DR2 - The Cross of Changes by Nick Midian, Book II, part 2 of 8

Written by Nick Midian

Content beta-reading and storyline suggestions by Duncan
English grammar, spelling, slang, Highlander continuity and general corrections
by Theo
French slang, content beta-reading and storyline suggestions by Mash
French slang by Alan


EMAIL: jcaballero@euskalnet.net

WEBSITE: http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/thedarkages

SPOILERS: For Buffy the Vampire Slayer: 3rd season, BUT no Xander/Willow kissing
and no Lover's Walk (welcome to the wonderful State of Denial, Land of
'Shippiness). Hmmm, I've messed with the third season's timeline to accommodate
it to my necessities. Let's just say that 'Band Candy' happened a lot later than
it did, around the first days of February, OK?
For Highlander: None really, the characters of the TV series and films are only
tangentially mentioned. You just need to know the basics of Highlander-style
immortality, BUT I've always thought that whole 'Immortals have no parents and
are found in a little basket' is a... um, the Spanish word for it is 'chorrada',
so let's just ignore it, OK?
KEYWORDS: Romance, Angst, Action-adventure, Violence, Alternate Universe,
Crossover.
RATING: PG-13 with some mild R parts for violence and sexual innuendo.
DISCLAIMER: This story has been written with no intention of profit, merely for
the pleasure of writing and sharing it.
The concept and characters of BTVS (Buffy, Angel, Cordelia, Xander, Willow, Oz,
Giles, Joyce, Spike, Drusilla, Snyder, Faith, Harmony, Lyle Gorch, Quentin
Travers and the rest) are intellectual and legal property of Joss Whedon, Warner
Brothers, Mutant Enemy, etc. Also, the concept of Highlander and the characters
mentioned here (Duncan MacLeod, Amanda Darieux, Richie Ryan, Joe Dawson and the
Society of Watchers) are the property of Panzer-Davis and Rysher Entertainment.
Michael Deveraux, Rachel Curran, Crystal Parker, Kyle White Owl, Robert
Coltrane, Elvis the Dog, Broderick Egoyan, Damon Frost, Mr. Smith, the World
Committee for Civil Defense and the rest are my own creation.
All the songs and lyrics here are used without permission, they are copyright of
their respective rights owners.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Please, understand that English is not my native language, so
any grammatical or spelling errors are my fault, not of any one of my wonderful
beta-readers. If you're thinking of sending any flames, please be kind with me.
I'm a grown man, but I still can cry like a child, believe me.
Additional Author's Note: The songs performed by Oz's band are 'Loli Jackson'
and 'Serenade' by Dover. It appears courtesy of Subterfuge records. All rights
reserved, yadda, yadda, yadda...
SUMMARY: After the events in 'Dark Reflection' a new threat menaces both the
Slayerettes and the Archangels as new and old enemies come to Sunnydale, merging
past and present. This time, it's something personal - ta-da-da-dam!!! (sorry,
but I just had to say that)

And now, on with the show. Fasten your seat belts ladies and gentlemen, because
it's going to be a long, hard and jumpy ride...

~~~~~~

The cast for Book II


Nicholas Brendon as Xander Harris
Charisma Carpenter as Cordelia Chase

Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers
David Boreanaz as Angel
Alyson Hannigan as Willow Rosenberg
Seth Green as Daniel 'Oz' Osborne
Anthony Stewart Head as Rupert Giles
Kristine Sutherland as Joyce Summers

Matthew Perry as Michael Deveraux
Paula Trickey as Rachel Curran
James Marsters as Spike
Nikki Cox as Crystal Parker
David James Elliott as Kyle White Owl
Elvis the Dog as Himself

Eliza Dushku as Faith Adams
Donald Sutherland as The Old Chess Player, Broderick Egoyan
Sebastian Spence as Damon Frost
Avery Brooks as Mr. Smith

Mercedes MacNab as Harmony Kendall
Armin Shimerman as Principal Snyder
Amy Chance as Aphrodesia
Persia White as Aura

Alan Rickman as Conrad Swann
Wesley Snipes as Talon Pantera
Dennis Rodman as Rush Pantera
Tom Berenger as Colonel Cabbot Ashe
Michael Ironside as the Sergeant
Trevor Goddard as Backlash
Shaquille O'Neal as Beast
Jet Li as Bushido

with

Kevin Spacey as Robert Coltrane
Nicholas Lea as Jonah Whalls
and
Catherine Zeta-Jones as the Lady in Red

~~~~~~


When the doctor called him, Giles needed a few seconds to decipher his words as
they crossed the thick layer of fog that surrounded his mind. When he was
finally able to understand the mystic complexities of the words 'Rupert Giles',
he stood up from his chair and walked to the man dressed in the white lab coat.

Oddly, all he was able to think of was that the man, who carried a little
nametag hanging from the upper pocket of the coat that read 'Dr. Limus', looked
surprisingly much like a TV actor, whose name he couldn't remember now even to
save his own life.

"Are you Rupert Giles?" the young doctor asked him again.

Looking at him with unfocused eyes, Giles frowned and shook his head in a sharp
nod. He passed a hand over his tired features, and sighed like a balloon losing
all the air that gave life to him. "Y-yes, I'm Rupert Giles."

Nodding and arching his brow, probably too accustomed to this kind of thing for
his own good, the young doctor turned around, taking an apple out of the pocket
of his white coat.

"Follow me," he told Giles, before taking a greedy bite from the apple and a
look at the file he carried in his other hand.

"May I ask, what was the exact nature of your relationship with the late..." he
took a more careful look at the file, checking the dead man's name with the
boredom of one who had done this kind of thing one-too-many times, "...Mr.
Harris?"

=Xander. His name was Xander.= That was what those who cared about him had
called the young man.

Harris was what the others had called him. The jocks. The people that didn't
really know him. Those who had never noticed what a valuable young man he was.
Brave beyond belief, strong in the times of necessity, loyal to those he loved.

Probably the greatest hero Giles had ever known.

"I was his teacher," he succinctly told the doctor.

"Really?" the doctor asked, with an expression of surprise. He then shrugged. "I
never had a teacher so good in high school, that I put him down as the person to
call in case of an emergency."

It was one of the greatest and cruelest truths in life that most of the time,
you don't really know what you've got 'til you lose it.

Giles thought it would be a lie to say that he had always been conscious of how
important Xander had been for all of them. Not only as an aid to the always
dangerous labor of Slayage, but as a rock on which all of them had leaned on in
the worst of times.

When the danger and the pain seemed to overwhelm them and he had made a quick
joke, why hadn't he thought that he was as scared as the rest of them, that he
was only trying to protect himself from the pain and the fear?

Why had he only thought that Xander was just an annoying kid?

When the chips had been down and the boy had always been there, nervously
jumping from foot to foot, had he valued the fact that Xander hadn't run away
screaming at the top of his lungs but stayed, covering their backs?

Or had he just thought that Xander was an impediment, somebody that only slowed
down and endangered them?

"He was my friend," Giles softly said, not caring if the young doctor heard him
or not.

If so, he didn't acknowledge it and limited himself to leading Giles through the
intricate web of corridors and hallways from the waiting room, to that cold and
empty place where the still corpse of his young pupil lay in repose, waiting for
the moment of his burial.

He had been Giles' friend. He had been there when he had been needed. He had
been there even when he had been ignored, and shoved aside by those who so
eagerly called themselves his friends. He had been there for them all so many
times, it was impossible to count.

But, had Rupert Giles been his friend? Had he returned his bravery, his
friendship, his undying loyalty? Had he been there when Xander had needed him?

In spite of his words to Buffy just a couple of days before, he wasn't very sure
he could say yes.

Now that everything was over, it was easy to look back and, examining those warm
brown eyes, understand the depth of his feelings – to see his loneliness, and
the silent cry for help that his sarcastic humor had hidden.

Why had he never seen him doing anything else, apart from the activities related
to the school and their after-hours job? Why had he always been so absorbed that
he had never worried that he had no friends, outside of their tight little
circle?

Why had he never told him how proud he was of him?

Why had he never told him that he loved him?

As a friend. As a brother-in-arms. As the son he'd never had.

Life is just a succession of moments that pass us by so fast, that we don't have
the proper time to cherish them. And, once out of our grasp, they seem so
important that they take our attention away from the ones that are still coming
to us.

In this particular case, he had fallen into his own trap – getting too caught up
in the web of a life so complicated, that it had obscured even the most simple
pleasures of existence. Friendship, brother- and father-hood.

They had lost him. And, dear God, he had no idea of how they were going to
manage to keep on going.

"Here we are," the doctor announced when they entered into room at the end of
the hallway and quickly walked to the neat rows of refrigerated chambers that
held the bodies of those who had understood the final truth about life.

Sooner or later, it ends.

The young doctor, still happily munching on his apple, opened one of the
chambers in the central row and extended the litter that, guided on metallic
rails, carried a body on it, covered by a white blanket as a concession to
modesty.

Giles felt something beginning to break inside him. A painful sensation that he
had only felt once before, the same moment he had found Jenny Calendar's body
lying on his bed.

The realization of the fact that a loved one was dead, that they would never be
there again in the good times or bad. That there would be no more shared
happiness or sorrow, no more smiles and tears, no more laughter and crying.

And then the doctor (Jerry O'Connell, he looked like the young actor from that
sci-fi series that had captivated him during his first new months in a strange
land, far away from his beloved England) finally put aside the white sheet.
Uncovering his face, Rupert Giles had to make a strong effort not to fall to his
knees.

"Is it him?" the doctor asked.

Was it him? Were those his features? They couldn't be. The boy he remembered
didn't have half of his face so swollen, that it was almost unrecognizable.

He didn't have those horrible wounds on his forehead and brow, so deep and open
that the white of the bone was visible through its separated edges.

He reached with a trembling hand and caressed his cold forehead, softly
smoothing the locks of dark hair, sticky with a mix of dried blood and other
fluids he didn't want to know about.

He felt the tears coming out of his green eyes then, as a sob of pain managed to
escape from his lips.

"Is it him?" the doctor insisted. "Do you officially recognize this body as the
one of Alexander L. Harris?"

Giles raised his green eyes from the face of the body, and looked hard at young
Jerry O'Connell look-a-like. Then, choking down a sob, he answered him. "Yes, he
is."

Nodding, the young doctor scribbled some notes in the file and looked at the
middle-aged librarian. "If you'll follow me, Mr. Giles, we'll finish up the
paperwork and you'll be free to return to your daily routine."

Taking his eyes away from him, Giles returned to looking at Xander's face. He
couldn't believe he was dead.

He couldn't accept it. It wasn't fair. It wasn't right. It wasn't how things
should be.

Leaning down on him, he placed a soft and tender kiss on the boy's forehead. "I
love you, Xander," he told him, wishing he would be able to hear him.

