The Past is a Foreign Country...
When all was said and done, it had been a pretty terrible day. My thoughts churned as I sat in my room. Perhaps it would have been natural to think about Tara, or Lynn, or the bizarre situation with the vampire, but instead my mind turned to the past. This day of truths had stirred up things that I had tried to leave alone.
It was unfortunate that my mind had chosen this day to note Ieuan’s resemblance to Dean. It had been a while since I had thought about my former lover, but he certainly did pay more than a passing resemblance to the wretched Welsh boy. Perhaps - no, probably - that contributed to my dislike of Ieuan, even if it had taken my conscious a while to catch up with my subconscious on that one. But yes, Dean. Damned Dean and his soft good looks, and… These thoughts brought me back, of course, to Asha.
My beautiful, wonderful, stubborn, wild and intelligent Asha. If she had been a slayer, she would have astonished everyone. She would have outlived Buffy Summers, I was sure of that, even if she had served seven years at the hellmouth. I have never been lucky enough to meet someone like Asha in all these years since her death, and rarely a day goes by that I do not mourn her passing.
I was in England when her watcher died, a rather decrepit man called Chambers who kept her strictly apart from the world, training her hard in body and mind. She had been with him for three years, and on his death was completely alone, as her mother had died when she was fourteen, and her father had never been in the picture. What the council were thinking when they sent me out there I do not know. A man of 25, well known for his cavalier attitude towards danger, to supervise a girl who was not only known to be rebellious, but had been forcibly cloistered with only an old man for company! What did they think would happen?
Not much happened, not really. We became friends at once, recognising something of ourselves in each other. I took her clubbing. She could dance all night and well into the next day. I was no match for her, even though I loved to dance in those days. She had astonishing strength, even for a Potential. Chambers’ work had paid off, certainly, but she was naturally agile, I think. I loved to train with her; it was like a dance. Our lives were a dance - from training room to patrol to club floor, we never stopped.
Sometimes we would argue bitterly. She was strong minded and rebellious, and I was arrogant and pig headed. We would rage at each other nearly every day, but all the fights blew over.
It was during one such fight that I realised I had fallen in love with her. I was raging at her for slipping out when I had left her to study some old manuscripts - I always thought slayers should be well versed, not just good fighters - and she had shot back that she had better things to do than read fusty old rubbish. It’s not fusty! I had stormed, and she had flashed me a wicked smile.
“I know, David,” she said. “I just like to get you riled.”
I felt my heart drop into my stomach as she said it. Maybe it was the way she smiled, or the lilt of her voice - her Arabic was like music - but I knew. I loved her, and probably had for some time. And as I gaped at her, Asha’s expression faltered, and I knew that she knew.
We slept together once. It was a year after I was first posted to Eygpt, and about three months after my revelation. I had tried to push it from my mind, but it was difficult. I felt something shimmering in the air between us, and although we joked and argued as always, something had changed. One hot night, hot even for Eygpt, we had been to an illegal club, but the sweltering heat had proved too much for even indomitable Asha, and we had gone home, sweating. We ended up in Asha’s room, just to talk. I remember the scene perfectly - she lay across the bed, her bare legs rumpling the sheets, and the room was tinted blue by moonlight. I had had a little alcohol that evening, but not enough so that I can blame my behaviour on drink. All I know is that one moment I was sitting on a chair facing her, chatting idly about some new music, or maybe the next day’s training. Then she lifted her face and looked at me, and the next moment I was on the bed with her. We kissed as if we had been waiting all our lives to do so, and then… Then there was the rest.
The next day I knew it had been a mistake. We managed to have an adult conversation about it, about how as her watcher I was not meant to be too attached to her, how that could lead us both into making dangerous decisions. We never said “I love you”, but I knew that it was understood.
“If I’m not called soon, I probably won’t be at all, right?” she said.
“The council normally recalls watchers if their potentials have not become slayers by the end of their teens,” I said. “It’s assumed they won’t need them.”
“Three years until I’m 20,” Asha said softly.
We did not discuss the matter further. What more could be said? I think it was that that eventually let me date Dean, those three years. I needed something to fill up the interim, or I would go mad. Asha, too, went on some dates, although she had to be careful, of course, in a strictly Muslim country. We ourselves had nearly been arrested on more than one occasion for being out together without a chaperone, but had managed to escape.
