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theusurpersdog · 5 years

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The Beggar Queen

Following up my post on Daenerys in A Game of Thrones, I also have a lot of thoughts on her arc in A Clash of Kings. In many ways it’s a very unexpected continuation of her story; at the end of A Game of Thrones, she has just hatched three dragons and walked out of a burning pyre, seemingly at the top of the world. Instead of a more typical fantasy story, A Clash of Kings sends Daenerys back down to being powerless. There’s a reality to how GRRM writes the story; sure, she has three dragons, but what good are they in the middle of a vast desert? What good are they when they can’t even fly or breathe fire yet? These are all questions Daenerys has to try and find answers to, while also trying to keep her and her people alive. And she’s also trying to build an army and fleet to take her to Westeros while navigating the wonders and horrors of Qarth.

The Bleeding Star

When Daenerys is about to step into Drogo’s funeral pyre in A Game of Thrones, she looks up to the stars and sees a streaking red comet blazing across the sky, and sees it as a sign of her dragons. That same comet guides her through the Red Waste in A Clash of Kings:

The Dothraki named the comet shierak qiya, the Bleeding Star. The old men muttered that it omened ill, but Daenerys Targaryen had seen it first on the night she had burned Khal Drogo, the night her dragons had awakened. It is a herald of my coming, she told herself as she gazed up into the night sky with wonder in her heart. The gods have sent it to show me the way.

The comet is the connecting thread between everyone in the story. From each point of view character, we learn some new truth or interpretation for what it means:

Cressen had never seen a comet half so bright, nor yet that color, that terrible color, the color of blood and flame and sunsets

- Prologue

That night she lay upon her thin blanket on the hard ground, staring up at the great red comet. The comet was splendid and scary all at once. "The Red Sword," the Bull named it; he claimed it looked like a sword, the blade still red-hot from the forge. When Arya squinted the right way she could see the sword too, only it wasn't a new sword, it was Ice, her father's greatsword, all ripply Valyrian steel, and the red was Lord Eddard's blood on the blade after Ser Ilyn the King's Justice had cut off his head.

- Arya I

Doubtless that was what they told Joffrey; Sansa was not so sure. "I've heard servants calling it the Dragon's Tail."

"King Joffrey sits where Aegon the Dragon once sat, in the castle built by his son," Ser Arys said. "He is the dragon's heir—and crimson is the color of House Lannister, another sign. This comet is sent to herald Joffrey's ascent to the throne, I have no doubt. It means that he will triumph over his enemies."

- Sansa I

When Bran repeated that to Osha, she laughed aloud. "Your wolves have more wit than your maester," the wildling woman said. "They know truths the grey man has forgotten." The way she said it made him shiver, and when he asked what the comet meant, she answered, "Blood and fire, boy, and nothing sweet."

- Bran I

All of those descriptions of the comet have one thing in common – Daenerys Targaryen. Whether it be Cressen seeing Fire & Blood in the sky, Arya seeing beauty and horror and Valyrian steel and blood, Sansa calling it the Dragon’s Tail and Arys Oakheart seeing it as the coming of Aegon’s heir, or Osha’s warning to Bran of “blood and fire, and nothing sweet.”, Daenerys is tied to the comet. Because it was meant for her. In the House of the Undying, Daenerys learns that the warlocks sent it to guide her to Qarth so they could feed off her and her dragons.

So, what does it mean, that this comet belongs to Daenerys? I think it’s very similar to how waking the dragon was used in A Game of Thrones. All of our protagonists find horror in the red streak across the sky, where only our antagonists (such as Theon) believe it belongs to them. In one way, all of the ominous foreshadowing for the comet is because the Warlocks were trying to kill Daenerys with it. But, the symbolism of the comet aligns shockingly well with Daenerys’ own path. She thinks it’s a sign of her reign, of her coming glory in the Seven Kingdoms. But instead, it leads her toward ruin; while she narrowly manages to escape the House of the Undying, following the comet almost kills her. The comet is just like the Queenship she’s chasing in Westeros; this thing she can’t let go of, that she’ll follow blindly, until it destroys her.

The comet also allows us to fully understand what Daenerys now represents to the people who saw her step out of Drogo’s Pyre:

"We follow the comet," Dany told her khalasar. Once it was said, no word was raised against it. They had been Drogo's people, but they were hers now. The Unburnt, they called her, and Mother of Dragons. Her word was their law.

Daenerys is very far from a normal political figure or leader; she is a messiah figure to her people, the product of hundreds of years of magic and prophecy. Her khalasar will follow her through the desert chasing a comet, because they watched her do the impossible. This kind of relationship she has with her people is crucial to understanding how Daenerys reacts to them. She puts an immense amount of pressure on herself to live up to the legend that made her the Mother of Dragons:

They are not strong, she told herself, so I must be their strength. I must show no fear, no weakness, no doubt. However frightened my heart, when they look upon my face they must see only Drogo’s queen. She felt older than her fourteen years. If ever she had truly been a girl, that time was done.

Daenerys knows her people are the weakest, the oldest and youngest, the outcasts, the people who cannot provide for themselves. So they turned to her, their only chance after the rest of the Dothraki abandoned them. And Daenerys is aware of this, and trying desperately to save her people and herself, but she doesn’t know how. Her dragons are only hatchlings, and all the enemies she made when Drogo died leave her no choice but to take her people through the Red Waste. As we’ll see later, her magical abilities failing her forces her to become a political and practical leader of her people, whether she is capable of that or no.

In later books, Daenerys begins to gather other followers, but in A Clash of Kings, the Dothraki are all she has. And they follow her because might makes right within a khalasar, and no one is mightier than the young girl who walked out of a fire with no burns and three dragons. Later books are much more invested in examining both the good - but especially the bad - that this kind of relationship can cause between a ruler and her people, but that part of Daenerys’ arc is already set up here in A Clash of Kings.

This dynamic does give us a glimpse into the altruistic part of Daenerys that is still there, and especially on display when Doreah dies in her arms:

Jhogo said they must leave her or bind her to her saddle, but Dany remembered a night on the Dothraki sea, when the Lysene girl had taught her secrets so that Drogo might love her more. She gave Doreah water from her own skin, cooled her brow with a damp cloth, and held her hand until she died, shivering. Only then would she permit the khalasar to press on.

Daenerys gives Doreah some of her own water, knowing that the girl was going to die anyway, just to ease her passing. She holds her hand as she dies, and refused to let Jhogo and the khalasar disrespect Doreah.

Daenerys is aware of the huge sacrifice her few followers made to be with her, and she’s willing to sacrifice tremendously to repay their loyalty.

The Dragons Are All The Difference

In my last meta, I talked a lot about how Daenerys is the truest possible version of what a Targaryen is, Fire & Blood writ large, and how much that has to do with the connection she shares to her dragons; and that theme is built upon even more in this book.

Now she has actually hatched her eggs, but quickly realizes that having dragons doesn’t help you feed your people:

Yet even as her dragons prospered, her khalasar withered and died.

The dragons eat many times their weight a day (and while that doesn’t seem like much since they’re so small, it’s important to remember that Dany’s people are starving to death) and don’t offer anything in return.

This is another case where the dragons function as a stand-in for Daenerys. While she gained tremendously from everything that happened at the end of A Game of Thrones, by becoming a khal and hatching dragons, the people who follow her lost everything. They didn’t even choose to stay with her; the environment she helped create was rejecting of their weakness and left them behind to die with her. And while they have their “freedom” now, it doesn’t mean much when Doreah dies in the Red Waste. Having dragons doesn’t make Daenerys capable of actually saving these people she’s led into the wilderness.

When Daenerys and her khalasar finally find the city they name Vaes Tolorro, at first Daenerys wants to make it their home:

In the coolness of her tent, Dany blackened horse-meat over a brazier and reflected on her choices. There was food and water here to sustain them, and enough grass for the horses to regain their strength. How pleasant it would be to wake every day in the same place, to linger among shady gardens, eat figs, and drink cool water, as much as she might desire.

And later, this happens:

"I've brought you a peach," Ser Jorah said, kneeling. It was so small she could almost hide it in her palm, and overripe too, but when she took the first bite, the flesh was so sweet she almost cried. She ate it slowly, savoring every mouthful, while Ser Jorah told her of the tree it had been plucked from, in a garden near the western wall.

The specific fruit Jorah gives her, a peach, makes this very important. In this same book, Renly tries to get Stannis to enjoy a peach in their last conversation, and Stannis will never stop thinking on what Renly meant by it; to us, it’s quite clear that the peach is the little pleasures in life, joy, happiness, pausing to love the things and people around you. The heartbreak of Stannis as a character is that he will never be able to understand the world in that way; the heartbreak of Daenerys as a character is that a part of her can sit and simply savor a peach, but something pulls her away from it; and, of course, that something is dragons:

She dreamed of Drogo and the first ride they had taken together on the night they were wed. In the dream it was not horses they rode, but dragons.

The next morn, she summoned her bloodriders. “Blood of my blood,” she told the three of them, “I have need of you. Each of you is to choose three horses, the hardiest and healthiest that remain to us. Load as much water and food as your mounts can bear, and ride forth for me.”

And while this choice is fairly reasonable at the time, since she doesn’t know what awaits her in most directions, she thinks later that she could go back to Vaes Tolorro:

Part of her would have liked nothing more than to lead her people back to Vaes Tolorro, and make the dead city bloom. No, that is defeat. I have something Viserys never had. I have the dragons. The dragons are all the difference.

The dragons always stop her from turning back, from being happy where she is. They are her reason to take the Seven Kingdoms, the motivation she has to restore her family to the glory Aegon the Conqueror raised it to.

A part of Daenerys wanting to turn back to Vaes Tolorro and start her kingdom there, is an interesting contrast to her thoughts on conquering Westeros:

Dany had no wish to reduce King’s Landing to a blackened ruin full of unquiet ghosts. She had supped enough on tears. I want to make my kingdom beautiful, to fill it with fat men and pretty maids and laughing children. I want my people to smile when they see me ride by, the way Viserys said they smiled for my father.

But before she could do that she must conquer.

She has all these wonderfully idealistic dreams for her kingdom, yet all of them are made meaningless with the line “But before she could do that she must conquer”; while she wants everyone in her kingdom to be happy, she’s going to have to kill their Kings and Lords and many of the people before she can achieve that goal. The fact that she has to reclaim the Seven Kingdoms by nature means she will force many to sup on tears. But Vaes Tolorro gives her an out; a ready-made city, a rich oasis in the desert, where she could be Queen and grow her people.

But that will always be too small for Daenerys Targaryen, seed of Kings and Conquerors. She will never be content with the small matters of Essos, not when the Red Keep and the throne that by right is hers is sat by the Usurper and his dogs. The connection she has to the Targaryens who took their dragons and conquered Westeros is always going to pull her away from the part of her that just wants simplicity.

Daenerys’ understanding of how dangerous her dragons are is also touched on when she is in Qarth:

And they must be trained as well, or they will lay my kingdom to waste.

She thinks a lot about how she wants to go back to Westeros, and how she wants to avoid laying waste to it. It’s very interesting to note just how aware she is of her dragons’ destructive nature this early in the story, because it suggests she is much more culpable in their actions than some people want to admit. A lot of characters in the story make decisions that end up being disastrous, but are too young or had no reasonable way of knowing how tremendous those decisions would turn out being – the two obvious examples being Sansa telling Cersei that Ned intends to leave King’s Landing, and Bran warging Hodor – and most people file Drogon’s murder of Hazzea as a similar accident for Daenerys. Yet she is already aware that without training they will completely devastate the lands of Westeros, and actively thinks she should try and train them to avoid that. So, once they are much bigger and flying around Meereen killing sheep, it seems like willful ignorance on her part not to do something about them. I think this is so important because the line between Daenerys and her dragons has always been thin, and the further the series progresses the more that line blurs, so Daenerys choosing to look passed or ignore how violent her dragons are is very interesting in the context of how she views herself.

