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BtVS: "The Watcher's Diary of Lydia Chalmers" (1/1, Gen)
Title: The Watcher's Diary of Lydia Chalmers
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel
Characters: Lydia, Spike, Quentin Travers, the First Evil, Lorne, Angel
Summary: Lydia learns the world isn't quite as simple as Quentin taught her it was.
A/N: None of this text is new. It appeared first as part of my WIP Windows of My Soul, and then as individual ficlets. I think it makes the most sense in this form, however. (For reference--mostly my own--the ficlets can be found.
The Watcher's Diary of Lydia Chalmers
"But we understand that you help the Slayer," Lydia probed as her colleagues protected her with cross and crossbow.
The vampire shrugged. "I pitch in when she pays me," he admitted.
"She pays you?" she asked, hurriedly writing notes down on her clipboard. "She gives you money?"
"Money, a little nip of blood out of some stray victim, whatever."
"Blood?"
"Well, if they're gonna die anyway." He paused, acting as if he were considering something. "Come to think of it, though, that's a bit scandalous, isn't it? Personally, I'm shocked. The girl's slipping."
Testimony highly unreliable, Lydia noted. "You've noticed a decline in her work?"
"Oh, yeah," the vampire said. "See, the poor little twig can't keep a man. Gets her all down. Few more disappointments, she'll be cryin' on my shoulder, mark my words."
Intriguing. "Is that what you want?" Lydia asked, probing. "I'd think you'd want to kill her. You've killed Slayers before."
"Heard of me, have you?" Interested, he stepped closer.
"I wrote my thesis on you," Lydia admitted.
The vampire smiled. "Well, well," he said. "Isn't that neat." He stopped smiling "Tell me, pet, now we're such good friends, how's the Slayer doing? Is she okay? High marks in all categories?"
Lydia considered. The vampire's interest in the Slayer was unique, practically pathological for a vampire. Deviant for a deviant, Lydia mused. Did that make him normal, or even more eccentric? The latter no doubt, and what she wanted right now was to sit down with her favourite vampire psychology textbook and integrate these new findings with the research she had put forth in her thesis. But they were here to evaluate the Slayer, not the vampire.
Evaluate? Evaluate what? Not for the first time, Lydia wondered at the pointlessness of the entire review. What were they supposed to do if they didn't find her up to par? Let the world burn in an apocalypse because the Slayer didn't have the information she needed? Find someone else? Bust the mad slayer out of prison (or kill her and wait for a new Slayer to appear)? None of the options were viable—they were stuck with the Slayer they had, little as Travers might like it. What was Quentin trying to accomplish, anyway?
Lydia forced a smile and answered the vampire, "That information will not be made public until after the review is completed. Have a nice day, sir."
Did she just call a vampire "sir"? And wish him a good day? She wasn't sure if she should be embarrassed by her show of respect for the vampire (he was just a creature, after all, albeit an intriguing one and a fascinating object of study) or her terrible lack of tact. Good day, indeed—when the very sun could fry him to cinders. "Good day" was practically an oxymoron for a vampire. Unless you assumed that good things were disagreeable to vampires as a matter of course, being evil (or, in many cases, merely amoral, her scholar's mind reminded her) and all.
She shook her head and kept on walking, trying to get such academic questions out of her head. They were in the middle of an evaluation, after all, and she had a report to write.
.
"How is that report coming, Lydia?"
Lydia Chalmer looked up from her laptop at Quentin Travers, who had just entered her hotel room. "Almost finished," she responded. "Just give me another 5 minutes."
"Can you give me a preview?" asked Travers. "The main ideas."
"The Slayer's methods are highly unorthodox, but she is ultimately capable. Under proper guidance, her innovativeness could be made an invaluable asset. Everything we already knew."
"And you are wondering why we had to cross an ocean and a continent to find out nothing new."
"With all due respect, sir, yes, I am."
Quentin nodded and sat down on a seat across from her. "Lydia, do you know Roger Wyndam-Pryce?"
Lydia did not allow herself to be taken aback by the apparent non sequitor. Travers would get to the point in his own time, she knew. "I've met him three or four times," she acknowledged. "As I understand it, he's rather highly placed in the Council. Like yourself."
"Like myself," Travers echoed. "Yes, indeed. And what are your impressions of Wyndam-Pryce? Please, speak freely. I want to hear what you really think."
Lydia considered. "He is…ambitious. Ruthless, even."
Travers nodded. "I would go so far as to say power-hungry. It takes something of the nature of a Machiavel to rise to such rarefied heights, I am afraid. Lord Acton was right, unfortunately. But you'll learn such lessons before too long; yes, Lydia, I see in you the potential to go far in the Council, although I rather suspect you will not be proud of yourself by the end of it. But Roger. He is a man in love with power, and he sees the Council as a means to that power. After all, our influence spans the entire globe, does it not? And we have less subtle resources. It was he who ordered the strike on the rogue Slayer Faith two years ago. What you cannot control, you must destroy.
"But he ignores one thing: that in the end, we are powerless. Yes, Lydia: for all our playing and scheming we cannot change the simple fact that we are not the Slayer. At the end of the day, the fate of the world rests in her hands, not ours."
Lydia looked at her superior in shock. "But what about 'the Slayer is the instrument'?"
