Mutant Enemy Television, Inc. owns pretty much everything within the Angel/Buffy universe. My use is in no way meant to challenge any established copyrights. This piece is not intended for any profit on the part of the writer, nor is it meant to detract from the commercial viability of the aforementioned or any other copyright. Any similarity to any events or persons, either real or fictional, is unintended.

"Vampire: The Masquerade" and "Werewolf: The Apocalypse" are owned by White Wolf Publishing. My use is in no way meant to challenge their copyrights.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Author's Note: Above you can see the additional disclaimers referencing the intellectual property of White Wolf Publishing. The only thing I've really used is the word Delirium, which refers to a concept already used in BtVS but which never received a name. I've now borrowed the name from WW, and I believe in giving credit where credit is due. For anyone who knows of WW's WoD, don't expect any expansion into that fandom, as it doesn't fit what I have planned. This is a Buffy-verse fic, not a WoD fic or any form of cross-over.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

I – Welcome to the Fold

"Hi, Xander," Janna muttered awkwardly. Xander noticed that she, like just about everyone else, was thrown off-guard by the eye patch. She wanted to look at it, try to figure out why he wore it, whether it was for show or if there was really some kind of hideous injury… but she was polite enough not to stare.

"Hi," Xander offered as pleasantly as he could. He looked the girl over closely, starting with her raven black hair, the green eyes, pale skin, and her short yet extremely athletic frame. She was doubtless involved in some kind of sports in her high school. "Don't worry about staring at the eye patch," he added with a broad smile. "You're supposed to look at it. People make eye contact all the time, don't feel you have to avert your eyes just because one of mine is covered. I'm totally fine with it."

"Okay," Janna responded, immediately turning her gaze back on Xander.

"But please don't stare, dear," he mother implored her. "That's ever so rude."

"That's okay," Xander assured the woman.

"So what happens now?" Janna's father asked.

"Now Janna and I have to talk a bit," Xander answered. "I'm getting an office furnished even as we speak, but for now if we maybe just go for a walk…"

"Go for a walk?" he father asked. "Isn't that a little…"

"Informal?" Xander offered.

"I was going to say unusual, but I suppose informal would work just as well."

"Look, I'm not here to have Janna lean back on a couch and tell me about her childhood while I get with the psych babble mumbo jumbo," Xander explained plainly, as much for Janna's benefit as for her parents'. "I'm here to understand. I'm here to help her work through her issues."

"Look, I don't have any issues," Janna interrupted.

"Everyone has issues," Xander assured her. "I have them, your parents have them, and you have them. Don't try to assure me that you're all fine and normal, because I have yet to see anyone who fits that description. I haven't even met anyone who can provide that description. My purpose is just to help you put things in perspective, to help you figure out what kind of person you want to be as you grow up."

"Oh really?" Janna asked standoffishly, crossing her arms as she engaged in a staring contest with Xander's outnumbered eye.

"Really."

"Why don't you just go for a walk, dear," Janna's mom suggested. "It can't hurt anything."

"Fine," Janna huffed. She pushed past Xander and out into the bright August sun. In the blink of an eye she plowed past him again back into the house, grabbed her sunglasses from a table just inside the door, then practically knocked him over as she bowled past him a third time.

"We'll be back in an hour," Xander muttered as he walked down the sidewalk after the teen.

"So where are we walking?" Janna asked.

"You decide."

"Is this one of your tests?" Janna asked suspiciously. "Is it like, if I walk toward the sun I must be happy because I want the warmth on my face, and I'm depressed if I put the sun on my back and instead concentrate on my shadow?"

"What?!" Xander replied. "Look, I told you – I'm not here to do the psych stuff. Stop being suspicious of me. I just moved into town – I don't know my way around. That's the only reason I offered to have you lead the way. Jeez…"

They walked silently for almost fifteen minutes before Jana spoke again. "Let me guess, now you're getting all Good Will Hunting on me, waiting until I start the discussion?"

"Sorta," Xander admitted. To be honest, he had no idea what to say… or more to the point, how to say what he knew needed to be said. Buffy had told him how Giles had confronted her with the news of his being her new Watcher, and how Merrick had first told her of what she was. Neither had made a very good impression on her. He hoped he could do better. At the very least, he knew he wouldn't use Giles' tactic of handing her a book with "Vampyr" written on it.

