Looking at the city spread out below, Xander sighed. Calm is an illusion, and it seemed to be designed to keep things difficult for him. When he'd parted from the others a few days ago, he'd really had no idea where to go. He'd just got on a bus headed away, having the feeling that he would find a Slayer. Probably any direction he went, he could find a Slayer. Except that he wasn't really certain how.
Yeah, there were some perks to this new thing. He'd been attacked by one demon, and he'd found that not only did he actually have the reflexes to pull of those combat moves from his soldier time, which seemed oddly fresh, considering that he'd nearly forgotten everything, but he had enough strength to take the demon down. Vampires had just sort of run away from him, hissing like scared kittens with looks of fear and confusion on their faces.
:You have the same energy as a Slayer now. They can feel it, and since there's no way that you could be mistaken for a woman, even in the dark, it confuses them.: Willow's voice was a whisper in his mind. She sounded almost sad.
That didn't quite make sense to him. Why would Willow be sad? "Something wrong, pal of mine?"
:Nothing that you can fix. There have been... tensions in the Sunnydale group. Apparently, some of them decided that the school collapsing disaster was Buffy's fault. That she should have had a better plan, done something different. That with a better plan, nobody would have been killed.: There were a few moments of silence before she continued. :Kennedy's blaming Buffy for my death. Something about if I hadn't been pressured to do the spell, if I'd had more power to draw on, maybe I would have survived.:
"Would it have made a difference?" Xander couldn't quite help asking. "And you know, I really do think there should have been a better plan than the one we had. Not that I had one, but... I mean, we had something more for the Mayor, for crying out loud. That... it was just... Willow do the spell, the rest of us will attack and try not to die, and Spike the Great can save the day."
:Little bit of bitterness there? I know, the whole thing with Spike and Anya hurt, but... well, yeah, I'd rather we hadn't been depending on Spike either.: Somehow, she sighed, which was fairly impressive for a disembodied spirit. :So many of us were too caught up in our own tragedies to help plan things like we used to. And we'd been drifting apart. Like we weren't quite as close anymore.:
"You've been thinking about this, huh? And how do you know what's happening with them? With Kennedy?" Xander glanced to the side, seeing a faint shimmer with his new eye. That would be... well, the place where Willow almost was.
:I can feel them. All the Slayers. I'm sort of trying to help them, to help prevent them from loosing it. Unfortunately, not only is there no instruction manual, I haven't been able to make solid contact. If I focus on a particular Slayer, I can sort of see and hear what's around her, and I can sort of do an empathic connection. It only seems to work on Slayers or you. I can influence their dreams, but... The only one I've been able to get any sort of contact with is Faith, and that's only been fuzzy.: There was a wistfulness to her voice.
"No luck with Kennedy then?" Xander was walking along the road, still trying to get an idea where to go. Stopping with the pretext of checking for traffic, he tried to look for a Slayer with his new eye. There was this sort of blurring, as if everything had gone out of focus, and there was a woman at a grocery store checkout. It was one of those little discount places, and there was an old woman and a teenager at the checkout. One of them was a Slayer, but he couldn't quite tell which, or maybe they both were. But... the old woman had to be sixty if she was a day. Could old people even be Called? Wasn't that against the rules or something?
:I've been able to influence Kennedy's dreams, but not really for any meaningful conversations. I'm sure that you wouldn't... well, maybe you would like the details, but you aren't getting them.: There was an almost playful note mixed with the pain for that comment. :But as for the maybe Slayer old lady...Under the old rules, no, it wouldn't happen. But when we did that spell, it activated ALL of the possible Slayers, not just girls between the ages of fifteen and twenty. So, there could be Slayer grannies... or maybe Slayer toddlers.:
"Three year olds with the power of a Slayer? Dear merciful... please say it's not so!" Xander shuddered, letting the special sight drop so that he could cross the street. He was vaguely aware of people giving him odd looks. Okay, he was a guy in a beat up leather jacket and an eye patch, walking along the street talking to himself. Maybe there was a reason for the funny looks.
:Well, I haven't actually found all of the Slayers yet. I know how many, and I can get a sort of feel for direction and distance, but... I can't focus on more than maybe two or three people at a time. Everyone that I've found has been at least post pubescent, but that's maybe a hundred out of over a thousand.: Willow sounded almost frustrated. :I think it's something that I'll get better at with practice. And if you just focus your thoughts towards me, I'll know. I can hear them.:
For a moment, Xander felt blind panic. When she said his thoughts, did that include... Oh, please say that it wasn't so.