Viserys Always Said. . .

One part of Daenerys’ story that isn’t talked about enough, is how devastating Westeros will be to her. In A Game of Thrones, she thinks to herself that all the doors will be red in the Seven Kingdoms. She knows that the house with the red door and lemon tree in Braavos is the last place where she felt at home, and ever since then she’s been running from one place to the next, a guest in the house of strangers trying to take advantage of her and her brother’s name. She watched her brother slowly lose his mind the more they were turned away, and had to suffer through his abuses. But when she marries Khal Drogo and meets Ser Jorah Mormont, all the things her brother said about Westeros are suddenly within her reach. Instead of thinking that a house in Braavos she can never return to is her home, she can tell herself that the Seven Kingdoms are her real home; they are the place where she’ll finally feel as if she belongs. She builds it up in her mind as this place where all the doors could be red, every house a home to her. And all the things Viserys said about how beautiful it is also stay with Dany:

She wondered whether Aegon’s Red Keep had a pool like this, and fragrant gardens full of lavender and mint. It must, surely. Viserys always said the Seven Kingdoms were more beautiful than any other place in the world.

And when thinking of Westeros, Daenerys specifically thinks that it is home. Previously in A Game of Thrones, Viserys misunderstands her when she says “home” because Daenerys had never viewed Westeros as her home. But now all of that has changed, and Westeros has become a promise to her. She never feels quite at home with the Dothraki, she certainly does not feel at home in Qarth, but waiting for her across the Narrow Sea is the most beautiful place on earth - and she is going to be the Queen.

But us readers have spent much more time in Westeros than Daenerys has, and we know that almost everything Viserys said wasn’t true. The Red Keep is a beautiful castle, but it has no pools or gardens that could compete with Xaro Xhoan Daxos’ manse. Even at Westeros’ height, it lags behind as far as arts and architecture and all the small beauties Daenerys is so enamored by in Essos. And Westeros is far from its best; while Daenerys sits in Xaro’s pool dreaming of gardens of lavender and mint, the War of the Five Kings is tearing Westeros apart. It was never going to live up to the place Viserys told Daenerys it would be, but the War of the Five Kings leaves it broken and fractured in a way Westeros had never seen before. It is not going to be the home Daenerys needs it to be.

The idea of Westeros being Dany’s house with the red door is something that follows her through the next two books, as well. In A Clash of Kings, Daenerys has firmly rejected any other future she could have to chase the Iron Throne, but she has yet to hit the emotional lows that A Storm of Swords and A Dance with Dragons bring her to. She has almost never felt at home her whole life, and the exclusion she feels from both the Dothraki and the Qartheen pushes her further into the promises of Westeros’ red doors, but she is not hopeless in Essos yet and still enjoys so much of its cities and cultures. The next two books will find her in Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen, though, and her hatred of those cities will make her emotional dependence on Westeros grow.

A Horse Girl With A Curious Pet

A huge part of Daenerys arc is how out of place she is. A combination of being the daughter of a disgraced King from a place she’s never set foot, to being a little girl running from place to place never settling, to being sold as a child bride to the Dothraki, Daenerys has never actually had a people or a place where she feels she belongs. A lot of her more problematic characteristics come from the need she has to find a place where she feels at home.

Being a Khaleesi is the closest Daenerys has come to being somewhere she feels she belongs, but the last few chapters of A Game of Thrones saw that completely implode. While she still has a khalasar and her own blood riders, there’s a distance she has from the Dothraki that is heightened in A Clash of Kings. This book is an introduction to a lot of the issues people point to when saying Daenerys is a colonizer and white savior:

She glanced at her bloodriders, their dark almond-shaped eyes giving no hint of their thoughts. Is it only the plunder they see? she wondered. How savage we must seem to these Qartheen.

The Dothraki sacked cities and plundered kingdoms, they did not rule them.

Daenerys does not understand the Dothraki, and is still an outsider among them. When she enters Qarth and sees all the beauty and splendor of the city, she quickly favors their way over that of her khalasar. Daenerys’ thoughts on the Dothraki are far from simple, since she herself is the victim of their more negative views on people and women specifically, but she also refuses to see them in a different light. She doesn’t even consider the possibility that the Dothraki could settle in Westeros and adjust to a more permanent lifestyle; instead she tries to find a new army to take Westeros with.

It’s really hard to find the line on what is reasonable from Daenerys in this situation, and what is her being irrational. She was sold to Khal Drogo as a child bride and brutalized for weeks or months, and then saw her life fall apart when she demanded the Dothraki be more humane in their warfare, so certain misgivings she has are reasonable.

But Daenerys doesn’t acknowledge her own culpability, and how she herself is not that far removed from the “savagery” of the Dothraki. When she thinks on how the Dothraki sack and ruin cities, it is in the context of her using them to conquer the Seven Kingdoms. Even though she could take her dragons and khalasar and live a perfect and peaceful life in the Free Cities, Daenerys is choosing to take an army – which she views as savage – and conquer a continent.

And there is a certain dismissiveness she has when addressing their beliefs and customs:

Other searchers returned with tales of other fruit trees, hidden behind closed doors in secret gardens. Aggo showed her a courtyard overgrown with twisting vines and tiny green grapes, and Jhogo discovered a well where the water was pure and cold. Yet they found bones too, the skulls of the unburied dead, bleached and broken. "Ghosts," Irri muttered. "Terrible ghosts. We must not stay here, Khaleesi, this is their place."

"I fear no ghosts. Dragons are more powerful than ghosts." And figs are more important. "Go with Jhiqui and find me some clean sand for a bath, and trouble me no more with silly talk."

In the above exchange between Daenerys and Irri, she does have a point. If they decide not to stay in Vaes Tolorro, they could die of dehydration and exhaustion; Daenerys does not really have a choice, they must stay in the ghost city. But she has no patience for the religious beliefs of the Dothraki, and how important they are to the culture, referring to it as “silly talk”. As we see in later books, there is often a logic to Dothraki superstition and Daenerys would be better off if she took Irri and Jhiqui’s advice into consideration.

Speaking of how Daenerys overlooks how important some things are to the Dothraki, I think this passage is especially illuminating:

“We are the blood of your blood,” said Aggo, “sworn to live and die as you do. Let us walk with you in this dark place, to keep you safe from harm.”

This is right before Daenerys going into the House of the Undying, when she is telling her blood riders that she must go alone. One thing that I want to make clear, is that the blood riders are very different from any other type of group sworn to protect their King/Queen; the Knights of the Kingsguard, for example, are sworn to die in defense of their King, but are under no oath to die if their king does, and won’t be punished by death if they save themselves instead of their king. Dothraki blood riders, on the other hand, are sworn to die after they avenge their Khal; so, if Daenerys dies, she has sworn her blood riders to committing suicide. The interesting thing is, Daenerys never really thinks much about that; I think, in her mind, blood riders were something that khals had and so she should have them too, never really thinking further on what she was swearing these men to do. Daenerys builds her brand on being very anti-slavery, and the blood riders live much better lives than chattel slaves, but there is something interesting to the idea that Daenerys has a group of men essentially chained to her – because their lives depend on hers, and as the quote above shows, they actively seek out to be with her when things are most dangerous; not because they want to protect her, but because they are risking their own lives when they let her leave. Of course, she didn’t force them into being her blood riders so they chose this, but Daenerys never thinks on what her choices mean for their lives when she does something risky.

Daenerys’ thoughts on the savagery of the Dothraki leads her to distance herself from the Dothraki when she arrives in Qarth, and she begins acting like the Qartheen to try and win their favor. She dresses in their traditional clothing, lives in Xaro’s palace, does not comment (or think to herself) on the city’s slaves, and tries to use their political systems to buy an army and fleet to sail to Westeros. This leads to some conflict with Jorah, who is instantly distrustful of Pyat Pree and Xaro Xhoan Daxos. Their arguments over the Qartheen are so insightful as far as both of their characters individually, and the relationship they have.

The things Jorah tells Daenerys about Qarth are not inherently wrong, and he actually gives her good advice. From his perspective, Daenerys has told him she thinks Xaro and Pyat Pree will help her win her crown, but he knows by instinct these men are scheming, so he tries to remind her of the reality of conquering Westeros. But the problem is the way he delivers the advice, and how he assumes Daenerys is much more naïve and stupid than she is:

Sometimes he thinks of me as a child he must protect, and sometimes as a woman he would like to bed, but does he ever truly see me as his queen?

Daenerys is aware of how he views and sexualizes her, but she also notices the way he sometimes treats her as if she’s a child. The way Jorah talks to her makes Daenerys both sad and upset; even her closest advisor doesn’t treat her like a Queen.

But Dany isn’t entirely blameless in why her advisors don’t fully trust her to act as Queen. It becomes much clearer in the Plaza of Punishment, when she doesn’t reveal her plan to Barristan or Jorah for really no particular reason, but she has a problem of communicating with her advisors. Since we are in Dany’s head, we understand that she too is nervous and distrustful of Xaro and Pyat Pree, and is trying to use them just as much as they want to use her. But all she tells Jorah is that she thinks they will help her win her crown, when she is actively taking measures to protect herself from Xaro and Pyat Pree. While she is still outsmarted a bit by the rich merchants of Qarth, Daenerys sees through a huge amount of their lies and flattery. Knowing that Pyat Pree would only show her the parts of Qarth that fit his narrative, Daenerys picked groups of her men to search every street of the city, both day and night. She also keeps guards with her dragons all day and all night, in case someone were to try and steal them.

It says a lot about him that Jorah naturally assumes the least of her, but it becomes a growing problem for Daenerys that she is unwilling to explain her actions to anyone. The reason for that, of course, is that she is Daenerys Targaryen, blood of the dragon, and her word should be law. She has an expectation for how people should treat her as a Targaryen Queen, and I’ll get into that more below, but it is a huge factor in how she interacts with those under her when she disagrees with them. She rarely understands why people don’t jump to follow her.

And as Daenerys grows further from Ser Jorah and the Dothraki, she is trying to win over the people of Qarth. As I said above, she is trying to use them to get to Westeros, so she never invests in them the way she did the Dothraki, but in order to win their favor she has to follow their customs and traditions. And to do that, she takes advantage of Xaro’s own ambition, by living in his palace and using his ideas to make enough money to buy the Thirteen and Pureborn into her favor.

I really want to emphasize how well Daenerys is treated in Qarth, even though they refuse to help her get to Westeros. I titled this “The Beggar Queen”, because Daenerys thinking of herself as one is extremely telling as to her expectations of people around her. Here is how Daenerys lives in Qarth:

Trader captains brought lace from Myr, chests of saffron from Yi Ti, amber and dragonglass out of Asshai. Merchants offered bags of coin, silversmiths rings and chains. Pipers piped for her, tumblers tumbled, and jugglers juggled, while dyers draped her in colors she had never known existed. A pair of Johos Nhai presented her with one of their striped zorses, black and white and fierce. A widow brought the dried corpse of her husband, covered with a crust of silvered leaves; such remnants were believed to have great power, especially if the deceased had been a sorcerer, as this one had. And the Tourmaline Brotherhood pressed on her a crown wrought in the shape of a three-headed dragon; the coils were yellow gold, the wings silver, the headed carved from jade, ivory, and onyx.

