Chapter 2:
"I hope he dies and rots in Hell." Were the first words Xander uttered after leaving the motel and he meant them from the bottom of his heart. That morning he had been looking forward to spending a nice day in the company of one of his friends, but now his good mood was completely gone.
He stared out of the window of the taxi that was steadily making its way towards the airport all the while cursing himself for a fool. He never should have let his curiosity take over, the moment it had been clear what the bastard wanted he should have gotten up and left.
Leaning back he placed his hands over his eyes and told his companion "He played me, he knew exactly how I would react to that and he used it against me."
Even though he couldn't see her, he knew Dawn had an expression of compassion on her face as she answered "We could have gone with my idea and told Buffy."
"No, while I hate to admit it, he was right about her. Tact isn't exactly her strongest point. And he was probably right about me being able to discover what the problem is, after all," he finished in a mocking voice "I'm the One who Sees."
No further words were spoken during the ride and soon they had reached the airport. While Xander paid the driver, he noticed Dawn putting something in the bag of clothes they had brought along. That bag alone was almost enough to make his blood boil and once again he wondered how it was that Valen knew so much about them. This afternoon he had wondered about the clothing stores the man had entered. Upon leaving the motel he had given them the bag and his questions had been, all the clothes were for either him or Dawn.
Despite the high level of security that had become the norm, there were no problems for them with checking in and finally they boarded the airplane that would take them to their destination. There had been two arguments when they were in the airport, the first when he had tried to convince Dawn not to come, which he lost, and the other once again about whether to contact Buffy or not.
"You know how she will react if we don't contact her." Dawn had told him.
"Yes, but she will want to come to keep us safe and besides, Valen said he would contact her."
"He said he would tell her all that she needed to know, and since he hates Slayers how much do you think he is going to tell her?"
"He knows it's important to us that they are told, so he'll tell probably tell them the basics. And Buffy will want to come anyway."
"I'm sure we can convince her she doesn't need to come."
A knowing look was all that was needed to counter that argument.
"Well, okay, she will want to come, but is that so bad? I mean, Europe has mellowed her a lot. She isn't the great general anymore and actually listens to other people now."
By that time he had realized she would continue to come up with arguments, until he found a reason that she couldn't counter. "Dawn, think about what would happen if she came."
"There'd be three of us, so we would have an even greater change of discovering the great and mysterious danger?" The brunette answered.
"No, there are only two tickets. So you wouldn't be able to come and according to Valen it was important for you to come." It felt gratifying to use her own argument against her, but the dirty look she gave him didn't bode well for the future.
"Fine, but we'll call her after we have arrived."
Despite granting this concession she made it clear that it would be hours before she'd speak to him again in anything approaching a normal tone.
. . . .
It seemed as if the rain that was streaming down his face had decided his eyes were a great place to pool. As he once again wiped them dry, well at least less wet, he wondered why Buffy didn't seem to be bothered by the weather. Usually she was the one that was complaining the most but maybe she was trying to set a standard for the potentials.
Looking over the two girls he wondered whether this was such a good time for a training exercise. The stalker that had shown up today might well be very dangerous and while the girls were pretty good in a fight they didn't have the experience to deal with certain things. Sighing he tried to loosen the clothes that were sticking to his body and when that didn't help he admitted, at least to himself, that he couldn't deal with certain things either.
When Buffy suddenly stopped and looked around Xander knew that it wouldn't be long before something showed up. And indeed moments later he could see three vampires appearing out of the rain. After the usual villain speech of the vampires and Buffy's heroic answer, both of which he could more or less predict a week earlier, they started fighting.
Using his crossbow he fired at one of the vampires who hadn't seemed to notice that Buffy wasn't alone and the other two were rather surprised when their friend suddenly became a cloud of dust.
"What?" The moment of surprise was enough for Buffy to quickly move in and stake one of the survivors.
The other then seemed to realize he was outnumbered and in serious danger of losing his un-life, turned around and started running. Buffy immediately started chasing it, while he and the girls followed behind her. Had it been someone else running over the muddy ground he might have actually thought the three-way chase funny. Fortunately it didn't last long as Buffy caught the vampire before it even got out of the park and tackled it to the ground. Wrestling until she had her stake in position had her lying on top of the vampire when it dusted, causing her to fall the tiny distance to the ground, into the mud.
He had to stifle a laugh but looking at her face he realized that she wasn't nearly as happy about the mud covering her body. That probably wasn't what she had wanted to show the potentials so she tried to cover her mistake up by explaining the best way to take out a vampire. After all, it wasn't likely that the Watchers had already told them that, was it?
