Title: Inevitability (Part 3/?)

Author: Michael Dunbar

E-mail: mutant190583@yahoo.com

Disclaimer: Joss and CO own all of the Buff Verse

Timeline: Set in season 2 sometime after Angel went bad. No other slayers exist either.

Summary: What's inevitable simply is..

Author's notes: This is kind of a filler piece; it just shows character change mostly.

Feedback: Tell me what you think please. Bad or good

----------------

I'm not sure what has changed in me, not entirely anyway.

You can call it an epiphany, an act of god, hell you could call it changing from a child into a man but all I know is that something is completely different.

Maybe the realisation of Cordelia's turning finally struck something inside me, making me step forward past the idealism of been a sidekick for a superhero like in the comic books I had read when I was younger.

Maybe I have just finally fucking grown up.

I wasn't in love with Cordelia that's for sure, but maybe if we'd have stayed together then it could have been the real thing.

Or maybe I'm just kidding myself and I'm still in love with a blonde slayer that doesn't even look my way and I always will be.

Always is such a long time.

I'm such a fuck up, my entire life I've never been anything else.

But this time my fuck up got Cordelia killed, if it wasn't for me she'd be somewhere close insulting my dress sense as usual and right at this moment that would be music to my ears.

I hurt Buffy when I slapped her hands away earlier, not in the physical sense I mean like that could ever happen, I could see it in her eyes.

She was hurt by my rejection.

But I'd say that is one of my smaller problems at the moment.

I'm not even sure where I am, I'm pretty sure I passed out.

Which was a big manly thing to do if I do say so myself.

I think I'm on Buffy's couch, there are a few pictures on the mantle of her and her mom and they kind of give my locale away.

Buffy must have carried me here, A tiny blonde girl carrying tall gangly old me through half the town, at any other time in my life I'd have laughed at that thought.

Now just isn't the time.

Cordelia wouldn't rise tonight, it would be tomorrow.

It takes 24 hours for demonic possession to take hold or so I've learnt over the past couple of years or so.

She won't even live a night I owe her nothing less; I won't let a fucking demon take her and hold her for any longer than a night.

I don't plan on been a Buffy and been held back by my feelings, that creature isn't Cordelia and will never be her again even if we managed to curse her.

You don't come back from visions of torture, feeding off humans and murder the same.

Believe me.

For the first time I have managed to get a good look around the room and notice Buffy's limp form on the chair.

She must be uncomfortable on the chair, despite her slayer suppleness.

The moonlight from outside just seems to shimmer down her sleep filled state and she looks so peaceful and just so happy.

Maybe Buffy is with him in her dreams, they have the white picket fence, the 2.4 children, the dog called Sparky and maybe they even have a happy ever after there.

I know the dream; I've had it so many times.

Then you get bombed down with reality, it hits you like a lead weight and you realise the dream can never possibly be.

But you live on because there truly is no other alternative.

My feet are on the floor before I even realise it and I've picked up Buffy's unconscious form and have laid her down in my former position on the couch and she sprawls out welcoming the extra space.

Buffy doesn't make a murmur.

She must be comfortable with my presence, at least that's something.

So peaceful and happy, it's not often I or anybody else gets to see Buffy like this.

It's one of the finest things to witness in my opinion.

I have no idea where I am going but the night air touches my face before I even realise it.

The darkness is only illuminated by the half moon shining down from above and the street lamps shining down onto the pavement.

Suddenly my feet stop and I realise I'm at the closest cemetery to Buffy's house. Not missing a beat I let myself through the gate and immediately lean down near a tree and pick up a branch that had fallen.

I now know what I came here for tonight, I came to kill.

But I'm Xander, the sidekick.

Maybe the vampires will see me and die of laughter.

Then suddenly it all changes because I see one of them, so obvious, so predatory.

So monstrous

Then all my doubts are gone and there is just me, the vampire and the foot long branch in my hand.

I have no idea where it comes from, such pain and rage. It fills me from head to toe like an almighty injection of adrenaline and then I'm attacking.

There's just blood, screams and then there's nothing.

Just a calm eerie quiet.

The creature is dust; id slammed the branch into his chest.

My breath is heavy as I slump to the floor into the vampires dust.

I'd beaten him to a bloody pulp first before going for the kill, broken what seemed like thousands of bones as I lunged and smashed with the large piece of wood.

Blood had sprayed all over and even onto me, my shirt is covered in that foul creatures liquid and I don't have a second thought as I rip it off and leave the tattered shirt to the birds.

I just run, run in pain and anger.

Tomorrow I'll free Cordelia.