To the Power Born: A Tale of the Slayers

Part 1: First Mission

My name is Jocelyn Kelly Penobscot, and I'm one of four girls in the world who were born with the Slayer power. My mom, Chantelle Penobscot (Rostov, back then) was a few weeks pregnant with me the day that Buffy Summers, the Prime Slayer, and Willow Rosenberg, sometimes called "The Wise," managed to activate every single Slayer on Earth. Seeing as how I'm a girl— all Slayers are girls, but you knew that, sorry— I was bathed in that power from before I was born, and I grew up with it, learned to use it and control it better than most anybody alive. Oh, I have a lot to learn yet, I know that— but I've had the power as long as I've been alive. I know what I can and can't do, and I know it way better than most. I didn't have to get used to it, because I've always had it— that makes a difference.

I love having the power. The ability to stand up to the evil that still persists in the world, the supernatural threats that rear up now and again, to fight for the people not blessed with this kind of power? Yeah. Priceless!

I've saved peoples' lives, and that's a hell of a feeling.

But my first "big case" as I think of it, it let me do something that put saving lives to shame.

I managed, with luck and a lot of help, to save the world.

If there's any feeling better than that, I don't know what it might be, and I'm not sure I want to find out— I don't know if a person can feel any better than I do about saving my world and live through the feeling.

It started so simple, and got so complex… I remember it still, the day it all started, the day I ran my first unaccompanied mission.

It was the start of the most important series of events in my life— how could I forget it?

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"You sure you're up for this, Jocelyn Kelly?" Whitey Penobscot, my Dad and my Watcher, asked as I chose my weapons for my first solo mission.

"I'm ready, Daddy," I said, slipping a bandolier of Mom's crazy-discs over my shoulder, and over the sheathed light longsword on my back. "Seriously, I'm ready. I've been training for this my whole life, and you and Aunt Rose both say I'm better than she was at this age. Besides, you, Mom and Gwendolyn aren't going to be but a shout away, right?"

"She's ready, Whitey," Mom said. She looked at him with a little smile, looked at Gwendolyn with that same smile, then gave me the Mom-Smile— the one that only us kids ever got, the one that said as plain as day that she loved us, was proud of us— and that we'd damned well better be careful, because if we got hurt, she'd skin us alive. "Girl was born ready. She's got your brains and my eye for throwin' things, a rack of them crazy-discs Graham gave me at the Battle of Bloomington, all the Capoeira, Hwa Rang Do and Kung Fu skills we and Rose's family could give her— I'm seriously not stressing this."

"She'll be fine, an' this I know," said Gwendolyn Davies. Her Welsh accent got stronger, as it often did when she felt high emotion, and I grinned at her reassuringly.

Gwendolyn is a Slayer, too, and Mom and Dad's girlfriend. Like most of my extended family, I sometimes think, Mom, Dad and Gwendolyn make up an unusual romantic relationship. Mom's very bi, Dad's cool with that, and when they met Gwendolyn (also very bi) three years back, everybody sort of… fell in love with everybody else, and she moved in with us, no fuss, no muss, no stress. They all share a bed, and nobody in our extended family cares.

"Thanks, Gwendolyn," I said. "Okay— Royal? You ready, big guy?"

Royal is my best friend in the world. He's a pseudo dragon, right out of a Dungeons-and-Dragons-style world— you've seen them, I'm sure. Giles— head of the Watchers' Council and my godfather— says that there are well over a million of them, these days. Royal's been my buddy since a couple of weeks after I was born, and I have a bond with him that is literally telepathic.

*I am ready, Jocelyn,* Royal said telepathically, and flapped over from the van seat to land on my shoulder. *Together we will end this bevy of monsters. I will scout for you, and warn you— and sting anything with a circulatory system that gets close to you.*

Royal draped himself around my neck, a three-foot-long, purple, scaly stole of cool and reassuring flesh, and nuzzled my cheek.

"And on that note," I said, "I think it's time to get this done. Radio check?"

I fiddled with my headset radio, adjusted it a little, heard Dad say, "Four score and seven dragons ago…."

"The world was a more boring place," I answered, giggling. "And you guys all know it."

"The girl's got a point," Dad said, reaching up to the dashboard to scratch the head of Phantom, his own pale blue pseudo dragon pal, even as Mom picked up and cuddled Tracer, her orange pseudo dragon, and Gwendolyn turned her head to kiss the top of her own silver-white pseudo dragon, named Moonlight's, head. "Royal, make her behave."