Then, caressing his hair one last time, he said goodbye to him and walked behind
the young doctor, getting out of that damned hellish room.

~~~~~~

"Why didn't you call his parents?" Giles asked the doctor moments later, while
he finished signing the legal papers.

"We tried," Dr. Limus told him while examining the papers to check they were
properly completed. "But it seems like they're pretty hard to get in touch
with."

With a shrug, he placed a new set of papers in front of the librarian, and
pointed at the dotted lines. "Please, put your name here, here and here, and
your initials there and there."

Sighing, Giles did as he was told. "May I know what was the official cause of
death?" he asked without raising his green eyes from the papers, not wanting the
young doctor to see the rage that was slowly but surely boiling up in them.

Leaning on the desk, Dr. Limus shrugged. "Probably some kind of animal attack,"
he told the librarian, whose hand immediately stopped its flow over the papers.
"A large animal – that would explain the wounds, the bite marks and the broken
bones."

Giles felt his fingers tightening painfully on the pen he was using and tried to
concentrate on that activity, not to explode at the younger man's stupidity. Or
maybe it wasn't stupidity, maybe it was worse.

"Large?" he asked. "You mean like a bear, for example?"

The doctor nodded. "Yeah, a bear. That'd make sense."

On hearing this, Giles couldn't help but to leave the pen on the flat surface of
the desk. Then, very slowly, she stood up, and, after taking off his glasses and
carefully putting them in the interior pocket of his jacket, he settled his hard
eyes on the young doctor.

Dr. Limus raised his eyes from the papers and looked back at him. Immediately,
he did a double-take.

Where had the middle-aged, broken man gone to? And who was that avenging angel
in front of him, looking down at him with burning green eyes that held no mercy
or remorse?

When Giles spoke again, the cold but barely controlled tone he used only
reinforced the younger man's impression of him. This man in front of him seemed
very capable of causing him a great deal of physical harm. He seemed even eager
to do so.

"Are you trying to tell me that an animal," Giles began, invading the young
doctor's personal space, practically pushing him against the wall, "a bear of
all things, attacked that boy, killed him and then stashed him into a locker of
the municipal high school? Do you really expect me to believe that?"

Giles leaned closer to him, almost touching his nose with his. "Do I look like
I'm retarded, perchance?"

Dr. Limus blinked, and gulped down nervously. "Well, uh, ah, I... I mean, I..."

With a menacing growl, Giles ripped the medical file away from the doctor's
hands and moved away from him, beginning to flip through its contents.

"Hey!" the young doctor protested. "That's privileged information, you can't-"

Giles cut him off with just a look; the doctor shut his mouth and, deciding it
would be safer for him to remain silent, let himself fall onto the nearest
chair.

Putting on his spectacles again, Giles went through the contents of the file,
reading them with critical and expert eyes. Feeling his insides freeze, he read
through the coroner's preliminary examination.

Multiple bone fractures.

Deep lacerations.

Pierced hands and ankles.

Open wounds.

Massive blood loss.

The words jumped to his eyes, as if they were alive and hostile. So much pain,
so much suffering. Had he begged for his life? Had he cried like a child? Had he
thought of them as that monster tortured him, thinking himself alone and
abandoned?

He closed the file with a ragged slap, and turned around to face the doctor with
a hard look. "When will you have the complete autopsy results?" he asked with a
ragged voice.

The doctor swallowed nervously. "There isn't gonna be a full autopsy," he stated
simply.

Giles slammed the file on the desk, making the doctor yelp in surprise when his
slap on the wooden surface resounded like a gunshot inside the small office.
"Are you seriously trying to tell me that you're not going to do an
investigation, in so clear a case of homicide?"

For a moment, the two men looked at each other in silence. "We rarely do them in
so... obvious a case," the doctor eventually murmured.

"What do you mean?"

Dr. Limus avoided Giles' intense stare and looked away, as if in shame. "You
know, in this kind of case. We just want to get rid of them as soon as possible,
and he has all the signs."

Giles' sigh sounded almost painful. "Explain yourself."

"His body heat's dropped to ambient temperature, and then risen and fallen again
until it stabilized at 15 degrees Celsius, making it impossible to calculate the
exact moment of death. And there's also been no apparent degeneration of the
organic tissue, even though there's no brain or heart activity. That's
consistent with what I've seen in the others, when they're going to... to turn."

The doctor remained in silence for a moment, as if doubting whether to continue
or shut up. Licking his lips with nervousness, he decided to continue. "And
there's something else..."

"What!?!" Giles insisted, grabbing Dr. Limus by the lapels of his white lab
coat, effortlessly lifting him as if he weighed nothing and finally pushing him
against the wall.

"Th-there's some kind of electrical activity associated with the central nervous
system. I can't explain it – I-I haven't seen anything like that before. Not
even in the others. It's as if his body is acting like some kind of collector,
gathering up all the ambient electricity, kinda like an electric battery."

Releasing him, Giles stepped back sighing and passing a tired hand over his
face. "But the bottom line is that... h-he is going to turn. Oh dear God, he's
going to turn."

Coughing, regaining his vertical posture, Dr. Limus rearranged his white coat,
smoothing out the wrinkles caused by Giles' grasp. "I'm afraid so," he said.

The man then continued, "And we don't want him here when that happens. So we'd
like you or whoever to take charge of him, to take him away and give him a
proper burial or whatever as soon as possible."

Side-stepping him, the young doctor didn't wait for the older man's response and
quickly began to go out the office, obviously wanting to get the hell away.

"Who are we?" Giles asked him, at the last possible moment.

"Pardon?" Dr. Limus said, turning around with a frown on his face.

"We?" Giles insisted. "Who's this we that doesn't want the body of my friend
around here? The we who knows the situation, and who remains silent?"

For a moment, the young doctor looked at him as if he was crazy. "If you need to
ask that," he finally told him before getting out and losing himself in the cold
interior of the Sunnydale morgue, "then you don't have any idea of what goes on
in this town."

~~~~~~

The ghost that came out of the building that housed the city morgue, had very
little resemblance to the man Buffy had grown to love like a father for the last
few years.

The gray bags under his clouded green eyes, and the five o'clock shadow on his
pale face were unusual features on his otherwise maturely handsome face, and it
could be said that he had the overall appearance of a very sick man.

Taking away her hazel eyes from his figure, unable to look directly at him,
Buffy wondered what her own appearance was like. Probably as bad as his, because
she felt like crap.

Or rather, she would love to feel like crap, because the truth was that she
could hardly feel anything at all.

It was like being numb.

She figured that her current state couldn't be much different to the one of
those people whose story starred in last week's 'Incredible but True'; someone
who'd fallen into a frozen lake in Minnesota, or someplace where it seems to be
perpetually winter. And who's rescued by his neighbors or, sometimes, his own
dog.

The doctors always seem the same in those places, saying the same things. 'He
was clinically dead for some minutes, but we were able to revive him...'

What was it like for those people, when they fell into those freezing waters?
Was that numbness that took control of their bodies, like that same piercing
cold that killed her breath on her lips, that might even stop the beating of her
heart?

She didn't know – but certainly, it felt like being clinically dead.

The idea of Xander in that cold and concrete gray building, stashed inside one
of those refrigerated chambers that would keep his body intact until the moment
of his burial, seemed obscene to her.

Her Xander-shaped friend, her brother in all but blood, had been the epitome of
life.

If there had been one thing in the last few years that had kept her grounded,
that had prevented her from falling into that darkness that seemed to be the
unavoidable destiny of all Slayers, that had been a light in her dark, that
thing had been Xander Harris.

Where everything had been tears, he had brought laughter.

Where everything had been death, he had brought life.

In that forever night that was her existence and destiny, he had been a shining
light.

If it was so easy to see it now, why she had never understood it before? Why had
she always taken him for granted?

These, and other, even more nagging questions, flooded into her mind as she
raised her head to see her Watcher, mentor and friend walking to her. The most
important ones, the most painful were, as always, the 'what ifs'.

What if she hadn't allowed him, and all her friends, to plunge themselves so
much into what was her responsibility and fate?

Would he be still alive?

What if she hadn't overlooked Faith, thinking that she would come back into the
fold once she had worked out her issues?

Would he be still with them?

What if-

"We have to talk to everybody," Giles told to her, bringing the blonde Slayer
out of her reverie.

She shook her head, confused. "What?"

Fumbling with the keys, trying to open the door of his car, the middle-aged man
looked at her over the roof of his aged car. "We have to discuss what we're
going to do now."

Buffy looked back at him, through half-closed eyes. "Is there really any need to
say it?" she asked. "I'm gonna find Faith, and make her pay for this."

"I'm not talking about that," he said, shifting in his seat and starting the
engine, which coughed like a frog with a cold.

"What, then?"

Giles sighed deeply, and closed his eyes for a brief moment. Then, looking
straight into her eyes, he said the only words that could make that horrible
situation even worse.

