“I hate this,” Buffy said, heartfelt.
They were at her house in Sunnydale. They living room was packed tight with bodies. A room full of young girls, all of them looking at her.
“I hate being here,” Buffy told them. “I hate that you have to be here. I hate that there’s evil, and that it’s growing, and that I was chosen to fight it. I wish, a whole lot of the time, that I hadn’t been.” Buffy gave a few of them a brief look full of quiet accusation, “I know a lot of you wish I hadn’t been either.
“But this isn’t about wishes . . .”
Vi looked across at Xander. Her eyes drifted away, back at him again. Vi’s spread fingers running back through her red hair. Her voice came awkwardly, “Do you really feel that way?”
“What?”
“Meaningless,” she clarified. “Like you said to Jane,” she added nervously. “I know you’ve . . . lost . . . so much. More than anyone should ever have to lose. Isn’t there anything left in your life that’s worth anything? Anyone?”
Vi watched Xander breathlessly as he looked back at her and held her eyes, awaiting his answer.
Jane walked.
Her hands were in her pockets. Her head held low.
People on the street walked around her. She didn’t seem to notice them. Too lost in her thoughts.
A soft noise from somewhere nearby, like the faintest whisper.
Jane stopped. Reached up slowly, her fingers touching the side of her neck where it met the slope of her shoulder.
She slowly lowered her hand and looked down at it blankly. There was a hint of blood. A tiny dart held between her thumb and middle finger.
Her legs suddenly went loose beneath her. She landed on the road in an awkward spill of loose limbs and didn’t move again.
Her hand, limp on the road, the palm facing up. The small tranquilizer dart lay on the ground just beyond the reach of her fingers, the tiny needle at the tip a faint glimmer in the sunlight.
“Sometimes it’s . . . painful,” Xander admitted slowly. “Some days it’s almost more than I can take. I wake up and just lay there and try to find a reason just to get myself out of bed.”
“Is it really that bad?” Vi asked cautiously. She swallowed slowly. “Do I have to worry that one day I’ll be left doing this on my own? Xander, you’ve gotta move on. Put the bad things behind you. I was in Sunnydale. I lost people too. But you can’t let that be the only thing that defines you for the rest of your life.”
Xander smiled at the slayer, and shook his head. “I said ‘sometimes’,” he said, barely containing his laughter. “What’s with all the drama? I swear, sometimes you’re even worse than Andrew.”
Vi laughed and gave him a playful shove, “Shut up.”
She met his eye and smiled at him. A few moments later she looked away. “It hasn’t been easy for any of us, you know. But some things are what they are. They can’t be taken back, no matter how much you sometimes might wish you could.”
“This isn’t about wishes,” Buffy told them. “This is about choices . . .
“I never had one. A choice. I was chosen. And I have to accept that. I’m not asking you to accept anything.
“You see, this is the part where you make a choice.”
“I didn’t understand at the time,” Vi said, quietly insightful. Momentarily self-absorbed. Lost in herself, in her thoughts. “Why did Buffy act like it was this awful burden? She had the strength to defend herself. She didn’t have to hide behind others in the hope she wouldn’t be seen. I just thought having strength like her had a certain freedom to it. She didn’t have to fear the vampires or the bringers. She wasn’t terrified of the uncertainty. She didn’t have to fear.”
Xander quietly disagreed. “Yeah she did.”
“Yeah,” Vi agreed. “She did.” She looked up, met Xander’s eye briefly and hesitated. Time enough for a breath. “I don’t think I ever got that. Not until it was me. I was terrified. I don’t think it ever occurred to me that Buffy was too. That she just forced herself to bury the fear and soldiered on.
“It was hard to get, what it ultimately meant to be a slayer.
“To flee to Sunnydale . . .
“To have Willow do that spell . . .
“To have whatever pretense of normality in your life stripped away. I don’t think you’ll ever know what it’s like, to be hunted. To be sought after to kill. Not because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, or who you choose as friends. But coming after you, in particular. Because of who you are. What you are. Things that are as much a part of you as breathing.”
Jane blinked slowly. Her cheek was pressed to the road surface. Her breath stirring up small wisps of dust. The blurred shapes of three people approached. Stood over her like towers in the blurry fog of her mind.