*I am a pseudo dragon, Whitey,* Royal sent telepathically. *Not a miracle worker.*

"And on that note," I said with a mock-sigh, "I'm out of here. Back after I kill the vampires."

"Be careful," Dad said.

"Be damned careful, honey," Mom added.

"Listen to your parents," Gwendolyn said.

"I will," I said— and got out of the van.

I went thirty feet down the street, pulled the manhole cover off of the storm sewer entrance where I would go into the sewers after a pack of vampires, and started down the ladder. Once I was in, I pulled the cover back on— and it got really dark. I switched on my night vision goggles— we Slayers are well outfitted, these days— and looked around in the pale blue light they showed me.

"Royal, can you see?" I asked.

*Of course,* he sent, sounding amused. *Shall I scout?*

"Only to the first intersection," I said. "Don't go too far, okay?"

*I won't.*

Royal flapped his way north, moving along under Mercer Avenue in Bloomington, Illinois, stopped at the place where the sewers under Mercer and the ones under Taylor Street crossed, and looked around the corners from ground level.

*All clear. Nothing at the limits of my vision.*

"Okay, move up, please," I whispered. He'd have heard me if I just thought it, but vocalizing made things clearer for him— we humans aren't natural telepaths like Royal and his kind.

He moved up to the place where Olive crossed Mercer while I moved up to a spot about fifty feet behind him, repeated his corner-looking, and sent, *I see the den— east of this corner, and empty, I think. Shall I check to be sure?*

"Wait for me to advance," I said. "Not getting separated, okay, pal?"

"I'll ratify that decision," Dad said in my ear. "Good call, Jocelyn."

Royal chuckled in my head and waited where he was.

I advanced, and we moved down to the wider sewer chamber where the vampires were crashing. A dry spring and summer made it possible to stay there and be comfortable enough— if your standards were low, anyway. There were four lawn chairs and four camp cots, a card table, a laptop computer sitting on the table— not much, but enough, I guess.

"Found their nest," I said. "No vampires, though. Dad… Bloomington Country Club isn't far from here, and this is Friday— are they having an event or anything? I know, sounds silly, but—"

"Not silly," Dad said. "One second, Jocelyn… oh, yeah. They're having a charity ball, honey, and Mayor Carlon is there. After the way he endorsed the Slayers and asked for our help with the mess at the Law and Justice Center last month, I'll bet most vampires would love a chance at eating him for lunch."

"Okay, I'm headed north," I said. "I'm going to stay down here in case I'm wrong, but I'm going fast.

"Dad— what's out there for back-up?"

"With Vincent and Vi off in Sydney and Willow and Lydia gone with Giles and Kelly to visit Buffy and Xander, that leaves Rose, Elaine and company," Dad said. "Your mother's on the phone with Rose now… and Rose, Ballard and Dawn are headed to the Country Club at speed— Elaine lost the toss, and Sh'rin's keeping her company."

"Understood," I said. "I'm not running, but I'm hurrying."

"Good girl," Dad said. "Stay cautious."

I moved out at a quick trot, ran back to the sewers under Mercer Avenue and turned north, Royal flapping quietly along in front of me, Dad, Mom and Gwendolyn moving along the street above me, going past me to the Country Club. I went a ways further on, passed Grove Street, passed Washington Street— and Royal braked to a halt at the place where the sewers under Mercer Avenue started to curve with the street as Mercer Avenue became Country Club Place. He hissed, and I shivered— a pseudo dragon hissing? Not a good sign.

Then Royal, brave even for a pseudo dragon— not cowards, pseudo dragons— turned and flew back to me, thought-shouting, *RUN, JOCELYN!* as he came.

Then I saw what he was running from, and though I'd never seen one, I recognized it from the many stories I'd heard about it and its kind from Buffy and Xander and the Sunnydale Survivors, those who'd fought at the Battle of Sunnydale and walked away from it.

Taller than average, six-two or so, and slender, but still powerful looking. Dead-white skin, bald head, pointed ears, exaggerated, needle-sharp fangs, dressed all in rough-tanned leather, moving with a rolling, ape-like gait that should have been awkward and wasn't.

"Dad!" I yelped, backpedaling furiously. "Mayday! Turok-han!"

"Run!" Dad snapped in my headset. "Backup coming!"

