Chapter Two: Revelations. In which Dawn meets Kel, Xander talks to Spike, a Scooby meeting is had, and Xander reveals a few secrets.
The conversations had been going around and around ever since Spike had come in this morning through the tunnel into Buffy's basement and had broken the news.
Xander was back blah wasn't human blah apocalypse blah blah blah.
Dawn was tired of it. Everyone was meeting in the Magic Box, supposedly an hour before sunset so they'd have time to have a final talk before Xander and his boytoy (Buffy's words, not hers) got there. She'd gotten here on time, unlike a certain someone (cough Buffy cough), and then she, along with the Anya, Giles, and the Witches, had had to wait.
She'd gotten tired of waiting half an hour ago. Fifteen minutes ago, Anya had finally gotten fed up with her jitters and had set her to shelving stock, saying that if she was going to have so much extra energy, then she might as well put it to good use.
But it was only two minutes ago that the boy had walked into the Magic Box, and for a reason she couldn't name, Dawn couldn't help but watch him out of the corner of her eye.
He was nothing like anyone she'd seen before, not since she'd moved from LA, anyway. In Sunnydale you might have witches and vampires and other Hellmouthy creatures, but you never saw anyone who looked out of the ordinary. You would never see a boy with the tips of his black hair dyed into a rainbow of colors, with a pierced lip and ears three times each. You'd never see a boy with a tattoo around his throat, a collar of lacy vines done in dark green ink. You'd never see a boy with a black t-shirt ripped across his midriff, and loose black jeans worn to holes that were patched with safety pins. And she'd never seen anyone but Spike wearing Doc Martens.
So this boy was different, and that should have been reason enough for her to have this embarrassing tendency to stare. But it was something more than that, and she knew it, but she couldn't quite figure out what the something more was, precisely.
The box of miscellaneous mystical statuary that she was trying to lift onto the top shelf proved to be heavier than she'd expected, and she found herself fighting to heft it high enough. Just before she was sure to drop it, there were hands over hers, supporting the box and lifting it easily onto the high shelf.
She turned to see the punk boy she'd been watching, standing behind her with his hands already back at his sides. He offered her a little smile. "It looked like you were having trouble."
"Man, you must be really strong. You're not much bigger than I am, and you lifted that thing like-" She paused. "Like you're not human. Damn it. You're some kind of demon, aren't you?"
"A wolf shifter, actually," he said. "I'm here with Xander."
Oh. "Oh," she said. "Spike said something about you."
"How much about me?" No alarm in the boy's voice, just simple curiosity.
"That you're a wolf shifter, and that you and Xander are... involved." She hated pale skin- it was hard to hide the blush.
He grinned at her and tucked his hands (chipped metallic green nail polish, she noticed) into his pockets. "Yeah. Notsomuch like you're thinking, though."
"Spike said he found the two of you kissing."
"I never said I wasn't sleeping with him. But we're more partners than anything. Like Batman and Robin." Another grin. "I, of course, would be Robin."
"Batman and Robin weren't gay," she said automatically, then focused on the more important part of metaphor. "So you're all... good-guy-ish? And Xander's a superhero?"
"Yeah, we're good guys. And yeah, Xander fights the good fight. Notsomuch a superhero."
"Then what is he?"
"A question I think we all want answered," Buffy said as she came in through the front door to the Magic Box. Dawn rolled her eyes- Buffy never could resist making an entrance- and ignored her sister when she gave the boy her patented Angry!Slayer!glare™. "And who are you?"
"Kelsey Ba'thalion," he said politely. "You'd be Buffy, I take it?"
"How'd you know?" she demanded.
"Because Xander told me that if I ran into a tiny blonde that scares the hell out of me, then I'd know that I'd met Buffy Summers."
Buffy's glare lessened a little bit, as she debated whether or not she was going to take that as a compliment or not. Apparently unable to make up her mind, she just shook it away and changed the subject- a well-known Buffy tactic.
"You're Xander's friend."
"Yeah," Kel said. "We've been partners for two years, give or take."
Dawn could see Buffy wanting to ask if Kel meant partners, partners, or just partners. Was it that obvious, or did she just know her sister that well? Nevermind, that was totally not the point.
What Buffy said instead was, "I thought he was going to meet us here at sunset."
"He is."
"It's sunset. So where's Xander?"