"So what am I supposed to talk about? You want me talk about the accident?"

"Seems like as good a place as any," Xander answered. "Your parents told me you were going to work that morning."

"Yeah, summer vacation had just started, and I was driving to the McD's. I got this really weird feeling, almost like the most kick-ass adrenaline rush ever, and right at that moment a deer jumped out in front of me."

"So you swerved and crashed."

"Yeah, wrapped my car around a tree," Janna cursed angrily. "Now I lost my wheels… damn insurance company is only givin' me blue book value, so it's gonna be months before I can afford another car. My parents were talking about helping me out, saying they'd buy me a car of my choice as long as it was something safer than my old Camaro, but lately they haven't been willing to be very generous."

"Because of your behavior," Xander surmised.

"Yeah." Janna kicked a stone that was in her path, almost looking like she was trying to decide how much to say. Xander expected her to clam up for the rest of their walk, but she suddenly launched into the rest of the story.

"See, I almost died because of the accident," Janna explained. "Doctors said I should have died, actually… my parents showed up at the hospital thinking they were gonna be saying goodbye to me. They don't know how I survived – they said it was some kind of medical miracle. I was out of the hospital less than a week later, fully healed. Freaked them right the hell out, actually. I think the doctors were sorta happy to get rid of me.

"Anyway, ever since then things have been different. I tried to explain it to my parents, but they don't want to listen. They just see the stuff I've been getting in trouble for, and they don't want to hear any excuses. That's always been their thing – when I did something bad as a kid, I found my punishment was far less if I owned up to what I did wrong. Now they think I'm trying to make excuses, when that's really not what's going on."

"It must be rough," Xander commented.

"It's unfair, is what it is. It's not like I'm making up stories, see? I'm trying to tell them what happened. I'm trying to make them understand that I never did anything wrong in the first place; but they just don't want to hear it. Every time something new happens, it just makes it worse."

"Why don't you give me an example?"

"Well, like there was this party I was at a few nights after I got home," Janna began. It was out in the woods because, well, you know…"

"Drinking, smoking, probably a little sex," Xander guessed. "I wasn't a teenager all that long ago."

"Right, you get it," Janna replied, surprising Xander with how quickly she accepted him as someone to hear truths she likely spent most of her time hiding from other adults. "Anyway, there were a bunch of us out there, and these…" Her voice trailed off suddenly, and Xander assumed she was trying to find the right words to continue. Almost a full minute had gone by when he realized she'd decided to keep quiet about the whole thing.

"These what?" he asked. She didn't answer. "Let me guess, a group of people showed up," he offered. She nodded. "Probably three or four of 'em, none of them invited. You guys probably didn't know them."

"Right."

"And things started getting weird," Xander guessed. "You noticed something was different about them… something was wrong with them." Janna looked at him strangely, almost aghast, but nodded all the same. "It was their faces," Xander said.

"Oh my God," she muttered, stopping dead in her tracks. "How do you know that? I never told anyone that. Well, I tried to tell my parents, but they didn't want to hear it. I'd been busted by the cops for drinking and fighting, and they hardly wanted to hear that there'd been a gang there. Forget the fact that they--"

"--had fangs," Xander finished for her. "Forget the fact that they were vampires."

Janna could only stare at Xander, her mind apparently stuck in the moment between surprise and reaction. "Janna?" he asked. "You okay?"

"I think I'm gonna puke," she muttered miserably, her body still as granite.

"We should probably keep moving," Xander suggested. "I don't think you want to be standing still for too long… someone might overhear more than they're supposed to." Janna nodded and started walking, but something in her eyes looked vacant, detached. Xander decided to let her work things through in her head… he remembered meeting Buffy and finding out about vampires. It'd all taken a little getting used to.

"So they were vampires," Janna finally concluded, as if she'd been reviewing the memory in her head for several minutes and was finally ready to accept Xander's conclusion.

"Yeah. Vampires."

"So…" She seemed at a loss for words. "So are you here to kill them? Are you like Anthony Hopkins in Dracula?"

"Let me see if I can explain," Xander offered. "How much are you ready to hear?"

"What do you mean?"

"You have to know I'm not here because of what you saw," he told her. "Well, not totally anyway. I'm here because of you. Your parents contacted the foundation, and we responded. We've been expecting to find someone like you out here."

