Coming of the Scooby Army

Ch 3 – Morning Light

Giles snapped awake and quickly looked around his bedroom. His skin felt clammy and there was the definite feeling that he was about to become sick. Sitting up slowly, he took several deep breaths until the wave of nausea retreated.

A quick glance showed that the time was a quarter to eight in the morning. The sun outside the window shown brightly and he could hear birds singing gaily. This in no way improved his mood.

He felt humiliated… weak of mind and spirit… pathetic, really. He was a Watcher, for Heaven's sake, from a line of same and he should have been made of sterner stuff. Instead, he'd betrayed those closest to him by not resisting hard enough. Even now he caught himself staring at the closet door with a deep sense of loss, knowing that the 'Book of Midnight' no longer resided within reach.

With a start, he ran for the staircase and barely made it into the downstairs bathroom. Moments later and his bowels evacuated with a painful cramp. Sweat broke out on his forehead and under his arms as his 'withdrawal' symptoms continued.

Xander awoke to the feeling of cold, dry skin against his. A glance showed Spike's hands resting atop one of his. He slowly pulled it away and sat up in the bed. Around him were Buffy's things.

"We're in Buffy's room," he said with obvious conflicted emotion. He looked around the room, bathed in indirect sunlight and took a deep breath, trying to smell any trace of her perfume in the air. Even now, it can still hurt.

"Her room was open… and I've been sleeping here, anyway," Spike said as he turned to look around the room himself. He'd been, uncharacteristically, almost afraid of coming into this room after 'that night'. He'd taken to sleeping in Dawn's bed, but on the weekends she sometimes slept in so late, he hadn't been able to put off lapsing into the restorative unconsciousness that all vampires required. Finally, he'd stopped avoiding and found Buffy's bed as comfortable as any. He'd almost expected his skin to burn or crack, despite the utter nonsense of the idea. Now, he took a deep, slow breath through his nose. "There's still a trace of her left, even after so many months," he said distractedly.

Xander didn't know how to respond. In one sense it felt good to be surrounded by evidence of Buffy again. On the flip side, it was just a reminder that she wasn't downstairs waiting for them. He breathed again slowly through his nose, but he didn't detect what Spike was scenting… and that kind of sucked.

"I don't think I've been in this room since… since before Glory's deal," he swallowed audibly over the lump in this throat. With seeming effort, he reached over and pulled a framed photo from her nightstand. It was a simple portrait of Joyce with her arm around Dawn, both wearing one of those 'say cheese' grins.

"Joyce," Xan said, smiling a little. He said to Spike, "I remember in the bad days of Angelus, this one time, Buffy had been sick. The flu, which was weird 'cause you know, Slayer constitution and all. Well, there was a lot of stress… anyway, we were all in here laughing and joking around… me, Buffy and Willow. Buffy was sort of milking the 'recovery' and we were all basically asking for the most outlandish things we could think of… 'Could you go to the market and get coffee ice cream – I think I'd feel a lot better', 'There's another bag of Cheesy-Puffs hidden in a cupboard downstairs that I saw, could you go grab those', 'I was really hoping that maybe you could cut the crust off of the sandwiches…", he gave a small laugh, remembering better times. "She really should have smacked the lot of us for being such smart-asses."

"She was a good woman," Spike said. "Always treated me better than I deserved."

There was a moment of quiet before Xander broke the mood with a grin and a snide, "So, again with the unconsciousness? This is becoming a habit around you."

"Magic isn't a joke. You never know what the hell that shit is going to do. It could have done worse than just knocked you out. But, how do you feel… really?"

"Lighten up, Vamp-breath, I'm… well, not exactly okay, but my lungs are working and there's a heartbeat. And the pain in my head indicates I'm not completely dead."

"Tara didn't warn me there might be a reaction," Spike snarled. "Should have known not to try that potion without a witch present… that was stupid!"

"Hey. I'm fine. And, we did the right thing. She was… dangerous."

"It work then?"

"Yeah… think so, anyway," Xander closed his eyes and tried to sense her presence. "I feel… alone… kind of… empty," he swallowed hard.

When he looked again, Spike was staring at him.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"You don't have 'nothing' face. You have 'I am thinking something, but I'm going to pretend that I have no thoughts by putting on blank-face' face."