Too late. It seemed almost to blur as it moved towards me, and I'm faster than any normal human already.

I didn't think, I moved. That may have saved my life.

Both hands dropped to the bandolier of crazy-discs I wore, and I grabbed a pair of the spread-hand-sized metal disks with the finger holes in the tops. The discs looked to have been made of three different materials, were oddly weighted, and didn't fly like normal discs would, but naturally curved in flight. I'd understood them since I first picked one up at the age of ten— that was when my hands got big enough to handle them— and mastered them in the four-plus years since.

I grabbed a pair, crossed my arms on my chest as I backpedaled, and flung them out, releasing the discs much earlier than normal to shallow-out their curving flights in the cramped tunnel.

They flew where I'd aimed them (though I hadn't thought about aiming them there), and buried themselves in the thing's hips, right over the joints and right below its waist. It fell to the ground with a screech— and started trying to pull itself at me along the sewer floor on its hands.

Still moving on automatic, I reached over my right shoulder and drew my light longsword, a yard of high-grade titanium-steel alloy with a thin layer of silver over it, narrow yet strong, sharp as hell, and tapering to a needle point.

I leaped forward and sideways, swung the blade around and down— and through the neck of the über-vamp. Scary, that— because it almost managed to grab the blade before I hit its neck, and I'm not kidding when I say I'm fast as hell. It dusted, and I remembered to breathe.

"Abort the mayday," I gulped. "I dusted it. Took it's legs out with a pair of crazy-discs, then beheaded it."

"You— holy shit," Dad said. "You should still come out, Jocelyn."

"I'd like to, Dad," I said, as Royal landed on my shoulder and nuzzled my cheek. "But I think… Dad, I'll come out if you order me to, but I think I should go on. If these things are in the sewers in force, we need to know it."

"Dammit," Dad said. "Okay, well… go to the next manhole cover. Your mother is going with you."

I heard voices in the background before the radio cut them off, and made a mental bet with myself. It wouldn't be Mom that came down, it would be Gwendolyn. She'd point out that Mom has me and my brother and two sisters to take care of, and that, while Gwendolyn loves them and they love her, Gwendolyn's not their mother.

So I felt pretty amazed when the manhole cover opened and Mom dropped in. Not upset, but surprised.

"Wow, I lose my bet with me," I said, as Mom stepped forward and hugged me. "I figured Gwendolyn would make the 'you've got kids' thing stick."

"She might have," Mom said. "But Moonlight told us something that changed the situation, and Tracer and Phantom confirmed it."

"What the heck could get her out of winning that argument?" I asked as we started back towards the curved area where Royal had first seen the Turok-han, with Royal and Tracer now flying together ahead of us.

"Well, you know how sharp a pseudo dragon's nose is, sugar?" Mom asked. "Seems they smelled a pheromone change in Gwendolyn. She ain't even had time to notice yet— but she's pregnant!"

I squealed— quietly— in delight. "Another brother or sister! Hot damn!"

"Pretty much how all of us feel about it, yeah," Mom said, grinning. "Almost enough to overwhelm the proud we're feelin' over you killing a Turok-han, Jocelyn— you done good, daughter-mine."

"Thanks," I said. "Mom… how? I thought those things were minions of the First Evil, and we'd surely know if that bitch was back."

"I don't know, Jocelyn," Mom admitted. "Your dad, he's calling Giles, and never mind vacation time. He needs to know this, and—"

Mom went silent, raised a hand— and we heard both our pseudo dragons hiss and growl.

We'd just hit a junction, a T-intersection where the storm drain ran on west down Country Club Place and off to the north to the Bloomington Country Club itself— and vampires came at us from all three directions.

Just normal vampires, thank god, not Turok-han— but there had to be two dozen of the things, and we didn't have room to fight properly, not in here.

Knowing how I preferred to fight, Mom took a long step away from me, gave me room to move, to use the longsword I drew again even as I stepped away from her— and it got nuts.

Vampires came at us like lemmings running for a cliff— and with pretty much the same result. My sword spun around me in the fast, deadly arcs that I'd learned from my Aunt Rose— a virtual goddess with a sword— and I beheaded everything that got close enough.

Mom, in the meantime, had her favorite broadsword in her left hand, a stake from a bandolier of them in her right. She'd slash vampires, stake them— and occasionally send a thrown stake through the heart of a vampire that menaced one or the other of us, dusting it, and draw another stake from her bandolier.