I met Dean through an American expat social club I occasionally patronised, if only for the opportunity to speak my native tongue. I was surprised that he targeted me. In the main, my romantic and sexual experiences have been with women. Only a very few men have caught my eye, and even fewer have I had any relations with. But something must have told Dean that I was not entirely opposed to the idea, and so he began his pursuit. I do not use the word lightly; Dean was only 22, but he was absolutely determined to have me. It was strange, to be so actively sought after, and I felt flattered. He was everything I was not - American, blandly handsome, a sports fan, and not particularly interested in scholarly matters, although he was certainly not stupid. But eventually I gave in to his requests, and we went on a date. I thought we would sleep together and that would be the end of it, but he asked me out again. After the third date, I found that I had asked him out, and after that we spent a growing amount of time together. I was certainly not in love with him, but I found I had grown fond of him.
Asha was a little amused, I think, although she was never kind to Dean. She perplexed him, I think, and she found him dull. “I don’t mind,” she said to me one day, but did not elaborate further. I know it’s only to fill the gap, I knew she meant. It was true, and not true at the same time. I began to have real feelings for him. He was very sweet, and gentle, and I found him soothing to be with, unlike my whirlwind. I think Asha sensed that. Perhaps that’s why she went out that last time without consulting me. Maybe it consoled her to defy me.
Asha and I had fought a few demons in our two years together. Nothing too big - vampires mostly - and she had handled them well. Still, I never let her fight them alone, as she was not a slayer and didn’t have their strength. I had heard reports of a demon that had killed several people, and I mentioned it to Asha, suggesting we investigate it later in the week, once we had had a chance to do some research. Then I went out to meet Dean. I came back and she was gone. I assumed she had gone out for some fun, and was annoyed that she had not left a note, but did not suspect anything was amiss.
Until the phone rang.
I knew, somehow, when that noise pierced the still air, that there was something very wrong. When at last I answered, my voice shook as I said “hello”. It was the hospital. There had been an accident, they said.
Her body was mutilated. That beautiful body. I stood and stared at her for a long time, scarcely able to believe that this had happened to her. They had not wanted to pull back the sheet, but I had insisted. The monster had left her face untouched, but the rest of her was a mess of blood. The air smelled of cleaning fluid, and I could hear the soft hum of the electric lights as I stared at her corpse.
The police questioned me for a long time. I gave them Dean’s number so he could provide me with an alibi, and I was let go. I walked home in a daze, the Eygptian sun rising behind me and promising another hot day.
Back at the house I sat on the sofa and listened to myself breathe. I felt that I was suspended in a bubble, able to see but not touch the world. I pinched my skin and felt nothing. I walked around the house aimlessly, hearing the sound of my heart in my ears.
I went into Asha’s room. Her bed was unmade, sheets tangled. Some items of clothing lay on the floor, and her dressing table was a mess of open bottles. I made the bed neatly, smoothing down the sheets, then folded her clothes and tidied up her cosmetics. Underneath a pile of lipsticks and eyeshadows there was a yellow exercise book. It was the one I had told her to use to practise writing English in. She had never been particularly interested, and I expected the book to be unused. It was, mostly, but across the middle two pages she had written in a careful hand not like her usual scrawl: “Asha and David”, and scored under it with a firm line.
I would say that I wept, but that would be an understatement. I howled and screamed and raged. I thought tearing out one’s hair in grief was a literary convention, but I did. I tore out clumps, making my scalp bleed, and I scraped at my arms and chest in desperation, as if that would tear the feeling out. Then I decided to act.
Still in the previous night’s clothes, my forehead stained with blood, I marched to a part of town where I knew I could find what I was looking for. I wasn’t a Slayer; I couldn’t fight this thing with a sword. Instead I snaked through the streets of Cairo, barely feeling the heat or noticing the flies that had swarmed around my head, until in the dark shadows of an ancient street I found the man I was looking for.
A thousand pounds secured me the gun. It was a great deal of money, but I handed it over without blinking. This was not a day for haggling.
“You tell no one where you got this, or I’ll kill you,” he hissed.
“That may well not be a problem,” I said grimly, and put the machine gun in its case.
I found the demon. It was not difficult, since it had left a path of destruction in its wake. I barely remember the fight, if it can be called that. I shot at it, peppering its horrific skin with lead, and screaming it came at me, slashing at my side. I managed to shoot it a few more times, and then it fell down dead. Bleeding heavily, I managed to crawl out of the alley, and fainted in front of a passerby.
