While undergoing surgery, Dawn has various flashbacks and dreams, including one about Connor meeting an especially nubile Slayer. Also, Groo finds out that his Spike-worshipping bisexual Amazon lover only wants him for his seed.
Connor skulks downstairs a little after ten on Friday morning. He's wearing faded jeans and a short-sleeve black t-shirt over top a long-sleeve gray t-shirt. "Mornin' Connor," Fred says to him.
"How was Buffy?," he asks Angel with a sneer. Wesley looks rather shocked.
"She's doing better," Angel replies evasively.
"I saw you two in bed." Now Wes, Gunn and Fred all look at Angel, demanding an explanation.
"Nothing happened. We just, lied next to each other. She was depressed."
"She needed cheering up," Fred adds. "That's how it always starts."
"Nothing is starting! Besides – " he recalls getting told the Curse had been lifted, and how even Clayton seemed somehow to know this. "Never mind. That won't happen."
"Good," Connor remarks. "I am gonna marry her sister, so the two of you doing it would be kinda gross." Angel's jaw drops. If there was one thing worse than Connor's anachronistic self-absorption, it was this talk of marriage. Angel's friends are also creeped out by his connubial desires.
"Yes, that would be unsettling," Wesley comments, referring to Connor and Dawn getting married, not Angel and Buffy being together.
"See! He agrees with me," Connor notes.
"I didn't say that," Wes replies.
"Don't you think all this talk about the big M is a little rash?," Fred asks, trying to be nice about it. Connor's mentioned it before, but this is the first time they've challenged him, hoping to nip his disturbing delusions in the bud.
"You're eighteen. A month ago, you didn't even know this girl existed," Gunn points out. "You came back to this world a little over a year ago. That's a little soon to be promising Til death do us part.'"
Connor looks worried. Gunn thinks maybe he got through. "Won't we be together in Heaven?" They give up. Connor walks away. "I'm going to pick up Dawn at the hospital. We'll be back in a few."
"You're going to pick her up. By yourself?," Fred asks. She's picturing Connor trying to carry Dawn seven miles.
"Eli's driving us home." They all breathe a sigh of relief. With Connor, you never know. He walks out.
"Even when he's happy, he's still scary," Fred laments.
"That reminds me," Gunn recalls. "I gotta go pick up Xander and Anya in Santa Barbara."
"How is she?," Wes asks.
"Dunno. Well enough to leave," Gunn guesses.
Xander walks into Anya's hospital room. She's sitting in a wheelchair, a cast on the lower half of her left leg. Xander has a cast on his right arm extending from just below his shoulder down to his hand. His left hand, of course, is a prosthesis. "Are they here yet?," Anya asks with impatience. "I'm sick of being in this death trap."
"They're on their way. I'd drive you if I could. But . . . no hands." He holds his arms up to show.
"How's Willow?"
"She hasn't woken up."
"Is she here?"
"No. They took her to a specialist in LA. Buffy's already at the Hyperion Hotel. So are all the Potentials. I mean, former Potentials. Dawn should be arriving there sometime this afternoon."
"Joining the rest of the Sunnydale refugees. I've seen my share of mass exoduses. Who am I kidding? I've caused my share. But all those times, people fled because they lost. We won. Except, we look and act like we lost."
"Just because we won doesn't mean we didn't lose a lot in the process."
"I know the alternative of complete and utter defeat would feel a lot worse. But shouldn't there have been a third alternative, where victory could be bought at a more affordable price? One where Giles doesn't die?"
Xander sees the tears welling up in her eyes and tries to comfort Anya by putting his plastic left hand on her right shoulder. "Sorry An. I'd hug you, but right now I'm not equipped for that."
"The doctors told me I died. For about fifteen seconds. I think it was after they brought me to that tent hospital."
"Do you remember?"
"No. I remember nothing."
"You didn't know at the time?"
"I didn't say that I didn't remember anything. I said that I remember nothing. Everything went black. There was no tunnel, no white light, no feeling of warmth and peace. No feeling. I was nothing. I was inert. I wasn't going anywhere. It was the end." Xander waits about ten seconds. "On the plus side, at least it wasn't painful and fiery," Anya finally says. "That was where you were supposed to make light of the situation."
"Sorry. I'm a little out of practice," he replies is wry despair.
"I really need to do something with my life. To make a difference."
"You already have."
"Oh please! I've just been along for the ride." He starts pushing her in the wheelchair out of the room. "See! I'm still doing it. My life has to matter."
"Sounds like you've changed."
"I really have."
"You've decided that there are things more important than the pursuit of riches."