We killed and we killed— and Royal and Tracer, not much good against vampires (no active circulatory system to send the sleep-inducing poison in their tails through them), had gone on down the two tunnels, and we both heard them say that there were vampires massed below the country club basement, and a group had broken through the basement of a house further up the street. Royal sent that there were dead humans there— and five vampires performing a spell of some sort.

"Mom, you have anything for that mass group at the Country Club?" I called.

"I've got some of your Dad's communion bombs!" Mom called back.

"Then you take that group," I said. "I'll check out the spell-vamps in that basement ahead. Only five of them, I can handle it."

"I hear you," she said. "Whitey?"

"It's a good plan," Dad said through our headset radios, sighing a little. "Be careful, Jocelyn. You, too, Chantelle."

"I will be," I said.

"Yes, dear," Mom said. "We've already got the bulk of this mess here down and— oops, make that 'all of this mess here down.' Sweetie, your Aunt Rose taught you well with that sword. Two with one swipe, I'm impressed."

"If I get up to seven with one blow, do I get to kill giants?" I asked, remembering a favorite childhood story.

"No, but we'll put you on a giant-killing team, at least," Dad said. "Get it done, you two— I'm going to be twitchy until you're both back safe."

"I hear and obey, O Wise Father," I said, and giggled as Dad sent me a raspberry.

Mom gave me a quick hug, then turned up the north passage towards the Bloomington Country Club while I went towards the residence on down Country Club Place. As I went, I saw Mom take a communion bomb out of a pouch on her belt, and grinned.

Dad invented those, and they're great against a mass of vampires. Simple plastic ball, divided into two sections, and a core of explosive, small, since it's not made to make metal fragment and move at killing speeds, like a regular grenade. Instead, the two compartments are filled with two different substances that are deadly to vampires; holy water and finely-ground communion wafers. The explosive splashes the holy water around, and spreads the communion-wafer-dust through the air. Vampires burn at the touch of either, and the finely ground wafer hangs in the air for half a minute or so— very hard on the evil undead.

I shook my head to clear the pleasant thoughts of lots of vampires dusting out of it, and moved down the sewer tunnel at a trot.

I found the place where the vampires tunneled up towards the house they'd invaded easily— a pile of broken stone with a purple pseudo dragon sitting on it, great clue!— and went up the narrow dirt tunnel slowly and quietly, Royal now draped around my neck.

"Five vampires and a magic circle, right?" I whispered.

*Yes, Jocelyn,* Royal sent back. *The circle— it is very complex, more complex than any I've seen, and we've watched Willow work. Also… they pulled up the carpet, and the circle— it seems to be marked on the floor— permanently.*

"That's… weird," I said. "And the family that lived there…?"

*All dead, I believe,* Royal sent. *Five bodies in the basement, plainly parents and children. It looks to have been a family room.*

"What's weird, Jocelyn?" Dad asked in my ear, having heard my comment to Royal over the headset.

"The magic circle the vamps are using seems to have been marked on the floor of the family room permanently— and the family didn't seem to know about it, it was under carpet, and they all got killed," I said. "Any thoughts?"

"Just be careful, sweetheart," Dad said. "Past that— oops, things just got nuts here, I need to help out!"

"Go, I've got this," I said.

"Love you, honey," Dad said.

"Love you, too, Daddy," I said— and entered the basement of the near-mansion where the vampires had nearly completed their summoning spell.

Royal had called it right— that was one big, complex, seriously complicated magical circle. I'm no witch, but I have seen Willow (the witch— the most powerful witch on the planet, period) work some big and complex stuff, and my aunts (by emotion, not blood) Sh'rin and Dawn, the chief of the Guardians (like Watchers, but all women, and mages to boot) and her second in command, work some serious stuff, too— and this circle put any of theirs to shame.

Huge, filled with several different symbols that I was pretty sure all meant "power" of one sort or another, and with a vampire kneeling and chanting at each of the cardinal points. At the points of the pentagon in the middle— the one formed by the crossing lines of the pentagram inside the circle itself— were five crystals, each carved into a specific shape. A sword of white crystal, a flame of red crystal, a man in armor of blue crystal, tree of green crystal… and a demon of black crystal. Beams of light (or absence of light, in the case of the black crystal demon) of each color were growing up from the crystals, moving towards a point some five feet off of the ground.

