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She wonders about the third girl sometimes.
Giles was wrong, of course, years ago, but then he was wrong about so many things. More important things than this, when you really come down to it, but still. Wrong.
"One girl in all the world," he'd said hoarsely, trying to scare her with the silly drama of his words, there in the still library with the heavy light that trapped them all like flies in amber.
Bullshit.
It nearly stunned her, the first time, to learn that there could be two. She remembers looking and looking, trying to take in the other girl's fast hands and that fixed look, the one that let her know it really was true. That she wasn't special anymore, just another tool that could be replaced when it wore out.
Her first instinct had been to kill her.
It wasn't so much the loss of identity, though that hurt. And it wasn't seeing her fight better and faster than she herself did, though that hurt too. It was just that feeling of being split, sundered, made less than what she had been. It was knowing that if she died tomorrow, there were others to take her place.
She can't help wondering if it spread her thin, if the girls after her didn't take some of her power in gaining their own. She can't help feeling it's a waste, a damned lie, to put it all on her shoulders and then whisper that she's not really so important after all.
Twice she's had to get used to it, fighting next to a twin, another girl who'd been spoonfed those ideals of bravery and sacrifice and made to feel, dammit, every bit as special as Giles had once made her feel.
The third time, she can't bring herself to care.
Fine. Let some teenager somewhere, in Mongolia or Uruguay or Ohio, learn to kick and jump and stake and fight with her eyes closed, gorging herself on prophecy and sacrifice. Let her learn that to love someone is only to wait for their death, that it's easier to be a martyr than a survivor.
Let her come here, where sorrow and loss are all just part of the game, and face an apocalypse or two. Let her deal with being unspecial, just another wind-up fighting toy, easily made, easily broken. Let her visit Faith in her glass box, and see how power twists. Let her kill the one she loves, learn to hate, learn to stop caring, learn to die.
Let them fight.
Kendra was a lioness, Faith a wolf, but it isn't power that kills her. She's waiting for the lamb, the doe, the bright-eyed yearling who will strike her down without even meaning to. She's gone sour and old, tough and rotten, and it takes purity to live this life. It's time and past for her to crumble to a handful of dust.
She's never read the handbook. She's never been the slayer she was supposed to be. She's only done what she could with what she had.
She'd like to see the third girl do better.