Title: And the Saints Boweth Before the King

Author: DOKChairman

Time/Spoilers: Takes place after the events in 'Grave'.

Summary: I could write a summary, but then it would give away everything.  So no summary, but I'll give you a hint.  The opening I put down for the story is indicative of some of what the story might be about.  Not much of a hint, I know, but it's all you're getting.

Disclaimer: Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy own the rights to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all of its characters.  I own nothing except the story, and the Anna Kournikova poster on my bedroom wall.

Author's Note: To any who might be wondering, this is not a Highlander crossover.  I have read more than enough Higlander crossovers with the Buffy verse and have no desire to create one myself.  I only mention this because I have noticed that whenever a sword is used in a Xander fic, it usually means a Highlander crossover.

Author's Note #2: For a long while, I debated with myself about whether or not I should shift viewpoints in this part of the story.  I know that I said that these flashbacks are only supposed to show the things that happened to Xander, but I have found that confining myself only to him severely limits my ability to tell the complete story.  So, please ignore the change in viewpoints.  Just pretend that this a flashback from the view of everyone, and not just Xander.  If I just do Xander, my story just won't make any sense.  That being said, everything is still supposed to be taking place in the context of Xander's memory flashbacks.  I know it's confusing and I apologize.

Chapter 5: A Knight's Tale

            To Xander's unending shame, he became frozen in fear as soon as he saw the large man advancing toward him with the sword.  He had faced the forces of evil for more than five years, he had stood up to Angelus, and he had even stopped his psychotic best friend from destroying the world, yet when the man coming towards him had pulled out his sword, Xander had frozen in blind panic.

            Xander couldn't believe that this was how his life was going to end.  He had always thought, more liked hoped, that if he ever did eventually die, that he would do so doing something heroic.  He had never thought that is life would end by having some psycho skewer him with a sword.  And he certainly never thought that he would go down without a fight.  Yet here he was, rooted to the floor, unable to move.  As soon as Xander had seen that sword, all thoughts of escaping or fighting back had left him.

            Everything was moving in slow motion for Xander, the man advancing toward him, Anya and Dawn both screaming at him in fear and concern, and himself doing nothing at all.  It was all too much for Xander to comprehend.  All he could do was close his eyes and prepare himself for the inevitable.

            After what seemed like an eternity, but was in actuality only about ten seconds, and no inevitable had come, Xander carefully opened his eyes.  What he saw baffled and confused him.

            The man that had just mere seconds ago been advancing towards Xander with hostile intentions, was now kneeling at Xander's feet.  Not only was he kneeling at his feet, but the man was offering his sword as well.  Kneeling on one knee, with his head bowed down, and the sword lying down on his two raised hands, the man looked like he was straight out of some old movie.

            Xander had no idea what to do.  Trying to find his voice, he barely croaked out, "Who the hell are you, and what are you doing here?"

            Without getting up or lowering his raised hands, the man lifted his head and spoke in his deep, strong voice.  "I am Thomas White, First Knight and Captain of his majesty's royal guard.  I have sworn my allegiance and my life to you and your family.  I have searched for you my whole life, so that I may present to you your birthright and the symbol of your family.  Take what rightly belongs to you, so that I may no longer carry this burden of service."

            As soon as the man called Thomas mentioned the word birthright, Xander instantly knew what he was talking about.  How he knew, he had no idea, all he knew was that he was sure that the sword lying on the hands of the man in front of him, belonged to him.

            With a slightly shaking hand, Xander slowly reached down and grasped the sword firmly in his right hand.  Carefully lifting the sword off of Thomas's hands, Xander brought the sword up and into the light of the shop.  The sword was beautiful, that was the only way Xander could describe it.

            This was not your normal, everyday, chop off vampires' heads kind of sword.  This sword was a work of art, a weapon both deadly and beautiful.  A little longer than Xander's arm, the blade was razor sharp and looked so shiny that it could almost be mistaken for brand new, except Xander knew that that was not true.  Somehow, Xander knew that the sword he held in his hand was hundreds of years old.  Looking down to the pommel of the sword, Xander couldn't help but admire the intricately carved symbols in the golden handgrip.  This was a sword that belonged in a museum, not to any individual person.

