XXV.

Xander and the Woods looked at the huge lakeside park, watching the streetlights coming on in the gathering dusk. Xander wrapped his charcoal duster tighter about him.

"I had no idea this park stretched all this way along here. We're going to have to split up. Robin, you take the walkways, Faith, the shore. I'll work back along the jogging trail towards the hospital. "

"Yes, sir, Boss Man." For such a wildcard rogue spirit, Faith had always responded well to strong leadership. She knew that had not always worked out well for her, but now she felt she was doing much better in choosing who she followed.

"Sounds fair." Robin eyed the many dark nooks, alcoves and overhangs in the park. He had grown up in New York, and had a lot more city patrol hours logged than Faith or their friend from California. "Now honey, if you meet any other kids on the playground, promise me you'll play nice." He straightened the lapels of her jacket and mimed wiping a spot of dirt off her cheek with his thumb.

"I promise, Daddy!" She brushed her imaginary pigtails off over her shoulder and literally skipped down towards the water, laughing.

"That's a strange girl," Xander said.

"You have no idea." Wood turned to Xander. "Okay, Faith's gone to play, and we're losing daylight. Make this quick- where do you get the funds for three tickets to Chicago on the first flight with no reservations and no round trip?"

"I came into some money."

"First class?"

"It's complicated. We couldn't wait, and I wanted three together. It's not important, Robin."

"Xander, I've never had any reason not to trust you. Please don't ever give me one." He started walking, his ebony walking stick clicking on the sidewalk. It concealed no blades, held no hidden spikes or special combat aids, but it was easy to check through security and it didn't scream out "heavily armed vampire hunter" which sometimes gave Wood an advantage. He started heading towards a coffee shop in the distance. Looked like it might be a college hang out, a place to start asking around at least.

Xander pulled his coat tight and looked up into the cloudy sky. "Just let me find her. Let her be okay. That's all." He started working the other way along the trail, looking for Dawn, for clues, for hope.

After about twenty minutes, Xander was thoroughly wet from the misty breezes off the lake, cold and tired. The wind kept pulling his coat open, then rain or spray or whatever it was would slosh over him, keeping him alternating between freezing and clammy. When his cell vibrated in his pocket, he almost missed it over the shivering,

"Xand, it's Faith. Got a guy here, says he saw her about four hours ago buying a hotdog from a, well, a hotdog guy. From a cart over by the boat dock, down your end. Said she had on a white sweater and blue pants. Robin's working some bar. Girl says she might have seen Dawn getting out of a car earlier. Green Honda, with a hospital tag on the window."

"Good work, Faith. I'm nearly down to the dock now, let me see what I can see."

"Roger that. Keep an eye. Already had to persuade a couple a junkies down here they could not have my jacket."

"Faith?" He was suspicious. "How much persuasion? Are we lucky there is a hospital right over there?"

She laughed. "No comment, commandant. Robin and I will start heading your way in a few, and we'll compare notes. Maybe I can find a few more talkative lads down here first. Out." She cut the connection.

"Slayers," Xander muttered. Before him was a sort pier, with a couple of little boats tied to one side and a concession stand or boat rental or something. It was just a little shack, now shuttered. The light over the end of the dock had been broken, and shadows stretched all around. It shouted out danger and uncertain menace. He felt right at home.

He saw some men, maybe four or five, smoking cigarettes and drinking out of a couple of bottles in paper sacks. They were laughing and talking amongst themselves. They seemed to be gathered around the side door to the shack. One of them took a long pull from his bottle, and then smashed it against the door.

Xander heard a squeal from inside and the men started hooting and laughing. He knew that squeal. He broke into a run.

As he reached the group of men, Xander saw through the gloom that several of them seemed to be nursing fresh injuries. They turned as he slid to a stop on the gravel path and started easing out onto the end of the dock, hands open at his sides.

"Well looky. We got a hero here? I doubt it." The man who spoke was short, about 5' 6" with a big grin and eyes that had a sleepy sad look to them. The others took a step to either side to bracket the man and started to encircle Xander.

"Can't be the cavalry. No bugles." They laughed again. Xander continued to close slowly. "Must be the night in shining armor here to save the girl. Oh, but where's his mighty steed and magic sword?"

"HELP!" Dawn's voice came from inside the shack. The men had obviously been working on getting in, based on the number of muddy boot prints that surrounded the doorknob. "Call the police, please? Hello?" She sounded scared, but her voice was strong and Xander felt a huge weight lifting from his heart. He smiled, and it was not a friendly smile.

"Hello, fella's smiling. What do you say to that, Ray?" said the little man in mock surprise. They wanted to get Xander surrounded but there wasn't room. One, presumably Ray, called out an answer.

