Date written: Sat 29 Nov 2008
Author: Starway Man
Email: theop at kew dot hotkey dot net dot au
Crossover: Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel/Charmed (sort of)
Pairings: We'll see.
Warnings: There is some violence, angst, and character death in this one.
Rating: R
Main characters: Xander, ensemble
Disclaimer: Anything to do with BtVS or Angel belongs to Joss Whedon and all related entities. Those parts of the story taken from the TV episodes belong to the writers in question. Any and all other references you can recognize (Charmed, Star Wars, Star Trek, etc.) belong to their various owners, I can claim ownership of nothing except this fanfic. No profit will be made from this work, so please don't sue me.
Acknowledgments: My deepest gratitude to Nodakskip and Greywizard for beta reading services. Thanks, too, to Buffyworld for the transcripts used in the writing of this story.
Summary: YAHF season six style, plus what happens afterwards in order to save the world.
Title: The Guardian
***
R: "It's Halloween, it's the one time of the year that supernatural threats give it a well-deserved rest. As should you."
B: "Yeah, what about costumes that take over your personality? Or, wee little Irish fear demon-y thingies?"
R: "Yes, well, if anything calamitous should happen, history suggests it'll happen to one of us."
(Rupert Giles and Buffy Summers, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER)
P: "A whitelighter. What exactly is a whitelighter?"
L: "Well, we're really just messengers. Guides. Think of us as guardian angels for good witches."
(Phoebe Halliwell and Leo Wyatt, CHARMED)
"On οί theoί filoΰsin, άpothniskei neos" (Translation: Those whom the gods love, die young)
(Menander, 316 BC)
***
Part One: Halloween
Pyramid-shaped tomb, Blessed Memories Cemetery, Sunnydale
October 2nd, 2001
The Guardian of the Slayer line stirred uneasily in her centuries-long sleep.
There had once been a time when this very old woman had been but one of many, but that time was now long past; she was all alone in the world these days, and had been for nearly a thousand years. Like the rest of her extinct sisterhood, the Guardian had hidden out of sight long ago, but she had nonetheless kept watch on this particular Hellmouth in California. And, during the last few years, on the Vampire Slayer whose job it was to prevent it from ever being opened.
The Guardian had also, ever since 1997, nudged certain events along here and there as part of her covert efforts to assist the Chosen One. Nothing dramatic; just subtle pushes that had cascaded into victories against the forces of darkness and evil.
Such as, for example, 247 days ago helping Buffy Summers come to the conclusion that the only way to save the world and her little sister Dawn was to die for the cause by jumping off a tower and shutting down a portal that would have otherwise let Hell, literally, come to Earth. The other Chosen One, Faith Lehane, had thus been brought back into the position of being the one girl in all the world Chosen to fight all the evil things which went bump in the night.
But now, the Guardian had sensed that something unexpected had happened.
There were two Slayers in the world again, at the same time.
Within her resting place, the Guardian's eyes snapped open. This wasn't like the two other times such a thing had occurred; the old woman could literally feel all the mystical forces protecting the Slayer line disrupted – almost torn apart. No doubt, it wouldn't be long before others sensed it as well, and the malevolent ones would try to use this latest development to their own advantage.
The Guardian slowly stood up and climbed out of her sarcophagus, the beginnings of a scowl on her face.
It looked like the time for subtlety was over.
***
Partytown Costume Shoppe, Sunnydale
October 29th, 2001
The young man known as Jonathan Levinson was at a critical junction point in his life.
Nearly two months ago he had joined forces with two other geeks, Andrew Wells and Warren Mears, in order to take over Sunnydale as the first step in their becoming supervillains. The exact circumstances regarding this development were actually rather pathetic, as the trio had decided to carry out their new mission in life whilst playing a board game of some sort. But ever since then, the so-called troika had started targeting the traumatized and returned-from-the-dead Buffy Summers, messing with the blonde Slayer's head as well as testing her supernatural abilities.
The problem was, Jonathan certainly hadn't enjoyed being kicked in the groin by the tanked Chosen One whilst masquerading as a demon with an illusion spell. That was why he had come here, looking for non-magical disguises to use from now on.
"Jonathan? Huh. I wasn't expecting to see you here."