Yet this is how she thinks on all of her gifts:

I have become the most splendid beggar in the world, but a beggar all the same.

The people of Qarth are willing to give Daenerys everything the entire world has to offer, except the Iron Throne. And even though Daenerys has received plenty from Qarth, she leaves feeling used:

They never saw me for a queen, she thought bitterly. I was only an afternoon’s amusement, a horse girl with a curious pet.

I think this highlights a certain attitude of entitlement Daenerys has. If you look from the perspective of the Qartheen, they have no incentive to help her reclaim Westeros. She wants to sail immediately, before her dragons could help her with the conquest, and she wants to take their ships and their soldiers to do it. She can’t offer them any improved position, because they are wealthy beyond comprehension, and she can’t offer any improvement in their businesses because they already trade freely with Westeros. The only thing she is offering is the name Daenerys Targaryen, which is meaningless to the Essosi who never loved the Valyrians, and never had any investment in who sat the Iron Throne. Yet Daenerys, even though she has almost nothing to offer, refuses to beg:

“Tell me the words of the Pureborn,” prompted Xaro Xhoan Daxos. “Tell me what they said to sadden the queen of my heart.”

“They said no.” The wine tasted of pomegranates and hot summer days. “They said it with great courtesy, to be sure, but under all the lovely words, it was still no.”

“Did you flatter them?”

“Shamelessly.”

“Did you weep?”

“The blood of the dragon does not weep,” she said testily.

The only gift Daenerys keeps of all the riches she received from men looking to see her dragons, is the crown made to look like a three headed dragon:

“Viserys sold my mother’s crown, and men called him a beggar. I shall keep this crown, and men will call me a queen.” And so she did, though the weight of it made her neck ache.

It’s very symbolic that the crown makes her neck hurt, but it’s also very interesting how she draws parallels between herself and Viserys. Being placed in a position where she is trying to buy and negotiate her way to the Iron Throne, she starts to understand the fevered madness that drove her brother:

She hated it, as her brother must have. All those years of running from city to city one step ahead of the Usurper’s knives, pleading for help from archons and princes and magisters, buying our food with flattery. He must have known how they mocked him. Small wonder he turned so angry and bitter. In the end it had driven him mad. It will do the same to me if I let it.

The idea of being passed over, of being laughed at, is enough to make Daenerys have to pause and check herself. She understands how begging to lesser men, when she is the blood of the dragon, could break her brother.

The rejection from the Qartheen is another step in the long walk Daenerys is taking to isolation and paranoia. A Dance with Dragons is the arc that most focuses on how paranoid and alone Daenerys is becoming, but even back in A Clash of Kings, she is starting to mistrust everyone around her; and for good reason. Daenerys is young and incredibly beautiful, and also has the only three dragons in the entire world. Once she hatches them, it becomes incredibly hard for her to distinguish who follows her or wants to have a relationship with her because of her, or if they simply want her dragons. Xaro Xhoan Daxos tries to trick Daenerys into marrying him, because Qartheen custom would allow him to claim one of her dragons. The warlocks also are trying to use Daenerys for her dragons, as they try and lure her to the House of the Undying to feed off the magical energy she has.

Quaithe is introduced in this book, and from the start she tries to warn and guide Daenerys against people who want her only for her dragons:

From her Dany received only a warning. "Beware," the woman in the red lacquer mask said.

"Of whom?"

"Of all. They shall come day and night to see the wonder that has been born again into the world, and when they see they shall lust. For dragons are fire made flesh, and fire is power."

All of the elements in Daenerys life start to add up to her feeling alone and cornered; she doesn’t trust the Dothraki to take Westeros, the Qartheen have refused to help her sail the Narrow Sea, she is fighting with her closest companion Jorah, and the mysterious maegi Quaithe is warning her to trust no one. All of this leads to Daenerys going to the House of the Undying for answers, but I’ll get into that more below.

What is very interesting about Daenerys, though, is that after the House of the Undying goes so poorly, she throws herself back into the Dothraki culture. As a show of defiance to the Qartheen who take all of their gifts and kindnesses back after she burns the Warlocks, she searches the docks while clad in the garb of the Dothraki. The lesson she learns from Qarth is that she hates compromise. She tried fitting in with them, to play their games and follow their rules, and they still refused to take her seriously. They accepted her gifts, listened to her case, and politely but unequivocally said no. So, what was the point? Why did Daenerys give up the Dothraki, why did she bother bribing lesser men?

In the following books, she will try exceptionally hard to make compromises to rule cities, but she hates it. Even though she wants to do these things for her people, each and every time it takes a part of her, and she starts to lose sight of why she even wants to help the people she hates and rule a city that is determined to deny her. Compromise does not sit well with Daenerys.

Daughter of Three

The main points of Daenerys’ chapters in this book are foreshadowing and prophecy. I’ve always found A Clash of Kings to be such a great book on its own, but an absolutely amazing second act to A Game of Thrones, because the first book sets up in the very first chapter the high fantasy conflict with the Others, and ends on the incredibly high fantasy aspect of Daenerys walking out of a burning pyre with three dragons; but in between, the story dives deep into the political and personal stories of our protagonists. And while people still argue which element this story is “really about”, I think Clash does a great job in establishing that the answer is both. The War of the Five Kings pulls the political plotlines into harsh focus, with character like Catelyn, Tyrion, and Davos consistently acting and reacting to the respective Kings, and characters like Sansa and Arya who focus on the personal fallout of war; but A Clash of Kings also sends Daenerys and Bran on their magical journeys, and permanently sets them on very high fantasy paths. In the same book that sees the political foregrounded, two of our main characters leap forward in their magical progression. Daenerys in particular highlights the way the political and magical intertwine, and how the two can work together.

The climax of Daenerys’ arc in this book is extremely magical. The rejection of Xaro and the Pureborn leaves her feeling like the answers offered by the Warlocks is her only choice, so she goes to the House of the Undying. Once she’s inside, she sees a whirlwind of visions that give readers a glimpse into the past and the future, as it relates to Daenerys and the rest of our characters. I’m going to try and break all of them down, and what I think they mean and why the Undying choose to show them to her.

There’s two different sets of visions Daenerys sees when she is in the House of the Undying; the first visions she sees as she is trying to find the Undying, and is tempted to look into doors. This is how Pyat Pree describes them:

“Within, you will see many things that disturb you. Visions of loveliness and visions of horror, wonders and terrors. Sights and sounds of days gone by and days to come and days that never were. Dwellers and servitors may speak to you as you go. Answer or ignore them as you choose, but enter no room until you reach the audience chamber.”

The visions Daenerys sees are of the Five Kings tearing Westeros apart, the Red Wedding, Ser Willem Darry in the house with the red door, the Mad King telling his pyromancers to burn King’s Landing, and Rhaegar talking to Elia about the Prince that was Promised. These visions are separate from the prophecies she receives from the Undying, and I don’t think we’re supposed to connect them to Daenerys or to each other. Some of them go together, but some of them simply don’t; I think GRRM intentionally separated them to show these aren’t necessarily about Daenerys, or even connected in any way. I do think the visions connect to Daenerys in thematic ways, though.

The first two she sees, of small men who represent Kings tearing the woman meant to be Westeros apart, and of a dead King with the head of a wolf at a feast, clearly go together. The first she sees is what the Five Kings do to Westeros, and the second is the climax of the war and its technical end, when Robb Stark is killed at the Red Wedding. These two visions don’t connect to Daenerys as much as they are a broad foreshadowing of GRRM’s world and his books to come; but I think it’s interesting that the glimpses Daenerys sees of Westeros are horrific, terrible things. I’ve always found the use of the phrase “mute appeal” to describe how Robb looks at Daenerys to be very interesting; GRRM only uses it twice more in the series, once to describe Ned’s pleading gaze, and then he describes Jinglebell as looking at Catelyn with mute appeal before she kills him. It’s as if Robb is begging Daenerys not to do something.

As Daenerys runs from the horrors of the Red Wedding, she sees her room from the house with the red door:

“Little princess, there you are,” he said in his gruff kind voice. “Come,” he said, “come to me, my lady, you’re home now, you’re safe now.”

Daenerys remembers that Willem Darry is dead right before she enters the room, which Pyat Pree told her she absolutely must not do. But that vision is the one thing that tempts her, brings her right to the threshold. In this case, turning around was the right choice; but I think this vision has broader imagery. Daenerys, so many times, comes so close to turning around and being the “Little Princess” again, an innocent child who didn’t want to conquer a place she’d never been. But she always turns around. She’s tempted the most in A Dance with Dragons, when she thinks of having a house with Daario free of being a Queen, but she can never commit to that kind of life. It’s not her anymore; she can’t go back.

Then she sees her father in the Throne Room, getting ready to burn King’s Landing. On a meta level, this vision exists mostly to set up Catelyn’s last chapter with Jaime, as well as Jaime’s A Storm of Swords arc; but it is also the vision most connected to Daenerys. For the first time, she’s seeing the real version of her father, the truth of the man she wants to remind people in Westeros; and she’s seeing her future, too. Daenerys was right when she thinks the people of King’s Landing will greet her like they did her father, because she’s going to burn the city.

Her last vision before reaching the Undying is of Rhaegar talking to Elia Martell, and naming his son Aegon. This is the only vision that Daenerys understands; she has no idea what the first two are, and doesn’t connect the vision of the Mad King to her father, but she does know Rhaegar. This is the first time she hears the phrase “the dragon has three heads”, which will chase her through Storm and Dance. Rhaegar also says that his son is The Prince that was Promised, and that “his is the song of ice and fire”. A Clash of Kings is the first book that really starts to introduce the overarching prophecies of the series, and it’s interesting to see The Prince that was Promised introduced in this context; Rhaegar knows something that we don’t, something about his son.

When Daenerys finally finds the Undying, she sees a second set of visions, this set all about her. First, she gets her prophecies of three:

. . . three fires must you light. . . one for life and one for death and one to love. . . Her own heart was beating in unison to the one that floated before her, blue and corrupt. . . three mounts must you ride. . . one to bed and one to dread and one to love. . . The voices were growing louder, she realized, and it seemed her heart was slowing, and even her breath. . . three treasons will you know. . . once for blood and once for gold and once for love. . .

It’s very interesting that these prophecies end on the note of a treason for love. Someone is going to betray Daenerys for someone they love, and that’s the end; I don’t have a firm grasp on the other treasons, fires, or mounts, but this one, to me, has to be Jon.

Next, Daenerys gets her mother of dragons prophecies; this is the first:

Viserys screamed as the molten gold ran down his cheeks and filled his mouth. A tall lord with copper skin and silver-gold hair stood beneath the banner of a fiery stallion, a burning city behind him. Rubies flew like drops of blood from the chest of a dying prince, and he sank to his knees in the water and with his last breath murmured a woman’s name. . . mother of dragons, daughter of death. . .

The three things connecting Rhaegar, Rhaego, and Viserys seems to be that all three were the Heir to the Iron Throne when they died. Their three deaths help to push Daenerys into taking the Iron Throne. Daenerys having the title daughter of death is extremely fitting with her previous imagery; everything about her life has come from death. Rhaegar dying, the Mad King dying, her father’s fleet being destroyed on the night she was born, Viserys being crowned in molten gold, Drogo and Rhaego’s deaths. She is the product of tragedy.

These are the next visions she sees:

Glowing like sunset, a red sword was raised in the hand of a blue-eyed king who cast no shadow. A cloth dragon swayed on poles amidst a cheering crowd. From a smoking tower, a great stone beast took wing, breathing shadow fire. . . mother of dragons, slayer of lies. . .

