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Author's note: Well, due to positive feedback, I'm going to keep going with this story, adding on two additional little things -- first off, an extra title (as if one just wasn't enough), which leads into my next addition. I did have a whole plan set up for if I want to go on with this story (which I do), but I had this absolutely faboo idea today, and that means adding another show into the crossover mix. So hold onto your trenchcoats, ladies and gents ... :)

Disclaimer: Basically, I'm just repeating this because of the additional crossover stuff. Everybody in here is not mine. I don't own any of the Highlander characters, who don't appear in person and will probably only be in-jokes anyway -- it's the mythology I'm borrowin', buds. The Highlander stuff all ends up back in Gregory Widen and Rysher Entertainment, etc. Neither do the characters from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and the town of Sunnydale, which both belong to the twisted and devious mind of God, otherwise known to the DMV as Joss Whedon. Also -- and here's the addition -- the character of Adam Newman and all the "Tomorrow People" stuff belongs to Roger Damon Price. Okay, done now. *G*

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Prayer for the Dying
or, Headless and Hopeless in Sunnydale
A Highlander/Buffy/Tomorrow People
Crossover
by Troll Princess
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So you get a phone call at 3 o'clock in the morning, and it's a drop-dead gorgeous woman practically begging in that sultry voice of hers to listen to what she has to say. Do you: A.) listen intently, and take one-handed notes? B.) kindly request her phone number and a more convenient time to call her back? Or C.) fake a loud snore and hang up?

I picked C.). And anyone questioning my intelligence at this point should at least hear me out.

The phone rings, it's late at night, and I'm tired. I've got a construction job that lasts all day long. I hang out with my friends for a while, then duck back home for romantic girlfriend time and a little private time with a sharp instrument of death. Then I finally get to see my bed again. Trust me, by 3 in the morning, I am not in the best of moods. I'm not even in the worst of moods. I'm in a nondescript comatose mood.

So I pick up the phone to hang it up again, and hear a soft, "Xander? Are you there?"

This is a voice I once heard whisper sweet nothings in my ear right before shouting sweet nothings at my face. Needless to say, I recognized it.

Which is why I snored and hung up.

A brief explanation on the voice. It belongs to one Cordelia Chase, who made my life hell for something like a year. She was vapid, she was insensitive, she was arrogant ... and from the insistent ringing of my telephone, she apparently didn't take "ZZZZZ" for an answer.

So I answered. "What?" I snapped.

Silence. Then, "Xander? Is that you?"

Something in the way she spoke made me groan into my pillow. I could almost hear the wince through the phone. If she was calling me this late at night -- or early in the morning, depending on your point of view -- it couldn't be good. "Yes, Cordy, it's me."

"I'm sorry I'm calling so late. I just ... I had a bad dream." Then, softer, "A vision."

I didn't think I was supposed to hear that part, so I ignored it as I sat up in bed, silently thanked the powers that be that Anya hadn't slept over, and glanced over at the clock on my nightstand again. "That's why you called me at three in the morning on a Tuesday?" Oh, wait. Three in the morning ... "A Wednesday? Because you had a bad dream? Cordy, I'd love to talk, but --"

"I know what you are."

You know that shy little whisper you hear movies when someone has something very important to say and doesn't know how to say it in anything above a whisper?

"I know what you are." In almost every context imaginable, that's not good. In my case, coming from Cordelia, it's ... well, it's still bad. It's just, if she was calling me for the reason I was thinking of, my night ... morning ... whatever, had just gone from bad to worse.

*************************

Everybody has their little secrets. Buffy's is that she's a Slayer. Dawn's is that she's really a great, big, glowing green mass of destructive energy. Giles's involves Buffy's mother and the roof of a police car, two images that should not be in the same embarrassing little secret.

Mine is this thing where I can't die.

Really, I can't. Not in any of the conventional ways, anyway. Before I actually knew why -- and after I found out why, I felt galactically stupid about the whole thing -- I tried stabbing, shooting, a hammer, and suffocation with my own body pillow.