Travers smiled—a somber, almost sad smile. "That," he answered, "is the true test we have come over to administer. There is a lesson the Slayer must learn if she is too succeed, and Rupert Giles with all his damnable interference seems to be dead-set against letting her learn it."
Lydia did not speak to fill the silence which followed. She knew that Travers would explain himself when it pleased him to do so, in the manner that he chose. After a moment, he asked another a question.
"Do you know the purpose of the Cruciamentum, Lydia?"
"A test," she answered, "of cunning, imagination, and confidence. To evaluate the Slayer's abilities and those of her Watcher. It is a rite of passage, dozens of centuries old." And the reason why Rupert Giles was fired from the Council, why current arrangements with the Slayer are so strained.
Travers nodded. "Yes, it is all of those things. It is a test, just as this review is a test. But both tests are also lessons, that we are not her parents, not her friends, and not even necessarily her allies. She cannot always count on turning to us for help. Someday we will not be here, Lydia, and the Slayer will have to soldier on by herself. It is our job to prepare her for that day. Rupert seems unwilling to let her learn that lesson, insisting on loving her with a father's love. He doesn't seem to realize that the best thing he could do for his Slayer now is to get himself a one-way ticket back to England and return home. But I suppose we cannot blame Miss Summers for her Watcher's mistakes.”
"Then you intend to give her the information she has asked for?"
Travers laughed. Like his smile, his laugh had a quality to it that was both sad and somber. "What else can we do?" he asked. "As I said, we are powerless. In our hands this information is just another file in our already overfull vaults, useless to the world. In her hands, this information has the potential to save the world. But if she is going to do any good with it, she has to discover that she is the one with the power. That is the lesson this review will teach her: that in the end, there is only one Chosen One." He paused. "Well, two in this instance, but that's a special circumstance."
Travers let the room return to silence, as Lydia processed what he said. Such responsibility to be placed on a single girl without even her consent: the fate of the world.
"What do you think, Lydia?"
"About what, sir?"
"You've devoted your life to studying a vampire who was feared all through Europe. You are not unversed in the psychology—and the politics—of power."
Lydia nodded. "I met him, today, you know."
"I know." He said no more, letting her continue.
"As you said, I have studied this creature my entire life. And now, I see him, and he is so far from what I expected. Although in a way, that is what I expected. After all, my thesis emphasizes how capable he was at adapting to new situations. With any other vampire, I would have said that what I saw today was impossible. With William the Bloody, it is merely implausible."
"Perhaps you had better fill me in on what you saw, Lydia."
Lydia paused, trying to decide how she could best explain what she had seen. "He seemed docile. A man who once cut a swath through Europe is now acting as sidekick to the Slayer. He helps her kill demons, stop apocalypses. From his activities the last six months, one would never even guess he was an evil soulless creature."
Travers nodded. "Have you ever heard of Maggie Walsh?"
Lydia thought. "Wasn't she the daughter of John Walsh, the man who wrote the textbook on demon anatomy? Last I heard, she was teaching psychology in the States."
Travers nodded. "The professor has joined her late father, I'm afraid. She was acting as the head of the Sunnydale headquaurters of the States' Demon Initiative. Succeeded in implanting over two dozen Sunnydale vampires with a neuro-microchip which would emit an electrical shock resulting in extreme pain if the vampire attempted to harm a living creature. According to the intelligence the Council has procured, William the Bloody was number 17 in their project."
Lydia looked at Travers in shock. "Why wasn't I told of this?"
"The Americans do not take well to our distributing our knowledge of their classified activities at will. A certain level of discretion is required."
"But this information has to be integrated with the research we already have. The models need to be revised, we need to—" She trailed off. "And I know more about William the Bloody then anyone else in the Council."
"Which is why I am telling you this now, Lydia. Believe me, we have not forgotten you. It seemed to me that while it was needed to make this visit to Sunnydale, it would be worthwhile to perform some actual research—discretely—while we were here. Do you have a hypothesis yet?"
"No piece of electronics could turn William the Bloody into something he didn't want to be. It could act as the catalyst, certainly. But there's something more at work here. Something—" she trailed off.
"Yes?" Travers prompted.
"I don't know," she answered. "I'm going to have to go back to my research, see how this new information fits together. A vampire deprived of the ability of violence, it would have no reason left to live. Chances were, it would go insane."
"Like—"
Lydia shook her head. "No, not like Drusilla, not necessarily. Drusilla's symptoms are of a severe schizophrenia, possibly dating back to severe stress she may have suffered as a human prior to her turning. But all vampires are insane by human standards, the equivalent of a severe antisocial disorder, psycopathy, even. For a vampire to leave the vampiric norm and go insane by its own standards, we have no idea what that would look like. And this one has always been prone to obsessions, typically fixating all of his attention on just a few objects.
"We have no idea what he is capable of, right now. We need more research."
.
"They took our files," the Watcher recited, "wiped out our records. We've lost contact with operations in Munich, Switzerland and Rome. We've got casualty confirmations coming in from as far away as Melbourne."
But it really was all as complicated as that, was it? Lydia spoke, knowing no one else would have the courage to say the simple truth to Travers. "Sir, we are crippled."
"It's all right, Lydia," Travers said. "We are still masters of our fate, still captains of our souls."
"Yes, sir," Lydia answered, but she didn't feel her mentor's confidence. This time, she was worried.
