Victor D. Infante is a poet, screenwriter, and journalist. More information and other works by the author can be found at his Web site.
Part One: The Watchers
"You see," said Xander, "the First doesn't perceive time the way you and I do." Dawn leaned toward the window while Xander continued gesticulating wildly at the young woman sitting across the diner booth from them. She knew he'd come to a peace with the whole thing—the Hell the First had put them through, Anya's quick, brutal death, the searching and teaching that came afterward. The last twenty years had moved at a breakneck pace. Xander was only 41, but she could see a bit of gray in his hair. Being watchers could do that to you.
"We thought it was about Good and Evil," continued Xander, excitedly, "but that was all just bull shit."
The young woman, Rosa, had cornered them at the Antiquarian Bookstore they'd been poring through. Dawn thought it was funny that Xander never used to read anything deeper than X-Men. Now, it was everything she could do to draw him out from underneath the books. He'd spent the last twenty years trying to understand what happened that day, and now that he thought he had it, this girl pops up out of nowhere, claiming to know everything—about the Slayers, the vampires, the Watcher's Council. She sought out Xander and Dawn for knowledge, and Xander was more than happy to share.
Rosa wanted to know about the First, about the creation of a multitude of Slayers around the globe, and Xander may well be the world's greatest authority on the subject. Even Wesley consulted him regularly, and that was a day she never thought she'd see.
"So," Rosa interrupted, "how did you find out all this?" The girl looked dubious and enraptured at the same time. Rosa hadn't even touched her coffee, she was so taken by Xander's story. Dawn wondered if she should be jealous, then put the thought aside.
"Well," said Xander, with a smirk. "Dawn and the rest weren't the only ones having conversations with dead people that night, and I've had more than one or two myself. This particular conversation I learned of when I consulted an oracle at a monastery up outside Chico. My buddy Oz is a monk up there. He's taken a vow of silence, but it's kind of hard to tell." Dawn giggled, Rosa seemed lost. "Anyway, the oracle helped me uncover a few things, led me to some tomes where the First's minions recorded this and that. Anyway, I was back in England—we live there most of the time—where I learned that, as scared as we were of the First? The First was scared of a few things itself."
Part Two: The Monsters
The First manifested inside what used to be called the Initiative. Once, a madwoman tried to splice humans and demons into soldiers here. Like so many of them, the madwoman served the First.
"All of them, eventually, serve me," the First thought, morphing into the image of the Slayer.
Adam was sitting on a rock, fist to forehead like the statue. The monster looked up, and saw his former enemy.
"You are not Buffy Summers," it said, matter-of-factly.
"No," said the First. "I'm much, much more."
Adam regarded the First for a moment.
"I am not alive."
"You never were."
Adam seemed to consider that for a second. He rose to his feet, and extended his arms in front of him. The laser sights behind his eyes gleamed red as he analyzed his hands.
"Wasn't I?" asked Adam. "There was flesh here once. Bits of bone linked by wire and metal. Blood ran through my veins. Blood and electricity. Radioactive trace elements. I had a heart, of sorts. A soul."
"No," said the First, in a surprisingly gentle voice. "Never that."
Adam was silent again for a moment.
"I was alive, though. And I served a purpose."
The First had to concede the point. It was the very reason that it had summoned this strange shade back from Hell.
"And what was your purpose, Adam? What role in the world did you fulfill in your brief, violent life?"
Adam trained his eye sights on the first. He knew that this was not his body, that he was incorporeal, a mere reflection of his former self, but his sense responded much the same as they did in life. "A matter of perception," he thought. Already, he realized he could see things differently. His comprehension of his senses was... different. Bigger.
"I was very small," said Adam, his voice almost weak with the realization.
"I was created... my mother created me to destroy, and first, I thought that was my role, but that seemed... inefficient. I drew the dark things to me, the vampires and demons. I pitted the Slayer against her allies, and drove the soldiers to distraction and weakness. I sought to make them all stronger, to instigate war and cull the weak. To remake the world into my image—no humans, no demons. All of them linked through cybernetics and computer chips. Man, magic and monster, at peace in a world of order."
The First furrowed Buffy's brow at that. It didn't know what it expected from this conversation, just that Adam knew something it would need to understand. Like so many who'd served it, Adam had once tried to remake the world in his own image. And failed.
The First needed to understand why it failed.
Adam looked up at the image of his enemy before him—the woman who'd killed him.
"You need to understand," said Adam. "I was defeated, but ultimately, I succeeded."
Part Three: Mothers, Daughters, Teachers
"I don't understand," said Rosa. "I've heard about the fight with Adam. The Slayer devastated him single-handedly. Ripped his power source right out of him."
"Well," said Xander, "it was hardly single-handedly. Basically, she called upon the source of the Slayers' power, channeled through herself, me, Willow and Giles. It was pretty intense."
Dawn listened, but this was stuff she pretty much understood already. Maybe even before Xander did. "It's about power," was the first thing Buffy had taught her, after all. Even now, with Slayers running around everywhere, it was still the first lesson she taught.
