Forget
By Niu
Dawn sits on the edge and watches as her feet send little cascades of stones tumbling down to the bottom of the crater. If Buffy were here, she’d tell her that it was too dangerous, the crater too unstable, that at any moment there might be a further collapse and then she’d be buried along with the rest of Sunnydale. Along with their mother.
But Buffy’s not here.
Dawn’s fingers traces names in the dust. She crosses them out and smoothes them over before writing another name. There’re so many names now but the faces are few and far between, especially from the monk-memories. They’re practically none existent now.
That’s probably why she doesn’t know who the man is that’s sitting by her side. He hasn’t said anything but he picks at the chipped nail varnish on his fingers and hums to himself.
Night starts to draw in and normally she’d leave now but the man still hasn’t said anything and the feeling of familiarity is creeping over her. She thinks he must be from the old days but she won’t ask. He may have intruded on her quiet place but that doesn’t mean she will be the one to break the silence.
Oz has been here before, many times, and never seen anyone else. He didn’t know any of them were still alive and he hadn’t wanted to find out, sometimes it was better to have uncertainty. Dawn was an age older than the last time he had seen her. She’d cut off her hair and it had blonde streaks running through it.
She looked old. Not old in the old lady sense or wrinkles or anything. She looked old the way Angel did. She looked old like the relics he’d seen. Being near her felt like being in some hidden temple in the jungles back east. He’d spent most of the day too in awe of that age to actually speak to her.
Dawn wasn’t just old though, she was ancient. She pre-dated pretty much everything and she’d started to get the wisdom that went with it. She knew how to do things that’d seem more appropriate in one of the films from her youth. The Matrix or even The Sin Eater. She had skills in magic that surpassed even what Willow’s had been and yet she hadn’t cracked from the power of it all. When people died, she didn’t bring them back. She understood about things like that now no matter how lonely she felt.
How old, how wise and how very, very alone.
Oz was pretty sure he had a handle on the whole wolf thing now. He’d been in some situations that might well have triggered it but so far he’d remained in control. The really good bit though, was that he could influence the wolf now. He couldn’t control it, but he managed to keep himself separate, along for the ride as it were, and if he thought loud enough, he could get the wolf to do things. Or stop doing things.
“Oz.”
Dawn nodded, another name she knew, another face she didn’t. How odd that it should be the visual aspect of her memory that failed her first. For normal people it was the other way around but then she wasn’t normal, was she.
“I haven’t seen you here before.”
Dawn shrugged, she never came at the same time twice, too many things wanted to destroy her or use her or sell her.
“You remember?”
“You’ll have to be more specific.”
“Me? Do you remember me?”
Dawn looked at him now, really looked. She studied every line, every mark, and every flaw in his skin. She looked deeper and examined every mark, every spot, and every scar on his soul. She looked deeper still and the wolf looked back. She smiled.
“I remember.”
Oz got the distinct impression that she wasn’t actually looking at him, more through him. It felt a little bit like having someone turn your skin inside out but he didn’t say anything.
“You keep it hidden now. It’s still there you know. Do you want to know about the others?”
“No.” No explanation, no softening of the tone, just ‘No.’
Dawn’s face changed in that instant and he was back in Sunnydale again with a 13-year-old girl chattering away about nothing.
“When I was a kid I wrote everything down. In my diaries and stuff? I had a whole stack of them and then when I found out about being a green, swirling ball of energy I decided it’d be a wicked cool idea to burn them.”
She’s met Faith then, Oz noted. There was something of Willow in her inflections and behind it all, there was that look Buffy used to give him, that weighting look that said ‘Right now, we are human and civil, but if there is a time when one of us is not those things, I will take action.’
“Not so cool now?”
“My memory isn’t as good as it was. My…my visual recall is…its practically non-existent. I remember names but conversations are vague and sometimes when I look at pictures I put the wrong name to the wrong face and I only know its wrong because I wrote all the names on the back of the pictures when I realised that I might not remember and I keep testing myself and I always, always get it wrong.”
“So stop testing.”
She’d gone back to looking old again, gradually, as she’d tried to explain. She looked like she might cry but there were no tears in her eyes; Oz wondered if she had none left. She balked at his suggestion, she oozed disgust.
“And let them die?”
“Dawn, I thought, I thought they were already dead.”
She smiled at him like he was a child, like he didn’t understand anything and above all she smiled like the world was ending.
“They’ll only really be dead when no one remembers and I have all eternity to remember them in.”
“Can I help?”
The smile didn’t change and she didn’t speak but she nodded, just slightly, quickly, if Oz had blinked at the wrong moment he’d have missed it.
They got up from the crater without another word. They drove, Oz following Dawn, back to her home in L.A. and once there, he followed her inside.
The pictures covered one wall, all of them enclosed in plastic covers, protecting them from the sunlight.
Dawn took down a picture of Buffy, Willow and Xander grinning at the camera. Oz remembered taking that picture.
“Willow, Buffy, Xander?” Dawn whispered.
Oz said nothing and watched as Dawn turned the picture over. She smiled like she was right and handed the picture to him. The names on the back were wrong and so was Dawn.
Oz didn’t have the heart to tell her.