Travers cleared his throat. "Ladies and gentlemen, our fears have been confirmed. The First Evil has declared all-out war on this institution. Their first volleys proved most effective. I, for one, think it's time we struck back. Give me confirmations on all remaining operatives. Visuals and tacticals. Highest alert. Get them here as soon as possible. Begin preparations for mobilization. Once we're accounted for, I want to be ready to move."
"Sir?" someone asked.
"We'll be paying a visit to the Hellmouth," he explained. "My friends, these are the times that define us. Proverbs 24:6. Oh, by wise council, you shall make your war."
And then it happened. Fire, was everywhere, obscuring Lydia's sight completely. There was nothing but conflagration, ripping through the world. There was nothing Lydia could turn to escape the flames, nowhere she could go. She tried to cry out, but her shout was silent compared to the din of the explosion.
Only then did it occur to her to wonder at the fact that she was not already dead.
.
Lydia Chalmers, formerly of the Watcher’s Council of Britain, sat down at her kitchen table and began to eat. Alone. She was alone, now. Her vocation, her colleagues, her mentor—all of these had been stolen from her by the First.
“I told you that there would be a time when we would no longer be there for the Slayer,” a familiar voice rung out from behind her. “I simply did not expect it to be proven right quite so soon.”
Lydia looked back to see Quentin Travers watching her with curiosity, his sad smile upon his face. “You’re not him,” she said simply.
“Oh?” he asked. “Then who am I?”
“The First Evil,” she answered, turning her gaze back to her dinner. “Absolute wickedness older than men and demons, something we cannot even conceive. Beyond sin, beyond death, you are the thing the darkness fears. You are everywhere: every being, every thought, every drop of hate.”
“Yes, that’s you, Lydia, always with the textbook answer. The perfect scholar. If I ask you about the Slayer, will you go all ‘Into each generation’ on me?”
Lydia did not answer. It wasn’t him.
“Maybe you don’t understand how this works,” he said. “I am the First Evil, certainly, beyond your comprehension, but in this form I am also Quentin Travers. I have his memories, his mannerisms, everything. He was proud of you, you know that? I was proud of you.”
Don’t think about the pain. Don’t let him get to you. “What do you want?”
“But now, look at you. You have no direction, no purpose. You’ve become useless. This is not why I protected you.”
“What?” She couldn’t help the exclamation of surprise.
“What did you think, Lydia, that you just had remarkably good luck? Please. We make our own luck. Fortune favours the brave.”
“And I earned having my colleagues—not to mention my mentor, whose form you are now defaming—blow up around me, how, exactly?”
“Lydia, you were never one to lack long-term vision. Sometimes what is required of us is not as we would like it. Think of it as your Cruciamentum. Necessary . . . in the end. I have plans. They don’t require a bunch of Watchers thinking they could win a war against me. It’s not their war. You know very well that in the end, there’s only two people in this war that matter.”
“You,” said Lydia. “And the Slayer.”
“One girl, chosen to fight—but you know it, don’t you? You have it memorized. Only no longer. Soon there will be no more potential Slayers. No more Watchers to train them. And then, when I have the two Slayers killed, no more of anything.”
“You may find her a more capable foe than you expect.”
“Her unpredictability and heterodox methods may yet prove to be an asset? That’s what you told me two years ago, isn’t it. And I didn’t listen and now I’m dead. But I haven’t forgotten. That’s why you are still alive.”
“You lie.”
“What is the first lesson a Watcher learns, Lydia?” That was classic Quentin Travers style: to ask a question in true Socratic form, and only afterwards to relate the answer back to the matter at hand.
“To separate truth from illusion,” she answered. “In a world of magicks, it being the hardest thing to do.”
“Yes! Another textbook answer. Look into my eyes, Lydia, and tell me that I am merely an illusion. A mere phantasm, the First Evil playing tricks on your mind. I am the truth, the hard-core reality. Good is the illusion, the lie. Only I am real, and deep within yourself, you know it is true.”
.
"My mentor," Lydia explained.
"Well, I can't tell you why you lived and this Quentin chap died. Why the Powers choose who they choose—not my business. All I know is they have plans for you, and they didn't involve you blowing up in a building with a bunch of stuffy British guys. No offense to you or Wes."
"None taken," said Wes as he continued to do whatever he had been doing.
"And what are those plans?" Lydia insisted. "Do they want to use me for good, or ill?"
"Well, that's where you come in," explained the demon. "A pesky little thing humans have. It's called free will. You want my advice, don't go around looking gift horses in the mouth. Sometimes, they bite. You're alive—take advantage of it." Suddenly, he turned somber. "It's been coming to you, hasn't it?"
Lydia nodded. "The First Evil. It's been taking his form. Telling me—" She paused, then began to speak again. "He told me that he's what saved me. That I was going to destroy the world. Is it true?"
Lorne looked pained. "Look, I don't know exactly who it was upstairs that engineered your little not-dying thing. But if it was this First Evil, it's up to you to make sure that it gets more than it bargained for." He sighed. "You know, I think you would benefit from a talk with the broody guy."
A Watcher taking council from a vampire? It was absurd. To her surprise, however, she found herself agreeing. She wasn't a Watcher anymore, anyway, and her world had already been turned upside down.
"Where is he?" she asked. "Take me to him."
.
Lydia walked into the Hyperion office and came face to face with the vampire with the soul, Angel.