"Like Hell I have! Name one person who's changed the world without burgeoning reserves of capital?"
Xander smiles. "Thankfully, some things stay the same."
"Do you realize how many more people Buffy could help if she had sound financial backing?"
Dawn is on the operating table, covered from head to toe with the exception of her face and her left knee. She breathes in the anesthesia and goes to sleep. Her last conscious thought is of a conversation she had in the kitchen after Angel and Connor left the bunker on Wednesday night. "I'm sorry about what I said earlier," Dawn tells Buffy while they're cleaning the dishes. "It was mean."
"Wasn't your fault. Connor's a bad influence."
"What!"
"I mean, he's rude. Especially to me. You spend a lot of time around a rude person, their rudeness rubs off on you."
"Connor is very polite. Except when he feels threatened."
"Don't they say the same thing about gorillas at the zoo?" That does it. Dawn slams down the plate she's washing.
"Do I say mean things about your boyfriends?"
"Do my boyfriends try to kill you?"
"Angel did."
"Technically, you weren't even alive back then. He really tried to kill Willow."
"Excuse me?," Willow asks as she dries the dishes along with Xander.
"Angel told me that Cordy doesn't remember Dawn. Her brain wasn't effected by the spell." Buffy pauses and smirks. "I know there's a joke in there somewhere, but I'm not gonna try to make it."
"She's blocked me out?," Dawn asks.
"How's it possible for her to have been immune from the spell?," Willow asks.
"It's got something to do with that Higher Being crap."
"Of course," Giles declares as he puts away the dishes along with Anya. "Cordelia was temporarily omniscient."
"All knowing?," Buffy asks. "There's irony for you."
"All seeing. Nothing hidden. No illusions."
"Her memories were re-re-written on the Higher Plane," Anya explains. "What the monks put in, the Powers must have taken out."
"Wait a second," Xander interjects. "You're saying Cordy is the only person on Earth who knows what our lives were really like? Did I still save Willow from Angel, like I saved Dawn?"
"I didn't bother to ask," Buffy responds.
"Connor was under the control of the First," Dawn argues. "Just like Spike was when he tried to kill you. You don't hold that against him."
"Connor attacked me even before the First started pulling his strings."
"So did Spike! Like, half a dozen times."
"Not after he got a soul."
"Fine," Dawn sighs. "None of your boyfriends have tried to hurt me when they had souls and weren't under the control of an evil entity."
"Can we just call it even and agree everyone's tried to kill Buffy, and Buffy's tried to kill everyone?," Anya asks.
"No she hasn't," Giles objects.
"Well, she has tried to kill me. And you."
"When we were in demon form."
"But she stopped trying to kill you when she knew it was you. With me, that was hardly a deterrent."
"Anya's got a point," Dawn states. Anya looks pleasantly surprised. "The past is the past. We have to put it behind us, forgive, and move on."
"That wasn't my point."
"It's a little harder when your ex-attempted murderer wants to join your family." Everyone stops what they're doing and freezes. "Care to explain?," Buffy asks Dawn. It takes her a few seconds to make sense of the insinuation.
"Ohhh. You mean the marriage thing. That's just Connor's way of saying I make him happy. Who told you?"
"Excuse me. The ma-ma-marriage Thing'?," Xander asks. A look of dread spreads across his face. "Oh God."
"Oh Goddess," Willow adds with the same look of dread. Giles is frozen in an expression of perplexity.
"He's not serious," Dawn assures them. "Actually, he is. It's his way. Connor's," she smiles as she thinks of the right word, "Intense."
"I'm going to throw up now," Xander announces as he looks around for the trash can.
"The two of you, have talked about, the, the, er, M thing?," Giles asks.
"Don't most guys talk about lifelong commitment after you sleep with them?," Dawn asks sarcastically. Buffy and Xander cringe at the reminder.
"That's one good thing about men who grow up in Hell dimensions," an astounded Anya jokes. From her millennia of experience, she knows how aberrational Connor is.
"The guy who raised him grew up before they had invented dating," Dawn tries to explain. "I think he was taught that when you find someone you love, you settle down with them and have kids and that's that."
"Kids?," Buffy asks. "He's mentioned kids? Angel didn't mention that."
"Technically, for him, they'd be grandkids," Anya quips.
"I let him know that would be like ten, fifteen years down the road at the earliest."
"You've actually thought about it!?," a horrified Buffy asks.
"With, with Connor?," Xander adds, putting his right hand to his mouth. "Oh God."
