Title: Emerald Spark (3/?)

Author: Cyclone

Feedback: Please be gentle.

Distribution: Gimme credit and a link.

Rating: Just a little bad language.

Spoilers: Anything and everything.

Disclaimer: The characters depicted herein belong to other people. I'm just borrowing them for a while.

Summary: After Halloween, everything changes. Sequel to Blackest Night. Part one of Emerald Flame.

Author's Note: Okay, y'know, the reason Blackest Night was originally a one-shot was because I saw only two ways to expand on it: Green Lantern Xander and Future Knowledge Xander. Both of them had already been done and done well by others, and I didn't want to retread ground already covered, so I intended to leave it as is.

Then I got this idea.


"Willow, I told you," Xander said calmly. "I've seen the future. We met them in the future. I told you about them before Buffy started ranting at me, remember?"

"Yeah," Willow nodded. She had managed to corner Xander and had asked him just who the two new girls were, since it was pretty obvious that they knew Xander. "But what are they doing here?"

"Faith was on the streets, and Tara's dad is worse than mine and Mom put together," Xander shrugged. "You know me. You really think I could leave them like that?"

"So, you went to Boston and Alabama and brought them here?"

"Yeah."

"Over one weekend?" she asked, cocking an eyebrow skeptically.

"I find your lack of faith disturbing," Xander intoned.

Up went the other eyebrow.

"Red eye flights and a lot of fast talk?" he offered.

Willow scowled.

"Behold, the power of the internet," Xander said, nodding sagely.

"Huh?"

"Don't worry, Will," Xander patted her on the head. "That joke'll make more sense when you're older." She flushed at the implication. By the time she realized he meant "sometime in the future," he was gone.

"Hey!"


Xander was having a good day. The birds were out, the sun was shining, the world was not currently facing an apocalypse...

...and he had his Willow back.

His Willow. The adorably shy redhead he grew up with, oh so long ago. Not the badass superwitch he barely recognized.

It was like having Jean Grey back with no Phoenix.

He was happy.

So, naturally, something had to give the day a sour note. That something took the form of a naggingly familiar face, which soon turned and headed away from the school, presumably toward home. It was only vaguely familiar, and he frowned, trying to place the face. The guy wasn't in his recent memory, so that left his future memory. Plus, that meant the guy was a new student.

So, who transferred to Sunnydale High soon after Hellowe-...?

"Shit," he muttered. "Ford."

"How do you know Ford?"

"Bwah!" Xander jumped and whirled on Willow. "Don't do that!" he scolded. "I got enough of that from Batman," he added under his breath.

"Xander," Willow said warningly. "What is it? What's wrong with Ford?"

He glanced back at where Ford had been. "Absolutely nothing, Will," he said quietly. "Except... watch your back around him. I'm steering clear of this disaster unless absolutely necessary."

"You know something, don't you?"

"Yep."

"What?"

"He plans on feeding Buffy and a whole bunch of morons to Sp- some vampire in order to get vamped, since he's terminally ill. It'll work out, though."

Behind him, Willow frowned, her forehead crinkling in confusion, "But... you said he was terminally ill."

"Yeah."

"Then how is it going to work out?"

Xander just shrugged and walked off, but as soon as he was out of earshot, he muttered quietly, "I never said it would work out for him."


Xander considered knocking. It was about half an hour past sunset, and he knew Angel was home -- at this range, even the hellmouth's interference wasn't enough to keeping him from getting that much information -- but he was debating the best approach.

Then he remembered where he'd seen Angel on this night the last go-round: at the Bronze, hoping to find Buffy.

Instead of, say, patrolling.

I think I'll knock, he thought with a grin. Real loud.

The force construct battering ram was inches away from the door when he got a better idea. It was high time Angel got a taste of his own medicine. With that decision made, he turned and left.


Angel frowned and sniffed. There was someone in his apartment. It smelled vaguely familiar, but he couldn't quite place it.

"Angel."

He spun and swung at the source of the voice... and found himself flying toward the wall, victim of a simple judo flip.

"See?" the intruder said. "That's the sorta reaction sneaking up on people gets you."

Angel looked up, "Harris?"