"I don't understand."

Where the hell do I start? Xander asked himself. There's so much to say, and I'm not sure if she's ready for it all… "Okay, let me try to sum up for you. First of all, you've seen vampires. You're ready to accept that they exist, right?"

"Yeah, I'm with ya so far."

"Good. All right, vampires are demons. They used to be human, but when they were turned into vampires, the human soul was set free from the body and replaced by a demonic entity."

"If you say so."

"Now here's the part where you come in – just as there are dark powers, some would say evil powers, there are also forces of light, or good."

"What do you mean?"

"You're what's referred to as a Slayer. As long as there have been demons on Earth, there has been the Slayer to oppose them."

"The Slayer? What do you mean? Am I the only one?" All of the patient, thoughtful understanding seemed to be draining from Janna's demeanor as she gave more thought to what Xander was saying.

"No," he corrected quickly. "At least, that's not how it is anymore. Or maybe it is. There're a couple of competing theories on that."

"Theories?" Janna asked. "You mean you don't even know what's going on? You don't know what's wrong with me?"

"Nothing's wrong with you," Xander said quickly. "On the very morning of your accident, something magical happened. Something amazing. You were born as what we refer to as a Potential, a woman who could one day become a Slayer. Not all Potentials became Slayers… until that morning. Just moments before your accident you became a Slayer. Injuries that should have killed you healed almost of their own accord."

"And that's why I'm stronger," Janna surmised.

"Yeah, you're stronger. You're also faster, more coordinated… and as you've seen, you're immune to what some people call the Delirium."

"The what?"

"The Delirium," Xander explained. "When you go out and get into these fights, what you have to understand is that your memory of events will be different than other people's. You see, people don't want to accept some of the things they see; humans are creatures of reason. They believe the world has certain immutable rules, and when inexplicable things happen, people have a tendency to warp their own memories to explain it all away. Like at your party in the woods – I'll bet everyone else remembered just a normal gang. If they remembered anything strange about the gang, they probably attributed it to drug use – probably PCP. Their minds alter those memories so that they make sense, so that they conform to what we understand to be the 'real world.'

"Of course, you're still you as far as most people are concerned, so memories of you don't get altered. So at the party, everyone clearly remembers you getting into a fight with members of a local gang. Ergo, you're suddenly seen as a gang member when in fact you were saving your friends from a pack of vampires."

"But those people have known me my entire life," Janna objected. "They wouldn't just think that I've become a gang member… that makes no sense."

"It makes more sense than accepting that vampires – and by extension most other things that we were taught as kids don't exist – are actually real. They made a subconscious choice, and chose to believe that you're a bad seed. It's easier."

"That's not fair."

"It's all subconscious, Janna. They didn't choose to demonize you in their minds, it just happened that way. And you can expect it to continue, too. That's why you have to learn to be careful, to conceal your gifts."

"Like Spider-man," Janna replied. "And gee, that movie really ended on an uplifting note, didn't it? So I'm expected to pretty much isolate myself?"

"Yes and no," Xander answered noncommittally. "You'll get the hang of that as you go along."

"So is that it?" Janna asked.

"No, actually… that's just the beginning."

"So get with the rest of it."

"I think our hour's up," Xander said, looking at his watch. "We should get you back home."

"No," Janna answered. "I don't want to go back home yet. I want answers."

"And you'll have them," Xander assured her. "Just remember what we were talking about. People are going to be seeing you differently now. If you want to retain some kind of a socially acceptable reputation you're gonna have to toe the line. We're meeting for an hour today, so that's all we're gonna do. I'm meeting with your parents tonight, and I'll discuss this all with them then."

"You're gonna tell them this Slayer bit?" Janna asked. "You just left me with more questions than I had before talking with you, and now you're gonna give them the answers first?"

"I'm not telling your parents anything about the Slayer bit," Xander answered immediately. "Maybe someday that's something that might come up, but right now they're not ready for it. They'll have to reach that conclusion slowly, and probably only of their own accord. You have to give it time."

"Fine," Janna grumbled. "But when will you tell me the rest?"

"As soon as I can," Xander assured her. "Let me make arrangements with your parents, then we'll talk."

To be continued…………………………………………