***Thanks everyone for your kind words. This chapter was an experiment for me. I'm trying to cover 3 stories in 3 different time periods at the same time with all three stories tying into each other. let me know how i did with it:) thanks, Sara
**Prelogue
May, 1971. The young man is running. Behind him lays a town in utter chaos. His doing. No one else’s. He had not meant for things to turn out like this. The deaths. Her death. This time he was trying to do what was right. After so many years of living on the edge. Of being bad. This time he was actually going to atone somewhat for his past. What a fool he was.
The demon came, saw what he faced, and he stomped his way through his adversaries without looking back. It was only thanks to a miracle that the young man was able to send the demon back into the pit. But it cost the life of a dear friend. And caused the betrayal of another one.
He was the one that brought Ethan and Julia into that mess. She trusted him with her life, and he failed her. All because he thought that he was powerful enough to defeat the demon. His arrogance. Her life. Ethan’s betrayal.
July, 2025. The old man makes his way up the hill. The sand is hot and the air even hotter, but after ten years here he’s quiet use to it. It takes forever to get to the top of the hill. The sand makes his journey a “two steps forward, one step back” one as it continuously slides his feet out from beneath him.
He finally makes it to the top of the hill and after bending over and holding on to his knees for a few minutes while he catches his breath, he stands and looks out over an endless sea of bronze sand. No plants or rock can be seen anywhere. He’s been here, alone, for ten years. And everyday he climbs the hill. And everyday he looks out over the ashes of his troubled soul.
First Night
Chapter 9, Scene 2
“the Heart of the Dragon”
by Sara Poe
September, 1999. The man wakes up with a jolt. He had been making his tea just a moment ago. Now he found himself laying on the floor with a lump on his head the size of an acorn. The sound of the whistling teapot was what woke him. He staggers to his feet, dazed but in control, and takes the teapot off the fire. “What just happened?” he thinks.
May, 1971. The young man presses the peddle to the floor. He wants the car to go faster. He wants to get as far away from that place as he can. It’s not fear that drives him. It’s rage. Rage at himself for allowing this to happen. It’s sorrow. Sorrow for the friendships and lives now forever lost. Pity. For a man that at one time could have aspired to greatness. But most of all he feels hopelessness. And he just wants to get as far away from the world as humanly possible.
July, 2025. The old man is alone. Has been alone for ten years. Ten years since he failed, once again, to protect the lives of those he loved. But today something doesn’t feel right to him. Today something is missing.
September, 1999. The man knows something is wrong. He’s made several phone calls and no one has answered. He’s tried calling the Bronze, which is the most popular club in town, but the phone just rings. Even Joyce, who had told him earlier that she and Buffy were spending a mother/daughter night in, wasn’t answering.
He grabs his coat and heads out into the night in search of some signs of life. This was Sunnydale after all. For all he knew everyone in town could be dead. He walks the streets that are usually bustling on the weekend and finds nothing but bodies lying around. Thankfully, none of those bodies are dead. For some reason everyone in town has fallen asleep. It was only the sound of the whistling teapot that kept him from suffering a simalure fate. “One more point for the British,” he thinks.
May, 1971. The young man made his way out of London. By morning he found himself somewhere in Wales. But this wasn’t where he wanted to be. He only came here to collect a debt owed to him. He needed the cash so he could leave this country. He would go east. Or maybe north. Anywhere that was as far away from humanity as he could get.
The roads were wet this time of year. The roads are wet most times of the year. The night fog doesn’t help as he speeds toward his destination.
July, 2025. The old man is back in his cabin in the sand now. His climb to the top of the hill seems to take longer each day lately. But he can still put dinner in the oven before he leaves and be home before it’s finished cooking. That’s been the routine for six years. Start dinner, climb the hill, come home, eat, write in his journal. “Sometimes,” he thinks, “sometimes they would talk for hours about…” Then he catches himself. There was no “they.” There was only him.
He sets the table, wondering all the while why he was thinking “they” instead of just “him?” Was he perhaps, going senile in his old age? Perhaps. Or perhaps after ten years of being alone he just wanted, for an instant, to have someone to talk to. He takes the food out of the oven and puts it on the table. That’s when he sees what he’s done. After ten years of being alone, tonight, of all the nights, he’s set the table for two.
September, 1999. The man reaches the Slayer’s house. He pounds on the door but there’s no answer. Looking through the window he can see the Slayer and her mother lying on the floor. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a thin sliver of metal. In less than a second he’s opened the lock on the front door and is inside.
He wakes the Slayer up and tells her what’s happening. “No,” he tells her, “he hasn’t seen Willow or Xander. But with everyone in town asleep how much danger could they be in?” After making sure that Joyce is comfortable on the sofa, they go out into the night to search for their friends.
May, 1971. The car slides to the right. The young man pulls the steering wheel hard to the left and pushes down on the gas pedal. The car roars forward and straitens up, speeding on its way. Nothing is going to stop him. Not tonight.
He’s done a lot of bad things in his lifetime. This was his chance to make up for them. Yes, when this thing first started he was thinking about the money. Rid the town of a demon and get ten thousand pounds. But in the two months he lived in that small town he got to know its people. When they found out who he and Ethan were, and why they came to town, they were treated like royalty. No…more than that. They were treated like family. And then he met Julia. In 1971, the rain starts to fall.