The first two are clearly Stannis and Young Griff/Aegon VI, and seem pretty straightforward; she slays the lie that Stannis is Azor Ahai, and that Young Griff is Aegon VI. The last one is a lot less clear. I really can’t say what this is. I know some people think the Stone Beast is Jon Connington with Greyscale, but to me that seems meaningless in light of the second lie. Why would both Young Griff and Jon Connington need separate lies? Jon Connington isn’t lying about anything. The imagery of a great stone beast is very prominent in all the books; from the prophecy of Azor Ahai waking dragons out of stone, to Sansa being described as a winged beast escaping the Red Keep, to Davos’ description of Dragonstone. I just can’t quite pin down what GRRM is foreshadowing.

The last prophecy she receives is this:

Her sliver was trotting through the grass, to a darkling stream beneath a sea of stars. A corpse stood at the prow of a ship, eyes bright in his dead face, grey lips smiling sadly. A blue flower grew from a chink a wall of ice, and filled the air with sweetness. . . mother of dragons, bride of fire. . .

All of these are pretty clear; Drogo was her first fire, then Euron, and finally Jon. The description of Jon “filling the air with sweetness” is very ominous, and just makes me even more confident he is the treason for love. I know there are some great metas that discuss sweetness in Daenerys’ arc, I just can’t think of any right now. But the idea of sweetness being bad, and foreshadowing a treason from Jon, is really highlighted by Daenerys hearing this prophecy in Qarth of all places. Time and again, the city’s exterior of sweet smells and beautiful buildings is used to hide the treachery underneath.

After the prophecies, Daenerys sees a whirlwind of past and future events:

Shadows whirled and danced inside a tent, boneless and terrible. A little girl ran barefoot toward a big house with a red door. Mirri Maz Duur shrieked in the flames, a dragon bursting from her brow. Behind a silver horse the bloody corpse of a naked man bounced and dragged. A white lion ran through grass taller than a man. Beneath the Mother of Mountains, a line of naked crones crept from a great lake and knelt shivering before her, their grey heads bowed. Ten thousand slaves lifted bloodstained hands as she raced by on her silver, riding like the wind. “Mother!” they cried. “Mother, mother!” They were reaching for her, touching her, tugging at her cloak, the hem of her skirt, her foot, her leg, her breast. They wanted her, needed her, the fire, the life, and Dany gasped and opened her arms to give herself to them. . .

The vision of her “Myhsa” moment leads into the realities of the Undying:

The Undying were all around her, blue and cold, whispering as they reached for her, pulling, stroking, tugging at her clothes, touching her with their dry cold hands, twining their fingers through her hair. All the strength had left her limbs.

The wording is intentionally similar, because we’re supposed to connect the Undying feeding off Daenerys, and the reaction she has to “her people”. In A Dance with Dragons, she turns Quentyn Martell and the swords of Dorne away because she’s not going to leave Meereen, maybe ever. Daenerys loves being a savior to the people of Essos, the feeling she gets when they scream “mother!”, the feeling that what she’s doing is right and good. But apart from those incredible highs, when Daenerys has to live in the choices she made to lead the Essosi, she just hates it. In A Storm of Swords, she does give her people fire and life, opening her arms up to them, but it’s not sustainable. Her fire burns out, and she’s left feeling empty and alone and more than anything angry at the people who made her choose to stay.

The Dragons Are Returned

After Pyat Pree and the Warlocks betray Daenerys, she has finally had enough of Qarth; the warlocks hate her for burning down the House of the Undying, Xaro hates her because she turns down his proposals, and the people hate her for all she’s done in Qarth. And if they all hate her, Daenerys is done playing their games.

The next time she goes out, she does so in the traditional garb and sandals of the Dothraki, with a bell in her hair to signify victory against the Warlocks. When Illyrio Mopatis comes through with Arstan Whitebeard and Strong Belwas, Daenerys commands them to name her ships Vhagar, Meraxes, and Balerion; the world will look upon her ships and know that the dragons are returned. Where she wavered from her the Dothraki, by the end of A Clash of Kings, Daenerys is ready to double down on the “savagery” of them. She’s tired of playing nice, of diplomatically talking and negotiating. This book perfectly sets Daenerys up for the path she decides to take in A Storm of Swords. She’s going to get the army she needs, no matter what.

Even if it means Fire & Blood.

#anti daenerys #asoiaf meta #game of thrones #a song of ice and fire #daenerys targaryen

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whatdoyouthinkmyjobis · 5 years

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Hunters on the Hellmouth

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TW: Inspired by events in BTVS 7.16 “Storyteller” and BTVS 7.22 “Chosen.” Discussions of miscarriage and abortion. Here’s a cheat sheet for keeping track of the Potentials.

Chapter 41: The Witch

DAY 1

Giles had seen Buffy’s heart break many times, but when Dean disappeared mid-kiss, Giles knew this time she might break in two.

Go to her. Go to her. Despite the urging of his heart, Giles did not break from the crowd gathered on Buffy’s front stoop. Shame froze him. He had been afraid to chase her when she had withdrawn weeks ago, apparently burdened by her secret pregnancy. Afraid to ask. And when the whole house had turned their backs on her, he’d gone along with them.

There Buffy stood -- barely a day post-demon possession -- suddenly alone.

Go to her. Go to her.

Dawn brushed past Giles and the Potentials to hold her sister’s hand and whisper in her ear.

Buffy, dry-eyed with her face set firm, turned to them and said, “Let’s hit the books. We need to focus on Caleb.”

“Excuse me?” asked Dani. “Dean was in charge, and now he’s gone. We should hold a vote.”

“No need,” said Giles, enjoying the flutter of rage across the girl’s face. “Buffy’s in charge.”

“I didn’t hear Dean say that,” she retorted.

“He didn't have to,” said Dawn with her chin held high.

“Buffy’s in charge,” repeated Betje as other voices joined the chorus.

Giles turned back into the house with a knot of Potentials in his wake. He had no idea what to do about Caleb or even if he was still alive after the fire, but Buffy needed focus. He was halfway up the stairs to grab research materials when he came barrelling back, nearly running Spike over.

“Oi! Watch it. Don’t damage the goods,” Spike said, rubbing his chest suggestively.

“It’s you! You’re the key!” Giles said, eagerly.

“Key? ‘Aven’t ‘eard that in a while.”

Ideas and memories flashed in Giles’ head faster than he could capture them. The First -- Lucifer -- had been chasing them for months because the first creature it had met in this world was Spike. But why did an archangel care about what a vampire thought was important? “The First spent weeks with you. What did it want?”

A twinge around Spike’s eyes betrayed his feelings about that time. “Information. Basic Sunnydale Who’s Who and What’s What.”

“But did it try to get in you? Read your mind or possess you?” Gabriel and Castiel had traveled through dimensions in their vessels; Lucifer had not.

“Night I ran into it ‘twas just a light, but it shot through me, jumped out looking like ‘er,” he said, pointing at Buffy as she entered the house.

“Got an idea?” Buffy asked. She still held her sister’s hand while Xander and Anya flanked her.

“Vessels,” said Giles. “It’s literally been staring us in the face this entire time. Lucifer needs a vessel. He wants Sam. He tried Astrid. There are very few options here for demons, let alone an archangel.”

“So he tried to use Spike,” she said with a quiet horror.

“But Spike didn’t give his permission--”

“--so Lucifer was ejected.”

“I ‘ad an angel in me?!” Spike curled his lip in disgust. “Now I need to shower.”

The idea seized Giles, his voice loud as he paced in the foyer. “What if, Lucifer found another vessel? Inferior, but enough to give him some form. Not a vampire because they are already possessed by demons, and obviously not the Slayer.”

“A witch!” Xander exclaimed with a giant smile. “They’re the only other group that can be possessed!”

Dawn raised an eyebrow at him. “You’d think you’d be less excited with your best friend being a witch and all.”

“Not possessable!” he cheered, pointing at himself with his thumbs. “For once, the Zeppo has the superpower!”

“Maybe that’s why he didn’t die,” Buffy muttered.

“What?”

“I, um, I got to Caleb at the winery,” she explained, the tiredness settling into her eyes. “Shoved my sword in and did not take home a prize.”

“I had the same reaction when you stabbed me,” Anya stated proudly, “and that was after Sam shot me in the head.”

“You two,” said Giles pointing at Buffy and Spike, “tell me everything about your interactions with Lucifer and Caleb. We’ll go back through everything again. If we want to kill Caleb, we need to cut off the power source.”

Barely half and hour back in her house without Dean, and between the walls, the air, and the constant jostling of bodies, Buffy was going to explode. “I’m going to check on Will and our new guests. Dawn, Anya, see if the girls need anything, and I’ll do a supply run.”

“You mean ‘we,’ oh carless one,” said Xander, happily closing his book.

“You, me, and vampire-infested buildings.” She flashed a lucky us grin. Just like old times. “Grab a couple of the better fighters to go with us. ”

Upstairs, she cracked open Willow’s door to find her still sleeping off her possession by Hecate. Buffy sneaked inside, hoping to find a few of Tara’s clothes for Ellen.

Willow stirred and muttered, “Sam?”

Crouching by the bed, Buffy brushed her friend’s hair from her eyes. “Just me.”

“Where’s Sam?” Her voice was soft and small. Tender, sleepy Will without a hint of terrifying goddess.

Buffy smiled tightly. “He came down after you fell asleep.” Willow needed to rest; she would break the news about the Winchesters later.

Jo was considering changing into a skirt when her mother, wrapped in a towel, ducked into the bedroom. “I don’t think anything in here will fit you, Mom.” Jo pointed at the flood-high hem of the jeans she’d put on.

Ellen smiled, a far away look in her eye. “Not sure my skin could handle clothes right now anyway.”

“Aren’t you cold?” Jo had turned the water up as hot as she could, but it still felt icy. The flannel she’d found barely helped.

Ellen nodded and sat on the bed. “Everything just kinda feels… sharp. Hard.”

Jo sat beside her. She knew exactly what her mother meant. Only a little noise from downstairs breached the quiet bedroom, but Jo had felt a roar in her ears since they’d arrived. She remembered holding her own guts in with her hands, growing cold and numb as blood gushed from her body. Her brave mother had offered to set off an explosion to save the Winchesters, their only hope at killing the Devil. Jo didn’t remember the explosion. Then nothing. Only it wasn’t nothing, but she was having a bitch of a time remembering what had happened. Then suddenly they were in someone’s backyard in the blazing sun.

“I died, didn’t I?” Jo whispered.

Ellen squeezed her hand. “We both did, baby.”

Jo let the words dissipate in the air. She couldn’t think about them now. Maybe not even later. So she looked around the room, trying to figure out what sort of person it belonged to.

Brown floral wallpaper and crochet pillows gave it the feel of an older woman’s room. The tangles of cheap jewelry on the dressing table, clothes strewn across the floor, and posters -- reproductions of Waterhouse paintings -- screamed college student.

Then Jo spotted an unbelievable picture from the nightstand. Dean Winchester in sunglasses and a t-shirt, his radiant smile highlighted by the sun, stood on a boardwalk, ocean behind him, with his arms around the blonde they’d spoken to.

“Mom, what was that girl’s name again?”

“Buffy? Bitty? One of those country club names.”

“She doesn’t seem like Dean’s type,” she said, handing the picture to her mom.

Ellen beamed. “They look happy.”

Jo snickered. Dean Winchester was the handsomest, cockiest hunter she’d ever met, and she had spent years pining after him. Nothing obvious. Sneaking glances when he’d come in the bar. Calling every few months to check in on him, his husky rumble making her melt as she kept the conversation light and friendly.