:Only the particularly intense ones, or the ones directed to or about me. And yeah, I feel... well, I haven't felt this balanced in years. This busy, yeah, but... I don't think we need to sleep now.: There was an odd note in her mental voice.
Xander sighed, knowing what it was. He'd felt it as well, especially after that demon, or when the vampires would run away. How human were they now? He was afraid the answer was 'not very'. It was sort of freaky, but he wasn't nearly as bothered by it as he would have been a few years ago. Maybe it was the fact that he'd known something could happen, or that he knew he was on the right side. Maybe he was just... tired of all the worry.
After a few moments, he decided to try to follow the old lady. If the teen was a maybe Slayer, she'd still be working at the store for a while. If it was the old lady... well, as wrong as it would be to deliberately leave some girl clueless as to her new destiny, wouldn't leaving an old woman to be attacked by monsters be worse?
It felt like it took forever to get to the place where the old lady had parked her car. It was a pleasant looking little group of mini apartment buildings, and from the looks of it, apparently they didn't rent to anyone under fifty. Senior apartments... well, he'd known they existed, just hadn't ever really had much call to go there. There she was, carrying a bag of groceries towards a little apartment with pots of brightly colored flowers lining the little patio. There was a wooden cane hooked over her wrist, dangling slightly as she walked.
"Hello, ma'am. Could I offer you a hand with those?" Xander tried to look helpful, and not dangerous. Or at least as non-threatening as someone with an eye patch could manage.
She looked at him, wrinkles over her face, and frowned a bit. "There are several more bags, I suppose... Well, your back looks younger than mine."
Xander offered a smile, resisting the urge to sigh. Was he reduced to pack-animal again? Just... carry this, carry that? Lifting a pair of bags from the old gray car, he turned, following her into the house. "Where should I take these?"
She looked at him, a small smile now gracing her face. "Right through there will be good."
Xander helped the old woman, who's name turned out to be Rebecca, carry in the rest of her groceries. It was only then that he got the chance to look around her tiny apartment. The furniture had that worn slightly shabby sort of comfort, and there were shelves and shelves of books. Some of them looked like very familiar books, actually... "Isn't Murstad's Prophecies a bit of an odd choice for some light reading?"
"Oh, I never read the Murstad's. Charlie swore by it, but I prefer Rocherre's." She didn't even look up, and made this little gesture with one hand, as if flicking some dust from the tiny end table. Then, she straightened back up, one hand resting on the cane that she hadn't been using at all as she turned slowly to face him. "How do you recognize the Murstad?"
"I... well, my high school librarian had a copy of it. Should I ask how you have one?" Xander was starting to half hope and half suspect that maybe Rebecca wouldn't be quite as unprepared for a demonic nasty as he'd first expected.
"My husband, God rest his soul, was a Watcher. Some of his books stayed here, many of them went back to the Council in England." She sighed, letting herself slowly sit on a faded green chair. "Do you have any idea where the current Slayer is? They haven't told us... well, just me now, about any of them since we lost poor Michelle."
"Funny that you should ask..." Xander looked at her, letting his vision shift slightly, and discovering a golden haze around her. She was a Slayer... and most definitely way past twenty. "You see, there was sort of... a catastrophic series of bad things. The Main Council, back in England? They got reduced to a smoking crater, and a bunch of demons were hunting and killing the Potentials. The short version is that in a battle against the First Evil, a spell was cast that activated all the Potential Slayers. Every surviving one, not just the ones in Sunnydale. Even the ones who wouldn't normally become Slayers right now."
"Are you suggesting... But I'm much too old to be the Slayer!" She looked surprised, and astonished, and dismayed all at once.
"You aren't the Slayer, you're A Slayer. There's a lot of them now." Xander sighed, sitting on the edge of the couch, which had been covered over by a blanket of some sort, maybe a yellow and orange pattern originally. "Those of us that survived... There's an effort to make a new Council of Watchers, some sort of training center for the new Slayers. I can give you a number to contact them if you want."
"Good heavens. I'm much too old to go patrol for evil, or try to avert an apocalypse – it would do terrible things to my knees, I'm certain. But I should be able to help with some training, and certainly with research. That number would be welcome... or if there would be someone there to call now?" Rebecca looked thoughtful, and rubbed her fingers over her chin.
Xander didn't have much trouble locating the phone, although it took him a moment to remember the use of an actual rotary phone. He dialed the number of Faith's cell phone, hoping that it was turned on.
Finally, the phone picked up, with a slightly cranky sounding :What?:
"Hello to you, Faith. Can I talk to Giles?" Xander smiled a little, trying to guess what had her so irritable.
