There are others, I know; worlds where the pain may not exist. Many of them… layer on layer of realities basically similar, yet infinitely different. I sit alone in this cell, reflecting on all the decisions that brought me here. Some few of them were mine; the greater number were not. How different my life would have been, had those choices been made otherwise? I cannot help but wonder.

Surely not every world resembles ours. They cannot all be dark and hopeless. This desolate reality cannot be all there is. Can it? I pray it is not so. Somewhere the forces of the Light must prevail against those of darkness. They must.

Take my current situation. Perhaps there is a world out there where Sunnydale's Watcher kept faith with the Council, where Rupert Giles is still one of the white hats. In that world, perhaps Wesley is still safe in England, not trapped in a stone cell, half-paralyzed and broken. Perhaps somewhere Wesley won his fight.

Oh, I gave an exemplary account of myself before they took me down, though I say it myself. I must you see, for there were no witnesses except the fledglings I dusted. In the end though, their master took me down himself, snapping my spine like a twig. Who'd have thought he'd ever be so strong? Who'd have thought he'd willingly be Turned?

Who indeed? We should have… all the Council agencies. It is, after all, our job to Watch; to keep the Slayers safe and well informed. In this, we have failed miserably. We thought his darkness eradicated, the Ripper dead and gone. He had been saved you see, brought back into the Light. What monumental arrogance.

Too blind to see the truth, the Council sent him here. Right into the Hellmouth, the portal held precariously closed by the Council forces. It had taken him little time to upset the balance, to free the darkness. Two young Slayers were lost before the Council even noticed that something was wrong, before they sent me in.

Formidable though I am, it had been too little, too late. The demons held Sunnydale in an iron grip, and they were spreading fast. Moving insidiously into the world, undermining everything the Council claimed to stand for. There are even rumors that some of them now sit on the Council itself.

The outlook is bleak. There is a new Slayer due here now, if the Council can find her. She slipped away from them, escaping her duty somehow. Perhaps they've already found her and sent her, I don't know. It matters little; in the end, he will destroy her like all the others if I cannot save her. She must at least be warned, prepared for the battle that will surely come.

How do I reach her, crippled as I am? There must be a way, if only I can find it. I must believe that, just as I must believe not all the worlds are like this one. The alternative is too depressing to contemplate. In some way, this Slayer is special. At all costs, this one we must not lose. I must find the faith somewhere.

He comes. I hear his heavy footsteps in the hall, sense the darkness where his soul once lived. It blights the very air around him, chilling the heart. I must hide my journal. He would take even this small solace from me if he could, though he gave me the means to keep it.

Blessed be the Light, the beacon in the Darkness.

Blessed be.

(c) 2001 M.C. Sak