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.
Buffy found him on the roof.
After the danger had passed, Xander had quickly taken his leave, offering some hogwash about a publicity stunt by DC to the other students present and taking the policewoman with him. They seemed to accept the flimsy excuse at face value -- gotta love Sunnydale Syndrome -- and the rest of the school day passed without incident.
And without Xander.
She wasn't sure how she felt about all this. About him. A part of her realized that the grudge she held against him was completely irrational, especially after this long, and yet...
She was still several yards behind him when he spoke.
"Her name's Patrice," he said. "Patrice Miller, Officer, Sunnydale Police Department. We never knew, Buffy. Last time... we never even considered it."
Her breath caught in her throat, "You mean... we..."
"I don't know," he shrugged. "The fight in the church was a chaotic mess, and I was busy dealing with Bug Guy at the time, so... I don't know. I just don't know. But we never saw her again after that, and we all thought she was just another demon." He turned and smiled, "But here's the good news. You saw what happened down there. You know what this means?"
"Yeah," she scowled. "You kept your Green Lantern power ring that night and didn't tell anyone."
"Never mind that," he said, waving it off. "Think, Buffy! The goa'uld. As far as I know, they didn't exist in the world I remember. That means the ring got the info from somewhere else, accessing a local database. She called me a 'Stellar Sentinel.' That means there is -- was -- something like the Corps here!"
"So?"
"So," he said, drawing the word out, "the fact that the ring could access their database means some of their stuff survived. It means we might be able to recreate the Corps. Don't you get it, Buffy? A galactic space police force, armed with the most powerful weapons in the universe! And you! You could retire, Buffy. Live a normal life. No more sneaking out to save the world." His voice dropped, low enough that even Slayer hearing couldn't pick it up, "And I don't have to watch you self-destruct again."
Buffy wasn't listening anyway. At the sentence "You could retire, Buffy," her mind raced into overdrive. And she found herself wondering why the idea bothered her so much.
"I've got things to do, Buff," he said distractedly. "Later." Xander turned, and in a flash of green light, transformed into his uniform before flying off.
"Hey, wait!"
Xander descended on the abandoned church like an angel of destruction. He swept through the building, on a quest to lay waste to the undead infesting it.
It was disappointingly uninfested.
"Damn," he scowled. It was the church where Spike had initiated the ritual to restore Drusilla, and he saw signs of a hasty exit, which meant they had been here, but were somehow tipped them off.
He had a pretty good idea how, too.
"Drusilla," he hissed.
"Ooh, Kitten's mad," Dru cooed as she rocked back and forth. Spike was only half paying attention to her, though. The entire mess had fallen to pieces within hours. Angel had vanished, he hadn't had word from any of the Tarakans in far too long, and then Dru had warned him of the "emerald flames" that would hit the church.
It was infuriating.
Drusilla, on the other hand, didn't mind at all. Knowing exactly how your existence was going to end -- in her case, engulfed in green flames -- tended to have a surprisingly calming effect on one's psyche once one had had time enough to process it. Plus, she was totally bonkers. As if that weren't enough, her already unhinged mind was further disturbed by visions of the future-that-was, swept away by a hurricane of changes.
It was also giving her a distinctly unhealthy obsession with the young man at the eye of that storm.
"Find her," she murmured. "Find the little toy soldier. Her strength will become my strength."
That caught Spike's attention.
"Tell me more, luv," he said. "Tell me where to find this toy soldier."
"Hello, Alexander," the voice was oddly accented. Xander turned in surprise, and the man standing next to Kendra extended a hand, "My name is..."
"Sam Zabuto," Xander finished for him. He had met Kendra's Watcher only once in the previous timeline, back during the initial hunt for old-school Watchers who had the skills they needed and only needed a little "re-education" in how things were going to be from then on. He had been struck by the man's resemblance to Tucker Smallwood, the actor who played David Endawi in that episode of Babylon 5.
The resemblance was as strong as ever.
"I take it we've met?" Zabuto asked, cocking an eyebrow.
"Once or twice," Xander shrugged. "Just in passing. More than that, I'd rather not say."
"Understood," Zabuto nodded. "You don't want to introduce changes to the timeline you cannot account for." At Xander's look, he added, "It's obvious you're changing the timeline. You couldn't avoid changing it if you tried, so you're trying to control the changes."
"How did you...?" Xander trailed off.
"It's what I would have done."
Xander nodded, "Fair enough."
"Mister Harris? I have something for you."
"Whatever you're sellin', we don't want any," Tony Harris growled and moved to slam the door in the stranger's face. The stranger blocked the door with one hand, then reached forward and wrapped the other around his throat.
"No, really," the stranger said. "I insist."
"Thank you for speaking with me, Alexander," Zabuto said. "It has been... most educational. I believe we are done. Kendra? Do you feel up to a patrol tonight? I believe Miss Summers is patrolling the Bronze area."
"Certainly, sir. I will patrol the odher cemetaries."
They hadn't spoken of the future. Rather, Zabuto had grilled Xander on the events that had given him his memories of the future and other past contributions to the Good Fight. Xander felt drained. He had encountered good interrogators before, but he'd never been this thoroughly spent.
On the other hand, he hadn't had anywhere near as much to hide before either. At the moment, he just wanted to go home and get some sleep.
So it was in this fatigued state that Xander entered the Harris home.
He didn't bother announcing his return. By this time of day, his parents had almost certainly drunk themselves into a stupor, and the last thing he needed was the temptation to show his father just how much his "worthless, no good son" could do if he were so inclined.
He was a little surprised to not find them passed out in the living room. Even more surprising was the note on the coffee table.
"Son,
"Surprise for you in the fridge.
"Love, Mom + Dad."
What the hell? he frowned. Since when do they give a damn about me? Is this for the CPS ladies' sake? God forbid they'd ever actually change for real... he shook the thought off and headed for the kitchen. The note's handwriting was a lot neater than he was used to seeing from either of his parents. Apparently, whichever one of them wrote it had actually been sober at the time, miraculously enough.
Something felt wrong. He wasn't sure why, but something -- about the note, about his parents' unexplained absence, about the whole situation in general -- was bothering him. It seemed... familiar, somehow...
He opened the fridge.
Kendra was in an alleyway between cemetaries. She had already covered three of the seven cemetaries on this side of town and was moving toward the fourth. Activity had been surprisingly light, with only half a dozen vampires so far. She had expected a hellmouth to have a much higher vampire population than that, but she was not about to complain.
"Hello, girl."
She turned in surprise. The one who had spoken was a bleached blond vampire, wearing a leather jacket. From the description, it had to be the one called Spike. At least thirty vampires, ten on either side of her, and five on each wall. She silently cursed herself for getting complacent. This, at least, explained the strange absence of vampires in the first three cemetaries.
Drawing a second stake with her left hand, she prepared for the coming onslaught.
"Get her!" Spike yelled. The vampires charged.
Author's Postscript:
Well, imagine that. A double cliffhanger.
Hands up if you think you know what's coming.