Xander nodded as Angel picked himself back up. He didn't offer to help... but then, Angel wouldn't have accepted any help from him either.

"What are you doing here?" the vampire asked...

WHAM!

...and found himself staggering back into the wall from a powerful right cross.

"What was that for?!" he demanded, blinking his eyes clear.

"For not telling me about my ex-girlfriend when she fell into a coma and died," Xander said calmly. "I didn't get a chance to hit you for it, last time around."

"Gee, thanks," Angel muttered. "So what are you really here for?"

"To see if you've come to your senses about the curse loophole."

"I've thought about that, Xander," Angel said, "but the part that isn't making sense is the part where the gypsies didn't tell me about it." He looked up, "I think you're lying."

"Damn it, Angel," Xander hissed, "I know you're smarter than this. Maybe not much smarter, but smarter. Use your vampy senses, you know they're good enough to tell you if I'm lying or not."


"hE DOES NOT ACCEPT THE BOY'S WORDS."

"gOOD."


"Fine," Xander said, throwing his hands up in surrender, "but if you lose your soul, Deadboy, I'm going to dust you."

Angel thought about that for a moment, then asked, "Promise?"

"Cross my heart."


"sHIT."


"Hello, Ms. B," Xander smiled. "Can I talk to Faith?"

"Certainly, Xander," she said with a nod, stepping back and allowing him to enter. He did so without prompting and waved to Tara, who shyly ducked her head and waved back.

He then made his way to Faith's door and knocked. The response was a muffled, "...go'way..."

"C'mon, Faith," he said, knocking again. "We've gotta get moving."

Finally, the door opened, and Xander blinked in surprise at the disheveled-looking Faith on the other side.

"Moving where?" she asked sourly.

Xander smiled, "Time for you to earn your keep."

Faith blinked at him blearily for a moment -- an image that Xander filed away for future amusement; he had never seen Faith look so out of sorts before, thanks probably to her Slayerness last time around -- and as comprehension dawned on her, she stepped back.

Xander blinked and belatedly realized how what he had said sounded. "Not like that," he said. "Trust me. You'll like it."


"Way cool," Faith murmured, her head whipping back and forth as she tried to look everywhere at once.

"Yeah," Xander smiled nostalgically. "Enjoy the view, Faith. I've got an asteroid to mine." He willed his ring to carry him off, leaving her in the force field generated by her own ring.

"Hey, wait!"

He paused and turned to look back at her, "What?" He was surprised to see naked fear on her face. After a moment, it suddenly occurred to him that Faith, for all her tough talk and street smarts, was still a teenaged girl. Even if she was the Slayer he remembered -- which she wasn't, a fact he kept forgetting -- being out in space would have been... disorienting, to say the least.

In other words, she was scared out of her wits, and almost as afraid to show it.

"C'mon," he said, waving her forward. "Use the ring and come here so I can show you what to do."

She blinked at him, then nodded, a goofy grin spreading across her face.

He filed that expression away too. The only time he usually saw Faith happy the last time around was when she was beating the crap out of something. Not that he disagreed -- beating the crap out of things was fun and great stress relief -- but the old Faith was more jaded, less prone to enjoying the moment without looking for the strings.

Her life on the streets had hardened her, but not nearly as much as the death of her first Watcher... or what had happened with Ms. Post.

Which reminds me, he added mentally. That's another thing I've got to watch out for.


"That doesn't look like much," Faith said, eyeing the baseball-sized hunk of metal dubiously.

"It's enough," Xander assured her, hefting the metallic rock in his left hand. "Thirty-five troy pounds of pure platinum. This chunk here is worth nearly half a million dollars, a lot less on the black market... which is where we're going to have to unload this if we want to avoid awkward questions."

"Whoa," she murmured respectfully. She grinned, "Come to mama."

"Now, now, Faith," Xander mock scolded. "This is going toward buying that house you're staying in now."

"Oh, right," she pouted. "Where the hell did you learn all that anyway?"

"About the platinum?," he shrugged. "Africa. Spent a few years there. Barter works, and there were quite a few times we killed a demon and found ourselves with its hoard of trinkets and precious metals and stuff."


Author's Postscript:

A special Christmas update. Happy Christmahanakwanzaka!