Dean came to see me as soon as he heard.
“My God, David,” he said, pausing in horror at the door. “What’s happened?” He stood and stared at me, a bunch of flowers hanging limply from his hand.
“Demon,” I said grimly, from between bruised lips. I had told him some time before of what work I did, and he had seemed to accept it. “It killed Asha.”
“My God, David!” he repeated, approaching me gingerly. “What - what did the doctors say?”
“I might be able to walk again,” I said. “But we don’t know yet. The tendons are all shot to pieces. My arm’s not so bad, although I’ll never look good in a singlet.” I tried to smile, but found I could not. “I’m going to need intensive physiotherapy, after a long hospital stay, of course.”
“And - you said a demon did this?” Dean seemed almost paralysed with confusion. “I know you said you fought them, but I never thought - “
“What, that your boyfriend would get crippled?” I said nastily. “It’s not a kids’ game, this,” I added, closing my eyes.
“I - I know. I just never…” He trailed off. “I’ll let you get some rest.”
When I opened my eyes he was gone, although he had left the flowers on a table.
I never saw Dean again. I spent the next week in the hospital, and then someone from the council came to get me flown home. I spent most of the next month in a private hospital in England, before facing the council. They said I had allowed Asha too much freedom, and suggested that I had had inappropriate feelings for her. They told me that I should never have gone after the demon by myself, and should instead have informed the council of Asha’s death so they could decide what to do. I defended myself half heartedly, and retreated to my London flat, where I spent the next six months nearly killing myself with alcohol and self pity.
I have never regretted doing what I did. It may have been a more sensible thing to have waited for the council’s help and advice before going after the monster, but what sort of man would I have been if I had simply sat around and waited, knowing that the beast that had torn my girl to shreds was still roaming the streets? Attacking it myself was not the intelligent or the rational thing to do, but it was, I think, the most loving. Ieuan called me careless, but it was because I cared that I risked my life. Sometimes I curse myself for having loved her, for had I not, perhaps she would never have gone out alone to pique me. Other times I wonder if I should have said “hang the council’s rules” and been with her as we both wanted. Would that have saved her? Whichever way, I blame myself for her death.
A leg is not much of a sacrifice.
It was unfortunate that my mind had chosen this day to note Ieuan’s resemblance to Dean. It had been a while since I had thought about my former lover, but he certainly did pay more than a passing resemblance to the wretched Welsh boy. Perhaps - no, probably - that contributed to my dislike of Ieuan, even if it had taken my conscious a while to catch up with my subconscious on that one. But yes, Dean. Damned Dean and his soft good looks, and… These thoughts brought me back, of course, to Asha.
My beautiful, wonderful, stubborn, wild and intelligent Asha. If she had been a slayer, she would have astonished everyone. She would have outlived Buffy Summers, I was sure of that, even if she had served seven years at the hellmouth. I have never been lucky enough to meet someone like Asha in all these years since her death, and rarely a day goes by that I do not mourn her passing.
I was in England when her watcher died, a rather decrepit man called Chambers who kept her strictly apart from the world, training her hard in body and mind. She had been with him for three years, and on his death was completely alone, as her mother had died when she was fourteen, and her father had never been in the picture. What the council were thinking when they sent me out there I do not know. A man of 25, well known for his cavalier attitude towards danger, to supervise a girl who was not only known to be rebellious, but had been forcibly cloistered with only an old man for company! What did they think would happen?
Not much happened, not really. We became friends at once, recognising something of ourselves in each other. I took her clubbing. She could dance all night and well into the next day. I was no match for her, even though I loved to dance in those days. She had astonishing strength, even for a Potential. Chambers’ work had paid off, certainly, but she was naturally agile, I think. I loved to train with her; it was like a dance. Our lives were a dance - from training room to patrol to club floor, we never stopped.
Sometimes we would argue bitterly. She was strong minded and rebellious, and I was arrogant and pig headed. We would rage at each other nearly every day, but all the fights blew over.
It was during one such fight that I realised I had fallen in love with her. I was raging at her for slipping out when I had left her to study some old manuscripts - I always thought slayers should be well versed, not just good fighters - and she had shot back that she had better things to do than read fusty old rubbish. It’s not fusty! I had stormed, and she had flashed me a wicked smile.