I didn't think, I just… moved, acted on instinct, letting the things I knew about magic— not like I could do it, but I had learned about it for moments just like this one— make the decision about how to proceed without actually having to think about it.

I pulled a crazy-disc off of the bandolier on my chest and flung it sideways, to my left. It went a quarter of the way around the circle, swung inside it— and smashed the black demon statue just before the beam of blackness joined the others at the middle of things.

The vampires howled, leaped up and charged at me, not entering the circle, but coming around it. Even as they did so, three more Turok-han came out of the shadowy corners of the basement to join them— and I got scared.

"Three more Turok-han!" I yelped as Royal leaped off of my shoulder and started attacking the more normal vampires with teeth and claws, and I heard Daddy start cursing and shouting orders in my ear— not at me, at the others he was fighting alongside.

I went into defensive-blender mode, spinning my sword around me as fast as I could to keep anything that wanted to remain in one piece away from me, even as something started forming in the middle of the circle, something man-shaped and glowing.

I managed to kick one Turok-han back from me, but a second one got past my guard, grabbed my non-sword arm, and threw me back into the wall. I hit hard, and little explosions of light interfered with my vision for a moment.

Even around those, I saw this absolutely gorgeous man— body by Gymnasts-R-Us, long black hair ponytailed behind his head, a face like a young Brad Pitt meets a young Daniel Craig, and badly tattered clothes that left a lot of skin showing— take form in the air in the middle of the magic circle, drop three feet to the ground, and land in a catlike, combative stance. His eyes— gray, and very pretty— widened as he saw the monsters around me, gathering to kill me, and he… well, he suddenly exploded into this brilliant yellow-white light.

The light filled the room in a microsecond— and all eight vampires, normal and Turok-han alike, turned to burning ash in an instant.

"Holy shit!" I said. "End the mayday— all vampires are dead, but— whoa!"

The man who had saved me looked around for a moment, not speaking, just staring at the unfamiliar surroundings— then his eyes rolled up in his head and he collapsed in the middle of the circle.

"Crap!" I snapped. "Dad, I need a medical-trained person here, and— ow!"

I'd tried to go into the circle after him, and gotten flung back.

"Dad, I've got a hurt man here— he saved my life, and he's— he's stuck in the magic circle, and I have no idea how to break it," I said. "I'm in no danger, repeat, no danger— but I can't get to the guy who saved me, and he's passed out."

"Understood, done here, en route, tracking you by headset GPS," Dad said. "Dawn's with us to figure out the circle."

"Hurry, Daddy," I said, and walked around the circle, examining the man who'd saved me— well, however he'd done it— from every angle.

He only got prettier in the few minutes it took Dad and the others to get to the house and down to the basement. Dad and Mom came in first, with my aunts-by-emotion Dawn Summers-Innes and Rose Killian right behind them, and my Uncle-by-emotion Ballard Innes behind them, with Gwendolyn behind him.

Aunt Dawn stopped to hug me, her pseudo dragon, Sunset (which is funny, because Aunt Rose and Aunt Elaine call Aunt Dawn 'Sunrise,' have almost since they all met) nuzzled my cheek, and they went to examine the circle. Aunt Rose hugged me as soon as Aunt Dawn let go— and I could feel her trembling, which freaked me, because nothing scares Aunt Rose.

"Aunt Rose, what's wrong?" I asked.

"Little freaked, Jocelyn," Aunt Rose admitted. "See, this house? Back in the day, I lived here. In fact, I lived here on the day Willow activated all the Slayers. Not long after, we moved to Scooby Mansion, but… memories. And since the guy who was married to my Mom then was an evil lawyer who was raping her by love potion and that circle's permanently etched into the floor, I have to wonder if it wasn't something that that shithead left behind."

"I'm afraid not, Rose," Aunt Dawn said. "This is… worse than that."

"Worse than a Wolfram and Hart rapist-lawyer magic circle?" Aunt Rose said, sounding unbelieving. "That's gonna take some doing, Sunrise."

"Magic circles are like signatures, Rose," Aunt Dawn said. "You know that, right? Heck, you can tell mine and Sh'rin's apart, and Sh'rin taught me magic."

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Aunt Rose said. "So… whose is this?"

"I only saw her work once, when Willow took us back to the building where she tried to summon the First Evil to help her cleanse it," Aunt Dawn said, looking grim, "but you know how we never found the circle where that bitch Amy gathered the power she used to drive the summoning?