Three weeks ago, before she left England, she faced off against three young Slayers. They were all about 14, each almost as powerful as Buffy herself. Dawn had nothing but a quarterstaff. They didn't stand a chance.
The first girl lunged directly at her. Dawn didn't move, but the girl fell straight past her. Dawn spun rapidly and touched the end of the quarterstaff to the Slayer's chest.
"One down," she said. "Who's next?" She didn't give them a chance to reply. The second answered with a spinning roundhouse kick, but Dawn dropped, rolled, and spun upward. The girl, confident in her power, had left her back unguarded. Dawn slammed the quarter staff into her back. Two tagged out.
The third was baffled, but took a swing anyway. She couldn't understand why it didn't connect. She swung again, and Dawn deflected the punch with her staff, then swung the other end up so it bonked the girl in the head. Three Slayers tagged out in under three minutes. They lasted longer than some did.
The girls were tough, but they were still clumsy in their power. They thought being strong was enough. It wasn't. Buffy had taught Dawn how to fight, and then, sometime later, Faith had taught her to fight dirty. Still later, Willow had taught her just enough magic to get by. Dawn couldn't blow up buildings or bind Hellgods like Willow did, but making her opponents think she was eight inches to the left of where she really was? Cake. The trick wouldn't have worked on, say, Buffy or Spike, but these girls didn't know that perception was a big part of power, that knowing the full extent of your own abilities and knowing what your surroundings really are could make you much more dangerous than any super-powers could.
Like Xander, Dawn had been changed by the gauntlet the First had run them through. She was stronger. More capable. Still, all this talk of that time made her think about the apparition of her mother, who had appeared to her the very night that the First had summoned Adam. "She won't choose you," the vision had told her, and she spent years trying to understand whether that was indeed her mother, or if it was the First. Eventually, she came to understand that this was a false distinction. The First was all Evil, every bit of it, and consequently, it was part of every living thing. Even her mother, rest her soul. Buffy and Willow tried to write the ghost off, but Dawn knew better. She knew it was both her mother, trying to protect her, and her tormenter, trying to drive her to destruction. They were one in the same, because good and evil were one in the same.
Buffy was uncomfortable with that idea, but then, she rarely had the time of day for metaphysics. The First wasn't some powerful entity, like Glory or the Master. It WAS evil. When it took on Buffy's form, it WAS Buffy. Dawn knew that there was no DEFEATING evil, but rather, one had to harness it, use the energy it gave, channel it toward preservation and construction. She and Xander were headed to Tibet in a couple weeks. There were people there she wanted to discuss this with further. Dawn smiled.
She thinks that's why the two of them had ended up together a few years back. They could both talk Buddhism and "the Invisibles" without missing a beat. Philosophy, pop culture, history, religion? All the same damn thing to them.
"The First couldn't understand how Adam had succeeded either," continued Xander, waving to the waitress for another cup of coffee. "For all its power, for all its knowledge, it was as blinded by ideas of good and evil as the rest of us. Adam knew better. He'd learned the hard way."
Part Four: Order
"Succeeded?" said the First, transforming itself into the image of the scientist, Maggie Walsh and, quite visibly, losing its temper. "You were created to destroy! You were to raise an army and eradicate the blight of man from the landscape, and you had your heart ripped from your body, your plan in tatters! How can you call that a success?"
Adam cocked his head, to the side. "You are not my mother. Or part of you is, but it doesn't matter. You are incorrect."
The First just stared at the monster. Adam rose to his full height and stretched. He could not feel his body, but that seemed irrelevant.
"I was created to defend a nation," said Adam. "I was created to preserve life on this planet. Their methods were imperfect. I attempted to create a new order, not understanding that I, too, was part of a greater order. I thought I stood outside reality. I was wrong. As the Master was wrong, when he tried to supplant humanity with his own race. As you are wrong now."
"Humanity will kneel before the beasts I raise," said the First. "It is the purpose of my existence."
"Is it really?" asked Adam. "To ensure that the strongest survive? If it were that simple, why are you talking to me?"
Walsh's face became Buffy's again. Adam's face was impassive.
"My role, I understand now, was never to destroy them, but rather, to test them. To place them in the fire—human, demon, and above all, the Slayer—and to let those best suited to survive do so. By all logic, my forces should have triumphed, but she reached into history for power, buoyed by forces present I did not understand."
"And what forces are those," said the First?
Adam seemed pleased at the question, as if there was something he'd wanted to share for a long, long time.
"You'll never understand the source of her power," he said, savoring the taste of the words.
The First assumed its true form, a demonic visage rising from smoke and brimstone. "Little shade! You think you can mock me! You are mine, and I can banish you to worse Hells than the one you rest in now!"
Adam seemed unimpressed. The moment passed, and The First resumed Buffy's form.