"Dude can't see, maybe can't count. Five of us, one of him." He drew a gun. It was small and dull and black in the man's large fist. Xander glanced at it but kept his attention on the leader.

The semicircle tightened. Xander had hoped to wait for Faith and Robin, but it looked like time was not going to be on his side tonight.

"Dawn?" he called out, glad his voice didn't break. "Stay where you are, okay?"

The men started laughing and calling "Dawn! Dawn?" She didn't answer.

Xander could see now the little man had a fresh shiner on one eye and a split lip. Dawn must have tagged him pretty good before getting backed into the little shack. Ray was leaning in a little, and Xander saw his chance.

He threw a snapping side-kick at Ray, connecting and sending the gun flying into the water. He braced for their rush, but they didn't come. That's when Xander realized the truth: they weren't demons. They weren't vampires or zombies or mummies or mystic warriors or robots or anything supernatural.

"You're ordinary people," Xander said quietly. "And if you've hurt Dawn, I can beat an ordinary person. I could kill an ordinary person."

The leader looked a lot less sure of himself now but he was obviously not going to let Xander take the coolness high ground here. He looked at his buddies, and then looked at Xander.

"What are you gonna do, kid, kill us all?" his voice dripped scorn.

XXVI.

Xander smiled again. Growing up, he and his best friends, Willow and Jesse, had worn out his tape of the movie "Stand by Me." In that movie, young Wil Wheaton holds a gun on a gang leader named Ace, played by Kiefer Sutherland. Ace looks at Wheaton and says in that exact same scornful voice, that exact same line. "What are you gonna do kid, kill us all?"

For once in his life, Xander had the absolute perfect reply. His hands came to his side and he stood straight, which made the others relax just the slightest bit. It was all he needed.

"No, Ace," Xander quoted calmly, "Just you."

And with that, he took one long step and his left hand shot out around the leader's throat. His buddies jumped in trying to help him, but Xander had the little man raised on his toes trying to break free, and he used him to block the two coming from his blind side. The two on his right, he jabbed at savagely, connecting with one and sending him sprawling.

"Ace" was turning pale, but his eyes were bulging as he struggled. The little man kicked, connecting with Xander's stomach and thighs, but he missed the groin or knee shot that might have broken him free.

A blow to his head staggered Xander. Ray or the other one had gotten past the body of their leader and landed a jab. Xander held on, critically eying the affect he was having on the leader, the man Xander thought of as Ace, who was now clawing uselessly at Xander's arm.

"Xander!" He heard Robin's voice from the up by the street.

"I got this. She's here!" Xander shouted over his shoulder. He used Ace as a club to sweep the attacking man on his left down, then stomped the man's knee to keep him down. Ray was already down and holding his bleeding nose. The leader of the gang was starting to become limp, and his eyes were rolling back in his head. Xander dropped him and moved to the door.

"Dawn, it's me!" he called to her, trying to see if there was any other way into the shuttered shop. "Are you, are you okay?"

The door opened a crack, and then opened wide and everything was okay. She was in his arms and crying and looking at the men scattered around on the dock. He held her back and gave her a quick appraisal.

She was dirty, and her hair was matted to her face. There was a cut on her forehead and blood had dripped into her eyes and been wiped on her sleeve… then he looked at her sweater and saw that it had been torn across the front, and her shirt with it. She was holding the pieces together with one hand and holding him with the other, and there was some blood. More blood soaked her side and down her sweatpants.

Robin had arrived, Faith not far behind him.

He looked at Robin with an unspoken plea. The older man held out his arms to Dawn. She went to him, skirting around one of the men on the dock who was starting to make wheezing and whuffing noise as he held his knee. Xander looked around, and saw the man he had been choking earlier trying to crawl down the dock away from them.

As Faith started lugging the injured thugs towards the nearest lit area, a park bench some 20 yards towards the street, Xander turned and headed after their fleeing front man. He grabbed him by the collar and by the belt and lifted him to his feet in front of the shack, spinning him with a jerk so he was backed against the wall.

"What happened, huh Ace?" Xander asked, and then slammed his fist into the man's face. Ace's teeth cracked together and his head crashed into the wall with a thud. As he started to slide down the wall, Xander grabbed him and held him up with his left hand while hitting him with his right.

Punch. Blood flew from the man's mouth in a fan across the boards next to him as his head lolled to the side.

"Just out for something fun?" Punch. Something grated in Ace's cheek, bits of bone rubbing together where no joint ought to be. The man screamed.

"You got something against women in general?" Xander yelled over the man's scream. Punch. Something snapped in Xander's hand. Maybe a finger, maybe one of those bones up in your hand they have to put a screw in for your whole life so you can tell when it's going to rain.

The man's eyes rolled and blood was running from his mouth and nose. The boards in the wall behind his head were starting to splinter with each impact. It was not certain if he was still breathing. Xander planned to make it certain.

