war weary
dolores

So.

I'm dead.

Huh.

This is about as deep as it gets, I guess.

In the intellectual sense, I mean. I'm not in Hell. Or if I am I kinda expected more. . . fire. And pointy things. Some general punishment, y'know? But there ain't any of that, so I'm guessing that I'm not there.

No choirs of seraphims and cherubins, or halos, or clouds, so probably not Heaven either. Maybe this is purgatory and this is me waiting final judgement. Whatever.

The cool thing is that it is just me. . . a non-wolf all-human me. . . I can't feel the wolf at all. Maybe it's gone off to its own canine version of the afterlife. Maybe it was only a corporeal thing, that couldn't transcend death.

It's strange. I got used to the wolf these past three years. I learned to live with it, the growling, slobbering animal that usually lived at the back of my being, my soul, and it only came out to play when the moon told it to, at first.

At first.

Then I could defy the moon, too. But the wolf was still there. And if I stopped thinking about that for a second, if I was so upset I wasn't concentrating on keeping the wolf back there, then it broke free. And that scares - scared - me more than I could tell you, more than I could tell anyone.

Why?

I remember killing Veruca.

I never used to be able to remember anything when I was the wolf. But I remember that, I remember the bloodlust pumping at my temples, the taste of her flesh, the warmth of her blood, the sting of the tranquilliser dart. The wolf-me was in raptures when it killed, I wanted to do it again and again and again. But the Oz-me that remembered can't ever forgive himself. When I went to find away to control the wolf, it was because I couldn't think of any other way to make things right.

But that was shown up for the stupid vanity that it was as soon as I got back to Sunnydale. Fuck, I could have killed Tara. I nearly got everyone else killed in the Initiative. And still the wolf was there, wanting, needing to kill. To feel that bloodlust again.

I am - I was a danger.

And there was nothing left. I'd found the cure. It was a placebo. I was the same as before - no, I was worse. I was fighting a battle with the wolf and I was losing.

Technically, I lost. The wolf destroyed me. But I took it down with me.

Y'know, it really is far too easy to buy a gun in this country.

I didn't leave a note, I was so determined to do it that I didn't stop to think of things like that. So I'm glad I got this chance. I'm sending it to you, G-man, because I figured you'd know how to tell these things to Willow, Devon, Buffy, Xander, all of them, better than I can. And I'm really sorry to put that burden on you.

But I know you'll understand.

Bye.

Oz.

 

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