Timeline note: Post-Welcome to the Hellmouth

Dearest Madeleine,

Received your letter yesterday and wanted to check in with you and see how things are going. I regret that I have not been as available this week, but with classes starting up again and my slayer finally arriving, I have not had a moment's peace.

She is a difficult one, that girl, and I'm not entirely sure we've bonded well enough yet that I can say that affectionately. I was prepared for a little spunk, a little modern sensibility. I had of course read Merrick's account of his struggles to train a slayer who had gone unnoticed by the council, and was ignorant of her calling. But I trusted that in the months before his death, he had made some progress. That, traumatic as his death must surely have been for her, it had further impressed upon her the need for a protector such as herself. Instead, I find it has produced the opposite effect-she had all but renounced her calling, and had not trained a day in the weeks since!

Though I have made some progress already in the latter regard, I find that I am more impatient with her than I had planned, that uncle-ing a two-year-old has not prepared me quite as well as I thought it had for being an authority figure with someone who aims to do their own thing. I keep reminding myself that there is much that girl doesn't yet understand about the forces at work here: the council, and their machinations to get her-to get ME-in place on the hellmouth, the delicate cosmic forces at work on good, on evil…I haven't even started her on any of that sticky business with the books of prophecies yet. She has thus far conceded to the fact of the hellmouth, and when confronted with vampires, she is at the very least staking them. But beyond that, she has little interest in furthering her education as a slayer.

I am further chagrined by this stubborn insistence she seems to have on the necessity of leading a "normal" life in spite of and in addition to the one mandated by her calling. She trains, she patrols, she attends school and presumably has responsibilities where her grades are concerned, and yet she attempts a social life on top of it. When does the girl sleep? Is it fair to deprive her of the human contact she so obviously needs? But at the same time, is it fair to permit these behaviours even if it leaves her under-rested? The hellmouth makes this tougher here-vampires are stronger, demons are meaner…there is no room at all for an off-night. A mistake could kill her, or worse. And hers is not always going to be the only life at stake here.

It ahs been mandated for so long that the watcher will be the slayer's sole support, that she hunt in secret, that the gravity of her calling necessitates that sacrifice. But if this girl's "modern" sensibility is indicative of where things are at these days, perhaps that's not enough anymore. Perhaps it never WAS enough. Can we know for certain that if slayers past had mothers, friends, communities, they might not have fought harder, tried harder, lived longer? The friends my slayer has seem just as devoted to her calling as she is. Now that they know what's out there, they feel compelled to not sit idly back. Might they not be useful? Might they not be trained to research, trained to aid?

I have no answers, Madeleine. They are good kids, honest kids, the hope of the future. Am I prepared to gamble with their lives as well as hers? I find that in light of your recent news, I can't help but spare a thought for their mothers. If it was Colin involved, or your unborn child, would I be less inclined to waffle? Would I be more inclined to say you CAN sit idly back, because we are sufficient to protect you? And would I really believe such a fiction? Would I really believe that one girl in all the world is really enough, that ONE MAN in all the world would really be enough to guide her?

And just what sort of slayer really would be most effective? The council's version, the docile lone wolf? Or my slayer's version, with friends, with love, with a life worth fighting for? All these years, I've had Mother in my ear going up against the council's wishes. You CAN have a life. You SHOULD have a life. Going up against everything I was ever taught was right, was proper, was keeping me alive. If it should turn out now that she may have been right all along…

I fear it's already affecting me. You see how I am already starting to doubt, starting to confuse. Can we really have it all, a life and a destiny? One area must surely be compromised by the attention the other receives. How to set those boundaries? How to keep things in line? Ironic, in a way, that it should be now you spring your little announcement on me. You and Roger went through these same questions when Colin was born, the same fears, the same decisions, the same fine balance between your life before, and your life now, between your love and your responsibilities. But then, there are two of you, aren't there, and here, there is only me…

Dear heart, my head is spinning, and I fear that I shall never sort it out. Perhaps if I was not so very alone out here…

But enough of that, I'm to be an uncle again. That's happy news. Send my regards to Roger, and hugs and kisses to my little man.

With love,

Rupert