In central California a man with one eye reads for the seventeenth time a letter from a woman whose name he will not allow to be spoken in his presence. She says something big is going on. Something apocalyptically big. Something old days big. She asks him to call, to write, something. Not for the first time he is fleetingly tempted by the idea of giving in. But only fleetingly. He sits and stares into the middle distance. He will, he knows, at some point have to get up and do something productive. But not quite now. Like so many of our diverse protagonists he is well used to the unnusual and esoteric. Unlike the others he has not seen much of it in more recent years and so he is a little taken aback when he finds himself confronting four intruders.
"She's telling the truth you know. As far as she knows."
"The world's ending?"
"Worlds end"
"And why does she need me?"
"You know the answer."
"She doesn't need me. Nobody does."
"But they did. Once. Three people at least. Such a blow."
"It wasn't her fault."
"You didn't say that then. And you don't mean it now."
"She did what she had to."
"She had no choice?"
"No. She had a choice. She chose and... and what are you doing here?"
"We need you. My brother, my sisters and I."
"Why, you need your dimension dry walled?"
"You know her. You know what she's capable of."
"I know exactly what she's capable of."
"Which is why we hope you'll be on our side."
"She's... I mean she thinks that... she doesn't even."
"Precisely. She doesn't understand. We feel you could."
"Understand what?"
The mass of scar tissue that should have been the speaker's eyes parts. Where there should have been eyes, or the remains of eyes there is instead a light glorious and pure and holding wonders and beauties that are not for mortal men to see.
"This."
In Istanbul a reunion between old lovers is taking place with a notable lack of passion on either side. Air which could have been full of what-ifs and might-have-beens is filled instead with the buzzing of flies. They have, in a sense, been waiting for this moment for the last thirty years. In another, more accurate sense, they have spent thirty years becoming very different people to the ones they were at their last meeting.
"So... what'cha been up to?"
"Achieved a state approaching Nirvana. You?"
"Turned evil, turned back. Buried two lovers. Accidentally destroyed the line of the Slayers. Spent eight months trapped in a silver bottle. Moved to England. Ate the heart of this warlock from Andalusia for reasons I don't want to go into. Lost pretty much everybody I cared about through one form of neglect or another so now it's just me, Dawn and you standing between the world and its absolute destruction."
Her old lover shakes his head.
"Not just you me and Dawn?"
"Umm... Miss 'I'm not used to having to explain myself'. I think he means he isn't going to help us."
He nods.
"But... the world. The apocalypse. Death, destruction. You're not going to help us?"
"No."
"But... but why?"
"Its about taking sides. I don't take sides."
"But...?"
"State approaching Nirvana. It's a thing."
The soldier turns to her companion. "So. You've dragged us all the way out here for nothing."
"I was sure that..."
"I won't join you. But I can help you. An old friend of yours came by this way a while back. Needed help I could actually give her. Could still be around. There's this..."
"Old abandoned temple?" asks the soldier
"How'd you guess?"
"Its always old temples. I'd bet it's not traceable to any identifiable cult or religion as well."
"Actually I think it's Mithraic."
"So is this and old friend or an 'old friend'."
"Told you all I will. It's a thing."
"And you're really just going to sit there and not help us?"
A shrug. A nod. The two women leave, one looking somewhat more flustered than the other
In California the one eyed man is lying amazed in the Miltonian sense of the word. Slowly he comes to his feet. A voice comes from another room.
"Alex honey. What are you doing?"
"Nothing. I'm..." he fumbles for some plausible lie and falls as ever miserably flat. Neither he nor any of his friends had been remotely competent liars. Perhaps it went with the hero territory. "...thinking."
The owner of the voice, a well preserved woman in her mid forties appears in the doorway. She has a look of long suffering amusement on her face. "Thinking huh?". The look of amusement turns to one of shock. "What the hell has happened to your eye"
"You know that, it was... something else has happened hasn't it?"
"It's glowing."
"It's what?"
"Glowing. What happened to you? What's going on?"
"You know... what I told you. About Angela and... and my old friends?"
"Yeah, look you've got light coming out of you."
"We fought demons"
"You what? No that doesn't cover it. You what"
"You're looking at me like I'm crazy."
"I'm looking at you like you have pure white light coming out of the place where your left eye used to be. Why did you never tell me about this?"
"Would you have believed me?"
"No but... so Angela was... by demons? I thought you said it was all because of... you know... she who shall not be named. Was she some kind of witch or something?"
"Yes, but she didn't call them up. There was... there was a thing... a situation. Choices were made and people died and she never even..."
"So... what are you going to do?"
"What I have to"
"And what's that?"
"Find her. Forgive her. Save her. Save the world. It's what we did."
"You're sure?"
"Look me in the eyes."
The woman looks, her husband had always had one eye, and he was as reticent about how he had lost it as he had been about the details of the end of his first marriage. She had never been overly put off by the injury, but now where his left eye may once have been there was a deep white light that held joys and terrors and the beginnings and ends of worlds.
"I'm sure"
"So am I"
On the outskirts of Istanbul the witch is in the middle of what she would never dream of calling a tirade
"I just don't understand it. We've got a world that's ending and he's just going to sit there"
"It's his right"
"It's bloody selfish"
"Bloody? You really have got British. And anyway it's not selfish. There's a war coming and lots of people are going to die and nobody can be really sure which side is the right side and so really, he's just being careful."
"Everybody's always careful. Sometimes you can't be careful. Sometimes you have to do what has to be done because somebody has to do it and it just seems like it's always me that's doing it. Ever since Buffy died. Before even. When I cast the spell that activated all the potentials I had no idea if I could handle it, I had no idea if it would kill me or kill them or what but I did it and I faced the consequences. I brought Buffy back when we needed her and I sent her away again when it came to it. I've always been the one that got my hands dirty."
"And Alex lost his wife and kids, and I killed my own daughter. Or had you forgotten?"
"No... it's just..."
"It's just that even now, even after it nearly drove you mad and destroyed you, you're still in love with your own power. You don't do this because you have to, you do it because you can and because you like to feel like people need you. There's nothing wrong with that and we all feel the same way but... it's not like everybody's either with your or against you."
"There really isn't a lot I can say to that."
"I got a lot of practice with Buffy. If I could talk her down I can talk anybody down." they walk on a way before she adds. "And if it matters I am. With you that is."
"Thanks. Look I'm sorry if I've been all controlley but... y'know..."
"You're the single most powerful thing on two legs and don't see why you should take any crap from people you could kill with a thought." They walk on again in silence, then. "You know what you need."
"If you say 'a girlfriend' I really will kill you with a thought"
The two come to the old temple. It looks strangely similar to about 90% of all the other temples they have ever been in, be they druidic, vampiric, demonic or proto-Christian. Unlike practically every other temple they have been in this one does not come with a complimentary ambush. There is, indeed, only one figure in the temple, and she sits in a state of calm reflection in one corner. She is youngish, maybe late twenties, and dressed plainly and in white, without makeup or ornamentation. It is not the last person that the witch or the soldier expected to see, but it is certainly the last way they expected to see her.
"Faith?" the exclamation comes at once from both women.
"But you're..." continues the Witch, gesturing vaguely in the direction of her clothing
"And you're..." adds the Soldier, attempting to express the words 'far far younger looking than you have any right to be' by waving her hands about ineffectually.
"That's right." She smiles and there is no trace of the old glint in her eye. "So what brings you to this place?"
The witch explains, and Faith listens, and then the soldier asks the obvious question.