Fury by SLynn
Chapter 12: Stranger
Giles was just getting ready for bed when he was stalled by Willow and Tara. After telling Tara the details of her dream, she felt it necessary to involve Giles as soon as possible, but not Buffy. They would leave it up to him to decide what she should know. The conversation did not go well.
"Let me get this straight," Giles began after a rather long pause, "you're telling me that the Fates want you to kill Xander?"
"I think so," Willow sighed, "or I've just bought the last ticket to Nutsville. I don't know Giles, that's why we're here."
"I've never…" he
began but ended with, "Tell me again what were their options?"
"If I do nothing the world ends, not good. If I kill Constance she kills Xander and Buffy, still not good. And if I kill Xander everything will be back in order."
"Did they say what that order was?"
"No. Just that my getting the curse lifted through things out of whack."
Giles began to pace the room.
"And they were clear about the… um… killing part?"
"Kill. Destroy. Po-tay-toe. Po-tah-toe. Right?"
"Not necessarily but likely as clear as it's going to get."
"So now what?" Tara asked, "Willow can't do it."
"But if I don't do something they said the world would be destroyed," Willow cut in, "I mean, I appreciate the help, but couldn't they have been a bit more specific? Dates, times, real outcomes, we've got nothing."
"Let me look into this," Giles said after a beat. "There has to be more to this. We have time to decide what to do. Besides, we don't even know where Constance is keeping him yet. Until then nothing can be done."
Willow and Tara nodded but didn't feel much relief. It just got stranger and stranger.
****
Another day was about to pass. Xander knew that soon someone would be showing up soon. Even without a clock he was beginning to just get a feel for about what time it would happen. Except this time it wasn't a stranger. Constance was back.
"Did you miss me?" she asked as soon as she was inside the door.
Xander wasn't too surprised, but didn't answer. He knew that sooner or later she'd come back. Might as well be today.
She accepted his silence and crossed the room to him.
"I think it's time
you got out of here, don't you?"
"You're not letting me go," Xander stated flatly. It wasn't a question and it held no hope. He knew better then that.
"No," she said standing directly in front of him now, "let's call it a field trip. It's time for you to start earning your keep."
"Where are we going?" he asked beginning to feel nervous.
"That's my business, but we're not going anywhere."
"What do you mean?"
Constance smiled at him.
Before he could say anything or even remove the startled look from his face, she'd placed a hand to his forehead.
"This might hurt a bit," was the last thing he remembered hearing from her before blacking out entirely.
****
Buffy wandered through the cemetery careless of the late hour. Sunnydale was tonight and had been every night since Constance had first arrived. Occasionally she slayed a vamp, but mostly Buffy was alone with her thoughts. Most nights she was home before two o'clock, but tonight she felt like staying out. It gave her a chance to think. And she had a lot to think about tonight.
Giles and Willow had been too quiet all day. It felt like they'd been hiding something. It was that feeling you get when you enter a room and the conversation stops. You know that the parties involved had to be talking about you, but you didn't know what they had to say.
And then there was Xander. She knew he was alive but only because she seemed to think she'd know if he was dead. It was strange. Before she had thought this whole 'connection' business wasn't real, now she was certain of it. Giles had tried working with her on locating Xander just after he was taken, but it was no use. She couldn't use the link the same way he could and until he did use it to contact her they were just going to have to search for him the old fashion way.
Not that that was going well either. No one would talk mostly because no one knew anything. The only odd occurrences in Sunnydale lately were the complete lack of odd occurrences.
It made no sense.
Giles had thought up hundreds of scenarios to supply them ideas of what Constance might be up too, but without word one from her, they were really just blind guesses.
Buffy sighed and scanned the grounds once more. There really was no point to staying out any longer. She was getting cold and wanted to be home more then anything when a movement behind the farthest hedge caught her attention.
Edging closer and preparing herself to fight if needed, she tried to get a better look. Headed away from her, further into the cemetery was a tallish man, thin and dragging what looked like a bat.
Just seeing him set off her senses and she began to trail him to get a better idea what he was up too. As far as she could see, he looked lost and somewhat dazed but otherwise kept moving in a straight path.
