Date written: Sat 14 Jun 2008
Author: Starway Man
Email: theop at kew dot hotkey dot net dot au
Disclaimer: None of the BTVS or Angel references belong to me, but rather Joss and his gang of idi...er, geniuses. Anything taken directly from the TV episodes belongs to the writers in question. And anything else you recognize that's subject to any form of copyright belongs to whoever it belongs to.
Warnings: There is some violence, angst, and character death in this one.
Rating: R
Main characters: Xander, ensemble
Category: Action, Adventure, Alternate Universe, Angst
Acknowledgments: My deepest gratitude as always to the usual suspects: Nodakskip, Greywizard and Francis Eugene. Thanks too to Buffyworld for the transcripts used in the writing of this story.
Summary: The gods must be crazy. How does Erica Alexandra Harris react when she meets her male counterpart from another world?
Title: Mirror, Mirror
X: "I wish we could just go back to the way things were before."
A: "And I wish YOU were never born!"
(Xander Harris and Anyanka, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER)
"Who are you people?"
(Cordelia Chase, ANGEL)
"The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy has, in what we laughingly call the past, had a great deal to say on the subject of parallel universes. Very little of this is, however, at all comprehensible to anyone below the level of Advanced God, and since it is now well-established that all known gods came into existence a good three millionths of a second after the Universe began rather than, as they usually claimed, the previous week, they already have a great deal of explaining to do as it is, and are therefore not available for comment at this time..."
(Douglas Nelson Adams, MOSTLY HARMLESS)
Part One: Brave New World
It was less than a moment after the Big Bang.
Already, there was life.
Forged in the fires of creation, the beings who would eventually become known as the Roman pantheon of gods spread out across the infant cosmos. Soon enough, the ones who would be called Diana, Hecate and Janus encountered the ultimate nemesis of their kind; the entity which was known as the First Evil.
The pantheon watched and waited; and less than a hundred thousand years later, the Universe had cooled to the point where matter and radiation became de-coupled. Stars and planets became possible. The First Evil took notice, and started to make some very long-term plans as the lower beings started to evolve on almost every world in existence.
Billions of years later, Janus, due to his unique nature, could perceive the wrinkles in space-time around one particular planet, where untold power emanated from all quarters and the seeds of good and evil finally arose. So, he and his peers investigated further into this, the most powerful world they had ever encountered, and they learned one rather startling fact:
Anything that can happen will do so. Somehow, somewhere, in the vast multi-dimensional infinity of the Universe.
Sunnydale General Hospital, Sunnydale
April 12th, 1981
5:01 am
Jessica Harris screamed and grasped her husband's hand tightly, as the birth pains ripped through her tired and tortured frame.
It had been a long nine months both for her and the man she'd married, waiting for the arrival of their first child. And now that the big moment was finally here, the redheaded mother-to-be found herself wishing that she'd never, ever let Tony touch her back during the Fourth of July last year.
"AGGGGHHHHH!" the poor woman screamed again, as the doctor and nurses attended to her body's needs. Jessica started panting, physically exhausted. "I can't, I can't do this anymore..."
"Yes you can," Tony said gently. "Come on, Jess, we're almost there..."
"What do you mean, we?" Jessica snapped at him, her face screwing up into a rictus of agony. "I'm the one doing all the work here – ahhhhhhhhh!" she screamed again.
"Push, Mrs. Harris!" the head nurse called out.
"The baby's crowning, I can see the head!" the doctor said as the newest member of the Harris family started to enter the world. A few moments later, there was a loud slap and then the sound of a squalling infant could be heard in the delivery room.
"Congratulations, it's a girl..."
Kindergarten class, Sunnydale
September 1st, 1986
9:06 am
The redheaded five-year-old burst into tears, staring at the remains of a broken yellow crayon in her hand. Another girl roughly the same age as her, but with black hair, quickly came over.
"Why you crying?" the newcomer asked her companion curiously.
The weeping child showed her the crayon. "I broke it," she said through her tears.
The other girl made a decision. She snatched the crayon from the redhead's hand and marched over to the teacher. "It's broken," the little girl said firmly. "I broke it."
The teacher just shook her head and smiled. "That's okay, sweetie." She took the crayon and gave her a new one. "There you go, all better."
"Thank you," the prepubescent said dutifully, as she hurried back to the sniffling redhead. "All better," the brown-eyed girl parroted as she handed over the new crayon.
The other girl's green eyes went wide. "Why you do that?"