"My purpose," continued Adam, "my true purpose, was to test her, to tempt her to weakness by vainly facing me in battle, to tempt her to corruption by letting her taste power in victory. She faced both tests, and succeeded. She and her race survived my onslaught, and she herself has no taste for power. When the time comes, she will defeat you, but you will have served your purpose."
The First looked sideways into time, down the corridors it could only partly see. There was a battle, with young girls falling by the wayside. The Slayer, with a sword jutting through her torso, the vampire plagued by anger and jealousy. The pieces are in place. But victory?
Buffy's countenance softened. "I know what I'm supposed to do," it said, "but I don't know why. I've manipulated every piece, each player is in my clutches. But still... there are easier ways to win. To assert my will upon the world."
"You are not alive," said Adam. "You have power, but no real choices. You will do this because it is the thing you do. If you win, humanity was not worthy of this world. If you lose, then it is theirs, for a time. The monsters will recede, then too will the Slayers, and man will be left to rest. And then the game will start again."
The First opened a portal to Hell, and banished Adam's shade to its damnation. It was the incarnation of all the evil that lurked within each being. It didn't like the thought that there were forces larger than it.
Conclusion: Goodbyes, of sorts
"I still don't get it," said Rosa, as Xander wound down his story. "Why was it that the First couldn't defeat the Slayer? What was the force more powerful than it was?"
Xander regarded the woman gently, with all the patience of someone who's spent nearly two decades teaching super-powered teenage girls.
"The First was never about evil," said Xander. "It was about balance." Rosa looked at him in disbelief.
"Oh, I don't think it saw itself that way, but there's evidence to support the theory. Before it all went down, we learned that Buffy herself had given the First the ability to act. We figured it was because of her resurrection, and that was part of it, true."
"Oh, boy," thought Dawn, "Here comes the Giles moment."
"We should have really figured it out beforehand," continued Xander, taking a last sip of coffee and resting his elbows on the table. "We should have figured it out the moment Kendra showed. It's not that there's never been two Slayers before—Giles was wrong about that. There have been. Wesley and I had a go at the Wolfram & Hart database a few years back, and there's record of one dying, say, in Iceland, and then being resuscitated, and another popping up in Africa. No one noticed because Slayers didn't used to last long. The situation corrected itself."
"But Buffy was brought back," said the young woman, appearing agitated. "Didn't that break some cosmic rule or something?"
"Sure," said Xander. "But the real kicker was that there were now two Slayers who'd be sticking around. That's what the cosmic balance took exception to. As long as Buffy and Faith both lived, one of them would figure out that there could be even more of them. That they weren't bound by the Shadowmen's rules forever.
"The First was free to act. It raised an army, murdered girls and destroyed the Council. And then, on one industrious day, it tried to talk Willow into killing herself, and manipulated Spike. It pulled Adam's shade from Hell to seek knowledge, and projected itself back in time to take Angel from the picture before he interceded. In retrospect, we should have seen the universe was giving us a chance to pull this off. Two headstrong Slayers? Two ensouled vampires? That's not coincidence. That's a redundancy plan. Still got nothing on the snow, though."
"Go back to that bit about...projecting itself through time?"
"Oh." said Xander. "Like I said, the First doesn't perceive time the way humans do, so it was nothing for him to be holding a conversation in its present while taunting Angel years earlier. It could be anywhere, anywhen it chooses, within limits I suppose." Xander's face went serious. "It could be here right now."
An electric shock washed down Dawn's spine, but she only hesitated a second, reaching instinctively for the knife Faith had given her, years ago. Xander calmed her immediately by placing his hand on her shoulder, never once taking his eyes off the First as it morphed into Anya's form." "How long you known, Harris?" it said, a perfect echo of her caustic tone.
"Since the beginning. Like I said, I've been doing this awhile now. I generally know when evil things are hanging out." There was a pause, and then Xander stated, plainly, "I've never forgiven you for killing her, you know. Not where it counts."
"There's fewer Slayers born every day, now." said the First, examining the replica of Anya's engagement ring on its hand.
"Nice touch," thought Dawn, as she glanced at Xander. His face said nothing.
"I know. That's OK, though. Fewer vampires."
"The future will belong to me. When all of you are dead and gone, the wheel will spin around again."
"Maybe. Or maybe someone will beat you back again. Did you learn what you came here to learn?"
"Not really," said the First. "What is this source of power I'm incapable of understanding?"
Xander softened again. Dawn realized that, on some level, he was now talking to the part of the First that really was Anya, and that was a place that she not only couldn't touch, but that she didn't even want to try and touch. That little bit was his.
"What made Buffy keep fighting and Spike sacrifice himself? What made Faith escape jail and Angel create a ritual death for his son? What kept us together when Hell was literally looking to devour us? What pushes all of us forward through days that feel like straight razors?" Xander let out a small laugh. "It's the only thing in this world more powerful than you, the only part of us that you have nothing to do with.
"It's love. It's the one thing you'll never understand, and it's the reason we'll always win."
The First glared, and began to fade out, without even a witty rejoinder.
"And the present?" said Xander, defiantly. "That belongs to us."
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