“I know, David,” she said. “I just like to get you riled.”
I felt my heart drop into my stomach as she said it. Maybe it was the way she smiled, or the lilt of her voice - her Arabic was like music - but I knew. I loved her, and probably had for some time. And as I gaped at her, Asha’s expression faltered, and I knew that she knew.
We slept together once. It was a year after I was first posted to Eygpt, and about three months after my revelation. I had tried to push it from my mind, but it was difficult. I felt something shimmering in the air between us, and although we joked and argued as always, something had changed. One hot night, hot even for Eygpt, we had been to an illegal club, but the sweltering heat had proved too much for even indomitable Asha, and we had gone home, sweating. We ended up in Asha’s room, just to talk. I remember the scene perfectly - she lay across the bed, her bare legs rumpling the sheets, and the room was tinted blue by moonlight. I had had a little alcohol that evening, but not enough so that I can blame my behaviour on drink. All I know is that one moment I was sitting on a chair facing her, chatting idly about some new music, or maybe the next day’s training. Then she lifted her face and looked at me, and the next moment I was on the bed with her. We kissed as if we had been waiting all our lives to do so, and then… Then there was the rest.
The next day I knew it had been a mistake. We managed to have an adult conversation about it, about how as her watcher I was not meant to be too attached to her, how that could lead us both into making dangerous decisions. We never said “I love you”, but I knew that it was understood.
“If I’m not called soon, I probably won’t be at all, right?” she said.
“The council normally recalls watchers if their potentials have not become slayers by the end of their teens,” I said. “It’s assumed they won’t need them.”
“Three years until I’m 20,” Asha said softly.
We did not discuss the matter further. What more could be said? I think it was that that eventually let me date Dean, those three years. I needed something to fill up the interim, or I would go mad. Asha, too, went on some dates, although she had to be careful, of course, in a strictly Muslim country. We ourselves had nearly been arrested on more than one occasion for being out together without a chaperone, but had managed to escape.
I met Dean through an American expat social club I occasionally patronised, if only for the opportunity to speak my native tongue. I was surprised that he targeted me. In the main, my romantic and sexual experiences have been with women. Only a very few men have caught my eye, and even fewer have I had any relations with. But something must have told Dean that I was not entirely opposed to the idea, and so he began his pursuit. I do not use the word lightly; Dean was only 22, but he was absolutely determined to have me. It was strange, to be so actively sought after, and I felt flattered. He was everything I was not - American, blandly handsome, a sports fan, and not particularly interested in scholarly matters, although he was certainly not stupid. But eventually I gave in to his requests, and we went on a date. I thought we would sleep together and that would be the end of it, but he asked me out again. After the third date, I found that I had asked him out, and after that we spent a growing amount of time together. I was certainly not in love with him, but I found I had grown fond of him.
Asha was a little amused, I think, although she was never kind to Dean. She perplexed him, I think, and she found him dull. “I don’t mind,” she said to me one day, but did not elaborate further. I know it’s only to fill the gap, I knew she meant. It was true, and not true at the same time. I began to have real feelings for him. He was very sweet, and gentle, and I found him soothing to be with, unlike my whirlwind. I think Asha sensed that. Perhaps that’s why she went out that last time without consulting me. Maybe it consoled her to defy me.
Asha and I had fought a few demons in our two years together. Nothing too big - vampires mostly - and she had handled them well. Still, I never let her fight them alone, as she was not a slayer and didn’t have their strength. I had heard reports of a demon that had killed several people, and I mentioned it to Asha, suggesting we investigate it later in the week, once we had had a chance to do some research. Then I went out to meet Dean. I came back and she was gone. I assumed she had gone out for some fun, and was annoyed that she had not left a note, but did not suspect anything was amiss.
Until the phone rang.
I knew, somehow, when that noise pierced the still air, that there was something very wrong. When at last I answered, my voice shook as I said “hello”. It was the hospital. There had been an accident, they said.
Her body was mutilated. That beautiful body. I stood and stared at her for a long time, scarcely able to believe that this had happened to her. They had not wanted to pull back the sheet, but I had insisted. The monster had left her face untouched, but the rest of her was a mess of blood. The air smelled of cleaning fluid, and I could hear the soft hum of the electric lights as I stared at her corpse.
