Part 24: 20/20/20 Vision and Two-Headed Babies
"I am rather curious about what you think."
Xander held up a finger as a signal for Giles to wait while he finished chewing his last bite of his bagel sandwich. Faith yawned widely in the back seat, her face practically disappearing behind the open-mouthed yawp. The second her mouth was closed, she sipped from her coffee and flopped lengthwise on the upholstery, doing a very good imitation of a cat waiting for a stray sunbeam.
Xander tossed Faith an amused look. "I thought Slayers could take the punishment of three hours of sleep."
Faith shot him the bird before flinging her arm over her eyes, muttering about how they should wake her when she was actually needed for something. Giles noticed that she kept a hand around the coffee cup that remained precariously balanced on her stomach.
"Xander," Giles pressed.
"I'm thinking about it." Xander's cheerful expression had transformed into a frown. This time his glance at the half-snoozing Faith lacked any trace of warmth. If anything, Xander looked distinctly unhappy about the prospect of going on a whirlwind tour of Russia with the dervish of a Slayer, not that Giles really blamed him. Frankly, he thought Xander was handling Faith's continued presence in the Cleveland house much better than anyone had a right to expect. Xander had most certainly suffered a blow inflicted by Faith's hand and near as he could tell they still had not settled accounts on that.
He idly wondered if they ever would.
"They're lying," Xander stated.
Now that was a surprise.
"Goes without saying, right?" Xander asked when he saw Giles's expression. "If they're really from the future, they're lying by omission. If they're con artists, they're lying through their teeth."
"So, you don't believe they're demons then?" Giles watched the motor cars dance in the Dunkin Donuts parking lot through the windscreen.
"No."
"I'm curious as to why not." Giles sipped at the watered-down swill that in an alternative universe might be called burnt coffee with vague hazelnut flavor.
"They lack the vibe." He shrugged. "I know Robin's still has to be thinking demon, but…jeez…this is going to make me sound like the stereotypical California airhead, but, I dunno. Everyone's got a vibe, right? Slayers got it. Witches got it. Vampires out of game face definitely have it. You ever notice that?"
"Yes and no. I'm just rather…how did you come to this conclusion?"
Xander gave his coffee a suspicious sniff, made a face, and rested it on the steering wheel. "Didn't notice in Sunnydale. Surprise, surprise I guess what with all the Hellmouth-y energy throwing everything out of whack, which is why I don't think the Cleveland Hellmouth is as powerful. Yet. I guess what I'm trying to say is that since May I've been picking up on that 'Whoa! Vibe!' thing."
Interesting. A more likely explanation was simply that everyone was stumbling around half-blind—in Xander's case somewhat literally—forcing all of them to rely on hidden talents that might've otherwise gone unused. Given everything Xander had been through in the last year, it simply could be that the young man was tapping powers of observation he didn't know he had.
"At least that's what I'm hoping," Xander added, missing Giles's bemused expression. "Because the only other explanation that I've got is that I've got mystical radiation-like poisoning from the destruction of the last Hellmouth I lived on and one of the side-effects is vibeage. I'm so hoping that's not the case."
"Don't tell me you're afraid of having two-headed babies," Giles chuckled.
The stunned expression on Xander's face was almost worth admitting to a certain amount of familiarity with B-movie conventions. The smile that quickly followed—the first genuine one Giles recalled seeing on that very face since Xander announced his and Anya's engagement—made him realize why Xander sometimes came out with his non sequiturs. Surprising a smile out of someone who'd seen too much was pure gold for the heart.
"More like afraid I might get a weird mystical cancer that turns me into a two-headed baby, although I bet I could sell my story to the Farrelly Brothers if that happened and, bonus, I'd have 20-20-20 vision instead of just 20 vision." Xander relaxed against the seat. "So, oh Wise One, why are we parked in a trash-packed lot instead of talking back at the Mother House?"
"Wise One?"
