Chapter 7: My little Superhero

Anxiously she watched his unconscious body stir for a moment, but he did not wake. Cassandra, nurse of the slayer school infirmary, had assured her that he wasn't in a coma and that he would wake up eventually. Still Willow couldn't rest until she was sure. Until he actually opened his eyes and told her he was okay. She wasn't sure she could handle it if anything happened to him, especially now that the painful memories of Tara were lurking near the surface again.

These were the times when it was most difficult not to resort to magic. The dark magic did not have a hold over her anymore, but that didn't mean she could use it whenever she felt like it. She had to be careful on how reliant she was on magic, because she could easily loose control again.

Her heart leaped when she heard a moan coming from her best friend. After three hours he finally awoke. Immediately Willow trapped him in a fierce hug. It took a few moments before he returned the hug, which wasn't surprising since he had just woken up. Still, it pained her to realize that their friendship was still a far cry from what it once had been. Hugs like these used to go automatically, as did the responses to them.

"Willow." She heard him breath out.

Only then she realized her hug had been a bit too much on the enthusiastic side. She loosened the embrace to give Xander some air, but she didn't end it. She needed to let him know how much he meant to her. You couldn't truly express something like that in words.

They finally let go and she looked him in the eye, confirming that he was okay. She saw that he was and nodded in acceptance. That was Xander's cue to throw out on of his lopsided grins. He was up to something, that was for sure.

"Did you get super strength while I was out cold?"

This made Willow blush, and Xander's grin grew even wider. "No, no super strength. Just your average plain old Willow-strength." She smiled back, just glad that he was alright.

"So..." Before Xander could get out any more of his sentence a host of quick and loud footsteps interrupted him and soon the carpenter was trapped in another horizontal bearhug, this time courtesy of Sera.

"Xander! You're alive!" the young slayer exclaimed in relief.

Willow didn't even bother to stifle her laugh at Xander's discomfort. That's what he got for making her blush.

"Sera, sweety, we'd like to keep him that way." She answered for Xander while putting a hand on the young blonde's shoulder.

"Oh! Sorry." Sera apologized, reluctantly releasing her hug.

"I never thought that the most dangerous part of getting knocked out was the waking up." Xander muttered as sat up in his bed. "So...What happened?" He asked, ruffling Sera's hair.

'When had the two of them gotten so close?' Willow wondered. She knew Xander liked the young slayer, but it had been more like a kind of admiration and protectiveness until now. Now they acted like they were brother and sister, and they had only known each other for a week! Was that jealousy? Yup, definitely jealousy. She wasn't jealous of their closeness. She and Xander were best friends and Sera would never be able to come between that. No, she was jealous on how easy things between Xander and Sera had developed. They had a clean slate and they were just getting to know eachother. Willow and Xander on the other hand had a history. And not everything in that history was all hunky-dory. She often wished they could just start over again, after all, it was easier to build something from scratch than to try and fix a big old train wreck.

Willow's thoughts were interrupted when she realized Xander was waiting for an answer. "You were attacked by a demon."

Xander rolled his eye. "I gathered as much from the demon-sized fist I can still feel on my face. But how did it get in to the house? I thought you had a demon ward thingy set up around it."

"I don't know." Willow admitted reluctantly. She heard no blame in Xander's voice, but she couldn't help but feel responsible for the attack. "It shouldn't have been possible for the demon to break through. Not without a lot of power. And I would have felt any disturbance to the ward if anything did try to break through. If Sera hadn't slain the demon and carried you here..."

Before she could contemplate on the possibility of Xander's demise, the carpenter interrupted her.

"What!" He turned angrily to Sera. "I thought I told you to get help!"

The poor girl was shocked at his sudden outburst.

"But I..."

"Not buts! You're not a slayer! You may have the super strength and speed, but not the experience or training."

"Xander, don't." Willow pleaded for him to calm down, but he didn't even seem to hear her.

"If you see a demon, you run and find help. You don't try to slay it! Am I clear?"

For a moment it seemed as if Sera was going to reply, but instead she burst into tears and stormed out of the infirmary.

Xander's wary expression turned towards Willow and flinched at the angry look on her face.

"You didn't have to be so hard on her. She saved your life, you know!"

"And she could have been killed in the process."

"No Xander, you listen to me." Willow returned firmly and poked his chest for good measure. "For years I've had to watch you get into situations you had no right to walk away from alive. I've learned to accept that I can't keep you from trying to save Buffy, Dawn, me or whoever else is in trouble. Sera looks up to you. She can't just run away and let you die if she could possibly prevent it. And you of all people shouldn't berate her for that. Especially not when, unlike you, she actually has the superpowers to back her up!"

