Madamoiselle: The Introduction
by melodrome
I posted this story once before and promptly removed it out of nervousness. I observed this site for a while and got a rhythm for it; now that I understand that this is a well-oiled machine, I'm willing to try posting it again. Reviews are more than welcome.
She was young. Fifteen, actually. But she looked seventeen at least. It had always been that way; she looked and acted older than her age. When she was twelve, people assumed her to be sixteen. She was funny that way. People no longer tried to guess her age; they just assumed that she was Hilary and didn’t give it any more thought.
She didn’t look too happy at the moment. Or maybe that was just her concentration face. She played piano well, but strangely. It was always the same set of six to eight songs, all of them intricate and melancholy in a very humbling fashion. He meant to ask her about them, but every time he came to himself, she’d get up and walk out the door. He wasn’t really the type to chase after her and call her name. He’d have to be careful to keep their first encounter casual so she wouldn’t freak out.
He sighed and walked out the door as she got up from the piano. He’d come back tomorrow, and maybe this time he’d remember that he actually had to say someth—
“Hey.”
It was sort of a question and sort of a proclamation. He turned to face the girl with short black hair that stuck out at the back.
“Hey yourself,” he said back in a manner that suggested he’d never seen her before. They both knew better.
“How do you get your hair to stay up like that?”
“I get people to jump out of closets and yell, ‘boo!’ at random. Seems to work pretty well.”
Hilary grinned at him and turned away. Oz nodded slowly and did the same.
*One month earlier…*
Oz was in Istanbul. He liked Turkey. The smaller villages in particular held a very warm feeling to them, but Oz stuck to Istanbul. He pretended not to know why and claimed that he preferred big cities. Fortunately, he didn’t let anyone get to know him enough to tell that he was lying.
He didn’t know why he tortured himself so. Every time he saw a redhead
(If I turn the corner in Istanbul and there you are, I won’t be surprised)
Oz had to stop and look hard, even if the air smelled wrong. It was only here that red hair startled him so. He hadn’t even been aware that he still loved her until he decided to chance a trip to Istanbul in his quest for
(there you are)
a purpose. He’d done the rehab thing, he’d done the teaching thing, and now he was back to traveling the world. In search for
(I wouldn’t be surprised)
a purpose. Nothing else.
There, now. You’ve thought about her so much that you can smell her now. It’s been almost four years. People don’t just turn corners and
!!!
Her mouth twitched. “Hey.”
He blinked. “Hey yourself.”
***
“Astral projection, huh?” Oz raised an eyebrow. “That’s exciting.”
Willow grinned. “Yeah. I, uh… can do stuff now.”
“Like awaken thousands of potential Slayers worldwide.”
Her cheeks tinged crimson. “Well, yeah, for instance… but it’s not like I do that every day or anything…”
Oz took a moment to just nod. “Cool,” he said after a while. A silence fell. He wasn’t sure why she’d projected herself halfway across the globe just to see him, but he figured she’d tell him in due time.
“So I guess you’re wondering why I projected myself halfway across the globe just to see you, huh?” she asked nervously.
Oz nodded. “It’s a point of interest in my mind.”
She got up from the chair she wasn’t actually sitting in and paced across the balcony of his hotel room nervously. Oz was amazed. She was tens of thousands of miles away, but he could smell her. He couldn’t touch her, but he could smell her. She must be more powerful than she’s telling me, he thought as he watched her pace.
Finally she stopped and stared at Oz. “You were always fascinated with Giles’ work, right?”
Oz understood in an instant what Willow was about to ask. “In a sense.”
She brightened falsely. “Well, now’s your chance to… to learn about what it’s like to be a Watcher!”
Oz’s expression remained completely neutral as he processed everything. Ten seconds passed before Willow couldn’t stand it anymore. “I mean, you don’t have to if you don’t want to… it’s just that Giles asked me to contact some people I knew in the supernatural spectrum and ask them if they were interested in Watcher work and, well, you were one of the first people who came to mind…”
“How badly do you need me?” he asked quietly.
Willow stopped pacing and settled for wringing her hands nervously instead. She hadn’t thought she was like this anymore—all nervous and twitchy—but seeing Oz again had psyched her out. “Fairly. Thousands of Slayers and only the Scoobies and a handful of Watchers who weren’t exploded with the rest of the Council to go around. But, really, Oz, don’t feel obligated.”
“I’m not. I definitely appreciate the offer, Willow…”
“Thanks but no thanks? Gotcha.” She appeared much more relaxed. “I just thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask.”
