Part 38: The Rimmer Directive on Time Travel

Willow looked up from rubbing her temples when Xander forced himself to walk back into the empty library. She watched him cross the room before asking, "What happened?"

"Got your tea?"

"What else?"

Xander wondered when the hell Willow got her long-disused Xander-shaped radar fixed. He doesn't remember her being this sensitive to his moods since senior year, and even then it was a pretty selective thing.

"Just walked into the teeth of Faith and Robin fighting. No big."

Willow shook her head. "Again?"

Well that was another surprise. "Sheesh. You mean this happens all the time?"

Willow chuckled. "Amazing. You can rattle off in detail-y scariness about everyone in the house, but you can't see that Faith-and-Robin's Casablanca romance is about to go blow-uppy."

"But they'll always have Sunnydale, so that kinda fits," Xander quipped. Amazing how a vaguely reasonable conversation made him feel better. "I don't really want to know."

"Because you once went momentarily insane, too?" Willow asked. She winced. "Sorry. That sounded like I'm being all accusatory, and nasty, and mean, especially when I have a lack of room to be talking on the Xander kissage and nearly killing front, so maybe I should sheathe claws and do the not talking thing right now."

He nodded numbly and brought the water-filled hotpot over to an outlet and plugged it in. As he began spooning tea into the cup, he silently willed Willow to just drop the subject.

"Still, kinda funny you don't see it, 'specially because me and Buffy have been talking about it for weeks. Faith goes into beat-down on a demons afterwards and Buffy's kinda worried that she'll get distracted when she should be paying more attention," Willow continued with the air of someone with juicy gossip.

"I thought I mentioned something about how I'm soooooo not going there."

"Maybe I'm kinda hoping you'll work the hoodoo that you do so well," Willow said.

"Wills, I don't do magic."

"Yeah, but listening is a kind of magic, especially when people need to talk," Willow rejoined with the compliment as she watched him pour the water over her herbs.

"Not like I do anything else around here." He carefully carried the tea to her waiting hands. "I'm not even managing on the research front with this stupid journal and just how sucky is that? I'm the guy who wrote it and I can't figure it out."

"Would help if he gave us directions to the arrow, sorry, map book," Willow giggled. "Hey, if I tell you now, think you'll remember to do it in 2008?"

"Unless you told me before and I forgot to do it in 2008, so I'm not sure that helps Wills."

"The Temporal Prime Directive must be followed to the letter. As Rimmer said, 'It has happened; it will be happening; it has will be happening for sure. Your bucket's been kicked baby.'" Willow agreed.

"Wait! Whoa! There's no bucket-kicking here!" Xander waved his hands. He stopped and thought about the lovely war zone he'd just escaped. "Then again, bucket-kicking? Mucho preferable to the alternative."

Concern-face was back with a vengeance. "Wow, the fact that someday you'll be a father is really bothering you, isn't it?" Willow asked. "Is it because of Anya?"

"No."

"Xander, it's okay that someday you'll fall in love again."

"Assuming love is involved at all, which I kinda doubt."

"But…" Willow began.

"Look, just accept that I might know something I can't tell," Xander said glumly. "Better, let's just accept that it's something I don't want to believe, and given our new best pals' track record in the historical accuracy sweepstakes, I think the odds are very seriously on my side for them being wrong and me being right."

Willow studied him. He must've been wearing his version of resolve-face because she let it go with a sigh. Xander relaxed as she took a sip of her tea. He ducked when he saw her almost throw it across the room. "What the hell happened?" she demanded.

"Wills, look, I told you that I'm not going to tell you anyth…"

"I'm not talking about that." Willow was in full scowl face. "When you got the tea! Your pain is all over it."

Xander froze. "Isn't reading people against their will against the rules or something?"

Willow blinked back the suspicious water in her eyes. "I didn't mean to. I mean, it's not like I can read auras without crystal help, but…but…I'm kinda connected to nature and natural things, not all of them on the good side, true, but herbs count and I can't just shut it off. Are you okay?"

"If you're connected to nature, why can't you just reach out and find the Slayers?" Xander asked.

"I'm not so good with the connecting with people especially when I don't know who I'm looking for. And stop being avoid-y. Who hurt you? Was it Robin? I'll…"

"Look, I told you. I walked in during a fight. You're probably picking something up from that."

"Xander…"

"Let. It. Go."

Willow regarded him as he fought to keep his body from fidgeting. "Okay. Fine. I'll leave it. For now. But don't think we're not going to talk, mister. That tea's got a mix of old and new pain in it and it's definitely yours and no one else's."

"Sorry," Xander muttered.

That earned him one Willow-sized hug. "Don't be. You're not at fault, no matter what you think. You should've just gone with the aspirin. I would have understood if you told me that you didn't want to get in the middle of a fight, okay?"

Xander buried his nose in her hair and gave her a bone-crushing hug back. "Okay," he agreed.

"Now that we've got that settled, I'll go raid the medicine cabinet," Willow's muffled voice said. "Stay here and just relax. Don't let it get to you. We'll figure it out."

Willow pulled away, blessed him with a peck on the cheek, and left.

Xander dropped heavily into the chair in front of the laptop and snatched the journal in a desperate attempt to pretend the last fifteen minutes never happened. Hey me, thank you for being not very clear. Think you could've at least hinted that you were looking for the grail when you went to Moscow? Because it kinda came from out of…

"Nowhere," Xander said aloud.

He flipped back to where the book was locked and reread the beginning in its not-sounding-like-Xander weirdness.