Willow hated to bring up that last part, knowing that it was a sore point for Xander. He had always been the normal one and while Willow herself admired that about him, her best friend tended to be a bit sensitive on that subject. But this wasn't about Xander, it was about Sera. She had saved Xander's life. He should be grateful instead of angry towards the little slayer. He probably was grateful, but he tended to care more about other people's lives than his own.

Willow could see Xander struggling with his thoughts and feelings. Initially he seemed to have been surprised at Willow's outburst, but after a few moments he seemed to realize his mistake.

"I was being an idiot again, wasn't I?"

"Yup."

"I'm going to have to make it up to her, don't I?"

"Uhuh."

"You're not going to help me are you?"

"Nope."

Xander sighed and lay himself back down on the bed. "She carried me?"

Willow smirked. "Like a groom carries his bride, except that the bride was carrying the groom and an eleven year old girl, while the groom was a 23 year old one-eyed carpenter and the two of them weren't really married. So actually not like that at all."

"Please tell me no one else saw it." Xander pleaded hopefully.

"Oh, it was dark outside and the distance between the house and the school isn't that great, so nobody probably noticed. The slayers at the school, on the other hand... I think about half the girls saw it and the other half will probably have seen the pictures by tomorrow."

"Pictures?" he asked meekly. At the sight Willow's teasing smile he buried his face in his hands.


Sera was lying on her bed, watching the wall change shape through her tears. She knew it was silly to cry over this, but she couldn't help herself. When Willow told Xander that she was the one who had rescued him, she had expected gratitude, or at least acceptance. What she hadn't expected was that he would get mad at her, even though she had disobeyed his order to run and find help. But if she had done as was told, then it would have been too late and Xander would have been either dead or kidnapped. Surely that was worth something, wasn't it?

The knocking on the door spiked her irritation.

"Go away!" she cried.

Of course it was too much to ask for whoever knocked on the door to just do as she told. Apparently Sera was the only one who had to obey orders.

"That's one mighty effective invitation against vampires you got there." Xander said as he walked in.

She couldn't help but grin at the joke and buried her head in her pillow so he wouldn't be able to see it. She was after all supposed to be mad at Xander, and laughing at his jokes wouldn't really show that.

For a while Xander didn't say anything. Perhaps he expected Sera to speak, but she didn't trust herself not to laugh as soon as she separated from the pillow. Besides, the silence was a statement on its own. It stated that she didn't want to talk to him because she was mad and that was really all she had wanted to say.

"You remember what I told about Buffy?"

Sera did, but she didn't say anything. Xander had told her that Buffy was the oldest slayer alive and also that she was one of his best friends. Buffy had gone to Italy after the last battle of Sunnydale, to take a break from fighting demons.

"I never told you why she went to Rome. Well, the thing is, she had always wanted to get away from the slaying. And by always, I mean from the moment she found out she was a slayer."

This surprised Sera. She realized that after nearly 8 years of slaying, Buffy would probably a bit tired of it all, but from what Xander had just said it seemed that it was more than that.

"I don't blame her with the life she's lead. Her first watcher died only a few months after Buffy was called and that wasn't the last time Buffy lost one of her friends. In fact, she had to send her first boyfriend in Sunnydale to hell, after he had killed a good friend of ours. Then a few years ago her second boyfriend left her, and shortly after that Buffy's mother died of an aneurysm. Her third boyfriend died saving the world. And then there are the times that Buffy died herself. Of course, she's alive again now. We brought her back from the death a both times she died, but I don't think either death was any fun for her. And that was just a rough summary of some the tough times she had to face."

Xander paused and for a moment Sera wondered what he himself had gone through. He had told her a few things, among them how he lost his eye and how his fiancée Anya died. But right now she didn't think that was all of it.

He sighed. "What I'm trying to say is that Buffy had a tough life because of her being a slayer. I don't want you to have to deal with the kind of stuff she had to. That's why I was acting like a jerk in there. I'm sorry."

Sera finally turned to look at him and saw the genuine worry and guilt written on his face.

"So, you... you're not mad at me?"

He smiled sadly and sat himself next to her on her bed.

"No, of course not. How could I be mad at my little superhero? I was just scared for you and, well, when I'm scared I sometimes do really stupid things; like getting angry at the girl who saved my life for no reason."

Sera sat up. "Okay, I forgive you." She saw Xander smile in relief. "But, I do have one question:"

"Go ahead, hit me. On second thought, don't hit me, I really don't want to get knocked unconcious again. Just ask away. I am the answering machine... wait... that didn't sound right."

Sera giggled and this time she didn't mind mr. Xander seeing it. "How did you know about the demon?"

He frowned. "What do you mean?"

