“Hey Oz.”

“Can I…can I talk to you?”

“Sure.” Xander swung himself around into a sitting position. “What’s up?”

Oz sat across from him, staring down at his hands. “I need some advice. And someone to talk to.”

“Not that I mind being confide guy, but uh…why me? We’re not exactly…ah. This is about Willow.”

A brief glimpse of something between relief and despair flashed cross Oz’s face. “You don’t know?”

“Know what?” Xander stared at the other boy, his eyes darkening. “Is Willow okay?”

“It’s…it’s a long story.”

“Then start talkin’.” Xander crossed his arms over his chest, his eyes pinning Oz to his seat. “Now.”

“When I’m in wolf form, the man in me sort of disappears. He gets repressed, buried under the instinct.” He looked back down at his hands, unwilling to meet Xander’s eyes. “When I wake up, I don’t remember anything I’ve done.”

“Right.”

“Well, I’m starting to remember.”

“So you wake up and remember that you ate raw meat, sat in a cage and howled at the moon?”

“I remember that I broke out of my cage, ran into another werewolf and fought…” Oz felt his throat catch. Admitting was harder than he’d thought. “Her.”

“Who won?”

“I did,” he admitted. “And…and then…there’s instinct that goes along with the whole wolf gig. Kind of primal.”

“Oh.” Understanding dawned in Xander’s eyes. “Ooooh.”

“Right. So. So, I didn’t tell anyone. About a second werewolf. And I didn’t tell anyone…”

“Meaning Willow.”

“Meaning Willow, about the other.”

“She came to me,” Xander said softly. “Worried that you had feelings for someone else. Worried that you might...”

After a long silence, Xander continued. “I told her to talk to you, tell you how she was feeling, but that I was sure that it was nothing. It wasn’t nothing, was it?”

“It wasn’t emotion.” Oz stated flatly. “It was instinct and…wolf calling to wolf.” Shrugging, he continued. “That was the first night. When we woke up, well, that was the first time I truly remembered what I had done. Veruca kept talking like we’d finally found each other, and all I could do was sit there numbly wondering what the hell I had just done to Willow.”

“You cheated on her.”

Oz nodded, the edge of his mouth lifting up in a small smirk. “Thanks. I figured it out.”

Xander shrugged, not quite looking at Oz. He was thinking about the look on Willow’s face when she’d come to him. *She* came to *him*. She did the best friend thing that they hadn’t done in forever and, lo and behold, thanks to Oz, he’d managed to do the wrong thing. Again.

“I tried to put a little distance between me and Will at that point.”

“I know. I told you. She came here.” Xander met his eyes finally and Oz flinched, the pain and hurt swimming in the dark brown almost as painful as the guilt in his own.

“I was too ashamed, too embarrassed. Too confused.” Xander’s face remained impassive, except for his haunted eyes. Oz frowned slightly. Usually he could read every expression on Xander’s face. Usually he could see and tell what the other man was thinking. But now, he didn’t know or understand what lurked behind the hurt expression. “I didn’t know what to do.”

“So, let me guess, you didn’t do anything.” There was no judgement in the statement and Oz nodded.

“I did. I went back to the mausoleum, I fix the door and I…I called Veruca.”

“Forget for a minute that I don’t want to know why you had her phone number, why?”

“She ra…runs free during the full moon. I didn’t want her to hurt anyone.”

Xander let loose a short bark of disbelieving laughter and shook his head. “Obviously.”

“She came and she wouldn’t get in the cage…” Oz averted his eyes now, needing judgement, but unwilling to see it. If anyone had the right to sit judgement on him, it was Xander. “So I…”

“You?”

Oz looked up at the soft tone, his green eyes locking with Xander’s dark ones. “I kissed her…then I…then we…”

Xander flinched, even though Oz couldn’t say the words. His heart seemed to shatter, the picture of Willow in his mind, alongside the picture of Cordelia when she’d found the two of them… “I know what you mean.”

“The next morning…yesterday, Willow walked in to bring me breakfast. Veruca and I were still asleep.”

“Not for long, I’m guessing.”

Oz got up and started pacing the room, his small body making long strides, driven by frustration and guilt and love. “It was…more horrible than I could ever imagine anything being. At least, up until that point.”