It wasn’t as if Lydia had never seen a vampire before. She had even fought ones before, in training and under controlled circumstances. She had interviewed William the Bloody—on whom Lydia had even then been the worldwide expert—flanked by operatives armed with crossbow and cross. (She had gone back alone later, but only after she found out about the chip.) Never before had she been in a room with a vampire where it was only the vampire’s sense of morality which prevented him from ripping out her throat
Of course, Angel was unique. He had a soul.
He looked at her, as if he was amused by her discomfort. Probably was; it wasn’t as if the vampire had any reason to hold any love towards the Watcher’s Council. Lydia remembered the Council refusing to help the poisoned Angel on the principle that they did not aid vampires, even souled ones. Another one of Wyndham-Pryce’s brilliant decisions. The Slayer herself had quit the Council in protest. Wyndam-Pryce’s own son had been fired as result of the brouhaha.
And, of course, there had been so many other things. The black ops team sent to capture Faith. The Summers girl’s Cruciamentum.
“So you have seen the First Evil.” He didn’t make it a question, so Lydia didn’t respond. She merely waited for the vampire to continue.
“The First Evil plays on your doubts, your fears. It manifests as whoever can do the most damage: people you’ve wronged, people you love. Anyone who is dead.”
“It appeared as Quentin Travers.”
That got a reaction. Angel looked at her, really looked at her for the first time. He wore an expression as if he couldn’t believe what she had just said.
“He was my mentor,” she explained.
Angel knew who Quentin Travers was, of course, and like the Council as a whole, it would not have been a name he would remember with any fondness. But he made no mention of Travers.
“It takes on the memories, the personalities of whoever it manifests as,” explained Angel. “It tells you whatever it takes to destroy you, to make yourself doubt yourself precisely when one is needed.”
Lydia nodded. “Last month, the headquarters of the Council were bombed—presumably by an agent of the First Evil. Travers died in that explosion, as did everyone else in the room, except me. There is no possible natural explanation, and the normal detectors for supernatural activity came up dry. Last week, the First appears to me as Travers and tells me that it saved me, so I could—I don’t even know what it wants me to do. But I know it can’t be good.”
“It fits the First’s M.O.,” Angel agreed. “As you no doubt know, Buffy sent me to a hell dimension in ’98. By the end of the summer, I was returned here, my soul intact. To this day, I couldn’t tell you how or why it happened. But it did.
“That winter, the First began to appear to me as people I had killed, both long ago and recent. It told me that I was brought back to drain Buffy. To be a monster.”
“Then what it tells you, it’s not true. It’s just lies?”
Angel shook his head. “It doesn’t need to lie. It has a much more powerful weapon: the truth. It told me I was going to drink Buffy. And I did.”
“But you didn’t kill her.”
“No.” Angel’s voice sounded distant, as if his mind were focused on an entirely different subject. “I didn’t kill her.” He paused, took a deep breath—or pretended to, since vampires didn’t breathe—then continued. “The last night the First manifested in front of me, I went to end my life in front of the rising sun. And it began to snow, blotting out the sun just as effectively as the sun is blotted out now.”
“Something intervened.”
“Something, somebody, I don’t know. I’ll probably never know. I’ll probably never know why I was sent back from the hell dimension. But you know what? I know that without the sun, it’s a 24-hour feeding frenzy for vamps in L.A. I know that there are a lot of people in danger, who need to be saved from those vamps. I know that we need to find out how to bring the sun back, or a lot more people will be in danger, more than I can possibly save. And in the end? That’s all I need to know.”
He walked over to a cabinet, took out an axe. “Now I’m afraid we have an apocalypse to deal with. I’d invite you to help us out, but I’m afraid that might cause a little friction with Wes. And believe me, we have all the friction with Wes right now that we can possibly handle.”
Lydia was intrigued by that comment, but felt it was best not to pry. “It’s okay,” she told the vampire. “I have things I need to take care of in England. But I’ll remember what you said.”
Angel exited the office, where he was joined by Wesley and a couple of other armed individuals, presumably members of the Angel Investigations team. “It’s not what one says,” Angel said, wielding the axe, as the group left the hotel, “it’s what one does.”
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel
Characters: Lydia, Spike, Quentin Travers, the First Evil, Lorne, Angel
Summary: Lydia learns the world isn't quite as simple as Quentin taught her it was.
A/N: None of this text is new. It appeared first as part of my WIP Windows of My Soul, and then as individual ficlets. I think it makes the most sense in this form, however. (For reference--mostly my own--the ficlets can be found.
The Watcher's Diary of Lydia Chalmers
"But we understand that you help the Slayer," Lydia probed as her colleagues protected her with cross and crossbow.
The vampire shrugged. "I pitch in when she pays me," he admitted.
"She pays you?" she asked, hurriedly writing notes down on her clipboard. "She gives you money?"
"Money, a little nip of blood out of some stray victim, whatever."
"Blood?"
"Well, if they're gonna die anyway." He paused, acting as if he were considering something. "Come to think of it, though, that's a bit scandalous, isn't it? Personally, I'm shocked. The girl's slipping."
Testimony highly unreliable, Lydia noted. "You've noticed a decline in her work?"
"Oh, yeah," the vampire said. "See, the poor little twig can't keep a man. Gets her all down. Few more disappointments, she'll be cryin' on my shoulder, mark my words."