"You were sad," was the childlike answer.
"I'm Willow," the redhead introduced herself.
"I'm Erica," the daughter of Tony and Jessica Harris said. "Wanna play with me?"
Just then, a boy wandered over looking lost and lonely. "Who're you?" Erica Alexandra Harris asked him curiously.
"I'm Jesse," the McNally boy replied, looking at her in sudden interest. "Who're you?"
Sunnydale High School, Sunnydale
January 9th, 1997
2:15 pm
A decade had gone by in almost the blink of an eye, and Willow, Jesse and Erica had grown up and matured into rather precocious 15-year-olds. All three were close friends and had been ever since that first day in kindergarten, but in the case of Jesse and Erica, their friendship had recently developed into something...more.
That was why Mr. McNally and Miss Harris were in the middle of making out in the stacks of the high school's library, when they heard a rather interesting conversation between the librarian and the new arrival in town, the blonde sophomore known as Buffy Summers.
"Dig a bit into the history of this place, you'll find a, a steady stream of fairly odd occurrences," Rupert Giles said as he examined his books. "Now, I believe this whole area is a center of mystical energy, that things gravitate towards it that, that, that you might not find elsewhere."
"Like vampires," Buffy said somewhat sardonically.
"Like zombies, werewolves, incubi, succubi, everything you've ever dreaded was under your bed, but told yourself couldn't be by the light of day. They're all real!" the Watcher said passionately.
"Okay, first of all, I'm a Vampire Slayer. And secondly, I'm retired. Hey, I know! Why don't you kill 'em?" Miss Summers asked the Englishman.
Giles looked rather surprised by the question. "I-I'm a Watcher, I-I haven't the skill..."
"Oh, come on, stake through the heart, a little sunlight...it's like falling off a log," Buffy promised him.
"A, a Slayer slays, a Watcher..." Rupert started to say.
"...watches?" Buffy asked.
"Yes. No!" Giles set down the books he had in his arms on a nearby table. "He, he trains her, he, he, he prepares her..."
"Prepares me for what? For getting kicked out of school? For losing all of my friends? For having to spend all of my time fighting for my life, and never getting to tell anyone because I might endanger them? Go ahead! Prepare me!" Buffy ranted, very upset at the weirdness which was her life.
They just looked at each other for a moment before the Summers girl exhaled, turned around and left the library in disgust.
Giles hesitated for an instant. "Damn!" he cursed, before running after Buffy.
Jesse and Erica walked out from behind the stacks, a strange look on both their faces. "What the hell was all that about?" the boy wanted to know.
The Bronze, Sunnydale
January 10th, 1997
5:58 pm
It was the night of the Harvest, and the popular girl known as Cordelia Chase was on the floor of the nightclub with a soulless vampire standing above her. She struggled as the undead version of Jesse McNally snarled, "Hold still, you bitch! You're not making this easy!"
He yanked the brunette up, and his fangs started heading for Cordy's neck when the male fledgling heard a female voice he knew very well. "Jesse, no! Don't do it!"
While the vampire was distracted, a terrified Cordelia took the opportunity to kick him in the shin and run for it. Cursing, the walking corpse nonetheless ignored all that and turned back towards his former girlfriend. "Erica! Come here, baby. It's gonna be you and me, together forever!"
Erica's shaking hands held the cross and stake up indecisively. "Jesse, please! I, I know there's still a part of you in there..." she pleaded with him.
"Okay, then let me clear something up for you," the vampire finally lost his grin. "Jesse McNally was an idiot who would have never amounted to anything except a beer gut, and possibly also a job as the school janitor. But look at me now, sweetheart. I'm a new man!"
He batted the cross aside, grabbed the teenage girl by the throat and shoved her up against the wall. The Jesse vampire then laughed as he saw the stake pressed up against his heart. "Who are you trying to kid, Erica? We both know you can't do it. You just don't have it in you-"
A fleeing patron bumped into Vamp Jesse, impaling him on the stake. Erica let go of the wooden weapon, as her former boyfriend began to fall down. The demon exploded into ashes before he hit the floor, the look of surprised disbelief on his game face the last thing Miss Harris ever saw.
"I'm sorry, Jesse. I loved you," Erica sobbed as Buffy the Vampire Slayer battled the legion of vampires all around her.
Sunnydale Zoo, Sunnydale
March 20th, 1997
7:03 pm
Willow appeared frozen with fear as the creepy zookeeper held a knife to her throat. As Buffy arrived with a bunch of hyena-possessed kids hot on her trail, the redhead cried out, "Buffy, it's a trap!"