"Xander. He-he's going to come back. He's going to turn into a vampire."

~~~~~~

"What is there to discuss?" Cordelia asked a couple of hours later, when all of
them were gathered in the library. "We're going to restore his soul, that's what
we're going to do!"

To say that she was a pale ghost of her usual self, would be an understatement.
Her eyes were bloodshot and swollen by the tears, her skin was pale and feverish
and the haunted expression on her face was the one of a person at the limits of
her physical endurance.

If she was still on her feet, it was thanks purely to the strength of her will.

"I'm afraid it's not that easy," Giles said, taking off his glasses and rubbing
the bridge of his nose.

"Easy?" Cordelia exclaimed with incredulity. "You say easy?!? Of course it is!!
If Xander's gonna rise we have to do the ritual, we have to give him his soul
back!"

"And what if it doesn't work?" Buffy asked, without turning around from her
position by the nearest window, her eyes lost on the school campus, looking at
the people walking across the grass, living their lives with normalcy, not
knowing what she knew, free from her nightmares and her burdens. "What do we do
then?"

"What do you mean?" Oz inquired, while he helped Giles to place a set of books
on the nearest table. "We've done it before."

"Yeah," the Slayer said, finally turning around and facing them. "Three times,
four if you count the one that Drusilla interrupted. And how many times have we
had success? Once. A 25 % success rate is not exactly something we should be
proud of, people."

Before Cordelia could respond to her, Willow came out of Giles' office, looking
tired, sick and helpless. She made a beeline towards her boyfriend, who lost no
time in taking her into his comforting arms.

"I've been on the phone with Xander's mother," she told them, "they're going...
they're going..." she choked down a sob and took a deep breath, succeeding in
not starting to cry again.

"They're going to bury him tonight. There'll be a short ceremony in the chapel
of the Parker Street cemetery, just family and friends, and then they'll..."
Willow's voice died and she looked down, letting Oz take her to a seat and rock
her softly like a child.

"They sure are hurrying up," Cordelia snorted, removing an errant lock of dark
hair from her face.

"Well, they, um, they think that it'll be better for everybody to be quick about
it, that Xander wouldn't have wanted anybody to suffer needlessly."

"Yeah," the brunette said with a sad look, "as if they ever cared about what he
felt or wanted. But I don't still understand why you seem so reluctant to do the
ritual."

"Because it won't work," a deep voice stated near them, making them turn around
in surprise.

Calmly walking out of the shadows, but still maintaining himself as far away as
possible from the windows, Angel looked at them. He had a haunted and
guilt-ridden expression that was so deep that it seemed excessive even on his
face, so accustomed to having one there on it.

Seeing him, Buffy quickly ran into his arms, allowing the souled vampire to
envelope her into a fierce hug. "I'm sorry I wasn't able to come sooner, I..."

"Sshh," the Slayer hushed his excuse, "don't say anything. Just hold me,
please."

Almost all the rest of their friends looked away uncomfortably, as Angel rocked
Buffy softly in his arms, offering her all his love and comfort.

Almost all of them but Cordelia, who just coughed harshly, getting their
attention. "Could we just get back to the matter at hand, please? Which is why
you don't want to have Xander back!!"

"It's not that we don't want him back," Giles insisted tiredly. "God knows that
no one would be happier than I if we could erase all that has happened, and
bring Xander back to us – b-but we have to accept the fact, that that's not
going to happen."

"Angel," he told the dark-haired vampire, speaking directly at him for the first
time in months, "could you explain yourself, please? Wh-why are you so sure the
soul restoration ritual won't work with Xander?"

Licking his lips, Angel looked at him with guilt reflected in his dark eyes. In
spite of the months that had passed, it was still difficult for him to face the
middle-aged man and not feel the shame and guilt of all the pain and suffering
he had caused him.

"I've been investigating, researching as you like to call it, the gypsy soul
curse. It seems that those people did a pretty good job, when they forged it,"
the vampire said slowly.

"What do you mean?" Buffy inquired with a small frown.

Guiding her to the rest of her friends, never looking directly at them, the
souled vampire fought to find the correct words to explain himself. "They were a
group of very old and wise gypsies, and they considered the curse a means of
punishment to make a spirit suffer a righteous pain. In other words, they only
wanted to curse someone who really deserved it."

Curiously, it was Willow who was the first one that really understood the
implications of his words. "Oh no..."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Cordelia asked her, a nagging dread piercing
her insides.

"If I've understood Angel right," the redhead said, looking horrified at the
vampire, "Xander needs to be guilty of something for us to be able to curse
him."

"That's it exactly, Willow," Angel confirmed, "otherwise the soul restoration
ritual won't work."

"That's why it didn't work with Faith the first time," Buffy realized. "But the
second time... I saw her eyes glowing, so how was she able to do what she did to
him?"

Angel shrugged helplessly. "A moment of happiness? I don't know. That's a
question which I can't answer, I'm sorry."

"We can't let him kill an innocent passerby," Giles said, letting himself fall
defeated onto the nearest chair.

"Why not?" Cordelia asked, receiving surprised looks from everybody. "I mean,
not an innocent person... but we could, I don't know, get some killer, or a drug
dealer or somebody like that and, I don't know, give them to him."

The blonde Slayer looked at her with incredulous eyes. "Yeah, like you'd toss a
steak to a caged lion."

"Right," the brunette nodded, thinking that she had gotten her point across.

Buffy snorted, shaking her head. "You can't be serious."

Cordelia looked suddenly angry. "You bet I'm goddamn serious!!" she exclaimed.
"Xander has given himself for everybody throughout the years, he's made
uncountable sacrifices for people he didn't even know and never asked for
anything in return. Well, I say that they give something for him now. I say that
they make the sacrifice!!"

"Cordelia!" Giles shouted at her. "We can't do that, we can't assume the right
of deciding who deserves to live and who deserves to die, we're not gods!!"

"So, what, then?!?" she shouted back, at the verge of tears. "We just stand back
and do nothing? Or bury him, stake him when he rises and let it all go, as if
nothing happened? We can't do that. I can't do that!!"

She turned away from all of them, hiding her face between her hands and openly
beginning to cry. It seemed that crying was all that she had been doing for the
last few days.

Surprisingly for all of them, Angel was the one who reacted first and went to
her. "Cordelia," he said to her, placing his hands on her shoulders.

"Let me go!!" she shouted, shrugging him away with a shake of her shoulders.

"Cordelia," he gently insisted, bringing his hands to her face, cupping it
gently into his cold hands and lifting it so he would be able to look straight
into her wet and reddened eyes. "I know it's hard to think clearly about it
right now."

He continued firmly, "And I know that you only want him back, that you'd gladly
do whatever it takes... but you have to think in terms of what Xander would do,
what he would want."

Angel paused. "Do you really think that he'd like to live knowing that somebody
died, just so he could get his soul back? Do you think he could even stand that
idea? I know that I didn't know him as well as you did, but quite frankly I
can't possibly believe that the answer would be yes."

"That's easy for you to say," she responded, seriously looking at his dark eyes.
"You've got your soul already."

Walking away from him, the brunette girl looked away through the window, using
the rays of daylight entering through the glass as a barrier that separated her
from him. "Don't you think that it's absolutely ironic that you get to live like
a human, and the only choices Xander has are to do it like a monster or to die
at the hands of his only friends?"

Closing his eyes for a brief moment, Angel looked at the floor. "I'm sorry."

"I'm sure of that," Cordelia snorted, walking to the closet. "That's what all of
you seem to do best. Feel sorry."

"Where are you going?" Buffy asked her with a weak voice, seeing that she was
taking her jacket.

Not turning around to face her, Cordelia just put it on over her sweater. "It
seems pretty obvious to me that there's nothing more I can do here, and I have
to get ready. I don't know if you still remember, but I have a funeral to
attend."

Then, without uttering another word, she left them, walking out of the library.

"What now?" Oz asked softly, bringing them out of their respective reveries.

Sighing and putting on his glasses, Giles shook his head. "I-I don't know. I
don't know what to do – I don't know if, uh, if there's even anything we can
do."

"You know?" Willow said, getting up from her boyfriend's lap. "Suddenly, Cordy
doesn't sound so crazy to me. I mean, there's a lot of people out there that can
barely be considered human – who says that they deserve to live more than
Xander?"

"Stop it," Giles said sharply. "We, we can't do that. We have not the right to
take that decision, it's just not in our hands to do so!"

"Then what? We just throw in the towel? Do nothing?"

"It wouldn't work, anyway," Angel said, passing a hand through his hair.

Buffy looked at him with a frown. "What?"

"That idea, it wouldn't work." He settled his dark eyes on the Slayer, and she
couldn't help but shiver when she saw Angelus' reflection in them. "A vampire is
a predator, if he kills to feed he can't really be blamed for it."

Buffy half-closed her eyes, looking at him with incredulity. "You can't be
serious."

"I am," he arched his brow, "dead serious, no pun intended. When a lion kills a
gazelle, you don't consider it to be murder – it's just the way nature is, the
big fish eating the little one. Killing to feed is the same, in the universal
scheme of things; Xander wouldn't be considered guilty of any sin."

Angel paused. "He would have to kill just for the pleasure of it, simply because
he liked it..." his eyes fell on the Scooby Gang with all the force of his inner
darkness, "...the same way I used to."

"So we're right back where we started," Buffy said, turning around, not want to
consider the implications of that right then. "Either we leave him free to kill
innocent people, or we like dust him straight off the bat."

"He is already dead," Giles stated, letting the words escape through his
clenched teeth, "the thing that will rise from his coffin won't be Xander, but
a-a monster that's inhabiting his body."

"And there's nothing else we can do?" Willow asked him weakly, quickly losing
all her hopes, seeing the future in front of her darker than what she had ever
dreamed.

Giles just closed his eyes, unable to look at her or any of the rest of them.

There was indeed nothing else they could do.

There was no hope.

And the saddest part, the thing that made Giles' insides cringe in pure
spiritual pain at that very moment, was knowing that the worst was yet to come.

~~~~~~

'Fall into the light.'

That was what the voice was telling him to do.

After what had seemed like eons of nothing more than pitch-black darkness and
painful and surreal nightmares, there was now something else to hold on to.

Something to maintain the integrity of his sanity in the middle of that
whirlwind of strange dreams and whispered sensations, fed directly into his mind
and soul.

A voice, and a light in the darkness.

The voice was strange and distorted, as if it was formed from the mixture of a
thousand different throats. It was high-pitched and deep, ragged and sweet, it
was shouting, muttering, screaming and murmuring.

It was a cry and a whisper. It was a warning, a menace and an advisement, all
wrapped up as one.

And it was telling him to fall into the light.

For the first time, he had spatial awareness and he felt himself abandoning his
current state of existence. He was carried away by invisible arms, floating
first and then falling at the speed of light to that faraway point of
illumination, that shone in the distance like a star about to be born.

He reached out to it, feeling the physical sensation of wind against his face,
brushing his hair, drawing sweet tears from his eyes. The light came closer and
closer, with each new beat of his heart.

He smiled.

He was coming back to life.

The pain was gone. The suffering had ended.

For a brief moment he just closed his eyes, and reveled in the peaceful
sensation of free fall, opening his arms out wide, caressing the darkness around
him as it was slowly vanishing into soft, silky tendrils. He spun and stalled
like a bird, drawing slow and erratic circles like a fallen angel with broken
wings.

He felt at peace.

The point of light grew and grew in front of his eyes and, as the bright light
dissipated the darkness, he felt it warming his body, breathing life back into
him.

He felt his heart beating inside his chest. He felt the air coming into his
lungs.

He reached for, and fell into the light – and for a moment, the flash of it
blinded him. For some seconds, seeing the stars shine under his closed eye-lids,
he thought of himself falling into a real night; into the starry night sky of
California, coming back like an astronaut that had been away from his home
planet for a long time.

Coming back to the ones he loved.

Then he opened his eyes, and saw only darkness.

But it was a different kind of darkness. He noticed it, for that brief second in
which everything seemed so real and normal that he believed it had all been
nothing more than a twisted nightmare conjured up by his mind. Overloaded by a
night of too much junk food, and bad movies.

It was a darkness produced merely by a lack of light, not by a lack of life.

It was a real darkness that came from outside, not from inside of him.

He was home.

And then, just when he felt the corners of his lips about to rise in an
involuntary smile... he felt it, hitting him like a pile-driver.

First of all it was the notion that he was trapped, couched and silky walls
surrounding him barely a few inches away from his body, and he felt panic engulf
him as a wave of claustrophobia hit him full-force.

But then, even that sensation was buried, overwhelmed by a more primal and deep
feeling.

It began in his fingertips like a crackling tickle and quickly extended all
throughout his body, traveling through his nerves like a living, electrical
pulse, setting them on fire.

Making him close his eyes tightly shut, and his fists clench so tightly that his
nails gouged into the skin of his palm, drawing his blood. Almost at the edge of
his consciousness, he felt it wet and cold, as it was spilled and flowed between
his fingers.

His body arched up as the sensation engulfed his whole being into an electric
current, and his upper jaw slid on his lower one, producing an unnerving and
screeching sound.

Then, on the trail of this, following the path opened up by the pain, came the
thirst. His mouth dried and his throat suddenly ached, with a need that screamed
to be alleviated inside his mind.

He felt something stirring inside him. Something that was alive. Something that
was hungry. Something that was clamoring to be fed.

Hunger. It was pure, unadulterated hunger, need and wanting.

His eyes opened, blazing red-gold in the darkness of his trap, and his nostrils
flared with the smell of human flesh.

They were close, so close...

He could feel them. He could smell them. He could hear them.

The hearts inside their chests, the blood running through their veins.

His mind went into overload, covered by a blood-red veil and he was reduced to
his simplest form, turned into a creature of physical need and desire.

His rational thinking disappeared, and the only thing that remained as the fangs
began to grow for the first time inside his mouth and the inhuman roar was born
in his throat, was a beast that needed to be placated.

The light inside him died.

His soul cried out.

His heart stopped beating.