Intriguing. "Is that what you want?" Lydia asked, probing. "I'd think you'd want to kill her. You've killed Slayers before."
"Heard of me, have you?" Interested, he stepped closer.
"I wrote my thesis on you," Lydia admitted.
The vampire smiled. "Well, well," he said. "Isn't that neat." He stopped smiling "Tell me, pet, now we're such good friends, how's the Slayer doing? Is she okay? High marks in all categories?"
Lydia considered. The vampire's interest in the Slayer was unique, practically pathological for a vampire. Deviant for a deviant, Lydia mused. Did that make him normal, or even more eccentric? The latter no doubt, and what she wanted right now was to sit down with her favourite vampire psychology textbook and integrate these new findings with the research she had put forth in her thesis. But they were here to evaluate the Slayer, not the vampire.
Evaluate? Evaluate what? Not for the first time, Lydia wondered at the pointlessness of the entire review. What were they supposed to do if they didn't find her up to par? Let the world burn in an apocalypse because the Slayer didn't have the information she needed? Find someone else? Bust the mad slayer out of prison (or kill her and wait for a new Slayer to appear)? None of the options were viable—they were stuck with the Slayer they had, little as Travers might like it. What was Quentin trying to accomplish, anyway?
Lydia forced a smile and answered the vampire, "That information will not be made public until after the review is completed. Have a nice day, sir."
Did she just call a vampire "sir"? And wish him a good day? She wasn't sure if she should be embarrassed by her show of respect for the vampire (he was just a creature, after all, albeit an intriguing one and a fascinating object of study) or her terrible lack of tact. Good day, indeed—when the very sun could fry him to cinders. "Good day" was practically an oxymoron for a vampire. Unless you assumed that good things were disagreeable to vampires as a matter of course, being evil (or, in many cases, merely amoral, her scholar's mind reminded her) and all.
She shook her head and kept on walking, trying to get such academic questions out of her head. They were in the middle of an evaluation, after all, and she had a report to write.
.
"How is that report coming, Lydia?"
Lydia Chalmer looked up from her laptop at Quentin Travers, who had just entered her hotel room. "Almost finished," she responded. "Just give me another 5 minutes."
"Can you give me a preview?" asked Travers. "The main ideas."
"The Slayer's methods are highly unorthodox, but she is ultimately capable. Under proper guidance, her innovativeness could be made an invaluable asset. Everything we already knew."
"And you are wondering why we had to cross an ocean and a continent to find out nothing new."
"With all due respect, sir, yes, I am."
Quentin nodded and sat down on a seat across from her. "Lydia, do you know Roger Wyndam-Pryce?"
Lydia did not allow herself to be taken aback by the apparent non sequitor. Travers would get to the point in his own time, she knew. "I've met him three or four times," she acknowledged. "As I understand it, he's rather highly placed in the Council. Like yourself."
"Like myself," Travers echoed. "Yes, indeed. And what are your impressions of Wyndam-Pryce? Please, speak freely. I want to hear what you really think."
Lydia considered. "He is…ambitious. Ruthless, even."
Travers nodded. "I would go so far as to say power-hungry. It takes something of the nature of a Machiavel to rise to such rarefied heights, I am afraid. Lord Acton was right, unfortunately. But you'll learn such lessons before too long; yes, Lydia, I see in you the potential to go far in the Council, although I rather suspect you will not be proud of yourself by the end of it. But Roger. He is a man in love with power, and he sees the Council as a means to that power. After all, our influence spans the entire globe, does it not? And we have less subtle resources. It was he who ordered the strike on the rogue Slayer Faith two years ago. What you cannot control, you must destroy.
"But he ignores one thing: that in the end, we are powerless. Yes, Lydia: for all our playing and scheming we cannot change the simple fact that we are not the Slayer. At the end of the day, the fate of the world rests in her hands, not ours."
Lydia looked at her superior in shock. "But what about 'the Slayer is the instrument'?"
Travers smiled—a somber, almost sad smile. "That," he answered, "is the true test we have come over to administer. There is a lesson the Slayer must learn if she is too succeed, and Rupert Giles with all his damnable interference seems to be dead-set against letting her learn it."
Lydia did not speak to fill the silence which followed. She knew that Travers would explain himself when it pleased him to do so, in the manner that he chose. After a moment, he asked another a question.
"Do you know the purpose of the Cruciamentum, Lydia?"
"A test," she answered, "of cunning, imagination, and confidence. To evaluate the Slayer's abilities and those of her Watcher. It is a rite of passage, dozens of centuries old." And the reason why Rupert Giles was fired from the Council, why current arrangements with the Slayer are so strained.
Travers nodded. "Yes, it is all of those things. It is a test, just as this review is a test. But both tests are also lessons, that we are not her parents, not her friends, and not even necessarily her allies. She cannot always count on turning to us for help. Someday we will not be here, Lydia, and the Slayer will have to soldier on by herself. It is our job to prepare her for that day. Rupert seems unwilling to let her learn that lesson, insisting on loving her with a father's love. He doesn't seem to realize that the best thing he could do for his Slayer now is to get himself a one-way ticket back to England and return home. But I suppose we cannot blame Miss Summers for her Watcher's mistakes.”
"Then you intend to give her the information she has asked for?"