Trouble was, Dean was like most hunters. Emotionally distant. Messiah complex. Can’t-get-close-to-people bullshit. Jo wanted him, but she wanted him to settle down. She wanted his big heart to find a home, to trade in the revolving door of women for one woman who knew his life and his worries.

Even though he had often checked out her ass, Dean hadn’t had the guts to make a move until the day before she died. Even then, knowing it may be her last opportunity to sleep with that beautiful man, she couldn’t bring herself to be a desperate pity fuck.

It took her dying for him to be real with her. She had no idea how long she’d been dead, but his soft, warm lips gently apologizing for her fate as he finally kissed her was practically yesterday.

“Happy? Mom, we’re talking about Dean Winchester. Didn’t you say he was trouble to the core?”

“I said he was troubled. Boy ain’t had an easy life.” Ellen pushed her damp hair back and squinted at her daughter. “I also said he wasn’t for you.”

Ellen wrapped her arm around her daughter, combing her hair with her fingers. It felt familiar and surreal at the same time, like discovering everything in your house had been painted the same shade of sickly pink.

“You okay, baby girl?”

“I will be. I don’t remember living being so exhausting.”

There was small knock at the door before Bitty/Buffy came in with an unconvincing smile on her face. She handed Ellen a green skirt. “I hope it fits. How are you feeling?”

“Pretty damn good for a dead woman,” said Ellen. “That don’t seem to phase you any.”

“Read the book and saw the movie.” The blonde scanned Jo. Her eyes lit up for a brief second when she saw the ill-fitting flannel. “Well, that’s a look. I could see if one of the taller girls has pants you could wear, but pickin’s are slim. Probably best we head to the mall. You can join us if you feel up to fighting.”

Jo did feel like fighting. Something in her felt caged and angry, but she didn’t know why. Although she doubted patrons at a crowded mall would appreciate her need to punch something. “Pants would be great, but cash is not so great.”

“Oh, oh yeah. Quick recap, (because my sister has this whole ‘Welcome to Sunnydale’ speech, and I don’t want to step on her thing): Welcome to Sunnydale, California. This town sits on a Hellmouth, which I guess you call a Devil’s Gate. Lucifer and his minions have driven out the entire town save for a few people on my team. Anyone else who stayed has been turned into a vampire.” She breezed through all of this lightly, as if it was a rundown of what she’d done over the summer.

“So we’re less about the shopping and more about the pillaging supplies from a vampire-infested abandoned mall. Which is where the do-you-feel-like fighting thing comes in. Bobby Singer is downstairs if you have more questions. Let me know in an hour if you want to go.”

Bitty/Buffy stopped her hasty exit when Jo asked, “Where are Dean and Sam? Things are kinda fuzzy, but I swear I saw them.”

“They had to go,” the blonde said without looking back.

Spike was confused. He hated being confused. The Winchesters (and the angels) were gone, caught a feathery red eye to destiny. He’d seen it happen.

But who were the new people?

Granted, he was used to new faces showing up out of the blue, but Potentials were not generally grizzled long-haul truckers. The man was mostly interested in the books and Giles, but he still gave Spike that sleeps-with-a-gun feel that Dean had. By the time Buffy came downstairs with two women who were probably and certainly not Potentials, he was ready for some answers.

Abandoning Giles and his endless questions, Spike followed the three women, Xander, and some Potentials outside. “Where we going?”

Buffy turned to look at him. Suddenly, he was reminded what it felt like to have your heart thrill so much, it forgets its beat. Only a day before, she’d appeared as a demon and beaten him soft. Now, she was practically radiating light.

“You up for some shopping?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Could do with some new boots.”

“So could some of the girls. Plus, Jo and Ellen are going to need some clothes.”

Spike nodded at the mysterious Jo and Ellen. “I’ll drive.” He held up the Impala keys he’d nabbed from the key tray.

Although Spike longed to drive Dean’s Impala since first laying eyes on it, he’d mostly picked up the keys as a gag. Show Buffy the keys. See what she did.

A disproportionate panic swept over her face. Eyes wide, she shook her head in tight nos.

She doesn’t think he’s coming back.

Before Buffy could protest and before Spike could toss her the keys, Xander butted in. “Drive what?”

Buffy crossed her arms. “He thinks he’s driving Dean’s car.”

“Funny,” said the blonde -- Jo or Ellen? “You’re not what I would have expected Dean’s best friend to look like. I mean, he barely let’s Sam drive that thing.”

The stranger scratched at her arm like the very air bothered her and squinted at the sun with disapproval. She had a nervous, trapped energy about her. It felt familiar to Spike.

Xander laughed. “Dean and Spike get along like oil and water if oil and water were trying to murder each other.”

“Yet you’re the one with a Winchester wallop.” Spike pointed at the purple bruise on Xander’s jaw.

“I can fit four.” Xander slinked away, tail between his legs.

Having no desire to stress Buffy out, Spike tossed her the keys. “Just ‘aving a laugh, pet.”

Buffy tenderly held the keys for a heartbeat before handing them to the older woman. “Ellen? We just need to follow the other cars.”

“Sure, honey. Something normal sounds pretty good right now.”

The four of them silently piled into the Impala -- Ellen and Buffy in the front. Jo shooting Spike curious side-eye across the expanse of the backseat. It was mid-April, yet Ellen cranked up the heat.

After a few turns, Buffy cracked her window. “It fades after a while. The cold.”

Jo peeled her dark eyes off of Spike. “What are you talking about.”

“It was warm, wasn’t it?” Buffy sounded far away. “It was warm and quiet. Now everything feels cold and loud and painfully bright. I won’t motivational poster you and say it gets better, but the intensity fades.”

“How do you know?” Jo asked.

“It’s been two years for me,” Buffy replied. “More for Spike.”

Recently resurrected then? Seeing Jo’s twitching discomfort in the daylight had thrown him. Since they knew the Winchesters, they must have been resurrected and brought here by the angels. The trucker-looking fellow was probably the same story. Sam and Dean’s parents? They had never mentioned a sister; although they’d dropped the news of another brother like a bomb only a couple days before.

Jo’s body loosened a bit, as if the intense fight or flight warring in her brain had finally settled on sitting. She looked out the window on the abandoned town. A few buildings here and there had been damaged by vampires, who were no doubt nesting inside during the day, but most were simply abandoned. “A lot of people die here?”

“Part of the human condition,” Spike said. “Only, sometimes it doesn’t take.”

They pulled up to the mall. Ellen, examining the smashed glass doors, said, “Mind if I just play getaway driver? This skirt ain’t exactly made for kickin’ ass.”

Buffy shrugged. “There’s a learning curve, but sure. We won’t be long.”

Buffy issued orders to the small band of Potentials who’d arrived in the two other cars. “There are probably dozens of vampires hiding in there, but lucky for us most of them are asleep. So stay quiet and don’t wander off. We’re in and out. Remember,” she said, handing a stake to Jo, “anyone who’s not us gets a stake through the heart.”

With a small grin, Jo twirled the stake in her fingers. “A stake? Next you’re going to tell me they’re repelled by garlic and crosses.”

“They are,” said one of the Potentials, eagerly.

“I just feel extra stabby today, though,” said Buffy.

“I can get behind that,” Jo muttered.

Inside, there was a shoe store immediately to their right. Buffy pointed at Xander and his carload to break off while she led Jo, Spike and the rest to The Gap.

With no concern for style or sizes, everyone began to shove clothes into their bags. Jo was pulling jeans from the shelf when a man walked out of the dressing room.

“Want to try something on?” he asked with a hungry smile.

Buffy lept between them. One, two kicks in the face. Suddenly, he was snarling and yellow-eyed. Buffy hooked his head with her heel, yanking him to the ground. She plunged the stake into his heart.

Jo seemed most surprised when the vampire turned to dust.

“Makes clean up easy, doesn’t it?” Spike whispered in Jo’s ear. “Think we got time to hit up the food court?”

DAY 2

Dean rolled over, seeking out Buffy’s warmth, and curled his body around hers. His morning hardness grew firmer as he pressed against her backside. Barely awake, he nibbled her neck, his fingers stumbling to find a way under her pajamas.

Buffy sighed, “We don’t have time, baby.”

“I miss touching you.”

“You don't want to be late for our big day.”

Everyone in the Winchesters’ apartment was up just before sunrise. Buffy could feel the reason for her sleeplessness flipping in her stomach and pounding behind her eyes. With barely a word between them, the group stumbled to Dean’s Impala and drove back to the Summers’ house.

Willow sat on the back porch with a steaming mug of coffee in her hands. Dean’s family and Dawn headed inside while Buffy grabbed a chair by her friend.

“Here to rouse the troops? We’re fresh outta bugles.”

“Nah. Let ‘em sleep.” Buffy had pushed them to the breaking point the last time they attacked Caleb, and they still failed. A few more hours of sleep wouldn’t be the deciding factor next time.

“Feeling better, Will?”

“You mean, do I not feel like I’m made of lightning, or am I okay with this being the vessel for the goddess of witchcraft thing?”

“The former, the latter will be...latter.”

“Just Willow here. Singular and non-floaty.” She gulped the last of her coffee and stared at the bottom of the cup, divining nothing. “I think that happened before. The vessel gig.”

The only time Buffy had seen anything close to that was when black-eyed, veiny, dark Willow tried to destroy the world after Tara’s death. She hoped that wasn’t one of Hecate’s faces.

“Remember the night Dawn was attacked in the house, and Lucifer came to me dressed up as Tara?”

Buffy nodded.

“I blacked out. Whited out? The last thing I remember was this growing light. Then I woke up in a burned circle of grass. I had no idea what happened, but I think since Lucifer was trying to get me to kill myself, Hecate came to my rescue.”

“Maybe that’s why he targeted you?”

Willow’s doe-eyes were heavy with thought. “Maybe. I’m not sure how I feel about housing something the Devil is scared of. That’s not usually the plot in a rom com or plucky musical.”

With a sleeping goddess in her and her boyfriend capable of hosting an archangel, this was the only topic that could direct Buffy away from her concern for Dean. “Maybe don’t think of it as being taken over. What if Hecate is like Cinderella, and you’re her slipper?”

“No one wants to grow up to be the shoe in that story.”

Buffy shrugged. “More terrible metaphors are in the works. They’re my favorite past time as of yesterday.”

Willow eyed her with a frown. “You miss him?”

Snuggled in his t-shirt in his bed, she’d lain awake reminding herself Dean was the best hunter alive. Alive. The few moments she managed to sleep, she had dreamed of his fingers in her hair, his breath tickling her skin. “Of course!”

“‘Cause you guys were kinda on the outs for a while, then one possession and you’re back to being joined at the hip.”

Buffy picked at some flaking paint on her chair, and mulled over how much she was willing to expose. Everyone save Giles was probably just as confused, but her pain wasn’t a balm to soothe a itch of curiosity.

“I was going through something, and I didn’t know how to talk with him about it.”

“You know who is always up for a talk? Your neighborhood Willow, located conveniently down the hall. We’ve been through a ton of stuff, Buffy. I don’t understand why you didn’t think you could talk to me.”

Willow liked Buffy’s relationship with Angel when it was a crush, but had turned against it and her once it became deadly serious. Her friend didn’t understand how being alive again was a curse and how that despair drove her to Spike. How could she expect Willow, in the midst of both mourning and sorting out her sexuality, to carry any of the pregnancy weight?

“I don’t think we fixed us,” Buffy said.

“What?”