"Here," said a familiar voice from the back doorway, the one that led to the training room. Xander stood there, looking dark and unsmiling and- well, really freakin' hot, actually, not that that was the point- with Spike appearing behind him. "I'm here," he repeated, and everything fell silent.
Spike found Xander leaning against the wall beside the back door, waiting for him. Spike couldn't control the surge of pleasure he felt, but he could and did keep his face blank as he closed the distance between them.
"Hey," Xander said, when he was close enough. Spike stopped and looked at him, noticing the collar tattooed on his throat that had been hidden by the high collar of his shirt the night before. It was similar to the one that he'd noticed on the wolfling, but Xander's was done in dark blue ink instead of green, and the art was heavy Celtic knot work instead of lacy vines. Spike stared at it, and wondered how long it had been since he'd last felt butterflies in his stomach.
"Hello."
Xander rolled his shoulders and looked uncomfortable. "Wanted a chance to apologize for last night," he said.
Whatever Spike had been expecting, that wasn't it. "Now I know there's gonna be an apocalypse," he quipped. "If you're apologizing to me."
Xander straightened up, something ugly creeping into his eyes, and instinctively Spike shrank back a step. Whatever was wrong with Xander, it has just come home to roost with a vengeance at Spike's joke, and Spike, demon though he was, couldn't help but be a little afraid.
Humanity bled back into Xander's eyes at Spike's movement, leaving only self-directed fear and disgust. He whirled around and slammed both fists into the brick wall, causing a spider web of cracks to appear in the masonry.
"Sorry." The word was hoarse.
"No need to be, mate." Greatly daring, Spike reached out and touched Xander's rigid back. "Any blind fool could see that there's something ridin' you. I don't know what it is, but it can't be easy to live with."
"It's not." Xander turned and slumped against the wall. "Worse, here."
"Hellmouth does tend to bring out the demon in you," Spike agreed. "Anything I can do to help?"
Xander let out a helpless sort of laugh. "Yes. No." Pause. "Can I make up my mind later?"
"Sure. Make more sense if I knew what was goin' on, though."
Xander shook his head. "Not up to telling this more than once."
"Then we'd better get inside," Spike said. "That was the reason we met tonight, wasn't it?"
"Yeah, it was." Spike waited patiently as Xander sighed, fidgeted, and finally straightened away from the wall. "Okay." He visibly steeled himself, then opened the door and went in. Spike followed him as he silently crossed the training room, getting close enough to the open door to the shop to hear the tail end of Buffy's question.
"-where's Xander?"
"Here," he said, stepping into the doorway with Spike right behind him. "I'm here."
It took a while for everyone to stop milling around and talking over each other. Eventually, it was only Giles' watcher-glare and everyone's mutual curiosity that got them to shut up and settled down in their usual spots, with Kel sitting at Xander's feet- a very canine habit that looked odd for a human boy.
"It was several days after Adam that I started having dreams," Xander began. "Not the dreams from the First Slayer. Dreams from something else entirely.
"It was a few days after that when I started hearing the voice. Calling me, I thought, and after a week, I found out I was right. I gave in, wrote a goodbye note, packed my things, and followed the voice out of Sunnydale. It didn't leave my head until I found myself in a white chamber somewhere like underneath an LA post office.
"A... being is the best way to describe it... spoke to me. Same voice that had been calling me. It told me that I'd been chosen, that the spell to defeat Adam had opened me up and drawn their attention to me. That I'd been given a gift.
"They gave me power. As much power as I had the will to control."
He paused, and everyone leaned forward a little, rapt with attention. Everyone but Spike, who was staring at him with a peculiar expression on his face, as if he was being told that a fairy tale was true by Snow White herself.
"What I didn't know then was that the power they gave me was demonic in origin. Dark power, you could say, and it was. Dark, I mean. It's... hard to control, sometimes. Much, much worse here in Sunnydale, which is one of the reasons I never came back here. There's only so much that I can take. Given a choice, I'd be at the other end of the world from here right now." There was a long pause.
"But I can't," he said finally. "I sent to help here. And I will. That's all there is to it."
A long silence followed his words, interrupted only by the sounds of rustling clothes and soft breathing. Finally Giles spoke, asking the question that they were all thinking.
"But Xander," he said carefully, "what, exactly, are you?"
A flat voice answered him- not Xander, but Spike, sitting up on the stepladder and looking shell shocked.
"He's Hellbound."