A/N Syg, I read one comic and gave up on it. Spike was holding a bikini contest with some of the teenage Slayers. Uh, no thanks. Everything else I know came from researching and reading fanfics, plus watching the shows themselves. I did read one book, a collection of stories about previous Slayers, that was good.

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"Am I a selfish person?" Willow asked Oz as he drove her to Ted's office after school.

"Where's that coming from?"

"I thought I knew Xander better than anyone and in the last two months I've discovered that some of what I thought I knew was just assumptions I'd made. It never occured to me to actually ask him things, plus there's the fact that I missed really obvious things like we take a lot of the same classes. Which are the advanced classes and he only ever asked for help with a regular class he took, Math. How did I miss the fact that he was taking the same classes I take? If I could miss something that obvious, what else have I missed?"

"Like the fact that he doesn't feel the same way about you?"

Willow nearly got whiplash jerking her head to look at Oz. "How?!"

"You're kinda of obvious about it." Oz answered. "In fact I wasn't even sure if I should go out with you because I was afraid you meant to use me to try to make him jealous."

"Oh, I - no, Oz, I like you! I don't think I'd do that." Willow looked miserable. "But I've also realized I did some selfish things to Buffy and Xander and it was because of my crush and my hope that he'd eventually like me too."

"He loves you, just not the way you want him to." Oz told her. "And feels very protective of you, probably always has, but loosing you guys' other friend, Jesse, to vampires made him even more protective of you. He needs you to be alright and to be happy."

"You figured all that out in the last month?"

"Some of it's stuff you said and some of it's stuff he's said and learning vampires were real explained a lot about Sunnydale. This town is weird."

Willow giggled. "Yeah, it really is." She agreed. "Cordelia asked me if I like who I am," Willow sobered. "and I'm starting to realize, there are things about me I don't like. Or rather things I've done that I don't like the fact that I did them. It makes me wonder what kind of person I am that I do things that in retrospect, I don't like knowing I did, but didn't question why I was doing them at the time."

"You may have done them for selfish reasons." Oz agreed. "Maybe you knew your actions were selfish at the time or maybe you just did them impulsively without realizing they were selfish actions. But now you do know, now you're acknowledging it. It's what you do now and after this that matters. What do you think you should do?"

"Apologize and choose not to do it again." Willow gave a half grimace. "And try not to be judgemental that Xander's dating Cordelia, someone I hate because I thought she was bullying me for years. She says I exaggerate how bad it was."

"Do you?"

"I didn't think I did, but again, in retrospect, I seem to have said and done worse things to her than she said and did to me." Willow admitted miserably. "And justified it to myself. And tried to get others to do and say bad things about her. I am a horrible person." Willow decided, tears shining in her eyes.

"Not a horrible person." Oz assured her. "One who made bad choices, has realized it and wants to change. Now you have to commit to changing and prove you are trying to change." He pulled into a parking spot in front of the office Ted worked at according to their information. "Be careful in there, okay? I want the chance to get to know you, Willow, who I think you could be." He gave a slight smile which on anyone else would have been a blinding, full face smile.

"I will." She promised, getting out of the van "Thanks for listening and not judging me and believing in me." She told him, resolving to try to not do selfish things, bad mouth people and accept Xander's choice to date Cordelia.

That last one especially was going to be hard. You don't let go of hate that easily, even when your reasons for hating don't really exist the way you thought they did.

Willow asked for an application, telling the receptionist she was looking for an after school job and she was given one. Her qualifications were deemed impressive for someone so young and she was given a trial run. When she was taken back and shown the desk she'd be working at, she saw a whiteboard with quota hashtags on it and saw Ted's name.

"That Ted guy looks like he probably wins salesman of the month, every month." She commented. "Those are great numbers."

"He is our best salesman." She was told. "We're going to miss him when he's on his honeymoon."

"He's getting married?" Poor Joyce, it would break her heart to find that out.

"Yes, in two months." Willow was pointed to a picture on Ted's desk. "That's a picture of his fiance, she's never come to the office, but he's talked about her quite a bit."

Willow hoped she managed to hide her shock because she was horrified to realize the picture was of Joyce. Worse, she recognized it, it was one of Joyce, Buffy and Dawn that usually hung on their wall. Only Buffy and Dawn seemed to have been cut out of it.