5. Five Decades

"Tell me a story." The short blonde swinging her legs from atop a marble
tombstone grinned at the old man pacing in front of her, his leather
trenchcoat swinging around his legs as he turned.

He scowled at her, face creased in disbelief. "A story? You want a story?
We're on patrol. You don't get a story when you're waiting for the forces of
darkness to attack."

The woman cracked her gum and rolled her eyes. "But I'm booored. Tell me a
story, Xander. Please?"

"You know, you sound like a five-year old. You're not getting a story,
you're staying alert," Xander responded, scanning the surrounding rows of
the graveyard for any movement, ears cocked for any activity, be it
teenagers necking on graves or vampires fighting their way out of them.

"There's nothing to stay alert *for*. This is the third graveyard we've hit,
and it's as dead as this tombstone. Tell me a story."

"Are you sure you're twenty-three? Sure you're not one of Willow's
kindergartners?"

She grinned, tapping out a staccato beat with the stake being twirled in her
fingers. "Stor-y," she sang.

Xander sighed, shaking his head. "You know, in my day--"

"Oh, here we go."

"--Slayers were *grateful* for a little break like this. They used the
downtime to hone their senses, do leg-splits, maybe try some target
practice--"

"--la la la while dinosaurs roamed the earth and cavemen dodged werewolves
that were *this* *big*!" She held her arms out as far as they could go, then
quickly corrected her balance when she started to slip off her perch. "Heard
it, internalized it, memorized it, bored by it. Wanna hear something new.
Tell me a story, Xand."

"--and they were grateful to *live* to be twenty-three, missy," he said,
wagging a finger in her face, then backed off when she snapped her teeth
toward his hand. "None of this back-talking their Watchers, either! They
respected their trainers-slash-guides-slash-teachers!"

"In what universe?" she snorted. "I read those journals Mr. Giles left. And
the ones your buddy Dawn wrote too. *And* the ones that Wyndham-Pryce dude
wrote. I'm just upholding a long and glorious tradition of civil
disobedience."

"See, this is where we went wrong. We taught Slayers to read." Xander's grin
widened at her squeak of outrage. "Yeah, that was it! The second they
learned about the printed word, they got too big for their Doc Martens and
started questioning their Watchers and upsetting the natural order of
things, thinking that they knew everything and didn't need us!"

"I need you to help me kill things. And to tell me stories," his Slayer
retorted, "and since there's nothing here to kill -- except you...."

"So you wanted a story, hunh?" he commented, stepping away from her warily.
At her answering giggle and nod, he rolled his eyes. "Right. I told you the
one about the giant snake, right?"

"Six times. The snake got bigger every time."

"And the one about the Master?"

"Pool of water. CPR. Big fight. Master go 'poof'. Bones smashed later."

"And the one about the enjoining spell?"

"Yeah, but that's a good one, you can tell me that one again."

"Nah, there's gotta be one you haven't heard." He sighed again, letting
his voice grow serious. "I didn't tell you the one about why we're out here,
I'm pretty sure."

"There's a reason we're out here besides waiting for the stupidest
fledglings in existence to walk onto my stake?"

"Yeah. This is where the world ended."

The Slayer blinked, looked around her, then looked back at Xander. "Um, Mr.
Harris? Faithful guide? Maybe you *do* need glasses. The world's still here.
When did it end?"

"Fifty years ago. Someone just hit the re-set button, that's why you don't
notice a difference." He leaned against the tombstone next to hers, his eyes
fixed on a spot in the distance. "The First - I know Wills told you about
the First, I remember her explaining it to you - wanted to end the world.
Permanently. And it had found this loophole to do with Slayers, and Buffy,
and Kendra and Faith being called after her." He shifted his weight, pushed
thick white hair out of his eyes, avoiding her gaze. "Things were going to
keep getting worse as long as Buffy and Faith were both alive. So we had a
choice. Let the First Evil keep bringing forth bigger and nastier demons,
mentally playing torture games with the people in Sunnydale, or...."

"Or?" She shifted on the tombstone. "Xand. Or?"

"Or the Slayers could die, calling the next one after Faith."