"'Could be worse, at least we're in the capital…'" Xander's voice trailed off with a frown. "Blah-blah-blah, blah-blah-blah. This is all about Moscow, for heaven's sake. Just as we get into the Slayer or Slayers…and hey, look, no mention of this grail at all."

Didn't mean anything. Finding the grail might've been a secondary objective. The only reason why he's focused on it is because he's got a group of antsy time travelers who really, really want it.

He flipped the page and quickly reread the description of Catherine's crew. No matter how hard he tried to find a discrepancy, it matched up perfectly, as in frame it on the wall and call it a family portrait. He frowned, flipping the page back and forth. They came out of nowhere, too.

Here he is blabbing on and on about Moscow for two pages, including excruciating detail that caused his eyes to glaze over, full of opinions and guesses and running commentary. He stops in the middle of a sentence before even naming the two candidates when Catherine's group is introduced.

He flipped the page a few times when it hit him. Hey, wait a minute. Moscow gets all this ink, but time travelers get one page? And not even a full page at that? No thoughts about meeting people from the future? Now is it just me, or is that just wrong?

Unless, and this is a possibility, Xander version 2008 just assumed that his dedicated readers would know what he was talking about and didn't bother to hit the details. He sped out of the library and ran smack dab into J'Nal with three Slayers in tow. "Hey, question," he grabbed the witch's arm.

J'Nal looked down for a horrified second at the offending touch before looking up. "Yes?" the question sounded strained.

"In all your research-y time over the hop-skip-and-a-jump to Moscow 2008, was there anything at all from anyone that said that you landed wrong on the first try?"

"You know the answer to that is no," J'Nal looked puzzled. "We can't re-insert ourselves a second time in the timeline. We explained that."

"Okay," Xander wasn't entirely sure about the tickling in the back of his brain. "What about other time travelers showing up in Cleveland 2003?"

"As I recall, no." Since J'Nal answered right away, that was a definite no.

"Here's another one," Xander began, ignoring J'Nal's cringe. "Aside from Catherine's ol' family journal, was there anyone who ever said anything about you guys popping up in Moscow?"

"No one else was there except you and Faith," J'Nal pointed out.

Don't look directly at this thought. You might scare it away. "Did Faith keep a journal? What am I asking? The answer's probably…"

"Yes."

"Hunh." Xander let J'Nal go to scratch his head. "Okay, what did she say about it?"

J'Nal shrugged. "Her entry, singular, about Moscow was rather light. She merely made reference that for details people should read your words since she was tied up with the new Slayer."

"Oh. Did that happen often? Faith deferring to me in her journal?"

J'Nal's forehead crunched. "I don't understand."

"Forget it," Xander said absently. "Wait! Something else. You figure Faith or I would've filed a report about meeting you guys in Moscow, right? Which meant that someone else would've mentioned it? I mean, c'mon, Giles isn't going to let that go without some comment in his journal."

"Your journal is the only source of information, which is why the whole business was puzzling until…"

"Until your Great Darkness started eating planets and your people got desperate. Gotchya," Xander nodded. "See, something here I don't buy. I'm going to not say something to at least Wills or Giles?"

"Unless we gave you strict warnings not to tell anyone for fear of polluting the timeline," J'Nal pointed out.

Xander winced. "Right. You're probably right."

"Are you finished interrogating me?" J'Nal didn't quite jitter, so it's a wonder the witch didn't start running down the hall the second Xander let him go.

"Yeah. Thanks," he responded absently as he returned to the library. He stopped at the table, staring at down at the book with an unseeing eye. Wait, wait. That makes no sense either. Swear a guy not to tell anyone to the point that no one supposedly knows about the Ghosts of Christmases Future, but record the whole thing in a journal that's meant to be read?

"Either I forgot what secret means or…" Xander began. Another snatch at the journal and he's flipping pages again, this time to the "directions" to find the grail.

As it so happens, we have the screaming yellow Arrow that points the way to the Grail. The Arrow is of Cleveland origin.

The way it pointed lead us thus:

We had to start near a stadium that was Brown. We traveled West until we hit the Lakeside. Oddly enough, this landed us in Canada, but we kept going until we felt Superior. That done, we turned East on the first Street until we came to an Erie Cemetery. We found the entrance to the underground caverns by the grace of Angel Vaslik's wing. As the caverns were damp, Summer was the only thing that could only warm us, so we followed the path that would take us there. The maze took us right to it.

He flipped through the pages. Almost nothing on the grail. Catherine and pals show, say they're looking for it, explain it's an important focus for major-league protective magic, its sole purpose is to roll back the Great Darkness that brings the terror of the thralls…and utterly useless to the people of the present day because no one knows how to use it.

And he and Faith turn it over. End of story.

This is wrong. This is an opera of wrong.

The grail, he noticed, didn't even get half-a-page.

There was nothing in this entry indicating what he thought about this pretty unbelievable story. Hell, he had more questions about it when he was half-asleep earlier this week, so…

Now he's really bothered, especially since the grail mystery was still a mystery even though he had all the information in front of him in black-and-white and in English.

He flipped back to the directions.

He tapped his finger under "Arrow." This is the first and only time said Arrow was mentioned. Why didn't someone, say, oh, him, mention dragging the thing to Moscow? Unless there was some mention of it in the pages he didn't see, but still…

And considering that he was willing to bet his remaining eye that the Arrow in question was a book of street maps…

He ran his finger down to "Erie Cemetery." Hunh, he just realized that he misspelled eerie and cemetery is…

"Capitalized?" he asked aloud.

Tickling turned into full-on screaming. Hold on. Erie is not misspelled, it's…

"No way. Nofuckingway," Xander yelled as he dove for the computer.

TBC…