"I've trust you've explained to Connor the necessity, in our world, of college, and graduate school, and post-graduate work?," Giles asks. "Very often people don't earn enough money to start a family until well into their forties." He's also terrified by the notion, but unlike Buffy and Xander it doesn't cause him to break out in a cold sweat.
"Would it be an outdoor wedding?," Anya asks. "Because, then of course, the father of the groom couldn't attend."
"He wants it in a church," Dawn answers. "A big, old-fashioned traditional wedding."
"What does Connor know about tradition?," Willow asks.
"It's been centuries since anyone in that family had a wedding," Anya jokes.
"He . . . he . . . he talks about specifics?," Buffy asks, on the verge of passing out.
"I think it's what he does to pass the time when we're apart," Dawn responds with scarcely disguised pride. "He's already trying to name the children. He wants three daughters and a son. I told him No way am I having four children!' But, I think it's cause that Holtz guy had a large family. Before, you know, Connor's parents killed them." That reminds everyone of the rather twisted family tree such a marriage would create.
"Would this make the Master your in-law?," Willow asks Buffy.
"I, I think I need to sit down." She does, and tries to breath slowly.
"And I thought my wedding was going to be messy," Anya jokes.
"At least half of the wedding party would end up dead," Giles half-jokes.
"Half the potential wedding party already is," Willow reminds him.
"Who would be the best man?," Anya asks Dawn. "Who would give you away?"
"Elijah. Connor's already decided that. As for giving me away, I guess I'd choose Xander. Or Giles."
"You would expect me to do that voluntarily?," Xander asks.
"What, you think you still got a shot with me?," Dawn jokes, making Xander even more uncomfortable.
"I'm honored you'd think of me," Giles says before abruptly shifting course. "Are were under some sort of bloody spell again?"
"Don't look at me. I haven't had a spell that worked in a while," Willow very darkly jokes.
"Have you thought about what colleges you're applying to?," Buffy asks Dawn. "I was thinking of working three jobs to make enough money to send you to one of those prestigious Ivy League schools. You know, the ones that are three thousands miles away. Or possibly Oxford. That's twice as far."
"Connor got here from a portal-less dimension. I don't think a measly ocean would phase him."
"An ocean AND a continent. Besides, that's not what I meant. What I meant was, I want you to see as much of the world as possible. I want you to go to a great school with thousands of intelligent young men for you to meet."
"And intelligent young women," Dawn responds, causing several seconds of stunned silence. "I'm kidding." Buffy's mildly disappointed. Anything would be better than Connor.
Groo opens his eyes and wakes up. He is alone. Slowly, Groo rises to his feet, weakened more by his night with Panthesilea than by his dramatic fight to the death the previous day with a stubborn champion. He looks out of his tent, and sees Panthesilea showing off for the benefit of his warriors. She hangs upside down on her galloping horse, picks an arrow off the ground, swings herself right side up, turns the horse to the right, takes out her bow and knocks a rock off of a tree stump more than a hundred yards away. The men clap. As her horse slows down to a trot, she does a handstand on his back, stands upright to wave at the men and acknowledge their applause, then leaps to the ground. Her stallion walks over and licks her palms. She jokes with the men until she notices her other stallion walking towards her. "Groo! You're leg's all healed." He had received a fairly serious wound in the previous day's combat.
"It appears that you, also, are revitalized." The fact that he woke up alone bothers Groo. He fears he's getting dumped.
"No thanks to you," she jokes, pinching his left cheek.
"May we talk alone?"
"Sure. This about politics?" After all, they are both leaders of tribes. He walks her back into his tent.
"It is about us. What are we?"
"Equals. You're a king. I'm a queen."
"Are we king and queen."
She laughs. "Then we would not be equals. The queen is always below the king who chose her. If she chooses him, he still becomes superior. That is why I can never have a king. At least not one who is mortal."
"Are you saying our time together meant nothing to you?"
"No. No, no, no, no," she assures Groo as she embraces him and rests his head on her shoulder. "You're going to father my child." Groo steps back, looking very frightened.
"Father? I am going to be a . . . father?"
"You act like this is unusual. It happens all the time."
"Are we to have a family?"
"I'm going to have a daughter. Or, you're going to have a son." She walks up to him and puts her hands on his face. "Is this a problem? I think it's wonderful."
"You should have told me."
"It isn't over. We got about fourteen more nights to go. And days, if you're up to it. Trust me Groo, most guys would KILL for this chance."
"You're treating me like an animal. We are not cows."
"This is an honor. I need a daughter who is strong enough to survive the trials. You are not a normal man. You are part god. You can give me that child."
"I am no god. I am part demon."
