to worry about. For the longest time, he had believed that being alone was the one thing he could count on in his life.

Then she appeared.

Not a day came when he didn't think of her. It was so natural now that it came as no surprise whenever she crossed his mind. There was no pain left, just a resigned numbness when it came to her.

Willow.

Beautiful.

The words were synonymous in his mind. He could never subconsciously separate the two. For all of his life, he had known that he was destined to be alone. He was Oz, therefore he was alone. But Willow came, and suddenly, everything changed. Everything transformed from its temporal, earthly state of being into a constant feeling of fire that he could barely keep hidden. And it could all be traced to this one woman, this ethereal creature that had merely looked up one day at his direction and stolen his very soul from his being.

Oz closed his eyes and allowed himself again to revisit everything from the beginning. He loved her. Wholly and completely loved her. He would do anything to have her back, save sacrifice her happiness. And she was happy with Tara.

So he must learn to be happy alone. It was the way he had been from the day he was born. Shouldn't he be used to it by now?

The porch door swung open behind him, startling him from his reverie. He jolted forward, and his hand clipped the cup perching on the railing. It teetered for one climactic moment before gravity took over and brought the cup and its contents onto the earth.

Oz turned around apologetically, but before he did so, there was movement on the street out of the corner of his eye. He turned his head, confused, searching for the source of the movement when there had been nothing there before. "Sorry," he muttered to his aunt, before heading into the house to grab something to clean up the mess he had made.

When Oz reappeared a few moments later with a broom and a dustpan, he saw the flash of movement again, and this time brought his eyes quick enough to the area where he knew he had seen it. There was nothing.

And yet...yet there it was. A rippling of air, exactly like the kind of sinuous liquid flow that appeared around the flame of a candlestick. And as Oz watched, something in that air cleared and he thought he could see a tiny glimpse of a figure and a shade of red that he knew well before it was gone and the air smoothened out.

The broom and dustpan fell from his lax hands as Willow appeared in the empty street. For one long moment, they stared at each other, eyes wide and questing, taking pleasure in the sight of someone they had lost long ago. She was there, real, not some foggy picture in his mind that played out behind closed eyes. Just a mere twenty feet away and it wouldn't take long to bridge that space with a few long strides.

But before he could bring his feet to move, she had turned around and was walking away.

She was gone before he realized that unless he did something, she would disappear and by then he was alone again.

"Willow," his voice resonated in the street, bringing back the sound of his tortured, pain wrenched voice.

Willow's hair started bouncing on her shoulders as she started running.

~*~

He was there. He was right in front of me, standing there, handsome in that aloof way of his. He was there and I walked away. You would think that I had learned my lesson the first damn time it had happened.

I never thought of what to do whenever I found him. It was something I was dreading. What did I do if I found him with someone else, happily in love? What did I do if he wanted nothing to do with me? Could I explain to him that I needed him to live or would I just leave, alone, and allow myself to die of wanting him?

Before that could even happen, however, I had just walked away. Submissive, compliant Willow who didn't want to get involved in anything that added unneeded stress.

You'd think I would learn.

Tonight was a full moon, and Oz would be out. I know it, just as much as I know that if I don't get that kiss in two days, I'll die.

I've never been afraid of dying. Not really. Living in Sunnydale where there are worse things than death kind of makes you realize that you shouldn't really be afraid of it. But if I died without telling him...

A coward's death. I'm not a coward. I'm Willow Rosenberg, best friend of Buffy the vampire slayer, and long-lost lover come back to tell the truth that needs to be said. I had forgotten he was mine. Had he forgotten too?

Did he love me?

...My whole life, I've never loved anything else...

Whispered words that rang in my ears told the truth that I had been denying for a very long time.

I fell asleep then, in the sun streaked hotel room that I had booked for two days. I fell asleep blissfully and entirely, slipping into blessed unconsciousness.

And I woke up later with a gasp from the sudden twist of pain that encircled my taut body, and I remembered that I could not afford to sleep, not when I barely had forty-eight hours left in my life.

Full moon. I slipped on my coat and walked out of the hotel room, closing the door behind me quietly.

The hotel was more extravagant than what I was used to. In the lobby, there had been a huge fireplace surrounded by bookcases full of books I guess people had left or given to the hotel. A chandelier dangled from the ceiling, looking like a thousand little diamond earrings hanging from golden strands. When I first saw it, I couldn't resist pushing out my hand and summoning up a little wind to make the diamonds jingle. The look on the bellboy's face as he watched the chandelier sway back and forth made me giggle.

It wasn't late, only about nine or so, but already the lobby had emptied of its daily inhabitants. I stepped to the fireplace, watching the flames leap and dance on the wood logs. The brilliance of the fire matched my hair. I knew that without looking.

Across the marbled hall that stretched away from the lobby, there was a little area that had tables and chairs set up. It was there for people who ate breakfast, I guess, but it was too late for breakfast, so I wondered why there was this guy sitting there, in the dark, jotting something down on a piece of paper. He sat in the dark, his figure hidden by shadows. Everything about him was dark, I could see that. Dark hair, dark eyes. Even the look on his face made me shudder. Grim determination, with a hint of cold triumph.

He was creepy.

I turned away from him and realized that the tables were on the way to the exit. I sighed, gathered my courage and briskly walked towards the glass doors that held my freedom. He got up as I started walking past him, and I crashed into his right arm. The papers he had been writing on fell from his hand and swirled to the floor.

"Oh...sorry," I groaned as I bent down to scoop them up. "I didn't mean to..."

One glance at the paper and I saw something that literally froze the words in my throat.

Full moon.

Silver.

Werewolf.

Oh dear. My eyes widened, and I knew that the person standing in front of me that gave me the creeps, the werewolf hunter was standing in front of me, hands outstretched, waiting for his notes. That was exactly what they were, just hastily scrawled notes, sort of like my shorthand notes I always took in high school and throughout college. But those four words I could decipher. Making sure to conceal my surprise and shock, I handed the papers back to him with a fake smile.

Tonight was a full moon. Oz would be out, with this werewolf hunter after him.

Finding Oz got more important all of a sudden. If I didn't, the two of us would die. There were worse things than your own death. But when it was the death of someone you loved... With a strangled sob, I ran out the door and into the chilled night. Oz was out here somewhere. And I had to find him. I had to.

~*~

Oz held it back for as long as he could. It was important that he get deep enough into the forest so that he didn't harm anyone. The moon was calling him; it was summoning him from his human existence into something deeper, something that was ancient and primitive. Usually he could ignore the moon's call. He could usually deafen himself to the way it drew his animalistic nature into the wild, but sometimes he couldn't.

Tonight was one of those times. There was no real way for him to escape it tonight, not with the way things had been going lately. He needed that release, that surge of power that overtook him as he let go of all the human worries and dropped into the wolf's needs and wants.

He could feel the hair growing on his arms. Was this deep enough? It didn't matter, he wouldn't be able to delay the transformation any longer. He tossed his head up at the moon and felt its ivory rays run raw power over his body.

He was alone. And he was grateful for it.

And just a few miles away, the one person who could directly impact both Oz's and Willow's life loaded silver bullets into his gun and smiled.

~*~