"You told me to get help, but that was before the demon entered the house. How did you know it was coming?"

There was a pause in the conversation in which Xander seemed to be carefully considering his answer.

"Alright, I'll tell you. But, you'll have to promise me you won't tell anyone about it. Well, except Willow, but she already knows."

"I promise." She assured him without hesitation.

With that he slowly removed his eye-patch and Sera let out a gasp when she saw what it covered. It wasn't one of those bad gasp, it was more a gasp of awe. Because, where she had expected, well, she wasn't sure what she had expected, except that it wasn't what was actually there. Xander had a purple crystal in the place where most people would have an eye!

"This is an Oculus Aurae. Or at least, that's what Willow calls it. I just call it my Aura eye, because it basically allows me to sense Aura's."

"What's an Aura?"

"I'm not sure. Willow mentioned something about radiating photons, but if you really want to know, you'd have to ask her. All I know is that I know when someone is a demon or not and I can kinda sense the difference between Willow's aura and the aura of other people."

"What about my Aura?"

"Well, it's stronger than most. That's pretty much the case with all slayers. Other than that, I'm not very good at the whole Aura reading thing yet. It takes time and practice, and I only got the eye about a month ago. Oh, and check this out."

Xander he took the crystal between his fingers and pulled it out. Sera winced at the sight. With a real eye that would definitely hurt, a lot. The eye-socket itself looked weird. It was like there had never really been an eye to begin with. There was just clean skin that looked like it belonged there and had always been there. The crystal eye was pretty cool. It was kinda round like a normal eye, but cut and polished like a diamond.

"Can you still sense Aura's now?"

"No, it only works when it's in my eye-socket. Sometimes I take it out before I go to sleep, because I keep sensing these changes. It's not like a normal eye, where you can just cover it when you don't want to see anything. The Aura eye always sees and it can see through most objects except when it has a really strong Aura."

"Wow."

"Yeah, it's pretty neat, isn't it?"

Sera nodded as Xander put the crystal back in and once again covered the whole thing with his eye-patch.

"Why do you keep it a secret?"

"Well, several reasons. I guess mostly, because I don't like people asking about it." At the apologizing look on Sera's face he quickly added. "And by people, I mean those who I don't really know and don't really care about. You can ask me about it any time you want." he said with a smile. "And then there's the whole element of surprise thing. If no one knows about the eye, then demons won't know about it either. It gives me a slight advantage and sometimes that can mean the difference between life and death."

The young slayer nodded, with Xander's lack of superpowers these small advantages were probably very important for him just to survive.

"So, when can I go on patrol?"

"Patrol?" Xander looked at her incredulously. "Now wait a second here. I know you have already slain your first demon, but those were extenuating circumstances. Just because you saved my life doesn't mean you're ready for patrol just yet. You still have a lot to learn about demons and fighting them. There will be no patrol for you for a very long while."


Barely two weeks later

Xander was puffing the last few dozen feet towards their target, or whatever was left of it by now. He was in pretty good shape with all the training of slayers, but no amount of work-out could give him the stamina needed to keep up with any one of his slayers, especially one as hyperactive as the eleven-year-old Sera.

Oh, how he hated the puppy-dog eyes that had manipulated him to allow Sera to join the vampire patrol tonight. He made a huge mental note, to never ever allow Sera alone in a room with Buffy, because a combination of Sera's puppy-dog eyes and Buffy's pout could easily break even the toughest battle-hardened warrior.

He came around the corner just in time to see the vampire explode, showering both Sera and then vampire's would be pray with its ashes.

"Wow!" Sera exclaimed. "Xander! Did you see that! I got it!" She added, jumping up and down from the excitement.

Xander couldn't help but smile at the girl's enthusiasm. No one he knew had ever had this much fun slaying vampires.

"Xander?" A familiar voice asked, still vibrating from fear.

He looked at the vampire's intended victim and his smile vanished as he recognized her as a employee of one of the local sawmills, except that she was now covered in ash, rather than sawdust. He quickly straightened up to mask his exhaustion.

"Joanne."

He really didn't feel like explaining the supernatural to her, so he decided to come up with a solid alternate explanation of what had just happened.

"Don't you just hate those dust clouds?" he asked her with a casual smile.

Author's notes:

Sorry about the lateness of this chapter. I decided to make it a bit longer to make up for it... Alright, alright, it's longer because it just turned out that way, but hey, good for you guys right?

Anyway, I'm changing the interval of chapters to 2 weeks from now on. It'll give me some more time to think about the story, which I'm gonna need since I'm out of usable material. Plus it will allow me to work on some other story ideas I've got. So, next chapter can be expected on the 15th of December 2006.