Before he could leave out the back gate she decided she should at least do something. The closer she got the more odd it seemed, and yet the more familiar. On guard she now came up about three feet from his back and spoke.
"Kind of late for a walk, isn't it?"
Moving quicker then she'd expected him too, he swung round on her, she had just enough time to duck the axe she'd mistaken for a bat. Failing to knock it from him, she did manage to knock the man to his feet.
And then she froze.
"Xander…"
He pushed himself up off the ground and looked about him, somewhat dazed and still clutching the axe in his right hand. Buffy, still in shocked and finally getting a good look at him realized that her mistaking him for a stranger had been an easy one. He just wasn't the same. Thin and pale and just not himself.
"Xander," she repeated starting to recover herself, "I can't believe it."
As she approached him, eager to just touch him and prove to herself he was real, his attitude of sullenness disappeared.
"Don't," he snapped at her and took several steps back. She hadn't failed to notice that he also tightened his grip on the handle of the weapon he carried and had even half raised it before him.
"What's happened to you?" she asked trying hard not to let her emotions get to her, "How did you get away? Are you alright?"
"I have to go," was all he said as he started to turn.
"No," she shot back at him, rushing forward and taking him by the arm, "Xander what's wrong?"
The moment she touched him she knew. She felt it. Horrible and bloody and real. She knew where he'd been and why. The jolt of it sent her reeling backwards and him to his knees.
"It's not real," she whispered when finally she could speak at all, "It's not. It can't be."
"Why not?"
Buffy knew the voice and knew that she had to get up, or likely die where she had fallen.
"Don't you think he's capable?"
"He wouldn't," Buffy started, finally getting to her feet and squaring off against Constance who now stood just beside Xander, still on the ground.
"And again, why not? I think you've underestimated what our dear friend Xander here would and would not do for quite some time. You don't really know."
Despite what she'd seen, what she'd felt, she refused to give in.
"I know…"
"Buffy," Xander cut her off, his voice edgy but determined, "it's true."
She looked at him, now standing beside Constance, and saw that he was himself. Could read his eyes and know he believed what he said.
"Then she must have…"
"She wasn't there," he cut in again, "I…I did it."
For a moment no one spoke. Xander and Buffy seemed only to see each other and Constance, unwilling to stop herself, laughed.
"I told you you'd be surprised."
Buffy didn't know what to do or to say. Xander looked as if he was falling a part and she didn't know how to stop it. She wanted to say so much, but he had never felt more like a stranger to her then he did now.
"We're wasting time here," Constance finally said, "Time to go. But don't worry we'll see you again real soon."
"Xander wait," Buffy blurted out, shocked that he'd turned to leave with Constance without even an argument.
"No, no, no," Constance said turning back to her and casually flinging her hand towards the slayer, "Not your place princess. You stay here."
Buffy found herself propelled several feet backwards into one of the larger gravestones. By the time she'd gotten up again, they were gone.
****
A phone ringing earlier then seven o'clock in the morning, or later then eleven o'clock at night, is never in general good news.
With it being well after ten in the morning, Willow had no such apprehensions upon answering her phone that day. She had been sleeping late, a luxury to say the least, and knew she should have gotten up sooner, but Tara had insisted she stay in bed and she wasn't one to argue.
"Hello?" she asked still a bit groggy.
Tara came into the room and mouthed her apologizes for not answering it herself. Willow waved her off, it wasn't important.
"Hi Mom."
Tara smiled. She liked Mrs. Rosenberg. Maybe they could all meet for lunch later.
"What? Mom, what are you saying? I don't…"
Tara, who had been on her way into the bathroom, stopped and came back in, saw the concern on her girlfriends face, and sat down at the edge of the bed.
"No. Mom, no."
She looked near tears. Tara, deeply concerned laid a hand on her leg and questioned her with her eyes.
"Okay, okay. I'll be over soon. Yeah. I love you too."
Willow hung up the phone.
"What's wrong? Is everything okay?" Tara asked.
Willow shook her head and ran a hand through her hair.
"Willow, what is it?"
"It's the Harris'," she chocked out, "Xander's parents are dead."
Tara slowly turned Willow's face by the chin so that they were face to face, deliberate, her eyes cool.
"It is the beginning," she said in a slow monotone voice.