Travers laughed. Like his smile, his laugh had a quality to it that was both sad and somber. "What else can we do?" he asked. "As I said, we are powerless. In our hands this information is just another file in our already overfull vaults, useless to the world. In her hands, this information has the potential to save the world. But if she is going to do any good with it, she has to discover that she is the one with the power. That is the lesson this review will teach her: that in the end, there is only one Chosen One." He paused. "Well, two in this instance, but that's a special circumstance."
Travers let the room return to silence, as Lydia processed what he said. Such responsibility to be placed on a single girl without even her consent: the fate of the world.
"What do you think, Lydia?"
"About what, sir?"
"You've devoted your life to studying a vampire who was feared all through Europe. You are not unversed in the psychology—and the politics—of power."
Lydia nodded. "I met him, today, you know."
"I know." He said no more, letting her continue.
"As you said, I have studied this creature my entire life. And now, I see him, and he is so far from what I expected. Although in a way, that is what I expected. After all, my thesis emphasizes how capable he was at adapting to new situations. With any other vampire, I would have said that what I saw today was impossible. With William the Bloody, it is merely implausible."
"Perhaps you had better fill me in on what you saw, Lydia."
Lydia paused, trying to decide how she could best explain what she had seen. "He seemed docile. A man who once cut a swath through Europe is now acting as sidekick to the Slayer. He helps her kill demons, stop apocalypses. From his activities the last six months, one would never even guess he was an evil soulless creature."
Travers nodded. "Have you ever heard of Maggie Walsh?"
Lydia thought. "Wasn't she the daughter of John Walsh, the man who wrote the textbook on demon anatomy? Last I heard, she was teaching psychology in the States."
Travers nodded. "The professor has joined her late father, I'm afraid. She was acting as the head of the Sunnydale headquaurters of the States' Demon Initiative. Succeeded in implanting over two dozen Sunnydale vampires with a neuro-microchip which would emit an electrical shock resulting in extreme pain if the vampire attempted to harm a living creature. According to the intelligence the Council has procured, William the Bloody was number 17 in their project."
Lydia looked at Travers in shock. "Why wasn't I told of this?"
"The Americans do not take well to our distributing our knowledge of their classified activities at will. A certain level of discretion is required."
"But this information has to be integrated with the research we already have. The models need to be revised, we need to—" She trailed off. "And I know more about William the Bloody then anyone else in the Council."
"Which is why I am telling you this now, Lydia. Believe me, we have not forgotten you. It seemed to me that while it was needed to make this visit to Sunnydale, it would be worthwhile to perform some actual research—discretely—while we were here. Do you have a hypothesis yet?"
"No piece of electronics could turn William the Bloody into something he didn't want to be. It could act as the catalyst, certainly. But there's something more at work here. Something—" she trailed off.
"Yes?" Travers prompted.
"I don't know," she answered. "I'm going to have to go back to my research, see how this new information fits together. A vampire deprived of the ability of violence, it would have no reason left to live. Chances were, it would go insane."
"Like—"
Lydia shook her head. "No, not like Drusilla, not necessarily. Drusilla's symptoms are of a severe schizophrenia, possibly dating back to severe stress she may have suffered as a human prior to her turning. But all vampires are insane by human standards, the equivalent of a severe antisocial disorder, psycopathy, even. For a vampire to leave the vampiric norm and go insane by its own standards, we have no idea what that would look like. And this one has always been prone to obsessions, typically fixating all of his attention on just a few objects.
"We have no idea what he is capable of, right now. We need more research."
.
"They took our files," the Watcher recited, "wiped out our records. We've lost contact with operations in Munich, Switzerland and Rome. We've got casualty confirmations coming in from as far away as Melbourne."
But it really was all as complicated as that, was it? Lydia spoke, knowing no one else would have the courage to say the simple truth to Travers. "Sir, we are crippled."
"It's all right, Lydia," Travers said. "We are still masters of our fate, still captains of our souls."
"Yes, sir," Lydia answered, but she didn't feel her mentor's confidence. This time, she was worried.
Travers cleared his throat. "Ladies and gentlemen, our fears have been confirmed. The First Evil has declared all-out war on this institution. Their first volleys proved most effective. I, for one, think it's time we struck back. Give me confirmations on all remaining operatives. Visuals and tacticals. Highest alert. Get them here as soon as possible. Begin preparations for mobilization. Once we're accounted for, I want to be ready to move."
"Sir?" someone asked.
"We'll be paying a visit to the Hellmouth," he explained. "My friends, these are the times that define us. Proverbs 24:6. Oh, by wise council, you shall make your war."
And then it happened. Fire, was everywhere, obscuring Lydia's sight completely. There was nothing but conflagration, ripping through the world. There was nothing Lydia could turn to escape the flames, nowhere she could go. She tried to cry out, but her shout was silent compared to the din of the explosion.
Only then did it occur to her to wonder at the fact that she was not already dead.
.
Lydia Chalmers, formerly of the Watcher’s Council of Britain, sat down at her kitchen table and began to eat. Alone. She was alone, now. Her vocation, her colleagues, her mentor—all of these had been stolen from her by the First.
“I told you that there would be a time when we would no longer be there for the Slayer,” a familiar voice rung out from behind her. “I simply did not expect it to be proven right quite so soon.”
Lydia looked back to see Quentin Travers watching her with curiosity, his sad smile upon his face. “You’re not him,” she said simply.
“Oh?” he asked. “Then who am I?”