"But they didn't do that. Right?" The girl leaned forward, her dark eyes
worried, fluffy dandelion hair drooping as she tilted her body toward him.
"Xander? Right?"

He looked at her for a long moment, then smiled sadly. "Right. Not because
the First wanted it, anyway." He paused, tilting his head back, eyes
drifting back over to that indeterminate spot. "We got It trapped in the
Hellmouth. Giles had found a spell, one that let a Champion touch the First;
and since everything we'd read said it couldn't be killed, we were going to
push it outside this reality. We cast it on Buffy, and on Angel as back-up.
Insurance. And it worked, they got it in there. Except...." His voice
trailed off.

"I hate your dramatic pauses, you know."

Xander grimaced. "Sometimes they're not dramatic, Josie. They're so the guy
telling the story can get it together enough to say the next part."

"Oh. Sorry," she whispered.

"'Sokay." His face fell into quiet folds again. "Buffy and Angel grabbed It,
and pulled It into the Hellmouth, and they managed to get it far enough in
there that It couldn't get out. Then they raced for the exit, and they made
it... but when the spell wore off, they were dying. The extra-dimensional
energy made it possible for them to banish it, but they couldn't survive. No
one could have. Not even a Champion. Angel turned human, but he was still
dying. They had a few weeks, and then...." His voice trailed off.

Josie slid off the tombstone and took a few steps toward him, hesitantly.
"You never told me that part before."

"You weren't old enough to hear it until now." He smiled, tilted his head to
look at the girl he'd known for half a lifetime, and thought again - for the
thousandth time - that Slayers had too much in common for it not to hurt
those who loved them. He cleared his throat. "And so, that is how Buffy the
Vampire Slayer and her one-time and maybe-always love Angel saved the world
by expelling the First and taking a lot of evil with it, leaving this one to
settle into a peace that will last seventy times seven years. If you believe
that sort of thing, and if Giles got the math right."

"But the vampires I fight...."

"Last of a dying breed, kid. Weak. Timid. Not gonna outlast my lifetime,
according to the guys who made the deal." He grinned wickedly. "Almost made
it worth it, to know that. And to know that I'd get to Watch a Slayer who'd
outlive being Chosen." He stood up, shaking out the folds of his jacket.
"And tonight's the night they come back to remember. The ones who can,
anyway."

"They? Who--" Josie followed his eyes over to the other side of the
graveyard, where he'd been watching earlier.

A platinum-haired man wearing a jacket very similar to Xander's was
kneeling at a grave, laying a handful of daisies under the name. A tall
woman with short, dark hair, a sword bound to her back, knelt at the grave
next to his with one yellow rose, her face sad, her dark eyes fixed on her
companion's back.

She knew their faces; she'd pored over them in albums Xander and Willow had
in their bookcase, long before she was called or even knew she had the
potential to be called. The man (who wasn't a man) had smiled or sneered out
of photographs with his arm around her most famous predecessor. The brunette
had smiled perkily next to Xander, and Angel, and Wesley. They'd never
seemed real to her, especially since they'd left twenty-five years before
she was born. All she could do was stare at them in shock, now that they
were here.

Xander took his phone out of his pocket, and hit speed-dial. "Will?...
yeah, they're here. No, looks like Lorne couldn't make it... No,
he isn't here either. Just the two of them." He smiled gently. "Yeah, I
think cookies and blood are a good plan. We'll pick 'em up now. You call
Dawnie, all right?" He rolled his eyes at something his best friend said.
"Yes, I promise, I won't get on his case. Some of us have grown up, you
know... You're gonna lose that bet, Rosenberg. Uh-hunh. Keep your cash
handy, we'll see you in twenty." He folded the phone shut, then turned to
the wide-eyed Josie. "You ready to meet some legends, kid?"

"No. Duh. And don't call me kid in front of them. I'm a Slayer, you know."

Xander grinned, following his charge as she began running across the
graveyard. "Never would've guessed... Hey. Wait up, will you? Some of us
aren't as young as we used to be...."

****

Christina
kikimariposa@prodigy.net