Chapter 8: Don't Walk Away From Me, Part II

Author's note 1: Read to the end before you yell at me. And let me know if the last bit gets too weird. It would be a lot easier if I could film this (if any major studio reads this, I'm open to offers).

Over the last few weeks, Xander had come to accept that his best friend was dating a werewolf. Willow was happy, so he was happy for her. And hey, Oz was a nice guy when there wasn't a full moon on. But he trusted him about as far as he could throw him (he thought that would be about eight feet), and when he turned the corner in the corridor and saw Oz pointing a gun at Willow, he didn't hesitate for a second. The gun went off harmlessly, obliterating a couple of ceiling tiles, as Xander tackled Oz and slammed his head and back into a row of lockers with enough force to almost knock the tiny guitarist out. For a few seconds there was commotion as no one understood quite what was going on; Oz wasn't fighting back when Willow finally managed to grab Xander and stop him from beating her boyfriend to a bloody pulp.

"XANDER! Stop it!" Willow was surprised at how steady her voice was, since her knees felt like they had turned to extra wobbly jell-O. "LISTEN to me. That wasn't Oz."

"Well it sure as hell looks like him!" Xander still wasn't about to let go, but Willow got in his face.

"Whatever it was possessed Oz got me too. Something was making us do this. Now let go of him!"

None of them noticed Sirk peaking out from the library door with a thin smile on his lips. Fighting amongst themselves. I really do not have a problem with that. He disappeared back inside.

Willow managed to pry Xander off her boyfriend and knelt next to him. Oz was looking down on the floor, gasping for breath in what she supposed was as close as he would come to panicking. "Oz... you OK?" She put her hand to his chin to get a closer look at his bruises, but he pushed her away and stumbled to his feet.

"Get away from me."

"Oz..."

"No. I..." For once his silence wasn't because he didn't need to speak but because there was nothing he could say. He ran, and Willow took off after him. Xander wanted to follow, but a withering look from Willow told him he wasn't wanted. He was still standing there, feeling his knuckles ache as Buffy ran up to him from the other direction.

"Xander... what happened? I was working out, and I thought I heard..."

"Oh, nothing you need to worry about." Xander's tone was furious. "Oz just tried to kill Willow, that's all. You know, I don't think I've told you how really grateful I am that you're keeping us safe, Buff."

"Oz did WHAT?" Buffy seemed to want to run after them, but Xander held her gaze.

"Do you care? She was trying to help you and it almost got her killed. I'm warning you. Until you're ready to be straight with us, stay the hell away from Willow – or any of us." He walked off before she had time to reply.

Willow caught up to Oz outside the school. "Oz, wait! Where are you going?"

"Will..." He tried to look her in the eye. "This is the second time in a just a few weeks that I've tried to kill you."

"But it wasn't your fault! First it was the wolf, a-and now some sort of... OK, I don't know what that was yet, but -"

"And if Xander hadn't stopped me, you would be dead. I'm sorry Will, but I meant everything I said before. I love you too much to risk that. I just... I need... I have to be somewhere you're not right now." Oz reached out and touched her cheek, then walked off. Willow didn't follow. A casual observer might have expected her to break into tears, and he would have been right, but he would also have been surprised at how quickly she choked them back as a look of determination came upon her face.

Xander had tried to reach Willow all evening yesterday, but she wasn't in. Eventually he'd gone over to Cordelia's and spent the night – not in a sex way, but just talked for a while and then fallen asleep side by side, feeling a bit safer together than alone. When they got to school the next day she made no attempt to hide that they arrived together, completely ignoring Harmony and her minions when they tried to make a big deal of it. He felt a bit proud at that, but most of what he felt was relief as he saw Willow come running up to them waving a bunch of books and loose papers, obviously speeding on caffeine.

"God, Will, I was so worried, is everything alright? Where's Oz?"

"He didn't come to school today. We're... on a break, I guess." Willow's mask almost cracked and Xander moved to hug her, but she went into resolve face and turned back to the papers. "Anyway, I've been researching all night. What possessed us was something powerful – something coming from grief and, uh... lost love. So I checked the school records for something that matched, and bingo." She held up a copy of a newspaper, a tragic love story: a student and a teacher who had an affair, and when it ended, the student killed his lover and then shot himself. Before Xander had had time to digest this, Willow had moved on to talking about how it had to be their ghosts that had possessed her and Oz.

"Stupid question?" Cordelia had been reading the article. "This happened in 1955. Why haven't there been any shootings until now?"

"Well, actually..." Willow looked very uncomfortable and lowered her voice. "You guys remember Johnny Willis and Maria Cortez? They were seniors last year?"