"Like Spike. Except you're fertile." Groo likes to think he's more than that.
"Can I see her?"
"Of course. But only after she passes the trials on her sixth birthday."
"S-s-s-sixth? My trials began after my sixteenth birthday."
"You're a man. Women have to meet higher standards."
"If it is a son, will he know his mother?"
"No. And you can't tell him he's part-Amazon. If you do, they'll kill him. It's tradition."
"Tradition can change." Cordelia had taught him that.
"Not if it puts our way of life at risk."
"I never knew my father," Groo confesses.
"Neither did I," Panthesilea breezily answers, undercutting him through callous empathy. "You're not turning down this honor?" She pulls a large dagger out of her right boot. "Because I don't like to hear no."
"No." He shakes as her eyes appear to heat up. "No, I will not turn it down." She breathes a sigh of relief and puts away her weapon.
"Great!" She leaps at him, straddles her legs round his waist, kisses him for a few seconds, bites and stretches out his lower lip, arches her back so her hands touch the ground as she still holds on to him with her legs, giving him an excellent view of her sleek upper body, then lets go of his torso and does a backwards handspring. "See you tonight," she promises, turning around and giving him a smile as she looks over her shoulder. Groo's knees weaken while she leaves. Panthesilea was quite a woman. Like none he had ever known. Being put out to stud was demeaning and dehumanizing. But there were worse fates. And Groo didn't know it, but sleeping with Penny was politically valuable, since male warriors throughout the peninsula viewed her as both irresistible and unattainable. Outside, she kids around some with the local menfolk, with whom she communicates in their native language, in which she's competent, though not quite fluent.
"Is it true that you will lie with any man you cannot kill?"
"Yes." They smile. "Your wife will mind."
"If it is you, she'll understand," another one jokes as dozens of other men nod and laugh.
"You wife will mind, if I made her widow," she explains. The men all go "oooh!" and laugh. "Not joke," she assures them before walking away. She's often regretted making that promise public, since over the years it's resulted in her killing literally hundreds of men in duels. Mind you, this hardened warrior doesn't find this loss of like tragic. Just time-consuming. She walks a little ways through the forest, then spots a woman in her early twenties wearing a red gown dancing alone in a clearing. She is tall, an inch below six feet (Panthesilea is 5'9"). Her red curls flow down to below her waist. The gown stops at her knees, and Penny finds herself staring at her bare calves and feet, transfixed by their whirling movement. Two minutes later, Memnon walks up to Penny. He had been looking for her.
"I guess it's true when they say no man can satisfy you," he jokes.
"Shouldn't you be on the way to your wife?," she asks disparagingly, angered that he startled her out of her trance.
"She's traveling up with the kids to meet me on the coast."
"You let her travel. I thought husbands didn't do that."
"There's a lot you need to learn about men."
"Not from you, Memnon. Now leave me alone, or I'll tell you're wife you're checking out nymphs."
"She's not a nymph. And I'm here to discuss demobilization."
"Send the allies home. Send the mercenaries to garrisons. I'll handle the women."
"Apparently, even the ones who aren't under your command," He jokes.
"She will be," Panthesilea says with a smile.
"Even the lioness takes a few days to digest her kill before hunting for her next meal," he comments about her sexual appetite. Memnon knows that Amazon queens advertise their prowess through their large number of sexual conquests, in a sort of imitation of great male leaders. But other queens restrict themselves to "hunting" amongst their fellow Amazons. They know how politically risky it can be to hit on random outsiders.
"Lions also sleep all day. They miss out on a lot."
"Her name is Ulla."
"How can they give this beautiful woman such a rude name? Barbarians."
"Wild, untamed, free-spirited. Knowing no rules but nature's." Memnon laughs. "You're no different from my men. They gape at these women in the same way." He thinks it's just the allure of the exotic – something Memnon's seen bring a lot of men to grief. He knows the pitfalls of consorting with the natives when you don't know their customs and taboos.
"Only virgins gape. I appreciate. She's a living work of art."
"Ulla is also a Priestess."
"I've always had a way with witches."
"She's not a witch. They don't conjure or perform divination."
"Figures. Simple barbarians."
"Remember the great battle on Olak's hill?"
"My great victory? How could I not?"
"There was a line of tall women dressed in red standing behind enemy lines. They carried daggers for stabbing any man who retreated. Those were the priestesses."
"I thought those were their wives."
"No, the wives were back in the camp. They yelled at the men, and ridiculed them, and sometimes hit them over the head for losing, but they never kill them."
"Tough and graceful." Panthesilea smiles as she continues to stare.
"And a virgin."
