Title: Watcher’s Burden

Author: Episkopos Reverend Alixtii O’Krul V, TRL (of the Church of St. Jesu the Heretic, Discordian)

Chronology: Post-“Not Fade Away.” Spring or summer of 2005.

Spoilers: “Chosen.” Very mild spoilers for other episodes (including but not limited to “Helpless,” “Checkpoint,” and “Never Leave Me”).

Disclaimer: This piece is set in the universe of Buffy the Vampire Slayer created by Joss Whedon. All characters in this piece belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. The events of the story are mine insofar as they do not pertain to the aforementioned parties. This story is not legal tender in the U.S. of A.

Rating: PG for suggestions of violence and drug use.

Summary: Sometimes preparing for the future requires sacrifices in the present.

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“I can’t believe you are the one suggesting this,” says Giles. “After what your sister went through—what you went through—I can’t believe you could possibly be saying this.”

“None of that matters,” I say.

“You could have died. She could have died.”

“She didn’t,” I point out, with more facility than I feel. “She was up to the challenge. And I didn’t even really exist yet, so there was never any danger of me dying. He couldn’t have killed me.”

“That’s not the bloody point and you know it.”

“You don’t have to like it, Giles,” I tell him. “I certainly don’t. But it needs to be done.”

“I won’t march those girls into danger,” he says, resolute. “I wouldn’t do it before and I won’t do it now.”

I walk up to Giles, put my hand on his shoulder. “You won’t have to,” I tell him. “I’ll do it.”

---

It is put to a vote before the High Council. Giles votes against it, of course; Roger Wyndam-Pryce votes in the affirmative. Lydia Chalmers, the sole survivor of the Council headquarters explosion, abstains. It’s up to me, the youngest member of the High Council, to break the tie. Of course, I’ve introduced the motion, so we all know how I'm going to vote.

“Aye,” I say, wondering how many girls I am condemning to death, and knowing in my heart that is necessary.

“The motion passes,” says Roger Wyndam-Pryce with a smile as he records the result of the vote. “The practice of the Cruciamentum is reinstated.”

---

“Stare into the crystal and meditate, Beatrice,” I tell you. You’re barely younger than I am, your eighteenth birthday about a week away. “We need to work on your concentration.”

You gaze into the crystal, your face blank, in a trance. Knowing you no longer sense my presence, I reach for the case and open it, taking out the hypodermic.

---

“Your Slayer has survived her test,” Giles says to me, coldly. “Congratulations.” He is still angry, I fear.

“Don’t worry about Rupert,” says Roger Wyndam-Pryce. “He is only upset that you passed the test that he failed.” Unsurprisely, I’m not comforted by Wyndam-Pryce’s words. I would think that there would be very little that man could say to me that I would find comforting.

“You made a difficult choice,” Lydia says. “Rupert understands that, I know. He’s made his own decisions he’d rather not have had to make. Just give him time.”

“Do you think I made the right choice?” I ask her.

“Does it matter what I think?” she asks, but then she sighs and looks to the side. I can tell she is thinking, that she’ll give me an answer as soon as she comes up with one.

Her eyes fall on a picture of Quentin Travers, who had lead the Council before he died in the explosion—the same explosion that Lydia had miracurously survived, although whether through intervention by the Powers, the First, or something else nobody knows. (Just as we still don’t know why Angel was brought back after Buffy killed him, I mused. And then I wonder—where is Angel?) Travers had traveled to America to oversee Buffy’s Cruciamentum, to review her performance before giving her the Council’s information about Glorificus. (Even years later, I shiver at the memory of the hellgod.) Giles and Buffy hated him with the deepest righteous anger. But Lydia had seen the other side of the man; had looked up to him as teacher and friend.

“Rupert loves the girls with the heart of a father, and it can blind him. Whereas Roger has no heart, could not even bring himself to love his real son; he’s blinded by his lust for power. It’s our job, perhaps, to see through these things. Quentin once told me that the purpose of the Cruciamentum was to teach the Slayer that we are not her friends, not her parents. It’s a cold truth, but history has borne him out. When it really mattered, the Council was not there for your sister. If Travers had not done what he did when he did, would your sister have been prepared to soldier on without us? He prepared for his own death, and it may have saved the world.”

Lydia puts her hand on the portrait’s frame, stares deeply into the painted eyes of her mentor’s simulacrum. “Let the men be blinded by love and power,” she says. “We need to prepare for the future.”

“For the future,”I repeat, then turn and walk towardsmy office. After all, a Watcher’s burden is never finished.

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A/N: I’ve been sort of fascinated lately with the concept of Watcher!Dawn, and this story is one of the results (see “Divine Interventions” and “Confessions of a Teenage Watcher” for more of the darker Dawn). Dawn's Slayer--Beatrice DeCosta--is a major character in "Confessions of a Teenage Watcher." The stuff about Lydia, on the other hand, utilizes continuity I’ve developed in “Windows of My Soul,” which examines in detail Lydia’s responses to being saved from the explosion as well as showing her working during AtS Season 5 (the “present” of the story) to locate Drusilla. It also has some good Quentin/Lydia scenes; check it out.