“It got worse?” Xander watched Oz, his own heart beating fast. Willow needed him and he was sitting here, listening to the other side of the story. Everything in him screamed at him to throw a punch, knock Oz out – God! Oz had always claimed to be the one that would *never* hurt her - and run to his best friend. He needed to be there for her. He needed to comfort her. He needed to hold her and help the pain ebb away…

But he couldn’t.

Willow was as off limits right now as she had ever been.

“It got worse.” Oz stopped and nodded, staring at the washing machine. “Last night, Veruca went after Willow. She was doing a spell or something in the Chemistry lab. Veruca went to her and, I don’t know, intended to get her out of the way, I suppose. No rivals for my affection.”

The last word was filled with bitterness and self-hatred. Xander got off the bed and walked over to Oz. He rested a light hand on his shoulder, jumping in surprise when Oz whirled around and knocked his hand away.

“I don’t want sympathy, you idiot!” The words were hissed out, Oz’s green eyes flashing. “I found them. I fought Veruca. I *killed* Veruca.”

Xander took a step back, surprised by the force of Oz’s softly spoken words. “You saved Willow.”

“I put Willow in danger by being with Veruca in the first place. Christ, Xander, can’t you understand anything?”

Xander’s face froze, the familiar words hurting more than they had a right to. “You just fucked her Oz, you didn’t know she was homicidal.”

“I knew she was a wolf.” Oz cringed inwardly at Xander’s reaction to his last words. He hadn’t meant to hurt anyone else. “And, when I started remembering things…? Well, I should have remembered that she was pure wolf, all instinct.”

“You went to Willow. You did remember.”

“I didn’t remember that I was the same way.”

Silence filled the room, uneasy and tense. Xander looked at everything but Oz, not wanting to know what else could make the other boy’s face so tight with pain. Suddenly, comprehension dawned and he closed his eyes tightly against the sting of tears. “Did you hurt her?”

“No. Buffy showed up.”

“Well,” he laughed hollowly. He’d failed her again. He hadn’t saved her again. Hadn’t even been aware she needed saving. “Three cheers for Buffy.”

“I’m leaving.”

“Drop your bombshell and go? Is that it?”

“Not here, Xander. Not…that’s not what I mean. I’m leaving town. I’m going away. I’m going to find a way to deal with what I’ve done.”

“You’re leaving Willow.”

The matter-of-fact statement hit Oz far harder than any of Buffy’s punches. “I don’t want to put her in any danger, danger from myself.”

“She…” he swallowed hard, hurt radiating off of him in suffocating waves. “She loves you.”

Tears stung Oz’s eyes at Xander’s simple proclamation. “I know. I love her too. Which is why I can’t…I can’t stay Xander. I can’t live with what I almost did.”

“So you find another way to destroy her?” Anger replaced the hurt and he took a menacing step toward Oz. “You cheat on her, you let her find you with another woman, you let that other woman attack her and then you attack her and *now* because you feel guilty, you just decide to hit the road? You’re her whole *fucking* world, Oz!”

“And she was mine…but there are parts of me…the wolf is something else in my world and, until I can figure that part out…”

“You’re a selfish bastard.”

“Maybe.” Oz nodded. “I want you to promise me something, Xander.”

His brown eyes grew wide, and he shook his head, the certainty of what Oz was going to say like a knife in his chest. “No.”

“Look out for her.”

“No.”

“Be there for her.”

“No.” His protests were no louder than whispers; tortured with knowledge he didn’t want.

“I know you love her.”

“Oz…”

He knew he was asking too much, he knew he was asking what he had no right to ask from the person it would hurt the most. “Take care of her?” Tears spilled from Xander’s eyes and he looked away quickly, unable to watch Oz as he said the last words that would wound him more than anything spoken by anyone who wasn’t Willow. “For me.”

Xander didn’t watch Oz leave the basement, didn’t hear the sound of the door or of the van pulling away from the house. He didn’t hear anything other than his own softly whispered denials.

He didn’t want to watch over her or keep her safe for Oz. He wanted her for himself, free and clear of any guilt from the past.

But now, with two simple words, not even a sentence, he had asked Xander to obligate himself to keeping some sort of inkling of Oz and Willow’s relationship alive.

Sinking down onto the edge of the bed, Xander stared at the pictures on his dresser, not really seeing them. Not needing to see. He knew them by heart, the soft curve of her face, the gentle caress of her smile.

And now, because of those two small words, no matter how she dealt with Oz’s leaving, he’d never know them again.