Rupert Giles looked at the girl sitting in the white room beyond the one-way mirror and could not help but feel miserable all the way down to his soul. Nearly five years, he mused. For five years he had been her Watcher. More, he had been her father. He had loved her like the daughter he had never had. Until the day she changed forever. Now she was sitting in the white room with the padded walls, her small form bound in a straight jacket, and just stared off into space. He had not seen her in nearly six months before he was informed of her capture. Capture. Like an animal. He looked at her through the mirror and wondered what had happened to the girl he had known, the girl he had seen grow up. She was so different now. Not just superficially. Buffy had died her hair a raven black. When she was captured she had worn what he could only think of as a biker outfit. All black leather. Her face had been thickly covered with make-up. They had captured her but one block away from an apartment where the police had found the body of a middle-aged man, crucified on the wall by wooden stakes driven through his hands and feet. According to the police the man had been a suspected child murderer, but had been set free for lack of evidence. A piece of paper had been pinned to his chest. The words, in Buffy's hand writing, had read: „He made them scream, made the children scream. So I made him scream. And scream. And scream." Her finger prints had been found all over the apartment and on the body. The man's blood was on her clothing. She took down four policemen before they finally managed to knock her out. Since then she had destroyed at least ten pairs of handcuffs and hospitalized over a dozen officers. The police were still trying to figure out what kind of drugs she was on. Giles suspected they would find nothing. It had taken him a lot of doing to get to see her. He was not a relative after all, even though he felt that way and knew that Buffy did to. Or at least the Buffy he had known felt that way. Still, he was allowed an hour of talking to her. The doctors hoped that he would be able to make her come out of the shell she was in. She was to be sent off to a closed institution for the criminally insane tomorrow. Giles took of his glassed and polished them, not exactly sure what he was doing here. That young woman in there was not his Buffy. His Buffy could never have done the things she had done. The things she had openly confessed. Murder. Several of them. With a sigh that made him feel a lot older than he was he stood up and walked into the room they had prepared for their talk. # The straight jacket would not be taken off. So far it was the only thing that could hold her and the officers were not taking chances anymore. So Giles sat opposite a black-haired girl in a white straight jacket and looked for traces of the girl he had known. „See someone you know?" She asked him. „Someone I used to know." „Why are you here, Watcher?" „I want to know what happened, Buffy. You disappear for half a year and then you are arrested for multiple homicide. I wouldn't believe it until I saw the video tape where you confessed. What happened?" She laughs, a throaty laugh that sounds nothing like Buffy's laugh sounded. „The Watcher wants to know what happened to his sweet little Buffy. How charming. I don't think you are ready to learn what happened to her, though." „Why don't you tell me regardless?" Her face goes all serious on me and the coldness in her eyes makes me shiver. „Simple story, Watcher. Buffy Summers died. She died six months ago." After she disappeared that was my greatest fear. Even a Slayer of her caliber would someday run out of luck. She is not dead, though. When I came here the first thing I did was perform a probing spell. I was hoping that Buffy was possessed. Or maybe even turned, made into a Vampire. Anything to explain her murdering those men. Nothing. She is alive and she is still human. „You are not dead." I tell her. „Never said I was. Buffy is, though. Quite dead." „If Buffy is dead, then who are you?" She cocks her head to one side and smiles at me. „I am what you always told me to be, Watcher. I am the Slayer." „You have always been the Slayer, Buffy. Ever since you were called." „Wrong, Watcher. Buffy was just a girl that was playing at being the Slayer. No longer, though. No longer." I try to understand what has happened to her. Something traumatic maybe. Something that fractured her, convinced her that she is now someone else. Schizophrenia? Maybe. I am not a psychiatrist. „If that is so, why don't you tell me how that happened. How did Buffy die and become the Slayer?" „Do you really want to hear this story, Watcher? For I can promise you, you won't like it even one bit." Giles just nodded. "Do you remember Dawn?" She asked him. "Dawn?" "My sister." "Buffy, you don't have a sister. You are an only child." Was her memory playing tricks on her right now? She must be worse off than he thought. "I didn't really expect you to remember," she continued, "no one but me does. Not surprising. Dawn was never real." "Why don't you tell me more about this Dawn, Buffy?" Giles asked. "I guess it's too much to expect you not to call me Buffy anymore, Watcher. Just don't forget that I am the Slayer. Buffy Summers is dead. Just like Dawn." She leaned back, smirking at him. "Dawn was forced into our lives a little more than a year ago. She suddenly appeared and everyone thought that she was my baby sister, including myself. A while later I found out that our memories had been altered. Dawn had been sent to me to keep her safe and I was to think of her as my sister so I would do the job properly." "Why was Dawn in need of safekeeping?" Giles was not sure whether any of this had ever really happened, but he had seen enough strangeness to know it was possible. ""She was something called the key. I never found out what for, but she kept her safe. For a while." "What happened then?" She laughs and the sound sent shivers down Giles' spine. So full of loathing and anger. "One day she was gone. We were all frantic, worried, panicked. We were sure that Glory, the demon that had been looking for Dawn, had somehow gotten her. We were wrong, though." She leaned forward, still smiling. "Willow did a spell that allowed me to trace Dawn to a house on the outskirts of town. It happened there." "What happened there?" Giles asked. "Buffy died. And was reborn as the Slayer." # "I walked towards that house and strained my senses, waiting for them to pick up on the presence of anything supernatural. Vampires. Glory. Other demons. But there was nothing. Nothing except the wind in the trees and the