“Nice shot, Ernie,” one of them said as he briefly crouched down beside her. “You got her right in the neck.”
Another deeper voice, steady but full of nerves. “Shut up. I don’t like being out in the open like this.”
“Just grab her, guys.” A woman’s voice. “Let’s get this freak show over with so we can get the hell out of here.”
Shuffling noises, the shallow blur suddenly a bright motion of color as her body was lifted from the road.
“I thought it would be so easy,” said Vi. “Simple.” Her voice was bleak. “Become a Slayer and all of the fears that woke me in the middle of the night would be nothing but a shitty memory.
“But preternatural strength didn’t save Amanda . . . or Spike . . . or Chao Ahn. It didn’t stop Rona from bleeding to death in the back of the bus.
“I’m just saying, none of us have had it easy. I don’t think we ever will. That’s not to say that I don’t like my life. ‘Cause, ya know, me and you . . . travelin’ the world . . . It’s kinda cool. You even have kind of an Indiana Jones thing goin’. Ya know, with the coat, and the gun on your hip, and the boots.” She smirked at him, “Definitely of the good.”
Xander gave her a sly sideways look. “Would that make you the Kate Capshaw to my Dr. Jones?”
Vi made a face, “Oh, God no!” She wrinkled her nose. “She’s so whiny. If I’m gonna be anyone I’ll be . . . What’s the name of the girl in Raiders?” Vi suddenly seemed to come back to herself and shook her head slightly, “. . . and I can’t believe you made me watch all those movies. I’m in desperate need of a life.”
Xander smiled, “Me too.”
The red-head chuckled, “Then I guess we get to be lifeless together.”
They dropped Jane’s limp body on the floor.
The world spun around her in dreamy circles. Three chaotic voices, two deeper, one softer, trading machine gun words in the swirling din.
For a brief moments, standing there, Vi suddenly seemed unsteady on her feet.
She pressed a hand, fingertips, softly to her forehead, as if she had a headache.
She nearly seemed to stumble standing still. Almost falling before she was steady on her feet again.
“Vi,” asked Xander softly. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Vi said, blinking as few times. She seemed slightly puzzled. “I just got dizzy for a second there.”
Still distractedly not quite meeting Xander’s eye, she shook her head.
A few moments later Vi straightened under his scrutiny with weight of the realization.
“It’s Jane,“ she said simply, looking across at Xander with wide eyes. “Something happened to Jane.”
Jane’s eyes opened and blinked uneasily.
She was looking down, at the moment seemingly unseeing of the dirty floor of the small room she was in and the metal bracelets on each of her wrists with thin chains hanging from them.
Jane groaned, raising a hand and pressing the fingers against her head. She suddenly coughed dryly.
A shadow moved across the floor.
Dave, standing over her. A small man in a button-up khaki colored shirt. He had a clear glass of water in his hand, holding it out to her. “Here, drink some of this.”
Jane took the glass from him in both of her hands and raised it to her mouth to drink. The chains tinkled. She took a few swallows that seemed to take some effort.
Holding the glass in both of her hands, she lethargically looked up at the small man standing over her. Her eyes were blinking often, as if looking in the face of a bright glare.
“You shot me.”
Dave had the gall to be sheepish. “Yeah,” looking down away from her gaze. “Sorry ‘bout that.”
Slender fingers slowly reached down and gently touched the small, dark and shiny spot on the cobblestones. The hand lifted and turned over.
Vi stared briefly at the blood on her fingertips before lowering her hand and getting back to her feet.
In the near distance, standing in the middle of the narrow cobblestone street, Xander was speaking with a small heavyset woman. The woman was short. Dark hair tied in a thick braid behind her head. Olive skin.
Vi watched as the woman gestured emphatically as she spoke with him. Energetic. Her words made unintelligible by the distance. The woman finished confidently, pointing Xander in a direction.
Xander gave the woman a few bills.
Walking slowly down the narrow street, Vi suddenly reached out and stopped Xander in his tracks with a gentle hand across his chest.
Xander looked at her with the question on his face.
Expressionless, Vi gestured crisply at the building off to their right.
Xander raised an eyebrow.
