Meant to upload this yesterday before work. Was doing HH for, like, the twelfth time when I thought of this little ficlette.
Keep in mind that I'm playing fast and loose with the timeline for this to work.
I own nothing except my copy of WoW and TBC. Do not sue me as I have nothing worth taking.
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Happy Hallow's End!
Within a graveyard cold and dank, there lives a troubled soul;
He believes all life is dead, and only he is whole.
As he sits aside his fiery steed, his laughter ringing clear,
The townsfolk stay behind locked doors, for Hallow's End draws near.
T'is seven days and seven nights, till the horseman roams the land;
Are you prepared to face the one who holds his head in hand?
Well, we shall know in just a week, the ones who'll take the stand;
When comes the time for trick or treat, the time for Hallow's End.
Isilien of the Scarlet Crusade
Xander was wandering through the new costume shop, a place named Ethan's, when he saw it. It wasn't exactly like the one in the game, but he figured he could fix that easily enough. A few minutes later, the original costume, along with a straight-bladed long sword, a roughly head-sized Jack-o-lantern, and a faux-plate helmet ended up on Ethan's counter. The cost of the buy meant that he'd have to go without snacks for the next month or so, but he simply hadn't been able to resist. He'd have to let Dawn know; she was just geeky enough to enjoy the joke.
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Honestly, Xander didn't know how Dawn had managed to convince her mother to let her exchange her already-bought-and-paid-for Partytown costume for the pile of bits and pieces she'd need to recreate Dawn Summers the Warlock, but Xander was glad it had worked, even if it did mean he'd had to escort her to and from the shop.
Besides, going as a pair would make the Halloween night even more fun. As he dropped Dawn off at home he was already working to come up with funny turns of phrase that wouldn't take him out of character.
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Joyce answered the knock on her front door and slammed the front door closed with a little scream before remembering who was supposed to be arriving about that time to meet up with her daughters and that nice Willow that always helped Buffy study for her tests. Opening the door again, she apologized, "Xander, you startled me!"
"No Xander here stands,
Fair lady of white,
Only a monster,
A long-Fallen Knight."
Joyce laughed at Xander's rhyme before inviting him in. "They'll be down in a moment she said, looking into the cut-out eyes of the Jack-o-lantern inside the helmet.
She'd no more than turned her back when she heard Dawn scrambling down the stairs, her words almost aglow with praise for her 'secret' crush's costume. Joyce was just glad that her daughters would have such a nice young man looking out for them. After all, even in suburbia there were strange people out sometimes. Like that violent young man in the mask on Teacher's Night . . .
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Dawn could only describe her condition as 'stoked.' She'd gotten to wear an awesome Warlock costume to match with Xander. Not only that, but by some trick of fate, she'd also managed to wind up in Xander's group for trick or treating too. Plus she couldn't stop geeking out over how her crush had handled Larry the stupid annoying pirate. He must have practiced that laugh for hours to get it just right. After what she'd heard him say about beating up Xander as revenge for the way Buffy had treated him. . . well, a little public embarrassment couldn't hurt. Another plus to following Xander was that he knew just which houses to visit so that all of his charges got full buckets in record time. Just as they were about to start heading for home a wave of . . . something passed over her, and for just a moment, she couldn't tell which direction was up before a hammer-blow of magic knocked her out of the proverbial driver's seat.
When her body stood up, it was not Dawn Summers of Sunnydale, California at the helm, but Dawn Summers of Goldshire, raised in the orphanages of Stormwind after her father died in the war and her mother of the plague. It had been there that she'd first discovered her talent for magic; there that she'd learned of the power the dark, hidden parts of that gift could give her.
That Dawn Summers looked up and paled.
Because, in that moment, she knew she was dead, for standing above her was the Headless Horseman himself.
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Spike was just getting ready to step out of the door when Drusilla screeched behind him. He was at her side in just a moment. He knelt down to ask her what was wrong, but she was staring past him unseeing.
"Its terrible, Spike! My poor kitten will lose his head! Oh, but snicker-snack and pumpkin smiles as he slices and dices," an insane giggle passes her lips.
Spike simply rolled his eyes, "Did you see anything else, ducks?"
Dru nodded at him, the first time since he'd arrived by her side that she acknowledged his existence. "Miss Edith saw it, and she told me what she saw." She confided gravely. "Death, death, death. The Horseman rides tonight with a demon alongside," Spike couldn't help but grin. So much for a quiet Halloween.
"What about the Slayer, Dru?"
"Insides to outsides and outside go in," the mad Seer pronounced before she lost interest. "Do you love all of me, Spike? Even my insides? The parts you can't see?"
Spike, thrilled by what he assumed was Drusilla's pronouncement of the Slayer's death answered with only a casual, "Of course," as he fled out the door.
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His head ached. That, in and of itself was not unusual. For as long as he could remember, his whole body had radiated pain. Pain that he alone of all the world had remained pure while the plague killed everyone else around him, reanimating them as mindless ghouls.
But that was wrong. That wasn't the pain he felt echoing through his head with every beat of his-
Heart. A heart that he couldn't remember beating for . . . forever. But it beat now, as it surely always had. His memory simply wasn't what it used to be. He raised his head and saw immediately a foul ghoul cowering at his feet, as was its place. A ghoul that . . .had a heartbeat?