And then Xander Harris finally rose, turned into a creature of the night.

~~~~~~

As he saw the last of the assistants to the funeral going out of the small
chapel, Oz followed him closely. And, after looking at Giles over his shoulder
and receiving a nod of confirmation from the middle-aged librarian, he quickly
closed the double wooden doors and locked them with the medieval-looking
security bar.

The young werewolf wondered if that was a wise move, it would surely stop anyone
from entering the chapel – but it also would stop them from getting out in a
hurry, if they needed to do so.

Looking back at the rest of his friends gathered inside the small, almost
familiar, chapel, seeing their faces and their expressions as they looked
sideways at the coffin that had presided at the ceremony, he guessed that
probably none of them would want to go anyway. Not even if things went
completely to pot.

As he walked back to them, he felt an odd sensation in his stomach. It wasn't
fear, even when it would be a lie to say that he wasn't scared. It wasn't pain
either, even when it would also be a lie to say that Xander's death hadn't made
him feel sad and broken.

It was something stranger, harder to define or explain.

But it felt like a premonition.

He didn't know how things were going to turn out this night. He couldn't say
what was going to happen. But he was sure, deep in his heart and soul, that
nothing was going to take place as they expected it to.

He guessed that it was normal, if you lived on the Hellmouth.

Sighing, the redheaded boy sat down in the same spot he had occupied during the
funeral. In the second pew at the right of the hallway, formed by the two groups
of wooden rows that filled the interior of the chapel, right behind Willow.

Briefly, he took a moment to think back to the ceremony.

Living in Sunnydale, he had attended more funerals than what he had liked or
could even remember – but he wasn't able to recall a single one of them, where
the ambience had been as cold and devoid of any real emotion as the one for
Xander Harris.

And it was surprising, if he thought about it – because Xander, or at least the
Xander he had known, was a man of deep emotions, someone that had never really
been good at hiding his inner self or his real feelings.

If he was angry, you could feel it; if he was happy, you could feel it too.

So, looking at the other side of the room where the members of his family were
seated, watching their stone faces, he couldn't help but wonder how it was
possible that the same blood of his friend ran through those people's veins.

He hadn't been able to find any emotion on their faces or in their eyes. They
didn't seem sad or angry at the injustice that was the death of such a young
man. They were just there, attending the ceremony in their dark clothing,
because that was what was expected of them.

Even his own parents. Their eyes had been devoid of any life, like the ones of a
pair of puppets.

When Xander's mother had risen from her seat after the reverend's speech to
place a single red rose over her son's coffin, Daniel Osborne had shivered at
the lack of emotion on her face. It had been a mechanical gesture, robotic...
false.

Some people would have said that it was the pot calling the kettle black; that
if there was anyone that shouldn't say anything about not having real emotions,
it was him. But he knew the truth, and he didn't have to prove anything to
anybody.

It was one thing was to control your emotions – not to show them as he had grown
accustomed to doing, since his father had abandoned his mother and himself when
he was nothing more than just a kid – and quite another not to have them.

And the people on the other side of the chapel, were definitely part of the
latter category.

They were the real corpses, and the ones who should have a funeral celebrated in
their memory.

So it had been his own side, that compact group of friends, who had the
responsibility of mourning and grieving for the soul of Xander Harris. As well
now the duty, of giving a final rest to his body.

Because no one else had come to tell him goodbye.

The members of his family could be counted on the fingers of two hands. Two
parents, an aunt, an uncle and a pair of cousins... not enough people even to
call it a family reunion.

No one else. No fellow students from the school, no teachers, no neighbors, no
friends – other than the ones who were now waiting for him to come back.

Even the reverend's eulogy had been a standard one, pre-written with a blank
space where the name of the deceased should be said, or where the words 'insert
name here' were between a pair of parentheses.

It would be laughable, if it wasn't so sad.

There hadn't had tears on their side either, but just because all of them were
beyond that phase – too accustomed by life to pushing their own feelings and
necessities aside, and moving on to the matter at hand. Too grown-up for their
own good.

So after everybody else had gone out of the chapel, his blood family, the
reverend, the people in charge of maintenance, they just waited there in
silence; dressed in the same dark clothes they had worn to one-too-many
funerals, their eyes low, their souls burdened.

The three girls that had loved him the most were in the first pew. Cordelia,
like the widow she'd never had the chance to become, sat in first place, the
closest one to him.

Buffy, the friend, the impossible dream, the one on whose shoulders rested the
final duty, was next and beside her was Willow, the sister, the friend, the
unrequited love.

And behind them, the three men that cared about the women; the ones that, now
that the white knight had been finally defeated, had to be the ones to cover and
protect them, the ones that remained behind.

Giles behind Cordelia. Angel behind Buffy. Oz himself behind Willow.

Waiting for the moment to come. Expecting it with dread, wishing for it never to
come, knowing that they wouldn't be spared from that horrible pain.

And the time came. The moment arrived.

And they went into its encounter, as they had done a hundred times before, and
as they would have to do a thousand times afterwards.

~~~~~~

When the coffin began to tremble, the six of them rose from their seats and
calmly walked to it. "You don't need to do this," the Slayer told them, "I'll
take care of it."

The brunette and the redhead looked at her with palpable sadness, and the blonde
just nodded in acceptance. The time for confrontation had passed long ago.

All those present there, the six of them, were friends. All of them were there
for the same reason, and all of them would do what they had to do.

The middle-aged man zipped open the bag that he carried under his arm, and all
of them took something from its dark interior. The Slayer a stake, the
cheerleader and the hacker a cross, the musician and the vampire vials of holy
water and the librarian an ancient crossbow.

"Be ready," he said to his younger companions, almost choking with the words,
and they nodded. "And remember that it's not him. It's the thing that killed our
friend."

"We know that," the redheaded girl said, "but I don't think that it's going to
make it easier for any of us."

Then, without the need to utter any more words, they took their positions around
the coffin, the girls in front, forming an open semicircle and the men behind
them, covering and supporting them.

The moment came, and the cards were finally laid on the table.

The trembling of the wooden coffin grew until it turned into a furious shaking,
as if something was moving inside it, struggling to get free. It bounced and
jumped, and the red rose placed on its dark and polished surface slid down and
fell to the floor almost in slow motion.

Like an earthquake, the shakes of the coffin seemed to extend to the whole
chamber, making their bones and their spirits tremble.

Then the first unexpected thing happened.

A thunderous roar, that would be expected more from a Tyrannosaurus Rex than
from any other creature on the surface of the earth, came out of nowhere. It
shook all of them, and even the huge stained glass of the tall windows.

As it rebounded off the walls and filled their ears with its inhuman cry, a
breeze also seemed to be born out of nowhere. It began blowing all around them,
making their hair and clothes flap around as it also grew in force, quickly
turning into a furious gale.

"Giles! What's going on?!?" Willow exclaimed, trying to make herself heard over
the roar of the unleashed wind.

"I don't know!" the Watcher shouted back, protecting his eyes from the wind with
his hand, his tie flowing and snapping over his shoulder like a whip. "I've
never seen anything like this before!"

"Or like that?" Oz asked him, tugging at the edge of his jacket to get his
attention.

"Like what?"

"That!" the young werewolf insisted, pointing to the coffin.

Giles had to make a real effort not to let his jaw fall to the floor, when he
saw a thin web of small blue electric lightning bolts be born from the metallic
handles of the coffin.

They emerged from the thin crack between the casket and the cover, extending
over its whole surface, crawling over it like small electric spiders.

They grew in force and intensity, too. And before they could even assimilate
what was going on, there were strong arcs of electricity jumping from the
coffin, joining it to the ceiling and to every metallic surface that was near
it.

The wind turned into a hurricane and the wooden pews began to jump in their
spots, some of them carried away by the force of the wind, being lifted by it
and then falling over the rest.

Willow screamed in panic when the unnatural tornado threw her to the floor and
she began to be dragged away, sliding over the polished wooden surface. "Help!"
she cried.

Without thinking twice, Oz launched himself behind her and, sliding over the
floor, grabbed her by her wrist, his other hand taking a safe grip on a near
pew. "I gotcha!"

"Don't let me go!!" Willow screamed, when she felt herself being lifted by the
wind. Oz clenched his teeth, grunting with the effort, feeling himself about to
be ripped in half, but neither his grasp on her, nor his one on the long seat
weakened at all.

Letting his game face show, Angel crawled to the red-haired couple, using his
claws as anchors on the wood of the floor until he finally reached for them.

"Grab a hold on me!" he shouted to the girl, who was now practically floating in
the middle of the air.

Grunting with the effort and the awkward maneuver, Willow was finally able to
reach out for the dark-haired vampire and surrounded his neck with one of her
arms at the same time that he did the same with her waist and with Oz's one,
grounding both of them.

Fortunately for the trio, it seemed that their combined weight was enough to
protect them from the force of the wind.

"We have to do something!" Cordelia told Giles. "We have to make this stop!"

There was a portrait of Xander on a easel beside the coffin, showing him as he
had been in life and not as the broken and tattered wreckage that they were
going to bury.

And when a blue lightning bolt hit it, the glass covering the picture exploded
in a cloud of piercing small fragments and the paper exploded in flames, his
handsome face filling first with white bubbles that erupted as it was consumed
away.

"Any suggestion would be deeply welcome!" the British man answered her.

Above them, the bulbs of the electric lamps on the high ceiling began to explode
one by one, letting a rain of bright sparks fall on them.

It suddenly got darker and, as if on cue, the wind began to quickly lose
strength until it finally died, the lightning bolts got weaker and weaker until
they disappeared too.

Finally, everything became semi-dark and silent, only broken by the ragged
breaths of the group of friends.

"And now?" Cordelia asked weakly.

Biting her lower lip, tightening her grasp on her stake, Buffy walked to the
coffin and, after taking a long and deep breath, closed her hand around the
handle of the cover.

And, immediately, removed it with a cry of pain. "God!!" she shouted, shaking
her hand.

"Does it burn?" Giles asked her with worry.

"No!" Buffy shook her head. "It's frozen!"

Swallowing a knot formed in her throat, Cordelia turned around from the Slayer
and her Watcher when she heard a creak coming from the still coffin. She tried
to call the rest of her friends, but the cold hand that seemed to take a grasp
on her heart closed her throat too, stopping her from doing so.

The cover rose two inches and then fell down with a loud thump, that sounded
like a gunshot. Immediately, all their eyes settled on it.

"Uh, Cordelia?" Buffy called her. "I think you should-"

Her advice was cut short when the coffin exploded suddenly and unexpectedly, the
lid propelled up like a rocket and flipping in the air like a coin until it
noisily landed on the floor, breaking with the impact.

Another moment of impossible quietness followed, as the gang's eyes were fixed
to the spot.

Then a hand with long and pale fingers and terminating in razor-sharp claws
emerged from the interior of the coffin, taking hold of the edge of it and
pushing up the rest of the attached body.

Xander's torso appeared from the darkness of the interior, the head bent back as
if he were in the grip of sexual ecstasy. His eyes closed and his mouth open, a
silent breath coming out his lips.

Growling like a big dangerous feline, he turned his head to them and they were
able to see the planes and the ridges on his forehead, brow and upper cheeks,
the long fangs bulging under his lips. And finally, when he opened his eyelids,
the red-gold demonic eyes of a vampire looked at them with hunger.

"Xander," Cordelia whispered, the word coming out of her lips like a painful
exhalation.