The police questioned me for a long time. I gave them Dean’s number so he could provide me with an alibi, and I was let go. I walked home in a daze, the Eygptian sun rising behind me and promising another hot day.
Back at the house I sat on the sofa and listened to myself breathe. I felt that I was suspended in a bubble, able to see but not touch the world. I pinched my skin and felt nothing. I walked around the house aimlessly, hearing the sound of my heart in my ears.
I went into Asha’s room. Her bed was unmade, sheets tangled. Some items of clothing lay on the floor, and her dressing table was a mess of open bottles. I made the bed neatly, smoothing down the sheets, then folded her clothes and tidied up her cosmetics. Underneath a pile of lipsticks and eyeshadows there was a yellow exercise book. It was the one I had told her to use to practise writing English in. She had never been particularly interested, and I expected the book to be unused. It was, mostly, but across the middle two pages she had written in a careful hand not like her usual scrawl: “Asha and David”, and scored under it with a firm line.
I would say that I wept, but that would be an understatement. I howled and screamed and raged. I thought tearing out one’s hair in grief was a literary convention, but I did. I tore out clumps, making my scalp bleed, and I scraped at my arms and chest in desperation, as if that would tear the feeling out. Then I decided to act.
Still in the previous night’s clothes, my forehead stained with blood, I marched to a part of town where I knew I could find what I was looking for. I wasn’t a Slayer; I couldn’t fight this thing with a sword. Instead I snaked through the streets of Cairo, barely feeling the heat or noticing the flies that had swarmed around my head, until in the dark shadows of an ancient street I found the man I was looking for.
A thousand pounds secured me the gun. It was a great deal of money, but I handed it over without blinking. This was not a day for haggling.
“You tell no one where you got this, or I’ll kill you,” he hissed.
“That may well not be a problem,” I said grimly, and put the machine gun in its case.
I found the demon. It was not difficult, since it had left a path of destruction in its wake. I barely remember the fight, if it can be called that. I shot at it, peppering its horrific skin with lead, and screaming it came at me, slashing at my side. I managed to shoot it a few more times, and then it fell down dead. Bleeding heavily, I managed to crawl out of the alley, and fainted in front of a passerby.
Dean came to see me as soon as he heard.
“My God, David,” he said, pausing in horror at the door. “What’s happened?” He stood and stared at me, a bunch of flowers hanging limply from his hand.
“Demon,” I said grimly, from between bruised lips. I had told him some time before of what work I did, and he had seemed to accept it. “It killed Asha.”
“My God, David!” he repeated, approaching me gingerly. “What - what did the doctors say?”
“I might be able to walk again,” I said. “But we don’t know yet. The tendons are all shot to pieces. My arm’s not so bad, although I’ll never look good in a singlet.” I tried to smile, but found I could not. “I’m going to need intensive physiotherapy, after a long hospital stay, of course.”
“And - you said a demon did this?” Dean seemed almost paralysed with confusion. “I know you said you fought them, but I never thought - “
“What, that your boyfriend would get crippled?” I said nastily. “It’s not a kids’ game, this,” I added, closing my eyes.
“I - I know. I just never…” He trailed off. “I’ll let you get some rest.”
When I opened my eyes he was gone, although he had left the flowers on a table.
I never saw Dean again. I spent the next week in the hospital, and then someone from the council came to get me flown home. I spent most of the next month in a private hospital in England, before facing the council. They said I had allowed Asha too much freedom, and suggested that I had had inappropriate feelings for her. They told me that I should never have gone after the demon by myself, and should instead have informed the council of Asha’s death so they could decide what to do. I defended myself half heartedly, and retreated to my London flat, where I spent the next six months nearly killing myself with alcohol and self pity.
I have never regretted doing what I did. It may have been a more sensible thing to have waited for the council’s help and advice before going after the monster, but what sort of man would I have been if I had simply sat around and waited, knowing that the beast that had torn my girl to shreds was still roaming the streets? Attacking it myself was not the intelligent or the rational thing to do, but it was, I think, the most loving. Ieuan called me careless, but it was because I cared that I risked my life. Sometimes I curse myself for having loved her, for had I not, perhaps she would never have gone out alone to pique me. Other times I wonder if I should have said “hang the council’s rules” and been with her as we both wanted. Would that have saved her? Whichever way, I blame myself for her death.
A leg is not much of a sacrifice.