The nerd turned around and grew rather nervous at the sight of Xander Harris, who was walking towards him with a pirate costume in his hands. Jonathan then told himself to relax; the male Slayerette couldn't possibly have any idea of what the troika had been up to lately, so this guy was just greeting an old high school friend.
"Uh, Xander. Hi," Jonathan gave his former classmate an anxious smile.
"Getting a costume for Halloween, right?" Harris was rather puzzled by Levinson's apparent nervousness.
"N-yeah. Yeah, I mean, why, why, why else would I be here?" Jonathan babbled. Then he pointed at the costume Xander was carrying. "You're dressing up as a pirate this year?"
"Yep, yep," Xander smiled. "Got myself an eyepatch and a hook for a hand, I wanna go for the whole bad boy look and fool around a bit afterwards."
"Well, I'm kinda surprised you'd want to do that," Jonathan confessed, finally starting to relax. "I mean, 'cause that was why Larry chose his pirate costume back during junior year, and I-I just figured you simply weren't the same type of guy-"
"I'M NOT!" Xander yelped, recalling that long-dead gay quarterback. Then Harris strove to calm himself down. He knew that Levinson knew the truth about Sunnydale, so he looked around and said quietly, "Jonathan, you remember what actually happened that year, right? That Halloween night four years ago, when everyone turned into their costumes?"
"Do I ever," Jonathan nodded vigorously. "I mean, I know this is Sunnydale 'n all, but you don't easily forget being chased by a bunch of real-life Ewoks because..." The nerd then trailed off. "Uh, why exactly did all that take place? I never did learn details."
Again making sure no one else was within earshot, Xander confided in his short acquaintance how the chaos mage named Ethan Rayne had cursed all his costumes that night, so that everyone got turned into what they had dressed up as – thanks to a spell invoked to the Roman god known as Janus. "So basically, that guy simply made with the mojo – and hey, two years ago I dressed up as James Bond just in case the whole crazy thing happened all over again, but I-"
"So this time if it happens again, you're going to be a pirate?" Jonathan interrupted with his distinctly reedy and nasal voice. The wannabe crime lord shrugged and then noted, "Uh, no offense, but that really doesn't sound like such a great idea to me. 'Cause off-hand, I don't know of any good guy pirates. Do you?"
That gave Xander pause to think, and eventually the two young men went their separate ways – Xander to return his pirate costume and look for something else, and Jonathan to start researching the spell Harris had just told him about.
***
Mears residence, Sunnydale
October 31st, 2001
"That sounds so COOL!"
Both Warren and Jonathan looked at Andrew with deep irritation. "Could you at least lemme finish first, douche bag?" Levinson demanded of his co-conspirator.
"But this is so exciting!!" Wells almost whined. He looked around the basement, which was packed with various odds and ends as well as money that had recently been stolen from a bank by a mercenary demon working for this trio. "I mean, it's totally in keeping with our mission profile!"
Jonathan briefly glanced over to the whiteboard containing a To Do list, which included items such as controlling the weather, miniaturizing Fort Knox, and obtaining workable prototype jet packs. "How do you figure that?"
"It's like Warren said about that M'Fashnik demon recently, the Force can sometimes have great power on the weak-minded. So, so, I wanna be a Jedi Knight. I want to be Obi-wan Kenobi," Andrew started gazing off into the distance, before he held up a cheap plastic toy. "I mean, a real-life lightsabre? I would KILL for one of those!"
Mears started scratching his head. "Gotta admit, Sparky, that does kinda make sense," he finally admitted, before looking at his Halloween costume. "And I wouldn't mind being James Bond for a night either." Warren briefly entertained an adolescent fantasy about what it would be like to be 007, and have his ex-girlfriend Katrina come crawling back to him.
"So, let's set up and do it!" Andrew was almost hopping up and down in glee.
"I don't know, you guys. It's a pretty specialized spell from what I've been able to uncover," Levinson admitted, the least bit doubtfully. "And Janus? Not exactly someone you wanna piss off, if you catch my drift."
"In 'Doctor Who', the Sontarans have a saying: 'the greater the odds, the greater the glory'," Andrew intoned solemnly.
"He's right. Come on, Short Round," Warren placed an arm around Jonathan's shoulders. "I have faith in you. You can do this!"
Against his better judgment, Levinson was convinced to do the spell. He was the only one who could do it, as he was the magical part of the trio; Andrew's specialty was summoning and controlling demons, and Warren was the mechanical genius who could create lifelike robots. So, after consulting his books and parchments, the amateur warlock finally settled down and began to chant in Latin.