"Or maybe," Xander said, raising his hand once more, cocking it like a crossbow aimed between the man's eyes, "maybe it was something personal?" He let fly.

And there, stopping his hand with a smacking sound an inch from the man's face was a small and preternaturally strong hand. It took Xander a moment to grasp that his blow had not landed. He looked at Faith, who had caught his fist in hers.

"Don't do it, Xander. It's not who you are, and it's not who you wanna be, you dig?" She wasn't sure she was getting through. "Dawn needs you. You need her. Let him go."

Xander let Ace go, and watched as he slid to the ground where he started moaning and swearing through the bubbles of bile and blood in his mouth.

"Gonna geth eeyou. Gonna thoe eeyou how thoo rethpek…" the babbling become completely unintelligible. Faith walked Xander back to Robin and Dawn.

Dawn had Wood's jacket around her shoulders and was looking at Xander with worry and fear. She was talking to Robin but her eyes stayed on Xander.

"I wasn't thinking. They saw my money when I bought a soda from a shop over there and came after me when I left the store. One got around in front of me and tried to knock me down and take it."

She closed her eyes. "He didn't know anything about close fighting. The blood… on my legs and my side, it's his. But there were more, and they had a knife. A real big one, like your basic Bringer special. I managed to get free after a bit and I ran down here. I popped the lock and got in there." She opened her eyes and gestured towards the now very dark boat dock. "I'd lost my phone, and there was hardly any light. I threw the deadbolt, and just prayed someone would see them trying to break in."

She turned to Faith. "How did you find me?"

Faith shrugged and pointed to Xander. "I followed him."

Robin took Dawn by the arm, nodded to Faith to get a hold of Xander. He looked at the hospital about two blocks down at the end of the park. "We need to get them looked at, and call someone to pick up the trash…"

"This ain't Sunnydale, lover," Faith said with a frown. "We bring them in like this, add a police report for Xander's playmates over there, and there are bound to be questions."

"Like what are you doing violating your parole, being in Illinois?" Robin finished for her. She would not have said it, but the thought did worry her.

Dawn said, "I'll be alright, really. I've Band-Aided over worse… but what about Xander." She turned to him, "Are you okay?"

He looked at his hand, covered in blood and starting to throb unpleasantly. "Not sure. Depends on if you'll come home with me and let me show I'm sorry, I know I was wrong."

"You are impossible." Her exasperated tone drew his attention. "How can I stay mad at you for looking out for me when you keep doing such a good job of it? Let's get the hell back to California. It's cold here."

XXVII.

The weary troop made a long stop at the pharmacy, and Xander made several calls to the airline. They couldn't get a flight back till morning, the red eye, so they wound up at the Le Meridien Hotel on the advice of a well-tipped cab driver.

Robin Wood told them to wait in the cab, popped out, and had some words with the doorman. He waved at them to hold on, and disappeared inside. When he returned he looked vexed.

"Okay gang," he said poking his head into the cab, "we can get suites or we can share one room. Also, I think is nicer than we had in mind."

Xander reached painfully into his pocket with his bandaged hand and pulled out his new charge card. "Get a suite. Get two. And some dinner. We'll worry about clothes for tomorrow later, after we get Dawn cleaned up." The adrenaline rush was leaving him stranded on the beach as it receded. He hurt all over, and every time he looked at Dawn, slumped in Robin's jacket against Faith's side, he ached inside too.

Robin looked, and was surprised to see a platinum card. "Okay, you're the boss. But we have to have a serious funding talk once we get this settled, okay?"

They efficient concierge staff bustled Xander and Robin into something called a Junior Suite King, and the girls into a matching merlot-and-honey-hued room across the hall. Dinner was probably as rich and amazing as the rooms themselves, but no one paid any attention.

Xander lay on the bed after mechanically eating what Robin had placed in front of him. Wood folded their clothes away neatly and then changed the dressing on Xander's hand. As carefully as possible, he examined the swelling and bruising. As two of the non-mystical humans to survive Sunnydale and the last battle, they'd had their share of experience with broken bones.

"Looks like a clean break. I'll wrap it tight and we can worry about it when you get home."

"Do you think she's… you know, okay?" Xander had his eye closed and had not moved since he collapsed on the bed.

"I'm sure she is. I peeked in when dinner came and there were robes and slippers, very girly. I believe the plan for after dinner includes a bubble bath but that's not something Faith would ever admit out loud."

"Oh, and we figured out what Dawn was doing here. Apparently the Summers girls have an aunt who lives here. Dawn tried to contact her but she's out of town."

He said 'aunt' like 'ont.' That always sounded sophisticated to Xander, whose family had always said 'aunt' like 'ant.' Xander always wanted to say it the sophisticated way, something he usually remembered a few seconds after saying 'ant.'