"You mean she's never been with a man?"
"Or a woman."
"How do you know?"
"In these tribes, men and women aren't separated. So they don't do that sort of thing." This is Memnon's pet theory on orientation, based on more than a decade of living with soldiers and hunting Amazons.
"If you're right, all the better. I love a challenge." She starts walking towards Ulla.
"Wait. You can't go there. It's a Sacred Grove."
"Perfect. Do you know how often I've made women invoke the Gods?"
"All outsiders who enter the Sacred Grove must be sacrificed."
"That's not friendly. With a policy like that, no wonder they never get any action."
"The ground in the Grove vibrates."
Panthesilea looks closely. "No it doesn't."
"Exactly. They think it vibrates. So the people shake when they're inside. Except for the priestesses, who dance, because of their connection to the God and Goddess. If non-believers go in there, they reveal the whole thing's a sham. And the locals don't like that."
"That's okay," Penny says, leaning against a tree and watching Ulla dance. "I can wait. And observe." She tilts her head sideways as she watches Ulla's fluid motion.
"You don't think your new boyfriend, who happens to be Ulla's ruler, will mind?"
"I'll let him watch us." Alas, Groo is probably not the sort of guy who would get off on this.
"I'm glad I'll be gone by the time this blows up in your face," Memnon concludes as he walks away.
It is nighttime. Connor makes his way down an alley, quickly and quietly. Slower and louder, Dawn tries to keep up, though her crutches make this difficult. Connor turns around. "You coming?"
"In a sec. I'll be right, aiiigghh!," Dawn screams as she is attacked by two vampires. Dawn swings her left crutch, knocking one of them back, but the other one pushes her down to the ground. Connor knocks that vampire down with a right hook, and takes the other one down with a left roundhouse kick and a right hook kick. He then helps Dawn to her feet. But a vampire attacks Connor while his back is turned, pushing him face-first into the wall. The other vampire starts hitting Connor, preventing him from protecting Dawn. Balancing on her right foot, Dawn swings her crutch at that vampire's left knee. But this only slows him down for a moment, and soon he has his left hand around Dawn's neck as she gasps in fear. But then someone comes out of nowhere and knocks the vampire down with a leaping right kick. "Buffy?"
"You wish." The girl is two inches shorter than Dawn, with black hair, blue eyes and full, red lipsticked lips. She wears skin-tight black leather pants and a tight, low-cut, sleeveless red blouse. She rushes to Connor's rescue, grabbing the other vampire from behind and sending his head into the pavement with a suplex. When he gets up, she puts him back down with a left reverse kick to the chest. When the vampire that had been attacking Dawn goes after Connor, she cuts him off at the knees with a sweep kick, grabs the back of his shirt when his body is parallel to the ground, spins round and hurls him through the air. She reaches her right hand down to help Connor up. As she's doing this, the other vampire charges her from behind, but she puts him on his back with an effortless right reverse kick to the face. "Are you okay?"
"Uh-huh," Connor responds like a dazed damsel.
"Ready to show 'em how Slayers do it?"
"Uh-huh," Connor responds with a smile. He takes the vamp on their left, and she takes the one on the right. After landing a few blows, Connor looks to his right and becomes distracted by the Slayer, who punishes her opponent with scissor kicks, flip kicks, roundhouse punches and all varieties of impressively limber moves. He smiles goofily at her demonstration of prowess. The vampire he's fighting takes advantage of Connor's distraction by knocking him down with a right hook. The Slayer stakes her vamp and, once again, comes to Connor's aide. She leaps up, wraps her calves around his neck from behind, does a backwards hand spring and sends the vampire to the ground. He gets up and tries a right hook, which she ducks, putting the vampire in a full nelson. Now that the vampire is between Connor and the Slayer, Connor stakes him. The Slayer reaches her arms upwards to better show off her cleavage, pretending to be stretching.
"You ain't so bad for a boy," she says to him.
"You want me to be badder?"
"Maybe later," she says with a giggle. "The name's Candi." She grabs the stake out of his outstretched right hand.
"I'm Connor," he responds with stars in his eyes. Dawn feels as if she is physically shrinking to insignificance.
"So Connor. Ya in the mood for a hunt?"
"Always." Connor and Candi go racing off. Dawn fruitlessly tries to follow, but they quickly pass out of sight.
"Wait! Wait!!," Dawn pleads. "Connor, you forgot, umm, ughh, I can't remember. But you forgot something."
NEXT: Dawn and Xander; Dawn and Spike. Plus, Wes and Buffy try to figure out how to deal with the new Slayers - and with each other.