July, 2025. The old man walks out of the cabin and sits in the sand. “Is this how it will end?” He thinks. “Losing my mind in the middle of nowhere.” Ten years ago he was a powerful man. He was a Watcher. Not just A Watcher, he was the Watcher of a Slayer that had outlived any before her. His Slayer was thirty years old. The nearest a Slayer had ever come to living that long was in ancient Egypt. But then there came the dark time. The time when one of his own betrayed them again.
Willow had been as much of a daughter to him as Buffy. The two of them were more to him than just his students. They were his children. He taught Willow in the mystical arts nearly as much as he taught Buffy in Slayer ways. Perhaps it was his fault for encouraging Willow in the arts. Perhaps insanity in this bronze hell was exactally what he had earned in his life.
September, 1999. The Slayer vaults over fences and cars and seems nearly unstoppable as she searches the city for her friends. The man tries to keep up but even though he is in great shape, he’s still a man in his forties trying to do the same things as a eighteen year old girl enhanced by mystical forces.
He has to stop to rest. Just for a moment. He leans against a tree and wipes the cold September sweat from his brow. A girl is lying under the tree. The man notices something strange. The girl is propped up against the tree with a sweater under her head. As if someone put it there to keep her comfortable while she slept. The only other reason she would be like that would be if she had put the sweater under her head herself. Perhaps to take a nap. But this was Sunnydale. YOU DO NOT SLEEP IN THE PARK AT NIGHT IN SUNNYDALE!
May, 1971. The rain makes it even harder for the young man to drive, but he still speeds on. Julia was dead and Ethan, his dear friend Ethan Raine, had betrayed him for a mere ten thousand pounds. Hell, after two months in that little town the young man was ready to just give the money to Ethan. All he wanted was to be there. In that town. With that woman. But now all that was gone. In the past.
The car slides right again. He tries to pull left but the damn thing is stubborn and keeps sliding right. The young man floors the pedal again, this time turning the steering wheel into the spin. The car begins to straiten, but the young man doesn’t see the bridge. The young man doesn’t see the other car coming at him either. It’s raining, you see.
July, 2025.The old man has sat in the desert sand for hours now. The sun has already begun to burn his already too tanned skin. But the old man refuses to move. The old man isn’t even there.
He’s doing something he learned to do long ago in Tibet. The old man is tapping into his inner spirit. He’s reaching way down deep into his soul, trying to find…something. Something’s missing. He can feel this. He doesn’t know what it is but he knows that he’s not alone. At least he’s not supposed to be.
Ten years ago he left behind all that he knew and loved. Not out of fear, but out of hopelessness. He’s done this before. He was betrayed by a dear friend and lost the life of the woman he could have loved. When that happened he ran. It was only after the accident…but wait! The old man feels something. Ten years past. He remembers the battle. Two people he loved dearly died saving the life of…someone. But who was it? Willow tricked Spike into helping her escape so she could…what? What was the old man missing?
September, 1999. The Slayer doubles back to look for the man. Her watcher. She finds him under a tree with a girl. “Molesting a young girl under a tree, didn’t think that was your style,” she jokes. Then the man tells her of his discovery, and how he believes that this girl was with whomever may have had something to do with all of this. The Slayer looks at the girls face. “Ohmygod!” she says. “That’s Tara! She was with…Willow!”
May, 1971. The young man’s car races forward. The oncoming car can’t stop in time, so it veers to the right, trying to avoid the collision. It heads straight for the bridge. The young man finally sees the other car as it crashes through the guardrail of the small bridge and plunges forty feet into the water below.
The young man slams on his breaks. The car slides uncontrollable and flips over twice before coming to a stop. “NO MORE!!” The young man screams as he pulls himself from the still wobbling car. “No more will die because of me!” He rushes to the bridge and without thinking, he throws himself over the rail. He hits the water below hard only three feet from the quickly sinking car.
Dazed, he struggles with the door. He still has time. Through the rain he thinks that he can see someone moving inside. The young man smashes his elbow into the driver’s side window. The elbow breaks, but so does the window. Ignoring the rain and the pain, the young man pulls the driver out of the car. He can see no one else in there and starts to swim to the shore. Pulling the driver with him.
There, on that riverbank in the rain, the young man pulled his charge onto the shore. He had just done something that he would never thought himself capable of before. He saved a man’s life. The first. The first life in a long line that this young man will save. Only the first. His destiny was set. He would become a Watcher.
July, 2025. The old man knows now. After seven hours of sitting in the sun, the old man stood up, and started walking into the desert.
Ten years ago, the most horrible day of his life happened. He lost two people he loved more than life itself. And he was nearly killed by a woman whom he thought of as a daughter. “How could she do this,” he thinks. “How could she do this and think that I wouldn’t know.” Everything has a reason. Ten years ago Willow broke out of her prison for a reason. There was a man she wanted to kill. She failed. But that man was forevermore in fear for his life. That man knew that some day Willow could escape again. And she would surely come after him.
So when the old man left Sunnydale, the man Willow was trying to kill came with him. And the two of them had lived here in the desert every sense. They became friends. But now…now he was gone. No…no, not gone. He was never here. The man was never here because he was mysteriously murdered in his college dorm that night twenty years ago. The night that all of Sunnydale was put to sleep by a cause never found.
“How could you do this and think that I wouldn’t know?” the old man thinks. His self-exile is over. “My god, Willow! How could you!” The old man is going home.
To be continued…
Edited by: WitchSara 
at: 4/24/02 3:21:12 am
by SquishyTrishy » Tue Apr 16, 2002 9:56 pm 
at: 4/18/02 11:50:39 pm
at: 4/23/02 7:10:14 pm