"She could have saved the trip," Xander said, eye closing again.

"Why do you say that?" Robin remembered studying Buffy before settling in Sunnydale, and his school's records of Dawn. There was never mention of any family other than the girls' estranged father.

"When Joyce died, their mom, when she died I got family and friends phone duty. Anya got the bills and the banks. Giles got the government paperwork. I got friends and family. Did I say that already? So I call Joyce's sister Darlene, well half sister I think but I never really got that straight. I can still remember the silence on the line, and I'm thinking what kind of thing is that, to find out your sister's dead from a stranger on the phone."

"Then she made this little air sucking sound and I thought she was going to cry. Instead she goes off on me about how she told Joyce to leave California and it's sinful ways. She just about came out and said Joyce must have got what she deserved. She didn't come for the funeral, and she never called again that I know of to check on the girls or anything. I figured it was something the girls didn't really need to know at the time, and they never asked me about it later."

They were both quiet for a while.

Wood said, "You were an only child too, right?"

"Yeah. It was me, and Willow, and my friend Jesse for years. He died, but then there was Buffy and Dawn. "

"I'll never understand families, I suppose," Wood mused.

Xander rolled over. Wood thought he was asleep. After some minutes, Xander spoke,

"You really love Faith, don't you?"

"Yes, I do. It's not been easy, but it's always worth it."

"Then you do understand families."

There was another long pause, and Wood got up and covered Xander with a duvet. He slipped across to the other room to check on his wife and Dawn.

In the opposite suite, Dawn was sitting in a huge terry robe, a mug of something hot in her hands and her hair drying in the warm air. Faith was also in a fluffy robe, but she had put her spike heel black suede boots back on, and they were propped up on the table.

"Now there's something you… well actually never see ever at all," noted Wood as he sat on the corner of the writing desk and observed them. "How is everyone?"

"We were just discussing how useless men are and how lucky you are we're here," said Dawn quietly. Although she had gotten used to her former principal being around, she was still wary of talking to him as something like a peer.

"Right on, sister" said Faith. She was drinking something that clinked in the glass, but Robin knew that she almost never really drank now. She'd splash a suggestion of vodka over a glass of ice and drown it in coke. Often at home she joined him in tea, but it wasn't something she ever made on her own.

"How's the boss?" There was a time in her life when being Faith's boss meant having a black heart and a blacker soul, if any. She liked the idea of following someone who had a heart and used it.

"Rough. It was touch and go for a while I think."

Dawn sloshed her mug as she quickly sat up. "What do you mean? Do we need to get a doctor? Is it bad?"

Faith chuckled, bringing her up short. "Boy, they both got it bad, eh lover?"

Robin 'shushed' her and turned back to Dawn.

"Dawn, I can't imagine what things are like for you two right now. I won't try. But if you care about Xander at all, please be careful around him for a while. Whether you do love him or not, you'll want him as your friend some day, and it's not smart to make that harder for yourselves than it has to be."

"Listen to Doctor Love," marveled his wife. "Who dreamed the man possessed such mad skills?"

"I have hidden depths," Robin replied with a little wink at Dawn.

Dawn went into the bathroom to rinse out her cup. She was sore, but clean. A line of butterfly Band-Aids crossed one collarbone and down onto her breast, and she had a couple split fingernails that were now taped up. When she thought about what could have happened if not for her friends, she shuddered.

She'd told Faith that she was more embarrassed than hurt, and Faith had pointed out the sad fact that ordinary people were hurting and killing each other every day all over the world. Life's not all demons and apocalypses. Dawn remembered Riley Finn pondering once what it said about their lives that he needed to know the plural of apocalypse.

Dawn came out after brushing her teeth and hair, and saw Faith and Robin holding each other, her hands on his face, his arms around her. They looked perfect, apart from the world, and Dawn tried to slip past them to the door.

""Hey, where you headed, D?" Faith was eying her suspiciously.

"I thought you guys might like to be alone for a while. Nice room, huge bed, big tub… You guys should be alone."

"I don't think you should be alone, Dawn, and you're not even dressed…" Robin trailed off as his wife prodded him in the ribs. "Ah, not dressed and not alone. Right."

"Wicked cool, girl," enthused Faith. "Just be careful with him. Guys aren't as tough as we are." It occurred to Dawn that there were several ways she might mean that.

"I know."

She slipped across the hall and used Robin's key to enter the other suite. She saw Xander, duvet twisted around his legs, sleeping in the middle of the big bed. As quietly as she could, she slipped next to him, and wormed herself carefully under his right arm and back against him.

As she drifted to sleep, he rolled on his side. He put his other arm over her and spooned against her. It didn't feel like being home, it felt like finally having one again.