"Oh yeah", Cordelia muttered. "That girl was a total fashion disaster. I never got what he saw in her, I mean... wait, don't tell me." She stared at the paper Willow produced, listing dead and missing students by date. "Holy crap."

Willow nodded, still whispering. "Every year around this time, it seems a man and a woman either die or disappear mysteriously. Last year Johnny and Maria were found shot dead on campus. The year before that a teacher and a janitor, and the year before that, and the year before that... I got this out of the school's mainframe, there's nothing in the papers about it, but..."

"I guess it's not the kind of thing Sunnydale High wants everyone to know." Xander shook his head. "Man. So what do we do about it?"

"Well, I've been looking through Miss Calendar's spells and stuff and I think I've found one that would... what?"

Xander didn't seem to happy with that suggestion. "Will.. magic? Are you sure you should be messing with that? Hell, Buffy doesn't even want us to..."

"This isn't about Buffy, Xander! It's just... I can fix this." Starting to come apart again. "I need to fix this, I can't let Oz think this is his fault and -"

"OK, Will, OK." Xander tried to calm her down. "If you say it'll work, I'm sure it will. So what are we talking about exactly?"

"It's a simple spell. The reason they're haunting the school is probably because they have unfinished business and they will keep doing it until they get closure, say what they need to say. Only if they keep killing each other they can't do that, because, y'know, death. This will put their souls to rest. I think."

"You think?"

"Hey, new at this, remember? But I've triple-checked, and this is supposed to work. I'll just need to get some ingredients for the spell first."

"Ah yes, where does a 20th century witch procure her newt's eyes?"

"There's something called the Magic Box downtown, I'll try that. We'll meet up in one of the classrooms after school. OK?"

The day went by uneventfully, with no sightings of either Buffy or Oz. Eventually they met up in the empty chemistry room. Willow arranged the items she'd found at the Magic Box – which turned out to be a pretty neat place that she hoped to visit again soon – in front of her and sat down. "So, everyone clear on what to do?"

"We're going to... play Scrabble?" Xander nodded sceptically at the heap of plastic letters arranged between two votive candles and a bowl with some smelly herbs.

"No. Or well, yeah, sorta. This is kind of a variation on a ouija board. The spell will use the letters to, uh, spell out the names of whoever is haunting the place and then help them find reconciliation and peace. Ready?" Xander and Cordy exchanged a glance, then each lit a candle, and Willow took a deep breath, picked up the print-out from Jenny's computer and began chanting.

"Spirits of lovers died too soon
Thwarted happiness gone to ruin
Love been unjustly denied
Guilt that was not pacified
I pray you hear me, hear me well
You're bound to sympathy by this spell
You who died within these walls
Make your names be known to all
To reunite what's torn apart
Make your peace and then depart."

She put the paper down and looked at the letters. Nothing had happened.

Cordelia frowned. "That's it?"

"I think maybe s-" Suddenly the candles were blown out as a strong and somehow bright gust of wind swept through the room, through the herbs, through the Scrabble letters, then right into Willow who blinked once in shock before keeling over unconscious.

"WILL!" Xander was at her side immediately. She was out, but at least she was breathing, and he couldn't see any physical injuries. "Cordy, get the car, we're taking her to the hospital. I should never have let her..."

Cordelia held the door open as Xander carried the limp Willow outside. None of them thought to look at the letters, which had been blown around by the wind, some scattered throughout the room, some turned upside down, some broken – and some forming words. As the draft from the closing door blew away the herbs that had been strewn over the little plastic letters, not two but four names could clearly be read.

JAMES STANLEY

GRACE NEWMAN

JENNIFER CALENDAR

RUPERT GILES

And the spell started working. When it found four where it expected two, it went by seniority.

In the library, Sirk went over the locator spell again. Something was playing havoc with it tonight, like static on a radio. This couldn't be right. The Slayer was supposed to be by any minute now, and according to the spell, Angelus was on his way to...

"Bugger."

Sirk reached for his crossbow, checked around him to make sure he was alone, and then promptly made his way towards the back exit. They were not paying him to fight vampires.

Giles felt himself being pulled.

He had no eyes or ears to tell him that, yet somehow he knew. And even without senses, he recognized where he was going. This was the school. Why was he here? This wasn't where he...

Had he died? He thought so. He remembered Angelus defeating him, Drusilla grabbing him, biting down, his life ebbing away... And then nothing. No space, no time, no light, no darkness. Limbo.