Vi closed her eyes briefly. Inhaled a quick deep breath through her slightly opened mouth and was briefly still. She met Xander’s eye and nodded again.
Xander nodded back, accepting.
He slipped the pistol from the holster at his hip. Ejected the clip. Took a moment to look at the bullets arranged in a tight stack inside. Slapped the clip back in. Fingers, grasped the slide along the top of the gun and pulled it back all the way, easily, and then let it go.
The ejector slipped back into position, the smoothness and precision of a well tended machine.
The first round slipped into the chamber.
“It’ll be quick,” Dave said over his shoulder after he left the room. “There’s just something I have to get.”
Whistling carelessly under his breath as he walked down the bare corridor.
Dave turned and saw Xander at the last moment.
Just time enough for the first wide-eyed hint of surprise to cross his face before the butt of Xander’s pistol came down on the side of his head. The sound of it hitting his temple was a hollow, semi-muffled thud, like two pieces of wood being clapped together.
Dave fell back against the wall and slumped to the floor.
Xander stood there, looking down at the man laying sprawled out in front of him. Expressionless. He finally turned away and moved slowly down the hall. His pistol raised cautiously in front of him.
The faint sound of voices.
A woman, “You’re certain those chains will hold her?”
“Trust me,” a man’s voice. “Those chains were blessed by a Sha’ha’izan mystic. Nobody’s strong enough to break them. Not even a Slayer.”
Xander approached the door at the end of the hall unhesitatingly. Still expressionless. Nothing visible on his face. Just the sharpness of purpose, like a shadow across his eye.
The door was open. Xander tensed a little bit more, raising the pistol in his hands just slightly.
The woman came into view first, standing by the opposite wall, arguing with someone out of view. She had dark hair. Bright red lipstick. A tight red sleeveless shirt and red leather pants that clung to a perfect body. She was wearing long, black gloves extended up both her arms just past her elbow.
She was looking off to the right. “I’m just nervous is all,” she said, arms wrapped around herself self-consciously. “I got a lot of money ridin’ on this. I just can’t afford to let anything go wrong.”
“No worries,” the man said certainly. “She’s not going anywhere.”
Xander finally came completely around the corner. The sights of the gun resting on the woman across the room.
Xander glanced to his right. Saw the large man standing not six - seven feet away. Their eyes met. The other man’s eyes widened. Thoughtlessly he threw himself at Xander. No hesitation.
Xander tried to bring the gun around. He wasn’t quite fast enough. Ernie was on top of him, within his reach. The man bodily threw Xander back into the doorjamb. Xander groaned under his breath at the blow to his spine. The two large men grappled. Ernie punched Xander in the gut three times with a short underhanded stroke.
A brief glimpse across the room as Ernie shoved Xander back against the wall. The woman was quickly stripping off her gloves.
Xander brought up a knee, backing the other man off slightly, followed by elbow brought around to the other man’s jaw like a punch knocking him off his feet. A strange sense of enjoyment played across Xander’s face. Ernie hit the floor and groaned.
Xander stood over the dazed man, the victor.
Motion, at the other side of the room. Xander turned to see the woman lower her bare hands in front of her, palms up, just above belt level.
Their eyes met.
Electricity arced from her fingertips. Blue lightning that flashed across the room and hit him almost before he even had time enough to flinch from it. It slammed into Xander, throwing him back against the wall behind him, hard, the impact making the plaster crack sharply, his gun spinning off in the direction of the door.
Xander’s body landed on the floor like a thud, limp limbed, and was still. His open eyes were blank and staring. Empty.
Author's note: Sorry it's been a while since I updated. What can I say? I've got the greater story more or less figured out. It's the details that are screwing me. The tiny little things that I think make the story cool. I got hung up. I have most of the details of the next two or three chapters worked out so they should come along faster. I read fics by other authors saying that they had trouble writing and posted something they weren't happy with 'cause it was at least something. Don't expect that from me. I may be nervous about some things, but you'll never get anything from me I'm not happy with.
I've been working on my original fic too lately so you may see the beginning of that posted up on my site soon if I can sort out a scene or two. Check it out when I do.
Thanks a lot to KeepTheFaith for the review referring to Xander in my fic as Indiana Jones. As you can see I went with that.
Hope to see ya again soon!