Title: Bitter End
Author: Jeanny
E-mail: jeannygrrl@hotmail.com
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Season 6 Through Wrecked
Distribution/Archive: Go right ahead, if you like, just let me know where it's going.
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all the characters that appear on the show are the exclusive property of Joss Whedon, UPN, Mutant Enemy, Inc. and any one else with a legal binding claim to the shows and/or characters. No copyright infringement is intended.
Feedback: Please! Constructive criticism is always welcome.
Summary: A small post-Scooby death vignette, set further on in Season 6. Not so much spoilery as speculative.
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Willow held her hands over her face, allowing the dirt on them to mingle with her tears and streak mud down her cheeks. It was fitting. She was dirty, after all. Tainted.
She'd never been so cold.
"I'm so, so, so sorry," she sobbed, again and again, and yet it wasn't enough, was it? Would anything ever be? Would any amount of sorrow or self-reproach make up for this? She had started it, after all. The spell, the dark magic, the deep burning need in her gut that made her do things that she would never have thought...that self-righteousness that pervaded her being, whispering its lie that these things she was doing weren't wrong, just hard. That skill was all that was essential, not care. That the ends not only justified the means, they absolutely demanded them. She had been unerringly secure in her confidence that she was right, and the others had followed her. And they had all trusted her, hadn't they? Even Tara.
"She should have known better," Willow said softly. Tara had trusted her. Tara had loved her. But Tara had to have known it was wrong. Why didn't she say so? Why didn't she tell her to stop? Willow shook her head, laughing bitterly. "Like I would have stopped if she had." She had been kneeling at the gravesite for so long that her body felt stiff and cold, almost frozen. The cold had begun in her limbs and had finally spread all the way to her heart. She stopped crying, no longer feeling the need for tears. There was only this final kindness and then-
"Will," the voice from behind her came, and she sighed. She had known he would come. He was the only one who would still even come near her now.
"Go away," she said evenly. Instead she heard him step closer to her, but she didn't look at him. She watched the dirt instead.
"You've been out here for hours. You should come in now," he said, troubled by her rigid posture, her face covered by dirt. She had made and broken so many promises to them all, but she was still his Willow. He had to try to reach her even if the others wouldn't. Her answer surprised him.
"I can't leave. I have to stay here. You know that," she said, softly touching the ground in front of her. "This isn't finished." It was then that he spotted the stake at her side, ready to be picked up in an instant.
"This isn't your job."
"Right. It's not my job. But it's my responsibility, because it's my fault. Isn't it?" When Xander said nothing she turned to look at him, noting how he didn't meet her eyes. "That's what I thought."
"You think you can do this alone?" he asked finally. Willow shrugged.
"Who else will?" she said in a voice that sounded nothing like her anymore: so hollow, so very sad and disillusioned. Xander shivered, as if the very sound of it gave him a chill.
"Buffy..." he began, trailing off because he had no idea what he could say. Willow just looked at him.
"I don't see her here, do you?" she posed the rhetorical question, then added with a half-sigh, "She's not the same. She's not the Slayer anymore." Xander wanted to argue with her, but found he couldn't. Despite everything that had been going on, Buffy hadn't slayed in weeks. Taking his silence as tacit agreement, Willow continued softly, "And that's my fault, and I accept that. If it wasn't for me, she wouldn't have come back. And if it wasn't for her, he wouldn't have been here."
"She called him because she thought he could help you," Xander reminded her, earning a glare. He could have sworn her eyes flashed black for a moment before she turned away.
"Watching him die helped me more than you know," she said softly. A hand emerged out of the soft dirt followed by a head and a shoulder. Willow let the new vampire surface almost fully before flicking her wrist. "Inciende!" she cried, and the vampire with such a familiar face was engulfed in flames, turning to ash before he could even scream. She stood, brushing herself off absently, and turned to her oldest friend, who was regarding her with extreme unease. Willow found she couldn't quite care anymore.
"I thought you weren't doing that anymore," he said carefully. Willow smiled, but there was no humor in it.
"Things are different," she said. "I can't do what I need to do now without using magic."
"What are you going to do?" Xander asked, afraid of the answer.
"Whatever I have to do to fix this," she said simply, turning and walking away.
He just watched her go. Part of Xander wanted to run after her, grab her and shake some sense to her. Another part wanted to believe that she actually could fix things; wasn't that Willow's job, after all? But the bigger part of him was too afraid to do anything. Xander couldn't remember a time he was this certain that things were about to go from awful to catastrophic. He sank to his knees, unconsciously in the same spot Willow had knelt for so long, and stared desolately at the disturbed earth, the scattering of dust, and the simple gravestone that read succinctly:
DANIEL OSBORNE
1980-2002
A GOOD AND LOVING FRIEND
Oz was gone, killed and changed by the vampires that were once again beginning to take over Sunnydale. Buffy was worse than dead, and Willow was like a stranger to him. Xander stared at his friend's grave for a long time, wondering when he would be joining him.
He'd never been so cold.
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