“The First Evil,” she answered, turning her gaze back to her dinner. “Absolute wickedness older than men and demons, something we cannot even conceive. Beyond sin, beyond death, you are the thing the darkness fears. You are everywhere: every being, every thought, every drop of hate.”
“Yes, that’s you, Lydia, always with the textbook answer. The perfect scholar. If I ask you about the Slayer, will you go all ‘Into each generation’ on me?”
Lydia did not answer. It wasn’t him.
“Maybe you don’t understand how this works,” he said. “I am the First Evil, certainly, beyond your comprehension, but in this form I am also Quentin Travers. I have his memories, his mannerisms, everything. He was proud of you, you know that? I was proud of you.”
Don’t think about the pain. Don’t let him get to you. “What do you want?”
“But now, look at you. You have no direction, no purpose. You’ve become useless. This is not why I protected you.”
“What?” She couldn’t help the exclamation of surprise.
“What did you think, Lydia, that you just had remarkably good luck? Please. We make our own luck. Fortune favours the brave.”
“And I earned having my colleagues—not to mention my mentor, whose form you are now defaming—blow up around me, how, exactly?”
“Lydia, you were never one to lack long-term vision. Sometimes what is required of us is not as we would like it. Think of it as your Cruciamentum. Necessary . . . in the end. I have plans. They don’t require a bunch of Watchers thinking they could win a war against me. It’s not their war. You know very well that in the end, there’s only two people in this war that matter.”
“You,” said Lydia. “And the Slayer.”
“One girl, chosen to fight—but you know it, don’t you? You have it memorized. Only no longer. Soon there will be no more potential Slayers. No more Watchers to train them. And then, when I have the two Slayers killed, no more of anything.”
“You may find her a more capable foe than you expect.”
“Her unpredictability and heterodox methods may yet prove to be an asset? That’s what you told me two years ago, isn’t it. And I didn’t listen and now I’m dead. But I haven’t forgotten. That’s why you are still alive.”
“You lie.”
“What is the first lesson a Watcher learns, Lydia?” That was classic Quentin Travers style: to ask a question in true Socratic form, and only afterwards to relate the answer back to the matter at hand.
“To separate truth from illusion,” she answered. “In a world of magicks, it being the hardest thing to do.”
“Yes! Another textbook answer. Look into my eyes, Lydia, and tell me that I am merely an illusion. A mere phantasm, the First Evil playing tricks on your mind. I am the truth, the hard-core reality. Good is the illusion, the lie. Only I am real, and deep within yourself, you know it is true.”
.
Lydia held her cross tightly as she made her way through the darkness. With the sun blotted out in L.A., people had been leaving in hordes, and the place had become overrampant with vampires and other demons who enjoyed the constant cover of darkness. But what she needed was in L.A. She would have braved as many hordes of demons as necessary in order to find out what she needed to know.
Here was the building she wanted: the Hyperion Hotel. She entered.
And who should she see but Wesley Wyndam-Pryce. She should have known this wasn't going to be easy. "Lydia," he greeted her without any warmth.
"Wesley," she echoed in the same intonation. For a moment, they just looked daggers at each other, and then Wesley spoke.
"As you can see," he said, "we are far too busy right now for the Council to interfere. We have a . . . situation on our hands."
"An apocalypse," Lydia corrected.
Wesley nodded, accepting the term.
"The Council is gone, Wesley. Destroyed," she told him. "Haven't you heard?"
Wesley looked back at her, in shock. Then he seemed to gain control of himself and his features regained their granite impassivity. "As I said, we have been busy, Lydia."
Still, Lydia could the see the question which played across his face, as impassive as he tried to make it. And the struggle he was going through to not ask it.
So Lydia answered it for him. "Your father is fine. He wasn't in the Council building when it blew." Wesley didn't say a word, just looked at her expectantly, to explain her own presence. "But I was. I was standing mere feet away from Quentin Travers, and now there is nothing left of him but dust and ash. He was vaporized in the force of the explosion. All of them—destroyed utterly. Except me."
"And you want to know why you were saved."
"Krevlornswath, he's here. I need to see the Anagogic."
"He's not seeing clients currently. As I said, we have other concerns that—"
"Wesley," she let her voice display some of the desperation she felt, "I need to know. I came all the way from London, through that interminable darkness out there, to find out. You can't turn me away, now."
"Don't worry, sweetcheeks," came a voice from the stairs. "Ol' Wes won't turn you away. After all, we help the helpless. That's what we do, isn't it?" Lydia turned with relief to see the green-skinned demon descending from the steps.
"Miss Chalmers is most certainly not helpless," Wesley pointed out.
"Sure, but everybody needs a little extra help sometime, right? Why don't you sing a little something for me?"
Lydia nodded, with relief, and began to sing in a soft voice which came from her lower registers:
Go ahead and hate your neighbour.The demon nodded. "Classic survivor guilt. The Powers intervene to save your life, and you wonder 'why me?'. Why not—Quentin Travers?"
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven;
You can justify it in the end.
There won't be any trumpets blowing
Come that Judgment Day,
But the bloody morning after—
One tin soldier walks away.
"My mentor," Lydia explained.
"Well, I can't tell you why you lived and this Quentin chap died. Why the Powers choose who they choose—not my business. All I know is they have plans for you, and they didn't involve you blowing up in a building with a bunch of stuffy British guys. No offense to you or Wes."