"Janus, evoco vestram animam. Exaudi meam causam. Carpe noctem pro consilio vestro. Veni, appare et nobis monstra quod est infinita potestas. Persona se corpum et sanguium commutandum est. Vestra sancta praesentia concrescet viscera. Janus! Sume noctem!" Jonathan shouted.
It was absolutely the worst mistake Mr. Levinson had ever committed, in his short and relatively miserable life.
Had he done more thorough research, Jonathan would have known that Janus did not take kindly to mortals invoking his power for their own petty desires. Four years ago, Ethan had done several propitiatory rituals to honor the god of chaos, and his intentions had been in keeping with the deity's wishes: to invoke disorder and disarray upon the living earth. It didn't matter that Ethan had gotten more than a few people killed that night; as far as Janus had been concerned, the magician's intentions had been neither good nor evil, merely – anarchic. Thus, Rayne had been safe from any possible angry mystical backlash from the Roman god.
Here and now, however, Jonathan wasn't. He had not used a bust of Janus as a focus for the spell. Also, he had not done the spell in order to bring about chaos; rather, his intentions had been completely the opposite – he had specific goals in mind that would advance his companions' and his own agendas. Levinson had foolishly tried to create a state of order that he and his fellow dorks could capitalize upon.
Was it any wonder, therefore, that Jonathan was instantly killed by a very irate and pissed-off Janus?
Warren and Andrew yelped in fear, ducking and raising their hands to shield their eyes as Jonathan's body simply exploded outwards in a rain of blood, bone and flesh. The entire basement suddenly looked and smelled like a blood-drenched slaughterhouse, as the young man died and his remains sprayed everywhere. The contents of the room were suddenly wet and sticky from being showered with all that dark red human blood, not to mention the smelly viscera.
Andrew started screaming like a frightened schoolgirl, looking at where his dead friend had been standing mere moments before. And that was before he saw what he was covered with, head to toe.
"AGGGGHHHHH! AGGGGHHHHH! Get it off! GET IT OFF ME!!!" he bleated.
"SHUT UP!" Warren looked completely freaked as well, but somehow forced himself to calm down as he backhanded Andrew in the face and the nerd stopped yelling, trembling as he did so. "What just happened?"
"I, I don't know," Andrew babbled, still in wide-eyed shock over Jonathan's gruesome and horrible death. "I guess there, there must have been some sort of, um, maybe a, an unforeseen side effect of the spell-"
"So Jonathan screwed up," Warren began to calm down and think things through. "And that Janus guy killed him for it. But we're still alive, right? SO, that means – okay, okay, okay," Mears said, as his brain finally started shifting back into gear. "We should be safe from now on, as long as we never do anything like this again..."
"Safe? Are you seriously spaced out? JONATHAN JUST EXPLODED INTO LITTLE PIECES!!" Andrew yelled hysterically.
Warren hit him again. "You need to calm down, Padawan," he said with the best Alec Guinness impersonation he could manage. "Jonathan knew the risks. And now, at least, he has become one with the Force."
Incredibly enough, the ridiculous platitude actually worked and Wells started to calm down. "Really?"
"Yeah. Just like we will, one day," Warren told him, dropping the British accent and looking around at the ruined basement. ( Well, thank God there's nothing left to bury at least. ) "Now look, first thing's first. We need to burn these clothes, and we've got to clean up the basement before my mom comes home from her Halloween party. Okay? Are you with me, Obi-wan?"
"Uh, yeah," Andrew said robotically, moving on autopilot. His mind slowly and carefully starting to blot out the worst parts of the nightmare he had just gone through, in order to protect its sanity.
That particular Sunnydale syndrome did occasionally serve as a useful survival trait, after all.
***
The Magic Box, Sunnydale
A short while earlier
"Your costume's stupid!" a little kid dressed as a fireman told Xander, who was holding a jar in his hands. "Even my little sister has a better costume than that!"
The young man sighed, resisting the urge to tell the kid go get himself eaten by a vampire. ( Still, I guess he has a point. Man, this has got to be the last time I ever try to get a matching costume with Anya's! )
As Xander walked over to another part of the store, he adjusted the angel halo he had bought back to the right angle on his head. Dawn Summers didn't notice; she just walked up to Xander's girlfriend (and secret fiancée) Anya Jenkins and asked her, "So what are you supposed to be?"