This was different, though. He was in the world again, being pulled towards... something. He could feel other presences around him. Including Jenny. The same force that was pulling him was pulling her, but not to the same place, and though Giles tried to reach out to her he found himself being drawn together with someone else. Someone as non-corporeal as himself, yet someone
(bound to sympathy)
he could relate to; the one who broke it off, the one who wanted to protect, the one who was always unable to. And just as Giles was drawn into Grace, Jenny – the one who screwed up and had died risking all to be reunited with her love – was drawn into James. And there they hung. Bound. Waiting.

It was equal parts guilt and anger that had made Buffy stay out of school today. After checking from a safe distance that Willow was OK, she'd spent most of the day training and arguing with herself whether Xander was an asshole or if he had a point. The argument had ended in a tie, and a nagging doubt that maybe she was doing something wrong. She had gone along with Snyder's and Sirk's plans to keep the others safe and to find Angel – but so far the only results had been a lot of dead fledgling vamps, not one sighting of Angel and possibly the loss of her friends. Heading into the school, she was intent on asking Sirk some very serious questions. She wanted this OVER with.

Of course, that intent died pretty much the second she rounded the corner in the hall and found herself face to face with Angelus.

"There you are!" His face broke up into a wide grin, stinging her to the bone; he'd never smiled like this before... He really looked happy. Evil, insane, but happy. "I gotta say, lover, school was the last place I expected to find you. Let's face it, your brains were never your best asset, and besides, I really hoped you would come find me."

OK, this is it then. Buffy slowly reached for the stake in her pocket, feeling the adrenaline rush kick in. "Well, I just figured we did it at your place last time. Turnabout's fair play, right?"

Angelus just kept grinning, but with a much more menacing tone to it now, starting to move around to find a weak spot. He'd been waiting for this just as long as she had. "Oh yeah, fair. You get me all worked up promising a big fight, and then you run and hide like a little schoolgirl. Do you really think I have nothing better to do than wait around for you to grow a pair? Or did you think if you ignored me I'd just get tired and your boyfriend would be back? Think again, sweetcheeks. I mean", he actually giggled, "there's so much you and I haven't gotten to do yet, and I've got so much to teach you! Whaddyasay, Buff? You wanna dance?"

She just narrowed her eyes, ready to spring into action in the blink of an eye – he would make the first move, vampires always do, and she couldn't afford to lose a fraction of a second when he did. "Just keep talking while you can." She raised the stake.

Angelus rolled his eyes. "Tut-tut-tut. We both know how this ends. Do you really think you can..." He blinked in surprise as the grin faded and was replaced with a look of desperation. "...make me disappear just because you say it's over?"

"I..." Buffy hardly had time to think Huh? before she suddenly felt something – someone
(someoneS?)
possessing her body. She felt and heard everything, but she wasn't in the driver's seat anymore. "I just want you to be able to have some kind of normal life. We can never have that, don't you see?"

The vampire stepped closer. "I don't give a DAMN about a normal life! I'm going crazy not seeing you. I think about you every minute!"

(Behind it all, Giles could see Angelus through Buffy's eyes. And underneath Angelus he could see the ghost a frantic teenage boy screaming at the woman he loved... and he could see Jenny, just as helpless as himself, both of them tied down by the spell and powerless to do anything but act out the script set by the ghosts. Jenny mimicked every movement, every line spoken by Angelus just like he himself followed Buffy's part of the dance. When he saw
Angelus
James
Jenny
pull a gun, he realized where this was going. He wanted to scream, wanted to stop this, wanted to save what couldn't be saved. But he'd already failed over a week ago and all the former watcher could do was... watch.)

"DON'T WALK AWAY FROM ME, BITCH!"

Buffy
(Grace)
(Giles)
ran. But they ran out of hallway and the balcony offered no escape. Turn around. Try to talk sense into him... She raised her hands. "You know you don't want to do this. Let's both... just calm down. Now give me the gun."

Waving the gun around, Angelus
(James)
(Jenny)
was close to tears. "DON'T! Don't DO that, damn it! Don't talk to me like I'm some sort of –" He wasn't aware that he'd pulled the trigger, and the bang and reek of gunpowder didn't seem to make any sense. The possessed Slayer looked down at the blood on her shirt, looked back up at him with a puzzled look on her face, then went limp, tumbled over the railing and hit the ground with a sickening thud.

In calm shock, Angelus walked over to the edge of the balcony. The body below him wasn't moving. The walk back to the music room seemed to take forever, still not sure who (s)he was. He found the record he wanted and put the needle in the groove.

My love must be a kind of blind love
I can't see anyone but you
The moon may be high
But I can't see a thing in the sky

He put the gun to his head.

'Cause I only have eyes for you...

BANG

Author's note 2: To be continued.