"Sorry." Xander's smile dimmed slightly. "Willow and Faith told me about what Charlie said. I guess I'm relieved that someone else gets stuck with weird titles that make my head go boom. At least you deserve it."
Giles sighed and tapped nervously against the Styrofoam. "Not terribly sure that I do. Besides, we have no idea what it is we have done or will do that puts you, me, Buffy, and Faith in that circle."
"Fun as the speculating is not, you still haven't answered the question."
"I wanted to get both yours and Faith's reactions without interruptions and before it was sullied by other people's opinions."
"I think you're going to have to wait on Faith."
"I'm awake," came the mumble from the back seat.
"No you're not," Xander countered.
Faith sighed a sleep breath and sank back into slumber.
"What's suspicious to you?" Giles asked.
"The big one is that they want to take a pretty powerful mystical object and disappear with it," Xander began ticking the points off on his fingers, "They don't actually know that much about said mystical object, not even its exact location…"
"Moscow is more exact than not knowing where it is." Giles could see where Xander was going, but found he was rather curious to follow the young man's train of thought. More than once since they left Sunnydale, Xander had taken him by surprise by what he did notice and how he acted on it.
"Yeah, but I gotta think that Moscow's bigger than Sunnydale," Xander countered. "And we've got to find this mystical arrow in Cleveland first before we can even think of using our yet-to-be-applied-for passports. Now maybe I'm spoiled, but how did the one thing that's supposed to tell us where this grail is end up halfway around the world? And on top of a Hellmouth, no less. That makes as much sense as wild dolphins in Montana."
"May I remind you that the Slayer's Scythe was in Sunnydale even though there was no earthly reason for it to be there?" Giles dryly pointed out.
Xander shrugged. "At least that makes some sort of sense. For all we know, that Guardian and the Scythe may have been blipped around the world for centuries so she and it were always close to the One and Only Slayer. That might explain why both Kendra and Faith ended up in Sunnydale at some point even though it didn't make a whole lot sense for them to visit. I mean, c'mon, there's no evil in Boston or wherever Kendra came from?"
Giles choked on his coffee. The convenient location of the Scythe and the Guardian woman Buffy claimed to have met always bothered him, but considering the task before them in Sunnydale and Cleveland, it became a low-level worry. He never considered the idea that maybe both were bespelled to be close to the active Slayer. Yet Xander just voiced the idea as if it was self-evident, or certainly a possibility. The most frightening thing about it was this: it was possible.
"Perhaps the Scythe could help us," Giles murmured. "Perhaps we could use it to find…"
Xander looked startled. "You mean you didn't think of using the Scythe to locate the new Slayers? I thought that would've been the first thing you'd look at."
"Perhaps if you were move involved with the hunting down Slayers…" Giles began.
Xander deflated and looked out the window. "Sorry. I'm getting pulled into a million directions by the Slayers we have. I'll…I'll…do better. Sorry."
Giles shook his head. "I didn't mean for…what I mean is, I do understand and appreciate what you're doing. Frankly, I fear the atmosphere in the house would be far worse if you weren't lending your support to the girls and dealing with the everyday problems of running the household." He inwardly winced when he saw Xander's shoulders hunch defensively under proof that someone had paid attention to what he was doing. "Not to pull you in yet another direction, but I think you should be more involved on the search-and-identify mission, if only because it didn't occur to Robin, Willow, and myself to look more closely at the Scythe as something other than a mystical weapon and a focus for Willow's spell activating the Potentials."
Giles noticed that there was a slight jitter as Xander took a tentative sip at his coffee. "Probably won't work anyway," Xander mumbled. "Everything's probably all screwed up because we have god knows how many Slayers running around instead of just the one or two."
"Still, worth looking into. In any case, we're wandering away from the point: the fact that this mystical arrow is in Cleveland while its connected object is in Moscow, uncommon that's true, but not rare. That's not necessarily a point against them."
"Well, this next one is both for and against them," Xander said.