In the middle of her explanation however she suddenly stopped and turned to look at a group of trees. "Who are you and what do you want?"
"Both interesting questions, although they have different consequences." Came from the figure he could now make out for himself. It was the stalker!
"Don't try that with me, I've had psychology classes myself."
"Well, there is no fooling you, is there? But I shall answer your first question. My name is Valen." Oh great, they were getting into a Babylon 5 theme, first with the questions and now even with the names.
Buffy, the barbarian that she was, hadn't seen this greatest of all series and therefore didn't recognize the name. "Okay, Valen, what do you want?" From the way she started approaching the man it was obvious she intended to get some answers, even if she had to beat them out of him.
"Buffy, look out!" Came from one of the potentials, who was paying more attention then they were as an impressive looking demon had managed to sneak up on the blonde Slayer. For a moment he took his eyes of the man to see if he could help his friend in this battle and when he turned back there was no sign of the so-called Valen anymore.
"Wake up, sir. We are about to land." What? Still a little groggy he looked at the pretty woman talking to him. Oh yeah, he suddenly realized, he was on a plane. Nodding his head he indicated that he was indeed awake before moving his chair in its upright position.
. . . .
"I don't understand though, why do you suddenly care so much about what Buffy thinks." Xander asked Dawn after they had cleaned up from the trip. Noticing her dark look, he quickly added "Not that you didn't care about her before but, it's different."
Dawn uttered a soft sigh before answering him "We got a lot closer in Europe, most of the time there wasn't really anyone but the two of us and we resolved most of our problems." She walked to one of the beds in the lavish hotel room and expanded a little on that. "No, that's not all there is to it. After the first months, nothing had really changed. Despite the fact we both wanted things to change, we just had no idea how to go about it. I mean, in Sunnydale it always seemed like she was the only one who really mattered and the rest of us were just the extras, especially me since I wasn't real."
Knowing she'd never listen if he tried to deny that, he asked her what changed after these first months.
"Those friends Valen mentioned. In the autumn we went to London and met them there when a lot of things came together and together we managed to solve the problem."
"Who were they?" Xander asked her.
"I can't tell you that." She sighed again before continuing. "It isn't my secret to tell. But suffice to say they showed us another way to act. Apparently they too had some problems when they first met, but in the end all that mattered was that they loved each other. They showed us that the problems of the past didn't really matter as long as we didn't stop caring about one another."
"So you worked things out and became closer because of that."
"Yeah, and that's why I believe Buffy will worry so much if we can't contact her. We haven't really been out of contact since."
Xander understood this, he had noticed a little of the changed attitude between the sisters, although he hadn't realized before how far the change had actually gone. "Okay, what do you say we go to dinner first and then try to reach her again before we start on our great and noble quest?"
"Alright, I am a little hungry too."
. . . .
Hours later they were still walking through the city, not having found any clue on the whereabouts of their quarry and Xander was starting to feel that he wasn't cut out for this sort of thing. Even in Sunnydale the information gathering had always been rather straightforward, you either went to Willy's or looked in some dusty books. But here he had absolutely no idea how to go about it and so after dinner he hadn't known what to do. That was when Dawn had shown why she was needed.
"I have no idea on where to start looking for that woman." Xander had said after yet another unsuccessful phone call. "Do you have any ideas?"
Dawn looked thoughtful for a moment before answering "When we had to find someone or something in Europe we usually went looking for the demon bars, like Willy's. There was usually someone there who was willing to give us the information we needed."
"Really? They just gave you the information you needed?"
"Well, Buffy asked and when she didn't get what she wanted, she beat someone up or threatened."
Ah, that made more sense. "I don't think we can do that, but it's as good a start as any."
They had then started looking for the bar that Dawn kept saying had to be there. But now, having spent the entire night going from one seedy bar to another, hoping to find a clue to the location of such a place they hadn't yet come up with one.
. . . .
It was the lack of results that got on Xander's nerves. He could live with the way they were treated in the places they had been visiting, although the behavior of some of the men towards Dawn hadn't exactly been proper. After he tried to stop that however, it soon became clear that she could handle herself when those situations cropped up. And even the fact that he was getting tired didn't really bother him; after all that was to be expected, it had been almost a year since the last time he had been up this late for anything but having some fun. But the fact that they still hadn't found what they were looking for didn't agree with him.