The Primal-possessed Erica tackled the blonde Slayer to the ground, as the rest of her pack mates quickly followed suit. The zookeeper shouted, "YU BA YA SA NA!"
The Pack looked up at him, and their eyes all momentarily flashed green.
All, that is, except for Erica's.
The zookeeper growled as his own eyes glowed green, and then the hyena-possessed man dropped the knife as he moved in to bite and eat Willow. "Errrrgh..."
"No!" Giles yelled, as he burst onto the scene and shoved the bad guy aside. Ignoring the confused kids around her, Buffy charged the zookeeper and after a brief fight, she tossed him into the hyena pit. The vicious animals quickly made a three-course meal out of the human, grossing Miss Summers out completely.
That was why the Vampire Slayer was completely unprepared for when Erica attacked her again, just before Giles knocked out the possessed Miss Harris from behind.
Former CRD Factory, Sunnydale
April 24th, 1997
7:14 pm
Erica hadn't felt this stressed ever since Giles had restored her human self-control after the Hyena incident.
It had all started when Willow had confessed to both her friends how she'd found herself an on-line boyfriend, some kid named Malcolm who lived about 80 miles away. Initially, the Slayer and the sidekick had been thrilled for their best friend, who was finally coming out of her wallflower phase.
But then, Miss Harris had started to get suspicious. She and Buffy had tried to follow up the clues and find out exactly who 'Malcolm' was...and to their horror, the cyber-Romeo had in fact turned out to be Moloch, a Corruptor demon who had been bound into a book back in the 15th century and was now loose on the Internet.
Well, until he had been bound into his new robotic body just now by a mystical ritual performed on-line, that is.
"Let's go this way!" Erica yelled as she, Buffy and Willow raced along the empty corridor.
"Wait!" Buffy called out. "I can hear somethi-"
She never got the chance to finish as Moloch came crashing through a wall. The demon-bot then quickly advanced on the three girls. He swung at Buffy, and she tried to block the hit; but Moloch didn't budge as he just pushed her aside and into the wall.
"I was omnipotent. I was everything! Now I'm trapped inside this shell!" the creature roared angrily.
"Malcolm!" Willow shouted. Moloch turned to face her, noting with some surprise that the redheaded object of his affections was holding a fire extinguisher. "Remember me, your girlfriend?!"
She pounded the extinguisher into his chest hard enough to make him bend back. "Well, I think it's time we break up!" Eventually though, Miss Rosenberg noticed her hits were having no real effect. "Uh, maybe we can still be friends?"
Moloch grabbed the extinguisher from her and threw it away. He then grabbed Willow and shoved her down the hall straight into Erica, and they both crashed to the floor. "I don't think so, Willow," the cyber-demon said simply.
Buffy had finally recovered from her daze after hitting the wall, and the Slayer got up to face Moloch. The demonic robot turned his attention to her and said, "This body is all I have left. But it's enough to crush you!"
Buffy looked around for a way to deal with the enemy. She noticed a power junction box on the wall, and quickly hatched a dangerous and possibly even foolhardy plan. "Take your best shot, Robbie the Robot."
With a loud yell Moloch reared back for a punch and swung with all his might. Buffy ducked aside, letting him punch right through the cover and into the electrical box. It shorted out, and Moloch was enveloped by a lot of high voltage electricity.
His circuitry overloaded, and the metallic body exploded right in front of the three teenagers. The head landed right in front of her and so a few moments later, Erica asked tentatively, "Is, is it over?"
( It's never over, ) Buffy thought to herself with an inner sigh.
Underground cave, Sunnydale
May 30th, 1997
8:10 pm
It was the night of the Prom, and the Chosen One had just fought and lost against the local vamp lord known as the Master. Erica and her companion, the ensouled vampire known as Angel, arrived on the scene and found Buffy's body floating in a pool of water.
"She's dead!" Angel exclaimed, as he examined the blonde girl.
"No, no, no! She can't be!" Erica cried out.
"She's not breathing," Angel gestured helplessly.
"But if Buffy drowned...CPR! There's still a chance we can bring her back and save the world!" Miss Harris said urgently, given how the prophesized apocalypse was currently at hand.
"You'll have to do it. I have no breath," the vampire confessed.