Anya, who was wearing very short candy-striped shorts and a red blouse – not to mention a Farrah Fawcett style hair – replied chirpily, "An angel."
"Oh. Then shouldn't you have wings?" Dawn looked a bit confused, staring in Xander's direction for a moment.
"Oh no, this is a special kind of angel called a Charlie. We don't have wings, we just skate around with perfect hair fighting crime," the former vengeance demon, who was indeed wearing roller skates as she skated around the shop, replied airily. "Besides, Xander's the one doing the whole angel with wings costume this year. Well, sort of."
"Sort of?" Dawn asked, as she followed Anya around.
"Yes. Apparently he dressed up as a fictional TV character known as a whitelighter, a guardian angel for witches," Miss Jenkins replied somewhat dismissively. "I am, however, still feeling completely secure in our relationship."
"Okayyyyy..." Dawn drawled out, not at all sure what her companion meant by that.
"Yes, I don't feel that this is a subtle sign that he will eventually leave me for another woman who happens to be a witch," Anya told the former Key, even though she was certainly starting to develop issues about Harris insisting that their engagement remain secret. "Besides, Xander said he's gonna teach me how to play doctor later on, instead of this game called Shiver Me Timbers..."
At that moment, Willow Rosenberg and Tara Maclay, two gay witches who were also part of Buffy's inner circle of Slayerettes, came over and started talking to Anya and Dawn. Not far away in a corner of the store, Buffy watched them and tried to ignore the vast, sucking emptiness within her that was threatening to drive the young woman completely insane.
The Vampire Slayer had been alive again for almost a month now, and she still hadn't been able to come to grips with her soul being torn out of Heaven by her four well-meaning but idiotically irresponsible friends. Even though she knew this world wasn't Hell, Buffy couldn't help feeling that it was the next best thing and, quite honestly, she was now at her wit's end on what to do about it.
"Buffy?" Rupert Giles asked, coming over to the closest thing he had to a daughter. "Are you all right?"
( Why do you keep asking me that, damn it?! ) Buffy kept a neutral expression on her face though, this wasn't the time or place for a screaming match with her former Watcher. "Yeah. Something I can help you with, Giles?"
"Uh, we need more mandrake root..." Giles caught Buffy's arm as she started to head for the basement. "But I've sent Xander downstairs to get some. You..." he trailed off. "You, you haven't worn clothes like these for some years now, have you?"
Buffy wanted to smile at his British obviousness, but she was feeling so empty and gutted at the moment that the young woman simply couldn't pull it off. "Decided to go a bit retro for tonight," she explained. "Thought it would do for a Halloween costume, y'know." Miss Summers left unmentioned the fact that she had secretly dressed as herself back in junior year, just before her 17th birthday.
The last time she had ever been truly happy in this world.
"Buffy..." Giles started to say, wishing he wasn't wearing this confounded blue wizard outfit. He knew that the Slayer found it difficult to take him seriously even at the best of times, and the facile Halloween costume wasn't helping. "Is there something you want to tell me...?"
"Hey, look over there!" Buffy interrupted, pointing to the main counter. "Lots of customers. A ton of bagging to do."
"Buffy," Giles started to fume on the inside at how his former charge kept dodging his questions like this.
"Hey, Giles? Where's Xander?" Willow came up to the former Watcher as Miss Summers left. "I, I kinda need some help in the charmed objects section."
"He's still not back from the basement? Good Lord, what on earth is that boy doing down there..." Then he squinted at the medallion Miss Rosenberg was wearing around her neck. "Willow, haven't I seen that somewhere before...?"
"This? Oh...oh!" Willow instantly felt guilty, even though she didn't know why. "It was a, um, a gift from Ms. Calendar. You know, before she..."
"Before she died, when Angelus killed her that night. Yes, I know," Giles sighed. "Well, I'll go look for Xander; you get back to what you were doing, alright?"
"Okay." The redhead nodded. Then she held up the medallion, "Um, I'm sorry if this is kinda bringing back bad memories, Giles-"
"No, no, it's fine," Rupert insisted, even though that was a bare-faced lie. "Go on, we mustn't keep the customers waiting."