"You really need to work on the English."

"I speak goodly."

"Yeah," Spike rolled his eyes. "I've just spent the night thinking…," he hesitated.

"Aaaannnd…?"

"It occurred to me that depending how far back you had the hitchhikers… all the way back to Toth? … That HX was probably the reason you and I… got physical. So… where does this leave us?"

Xander went to respond, when he realized he didn't know exactly. He never would have started anything if it wasn't for that whole 'pack' thing and her wanting some backup to take over Buffy's leadership of the gang.

Spike stood and stepped back a pace.

"I see," he reacted with an obviously practiced disinterested shrug.

"No, you don't. And, neither do I," Xander said. "I-I think I should get back to my apartment." He was relieved that he was still dressed, even though the clothes were still damp… and now so was Buffy's bed.

"I need a hot shower and a non-mystically induced nap," he tried to smile, but he knew it was strained.

Spike, of course, wasn't an idiot and probably recognized it too. "Yeah. It's gettin' close to time for a lie-down for me, too."

"Spike… things we did," Xander turned deep crimson, "Uh, in the, uh, basement for instance…"

"… Never happened. Got it," Spike interrupted.

"No, that's not what I was going to say. I was going to say that I don't regret it. Even though… well… I'm not sure that, uh, stuff would have happened without Hyena…"

"… It wouldn't have and we both know it," Spike interrupted again with irritation. "Stop trying to 'spare my feelings'… I don't have any."

"Bullshit. And, if you'd stop trying to play the martyr and let me say what I'm trying to say…?!"

"I'm listening…," Spike had crossed his arms and was glaring at the human.

"I'm just trying to tell you that… that this is a bit weird without her emotions filling my head, okay? I'm not saying that we're done. I'm not saying anything except that I'm feeling a bit groggy and I've got a killer headache and I just need a nap before we talk about what happens with us… okay? That's all I'm saying."

"Sure."

Xan gave him a beleaguered sigh. "I gotta go."

Spike watched him leave the room.

Giles stood in the living room feeling a bit adrift as he surveyed what had happened to his apartment. He wasn't exactly sure what he needed or wanted to do.

A glance in the direction of the sofa revealed that Tara and Willow were, somehow, sharing it as they slept. There was an afghan draped over them and both were snoring softly. There didn't seem enough room for both of them, but somehow they'd managed to squeeze together close enough to allow them to fall asleep without one of them ending up on the floor.

Rupert went to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee dripping and then quietly picked up the phone and dialed England.

When his call was finally patched through to Travers by his unctuous assistant, Giles found himself momentarily speechless.

"Hello? Rupert are you there?"

"Hello, Quentin."

"I thought for a moment we'd been disconnected," he said. "You have a report on Sunnydale to share? Another apocalypse on the horizon?"

"Not this time," Giles said, falling heavily into the desk chair that had survived the magical battle of the night before.

Mr. Travers obviously heard his distress crossing the Atlantic over the wire, "Rupert… you don't sound well. Has something happened?"

"Y-yes. I'm afraid so."

"Oh. Well… I'm sorry. We will, of course, have to make arrangements for a replacement to be sent … Faith isn't trustworthy enough to have released at this juncture…," Travers said distractedly, almost as if he'd forgotten Giles was on the phone.

"No, no! This isn't about Buffy," he quickly interjected. Though, of course, everything that had happened was about Buffy… and Glory… and what he'd had to do to protect her and ultimately, his failures. But the last thing that the others needed was Quentin deciding to send in more Council members to oversee things as they continued working to keep the Buffy robot playing her secret role.

"Oh! Oh, well… that is… good, then. I confess to being confused about what you could be sounding so 'off' about, if not the Slayer's welfare. Surely after facing a goddess, there isn't much left that could have you so obviously out of sorts."

"I… I have called to turn myself over to the Council, Quentin. On the charges of misuse of dark magicks… disregarding the Council's edicts involving dark magic tomes… a-and-and failing to properly represent the Watchers Council in thought and deed."

There was a fourteen heartbeats delay in Travers' response. Giles knew this because he could feel every beat hammering his ribcage.