"Well, we've found it, now."

"That— that waste of rat-flesh was living here!?" Aunt Rose said. "That— I hated Jerry, but I loved this house, and Amy— oh, man, I wish I could kill her! Too bad Wil beat me to it!"

"What about the man in there?" Dad asked Aunt Dawn. "Is he likely to be a problem? A danger?"

"No," Aunt Dawn said firmly. "Jocelyn, you broke the one figure, the black one, didn't you?"

"Yes, I did," I answered. "It was a demon. Classic-looking thing, horns, tail, arrowhead tip on the tail."

"Yeah, figures," Dawn said. "Whitey, these guys were trying to use Amy's power-summoning circle to summon some serious dark power for… I don't know what, we'll have to take pictures and ask Willow later— and the Turok-han, they were just a side effect. They weren't trying for the First Evil, I know that much, but… something bad and nasty, maybe one of the Elder Demons.

"Anyway, Jocelyn breaking the demon statue… that screwed their purpose, but not the spell. It still summoned something mondo powerful— the unconscious guy in there, he must some serious power of his own— but nothing inherently evil. Sword, flame, tree… and warrior. So, still combative, but also… without the corrupting influence of the demon figurine, there's nothing evil about him. And since Jocelyn says he saved her, I'm inclined to try and help him. So… give me a minute to figure out the circle, and a safe way to break it, and we'll do what we can."

While Aunt Dawn worked on figuring out the circle, Aunt Rose let Uncle Ballard— her husband in all but legality, since he was legally Aunt Dawn's husband, but also husband to my aunts (all by friendship) Rose, Elaine and Sh'rin— cuddle her, help her come down from the shock of finding out that Amy Madison— who'd almost destroyed the world not long after I was born— had lived in a place she once loved. This looked sort of comical, because Uncle Ballard is five-eleven— and Aunt Rose peaked at four-eleven, a full foot shorter than him. Between her height and her A-cup breasts, Aunt Rose, while undeniably gorgeous— classic, redheaded-Irish looks— could pass for eleven or twelve without a lot of work. And she was now… almost thirty, wow.

I told Mom, Dad and the others what had happened, how my benefactor had appeared, assessed the situation— and pulsed with light that must have been a lot like sunlight, since it destroyed vampires.

"Then he looked around like 'how did I get here, and where is here anyway,' and just… passed out," I finished. "God, I hope he's okay, he saved my life."

"I'm sure that Dawn and Sh'rin will be able to help, sugar," Mom said. "I can see him breathin' from here, and since that's the case, they'll be able to help— they're about the best healers on the planet."

"And I will definitely offer my help, if they need a trained paramedic type," Dad said. "The man saves my oldest daughter, he gets my help."

I hugged Dad, stayed hugging him for a minute, grinned as our pseudo dragons, sitting on our shoulders, draped their tails across us both. Daddy isn't my biological father, but I've known that since I was old enough to understand it when told (I was seven), and never, ever cared. Mom admits that my bio-father was a mistake, and Daddy married her before I was born, knowing she was pregnant with someone else's baby, and has never, ever treated me one drop less like a daughter than he treats my sisters, who are his. I love him, he's my Daddy, end of story. Mom has great taste, and any guy I ever marry will have a lot to live up to— Daddy's a hell of an example, and I expect any man I fall in love with romantically to live up to his image.

"Got it!" Aunt Dawn said a moment later. "Man, that's a serious seal— I don't know what they were trying to summon, but I'm damned glad you stopped them, Jocelyn. This seal would hold pretty much any demon I ever read about or heard of."

Aunt Dawn did something with some powdered holly ash, a couple of drops of holy water and a sprig of mistletoe, then stepped into the magic circle and started looking over my mysterious benefactor. I followed her, curious and a lot interested, and leaned over him, looking at his face while she checked him over.

He opened his eyes, looked straight into mine because of how I was sitting— and I saw so much hurt and anger and sadness in those eyes that I almost cried out in sympathetic pain— and I did take his hand and squeeze it, trying to tell him by that contact that everything would be all right.

He squeezed back, and he tried to smile— but it didn't take. Whatever that hurt was, it was too big, too new, to let him smile.

But he tried, and he squeezed my hand back… and I'm pretty sure that's when I started to fall in love with him.