Title: Wing you to your rest
Author: Knife Hand
Feedback: Constructive feedback appreciated, flames unappreciated
Spoilers: Not Really.
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy, or Tara, or Willow, or Cordy. I would buy them but I am broke.
Summary: Due to an unintended meeting years earlier, Xander goes as something very different for Halloween and changes the course of everything to come.
Xander glanced down at the photograph on his bedside table. A pair of five year olds smiled back at him, the boy a younger version of himself, one arm around the girl and the other held hard by his side as if to hide the cast the held the broken arm. The girl was smiling brightly, her long blond-brown hair caught frozen in the wind, as she half leaned into the embrace of the boy with her eyes lightly closed. The picture portrayed a meeting that should have, if destiny had any say in it, never have happened. A meeting that had, and would, change the world beyond all imagining. Of course Xander did not know that, and neither did the girl in the photo.
Xander settled the bracelet of sting and plastic beads around his wrist, a present she had given him in one of their many letters, before pulling the coat he had rented around his shoulders and walked out of his room and the house. Tonight was Halloween, and that Troll of a vice-principal, Snyder, had roped him into escorting a bunch of children. His costume was not obvious, dressed in the coat he had got at Ethan's, a white t-shirt, denim jeans and a pair of sturdy boots, he looked like he was not in a costume at all. Only one person would guess what he was, and she was a thousand miles away. She would know because she had dubbed him, when they had met, when they had saved each other from despair.
He strode confidently down the street. Giles had said that tonight would be quiet, but Xander had still slipped a silver knife into his boot, just in case. He did not drop by Buffy's house on his way to the school, he just couldn't stand watching her get all fancied up for that damn walking corpse. He picked up the children he was to escort, ignoring the antsy remarks of Snyder and the jeering of Larry and led them out of school for an hour of mind numbing boredom.
Janus watched as his servant invoked him. The servant was transforming all the people who had bought from him into their costumes for Halloween. Janus smiled at the Chaos that this would cause. The mask would become the flesh and the flesh a broken mask for the night. The god of Chaos slowly opened himself, letting a trickle of his power into the spell his servant wanted to cast. At the shear potential of the spell felt in that instant, Janus opened himself fully to the spell before the probe was complete. If he had waited for just an instant, what happened next could have been avoided and the future would have been vastly different. His power flowed through the bust that was the focus of the spell, a moderate amount of power, but nothing to bother the god. Then a massive surge hit, drawing huge amounts of power. Janus followed this draw and noticed it was concentrated around two costumes.
"HIS messengers! Ethan, you fool. You dressed them as HIS messengers." Janus gasped.
The next instant he noticed a thread. From one of the messengers a thread pulsed far outside the range of the spell, changing the one it found. The god fully grasped the meaning of this a nanosecond before he passed out. In that final nanosecond Janus swore to himself that if he survived, Ethan Rayne would pay.
Xander staggered as the wave of magic swept over the town. When the wave had passed, the entity that was Xander's costume knew two things. One; that it was now in the body of one Xander Harris, resident of Sunnydale, and two; that Xander was now it. The power of a Messenger is so great that no one can be possessed by it, so by its very nature it now was Xander Harris, as Xander was now it. Xander now possessed the memories of both himself and the costume.
Xander walked down the street with such a subtle deadly grace that even most trained soldiers would have missed it. As did the two real vampires who had thought that the older vamps were a bunch of superstitious morons to stay in tonight. They tried to jump Xander from some bushes. They obviously possessed little brains even when alive as they jumped out of the bushes while Xander was still several feet away. Inexplicably stunned that their ambush failed, they resorted to the age old fledgling tactic. They charged. The fight was over quickly. Xander stabbed the first in the gut with his short sword and then, switching hands in a flash, decapitated the second with a reverse held stroke. He returned the short sword to its holster on his belt and walked on while the first vampire still clutched at the ever expanding wound in its gut as it slowly disintegrated him.
He turned the corner at the end of the street and stopped dead. Standing at another intersection almost a hundred yards away, stood another man.
"Fallen!" Xander growled.
"Puppet!" the man who had been Jack O'Tool growled back.
Xander stepped out into the middle of the road, as did Jack from his corner. Xander shed his coat and pain sprouted from his back. Six massive wings sprouted from Xander's back, and from his position Jack also sprouted six wings. Jack's wings were like the wings of a Raven, dead black and he held them swept back. Xander's wings were in a more aggressive forward swept position. With their dark brown colour and tightly pack feathers, Xander's wings resembled a Hawk or Falcon's wings. The street had emptied the second the two men had stepped out onto the road.
"You are a disgrace to your Chior and to all Cherubim." Xander said, anger filling him.
"Oh please. We are the power, why should we yield control to another. It is us they fear, not HIM." Jack countered.
"HE made us. We are Angels, not lawless thugs."
"We could have won, had you puppets join with us."
"We are soldiers. We are to enforce HIS will. We follow orders, the chain of command. If not, what purpose do we serve?"
"Ourselves. We serve ourselves, Brother." Jack grinned.
"No! I serve HIM!" Xander said coldly, his emotions shutting down completely as the Angel took over for battle.
Xander launched himself off the ground, his powerful upper set of wings propelling him towards his enemy, while the two smaller, lower sets provided stability and great aerial agility. Quickly drawing his short sword, Xander crashed into Jack and the two Angelic entities barrelled down the street in battle.
Xander sat in the library not listening to Buffy as she went on about how brave Angel had been and how Willow had gotten Giles to break the spell. Xander was thinking. Jack had managed to get away, gravely wounded but still, the Fallen had gotten away. There was also the connection. He had been so absorbed in fighting last night that he had not noticed that he could feel the girl from the photo. And that she was now like he was; whatever that was. He was an Angel, a Cherub, but he was also human. He could feel her emotions, feel her nervousness. He sent a calming pulse through the bond and she settled down. He thought it was the bracelet that had done this. She was there in the Angel's memories, a deep and close friendship that transcended all barriers. With a sigh he settled down for more of the same from his friends.
TBC