sound of two dogs playing in the back yard. Two German Shepherds, big ones. They were busy gnawing meat off some bones and I decided not to disturb them. "I didn't want to attract too much attention, therefore I just used the front door. Breaking it open was no problem, of course. No one was home, but the spell had clearly shown that Dawn had to be here, so I started searching. "There was nothing on either the ground floor, nor the first floor. I finally made my way down into the basement. By then I knew that this house belonged to a man called Harvey Jameson. I found his ID on the kitchen table. He didn't look like a demon to me, but looks can be very deceiving. I stayed on my guard. "In the basement I found my first trace of Dawn. Her dress, to be exact. She had worn a red and white flower dress on the day she went missing and here it was. Along with her underwear. All the clothes were dirty and torn. I think by that time I was so worried I was in shock and just kept on going on auto pilot. "I went back up, still looking for a trace of Dawn. She had to be here, the spell said so. I went into the kitchen again, hoping to find some more clues. I found a large butcher's knife lying in the sink, freshly scrubbed. The chopping block next to the sink smelled of disinfectant. Deep knife marks were all over it. "I think I already knew what had happened then, but I didn't want to realise it. I was still Buffy then, still weak. The sound of the dogs attracted my attention, I could see them playing with their food through the back door. They were playing with a bone, some pieces of meat still sticking to it. "The bone was large. Too large to belong to a chicken or a pig. Just about large enough to belong to … "I just shut down then. No more thought, just action. I grabbed the butcher's knife from the kitchen and went into the back yard. The dogs stopped playing with the bone and looked at me. Just looked. I looked into their animal eyes and knew that they were not to blame. Still, I raised the knife above my head and cut them down." Giles had not moved an inch since Buffy had started her narration. He couldn't even blink. She was telling it all with a voice that was devoid of all emotion except naked hatred and anger. "The animals' blood splattered me, stained me, helped me come to terms with what had happened. What was going to happen. Buffy Summers closed her eyes, breathing heavily and shivering." She looks directly at Giles and it takes all he has not to flinch away from her. "It was the Slayer who opened them. "Then I waited. Harvey Jameson returned home about two hours later. He found his front door kicked open. Every normal citizen would have called the cops. He didn't. Probably did not want them to find evidence of what he had done in here. "He went inside, carefully looking around every corner. He even took a shot gun from the closet next to the door. I had left it there, but taken out the ammo. He went into the kitchen, calling for his dogs. "I threw the carcass of the first dog through the kitchen window, directly on top of him. He screamed as the bloody meat drove him to the floor, screamed more when he recognised it for what it was. He managed to get out from beneath the dog and ran down the corridor. "I threw the second carcass at him through the front door. By the time he stopped screaming and managed to get free I was upon him. "He was not a demon. Not a Vampire. Just a human being. Your average joe. By that time I knew that the monsters are everywhere. It doesn't matter whether they have souls or not. They are monsters. I broke his right arm as he reached for the shot gun. I kicked his knee in when he tried to get up. "All the time he was screaming. Asking me who I was, what I was doing here. He said he had nothing to do with the disappearance of the girl. I was not a cop, I had no right to do this. He asked me where my evidence was, he had done nothing wrong. "I never said a word. I dragged him down into his basement and chained him to the wall with the handcuffs I had found down here. Probably the same ones he had used on Dawn. By that time he was whimpering. "I took a canister of gas I had found in his garage and started pouring it out on the floor. Jameson looked at me with wide eyes, constantly asking what I was doing. He recognised the smell, of course. By then he probably knew what I would do. "I finally put the butcher's knife down beside him and he stared at it as if it would get up and butcher him any moment now. That was also the one and only time I spoke to him." Buffy leaned back and closed her eyes, reliving the memory. "I said: Don't bother trying to cut the cuffs! You'll never make it in time. "He just looked at me in complete confusion for a moment, then he realised what I meant. He started screaming again. Got even louder when I took out the matches I had found earlier and lighted one of them. "By the time I got out the door half the house was already burning. I sat down on the grass outside and watched. Watched for half an hour. "No one came out." Buffy, no, the Slayer opened her eyes and stared at Giles again. "Watching it burn, watching the skies fill with the smoke of burning human fat, I realised that there is no such thing as evil, Watcher. Or if there is, then we are all it. I looked up at the sky and I saw neither God, nor the Powers That Be, nor any other metaphysical force that compels us to do anything. „Angel once told me that it was not the demon inside him that loved to kill, but the man. On that day I realized that he was right. Demons might kill humans, but they are just doing what comes naturally for them. You can't blame a predator for hunting its pray, can you? „We humans, we are different. And that is where the true evil lies, Watcher. We are all monsters, Watcher. Each and every one of us. It's not the Powers That Be or some dark forces that make human beings tick. It's not the devil that butchers little girls, it's not fate that hacks them into little pieces, it's not destiny that feeds them to the dogs. „It's us. Only us." There was silence for a long time, Giles totally at a loss what to say. The Slayer just watched him, waiting for his reaction. Finally Giles blinked and looked away. "Does that answer your question, Watcher?" The Slayer asked. "I guess it does." Giles mumbled. "Good!" With that the Slayer ripped the straight jacket to pieces. Standing up, she kicked in the door and barrelled past the four guards waiting outside, barely slowing down to knock them senseless. When Giles finally got up and ran out into the corridor he only heard a few muffled cries in the distance. Buffy was gone. And so was the Slayer. THE END