            Not knowing what to say, Xander could only mumble a thank you to the man still kneeling before him.  Without really understanding why, Xander brought the sword up to his face, and pressed the cold face of the sword up against his skin.  As soon as he did, Xander was assaulted by a wave of memories.

            Xander saw himself dressed in strange clothes, walking down the hallways of what could only be described as a castle.  Xander saw himself wearing the armor of a medieval knight and riding on a horse.  And Xander saw himself using the sword that he was holding in his hand against a man that looked vaguely familiar to him.  Whoever the man was, Xander knew that the man hated him and was trying very hard to kill him.  The most shocking thing of all though, was that Xander felt the same way.

            However, nothing prepared Xander for what he saw next.  Another memory flashed before his eyes, this time of him being killed.  The man that he had been fighting had somehow gotten the upper hand, and had stabbed Xander in the stomach with his sword.  As the Xander in his memories slumped to the ground, the Xander in the real world did the same thing as well, and both Xanders slipped into unconsciousness.

            Buffy Summers was not a happy camper.  She had spent the better half of her day searching for her friend, and had had very little success in finding him.  She had first visited the Magic Box in the hopes of finding him there.  She knew that he spent most of his free time working on restoring the shop, so she had hoped to find him there.  Unfortunately, he was nowhere to be seen.  She then visited his apartment, and again found the location devoid of his presence.  She had next visited his construction site, in the hopes that he would still be at work, but again her efforts had been to no avail.  She had finally given up any hope of finding Xander, and decided that she should visit the Magic Box one last time before going home.  She figured that she might get lucky.

            She had no idea of how lucky she was about to become, as she casually walked through the entrance of the Magic Box.  She was soon confronted by a rather disturbing image.  Lying on the ground was Xander, and from what she could tell, he was unconscious.

            Now Buffy, being the rather impulsive and quick to violence kind of slayer that she was, immediately leapt into action at seeing her unconscious friend.  Only seeing a man with a sword standing over her prone friend, she ignorantly assumed that whoever the strange man was, he was the one responsible for Xander's current condition.

            Throwing caution to the wind, Buffy rushed the large man at full speed, and despite her rather small stature, managed to execute a textbook flying tackle.  Because of her considerable slayer strength, both Buffy and the man went flying back six feet, only stopping because they crashed into one of the shop's walls.

            As soon as they landed, the man shifted his body so that he had enough leverage, and shoved Buffy off of him with his feet.  As Buffy went flying through the air, the man leapt to his feet and assumed a fighting stance.  Buffy was quick to recover as well, and started to advance on the man.

            The man spoke quickly, "Please, Miss Summers, stop.  I do not wish to harm you, but I will defend myself if you continue."

            Buffy smirked, "Don't you have that backwards?  Usually this is the part in the fight where the bad guy boasts about how much he's going to hurt me, and then I make an extremely witty remark about how you're about to get your ass kicked.  You don't want to mess up the system, do you?"

            The man backed up a little as Buffy continued to come towards him.  "Please, Miss Summers, this is not what it looks like.  I did not harm Alexander."

            Buffy looked at the man skeptically, "You don't really expect me to believe you, do you?"

            "Buffy, wait!  He's telling the truth!"  Buffy heard someone shout.

            For the first time since coming into the shop, Buffy realized that she was not alone.  Making sure to keep one eye on the man dressed in black, she looked off to her right and saw her sister and Anya.  Buffy recognized Dawn's voice shouting at her.

            "Dawn, what the hell are you talking about?  He was hurting Xander!"  Buffy shouted.

            Dawn rushed over to the two combatants, and against her better judgment, stepped in between the two.  Dawn looked up to see confusion on her sister's face.  "He's telling the truth, Buffy.  He didn't hurt Xander."

            Buffy eyes blazed in defiance, "If he didn't hurt Xander then why is he lying on the ground unconscious."

            Dawn was unsure of the reason why herself, but she knew that the man had nothing to do with it.  She had seen how he had reacted to Xander, and she was convinced that he would never hurt her friend.  "I don't know why Xander's like that, but I do know that Thomas had nothing to with it.  Xander just touched that sword to his face and then he just collapsed.  Thomas was trying to wake Xander up when you came in all psycho like."

