“Waiting for her” and all that rubbish. A man, a vampire's got to have something to feed on, or he can’t stay in one place, Angel knows that as well as I do.
Don’t know where he is now. Not like that makes much of a difference for me, but after hanging out for centuries around the same bloke, you sort of get used to knowing his whereabouts.
After leaving Rome, the only thing I wanted was to forget once and for all about the whole bloody thing. And if such a feat was possible, it had to be done far away – from her, from anyone else, from all of this. I didn’t want to go back to California. There was a gaping hole back there, in the ground and in my head, and one breath of air in California would remind me of it when I didn’t particularly need any reminding.
I considered going to Japan first – smashing night-life over there, ancient demons making the ground shake, metamorphosing animals that disguise themselves into Buddhist monks to kill hitchhikers… Entertaining stuff. But while I wanted to put as many kilometers between myself and the rest, I didn’t want to land where I didn’t know anyone, where I had no connections, where I knew nothing about the rules of the game. I suppose it’s the same anywhere for vampires, but perhaps not for vampires with a soul.
I like being in control. Taking the mickey out of anyone who messes with me comforts me in that idea, but sometimes it just isn’t enough.
I did have some connections in Paris, though, so that’s where I landed. Sufficiently far, sufficiently void of any person or demon related even from afar to those I was trying to avoid.
Oh, I’ll admit I had a blast. Europe’s a great favorite with vampires because despite where we were sired, for some moronic emotional reason, we feel that’s where we forged our fame. Praha and Budapest are stock full of vampires of high standing that are hell-bent on upholding our reputation and think biting is serious business. Stiff-collared nits, the lot of them.
But there were no such characters in Paris. The place is as charming and folkloric as a movie set, old but not in an overbearing kind of way, and Gallic vampires are refreshingly happy-go-lucky. They only care about three things : good eating, good drinking and gorgeous women, all of which they manage to combine rather efficiently.
Alduin was a demon whom I’d pulled out of a messy situation at one point – a long story, that one, involving an unpaid plumbing bill and a tremendous flood of the Seine river in 1910 - so the fellow owed me a favor. I stayed at his place, a flat in the Marais neighborhood, next door to the former house of that damn Flamel warlock and a gay bar.
Though I’m not fond of the Froggies, I’d be lying if I said the wining, dining and fighting weren’t splendid – rare steak and underworld creatures with a short temper abound. The ladies, well, I have to admit I got a sample of that as well, and second helpings were had with great relish. But no matter how delicious, the taste of wine and women can get a bit cloying after a while, especially when one wakes up every evening with the same feeling of emptiness he fell asleep with in the morning.
Sometimes I feel almost as unreal as when I didn’t have a proper body to call my own, when I could dissolve in a blow of wind. But I do have a body, and in Paris I tried with all my might to sense it again, to fill it with drink and food and sex, something to weigh me down and give my flesh some consistency.
It didn’t work. It was gone, that fire in my veins, that real, wonderful heat I felt when I was holding the line so she could live, like sunshine coming from inside to burn me. And when I was with her, of course. When we together and she wanted me – only me.
It’s still too painful, the thought of her, the memory of her voice, her skin, the way her tiny waist fitted into my arms. I try to bury it, but it keeps coming back every time I open my eyes.
Funny thing that now that I’ve got my soul back, I feel as dank and depressed as a ruddy fish out of water.
When I decided to leave, Alduin tried to convince me to stay. It’s the same old technique of the ugly bloke trying to use the handsome one to pick up birds, and poor Alduin’s three eyes and lack of nose really don’t help him in that department. But there was nothing doing – the Old World and its quaint charms weren’t for me.
I had the vague idea of going back to New York. There would still be a entire continent between me and my memories, and an ocean between me and her. Perhaps it would be like meeting up with an old flame, without the same potential for disaster.
I don’t know why we have to leave Rome. I’m not usually one to argue my big sister’s decisions – well, not often at least – but this one has me reeling.
Everything is going our way, for once. The Watcher’s Council was as hard to budge as a oil tanker stuck on sand, but they finally got around to training a bigger amount of Watchers to look over new Slayers. Giles is in charge of that, but then who else could’ve done it?
So Giles is happy. Willow and Kennedy are happy and in love, living together and getting into a nice, comfortable routine, you know, as far as routine can go when a super-powerful witch and a Slayer are involved. Andrew’s happy that his whack science skills were finally useful to something other than creating chaos. And I think Xander’s starting to get used to the fact that most Slayers he’s training have a mad crush on him – so I guess it’s safe to say he’s reasonably happy too.
Why can’t we stay, and leave everything just as it is? No, that would be just too easy.
Seriously, we’ve been back in business, and kicking major demon ass. Okay, so it’s not like they’re very organized or anything – for more than a year after the First was defeated, it looked like they were just scrambling around, trying to make sense out of the situation and cause as much trouble as possible in the process. And yeah, they’re starting to regroup again from what I’ve heard, but we clearly have the upper hand.
And I like it in Rome, too. I can just hang around at Willow and Kennedy’s place, or work out with Xander, or go and talk to Giles when he’s in his office, and that’s cool. Let me tell you, a couple of his students are real studs, and, well…
Okay, so there was this one guy, David. He was only a few years older than me, one of the youngest Watchers-in-the-making. We got together a couple of times, but he told me he couldn’t have a real relationship, because he was busy with his studies… I don’t know, maybe if we stayed in Rome, it could’ve worked out. Not that Buffy or anyone else knows about it, of course, but it just makes me even more pissed off.
She told me that there was some work to do in California, and that she wanted me to think of my own future in a place where I could start with a clean slate. I think she’s just scared that hanging around potentials might give some ideas, or that Willow will start teaching me some magic stuff.
But it’s clear that I’m neither a Slayer nor a witch. I’m eighteen now and if I were one or the other, I would’ve had a “calling”, as they say. But I never did – I’m still just plain old Dawn, the human ball of cosmic energy.
I don’t know what future I could possibly have. I didn’t even finish high school, so college is obviously out of the question. I’ll probably end up working at a fast-food joint like Buffy did, because I don’t see what else there is for me to do.
Before there were any talks of leaving, I didn’t have to think about at all… but maybe my sister’s right. I’m not really of any use here either.
I tried to get Andrew to teach me about computers, chemistry and all the other stuff his years of geekdom taught him. He hasn’t got much going for him either, but he manages to uphold some sort of skill. I soon realized, though, that without years of geekdom behind me, I didn’t have a chance at accumulating the erratic and miscellaneous knowledge that constituted Andrew’s major asset, and after a couple of lessons on Star Trek and microchips, I gave up.
So here we are, ready to leave again. I just don’t know what I’m going to do with myself once I’m over there. And I have no idea what Buffy’s going to do either.
Surely she can’t be leaving all her friends and all the potentials behind for no good reason. I mean, this is Buffy we’re talking about. The Slayer. The Chosen One.
She keeps saying there are lots of “chosen ones” now, but that doesn’t cut it with me. I’ve seen them all, practicing, learning, fighting, and they’re good. They’re very good. They have the guts, the fire, the spark.
But they don’t have the dark, and Buffy does.