Conversation With the Monster
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.”