First off, ow. And second off, my secret is a little more complicated than just not dying.

Do you have any idea how good I've gotten at hiding injuries? How many times I've had to turn "cerebral hemorrhage" into "Really, I'm fine, just need an Advil"? How many times I've had to joke away sensing another of my kind as "hearing those pesky kill-the-cast-of-"Survivor" voices again"?

I'm Immortal. Not immortal ... Immortal. With a capital I.

In case you didn't know, that changes the rules. And where there's rules, there's a Game.

Unfortunately, that had been my whole problem ever since my father pushed me down those basement steps.

*************************

So, right. The phone call.

I'm supposed to be upbeat, right? Take the whole thing in stride, play it off as if I don't know what she's talking about, right? Right. "What are you talking about?"

"Xander, just ... just give me a second, all right? I'll explain, but I woke up with this pounding headache and I ..." She paused again, this heavy pause where she breathed a little heavier than she probably should have. "God, Xander, why didn't you tell me you couldn't die?"

I expected Cordy to say a lot of things. That was not one of them.

My silence gave her enough of an opportunity to start talking again. "Did you know that I was having visions? There was this demon guy who was working for Angel, and he was going to die, and he had the visions, and he kissed me and now I have the visions and I'm babbling, aren't I?"

She laughed, nervous and sniffly, and I figured out she'd been crying. Why the hell would she cry about something like this?

"You could have told me. I wouldn't have worried so much when we were going out. It's not like I mind or anything, I just ... I just wish you wouldn't have kept this from me like you kept the whole Willow thing ... oh, right, Willow ..."

She was rambling. I was fairly sure I was about to hear about some sniffling account of our sad and sordid dating history all over again. And then she went and asked me something totally out of left field.

"What does Willow's girlfriend look like?"

"Tara?" I was all ready to answer just out of instinct, but stopped. I didn't know why she'd want to know about Tara, what the hell she was trying to get at, and most of all, how she had found out that I was Immortal.

Suddenly things started clicking in my head, and my gaze went to the broadsword propped up next to my bed.

I'd had a strange feeling when Tara was near from the first time I met her, something I'd never been able to explain but always felt as if I should recognize. If my teacher had still been alive, I would have asked him if what I thought I was sensing was true.

But if what Cordelia was saying held merit, I'd been right all along.

"Xander, I need you to do something for me, would you?"

She was emotional, really upset. I'd never heard her this distraught before. I think at that point in the conversation, I would have offered to get her groceries, give her a full-body massage, and slay a few dragons while I was at it. She sounded that awful.

"Yeah, sure, Cordelia. What?"

"First, I need you to shoot Tara."

Okay, I'm sorry. Even in retrospect, does that still sound as impossible as it sounded to me at three o'clock in the morning?

"Cordy, I --"

"And I need you to do it in front of the Scoobies. All of them."

Did you ever get that feeling that you were taking a test you hadn't studied for in a class you hadn't taken? I was so flustered, the only thing that seemed to want to come out of my mouth was, "Why?"

The line went silent again. Then, in that shy stage whisper again, Cordy said, "Because if you don't, millions of people are going to die."

Oh.

****************************

There are moments of quiet reflect in a person's life. There's the moment he has his first kiss. The moment he slays his first vampire. That beautiful time when he loads a gun and gets ready to shoot his best friend's lover.

Don't they make movies of the week about this?

Yeah, Tara was going to get shot, all right. And yeah, I was going to be the one to do the dirty work. It's not like I had a lot of choice in the matter. Millions of dead people versus Shoot-Her-Down-She-Shoots-Back-Up Tara. Decisions, decisions.

Cordy'd better be right.

Hell, I'd better be right.

I'm twenty years old and I've already beheaded four men. If what I had been feeling around Tara wasn't imminent Immortality, Willow was never going to forgive me.

Heh ... you know, it didn't hit me until right now.

That I never thought for once about whether or not I'd be able to forgive myself.


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Saturday, February 10, 2001 11:16 PM