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The market place is full of people haggling over prices of fruit and fabrics, of jewels and trinkets. Cairo is such a colorful and busy city; by looking at the hustle and bustle of the day you wouldn’t believe how deadly wandering in the streets after the sunset used to be. There are still the occasional vampires and demons, but ever since the slayers moved in and cleaned up the city, the creatures that go bump in the night have learned how to stay low.
Willow picks up an old-looking lamp with a smile, lets her fingers run over the patterns etched on it. They don’t mean anything, don’t hold any power, and she sets it down on the table, satisfied.
There’s a mirror next to it, and she picks it up. The surface isn’t perfectly smooth and her reflection is slightly distorted in it, but Willow can still see her face well enough to make out the tired lines around her eyes. She tucks a lock of white hair behind her ear with a soft sigh. For a sixty-four-year-old witch, she doesn’t look that bad.
Her green earring catches a ray of sun and shines. She loves how they bring out her eyes. For a long time, Willow had let them locked inside her jewel box, refusing to wear them. But the sting of her break-up with Kennedy has been dulled enough by the years that she can now wear them happily, remembering only the good times of her relationship with the slayer.
Something in the distorted reflection of the mirror catches Willow’s eye and she turns around, her skirt billowing around her. Her heart is beating fast, her breath is ragged as a strangely familiar figure disappears into the crowd.
Willow’s brain didn’t recognize who it was, but her heart is telling her to go after this person, and she knows to trust her instincts. She sets the mirror back on the stand, ignoring the merchant’s speech to get her to by it, and starts weaving her way through the multitude of bodies.
They press around her, push her in every direction, and for a moment she’s lost. She feels like that teenager she used to be before she met Buffy, the little girl no one saw or cared about, that bullies pushed out of their way without even noticing. She feels helpless.
But she’s not that little girl anymore, she hasn’t been for a very long time. She’s the current head of the North-African branch of the Slayers and a powerful witch. Willow stops, takes a long, deep in-breath, lets power flow through her, radiate from her. The crowd seems to scatter slightly, like everyone’s avoiding her without even realizing. She can breath again, she can walk again, no longer smothered by this oppressing sea of bodies.
She runs through the crowd, finds the person she glimpsed in the mirror. She follows him inside a small alley, calls his name.
“Oz!”
The werewolf turns around, shock and surprise written all over his face. He recognizes her, that much is obvious as his lips stretch in that shy smile Willow used to know so well. There are more dimples in his cheeks than there used to, but time seems to have been as kind to him as it has been to Willow.
Seeing him after all this time, it should feel strange, it should feel awkward, but somehow it just feels… it just feels perfect. Like being complete once again.
“Willow,” Oz says in a quiet breath, and there are so many emotions tangled up in this one word that it should not sound so calm, so peaceful, but it does.
Oz’s arms find their way around Willow’s waist as she raises her hand to touch his cheek. His skin is soft as old parchment, his lips still fit perfectly with hers as they kiss for the first time in decades.
“I missed you,” Willow says when they part, and she knows she’s smiling.
Oz’s soft smile tells her everything she needs to know.
~~~
“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. Because... you're with me, you know?”
I know.”