:Yeah, I suppose. He'll probably thank you for the time away from the feud. Buffy and Kennedy are shouting at each other again.: There was a pause, and what might have been Faith sighing. In the background, Xander thought that he could hear shouting, not quite close enough to make out the words. :Is there any good news?:
"Sort of. There's one, maybe two Slayers in this city that I know of so far." Xander smiled, glad that Faith was someone who would listen to him.
:Reassuring to hear. Here's Giles, and I expect to hear more later. Don't be afraid to call.: Faith sounded like she was smiling.
:Ahh... hello, Xander. Is everything alright? Have you had much luck finding the new Slayers?: Giles sounded stressed. It was probably entirely natural, considering that he was one watcher for almost two dozen Slayers, with no Council to draw on for assistance or manpower.
"Luck enough. Price to pay for meddling and all that... I can explain later. But I'm sitting here... well, standing, actually, with Rebecca, and she's a Slayer now. Her husband was a Watcher before he died. Umm... I was thinking that she might be able to help with the Watchery end of things." Xander smiled, just absurdly glad to hear Giles' voice again.
:You think that she would be more helpful as a Watcher? Why?: Giles sounded a bit distracted, and then there was a muttered aside 'no, I do not know where your books have gone. Not the dice either. Ask Dawn.' Then with a sigh, Giles spoke into the phone again. :We could use a bit more responsible supervision around here.:
"Because, if I'm going to be blunt about it, she's old enough to have kids my age, maybe old enough to have grandkids bugging their parents about cars and piercings. She's pretty sure that she's a bit too old for patrolling, and I'm not going to argue the point." Xander sighed. "Why don't I let you talk to her?"
Rebecca was there, waiting for the phone, a thin smile on her face. "You do know that it's considered rude to call a woman old?"
Handing it over, Xander made a small shrug. "You brought it up, and honestly, you do seem a bit... farther from your teenage years than most of the Slayers that I've met. Here's Giles."
Leaving Rebecca to talk to Giles, Xander sat back down on the couch, this time leaning against the back of it, his eyes closed as he pondered things. Go out and find the Slayers. Make certain they don't abuse their powers. This was not easy. "Why am I doing this again?"
His memory allowed him a long moment of blank contemplation before dredging up the answer. He hadn't wanted the world to end. He'd figured anything the Powers That Be asked – demanded, really – of him would be worth it to allow the world to continue. As he considered the alternative – the absolute end of everything as he knew it, Xander came again to the conclusion that this really wasn't that bad. And he'd always wanted to travel, even if this wasn't quite how he'd imagined things would turn out.
"Well, Xander. It seems that you may end up helping me pack for Cleveland. Either that, or helping me move somewhere a bit larger if I do become a Watcher. I think I'd like a bit of a longer explanation of how this happened, if you don't mind." Rebecca was looking at him, her eyes bright with interest.
"Right. Well, might as well start at the very beginning. My part of it, at least. For me, it started when Buffy Summers moved to Sunnydale..." Xander began to tell Rebecca the story of his life, with some editing, naturally, but enough to give her an idea what sort of things they'd faced. Enough that she wouldn't accuse them of panicking about the First and changing the world on a poorly thought whim.
In the end, Rebecca sat there, looking rather disturbed. "I must say, I'm glad that Michelle didn't have to face the First. Or Glorificus, for that matter. I certainly agree that your group seemed a bit outmatched. But... well, never mind. What's done is done. Talking about how you could have tried other things is rather pointless now. I would certainly help teach younger Slayers if there are any more in the nearby area. Of course, I have no idea how many demons or vampires there might be here, considering how much Michelle did to fix that problem..."
Xander felt a bit startled. "This is going to take a bit of getting used to. Every other Slayer I've bumped in to has been my age... or younger. You've gone out, lived your life, and now, you're being dragged in for round two of World saving. It gives you a whole different perspective."
Rebecca chuckled. "Well, there has to be some advantage to not being seventeen anymore. Wisdom might not be a wonderful trade for strong muscles and flexible knees when picking up groceries, but it might be helpful fighting evil. As long as someone else does the actual fighting."
"Hopefully. I think there's another Slayer in the city, but I need to find her. There might even be a possibility of getting some council funds to help with the expenses..." Xander was half thinking out loud.
"Young man, did you not say that the Council had been blown to kingdom come? How would they be able to dispense any funding?" Rebecca looked at him, her expression suggesting that she might be worried about his sanity.
Xander smiled at her. "The Council got bombed, but that shouldn't have touched their bank accounts. If someone were to make a few adjustments... hmmm... Wills?" Xander looked around the apartment. "Think you can walk me through that if we can get some internet access?"