Erica took off her jacket, and started doing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Just when all hope looked lost, Buffy opened her eyes wide and drew in the first breath of her new life. The Slayer lay still for a moment as her eyes flicked back and forth in confusion.
"Buffy!" "Buffy?" Angel and Erica spoke in unison.
Buffy turned her head to the side and coughed out a lot of water. "Angel? Erica?" she finally spluttered.
"Welcome back, Buffy," the black-haired girl said with a fleeting grin.
A few moments later, Miss Summers got up, feeling oddly refreshed. "Come on, let's go – we got us a way-ugly vampire to kill!"
1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale
October 31st, 1997
6:15 pm
Willow almost couldn't believe everything that had happened so far this evening.
Two days ago, Principal Snyder had dragooned most of the students into taking little kids out for the Halloween safety program this year. And not only had Erica and Buffy vetoed her idea for them to dress up as the Three Musketeers, as Cordelia Chase was so fond of calling the three female friends, but the costumes she and her best buds had chosen for trick o' treating tonight...
Well, Miss Rosenberg was just grateful that she had gone as a ghost and thus was still herself, albeit in spirit form, after everyone had turned into their costumes earlier on. Thanks to a spell empowered by Janus, Buffy was now a quivering, helpless, emotional wreck from the past since she had dressed up as an 18th century noblewoman in order to impress her boyfriend Angel.
And if that wasn't bad enough, Erica...
Willow winced as a barrage of ancient Greek came from the dark-haired woman wearing a leather battle-dress and wielding a long, sharp sword in the middle of the living room. The ghost was no linguistic expert, but she was willing to bet that there was a large number of swear words being directed at her by the female warrior possessing Erica's body.
"She just had to dress up as Xena, didn't she?" the redheaded hacker sighed to herself in despair.
Not far away the British vampire who had eventually taken the Master's place controlling Sunnydale, after Buffy had staked that ancient bloodsucker five months earlier, paused as he took in all the chaos and pandemonium happening in the town built upon the Hellmouth. There was screaming and running and the sound of angry demons everywhere.
"Well. This is just...neat!" Spike a.k.a. William the Bloody said to himself with a wide grin.
Abandoned church, Sunnydale
November 13th, 1997
6:38 pm
Spike was in a bad mood, as he fought the Slayer. Not Buffy, but the Jamaican girl named Kendra; the new girl who had been called to her duty before Erica had revived Miss Summers roughly six months ago. After getting in a lucky punch that sent the junior Chosen One reeling, the English vampire grabbed a torch from its wall hanger and threw it into a pile of old drapes, setting them ablaze.
"Look out!" Erica shouted, as the fire quickly spread within the church which was being used to heal Spike's weak girlfriend and sire, Drusilla. The mystical ritual in question was not complete given how Angel, who was Spike's grandsire, was not yet dust and ashes. But the undead villain knew the tide of battle had shifted, what with the white hats already having taken out most of his minions.
So William the Bloody decided there was no more time and quickly unstrapped Drusilla from Angel. "Sorry, baby. Gotta go." He lifted the dark-haired vampiress into his arms and started down the aisle. "Hope that was enough..."
With nothing holding him up anymore, Angel fell to the floor behind them. Buffy crawled over to him and saw Spike making his escape. Intent on stopping him, she stood up and grabbed the censer from the altar. The senior Slayer quickly swung it around her head by its chain a few times, and then launched it at Spike as hard as she could.
It hit him in the back of the head, and the British undead stumbled into the church organ. The keyboard console collapsed under his and Drusilla's weight as soon as they hit it. A moment later, the entire organ superstructure collapsed onto the two soulless creatures, with its huge brass pipes clanging and rolling everywhere.
"Wow, I'm good!" Buffy said to herself, astonished and quite pleased at her luck. She then gestured to Kendra, "C'mon, help me. We gotta get him outta here!"
Kendra rolled her eyes but nonetheless obeyed. The entire Scooby Gang, including Cordelia oddly enough, quickly fled the burning church as the organ that had buried Spike and Dru also caught on fire.
Sunnydale High Basement, Sunnydale
December 10th, 1997
6:33 pm
Buffy knew she was in for a tough battle as she fought the two cowboy vamps known as Lyle and Tector Gorch simultaneously. And as if that wasn't enough, her friends and most of the school had been possessed by the offspring of a pre-prehistoric demon known as a Bezoar, and they wanted to kill her, too. "Guys, this really isn't a great time..."