Even after he had been tricked into accepting this mission, he hadn't really believed that it would take long. They just had to find the woman, figure out what the problem was and they could leave. But now that they couldn't even complete the first step he began to realize the extent of time this could take. At the moment he didn't have any other obligations at home, but in about two weeks he would have to go back to work. He shook his head, that shouldn't be a problem. Just because they hadn't found anything yet, didn't mean that it would take that long.
"I don't think we're going to find anything tonight Dawn." He told his friend.
Dawn didn't look entirely happy about it either, but she had to agree with him. "I know, but let's try that bar over there as well. Maybe we'll be lucky, and if it doesn't work out we can go back."
And with those words they set out for their sixteenth bar of the night. Had this been a movie, Dawn's comment would have triggered their inevitable luck, but this was real life and it wasn't long before they left the smoky bar
"Can you believe that? He actually carded me! None of the others tried that." An irate Dawn complained to Xander.
"Well, you are under twenty-one and technically aren't allowed to drink alcohol." He tried to placate her. "The man was only doing his job."
A furious look from Dawn told him exactly what she thought of that "In Europe it was a lot easier to get a drink, nobody there really bothered with age."
It took Xander most of the way back to their hotel to calm her down and even then she kept muttering comments about the bartender's parentage.
. . . .
The next day was spent trying to find information about their quarry using public sources, but they were unable to find anything that wasn't already in the files Valen had given them. And after nightfall they once again started on their tour of the sleaziest bars the city had to offer. When midnight had come and gone however they had to admit that this tactic just wasn't working and decided on the alternative they had come up with during the day.
Like the original plan, this one too was simplicity itself; they would still go look for the demon bar, but instead of looking for clues in other bars they would go and look for the bars patrons and ask them. And what could possibly be easier then finding a demon inside a city?
. . . .
They had reverted to the most basic plan to look for demons. Although they knew that not all demons hang out in cemeteries, that was the place they started looking. While not as rich in cemeteries as Sunnydale, they didn't have that much trouble finding them and started looking around. It was the third cemetery they finally found a clue, or rather it found them.
The first thing they noticed about the two vampires was when they spoke. "Look what we have here, dinner has just arrived."
When the two of them turned around Xander fumbled in his jacket for the stake he had brought along. But when he saw the demonic faces of their opponents he froze, somewhere in his mind he was shouting at himself to move and stake the bastards, but he was paralyzed in fear.
All he could think about when he looked at those faces were the things he had lost in the time he had been fighting them. Memories crashed through his head, he remembered putting a stake through his best friend's heart. He remembered Buffy dying, not once, but twice. An image of Willow preparing to destroy the world was followed by Caleb taunting him while putting out his eye, until finally he came to Andrew telling him how Anya had died.
It felt like hours before he could move again, and when he did he noticed that the vampires had gone while Dawn was shaking him, trying to get his attention.
"Xander, what's wrong?"
"Nothing, Dawnie, I'm alright."
This earned him a scornful look, "Of course you are, that's why I've been shouting to get your attention for the past five minutes."
The last thing he wanted to talk about with the taste of fear still in his mouth was the reason he hadn't been able to do anything, so he looked for something to change the subject. The knife in Dawn's hand gave him this excuse as he could dimly recall her using it to kill the vampires.
"How did you kill the vampires, I thought they couldn't be hurt by knives?"
The reaction he got was stronger then he had anticipated when Dawn almost jumped in the air, while looking guiltily at the weapon in her hand.
"They can't, but this isn't a normal knife. There are a lot of spells on it that enable it to destroy beings of magic."
"Where did you get it then? Not that you can't handle it, but I'd sooner expect one of the Slayers to use it."
"No, it's mine. Buffy agreed with me on that, I'm the only one who should use this knife."
Once again, the reaction was a lot stronger then he had expected, but he didn't think he should push her on it. "Okay, but where did you get it? I've never heard of anything like it."
But Dawn wasn't listening to him anymore, she was staring at the knife as if remembering something terrible. He suddenly had a feeling that maybe he didn't want to know where she got it, but still curious about the knife he tried to see as much of it as he could and couldn't help but notice a tiny pattern on the haft when she put it away.
"Let's just go back to the hotel shall we? We can try to find the bar again tomorrow."
This finally did get Dawn's attention and she looked at him with sorrowful eyes before agreeing.
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Post-fic comments: Okay, this chapter was still a little slow but things will start to speed up a little in the next chapter. Thanks to those of you who reviewed.