Some of the shadows seemed to warp, bending into the shape of a young woman, with little golden glimmers of light helping to define her features. :Hello Rebecca. I'm Willow, you can get in touch with me any time just by focusing your thoughts on me.:
"Ahhh. I do believe the fact that you're now a spirit was one of the minor details that Xander didn't include in his story of Sunnydale. Most irregular... You think that you can gain access to the Council's funds?" Rebecca looked a bit startled, but showed no signs of panic.
:I need someone else to actually use the computer for it. I've been trying to figure out what I can and can't do now, and I can't actually use a computer. I'm non-corporeal, which means the demons can't hit me, but I can't actually type on a keyboard.: Willow shrugged.
"Well then, that should make things much easier. And once we figure out who the other Slayer in the area is, assuming we can in time, then things can move onwards. I'll have to stay in touch with Mister Giles. Possibly a secondary training center for this part of the country... It might be worth checking if you can find the children or surviving spouses of some of the other fallen Watchers, some of us pick up a considerable amount." Rebecca looked enthusiastic, as if life had been utterly boring, and now she had something to focus on, a purpose in life once more.
After a few moments of what might have been thought on the possible new training center, Rebecca looked over at Xander. "You most likely won't find anyone younger than twelve or so, and not much older than I am. Some of the oldest sources claimed that the power of a Slayer was tied inextricably to blood, and thus only a female who had ties to blood would serve as a conduit for the powers being called on."
:So, that means no Slayer toddlers? Wonderful... That had been a sort of scary idea.: Willow's mental voice seemed very relieved.
"Good heavens, the idea... yes, it would be frightening. But no, the power is tied to blood, and so only a female who has passed over the threshold of childhood into maidenhood, to quote one particular source, can be a Slayer. Presumably, the power would fade after menopause, but I don't think there's ever been a Slayer old enough to test that before... I suppose that will change soon enough." She sighed, shaking her head a little. "I suppose this is what happens when I spend six years complaining that I feel like an abandoned old lady, with nothing to do with her life. Should teach me a bit about complaining... almost as bad as wishing. Not quite as bad as the foolish question of what could possibly go wrong, but definitely not a thing to encourage."
"Wonderful. I was pretty sure that while I might be able to find the Slayers, I'm definitely not going to be able to train all of them and still search for more." Xander felt relieved. It just wouldn't be practical to send over a thousand people to Cleveland to work with Giles. And it would also be pretty arrogant to think that all of them would be in America, which raised the whole question of languages... urghh, best not worry about that just yet.
"So, we've got the plans going for Slayer training center number two. Let's not repeat some of the big problems from last time by trying to demand the Slayers have no more contact with their families, okay? And definitely no more of that Crucinumbering thingy that they did to Buffy." Xander was drumming his fingers on the little table, thinking about the chance to start the Council over, without some of the big nasty problems from before. "And the Slayers are not expendable, no matter what stupid ideas Quenton Travers had. He's dead, we aren't, he doesn't get a vote anymore."
Rebecca frowned just a little. "We won't demand that they stay in touch with their families if they don't want to. Sometimes, it's better to just walk away. But that doesn't mean that they have to, or that they won't be allowed to try to have friends. Michelle never had much luck with that, but we did let her try."
Looking at Rebecca, and her determined expression, Xander's mouth ran over, and the words came out before he could stop them. "Did you put your Slayer through that? The Cruci-whatever test?"
"No. It's only... Only done if they reach their eighteenth birthday, you see. Michelle... well, she didn't." A tear slid down her face, and Rebecca dabbed at her eye with a handkerchief before scrubbing over her face. More tears slid from her eyes, following the creases of her cheeks. "Charlie and I had been trying to figure out what to do about the test.... It would have been in just a few more months, but... There was a demon, with a prophecy behind him. No man could stop him, no demon defeat him. Michelle... she wasn't a man or a demon, but she didn't survive the injuries from the battle."
"I'm sorry." Xander knew the words weren't enough, but there wasn't anything else that he could do. He was pretty sure that his powers didn't include bringing back the dead, and having seen what it had done to Buffy, he wouldn't even be willing to try it unless the body was still warm, or the ghost was right there asking for it. He put an arm around Rebecca, offering what comfort he could.
For a while, he just stayed there, holding her as she cried for Michelle. After a while, she straightened a bit, the tears finally having stopped. "If there might be another Slayer in the area, you should probably try to find her. I can start planning what to do about a training center, looking for some other possible watchers. Possibly a fighting instructor or two would be good. I can organize that, you find people young enough to make use of it."
End part 2.