Giles scrunched his head in thought. Clearly, he had no idea where Xander was going or what his conclusions actually were.
"On the side of them being grifters, they're talking about dragging one of the senior Slayers to the other side of the planet at a time when we can't really afford for that to happen."
"You're thinking trap."
"Could be. Leave the house with only one experienced Slayer while the other one is lured god knows where in a country she knows nothing about? Anything could happen, up to and including an ambush that could get her killed or leave the Cleveland house vulnerable."
At this, Giles switched his gaze to Faith to see if the snoozing Slayer had any reaction. Their backseat passenger hadn't so much as twitched, an indication that she seemed insensible to the conversation taking place in the front seat.
"Then why not lure Buffy instead?"
Xander grinned. "Noticed you didn't ask why not lure both of them."
"Because if it is a deadly trap, two experienced Slayers are more likely to get out of a sprung trap alive than one."
"Yeah, what I thought too," Xander agreed. He turned his head slightly, putting Faith more firmly into his line of sight, which meant that he'd completely miss Giles's reaction. In a lowered voice, he added, "If I had to choose, losing Faith right now might be a bigger blow than losing Buffy."
Giles felt a stab at that. It didn't help that he suspected the admission cost more for Xander to say than for him to hear it. Faith remained stubbornly unresponsive in the back seat.
"Faith's involved with the boss, so right there that would cause problems if she died because we took a chance on these guys," Xander added in that same low tone. "And while neither Buffy or Faith are winning any popularity contests with the other Slayers, Buffy's got some Sunnydale-sized baggage to overcome where Faith doesn't. Plus, Buffy's been kinda playing keep-away of the self. I don't know what to do about it so I've been leaving it alone." He winced. "Sorry about that, by the way. I just don't…I don't want to intrude because…I don't know how to…"
"Xander, it's quite all right."
When Xander's gaze snapped back to him, Giles could see in the other man's expression that he was still fatally bleeding over the loss of both his home and Anya. I am an idiot. Seven years and I've not yet learned that just because Xander acts like he's perfectly fine, doesn't mean he actually is perfectly fine. When is this bloody boy ever going to learn to trust people enough to ask for help?
Because the only way Xander knew how to deal with setbacks was to help everyone but himself and make jokes. Giles knew that too, even if the "help" involved could be downright distracting and annoying at times.
"Buffy's situation is too close to home for you to be anything resembling objective," the Watcher said.
Xander frowned at that before looking away. Now it was his turn to study the pattern of leave-a-parking-space-take-a-parking-space. Giles could practically hear what he was thinking: Spike is missed and mourned by everyone because he died a big hero saving the world. Anya barely gets mentioned because she only got a sword in the gut saving Andrew of all people. Buffy and I have nothing in common.
"You are not responsible for helping Buffy overcome her grief when you have your own to deal with," Giles continued, ignoring the guilty waves washing over him from the other man. "It's up to her to reach out to either you, Willow, myself, or anyone else she chooses and she has made very little effort to do so. When she's ready to really reach out, she will. You have enough on your plate."
"The thing that's for them, believe it or not, is including me," Xander said as if Giles hadn't spoken. "They're grabbing one of the strongest people in the house and one of the weakest, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense."
"Strongest in the house doesn't always come down to fighting skill," Giles said quietly.
Xander turned his head and gave Giles a crooked smile. "Okay, then. We've pretty much spelled out why not Buffy, which also applies to Kennedy since she's had the full-package training. But Robin's an even better target since he's crowned himself our fearless leader. Hell, while we're at it, we've got you as the only experienced Watcher within a thousand-mile radius, Witchy Willow with her witchy ways, Dawn who can read pretty much any written language. Much as it kills me to admit this, even Andrew would make a better target because he can summon demons and read demonic languages. Plus, if he dies we all starve to death because he's the only one who knows how to operate a stove. So if they're setting us up for a big fall, grabbing me makes zero sense."