He just growled at her as he jumped out of the coffin, landing on his feet with
a surprisingly smooth movement. There was no trace of any wounds on his face,
there were no lacerations or cuts at all any longer.

And, when he began to move towards them, his muscles moved like the pistons of a
well-oiled machine under the black suit he had outfitted with for his funeral.

=That isn't my Xander,= the cheerleader thought with an inner chill. =This...
thing is an inhuman monster.= A perfectly adjusted machine of destruction.

"Cordelia!" Buffy shouted to her. "The cross!!"

Not even thinking about what she was doing, the brunette raised the wooden
crucifix she was still holding with shaking hands, using it as a shield.

For Xander – a confused, primal and disoriented Xander – it was as if he'd been
hit with a 50,000-watt headlamp, at point-blank range.

The mere presence of the sacred icon burnt his eyes and face and he had to look
away, its flaming image carved with fire onto his corneas, and his own saliva
turned into an acid foam inside his mouth.

He backpedaled in pain, automatically raising a hand to protect himself from the
effect of the cross and stumbled upon the coffin, throwing it to the floor and
falling behind it.

"Buffy!" Giles called to the Slayer. "Now!"

Erasing all rational thought from her mind, not wanting to contemplate what she
was doing, Buffy jumped forward and down. Falling to her knees and grabbing the
vampire (she didn't, she couldn't call him Xander) by his neck, she raised her
stake, ready to plunge it down with a killing strike.

She felt the growl in his throat under the palm of her hand and clenched her
teeth, a tear escaping from the corner of her eye. "Forgive me, Xander," the
Slayer whispered as she brought the stake down.

But, far from what she was expecting, her strike stopped when he captured her
falling wrist in his hand, and Buffy struggled to get herself free from his
iron-like grasp.

"Damn it," she muttered in pain, "don't you make this any more difficult than it
has to be..." The vampire just growled and bared his fangs at her, his hand
painfully squeezing her wrist. "I need some help here!"

Before anyone could move to help her, Xander hit her in the stomach and the
Slayer grunted in pain, closing her eyes and grimacing at the sudden pain. He
hit her again and then pushed her away from him with unexpected strength, even
coming from a newborn, unleashed vampire.

The Slayer flew a short distance and landed on her back, a yelp of pain and
surprise escaping from her lips.

"Buffy!!" Angel screamed, seeing the woman he loved more than his unlife falling
down.

With a growl of rage, allowing his human mask to vanish and his real, demonic
face come out, the souled vampire abandoned his spot beside Willow and Oz. He
then crossed the distance that separated him from his newly risen blood-brother,
with five long and fast steps.

Launching himself forward, Angel tackled Xander to the floor and both of them
ended up in a pile of moving limbs amidst the remains of the coffin.

Angel caught one of the broken pieces of wood from the coffin and, still
fighting with Xander, prepared himself for the final strike.

He didn't want to do it but, looking at it from a certain point of view, Angel
supposed it would be best for everybody if he was the one to slay the vamp that
Xander had become.

At least this way, neither Buffy nor any other members of the Scooby Gang would
have to blame themselves for Xander's final fate. And he was so accustomed to
the pain and guilt, that the former Scourge of Europe thought that another brick
in his wall wouldn't make too much difference now.

But, much to his surprise, he never had a chance to fulfill his intentions.

When Angel discharged the blow, the Xander vampire just blocked his strike with
his forearm and punched him in the abdomen. Punched him with so much force that
the souled vampire felt his feet abandoning the ground for a short moment, as
the impact of the younger vamp's blow lifted him up a few inches.

He was very strong.

=Too strong.=

And freakishly fast too, he noticed as Xander grabbed his wrist and twisted his
arm painfully, making him lose the make-shift stake and kicked him in the gut.
The older vampire folded up, feeling something breaking inside him and the taste
of his own blood coming to his lips.

With a roar, Xander grabbed Angel's elbow with his free hand and, using this
point as a fulcrum, yanked at his wrist, breaking the older vampire's arm with a
disgusting sound of splintering bones and twisting it into an impossible angle.

Angel's scream of pain thundered in everyone's ears like an explosion.

"Angel!!" Buffy shouted, regaining her feet and jumping back into the fight.

Nevertheless, even before she could take the first step, Xander was moving
again. Yanking at the souled vampire's broken arm, he spun around like a discus
thrower, releasing Angel's large frame when he completed his first circle.

And then, Angel was airborne.

As if in slow motion, all those present looked in amazement as the dark-haired
vampire flew in the air for more than 20 meters, describing a perfect parabola
over their heads and finally crashing down like a meteorite between the
now-scattered pews.

Making them explode into a cloud of wooden splinters, and dragging them along as
he slid and bounced on the floor until he finally stopped.

For a second, no one even dared to breathe.

Buffy just stared with wide eyes at the vamped figure of her deceased friend
and, just for a heartbeat, she almost choked on her own saliva.

She closed her eyes, and shook her head. What she'd seen in that short instant,
couldn't have been real.

It was as if Xander was in the middle of a kaleidoscope, a gamut of blood-red
and black lights shining around him with blinding fury. Pure, raw energy coming
out of every pore of his skin in vibrating waves, hitting her almost with a
physical blow.

Something like a buzz twisted painfully inside her stomach. She never had felt
such darkness, such power before.

And when he bared his fangs at her, she thought that she was looking at the face
of Death itself.

Then she heard Angel's moan of pain, blinked and the aura around the newly-risen
vampire seemed to disappear as if it had never existed.

=I'm having hallucinations,= the Slayer thought, biting her lower lip.

"This has gone too far," Buffy finally mumbled between clenched teeth.
Tightening her grip on her only stake, the blonde Slayer charged forward and,
with a war cry that emerged from the deepest part of her belly, struck down with
a deadly blow...

...only to find an empty spot where Xander had been merely seconds before.

"Oh my God," she heard Cordelia whispering as she tried to turn around to see
what was going on. But Xander didn't seem to be anywhere around her.

"Buffy, above you!!" Cordelia warned her.

The Slayer only had half a second to look up and see a dark bulk falling on her
and pushing her down, painfully smashing her against the ground. With a grunt,
the air was choked out of her lungs as a pair of feet of crashed into her ribs,
and she had to make an effort to stay conscious.

Cordelia was sure she was immersed in the middle of some hideous nightmare,
because what was happening couldn't be real.

When Xander had shrugged Buffy away it had been horrible, because she had
understood that it wasn't going to be as quick and clean as all of them wanted
it to be.

When he had defeated Angel as if the centuries-older vampire was nothing more
than an amateur, it had been terrible because the fear had begun to replace the
sadness inside her.

But, when she had seen him jumping up into the air and, for just a mere second,
float up there as if he was as weightless as a feather, she had just gone into
mental overload. That was just not possible.

But then he had landed on Buffy, taking her with her guard down. And after
making her crash to the ground with the force of the impact, he was diving down,
a clawed hand flying directly towards the fallen Slayer's throat.

Then all the wonder had vanished into a puff of smoke, under the realization of
what was going to happen.

"No," the brunette whispered, unable to take her eyes away from the scene.

Then, she caught a whisper of movement out of the corner of her eye and
something passed a few inches from her face as a soft blow of air caressed it,
making some loose strands of her dark hair dance idly and fall on her cheek.
When she turned around, the arms of Giles' crossbow were still trembling after
releasing their bolt into the air.

The arrow struck Xander's shoulder, just a second before his claws ripped the
tender flesh of Buffy's neck. And the force of the impact was enough to make him
fall away from the Slayer, rolling on the floor as he brought a hand to the
shaft protruding from his flesh, a roar like the one of a wounded animal coming
out from his lips.

"Cordelia!" Giles exclaimed while he fumbled with the ancient weapon, trying to
reload it. "Help Buffy!"

The brunette nodded sharply and quickly went to the aid of her blonde friend,
helping her to her feet and, allowing her to lean on her taller frame, removed
her from the fight.

Buffy grunted in pain, holding her side as she was practically carried away in
Cordelia's arms. "I think I may have a couple of broken ribs," she muttered, a
thin trace of blood coming out of the corner of her lips.

With a new roar, Xander ripped the arrow from his shoulder, a thin spray of
blood coming out the wound when the metallic point shredded his flesh on its way
out. Settling his menacing red-gold eyes on the lanky figure of the British
Watcher, the vampire broke the thin wooden shaft in two with his strong grip.

And, throwing the remains away, the vampire began to walk to him with decided
steps, an animalistic growl escaping his lips.

"Bloody hell," Giles murmured, seeing Xander coming in his direction while he
still fumbled with the complicated mechanism of the crossbow. When he raised his
eyes from it, the vampire was already just a couple of steps away from him.
Giles gulped with nervousness.

"Get away!!" Willow raggedly shouted, jumping into Xander's path at the last
possible moment and raising her cross as a shield.

"Willow!" Giles exclaimed in surprise, feeling the small redhead's back leaned
on his chest.

The Xander vampire recoiled in pain at the sight of the sacred icon and,
covering his face with one arm, instinctively swung his other one around,
hitting Willow with a blind slap that ripped the cross away from her grasp.

"Willow!! No!!" Oz, who had been helping a fallen and almost unconscious Angel
to his feet, shouted when he saw the large crucifix flying away from his
girlfriend and sliding over the floor until it stopped at Cordelia's feet.

Moving faster than what was humanly possible, Xander grabbed Willow by her neck;
at the same time, he placed his hand flat on Giles' chest and pushed him away,
sending the bewildered Watcher flying into the air for some meters until he
landed painfully on the floor.

"Xander," Willow grunted, his strong grip on her throat choking the air out of
her lungs, "don't... do this..."

But, when she felt him effortlessly lifting her body from the ground and looked
down at his red-gold eyes, the hacker wasn't able to find any trace of her old
friend there.

Just a hungry demon.

Time seemed to slow down, as he spun her into his deadly embrace. Holding her
tightly against himself with her back to his chest, he ripped the collar and
shoulder of her black blouse and jacket with his clawed hand. It exposed the
soft and milky-white skin of her neck and shoulder, only covered now by the thin
white strap of her bra.

"Nooo!!!" Oz screamed, forgetting all about Angel and launching himself into a
mad run towards them, his usually so calm and controlled face turned now into a
twisted and flushed grimace.

But he was too far away, and Xander was too fast.

Oz saw Willow looking at him, her sea-green eyes clouded with fear until she
closed them, waiting for what seemed her unavoidable fate.

Xander's face sank down with a growl. And, as he held her on her feet, one arm
around her waist and the other one turning her head away, exposing as much as
possible to his mouth, his fangs finally pierced her skin and ripped her flesh
as they sank into her shoulder.

Oz's eyes filled with tears for the first time in many years as he saw her red
blood beginning to flow from the wound, too much even for the vampire to swallow
it, falling down her fair skin, drenching her clothes.

