TITLE: Istanbul AUTHOR: seraC EMAIL: seraphcelene@yahoo.com SPOILERS: New Moon Rising and Bring on The Night ARCHIVING: Essential-Imperfect, Buffy FanFiction Archive, Near Her Always. Everyone else ask please. SUMMARY: “I was waiting. I feel like some part of me will always be waiting for you. Like if I'm old and blue-haired, and I turn the corner in Istanbul and there you are, I won't be surprised.” NOTES: Since New Moon Rising aired I’ve been wanting to write the story of Willow and Oz, years later, meeting in Istanbul. I planned. I plotted. I schemed, but it would never come. Then one day ... Voila! AU after Bring on the Night. FEEDBACK: Is like air! It’s important. Necessarily even! Yes please. DISCLAIMER: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all related characters belong to Joss Whedon, David Greenwalt, UPN, Sandollar, Mutant Enemy, et al. I’m just taking them out for a bit of exercise. THANKS: To Moonwhip for the beta. “Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.” -- William Faulkner Istanbul You said it would be Istanbul. But you had forgotten. Or maybe hadn’t forgotten so much as you had filed away the memory, because here you are and you remember. ********** Her hair isn’t blue. It’s still as red as a sunset. She’s thin. Too thin, but she’s never really been anything else. Older. Stronger. Sadder. He can smell the power and grief like perfume on her skin. Only this goes beyond the epidermis. It’s bone and heart and soul and she holds it before her like a shield. He heard about the rising. About the First. Only he heard too late and by the time he got to Sunnydale everyone was dead or broken. ********** You remember too much, though you try to forget. You remember the look of complete surprise on Xander’s face when the demon reached into his chest and ripped out his heart. He stood for a moment. Shocked. Stopped so suddenly, so completely that he didn’t quite comprehend. You know he didn’t get it. Could tell from the way he cocked his head slightly to one side, his eyes questioning even as they glazed over. His eyes wondering about the bloody, still beating heart in front of him. ********** The carnage reminded him of Angelus. Only he’d heard that Angel had died. A passing conversation picked up by his too-keen ears as he paid for a room over the bar. He heard about it again two nights later from a vampire before he slammed the stake into the place where the heart should have been. He didn’t bother to sleep that night. Hitched a ride to Calais instead. He stayed awake the entire ride, eyes fixed on the road, ignoring the music swirling in the truck’s cab. He didn’t doze or close his eyes. He refused to sleep as if staying awake would get him there any quicker. When the plane landed in New York he went underground. There was a full moon and he lost three days. Three days... ********** When Buffy went down you weren’t surprised. Shocked for a moment. Maybe a little unprepared, but not surprised, not really. She was the strongest, had lasted the longest of all the other girls. “Slayers-In-Training," they said. Sort of apprentices. Everyone had been so surprised when Faith showed up with Angel and Cordelia. Almost as surprised as when you saw the thick rope of scar tissue stretching across the throat of the man who barked his name into his cell phone. Pryce. No longer Wesley. Not even Wes. Pryce. You wondered about that but never asked. And later it didn’t matter. He held your hand while you cried over the pile of dust that had once been Angel. Too wounded too comfort your best friend who stood dry-eyed at your side. That’s when you knew she wouldn’t last much longer. You felt her give up in that moment. Truly. Like before. With Glory. Only this time there was no coming back. She was gone. There was nothing left in her to give. She would fight because she had never learned how not to, but it would be hollow. It was as if her soul had dissipated in the early morning light. When you called her name her only response was “They’re gone.” Sister. Lover. Father. You were glad she didn’t live to see Xander die, transfixed by the sight of his still beating heart. ********** It took four days to get from New York to Sunnydale. But four days was one day too long. The battle only lasted three. Four were left standing. He found Spike first, huddled in an alley. Mad. Insane. Curiously bathed in the scent of a human soul. But there were other things to know first. He asked about the others. Spike babbled about letting the rats devour the spark so that he could rest. “Too many faces,” Spike said. “Too many names to remember. Too many faces and voices and all of them shouting all at once.” They were trying to eat his eyes. He left Spike there amongst the rags and the garbage, clawing at this face. Desperately pleading to be left alone. Calling for the rats to eat away his burning heart. Wesley was different, too. Whole or as much as this shell of a man could ever be. His eyes were empty and his hands gripped the crossbow a little too tightly as he talked about the last four days. His voice was expressionless, thickening slightly only when he remembered Cordelia dying in his arms and how Angel had died that same day. Every now and again a fragile looking girl he introduced as Fred came to check on them. Too franticly busy to stay in one place for long, she flitted from room to room straightening everything and nothing in particular. Wesley said that Willow was gone. Off to find the new Slayer. With the Watchers Council gone someone had to guide her. They all agreed she would do well enough. She knew the history and what she didn’t know Wesley would tell her. He stayed for awhile to make sure that they could be okay. A week later he left to search for Willow even though he was never sure of whom he would actually find. ********** Wesley told you he had been to Sunnydale. He told you during one of your monthly phone calls about the progress of the new Slayer. She was young, barely fifteen. But strong and willing. Eager. You went underground for the first four months to train her, instruct her. To tell her what you knew about her predecessors and their legacy. You gave her a little silver cross Buffy used to wear. The same cross on a new chain because you broke the old one removing it from the body. You avoid Oz for another six months. Always moving. Constantly. He keeps in contact with Wesley in case the ex-watcher should ever hear from you. Wesley lies as if he cares and Oz never believes him. Searching for you still. Searching until today when he finds you distracted on a street in Istanbul. Distracted because today you mourn. Today you hum ‘Happy Birthday’ softly under your breath because you’re sure that somehow Buffy can hear you. ********** She looks good. Sad. Broken. Too thin, but good. She looks ‘I-haven’t-seen-you-in-over-three-years’ good. And familiar. Her hair is longer than the last time, a sweeping curtain of red down to her waist like in high school. But different. She keeps the front braided back off her face and there is a shock of silver at her temple. She’s dressed in black, head to toe. Soft cottons and leathers. He can see the glint of silver at her throat and on her fingers. The buckle on her belt is an intricate knot. Old. He can smell the age. And her. He was walking and suddenly inhaled the familiar scent of her skin and hair tinged with sorrow and bitterness. And then he saw her and she saw him and a half a block away from each other they froze. On a street in Istanbul. He wasn’t surprised. Isn’t that how she said it would happen? ********** He takes a step forward and then another and stops. He watches you with fierce, hunter eyes. At some point there will be tears, but not now. Not today. Today he wants you to meet him in the middle. Later, beneath a velvet sky laced with a thousand stars, he will hold you naked to his side and you will weep for what was lost. But that is for later. Now he extends his hand to you, palm up. You do not hesitate. You know him. You have always known him. Stepping forward you take his hand and for a moment you are in his arms! Then he turns and pulls you along. There will be time, you think, to find out how he’s changed and to tell him how you have changed. To introduce him to the Slayer you are raising alone. An eager, quiet girl with mahogany hair named Meredith. But for now it is enough that you are with Oz and he is holding your hand, tight and sure, and you are together in Istanbul. end