Title: Bookends
POV: Jocasta
Timescale: During Episode 21
“Conversations with Dread People”.
Written by: Voirrey
Jack, we have to talk. A Watcher’s talk. Or maybe a Watcher’s
Watcher’s talk.
You know on the night you did the Mohra
blood thing – we really should have a good word for that shouldn’t we? Your rebirthday? Shansu sounds too much like a martial art –
or a sneeze! Anyway, you commented that
Cass the girlfriend had spoken before Cass the Watcher had thought, and I think
I’ve been doing that too much over the last week or two. I was too busy enjoying you enjoying things
to start with, and a bit too busy worrying about you after that, or feeling
guilty about not worrying enough, to really think straight. There – that’s the Watcher confessing to her
Watcher!
I feel guilty that we didn’t spend
long enough thinking about how The First would try to get at you. Don’t tell me I shouldn’t – I do! I mean we knew that he, no it,
The First is not a person, it was bound
to target you. We knew how much it seems
to hate any vampire who gets a soul, or becomes human, and yet we almost
discounted it because it had already targeted you with the Soul Eater because
you had a soul. Yeh, yeh, I know, no
point in sending a Soul Eater if you didn’t have a soul! But just because it hadn’t targeted you
since, we didn’t concentrate properly.
Well yes, OK, we did spend a few
minutes deciding that there wasn’t really anything in your background that you
felt guilty about, and, as you already had your soul, becoming human wasn’t
going to make you vulnerable to the guilt trip thing. But I should have thought harder about
things. It should have been obvious that
The First was going to be really pissed off - we used something that was
part of its fight against us to benefit us instead, and we didn’t recognize how
pissed off and devious it was being when the next round started. I should have been able to see it – that’s my
job.
I mean when the Corsican Brothers
showed up we all just went ‘OK, these are old enemies of Jack’s that The First
has dredged up, possibly literally, to get at Jack.’ I should have thought it through further, so
should James probably, but I am the senior.
It was not nasty or devious enough to be an attack aimed at a newly ex
vampire – all the other things it has done recently to people in similar
situations have been more complex, and often using the primary target as a way
of getting at others. Just sending a
couple of old enemies was too simplistic.
Mind you, we do know now what your
weakness is – we should be grateful that The First has pointed it out to us,
because now we know, you won’t get fooled again! Jack my love, your weakness is women! No! I don’t mean it that way!
You’re just naturally
chivalrous! After all it’s part of the
code for lots of different warrior classes throughout history – and you’ve been
part of quite a few of them! You’ve had hundreds of years of conditioning that
men are the fighters, women are to be protected. Not that I have any objection to you being
protective of me! I am not going to try
and say that I’m just as good as you, and quite capable of taking care of
myself in a fight, because that would be stupid! Although I can usually just about hold my
own.
And I don’t mean at all that you’d
give in to any female opponent, or feel that you have to dash to help any
female in a fight - after all you don’t have any trouble about letting the
Slayers just get on with it. Although
maybe that’s after years of being a vampire, or just years of knowing
Slayers!
But it means that from The First’s
point of view, this could be something to exploit, you have a soft spot for
some women, probably especially ones you’ve been close to. I know you’ve said that you weren’t going out
with Tanya, but you must have been fond of her, otherwise the Corsicans
wouldn’t have killed her to get at you that time in
But it should have occurred to us,
that if Sally said at the time that Tanya hadn’t been turned, then this was not
a vampire Tanya whose soul was trapped in her vampire body and causing the
psychic distress that Donna and Louise heard with Magda. But I was trying so hard not to go
‘Rival! Rival! Stake her!
Stake her!’ and being so careful to not let how I feel about you stop me allowing the poor girl the chance to become human
again, that I didn’t think it through properly.
So now we know my weakness as well!
Anyway – it meant that you went into
the fight at Grosmont with a distraction – it was the first time you were going
to flex your muscles as a human in centuries, and you were still going to be
‘feeling your way,’ then The First threw in Tanya as a distraction at the
planning stage! You wouldn’t be able to concentrate
fully for thinking about how you were going to save this someone that you
hadn’t saved last time, and that you now thought you’d left in a state of
torment for fifteen years. So – a way of handicapping you, and the rest of us
really, as no one would want to stake her and upset you. Typical First move – why didn’t it occur to
us?
Then throwing a fake
Now comes my big guilt trip – I saw
you go down, and I just thought ‘He’ll be fine, potion of invulnerability and
all that,’ and didn’t come over or anything – I was much more worried about
Roxy. I left it to Dominique to patch
you up and stop anything else happening to you.
I was more worried about my Slayer than my lover! That can’t be natural! You lying bleeding
on the ground should have distracted me more than it did. So I have to accept that Jocasta The Watcher sometimes blots Cass the girlfriend out
altogether. And, at least at the moment,
you’re going to have to live with that as well, and I’m frightened that you’ll
think that that is not enough.
But, I’ve realised something else,
as I’ve been talking this out – if you are feeling guilty because you didn’t
see through Tanya or Rosa, or because you got injured in your first fight, then
that will give The First another lever.
And if women, particularly ones that you are fond of, are your weakness
– then I am part of that weakness! If you’re worried about me, or how I feel
about the way you reacted to Tanya or Rosa, then I become another lever. Having my world turn turtle today might have
been a way of getting at you as well as a way of getting at me! Thank The Powers that Be
that Magda and the girls were able to get me back to
If I’m feeling guilty because,
although I say that you’re my weakness, I’m worried that you might not be a big
enough weakness, then how much of a lever does that give it? And if we both spend time worrying about how
guilty we feel about each other The First is onto a winner. So as long as you can cope with me not always
putting you first (as opposed to First), I can cope with the fact that you had
other girlfriends in your past, just like I’ve had other boyfriends, and if we
both remember that on the whole people we know to be dead are
dead, we’ll probably get by.
I really really want you and me to stay
together as a couple, and if we both go off on our own individual guilt trips,
and they get between us, then The First wins.
This has got to be the weirdest reason to stay together, but as it’s not
by any means the main reason, it’s worth remembering
if we get ratty with each other that it might not be purely us!
Can we make a deal? Every time I feel guilty about something –
I’ll tell you, and every time you feel the need to go on a guilt trip, you tell
me – and if either of us has any real reason to feel guilty we’ll sort it out
together! That way, we’ll be like a
couple of books on a shelf – you know – the way if you prop them up so that
they lean on each other they don’t fall over, but take one away, and Splat! If I am right, and you look like you probably
agree, if we are both each other’s weak point, then if we stay together, and
guard each other’s backs, so to speak, we win.
And I want us to win – oh how I really, really want us to win!
………………………….