“You went dark, Willow. Really dark. By the time you came back, Dean and Sam were here, and it felt easy to just move on. I did the eggshell walk for a little bit, but mostly I was wrapped up in Dean. Maybe I never got off the eggshells, because it didn’t feel right to dump this on you.”

Tears welled in Willow’s eyes. “I know we can’t go back. I can never make it up to you--”

“You don’t have to make up!” Buffy grabbed her friend’s hand and squeezed. “What we need is time. You and me. Maybe Xander, but definitely you and me. Hey, how about we do some sort of road trip, huh? The three of us? After we bag the Devil, the girls deal with things while we have much needed friend time.”

Willow nodded and offered a weak smile. “Will you ever tell me what happened?”

“Later. Now is for coffee,” Buffy said as she headed inside.

Bobby was used to research. Piles of yellowing books, strong coffee, and a sore back were his preferred methods of learning. Much better than the knock-in-the-teeth experience style. Although, Andrew and Dawn’s “Welcome to Sunnydale” basement conference has been some of the most informative hours of his life.

For instance, everyone was making their fight harder by not differentiating demons from monsters. Anya -- defensive in a way that people with secrets are -- had insisted that a creature born on earth and with no dealings with the soul or Hell was still a demon. Bobby had some theories he wanted to test before he took her word. He’d picked up from Andrew’s nervousness and constant invocation of heroic stories that the boy felt he needed to redeem himself for something. Dawn’s swings between pride and shame when talking about her sister -- Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- had tipped him off that something was wrong. Later, when Buffy gently insisted they all travel back to the Winchesters’ apartment at night instead of staying in her own, or one of the nearby houses, made it evident that everyone in that house had betrayed her.

Recently.

Bobby would get to the bottom of everything eventually, but first, he had to survive the Apocalypse. As luck would have it, he had a book for that.

While Bobby knew better than anyone that this fight turned fresh-faced kids into battle-scarred husks faster than anything, he struggled to call anyone in the Summers’ house an adult. Anyone but Giles.

Thankfully, Bobby didn’t have to venture far into the house before finding Giles. Propped over a book at the dining table, the Watcher was either completely engrossed or had fallen asleep. With only the smallest twinge of guilt for robbing Giles of his respite, Bobby tossed a book on the table, causing Giles to jump in his seat. Asleep.

“Rough night?” Ellen asked, settling into the chair beside Giles.

Giles rubbed his eyes and yawned. “Relatively calm until the screaming began around three. A couple of the girls had rather vivid nightmares.”

“Don't know why,” said Jo, picking up a book and making a face. “Lucifer is out to get them. No big deal.”

Ellen snatched the book from her hands. “Coffee, Little Miss. Get some for Bobby, too.”

For a second, Jo’s face flushed with teenage exasperation before she headed to the kitchen.

Redirecting her attention, Ellen asked, “Where are the girls now?” She glanced at the knot of girls lounging around the living room. “The screaming ones?”

“We moved them to Buffy’s room so they’d stop disturbing the others. I haven’t heard them in a while, so I assume they’re still asleep.” Giles checked his watch. “Is that really the time?”

“Sorry, Rupert. We thought we’d get right to business today.” Ellen offered an apologetic smile. “Speakin’ of, point me at those girls when they’re up. I don’t understand a lot about wherever the hell we are, but I’m sure mothering is still the same.”

A small smile broke free on Giles’ lips. “No doubt they need that. Some of these girls haven’t seen their families for six months.”

Bobby cleared his throat. “The squeaky blond boy said they’re here because they're the next vessel for Artemis, who is currently asleep inside of Buffy, and that’s why she’s a super-powered vampire-killing machine. Right?”

Giles nodded. “In short.”

Bobby pushed the slim book he’d dropped on the table toward Giles. He’d gotten it from a book dealer probably two decades before, as a ‘thank you’ for saving her son from a poltergeist. The book, Huntress Bound by The Order of the Oracle, contained a ludicrous story about how the goddess of witches captured and enslaved the goddess of the hunt. It was warped from years of propping up the nightstand in Bobby’s bedroom. “Archangel Asshole insisted I bring this.”

Giles was agape as he flipped through the pages, muttering, “Yes,” over and over. Finally, he looked up. “Bobby, are you any good at research?”

“Good at it? My research is the only thing that’s been keeping those idjits alive all this time.”

DAY 3

She straightened his tie. Dean looked even more impossibly handsome in his grey three-piece suit. His mossy green eyes sparkled in the late morning sun. Would it be bad luck to kiss him now?

“You are beautiful,” he said, skimming his hands over her waist and down her hips. The sequins on her gown clattered under his fingers.

“You don't think it's too much?”

“You're perfect.”

Holding hands, they turned to look at the ivy covered church. It was now or never. “Ready?” she asked.

Dean flashed his machete in reply.

Buffy kicked in the doors.

Buffy unlocked the apartment door. Sunnydale was only occupied by her people and vampires, but locking the door felt good.

She had been itching to patrol. Fresh air. Time alone. Violence. She didn’t need to go far from the apartment. Though they turned it off at sunset, the generator on the roof was a rumbling call that tasty humans lived inside. She’d dusted six vampires just on her street, each kill softening the anxious needles in her brain. Maybe tonight, she wouldn’t have that nightmare again.

She tiptoed into the kitchen to grab a bottle of water before bed, only to find Jo with a bottle of whiskey, pictures scattered around her on the floor.

Gently, Buffy removed the whiskey from her hands, and gave Jo a bottle of water. “Rough day?”

“I wanted to know if getting drunk felt the same.”

“Does it?”

“Feels pretty good.” Jo grinned at her. “I’m not usually a mess like this, I swear. But I come back from the dead to ‘The Pantheon Realm’ where my friend is dating ‘a slayer’ which totally sounds like something he would have killed when I was alive.” She used finger quotes around her words. “Although my life did involve cities laid to waste by Lucifer and his demons, so at least one thing’s consistent.”

“You think I’m a monster?”

“No! But you’re freaking me out! Everything is familiar, yet not familiar. Bonus! Now that I’m alive again, it looks like I’m going to die. Blaze of glory round two!”

Buffy understood. Heaven was rest. Hell was coming back to a fate-packed to-do. “You’ve been alive for three days. If you want to stay here tomorrow and chill, that’s fine. Maybe drive off into the sunset? You don’t have to help fight Lucifer.”

“Hey, I died helping fight Lucifer!” Her eyes were ablaze as she pointed at Buffy. Soon, she slumped back against a cabinet and ran her finger over the pictures of the floor. Jo chuckled and held a picture too close to Buffy’s face. “What is this?”

It was from Buffy and Dean’s vacation to San Francisco on Halloween. They’d stopped to watch a parade where a drag queen was affronted by their lack of costume. The queen’s solution was to dump a bag of hot pink glitter on Dean. In the picture, Buffy was laughing as he tried to rub the glitter on her. It was Sam’s favorite picture, and he made sure it was prominently displayed on the refrigerator.

“On Halloween, Dean and I took a little vacation--”

“That! That crazy, opposite day stuff is what I’m talking about.” Jo’s voice was loud and slurred. “‘Went on a vacation’, with Dean Fucking Winchester? He’s not the guy anyone goes on vacation with! He’s the guy who finds you crying in your beer after your boyfriend dumps you on vacation. He’s the guy who promises you one night of great sex before running away from any feelings he may have stirred up. Dean Winchester is much more interested in sluts than girlfriends.”

Dean had barely talked about Jo. Ellen yes. Bobby at length. Jo got short statements. She was “a kid” who was “in over her head.” “Somethin’ to prove.” He’d spoken of her death once.

Yet, on more than one occasion, Lucifer referred to Jo and Dean in much more intimate terms. Buffy hated it when they’d had to discuss her relationship with Spike, so she never asked about Jo. She was the past. She was buried.

“Sounds like you spent a lot of time with him,” Buffy replied.

Jo waved her bottle of water dismissively. “I’m happy for him. I am. God knows that man needs more people than Sam.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “It’s just that...well...I don’t have superpowers. Is that all it took to get noticed?”

Buffy’s heart broke for Jo. Jo, ripped from death to be dealt a crappy life. Aching from the newness and unfairness of it all. Pining for the right man met at the wrong time.

“Will you girls quit yer snivlin’ and git to bed?” growled Bobby from the couch.

DAY 5

Their friends and family waited quietly in the pews while the choir of Potentials sang:

There are many here among us

Who feel that life is but a joke

But you and I we've been through that

And this is not our fate

So let us not talk falsely now

The hour's getting late.

At the head of the church stood Caleb in his vestments, clapping along with the music. With each slap of his hands, one of the Potentials exploded in a puff of blood. He was flanked by a pus-pocked corpse on a fly-riddled green horse and a white robed creature with huge black wings astride a pale horse.

Pestilence charged them. Buffy grabbed the bridle and swung up, kicking the rider off. “I got him. Go!” Dean shouted as she galloped toward the priest.

Death was missing.

“Do you think this is far enough from the house?” Anya asked, tightening her grip on her axe. “You said you burned stuff that one time.”

“Because my life was being threatened by an archangel. This is just a friendly chat between frenemies,” Willow said. “Besides, I’m much more concerned about the vampires.”

At an intersection down the street, she and Buffy sat holding hands inside of Hecate’s symbol drawn in sand. According to the books, the goddess could be summoned under a full moon with appropriate sacrifices of food; they were surrounded by bottles of wine and honey bears.

Snarls drifted past the double ring of Potentials surrounding them.

The idea was that Buffy’s spirit would be able to use Willow’s vessel state to call Hecate. Then Buffy just had to convince the resentful, former friend of the goddess within Willow that she hadn’t been betrayed, and maybe she could use her powers to help a little. “Easy peasy,” Buffy grumbled.

Willow began, “Hecate! Crone Goddess of the Moon! Power, great power. Grant me this boon.”

One of the Potentials stepped back, knocking over a candle.

“Give us some room, girls! This could get weird...er.”” Buffy righted the candle and wiped some warm wax from a honey bear. “I hope mildly melty is still goddess approved.”

“Half step out!” Jo shouted. The group shuffled.

Willow tried again. “Mistress with three faces, I accept my role. Lead me to the path. Your name writ on my soul. Hi, it’s Willow Rosenberg again. Remember? You were in my body a week or so ago yelling at some --”

Everything went deathly silent. Before Willow’s eyes, the Potentials transformed into gnarled black trees. Mist and moonlight shot through their twisted branches. Buffy, still in her meditative pose, crumbled into an ash heap; in the middle of the ashes, lay a single golden pebble.

Willow didn’t dare to breathe.

The glow of a light appeared to her left. A naked, torch-bearing figure stepped out from behind one of the trees. Her skin was as dark as the night and freckled with stars. She phased in and out of three faces -- one screaming, one old, and one calm. Her pearl eyes fixed on Willow.

“You have summoned me more than any other vessel.” Her voice was musical and animal. A whisper and a cry.

Willow wasn’t sure how to respond. Hecate hadn’t asked a question, and Willow wasn’t sure if the declaration was surprised or annoyed. Willow bowed her head to the ground, arms open wide in reverence, and waited.

A chill snaked from the top of Willow's head to the tips of her toes.

“Rise, girl. What do you want?”

Willow stood, but didn’t dare look up. “Lucifer is here. His brother Michael is coming.”

Hecate lifted Willow’s chin with her hand, forcing her to look in her glowing eyes. “Why does this worry you?”

“They’re going to destroy the world.”

“Not the whole world. Only part.”

Fear rushed out of Willow’s body. “Only part! Only! Part! Do you hear yourself?”