Slow, he was too slow.

~~~~~~

Sweet. Coppery. Warm.

Spicy. Metallic. Utterly delicious.

Such was Xander's first taste of human blood.

It flowed into his mouth like a fountain of life, inflaming his taste-buds like
the richest ambrosia he'd ever had the luck to taste. It burned every inch of
his flesh as it passed by, sliding down his throat and esophagus, filling his
stomach like the most precious of liquors ever bottled by man or god.

It was alive. It was on fire. It was pure energy and emotion, as he greedily
drank it from its pulsating source with noisy and eager slurps.

One gulp and, almost at the mere contact of the vital liquid with his tongue, he
began to immediately feel the effects. The red veil began to vanish from his
eyes, the cloud of thick fog that covered his brain began to dissipate and the
first rational thoughts were able to begin circulating in his still-confused
brain.

Two gulps and the overwhelming hunger began to be placated. He was conscious of
himself for the first time, of the coldness of the air around him; of the dim
light of the street-lamps entering through the stained glass windows in colored
rays, of the floor under his feet and the warmth of the body against his.

Three gulps, and the first questions began to pop into his mind. =Where am I?
How did I get here? What's going on? What's happened?=

Still, the core of his attention was still focused on the sensations and
feelings around his mouth, on that delicious taste, on that wonderful warmth
where his lips were in contact with Willow's skin...

=Willow?=

His eyes opened wide, and almost popped out of their sockets. =Willow?=

In front of him Oz was running to him with long, fast steps, his boyish face
twisted into a grimace of rage and fear that made it almost unrecognizable.

=Oz? Willow?=

He never got the chance to take his fourth gulp as, sudden and unexpectedly,
some movement out of the corner of his eye took his attention away from the
upcoming young werewolf and a dark bulk seemed flood into his peripheral vision,
covering it.

His fangs abandoned Willow's flesh, and his brow arched in confusion. =What
the...=

The impact of something hard against his face cut off his train of thought, and
sent him away from the red-haired hacker and to the ground, as his head twisted
almost comically to one side with a violent spin.

"Get away from her!!" Cordelia shouted to him, swinging her large cross over her
shoulder, getting ready for a second hit.

As he rolled onto the floor, dodging the brunette's strike, Oz arrived in time
to catch an almost-faint Willow before her body actually hit the hard surface of
the floor.

Enveloping her into his arms, the young werewolf let himself fall down, allowing
his girlfriend to lie in his protective embrace as he tried to stop the flow of
blood from the wound on her shoulder, with his bare hands.

"Cordy, what-?" Xander tried to ask as he dodged the brunette's strikes as well
as he could, which was surprisingly difficult as Cordelia was attacking him with
the fierce rage of a panther, wildly swinging around the large cross like a
makeshift mace.

He was totally confused. He didn't know what was going on.

But he knew that something was terribly wrong with this picture.

"Cordelia, ungh!" he grunted when his girlfriend finally succeeded and hit him
in the shoulder, the heavy cross hitting him like a bolt of lightning, making
him fall to his knees.

With an inarticulate cry, her hazel eyes clouded by tears and sorrow, Cordelia
hit his fallen form again and again, refusing to think on what she was doing,
telling herself that the monster at her feet wasn't the boy she had loved –
still loved.

She clenched her teeth not to scream, pressing her lips tightly shut not to cry.

One, two, three, four times... Xander felt the cross falling on him like a
sledgehammer, smashing him, burning his skin with each contact. Until the pain
was so intense that it clouded his mind again and he rose up with a roar, his
eyes blazing in golden fury.

He pushed Cordelia away with a blind backhand slap, that ripped the cross away
from her hands and made her fall down flat on her behind.

He growled at her.

And saw fear in her precious eyes.

Xander felt something piercing him right then, like a burning physical pain,
like the scream of a thousand voices right in his ear.

He raised his gaze from her, and looked around. And all around him, everything
was in complete chaos.

The small chapel seemed to have been hit by a tornado. There didn't seem to be
one single pew still standing upright, and most of them were broken and
splintered as if a mad lumberjack had gotten very angry with them.

The tapestries that had covered the walls had been ripped off and thrown around,
fallen like forgotten blankets in an old woman's loft.

There were flowers at the end of the chapel, near a broken coffin and the
reverend's tiny pulpit. Red roses were scattered on the floor, stomped on and
smashed.

=What's going on?=

Buffy was near them, she was looking at him with eyes as wide as saucers,
holding her side as if in pain. She was looking at him. There was a thin thread
of blood coming out the corner of her mouth. She was scared.

Giles wasn't far from her. The middle-aged man was surprisingly helping a very
pale Angel to his feet, holding him by his waist as the vampire surrounded his
shoulders with one of his arms, his other one hanging limp and useless by his
body.

They were looking at him. They were scared too.

Willow was on the floor, in Oz's lap. The red-haired girl was beyond pale, her
eyes clouded and almost at the edge of unconsciousness, held up only by her
boyfriend's arms while he tried to stop the flow of blood from a horrible wound
on her shoulder. They were scared.

The blood... the blood was red, standing out against her milky white skin,
drenching her clothes. The blood was beautiful and offensive at the same time,
it called him and repulsed him. He felt thirst, loathing, hunger, nausea and
sexual excitement, all at the same time.

He looked down at his hands.

They were covered in blood.

Willow's blood.

He felt suddenly cold and dirty.

"No..." he whispered, rubbing his hands, trying to free himself from the warm,
sticky sensation of the vital fluid on his skin. He rubbed them together with
frantic energy, until his skin was reddened and raw and his claws began to draw
his own blood.

Claws. He had claws.

=But human beings don't have claws.=

"No..." he repeated, trying to deny what was becoming painfully evident with
each passing second. As a wave of panic hit him painfully in the gut, he brought
his hands to his face, caressing it with his fingertips.

Finding the planes, noticing the ridges, touching the fangs.

"No..." he cried with a sob, as the word, so obscene to his mind that he wasn't
able to voice it, made its up way through the various layers of his brain.

=Vampire.=

He was a vampire.

And then the recent past hit him, with all the force of a hurricane.

Faith. The cargo bay. The cross, the spikes and the pain. The blood.

His blood.

Her blood.

Xander closed his eyes, holding his stomach as a wave of nausea made him bend
over. He remembered. Every second of it. Each moment of pain, every damned
instant of Hell.

"Nooooo!!!!!" he screamed, falling to his knees and raising his face to the tall
ceiling, his cry thundering inside the chapel, shaking the tall stained glass
windows.

And then he just crumbled, hiding his face between his hands, shedding blood-red
tears, dying a little bit more with each passing second.

Until Cordelia called his name. "Xander?"

He raised his eyes, wet with tears, to her and found his loved one still on the
floor, merely a couple of steps away from him. And she was... she looked like
total crap.

Her face was pale, and crossed by the unmistakable traces of dried tears; her
eyes were reddened and her hair and clothes were a mess, as if she had just been
standing in the middle of a wild storm.

She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

"Xander?" she called him again.

And the newborn knew then that everything had ended for him. He couldn't be
here. Not after what had happened, not after what he had done, not after what he
had become.

A vampire.

A demon.

He couldn't look at her face anymore. He couldn't look at those beautiful eyes,
and see the fear and the loathing. He couldn't live like that.

So, he just stood up and began to walk backwards away from her, with short and
doubtful steps at first. Away from all of them. Seeing their eyes fixed on him.
He was a monster. He was the enemy. They had to kill him.

"Xander!!" Cordelia insisted, regaining her feet.

Closing his eyes, he turned around and began to move along the main aisle,
increasing his speed with each step he took away from her.

"He's trying to escape!!" Giles shouted, making Cordelia turn around to look at
him. "We can't let that happen!"

Looking around her, Cordelia spotted the Watcher's crossbow on the floor, just a
few inches from her and quickly knelt down, retrieving it. She turned to look at
Xander and found that he was already far away, running like mad towards one of
the tall stained glass windows.

She raised the crossbow, feeling its grip oddly familiar in her hands, and
shouldered it, the movement natural, easy in her grasp, as if she had been born
bearing one. She aimed at Xander's back, her finger caressing the trigger.

There was a thick silence, as she felt the stares of all her friends fixed on
her. She had to do it; it was not only her right, but her duty. Not Buffy's, and
not Willow's.

She was the one who had loved him the most, no matter what any of them thought.
He was her one true love, and Cordy felt she had to give him peace and rest.

Xander was almost fifteen meters from the window when his feet abandoned the
floor and, like some kind of big, black bat, he jumped smoothly into the air,
flying towards the glass.

Cordelia blinked repeatedly, trying to free her eyes from the burning mist of
her tears. Tightening her finger on the trigger of the crossbow, she pronounced
for the first time the words that had ached to come out from the depths of her
soul for months.

"I love you, Xander," she whispered, closing her eyes as she pulled the trigger.

The arrow flew out, abandoning the crossbow and crossing the space with a swift
whisper of stabbed air.

Xander moaned in pain when the bolt hit him right at the apogee of his flight,
entering through his back, its wooden point piercing his flesh. It punctured his
lung and finally appeared out from his chest, a thin and rain-like spray of
blood splattering the stained glass barely inches away from his body.

For an endless moment time stopped and he remained there, suspended in the
middle of the air, his arms spread wide like the wings of a defeated angel. His
eyes closed and his demonic face filled with a expression of peace that softened
it, making it look almost human.

Xander let out a long, painful breath.

Cordelia had missed his heart, only by a fraction of an inch.

And then he crashed through the glass, the impact of his body against it making
the tall window explode into a myriad of shining jewels that floated around him,
like a bright rainbow.

He fell into the darkness of the night.

Letting the crossbow fall, practically throwing it away, Cordelia ran behind
him, calling his name at the top of her lungs. "Xander! Xander!!" She reached
the frame of the broken window and looked outside, her breath cut short on her
lips.

Outside, the night was quiet, silent; one could even say... dead.

"Xander!!" she cried, calling him.

But the night didn't answer her.

~~~~~~

All Xander knew for a long time was that he was running, escaping, flying over
the asphalt so fast that his feet almost didn't touch it. Everything around him
was nothing more than a blur of movement, passing by the corner of his eyes.

Nothing was real. Everything was an illusion of his fevered mind, but the
pounding of his heart inside his chest and the breath coming out of his lungs in
short, quick exhalations of air.

He lost all awareness of time and space, he just ran without knowing where he
was going. Just wanting to distance himself from them, from his past, from his
love, from his family and friends, from everything he had held dear. Running
away from himself.

Time passed. He didn't know how much, he couldn't estimate it because the night
around him was so silent and quiet, that it seemed that the world had stopped
its endless turning.

The newly-risen vampire ran for miles. He ran for ages.

His legs finally failed him at some point and he fell to the cold hard ground,
suddenly too tired even to let out a grunt of pain when he rolled over it, its
rough surface scratching the palms of his hands and his face.

After a brief moment, Xander remained still and quiet, silently breathing, lying
in the middle of the road with his eyes lost in the starry night sky, feeling
like the only living thing in the world.

The last lonely boy.

But he wasn't alive, and he wasn't even a boy anymore.

He was a vampire. He was a demon, a creature of darkness and death.

He was also cold.

Getting up from the hard asphalt, Xander stood up to his full height, shuddering
with that strange feeling, a coldness that seemed to come from inside himself,
engulfing him into a frozen and paralyzing embrace.

He crossed his arms over his chest, tightening the jacket of his black suit
around him, trying to regain some warmth – but to no avail.

He looked around, trying to place himself. He was practically exhausted, too
tired even to think. Warehouses, tens of them left and right, rusty and dirty.
Abandoned buildings, empty and condemned, some of them even semi-collapsed.