Lyle and Tector paid no attention as they attacked the Chosen One. Then a lot of the students attacked all three of them, a moment before Tector was yanked into the pit of the mother Bezoar and, well, eaten.
"TECTOR!" Lyle shouted in alarm, as he saw his brother's boots disappear into the liquid of the pit. "Tector?"
His brother didn't answer, but the mother Bezoar let out a deep, loud belch. Lyle then looked over at Buffy and said angrily, "This is all your fault!"
Buffy honestly didn't get it. "How do you figure that?"
The Texan vampire didn't answer her, he just grabbed Buffy by the shoulder and flipped her over onto her back. Sensing an opportunity, the mama Bezoar wrapped a tentacle around her ankles and pulled the Slayer into the pit. Buffy managed to grab a pickaxe on the way, though, and dragged it down below with her.
Lyle just listened in amazement as Buffy and the mother Bezoar began to fight underneath the surface, and all the digging activity in the room came to a stop. The students and teachers gathered around the pit and watched. Slashing sounds and Bezoar snarls emanated from the depths as Lyle stepped closer for a better look.
The mother Bezoar suddenly let out a loud death scream from a particularly vicious blow from the pickaxe. Instantly, its hatchlings all fell away from their hosts, dead, and then all the teenagers and adults collapsed to the floor unconscious. Lyle Gorch thought to himself, ( What in tarnation is all this? What just happened here, God damn it? )
He slowly stepped even closer to the pit, cautiously looking around at all the prone bodies. He eventually came to the edge and looked in. It was at that moment that the pickaxe came flying out and landed on the floor right next to him.
Buffy subsequently pulled herself up and out of the pit, dripping with black slime. Looking pissed and mean, the Vampire Slayer stood up and angrily glared Lyle right in the eye. "I told you this wasn't a great time."
Lyle just nodded, "Alright." He hurriedly tipped his hat. "See ya around, Slayer."
Gorch wisely turned on his heel and quickly hightailed it out of there. Exhausted from the fight, Buffy just watched him go before heading up out of the underground room herself.
A short while later, Giles was attempting to give some sort of official explanation to all the confused and dirty people around him as fire trucks and the police arrived on campus while wondering to himself exactly what had happened. "Yes, yes, uh, i-i-it was a-a, a gas leak, everyone. Uh, well, just, uh, get some air, and a...good night's rest, you know, uh, you'll be fine. These gas things...will happen." He stopped walking as he saw Erica and asked sotto voce, "W-w-what was it, really?"
Miss Harris shrugged, "Stick with the gas thing, I'll fill you in tomorrow." As Giles nodded and walked off, Erica turned to face Willow and Cordelia. "How are you two doing?"
"Erica, did I really hit you?" Willow asked in shame and confusion.
Her oldest friend nodded, "You knocked me out with a microscope, the same time Cordelia knocked Buffy out with a pipe."
Cordelia asked, "I actually hit you as well?"
The Harris girl looked at her in a very unfriendly way. "Yes, Cordelia, right where it hurt!"
Miss Chase shrugged, "Good. Well, I don't mean 'good' because I hit you, it's just I didn't wanna be left out."
Erica resisted the urge to growl at her former childhood nemesis, wondering why the hell the brunette May Queen always seemed to show up whenever the Hellmouth weirdness reared its ugly head. After making sure Buffy was okay, the female teen decided it was simply just one more of life's strange mysteries, and went home to get some much-needed sleep.
Sunnydale High Basement, Sunnydale
December 11th, 1997
12:01 am
Within the dank and smelly pit, the mother Bezoar's corpse had already disintegrated completely. Above in the basement Sunnydale's finest had long since departed the room after conducting a cursory examination, and all was dark and quiet.
Until suddenly, it wasn't any longer.
The liquid of the pit started to boil and bubble, as if it was being heated by some huge fire, while the stone surface started melting, sinking down and exposing large areas of the underground pool. Then the liquid started to whirl around, rotating faster and faster with an incredible amount of centrifugal force.
Loud noises and bright lights suddenly started to emanate out of the pit, as a minor earthquake shook the building. A moment later though, it all stopped...at the same time that a male figure covered with black slime was ruthlessly ejected out of the depths of the abyss.
The man crash-landed onto the exact same spot Lyle Gorch had occupied scant hours ago, completely unconscious.
Alexander (a.k.a. Xander) LaVelle Harris, 21 years old, had arrived into an alien world.
A world that was almost the mirror image of what his world had been like, just a few short years ago.
To Be Continued...