“My concerns are not human concerns. The world is ancient. It burns and floods and freezes in the span of my heartbeat. The world will change, but I will remain.”

“Why do you think the angels would leave you alive?” Willow asked. “Lucifer is trying to wipe out Artemis’ vessels. Why not yours next?”

Something like surprise flitted over the goddess’ calm face. “I am witchcraft itself. I will remain.”

“Oh, you got an army up your, uh -- No sleeves, okay. Have you been busy calling all witches? Huh? No, you haven’t. Meanwhile, Artemis is still locked up and --”

“Do not speak to me of the Huntress!” Hecate thundered. The stars on her skin grew as if they might supernova with her rage.

Willow put her hands on her hips. “Artemis was your friend.”

“The Huntress was closer to me than a sister. She turned her back on me! How could a mortal like you understand the pain of that break?

Willow didn’t just remember skinning Warren. She remembered trying to kill Buffy. Trying to kill Giles. And those memories haunted her with each hug, each encouraging word, each smile. “I know how rare true friends are. I know every moment of pain is worth it.

“My friends and I are prepared to fight the angels, but we haven’t even been able to get past his creepy priest groupie. But we’ll keep fighting. We’ll die fighting. Saving the world is worth it.”

The calm face did not change. “Then I shall again prepare myself to search for another vessel.”

An idea popped into Willow’s head. “Why me? Why are you using me as your vessel?”

“You had the potential to be the strongest witch in the world. A lesser witch could not contain me.”

Hecate was eternal. Witches may live long lives, but not that long. Besides, Willow was born in the 80s. “What happened to your vessel before me?”

“He...disappointed me.”

“Did he have a name?”

Hecate blew out her torch and stepped back into the rapidly shrinking trees. “Gregor Skrivanek.”

Buffy, in a meditation pose across from Willow, looked at her quizzically. “Gesundheit?”

There was a twang and a wizz as one of the girls fired a crossbow. “If we’re finished being freaky, I’d kinda like to go back inside,” said Jo.

DAY 9

Before she reached the steps to trample Caleb, Buffy tumbled and bounced down the rest of the aisle. Her horse had turned into a toy. Likewise, she was small and limp, unable to move on her own. Caleb, scooped her up in his giant hands. “Did you think this was about you?”

He turned her toward her friends and family. With the snap of his fingers, they were ablaze. “Did you think you could save them?”

“The blame is on me,” he continued. “I let that vampire’s obsession with you trick me into thinking you mattered, but you don’t. You’re empty. You try to fill it with school, with shopping, with any man who is desperate enough to fuck you, but you’re a little doll who needs other people to pose her.”

He turned her away from him, toward Death at the end of the aisle, his scythe and robes spattered with blood, and dangling from his hand -- Dean’s head.

In a weird way, it was comforting to have all the Scoobies gathered around the dining table researching monsters. Almost homey, if it was even possible to feel at home in her own house again. Of course, Buffy’s semi-fond memories of high school slaying didn’t involve Spike sitting next to her as they researched monsters, or Andrew Wells fiddling with a camcorder. They didn’t involve researching how to kill a human either.

Xander’s eyes were practically cartoon hearts locked on Ellen as she replaced his empty plate with a second helping of sloppy joe, cornbread and green beans. “You’re just the most amazing, Ellen.”

Smiling, she tousled his hair before checking on the Potentials in the other room.

Xander ravenously tucked into his food.

“Xander, you got a little.” Dawn wiped at the corner of her mouth.

Anya glanced at the sauce smeared on Xander’s face. “It's just pride.”

Xander mock laughed before taking a giant bite of cornbread.

“It’s been a long, dark time since we’ve had seconds,” Andrew declared, zooming his lens in on Xander. “But Ellen knows all sorts of recipes. Tomorrow, she’s going to teach me to --”

Dawn paused from note-taking. “Andrew, what are you doing?”

“I’m making a documentary of our gallant heroes. My redemption arc heavily features. I’m, like, the Vader of the group.”

“Don’t show interest, or he’ll think you care.” Anya slammed her book closed. “Why can’t we just set him on fire again?”

“I don’t want to be on fire,” replied Andrew, meekly.

“Not you. Caleb,” she clarified. “Fire is the traditional, time-respected way to off a witch.”

Willow scrunched her face in disgust. “One, I’m generally not a fan of the burned-at-the-stake scene. Had a close call once. A singeing, if you will. Two, I have a theory--”

Buffy tuned out while Willow explained again. The goal was to kill Caleb, but to kill him, they had to return him to a much more human state. When Dean had asked her if she was ready to kill a person, she’d bristled. While it wasn’t the Slayer’s job to deliver justice in the human sense, Caleb had clearly chosen the path of evil. She’d plunged her sword in him without hesitation. However, in light of Willow’s plan, Buffy couldn’t help but wonder if Caleb -- once separated from the archangel controlling him -- could be saved. Was he simply another victim of Lucifer?

Ellen drifted back into the room, her eyes on the windows. She sucked on the insides of her cheeks when she was nervous, and she’d been nervous ever since Jo, Bobby and Giles left town two days ago to follow some leads.

“Has she called?” Spike asked, gently reaching out to touch Ellen’s arm.

Ellen smiled and patted his hand. “A few times. Thought they’d’ve been back by now.”

“Don’t tell him I told you,” Spike lowered his voice to a whisper, “but stodgy ol’ Giles is right decent in a fight. She’s in good hands if it comes to that.”

Before Ellen could respond, the Impala pulled up outside. She smiled at Jo, still in her bland detective suit, coming up the walk with the Winchester's green cooler. Buffy recognized the relieved mom look. Ellen was doing a good job not steamrolling everyone between her and her daughter’s embrace.

Jo arrived with a triumphant smile. “Not even rusty.” She handed her mom the cooler. “Stopped for food before Apocalypse-zone. Got some fresh stuff!”

“Thanks, hon.” Ellen set the cooler on the table and wrapped Jo in a bear hug.

Bobby, tie loose and trucker cap back on his head, set a box of files on the table. “Had a minor setback, but we got it.”

“What happened?” Buffy asked.

“I’m afraid I am not a convincing FBI agent,” Giles said with a sigh. He glared at Andrew. “What is he doing?”

Undeterred, Andrew zoomed in. “Set the scene for us, Giles. You’re sweating bullets in the FBI office, surrounded by men in black who’ve been trained to sniff out a lie. What do you do?”

Bewildered, Giles again looked to the group. “What is he doing?”

“‘E’s keeping calm.” Spike reached into the box for a handful of files. He handed one to Buffy.

“Meet Gregor Skrivanek,” Bobby said. “Box one.”

“Of how many?” whined Anya.

“Three more in the trunk,” Jo said with a smirk.

Anya closed her book and left the room.

“Did you get the mementos we need for the spell?” Willow asked.

“That’s box four.” Jo smiled. “It’s in the backseat. Although they’re less mementos and more burnables.”

“Burning is the goal!” Willow smiled.

Buffy opened her folder, a thick police file from Boston. It contained three coroner reports and photos of three different teenage girls. Two slashed at the throat. One was just a head. All were bloated and distorted from floating in water.

“Get it all,” Buffy said. I’m ready.

DAY 12

On yesterday’s patrol, Buffy had captured a vampire minion and gave him a message for Caleb.

Highway 1 bridge at 10. Alone.

Caleb was cocky. He’d show.

The wind whipped around Buffy as she stood high above the ravine on the bridge headed out of town. She pulled her coat tighter -- not tight enough to outline the ax hanging from her belt -- and passed the time by watching Orion, Dean’s favorite constellation. Willow had told her Orion the Hunter was the only man Artemis loved. (“Later she maybe killed him, but that’s totally not your story! Not a blueprint!”) It was a cute bit of trivia, but it didn’t matter.

Dean was no more Orion than he was Michael’s toy. She was more than a holding cell. If they were anything, they were masters of their own fate.

“You came,” Caleb shouted down the bridge. “I’m surprised after the beating I handed you last time, but then you are an arrogant bitch.”

She bit back a grin. It was almost too easy. “Don’t pretend you know me.”

“Don’t I? Buffy Summers became the Slayer without any training because who would have guessed such a shallow waste of space could be anything? Certainly not her daddy who ran away in terror. Now she tries to fill the hole by spreading her legs for any old guy who shows an interest.”

He smirked at her with the hungry glare of a middle-aged man parked outside a middle school. “People think Lucifer has Daddy issues, but he’s not still trying to gain approval. He can flex his own power.”

“Kind of a crappy story,” said Buffy. “Not very accurate either. I give it two stars, but one of those is a pity star.”

She slowly walked toward him. “Here’s a story I heard recently. About thirty-five years ago, a boy named Gregor was born with the most powerful magic skills history had ever seen. Of course, floating objects over his crib frightened his parents, so they dropped him off at an orphanage. He grew to despise the nuns who ran the place. Conveniently for him, he was the lone survivor of a fire at the orphanage when he was six. By the time he was thirteen, every orphanage and foster home he went to after that found a girl dead within six months of his arrival. He was never tied to the deaths though, because he was using magic.”

Snarls echoed from underneath the bridge. Buffy had expected Caleb to bring backup; although, she tried to not dwell on what could be climbing so high above the ravine.

“Are you trying to appeal to my humanity?” Caleb sneered. “This is more nostalgia than anything.”

Buffy continued. “Murder. Murder. Murder. Always girls. Probably misplaced mommy issues over being given up. But when Gregor turned sixteen, he was caught strangling a girl and sent to a juvenile detention center where he supposedly found God. When he got out, he changed his name and became a priest. And a serial killer.”

“Nice story--”

“I wasn’t finished.” The power of her voice stopped him in his tracks. “If this boy had been a powerful warlock, why did he start choking girls. Why did he get caught?”

Caleb cocked his head to the side, clearly desperate to know.

Two pairs of feet thudded behind her at the entrance to the bridge. She couldn’t deal with them now. Caleb had to be first or the spell wouldn’t work.

“It’s because Hecate cut him off. He was supposed to be her star, her vessel to move about the Earth when needed, but he was too maggot-riddled for her.” Hecate's sense of morality may be different from theirs, but it was clear she held women in higher regard than men.

Shots zipped through the air. Whatever was behind her roared.

With Caleb distracted, Buffy closed the gap between them and slapped him across the cheek, leaving an ashen handprint. The contact of their skin blazed white hot as his body, no longer a vessel, ejected the bit of Lucifer’s grace that could fit inside.

Doubled over on his knees, Caleb growled. “What did you do, you bitch?!”

“Magic,” she replied as she swung her axe down on his neck.

One swing for her. One for Dawn. For Grace. For Vi, Sophia, and every Potential he’d killed. Buffy, whose personal code was to never kill a human, chopped him to bits for every girl he’d murdered.

She spun around. Two Turok-Han were heading up the highway towards the tall trees where Bobby, Jo, and Ellen were perched with rifles and blessed bullets. Bobby had been right. The bullets hadn’t killed the vampires, but they had slowed and distracted Caleb’s minions.

Buffy took a deep, stuttering breath over the bloody mess in the road, grabbed a chunk of his hair, and tossed Caleb’s head into the ravine below.

“Hey!” she barked. The vampires stopped to consider who to kill first. “Miffed about being shot? Don’t lose your head over it.”

With a running start and two hand springs, Buffy was between them. She twirled her ax above her head. The vampires’ heads popped off, and they crumbled to dust.

Buffy rose. Her grin to the stars. Blood dripping from her ax, from her fingertips.

Bobby and the Harvelle’s stumbled out from the brush.

“Well that went off without a hitch.” Ellen wrapped her arm around Buffy’s shoulders and gave her a squeeze.