"I see," he said, trying to sound businesslike, but Giles could hear the slightest trace of surprise. He'd caught him completely off-guard.

"I believe you should start at the beginning," Quentin continued.

Back at his apartment, Xander stood under a hot spray of water from the shower head. He was leaning forward, his hands against the wall in front of him as his eyes remained closed against the pulsing beat of water massaging his face.

He was wrestling with what had happened between him and Spike. It would have been so easy to simply blame everything on Hyena. And to take Spike's suggested route of pretending it had never happened in the first place.

But, it had happened. And, his mind kept returning to Commando, in his own body at that time, mentioning how cute Spike was. Didn't that say something about Xander himself?

His commando-persona hadn't been an entirely outside invader like the animal spirit had been. Sure, his dollar-store level soldier costume had been infected with Rayne's chaos-magic, but it only worked by tapping into the qualities already present – at least according to Giles' post-possession wordy explanations.

Willow hadn't much change, other than being dead and a ghost, because that sort of spirit IS the person. Buffy had within her the high school ditz she'd apparently been more of while at Hemery High before she came to Sunnydale. Ethan's costume had seized on those superficial qualities, combined with her desire to escape the responsibility of Slayerhood and chaotically enhanced those traits… suddenly, she had no responsibility, except to find a nobleman and to look pretty. It had even wiped out her modern knowledge to better fit into her costume's time period where girls were seen to be better if they were dumb.

Personally, he liked his Buffy the way she'd really been.

Each of Ethan's costumes twisted, suppressed or enhanced traits and memories already present until they became unrecognizable… until they fit more in keeping with the outfits' motif. But, it didn't actually create something from nothing, Giles had then explained to them.

Wait, Buffy had objected, Are you saying I was a bubble-headed bimbo before?! And, I've never been to a castle or led the life of a hoity-toity chick – that's more Cordelia's bag.

O-O-of course, Giles had quickly backtracked. I'm not sure of the full details of the spell…, but, I would say that you'd seen movies of what life would have been like as a Royal. I'm sure that you've also daydreamed, as we all have, of what it would be like to live other lives. The costumes simply made those daydreams more real by suppressing your actual lifestory in exchange for your imaginings… again, drawing on things buried in your subconscious that you'd seen, heard, e-even read and building a new lifestory to match the new "life" being reflected in the costume. And, of course, the outfits themselves were able to change the physical form to match the new reality for each wearer.

Like being stuck in a holodeck, while brain washed, after having a transporter accident, Xander had muttered.

I might agree if I had any idea what that meant, Giles had drolly responded.

There'd been a lot more questions, mostly from Xander himself, after the Judge/Angelus team up… like how he could have had information about rocket launchers, and how to shoot guns if everything was only built on daydreams – but Giles had been concerned about how Angel's going bad was affecting Buffy and had given him a Britishy "That was a very complicated ritual Xander, and we simply don't have time to rehash Ethan's folly. We have a more pressing threat at the moment."

Things had gotten a bit chaotic in the non-Ethan spell way shortly after that, but now as he stood under the jets of hot water, he wondered if Giles' explanations weren't way off base.

"I guess it doesn't matter now," he said aloud as he let the water beat down onto his back. "Toth must have really thrown everything out of whack."

But, IF the soldier personality hadn't been a separate entity during Halloween, he had become one after that for awhile. It was all so complex.

But still, bottom line was it was different than Hyena. Commando had been more 'him' and if he didn't have a problem with being a bit on the Bi-Side, then why was the fact bothering him so much now. It's not like he'd ever had problems with gays… his best friend was a lesbian, hello? But it was different with it having happened to him. He wasn't even sure if he was still attracted to Spike now that Hyena at least seemed gone. He liked him, he was sure of that much, but he liked Riley and Oz too… didn't mean it was a physical thing….

He turned off the shower and stepped out of the tub to wrap in a towel. Looking in the bathroom mirror, he tried with a faint trace of desperation to feel any echo of Commando and then Hyena.

He felt nothing, except disturbed that he was hoping for some glimmer of one of them.

Who am I without them? Just the Zeppo, again? Am I back where I started? And what the hell am I gonna do about Spike?

What do you want to do about him, Xan?

End Ch 3