Skid row, the worst part of Sunnydale – where only the homeless, the vagrants,
the drug addicts and their dealers dared to tread. Not even the vampires came
here, too full of themselves to be humiliated on feeding from the scum of
humankind.

Xander almost burst out in laughter. Now he could be their master. Xander
Harris, King of the Trash.

He walked to the nearest building, feeling himself weaker and weaker with each
step he took towards it. He needed some secluded place to crash, somewhere to
get a few hours of rest, to gather his strength and think on what to do.

Xander found the main door of the building closed, a thick panel of wood nailed
to the frame and a sign glued to it, warning that the building was condemned and
that it would be unsafe and dangerous to go into it.

Amused, Xander noticed that there were few street lamps intact around the place
– none, in fact – and that if not for his new vampire eyes, he wouldn't have
been able to read the sign.

Who cared?

Grabbing the wooden panel, Xander yanked at it, easily ripping it from the frame
and then throwing it effortlessly aside, entering the building.

The interior of the building was dark, but he was able to see inside it as if it
was noon on a clear day. Not that there was anything really interesting to see
inside, apart from tons of sticky trash and dusty debris that smelled of urine
and rotten filth.

He didn't want to think on who had spent the night there before him, or on what
they had done there; he just searched for a secluded spot, finally finding one
under a staircase and, letting himself fall into it, he tried to find a
comfortable position to rest.

That was when he understood that the thing that was stopping him from finding
said rest, was the arrow still sticking out from his chest.

Frowning, Xander grabbed the shaft right behind its entry point and yanked
tentatively and softly at it. He clenched his teeth, swallowing down a scream of
pain.

It hurt like hell.

Reaching awkwardly over his shoulder, he patted his back until found the place
where it was embedded in his flesh and grabbed the shaft, breaking it with a
loud snap of splintered wood.

Breathing heavily, Xander took the arrow once again from where it appeared in
his chest and, clenching his teeth, he gave it a good yank, ripping it from his
body. He grunted in pain and finally screamed when it finally came out
completely, followed closely by a thin spray of blood.

Xander breathed heavily, practically choking on his saliva and, feeling
lightheaded, rolled into a ball, allowing the darkness to claim him.

He wished not to have to wake up again.

The young vamp just wanted a little rest, but he didn't have even that much
luck.

The nightmares claimed him for endless hours, mixing memories and unreal
fantasies alike. Disturbing dreams of death, sex and blood, of a demon reveling
in the bloodlust and the joy of the carnage it caused, of himself doing evils
that were beyond what his twisted imagination could have previously conjured up.

And Faith's voice superimposed on all of them. Her laughter, her whispering, her
crying. Obscure, obscene, repulsing, exciting, attracting...

"Come with me.
Be mine.
We'll be one.
We'll be the same.
Come with me."

His eyes opened and a scream of fear died on his lips, coming out in an
agonizing exhalation of breath. He felt lightheaded, his stomach rumbling in
pain, his whole body shaken by an unsettling sensation of nausea that just
wouldn't go away.

Crawling on his hands and knees, Xander came out of his little nook under the
staircase and, finding a secluded corner, vomited out violently the contents of
his stomach.

Grunting and heaving, Xander spat the awful taste away and closed his eyes,
leaning his forehead on the rough surface of the wall, slowly breathing while
his body was still shaken by soft waves of nausea.

"Hey man, something bad fall on you?" asked a rough voice not far away from his
back, closely followed by a seemingly-endless series of coughs.

Xander turned around in surprise and his golden eyes bored into the semidarkness
of the interior of the building like a pair of daggers, almost immediately
finding the source of those words.

A man, sitting down on the floor and with his back leaning against the wall;
covered by dirty and torn rags, his skin and long beard dirty with mud and soot
that made his age impossible to calculate. A vagrant, a homeless person.

"Hey man," he repeated when he finally was able to subdue his coughing, offering
him a bottle hidden inside a dirty brown paper bag, "take a sip, and erase the
taste."

Frowning, wondering what he was doing, Xander walked, or actually stumbled, to
him and took the offered bottle from his hand, taking a long and greedy gulp
from it.

It was awful and it burned his throat as it went down, making him cough and
heave like mad.

"What the hell is this stuff?" he asked with a rough voice, cleaning his lips
with the back of his hand while he returned the bottle to the man.

"Homemade plum liquor," the guy said with a smile, that was almost hidden by his
white-gray moustache and beard. "Strong but good, huh? I learnt how to do it in
old Folsom, we didn't have many good vaults there," he commented, laughing as if
it was a private joke. "What's your story? What happened to your face?"

Looking away from him, leaning on the wall for support, Xander passed his hands
over his face slowly, letting his fingertips trail the edged paths of his
forehead, nose and cheeks. Game face. Vampire. Demon. Monster.

"Are you sick or something?" the vagrant asked him, suddenly worried. "You don't
have anything contagious, do you? I'm a healthy guy and I don't want to get-" he
was cut off by a new round of rough coughs and, for a second, it seemed that he
was going to spit out his lungs.

Xander chuckled, on behalf of the situation. "Yeah," he whispered, finding his
own voice so rough and deep that it was unrecognizable even to himself,
"terminally ill."

"Then get away, man," the vagrant grunted, "I don't wanna get anything dirty
from you."

Xander looked down at the man through half-closed eyes. =Too late to worry,
dude,= he thought, =you already got it.= He couldn't say how he knew it, but he
knew it.

The life was escaping out from that man's hands, falling like sand between his
fingers in front of his own eyes. He could see him dying right there, he could
taste it on his tongue, smell the blackness of his lungs in his nose.

Lung cancer, quickly stealing the life away from him. How much time was there
remaining for this man? How much time until he finally collapsed, coughing and
spitting up blood? Months? Weeks? Days?

Who would care if he fed on him right now?

The thought had wormed its way into Xander's mind without warning, shaking him
to the core, and now it refused to go away.

Who would care, indeed?

=If I took him, ripping the tender flesh of his neck with my fangs, if I drank
his blood, swallowing as it entered my mouth, if I killed him, who would notice
his absence? He's going to die anyway, he doesn't matter to anybody, he...=

"Stop!!" Xander cried, pressing his temples with the heels of his hands and
falling to his knees. "Get outta my mind!!"

"Hey, you alright?"

Xander rocked on his knees back and forth, and clenched his teeth tightly
closed. His fangs ripped open his lower lip as the beat of his pulse thundered
in his temples under his hands, threatening to making his head explode.

The recently-turned vampire managed to slowly rise to his feet, and stumbled
clumsily away from that sweet temptation – the roar of the man's blood as it ran
through his veins was in Xander's sharp ears, as well as the pumping of his
heart inside his chest.

He needed to get away from him. He needed to... he needed to...

"Where are you going, man?" the vagrant asked him, not wanting to lose his
company so soon. "Was it something I said? Come on, come back and have a drink!"

For a brief moment, Xander looked at him over his shoulder. Then he briefly
closed his eyes, and searched for the nearest exit.

~~~~~~

As he walked through the empty and dirty streets of Skid row, Xander tried to
figure out what it was that was happening to him.

He was a vampire, that was pretty obvious.

But... it also felt like that he was still himself.

Had his friends restored his soul? Was he now condemned to walk the earth for an
eternity of unhappiness?

But if they had done that, why had they tried to kill him?

Because Xander remembered it clearly now. Cordelia raising the cross to him as
he came out of his casket, Buffy trying to stake him before he even knew what
was happening...

They had tried to kill him immediately. They hadn't given him a chance.

He tried to fight the bitterness that flowed into his heart at that idea, but he
wasn't able to. For months they had struggled and suffered, as that monster
Angelus had turned their lives into a living hell.

Until finally, even when the whole world had been at stake, they had risked
everything to return his soul to him.

But what about himself?

With him, it had just been 'Hello Xander, dust Xander, goodbye Xander'.

They hadn't given him a chance.

Arriving at an abandoned and ruined park, the playground looked deserted to him.
The swings were rocking slowly with their seats hanging from the rusty chains,
the carousel and the jungle gym covered by dirty and obscene graffiti, so Xander
let himself fall onto one of the few benches that remained intact.

He felt his shirt cracking with dried blood, sticky and glued to his chest.
Leaning backwards on the back of the bench, Xander let his head fall back and
closed his eyes to the night sky, which was slowly turning gray as the dawn
approached.

Suddenly he felt it, the sun was going to come out soon.

He should get up, and search for a safe place to spend the day. He should run
away from the daylight.

But he was so comfortable here, with his eyes closed and feeling the soft breeze
caressing his face and hair, not thinking, not remembering at all...

Xander understood then, that he wasn't going anywhere. He was going to stay
right there, and just wait for the sun to come up. He would salute it one last
time, and then he would die.

That would be best for everybody.

Would it hurt?

He hoped that it wouldn't hurt too much, that it would be quick and merciful.

Did vampires contemplate suicide? Did he really want to die?

=Wake up and smell the coffee, Xandman!= he told himself. =You're already dead.=

But if that was true, how was it that he was still breathing? How was it that he
was able to feel his heart beating inside his chest? How was it that he was
still himself?

Xander passed a tired hand over his face, rubbing his eyes with a sigh. He
figured that the question wasn't really that, the real question that needed an
actual answer was whether he wanted to keep on... 'living' like this.

Did he want to walk in an eternal night? Did he want to drink blood, so he could
maintain this... existence?

A few minutes ago, he'd had the chance to take a human life. Instinctively, he
knew that it would have been as easy as stealing candy from a baby, and probably
even with fewer consequences.

But still, he had refused to do it... even when he had almost been able to feel
the now-sweet taste of the man's blood in his mouth.

Why? Was there still some hope for him? A cure for him? If so, maybe Giles could
find-

=No.= The mere mention of the British Watcher's name inside his mind filled him
with a mixture of sensations, that shook his whole being to its innermost core.
He felt the bitterness of betrayal, the fear of rejection, the hope of
acceptance.

Xander felt love and hate together in a ball the size of a fist that installed
itself into his belly, and refused to go away.

They were his friends. They were his family. They had tried to kill him.

He couldn't live with that idea in his mind.

Giles. Oz. Angel. Willow. Buffy. Cordelia.

They had tried to kill him.

He'd loved them. He would've done anything in the world for them. He had died
for them, for crying out loud.

They had tried to kill him.

GilesOzAngelWillowBuffyCordelia...

Xander opened his eyes when the sting of tears was so intense, that he thought
that they were burning him, stewing him in his own juices.

And then the first solar rays hit him squarely in the face as the day began to
dawn, the sun peeking out far away from behind the buildings in front of him.

He blinked in surprise, a little blinded by it. It was warm and nice, in spite
of its weakness during these days of February. And it didn't hurt him at all.

Xander waited in silence for long minutes, his game face turned into a stoic,
frozen mask, looking at the daytime star rising up and banishing the darkness of
the night.

The blanket of light then slowly covered the town of Sunnydale, until the gray
sky turned blue and everything around him gained the sudden and wonderful colors
of life.

"Great," he said out loud after some moments, even when there was nobody else
around him to hear the words. "What else can happen?"

~~~~~~

Using those first hours of the morning as a shield, walking through the most
secluded and empty streets he could find, jumping over walls and crossing
abandoned backyards, Xander made his way from Skid row back to his house.