For a moment, he almost struck anyway, certain he was mistaken. But he heard it again, and again. Had he been capable of it, tears would have overflown his eyes. The Light had answered his prayers! Here were living breathing people! Humans unaffected by the plague. People that, perhaps, he could still save. But this one . . .something was telling him that this one that cowered in fear before him as though he were one of the undead was special. And whatever it was, it was right. This was the first human he had seen in so very long. He would be certain that no harm came to her. Almost against his will a phrase slipped out of his mouth, feeling strange by itself without other phrases to support it. "You are dear to me," he said, wonderingly as the young woman stared at him in shock. Perhaps the knights of this strange place mistreated their people? Did they have no concept of how fortunate they were to have subjects at all?
A movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention, and his sword swung around without conscious thought and decapitated the undead filth that had tried to spring on his charge; he could not have been more surprised when the corpse vanished into dust. He swung back around just in time to see a bolt of magic fly from her fingers and reduce the head of a charging undead to vapor. This place was infected too. For a moment despair nearly overcame him before the girl in front of him caught his attention. There was still at least one worth saving. He held out the reigns that hung on his belt and his horse rose up beneath him, lifting him high enough to see humans all down the street running from or fighting monsters, demons, and the undead. He raised his blade above his head and let forth his war cry.
"Prepare yourselves, the bells have tolled!
Shelter your weak, your young, your old!
Each of you shall pay the final sum!
Cry for mercy! The reckoning has come!"
Peripherally aware of the warhorse rising at his side, the Horseman swept out across Sunnydale with the blood of the undead on his blade, and a song in his heart.
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It had taken forever, but Spike had finally managed to track down the Slayer. Only somehow she wasn't the Slayer anymore. At least not now. He'd had some fun scaring the living daylights out of her for a bit, but she'd been so terrified it wasn't hardly worth the effort. He was just about to just grab the silly bitch and drain her to death (after all, killing a Slayer was killing a Slayer and this one would give him a whole three. Better than most Masters twice his age could claim.) when he heard the sound of hooves behind him. He managed to turn enough that he saw the definitely dead horse bowl him over.
By itself, that wouldn't have been enough to cause him any trouble at all, but then the obviously well train warhorse decided to use him as a carpet, stomping up and down all over him. By the end of half a minute, if there were any unbroken bones in his body, he couldn't feel them.
"Your body lies beaten, battered, and broken!
Let my curse be your own, fate has spoken!"
And the asshole was rhyming about his plight. He was going to beat the shit out of the bloody wanker! Just as soon as he healed enough to stand up.
"She's a human," the girl on a very demonic-looking horse behind the bastard that had trampled him said. Even though the young woman was frightened, she didn't protest as the knight hauled her onto the horse behind him.
Bastard! Walking off . . . well riding off with his dinner! How dare he? He was definitely getting the beating of his life! Tomorrow. Or maybe the day after.
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Dawn directed the Horseman as best she could toward the most active concentration of fell energy within her sensing radius. "There!" she said as the shop came into sight pointing directly at the source of the magical disturbance. Both of them dismounted and made to enter the strange building. It was an unpleasant shock to discover that they could not. Dawn growled as a shadow bolt splashed off of empty space at the threshold. The shield in the doorway likewise deflected a two-handed blow from the Horseman's sword.
Now Dawn was pissed. She hadn't come this far, survived, somehow, the Headless Horseman himself, to be stopped by some idiot, stupid wizard. With a scream that turned into a roar mid-breath she drew the shadows around herself and shifted. Wings of shadow stretched out behind her and four-inch horns grew from her brow as she smashed herself, both fists and magic against the barrier. Which fucking held! She blasted as much power as she could draw at the barrier two more times just to be sure, but nothing she did seemed to even phase the magical shield. With an irritated roar, she reverted to human form and turned around. Just in time to see the Horseman leap into the sky astride his mount and unleash a wave of fire over the front wall and roof of the building, laughing hysterically as the store started to go up like a pitch-soaked torch.
"Fire consumes, you've tried and failed!
Let there be no doubt, justice prevailed!"
And that was downright impressive, though she still couldn't understand why-
The spell ended and the sidewalk came up and punched her in the face.
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Xander settled back to the ground, trying not to hyperventilate at what he was seeing. There was no way that it could possibly be happening. Even as he performed his customary post-fight ritual, he still couldn't believe that he and Dawn had killed dozens of vampires drawn out onto the streets by the chaos of the night. That he'd beaten Spike to a pulp! Still have all my fingers and toes. Arms and legs still work. Then he got to his head.
And promptly knocked it off.
For a full five seconds, Xander stared at his headless body in shock, waiting for the pain and death to set in. when it didn't he glared at the flailing form for another few seconds before willing his head up to shoulder height and growled, "Get over here, you idiot!"
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And that's it. I have a few more of these I want to write so's I can get back to IND. Just clearing bunnies. Please remember to review. It is, after all, the coin of the realm. :)
And that's it. I'm going back to bed.