"None taken," said Wes as he continued to do whatever he had been doing.
"And what are those plans?" Lydia insisted. "Do they want to use me for good, or ill?"
"Well, that's where you come in," explained the demon. "A pesky little thing humans have. It's called free will. You want my advice, don't go around looking gift horses in the mouth. Sometimes, they bite. You're alive—take advantage of it." Suddenly, he turned somber. "It's been coming to you, hasn't it?"
Lydia nodded. "The First Evil. It's been taking his form. Telling me—" She paused, then began to speak again. "He told me that he's what saved me. That I was going to destroy the world. Is it true?"
Lorne looked pained. "Look, I don't know exactly who it was upstairs that engineered your little not-dying thing. But if it was this First Evil, it's up to you to make sure that it gets more than it bargained for." He sighed. "You know, I think you would benefit from a talk with the broody guy."
A Watcher taking council from a vampire? It was absurd. To her surprise, however, she found herself agreeing. She wasn't a Watcher anymore, anyway, and her world had already been turned upside down.
"Where is he?" she asked. "Take me to him."
.
Lydia walked into the Hyperion office and came face to face with the vampire with the soul, Angel.
It wasn’t as if Lydia had never seen a vampire before. She had even fought ones before, in training and under controlled circumstances. She had interviewed William the Bloody—on whom Lydia had even then been the worldwide expert—flanked by operatives armed with crossbow and cross. (She had gone back alone later, but only after she found out about the chip.) Never before had she been in a room with a vampire where it was only the vampire’s sense of morality which prevented him from ripping out her throat
Of course, Angel was unique. He had a soul.
He looked at her, as if he was amused by her discomfort. Probably was; it wasn’t as if the vampire had any reason to hold any love towards the Watcher’s Council. Lydia remembered the Council refusing to help the poisoned Angel on the principle that they did not aid vampires, even souled ones. Another one of Wyndham-Pryce’s brilliant decisions. The Slayer herself had quit the Council in protest. Wyndam-Pryce’s own son had been fired as result of the brouhaha.
And, of course, there had been so many other things. The black ops team sent to capture Faith. The Summers girl’s Cruciamentum.
“So you have seen the First Evil.” He didn’t make it a question, so Lydia didn’t respond. She merely waited for the vampire to continue.
“The First Evil plays on your doubts, your fears. It manifests as whoever can do the most damage: people you’ve wronged, people you love. Anyone who is dead.”
“It appeared as Quentin Travers.”
That got a reaction. Angel looked at her, really looked at her for the first time. He wore an expression as if he couldn’t believe what she had just said.
“He was my mentor,” she explained.
Angel knew who Quentin Travers was, of course, and like the Council as a whole, it would not have been a name he would remember with any fondness. But he made no mention of Travers.
“It takes on the memories, the personalities of whoever it manifests as,” explained Angel. “It tells you whatever it takes to destroy you, to make yourself doubt yourself precisely when one is needed.”
Lydia nodded. “Last month, the headquarters of the Council were bombed—presumably by an agent of the First Evil. Travers died in that explosion, as did everyone else in the room, except me. There is no possible natural explanation, and the normal detectors for supernatural activity came up dry. Last week, the First appears to me as Travers and tells me that it saved me, so I could—I don’t even know what it wants me to do. But I know it can’t be good.”
“It fits the First’s M.O.,” Angel agreed. “As you no doubt know, Buffy sent me to a hell dimension in ’98. By the end of the summer, I was returned here, my soul intact. To this day, I couldn’t tell you how or why it happened. But it did.
“That winter, the First began to appear to me as people I had killed, both long ago and recent. It told me that I was brought back to drain Buffy. To be a monster.”
“Then what it tells you, it’s not true. It’s just lies?”
Angel shook his head. “It doesn’t need to lie. It has a much more powerful weapon: the truth. It told me I was going to drink Buffy. And I did.”
“But you didn’t kill her.”
“No.” Angel’s voice sounded distant, as if his mind were focused on an entirely different subject. “I didn’t kill her.” He paused, took a deep breath—or pretended to, since vampires didn’t breathe—then continued. “The last night the First manifested in front of me, I went to end my life in front of the rising sun. And it began to snow, blotting out the sun just as effectively as the sun is blotted out now.”
“Something intervened.”
“Something, somebody, I don’t know. I’ll probably never know. I’ll probably never know why I was sent back from the hell dimension. But you know what? I know that without the sun, it’s a 24-hour feeding frenzy for vamps in L.A. I know that there are a lot of people in danger, who need to be saved from those vamps. I know that we need to find out how to bring the sun back, or a lot more people will be in danger, more than I can possibly save. And in the end? That’s all I need to know.”
He walked over to a cabinet, took out an axe. “Now I’m afraid we have an apocalypse to deal with. I’d invite you to help us out, but I’m afraid that might cause a little friction with Wes. And believe me, we have all the friction with Wes right now that we can possibly handle.”
Lydia was intrigued by that comment, but felt it was best not to pry. “It’s okay,” she told the vampire. “I have things I need to take care of in England. But I’ll remember what you said.”
Angel exited the office, where he was joined by Wesley and a couple of other armed individuals, presumably members of the Angel Investigations team. “It’s not what one says,” Angel said, wielding the axe, as the group left the hotel, “it’s what one does.”
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thank-you for sharing your vision of Lydia.
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