He surprised himself at learning how close both places were in space, and yet
how far away those worlds were from each other.

Even when it couldn't be said that his family was a rich one (it was difficult
when your father was a drunken moron and your mother was missing in action half
the time), they still had that house that they had inherited from his
grandmother. And a little amount of money, that had allowed them an easy
existence.

He'd often wondered how much worse his life would have been, if his parents had
had to work for a living.

Anyway, Xander finally made it home and jumped the fence that surrounded his
house with an smoothness that felt both surprising and natural for him. He
crossed the backyard, kneeling down and breaking the glass of the basement
window with his elbow.

Rolling and grunting with the effort of making his body pass through the narrow
space, he managed to jump into the basement, his heightened senses allowing him
to move in the semidarkness with sure and easy steps.

Suddenly he wondered, =How is it I could get in here?= No one had invited him
in.

There was only one explanation – no one considered this house their home, not
even his mother and father.

Xander couldn't help but grimace when he remembered that barely days before, he
had been thinking on moving from his room into this same basement, to gain some
privacy and independence from his parents.

Now, it seemed that a whole lifetime had passed since then. His lifetime.

As he walked up the stairs and opened the door to the kitchen as silently as he
could, Xander noticed that he was alone in the house. He could smell the absence
of human life inside the building, as if it was a physical sensation.

Where would his parents be? If he knew them, they would probably be throwing a
party in some tacky bar, celebrating that they had gotten rid of the loser son
at last.

=Well, Mom and Dad, you know what? I'm baaack!=

Shaking his head, thinking on the faces they would exhibit if they found him
nonchalantly sitting in the living room, zapping channels and sipping from a
soda with his game face on, the huge red stain still on his shirt, he walked up
the stairs and to his room.

=They'd probably just think that it was a side effect of the delirium tremors,=
Xander concluded with dry humor.

Sighing, he took a quick look around himself. He had made a decision, and he was
resolved to stick to it.

Xander needed time to think, and to understand what was happening to him. He
needed space and some peace of mind, and he knew he wasn't going to get anything
of the sort if he stayed here in Sunnydale.

There were simply too many complications.

Because, even when it felt bitter and angry inside him, the young fledgling
still wanted to find the Scooby Gang. He wanted to go see Buffy and Willow and
spend the night, watching hideous Indian movies on TV and laughing all night
with them.

He wanted to do research with Giles, and see Oz's band playing at the Bronze.

God, he even wanted to see Angel and make bad puns at him, until he managed to
make the souled vampire's face turn red.

And above all, he wanted to be with Cordelia, to take her in his arms and kiss
her like there was no tomorrow.

Xander caressed his chest, his fingers tracing the contours of the red stain on
the fabric of his shirt. She had shot him with that damned crossbow.

Xander opened his closet and took a large sports bag, quickly stuffing clothes
inside it, some jeans, some underwear, a pair of sweaters...

It hit him right then that he couldn't go anywhere, looking like a nasty corpse
that had just crawled out of its grave. So, leaving his bag on the bed and not
wanting to follow the trail of that last idea, he practically ripped off his
dirty clothes as he walked into the bathroom, switching on the light.

"Oh, God!!" Xander exclaimed when as he stepped into the bathroom, he found
himself face to face with a demon.

His surprise was so great and he felt himself so paralyzed by the fear and
loathing, that he needed a whole minute to understand that it was his own face,
which was looking back at him in the mirror.

Frowning and tilting his head to one side, Xander took a dubious step towards
the polished mirror. He let the fingers of his right hand trail over its cold
surface, as he traced in amazement the contours of his own face with his left
one.

"Vampires don't cast a reflection in the mirror," he whispered raggedly, a knot
forming in his throat while he lifted his upper lip and examined his elongated
and sharp canines.

Sighing almost in pain, Xander leaned his forehead onto the mirror and closed
his eyes for a brief moment, taking deep and long breaths.

"C'mon, Xander!" he said out loud, trying to convince himself. "You can do
this."

Taking a step back from his own reflection, the young Mr. Harris looked at the
golden eyes of the demon, and taking a long breath, swallowed down the thick
knot in his throat.

He had no idea how to do this, so he just decided to calm down and think of nice
things like Twinkies, Shania Twain's legs and Cordelia's kisses...

And then, as his mind began to wander off, the vampire tried to make his face
turn human.

Nothing happened.

"Come on," he grunted, closing his eyes and grimacing with effort. "Just
change!"

After five long minutes of groaning and grunting, as if he was trying to do a
very different activity associated with that same room, Xander abandoned the
attempt with a long sigh.

He let himself fall back against the cold china wall, banging his head softly
against it and feeling completely stupid.

=It can't be that complicated,= Xander thought. He had seen Angel and other
vampires do it a thousand times, as if they weren't even thinking about it – so
it couldn't be all that complicated.

=Maybe that's it,= he told himself, taking hold of the sink and looking at
himself. =It's just a muscle, right? Like raising an arm, or taking a step. You
don't think 'I have to raise my arm' or 'I have to raise my foot, move it
forward and then lower it to the floor', you just do it.=

So, Xander closed his eyes and, arching his brow, thought of his own face
changing. Not the complicated mechanisms of the muscles, the bones and the
cartilage rearranging, the mystical complexities of it all.

He just wanted it and, when he opened his eyes, he couldn't help but smile.

He was looking back at himself with brown eyes, the ridges had smoothed out and
his eyebrows had appeared again.

"Oh man," he said caressing them, "you don't know how much I've missed you
guys."

Well, there was no one better than he in taking pride of the small triumphs.

Barely half an hour later, after taking a hot and relaxing shower and cleaning
all traces of blood and dirt from his body, Xander went back to his room. Naked
and wet as the day he was born, he finished getting his stuff ready.

There was something changing inside him and he could feel it, a sensation so
alien to him that he needed some moments to recognize it. Xander was steeling
himself, weaving an armor of coldness around his heart not to think, not to
remember, not to feel.

He'd begun to think in terms of just the immediate future, not of tomorrow but
the next five minutes. And above all, not of the past, never the past. Yesterday
just didn't exist to him anymore.

His soul, if he still had it, had turned numb. His heart had turned cold.

Abandoning his task for a brief moment, Xander took a long and slow look at his
naked body. Examining it in the golden light of the morning, filtered through
his window, the word 'creature' popped up in his mind.

He was different. He was no frightened boy anymore. He was no longer human.

He was a vampire.

Different. Strange. Special.

But a vampire, nonetheless.

Shaking his head, Xander grabbed a pair of boxers from his drawer and slipped
into them, followed by a pair of jeans, a T-shirt and a sweater. He completed
his attire with socks and a pair of sneakers and zipped his bag shut, throwing a
jacket over his shoulders.

Then, kneeling down in front of his closet, he removed the little board that
covered his vault of treasures, as he called it, and took the small box inside
it, opening it.

Xander wasted no time in taking the small bundle of dollars he kept there, the
remains of his savings after spending the rest on an expensive bottle of perfume
for Cordelia.

One that now, he wouldn't ever have the chance to give to her. He quickly put
the cash into the interior pocket of his jacket.

Xander knew he had an account in the local bank with a little bit of money his
grandmother had left for his university studies, but he found it hard to believe
that he would now have access to it.

Somehow, being officially dead was bad for one's economic situation.

Xander played with the thought of searching for some more money in his parents'
room, but the idea was plainly laughable. The mere concept of Alexander Harris
Senior saving cash for a rainy day, went against everything he knew about his
father.

No, he would have to manage with what he had.

For some silent seconds he pondered his next move and then, opening the box
again, he rummaged through its contents, the pictures, the objects, the
mementos... he didn't want to remember the past, but he didn't want to forget it
either.

If he lost his hope, there would nothing of Xander Harris remaining inside him;
and then, it would indeed be better for him to be dead completely.

He took a small package, carefully wrapped up in colorful gift paper and
examined it closely before putting it in his pocket and taking a picture from
the box.

The gang at Christmas, laughing, sharing that special time together.

It hurt now to look at their faces, to see their smiles. They made him want to
cry, and he was tired of crying.

So, keeping the picture carefully guarded inside his pocket, Xander put the
wooden box back inside its secluded nook. After covering it, he took his sports
bag and the plastic one where he had gathered his dirty and torn clothes and
quickly went out of his house, not looking back as he ran away down the long and
empty street.

His relaxed jog took him faster than what he expected back across Skid row and
to the railway intersection near it, a place that all the freight trains
arriving at, leaving or just passing by Sunnydale had to use.

Xander sat down beside the railway on a flat stone, his back leaned against a
sign. He waited, his eyes closed and the sun warming his body as he tried not to
think of anything at all.

He didn't have to wait for long as he heard the whistle of a freight train, and
the ground began to rumble under his feet as the enormous bulk of the train
became bigger and bigger on the horizon.

Jumping to his feet, Xander threw his bag over his shoulder and waited for the
train to come close enough, hoping that it would slow its speed as it crossed
the intersection with the road.

The bells began to clang and the barriers were lowered, even though there was no
car coming on the road. Xander began to run in the same direction as the train
as it got closer and closer to him, discovering with amazement that he was
almost able to match the machine's speed with little effort.

When the first cargo truck with an open door reached him, he jumped into it,
getting a good grip on the door's handle and propelling himself inside.

When he turned around on the floor and sat up, he found that he wasn't even
panting.

Shaking his head at the whole surreality of it, Xander left his bag on the floor
and got up. He took a look around himself, feeling oddly like the star of an old
western movie, completely surrounded by big haystacks that were being
transported to an unknown destination.

Xander sat down almost at the edge of the doorway, leaning his back on its open
frame. He looked at Sunnydale, as its buildings passed by quickly at first –
then the train left them behind, gaining speed once it passed the town limits.

He had only the vaguest notion that they were heading north.

Where he was going, he had no idea. When he would arrive there, he didn't know.
What he would do once he got there, that was a complete mystery to him.

=But if there's one thing I do know,= he told himself as took out the picture
from his pocket and looked at it, the wind making it flap and tremble in his
grasp. =It's that no matter where life takes me, no matter how much time I need,
no matter what I have to do, there will come a day when Sunnydale will see me
return home.=

He paused for a moment. =For better or worse.=

Letting his hand rest on his lap, still holding the picture almost
absent-mindedly, Xander looked back at his home town, getting smaller and
smaller in the distance.

He never noticed he was crying, not even when the first tears, red with his
blood, hit the picture on his lap.

~~~~~~

Far away, sitting on her unmade bed, a brunette girl looked out her window,
holding a framed picture against her chest as if it was the most precious thing
in the world.

Very slowly, as if she feared to see what was in that picture, she took it away
from her chest and looked down at it.

She was there, her face radiant with a happiness that would seem impossible for
her to possess if anyone looked at her right now. She was hugging a handsome
dark-haired boy as he playfully tried to kiss her on her cheek, one of his arms
hugging her close to him, the other one holding her head.

And, even when she seemed to resist his show of affection, she had both of her
arms around him too.

She looked up from the picture and, even when no sound came out from her lips,
the tears that fell from her eyes and onto the cold glass surface of the frame,
spoke volumes for her.

Lord help me to be strong
On this road I travel on
When I'm lost and lonely find me
My journey's just begun
And I'm not the only one

"I want to know what love is", Foreigner

~~~~~~

To be continued...