Giles resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose in frustration. "Are you seriously telling me that you think they might be telling the truth because you're the other person they want with them in Moscow?"
"Giles, c'mon, targeting me as someone who needs to be distracted and on the other side of the world where there may or may not be a trap is too strange for it not to be real."
"Of all the deluded, idiotic, twaddle I've ever heard you say over the years, this has to be the worst," Giles fought to keep his voice low. "Frankly, losing you would be a devastating blow whether you see it or not."
"But…" Xander began.
"Oh, do be still and listen," Giles cut him off. "We are all contributing to the best of our abilities and all of us are contributing things that no one else can. You included. Frankly, you're the only one who's shown any patience for the new Slayers beyond their skill with a stake and you, along with Robin to a lesser extent, have been instrumental in building our weapons arsenal. Furthermore, you've been almost solely responsible for getting our new home shipshape. Without you, we'd be still living out of a handful of boxes and probably sharing the single stake we had left when we departed California."
Xander's jaw locked and he looked away as if Giles's anger was a physical blow. His inability to accept a compliment remained one of the many aspects of his personality that continued to confound Giles at every turn. It was enough to make the Watcher wonder what Xander actually heard when he got one.
"To my way of thinking, the fact that you are 'targeted,' as you put it, is in their favor, but not," here Giles held up a finger to stop Xander from speaking, "because what you do is not worthy of note. You're right, it is not likely they'd pick you out of the crowd as someone who should be taken out of the way. That's because your contribution is too difficult for outsiders to easily identify. You outshine all of us behind closed doors on a day-to-day personal level."
Xander swallowed hard. "Which kinda leads to my next in their favor point. They get a lot of things wrong."
"Oh?" Giles asked with resigned sigh, again wondering if Xander had heard a single word he said.
Xander shook his head. "What I mean is, they're consistent about their wrongness." When Giles remained stubbornly silent, he added, "Okay, take their pronunciation of Sunnydale, or calling earth Tara, or screwing up slang, or facts about us. They're wrong, sure, but they're consistently wrong even after we try to correct it. When one of them lacks information, they all lack the same information."
"A nice cover if they haven't done their homework," Giles pointed out.
"Yeah, but it's consistent even after being here for two days, and the details of wrongability are still there even when none of the others are around," Xander countered. "They may be Oscar-quality actors, but no one is so good that they can keep it up 24/7 whether separately or all together. I haven't noticed any slip-ups. Unless you have?"
Giles was rather pleased with Xander's reasoning. It was fairly logical and based on solid observation. This boded well for his hopes that Xander would agree to accept a role as an official Watcher, as opposed to the unofficial capacity under which he was currently operating.
"I have to admit that I haven't. I fear that I was forced to play stupid in hopes of catching Charlie out but he remained unshakably consistent in his presentation." Giles chuckled. "The poor man had to repeat his story five times to me, although it turned out for the best because even he realized his caution was forcing him to leave out some very salient points."
"Find anything?" Xander asked.
"I believe that you and I have come up snake eyes," Giles answered. "All we can do is continue to watch them and see if we can find any cracks."
"Of course, the possibility that they might be telling the truth and might let slip about the ol' future isn't a draw," Xander grinned.
"I'm not greedy," Giles waved an airy hand. "A mere hint of a glimpse is good enough for me."
Xander started the engine and pulled out of the carpark, one hand resting on the steering wheel while the other clutched his coffee cup. "So the plan is to go along, find this arrow, and watch 'em for trouble."
"That about sums it up," Giles agreed.
"So, what happens after we find the arrow, assuming it even exists? Moscow ho or not?"
"Let's cross the bridge when we come to it."
The rest of the ride went on in companionable silence, punctuated by something that sounded like an occasional snore from the back seat. Once they made it to the brownstone, Xander killed the engine and let out a yawn. "I'll take today off from training. 'Sides, I need some more sleep."
"I'll wake Faith. You go on."