However, Rupert quickly got distracted from the Xander-hunt by a rather annoyed and dissatisfied customer and sent Dawn over to help Willow. Meanwhile, down in the basement, the construction worker was no closer to finding the mandrake root than he'd been when he'd first started looking.
( Where the hell is it? ) Harris groaned to himself, searching through various boxes. ( Man, I swear that Giles and Ahn really need to start developing some sorta system down here... )
"What the heck are you doin', Droopy Boy?"
The male, British voice almost caused Harris to yelp in astonishment. Whirling around, Xander quickly relaxed when he saw it was only the Scooby Gang's chipped vampire. "Spike? What are you doing down here?"
The soulless undead looked at him in undisguised annoyance. "Came in through the tunnels, mate. Running low on burba weed." William the Bloody held up what appeared to be stringy vines of some sort. "Stir it in with the blood, makes it all hot 'n spicy."
Xander looked disgusted. "Spike, have I ever told you how GLAD I was the day you finally moved out of my basement?"
"Mighta mentioned it once or twice." William the Bloody smirked at the mortal, as he turned to head back towards the tunnel entrance.
"HEY!" Xander called out. "Where do you think you're goin' with that stuff?"
"What? I was gonna pay for it – eventually," Spike said defensively, but then he gave up the charade when he saw Harris wasn't buying it. "All right, so I was gonna nick it instead, 'cause that's what I do. Evil undead here, remember?"
"Just go upstairs and pay Anya for what you've got there, Captain Peroxide. And hey – if you ever try to pull something like this again? I'll tell Ahn about this conversation. Trust me; my girl has forgotten more about inflicting torture on guys than you'll ever know, and since you can't even fight back thanks to that chip in your cranium, you really are gonna regret stealing from her – and Giles," Xander warned the platinum-haired vampire.
Snorting in contempt, the English undead just stomped up the stairs without even looking at the man he considered to be just an irrelevant brick-layer.
And at that point, on the other side of town, Jonathan Levinson finished incanting his Latin spell to Janus.
Now, as has already been said, Janus was the Roman god of chaos. It was what he did, not to mention what he was. So, on a whim, he – or rather it, as Janus was far beyond the simple concept of human gender – decided to do something totally unexpected.
Despite slaughtering Jonathan for his insulting actions, Janus nonetheless empowered the guy's spell so that everyone in Sunnydale who had been changed into their costumes four years ago – was so affected again. Whoever they were, they changed into whoever or whatever they had dressed up as tonight.
Xander silently screamed as he staggered backwards, his vocal cords no longer working. The magicks Jonathan had invoked started working their way inside him, until he toppled over – dead.
Because in order to become a whitelighter, you have to die first.
The chaos magic ignored his state of non-life and latched onto his soul, as Xander's mystical essence tried to depart his corpse. It quickly wrapped itself around the ethereal white light, trapping it like a fly in amber and preventing it from journeying on to either Heaven or Hell.
Knowledge from various sources was subsequently obtained, as it came streaming in from the mystic realms. Knowledge about demons, magic and human history showed up to be used as needed by the nascent whitelighter. Finally, the memories of the new persona were added in and then the chaos magic focused its attention on the physical shell of the corpse.
Xander's limbs quivered as the magical power rushed through them, preparing the body for what was to come next; being transformed into white orb lights. A blue shimmering light came into existence and started hovering over the man's body, quickly intensifying in appearance. The blue light then shone down upon the Xander-shaped collection of white orbs, very much like that scene that Harris had watched in the recent 'Charmed' episode where Paige Mathews had taken over from the dead Prue Halliwell – and the Power of Three had been restored on the popular TV show.
The blue light quickly faded away as the chaos magic finished its work, and the body returned to human form – but not human existence. The new whitelighter known only as Alexander – someone and something that should not exist, but did so anyway – then slowly opened his eyes and got up off the floor.
Frowning in confusion, Alexander quickly felt the nauseating presence of the Hellmouth nearby; and feeling thoroughly sickened and disgusted by its pervasive evil, the guardian angel for good witches quickly orbed out, heading for the whitelighter realm up above.
A place which, unfortunately for Alexander, did not exist outside the fictional realm of television and DVDs.
And not all that far away in her pyramid-shaped tomb, the ancient female Guardian nodded to herself in satisfaction as her plan to save the Slayer line and legacy finally got underway.
TBC...