            Buffy frowned at Dawn, "I was not acting like a psycho.  I thought he was trying to hurt Xander.  What did you expect me to do, just let him do whatever he wanted?"

            Dawn shook her head, "I thought that we went over this Buffy?  No more jumping to conclusions or sudden judgments.  You're supposed to think before you act."

            Buffy cried out, "Hey, I think plenty.  When I saw that guy, I thought of all sorts of different ways of killing him.  This thing is always full of good stuff."  Buffy then pointed at her head.

            Dawn was stopped from retorting by a loud groan coming from Xander's body.  Both Dawn and Buffy rushed immediately to Xander's side, and Anya was not far behind.  When they got close to him, they saw him roll over onto his back, and slowly opened his eyes.

            In a strained voice, Xander croaked out, "You know, it's a good thing that you three aren't around me every time I get knocked out, cause a guy could really get used to waking up to such beautiful women.  I really don't think my body could take the strain."

            If Buffy had been worried that something might have been wrong with Xander, his comment allayed her fears.  He was the same old Xander.  Buffy just snorted and moved back to give Xander room to climb to his feet. 

            Xander began to shake his head vigorously.  "Did anyone get the license plate number of that truck that just ran over my head?"

            Buffy asked, "I take it you don't know what happened to you either?"

            Xander groaned slightly.  "No, I don't know what happened to me.  One second I'm holding a sword in my hand, and the next I'm waking up to two thirds of my fantasies."

            Buffy hit Xander in his arm, none too gently.  "I only hope that you're talking about me and Anya, because if you're talking about Dawn, I'm going to seriously have to hurt you."

            Moving out of reach from Buffy, he grinned at her lecherously.  "Of course I am Buffy.  As beautiful a girl as Dawn is, she is not in my age bracket.  Besides, I don't think she has quite the…stamina that you and Anya have."

            Buffy's face flashed a deep red, "What the hell do you know about my stamina?"

            Xander just smiled a knowing smile; "I have only one word for you Buffy.  Faith.  Believe me, I know how much stamina a slayer really has."

            Again Buffy blushed, but this time she retaliated derisively.  "Oh please, Faith told me you only lasted for like five minutes.  That's nowhere near enough time to find out what a slayer is really capable of."

            Xander got indignant, "That was my first time!  Ask Anya, she'll tell you that I've improved a whole hell of a lot since then."

            Anya spoke up, "It's true.  He can last for more than ten minutes now."

            Dawn was fed up, "Hello, people, do you realize what the hell you're arguing about?  I really don't need to hear this."

            All three Scoobies looked properly embarrassed by Dawn's outburst.  The three of them made there way toward the table, and Xander sat down heavily in one of the chairs. 

            Meanwhile, during the Scoobies argument, Thomas had picked up the sword that had gone flying during his fight with the slayer.  When he saw that everyone had calmed down and was sitting down, he moved towards Xander.

            Xander watched Thomas move toward him.  Thomas stopped in the middle of the room, and everyone turned to stare at him.  Feeling four sets of eyes boring into him, Thomas showed the first sign of being flustered since coming into the Magic Box.  He shifted from one foot to the other.

            Seeing that Thomas was just going to stand there, Xander decided to get some of his questions answered.  "So Thomas, that is your name right?"  Xander saw Thomas nod his head in confirmation.  "So Thomas, who the hell are you?  What was all that stuff you were talking about earlier?  And what does any of it have to do with me?"

            Thomas seemed confused, "But Alexander, I already told you who I was.  I am Thomas White…"

            Xander interrupted him before he could get any further, "No, I already know who you are, but I don't know who you are.  And another thing, don't call me Alexander call me Xander."

            This time Thomas seemed to understand what Xander was saying.  "Ahhh, I see.  You want to know about me.  I sometimes forget that I know everything about you, and that you know nothing about me."

            Xander interrupted again, "See, that's the thing.  How do you know so much about me?"

            Thomas just smiled, "All in good time, Xander, all in good time.  You must learn patience if you wish to hear my story.  For you see, my young prince, I am over six hundred years old and have much to tell."

To be continued soon (If baseball doesn't get in the way)…………………….