Xander gave a curt nod and exited the car. As soon as Giles saw the door close behind the younger man, he casually said, "Quite a good show you put on back there. Dare I ask why you thought it was necessary?"
Giles looked over his shoulder to spy Faith glaring at him over her protective arm covering. "I'm slipping," she commented.
"Not quite. Frankly, you had me fooled until Xander and I had our disagreement. I don't care how heavy a sleeper you are, sensitive hearing is not going to let you sleep through that."
Faith sat up, carefully placed her coffee cup on the floor, before luxuriating in a full-body stretch. "I had nothin' to add. Plus, you hauled me away from a warm naked body at the ass crack of dawn. You sure as fuck didn't need me here."
"I'm still curious about what you think."
Faith shrugged. "Robin's still has 'they're demons' at the top of his list. Human con artists is a distant second. He's still thinkin' distant possibility that they're telling anything resembling the truth."
"I know what Robin thinks since he was kind enough to tell me at length last night," Giles said with irritation.
"Now what I think is wicked funny is that B believes 'em 100 percent," Faith grinned.
"That I wasn't aware…she confided in you?" Giles could feel the hope in his chest as he asked this.
"Was sitting right there when she was talking to Willow after. She believes them because—and get this—she was watching Catherine and Ruda through the whole thing. She figures the way they hung together, they gotta be telling the truth." Faith rolled her eyes at this, which pretty much told Giles what the Slayer thought of this very thin piece of evidence. "Willow pretty much buys it too, but she's at least willing to admit they might be lying."
So much for getting an unpolluted opinion out of Faith. "What about what you think?"
"Gotta go with Xander and you. They could be lying, hell, I'm 50-50 on that one, but on the chance they're not?" Faith shrugged. "I'm willing to bet that no matter what, this arrow and grail they want is legit. So, even if they are con artists, we could get ourselves some powerful magic weapons out of the deal if we stay on the case."
"Rather what I thought," Giles admitted.
"Plus, I think Robin's reaching on the demon angle because I just don't see it," Faith continued. "Their story's too subtle for the smash-kill party and too complicated when an easier lie will do for anything smarter than that. Although I gotta admit you both used bigger words than I would in saying no way José. Jesus, I didn't know Xander was such a brainiac. Way he acted back in the day, I thought he was some pot-smokin' surfer dude scared straight by the evil undead."
Giles couldn't resist. "I fear Xander's going to continue taking you by surprise at this rate."
Faith studied him a moment. "Let's get one thing straight: I know people. Ain't no way he was playin' as an equal back in the Dale."
"You're perhaps right in ways you don't expect," Giles admitted.
"How fuckin' ironic is it that you're prepared to see him as an equal and he's still acting like you're the Nick At Nite dad." Faith yawned widely, giving Giles a disturbing view of her teeth. "'Course it's even funnier we got a house fulla girls that have pegged him as the Nick At Nite dad. If we get a new Slayer who calls herself 'The Beav' and starts following Xander around like a lost puppy I will laugh my ass off because that would be too perfect."
"So, you have no problems with the idea that you and Xander may be forced to play this out in Moscow without support from the rest of the house."
Faith's protective shielding closed around her and her face lost expression. "Not too hot about it, and not because I think he's dead weight."
"Yes. Your shared history," Giles said mildly.
Faith twitched. She clearly was not used to be on the other end of someone else's pointed observations. "Me and Xander teaming up? Going to be uncomfortable for me and you can bet he's not overly thrilled about the prospect."
"Sooner or later you will have to come to grips with it," Giles said. "My advice to you is that you best do it before circumstances forces you to do so or removes the possibility altogether."
"How? I've tried getting him alone a couple of times, but…" Faith let out a frustrated breath. "Let's just say every time I try to talk to him he shuts me down."
Giles offered the best advice he could. "Give it time. When he's ready to hear it, he'll hear it."
Faith studied Giles a moment before asking, "Given the little convo I just heard, do you honestly think he'd ever believe me?"
TBC…