“Whoa, hold on a minute. I’m not saying no. I just… I don’t think I could be around you all the time. It’s great to see you and everything… I was actually hoping that I really would turn a corner and there you’d be…” Oz stopped talking and looked Willow in the eye. He almost physically recoiled because she looked so different; she had longer hair and she looked tired, but overall, she looked… older. Oz hadn’t changed at all, he felt, but it was like Willow was an entirely different person. “I don’t mean it offensively. I just mean… it’s best for everyone if we’re not in each other’s company for more than visits every so often, like this, when you can just poof away if I start to wolf out.”
Willow nodded solemnly. “How’s that going, by the way?”
“I haven’t come close since I last saw you.” He paused. “How’s Tara.” He decided not to phrase it as a question.
Willow’s face fell. “She… um… she…”
“Nevermind,” he muttered. “I’m sorry I asked.”
“She died a couple years ago.”
Oz looked up. “Willow, I’m sorry.”
There was a pause. “So… you’ll do it?” Willow finally asked softly, no longer nervous in the least.
“Yeah. Give me a location, a name, and a number at which to reach Giles at any time, and I’ll be there in two weeks.”
Willow smiled, and she looked like the old Willow again. Oz was glad. “I’ll find someone who might suit you. I’ll come back to the same street corner the same time tomorrow, okay?”
“Sounds good. Willow—” Oz smiled vaguely. “You look good.” He meant it.
She grinned a Willow grin. “You look good, too. It was great to talk to you, Oz.”
He nodded and smiled, and she disappeared from view.
***
She played piano again. He determined her expression was that of concentration rather than that of melancholy. This time he leaned in the doorway and watched rather than from afar.
She glanced over and spotted him, now smiling. She stopped playing abruptly. “Your hair was brown yesterday!” It was an accusation. She had a very strange manner of speaking.
“Was it?” He glanced upward as though he could see his hair.
“I’ve always secretly wanted to bleach my hair. One time I tried brown with blonde streaks. I looked like an anime character. I kept fighting off the temptation to wear a grotesquely short skirt and giggle at some gentlemennnn.” No sooner had she finished that sentence that she immediately began plunking out the same song she’d stopped in the middle of only moments ago. Oz just waited, amused. After a few seconds, she stopped playing again, grabbed her handbag, and began to walk from the room. “It is time for a burger,” she decided as she walked past Oz. She glanced at him only momentarily, and he gathered he was supposed to follow. So he did.
He observed. She looked bewildered as she walked, as though she was taking in her surroundings for the first time, though he’d seen her walk down this hallway several times over the last week and a half. Suddenly she yelled, “STOP!” and stood in the middle of the hallway, opening her bag for something. Oz stopped walking and waited as she sang a song compiled of “doo doo”s and applied some grape-flavoured chap stick. Then she went on her way. Oz, again, followed.
“New in town?” he asked.
She nodded. “I went to school in a small town where my youngest friend was two and a half years older than me, so when they graduated last year I figured I may as well move someplace where I could at least meet some new people and actually be interested with my social life. Besides, my friend needed a roommate, so I figured I should probably take the opportunity as it was presented to me.”
“You’re a senior, though.”
“Yep.”
“So either your friend, two and a half years your elder, is really behind, or you’re really ahead.”
“I skipped two grades. Aren’t you like in your twenties?”
So he had changed in appearance over the last few years. “Good call.”
“So why are you loitering around a high school at noon on a weekday?”
“I’m here to talk to you, actually.”
“The stalking wasn’t very endearing.”
“Didn’t want to interrupt your piano playing. By the time you finished, I’d forget what I wanted to say.”
“Hm. So what’d you want to talk to me about?”
“It’s kinda personal, actually.”
“Personal,” she sang back. She turned the song into a passable impression of industrial-genre music. Oz smiled. Willow really had picked an interesting one for him.
“The explanation’s kinda long.”
“I liiike sushi.”
“Sushi it is. Tonight?”
Hilary frowned into her handbag. Her brow didn’t furrow; the corners of her mouth were turned down. Oz found this both amusing and endearing. “Do you have money?” Oz nodded and fished five dollars out of his pocket. She smiled at him, and then crumpled her nose. “Can I bring a friend? It’s just that this seems really weird to me, you know?”
Oz thought for a moment. “I get where you’re coming from, but what I have to say is going to be hard for you to accept let alone anyone else.” He shrugged. “You can bring someone if you want. It’s up to you.”
She began to nod in rhythm. Oz figured she was playing a song in her head and thinking about what he’d said at the same time. “There is a particular… sushi… arena… two blocks from here,” she stated pointedly. That seemed to be all she had to say.
Oz nodded. “Was that an invitation?”
She wrinkled her nose again. “Sort of. Come or not.” Then she turned away from him. The conversation was quite apparently over.
Oz smiled and walked away, hands in his pockets. He definitely owed Willow a lot of gratitude for this one. There’s no way he’d be bored, anyway.
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