“Yeah, Will’s spell turned off his vesselness.” Buffy’s hand had been covered in the ashes of some objects Caleb had owned. After Willow wrote the spell in the ash, all they needed to make it work was skin-to-skin contact.

They all began the trek back to where the Impala was hidden. Buffy resisted the urge to bounce. “God, I wish Sunnydale wasn’t shuttered up. I’d kill for a burger.”

“Nothin’ like the Apocalypse to make you miss the little things,” said Bobby.

Buffy missed one thing that wasn’t so little, but she wouldn’t let her mind drift there. The dream would come again, for sure. Tonight, however, she would live in the moment. She’d beaten back the Devil.

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becomingherocomic · 4 years

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Becoming Hero

Despite bullets and hunger, Isabel saves orphans in Liberia. #superheroalert #dogood

Isabel grew up in Liberia around the time of the Civil War. Four of her siblings were killed during the war, one by an accident she never specifies, one by raging diarrhea–one of the leading causes of death in the majority world; there was a sister whose death I cannot remember, and another, most horribly, she describes as being butchered like an animal, chopped into pieces. The way she looks away when describing this tells me she saw this happen right in front of her.

I first met Isabel when I was working late in a military hospital here in the US. She was working as a janitor, and I thought I would give her some cookies. I wanted to reach out to her, and show her some kindness. How absolutely silly–there is a verse in Hebrews that says that the lesser is blessed by the greater. We didn’t have much time to talk that night, but over the following evenings the scattered conversation she shared with a lonely family medicine resident became my comfort, my blessing, from this woman so much greater than I. The janitors at CRDAMC in Fort Hood in the US are treated with no mercy. If they miss a day of work by accident, they can be instantly fired. The other two I came to know through Isabel both had health problems not effectively treated by their insurance; one young Liberian found herself up against a several hundred dollar charge for the flu that she could not pay, so she never got treatment for her back problems. Another woman was not given appropriately early evaluation for a mass in her spine, likely because it was too difficult to explain things through her thick language challenges; even though the correct standard of care is to ask for a translator, she was never once offered one in her visits to her military PCM. Isabel never complained. And one day–perhaps over lunch, perhaps at the hospital–she told me about her orphanage.

Isabel and her husband used to go to the refugees camps to share what little food they had with the refugees. One day, very early in this process, Isabel noticed a little child running around who seemed lost. She asked for his parents, and the people said the child just didn’t have any. Isabel became concerned about the children with no parents, and as her eyes opened to more and more of them she determined in her heart to give them a place to live, and a family of some kind. When she mentioned the idea to people in her church circles, they laughed. It was a running joke, she told me: “you have nothing, and here you want to take all these children?” I think, if you really think about it, you can’t blame them for thinking she was irresponsible. I’ve heard Christians in Puerto Rico say it was irresponsible for someone to want to donate a kidney to a stranger (“what if you need it for your family”), and I’ve heard Christians in the mainland US say it’s optional, not a duty, to take care of the poor. “You can do that if you want to,” but your money belongs to you first, they’ve said. There’s a prevailing desire for safety, a fear of taking risks. So we can’t quite judge the Liberian churches who, having nothing, laughed at this crazy woman who wanted to take in 75 lost children. Think about the logistics of feeding 75 children. Think about how you could possibly find a place for them all to stay. In your house? There isn’t room. How on earth can you feed all of them? But Isabel is a woman of solutions instead of problems, and faith instead of fear. She began to go from church to church anyway, and gradually she did gather enough money to buy a small house. Finding the children was easy–she had 75 almost immediately. But now, she had nothing to feed them. She went to the Peace Corps, and they gave her 200 bags of milk. But with nothing else to eat–no solids–she feared the children would simply develop diarrhea and die anyway. An inspiration occurred to her–perhaps inspired by the widow in Scripture, who at Elijah’s behest sold olive oil to save her family. Isabel took 100 bags of the milk, and began to sell them. And discovered they sold like gold. People would pay insane amounts for each bag. This wasn’t just enough to pay for solid food for the children, but for mattresses and clothes! And that is how Isabel started her orphanage. In those days, during the war, the orphanage she managed to buy was about two hours from her house–and she would walk those two hours daily, hiding from gunfire. After the war, she would travel throughout Liberia to reunite the children with their parents. She managed to find the parents of over half of the children; the rest, by now, are in high school or older. One day, she went into one village, and saw a grandmother, and some men with shovels, around a hole in the ground. “What happened here?” she asked. The grandmother pointed to a tiny, wrapped up infant. The baby looked like a skeleton, with her lips fused together from hunger. “She died last night,” the grandmother said. Isabel had a sense–“no, this child isn’t dead,” she said definitively. “Yes, she died last night! She stopped moving,” the buriers insisted. “No, no,” Isabel took the tiny skeleton, and dribbled water into her mouth. The baby’s lips moved. “This baby isn’t dead; she is just hungry. Let me take this child.” “If she’s not dead now, she’s just going to die on the road, and then you’ll throw her away. No, please, let us bury her right,” they insisted. But Isabel won out in the end, promising to bury the child if it died. The baby spent three months in the hospital. But today, she is 22 years old. Isabel has a number of other stories like this. In the end, she established something that looked like it would last. For a year they had help from a peace corps worker, and at one point some US Marines from the embassy built solar panels for Isabel’s electricity. But when the Kargbos lost their primary US donor to support the orphanage, Isabel had to seriously evaluate their financial situation. While many of her biological children had moved to the US for a better life, she still had her son Moses back in Liberia, and her husband, to tend the orphanage. She thought she could go to the US, the land of plenty, and earn enough money to send back to the orphanage so that it would flourish. And so after two decades in Liberia establishing the orphanage, she spent nine years trying to raise money for it in the US. She found, however, that the expenses and high cost of living in the US ate away the paltry funds she could gather with her education, and as the orphanage began to suffer without her presence, she decided to return to Liberia permanently. It was around this time that I met her. I remember when I was working one Thanksgiving–I had no family in Texas anyway–and Isabel had invited me to come to her Thanksgiving whenever I managed to get away. I was doing rounds on the newborn babies, enjoying the quiet of a fairly empty hospital with only essential staff, free from the annoying interference of the more controlling nurses and administrators (you know, the kind of person who knows better than you about your patient care even though they’ve never been to medical school, because they improve the numbers geared to make the hospital money; the person who controls everyone around them, and still somehow manages to get holidays off because “they deserve it”). Suddenly, whispers and warnings permeated through the hallways: the hospital commander was coming in. “What is the hospital commander coming in for?” I admit I kind of smirked. People hate it when I smirk. But the smirk was deserved. He was coming to get his picture taken while he gave out turkeys to the patients stuck in the hospital over Thanksgiving. He had a glorious entourage, all decked out in their blue Army dress uniforms, their chests studded with colorful war-candy. The vast majority of the awards in the modern Army have nothing to do with combat, or bravery–you can get one for just going on a deployment, or writing a good paper, and there’s even one for just existing in the Army during 9/11. You wouldn’t know that, with the chests stuck out, and the strutting: it’s not uncommon for a commander, at military balls, to insist that lower Captains take pictures with him so you can see by contrast how very many medals he has on his dress blues compared to everyone else. I met the commander’s eyes for a moment as he passed by with his photographer; we all had to stop working on medicine to praise his presence. Decorum, and so forth. “When you give to the poor, do not do as the hypocrites do, and bring your trumpeter to announce your good work in the city square,” my Messiah once said; the commanders of his time didn’t have photographers. But his words are so much harder than we think, aren’t they? All of our giving programs online include social media buttons, so we can share how good we are with others. We call it “spreading awareness,” and I admit to feeling like if I tell everyone else I’m doing good, they’ll want to do good, too. And of course, we have to have some way to share good programs. But there must be a difference between a photograph of a well-dressed man of power handing out turkeys, and a practical call to action begging you to join the work. As the commander continued down the hall, I could only think about Isabel, working in the lowest position in the hospital, compared to this man with all his power. “The first shall be last,” the Messiah once said. In heaven, she will be the one studded with awards, and hers will not be pompous, but glorious. Thanksgiving with Isabel’s family was shy, but good. Those were the good days, even though I didn’t know it, and I miss going to lunch with her once a week, and learning about potato greens, and spicy chicken; the memory brings a soft, full, well-fed feeling. I was working often 80 hours a week in that hospital, a brand new physician, completely overwhelmed by a creeping illness suddenly exacerbated by an unrealistic work schedule. I regret spending so much time worrying about my position in the hospital, and I regret almost all of the time socializing with other military medical professionals, desperate to be liked but too rebellious and different to ever earn any place in those safe, successful hearts. I wish I had spent even more time with Isabel before she left; I am so grateful for the opportunities I did take. Ultimately, I left that residency as it ate away my health and my mind, burdened by my significant moral opposition to the residency’s prevailing philosophy of loyalty to the organization over the patient. None of the female residents in my year or above me who had pretended to care about me really kept contact. They looked down on me for my weakness and had little compassion for my daily chronic pain and worsening chemical depression. My best “friend” at that time seriously used and then deserted me in my time of need, after a relationship so deeply emotionally manipulative and mind-altering that my depression spiraled and I had to be hospitalized. Isabel never judged me, even when I was kind of stupid; she saw my pain with such deep compassion even though I had so much more than she did from a material perspective. I know of people who are so poor they feel uncomfortable, angry, or cruelly unsympathetic towards people who have more than they, and I understand their justification; but Isabel was so rich in spirit that she didn’t see it that way. There’s an old Hebrew saying, “never muzzle an ox as he treads out the grain,” and a later one to explain that the teacher deserves his due; as Isabel returned to Liberia to rescue the orphanage that could no longer survive without her presence, it would be truly evil of me, with the life I have, not to support her work. To stand by while she lives often without running water or electricity, in extreme heat, eating only rice every day with the occasional vegetables, and not give? I would be as fake as that man of power, and a bad friend to boot.

However, I am finding I cannot, alone, provide for the enormous needs of the orphanage. The government recently dropped off twelve more children; there are five mattresses that need purchasing, a child with severe liver disease who needs $450 worth of medicine, and three teenagers who have graduated high school but cannot afford the mere $1200 ($300 per semester) it would take to pay for their technical school or college. One of the young men wants to become a PA, to be provide medical care of the children at the orphanage, but had to stop school after two semesters because there just isn’t any more money for his schooling. It’s frustrating because most of these costs are so cheap for most people in the US and Europe–six semesters of trade school at $1200 is absolutely unheard of. The younger children need just $50 per month to receive full clothing, education, and food support; a significant amount of their diet comes from Child Aid International, but consists primarily of rice and occasional vegetables, with a slight deficiency in variety and protein.

If you would like to help, you can sponsor or half-sponsor a child for $50 or $25 a month with His Hands Support Ministries. I personally verified sponsorship records and end finances received by Isabel from this volunteer organization, and 100 percent of the funds they receive go to Isabel–not the case with large, admin-heavy organizations like Compassion International. For some people, this sponsorship is literally just the cost of one fancy date a month; for others, it’s the price of a cup of coffee a day. And it makes a huge difference.

Alternatively, if you would like to help fund someone’s college or trade school, get in touch with me at jen at becominghero.ninja, and I will coordinate with His Hands Support Ministries to find a way to make your special donation 501(c)3 tax exempt.

And finally, please share and tell as many people about Isabel’s work as possible!

Thank-you, as always, for your superhero work.

Want more ways to make a difference? Get superheroalerts sent to you weekly with a free fiction digest. Or check out today’s Random Act of Kindness from my special Random Act of Kindness Generator!

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