Author's Note: Yet another one of my older stories.
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon created Buffy and all associated characters,
X X X X X
My life is too Alanis these days.
It's the kind of funny that's not.
You know?
I came back to Sunnydale for many reasons –
No.
Not true. I came back to Sunnydale for one reason. All the others –
friends,
fighting vampires, even Devon and Dingoes – were window
dressing. Nice, yeah.
Not crucial.
If they'd been it,
then maybe I wouldn't have come back. Maybe I wouldn't have
made
the effort quite so much to change – excuse me, to not HAVE to
change. That
werewolf thing, you understand. It wouldn't have
been so important to not go
wolf every 28 days, or so, if not for
Willow.
But find it I did. The people I got my cure from had
that whole mysterious monk
thing going on. More, they knew their
stuff; a month or so and I was able to
control my change with the
best of them.
Only drawback: I would change whenever I got really upset.
I almost laughed when they told me this. Key
word being almost. I get really upset
about as often as I hit the
e-flat diminished ninth. So I figured, no problem at all.
Willow hadn't gone along with the plan.
She'd found someone else. Girl named Tara.
Not the girl part that bothered me. To each their own. My concerns were wider.
As in the someone else at
all. When I found out – I smelled Willow on Tara.
Couldn't've
been just friendly contact either – my nose knows these
things.
Don't bother asking how.
It burned in me. Anger, rage, jealousy.
So of course you know what happened next.
The
impossible happened and I went wolf. Was only kept from mauling Tara
because
Iwas shot and carried off by some guys in army gear
calling themselves the
Initiative. They wanted to perform all
kinds of experiments on me.
So, you see, mixed blessing at best.
No. Not a mixed blessing. A dichotomy. Because if I'd
killed Tara – no matter
how good, how right it would have felt –
I would have been no better than I'd feared
when I left. Killing
Tara would have been worse than killing Veruca. Because,
you see,
from a strictly human standpoint it's my own damn fault.
As Jimmy Buffett would say.
I left her, after all. I left her for
her own protection – and mine. Not
trusting myself was a huge
part of that deal. But I did leave her. Somewhat in the lurch.
And
so from that strictly human viewpoint she can't be blamed for
eventually
giving up hope.
But I'm not strictly human
anymore. Not even a little. And part of me, a large
part, relishes
the thought of chewing the bitch's face off, tearing the
bloody
meat off her skeleton and gnawing her bones.
Thus the dichotomy.
And the reason I had to leave. Because she
brings out that feeling of upset that
triggers my wolfness. Either
of them does.
And my policy is no more Verucas. EVER.
See, this is what brings up what's funny in the way that's not.
Because I left to protect Willow. I changed what cues my
lycanthropy to protect
Willow. And what happened was –
The change could hurt her more than ever.
So I had to leave again.
Dammit.
And so re Alanis.
Isn't it ironic?
Don't you think?