Title: War Weary
Author: Dolores Labouchere
E-mail: dolores_l@h...
Summary: Oz is dead, and he gets to write one last letter.
Spoilers: Season 4 Oz-related.
Rating: R for naughty words.
Distribution: UCSL, Dead Letter, Dolores' Domain otherwise just ask
Disclaimer: They're not mine, they never have been and they probably never   will be.   I promise to put them back when I'm finished although they might   be slightly soiled.
Notes: Part of the Dead Letters challenge -   http://www.dymphna.net/deadletters/ - and really not one of my more cheerful   fics.   For Kate and Sun because they thought of this fabby challenge in the   first place.

"This I not a novel to be tossed aside lightly.   It should be thrown with   great force." – Dorothy Parker

***

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.

***