Author: Cyclone
Feedback: Please be gentle.
Distribution: Gimme credit and a link.
Rating: Just a little bad language.
Spoilers: Anything and everything.
Disclaimer: The characters depicted herein belong to other people. I'm just borrowing them for a while.
Summary: After Halloween, everything changes. Sequel to Blackest Night. Part one of Emerald Flame.
Author's Note: Okay, y'know, the reason Blackest Night was originally a one-shot was because I saw only two ways to expand on it: Green Lantern Xander and Future Knowledge Xander. Both of them had already been done and done well by others, and I didn't want to retread ground already covered, so I intended to leave it as is.
Then I got this idea.
Willow marched through the ruined wreckage of the army that had tried to stop him. They had been numerically superior, technologically advanced, well-equipped, well-trained, fanatically dedicated... and utterly doomed from the beginning. They had had no chance. She entered the central room and walked into the flow of energy from Xander's power rings, disrupting it.
The energy threw her to the ground, and a moment later, she stood up and blocked it again, clutching her side.
"You can't stop me," Xander said bluntly.
"Yeah, I kinda figured that out," Willow said with a shrug. "But... where else am I gonna go? You've been my best friend my whole life, Xander. World gonna end... where else would I want to be?"
"Is this the master plan?" he cocked an eyebrow skeptically. "You're going to stop me by telling me you love me? C'mon, Will, what worked on you isn't gonna work on me."
"Well, I was going to walk you off a cliff and hand you an anvil, but..." she shrugged again, "your cartoon-fu beats mine any day of the week."
Her face turned serious, "I know you're hurting, Xander. I can't imagine how much you're hurting. And I know that, y'know, wiping out all life... not exactly the best idea you've had, but hey, what do I care? Still wanna hang. You're Xander."
"Don't call me that."
"First day of kindergarten," she said. "I cried because I broke the yellow crayon, and I was too afraid to tell anyone, but you were there, and you took the blame for me. You've come pretty far, ending all life in the galaxy, again, not one of your better ideas. But you know what? Yeah. I love you. I loved blame-taking Xander and I love... scary Parallax Xander. So if I'm going out, it's here. You wanna kill the galaxy? Fine, mister, but you start with me. I think I've earned that."
"You think I won't? This isn't like last time, Will. I'm a little bit better at following through than you are. Besides, I'm not just ending all life, I'm recreating it. This isn't a weapon, Will. It's a galactic Genesis Device."
"Then it'll be one hell of a ride, won't it? Either way, I'll still love you."
Xander tore his eyes away...
--Flash--
...and the vision shattered. He found himself floating in darkness. "That's not how it happened," he said raggedly.
"No," a voice said. "But it is what may happen."
He looked up and saw five figures, the closest of whom was...
"Ganthet?" he blinked. He looked at the other four and felt his neck hairs rise. Shazam. Highfather. Zeus. Phantom Stranger.
It was the Quintessence. Quite possibly the five most powerful beings in existence.
"Greetings, Alexander, Green Lantern of Sector Two-Eight-One-Four," Ganthet spoke.
"What's going on?" he asked. "Where am I?"
"A place between," Zeus answered.
Highfather nodded and said, "Our worlds are more closely linked than you realize, Protector of Man, and you walk in both worlds."
"You have changed what is and what will be," Shazam said. "You must see what is and what may be."
"How could this happen?" he demanded. "Why show me this?"
"We have only opened the window," Phantom Stranger said. "Beyond that is up to you. We cannot control what you see, nor can we predict how whatever you see may come to be."
--Flash--
"...and while this might be a bit presumptuous on my part, since the election's still a week away, I'd like to thank the Justice League on behalf of the people of New York."
"We were only doing our best, Mister Petrelli," Superman said, shaking the congressional candidate's hand. "We're just glad it was enough."
Xander stared. It was them. The Justice League.
Or a Justice League, anyway.
That was himself as Green Lantern. Obvious enough.
He looked at Superman. This man of steel seemed a bit shorter and skinnier -- and, of course, younger -- than the man Xander remembered from the other world.
The next person he studied was the Flash. This version of the scarlet speedster looked slightly overweight... and wore a sword strapped to his back?
Batman was wearing an all-too-familiar smirk. It took Xander a moment to place it, but once he did, he had to admit that, aside from that damned smirk, that man was perfect for the role.
There was a redhead present too, wearing the tuxedo, top hat, and fishnets of Zatanna, with a domino mask added to help conceal her identity. Xander couldn't quite identify her, but he was pretty sure it wasn't Willow behind that mask. Not with those legs.
There were three other shadowy figures standing with them, all female, but beyond the wing-shaped shadows on one that screamed "Hawknoun!" and a glint of gold and silver here and there on another that made him suspect that she was probably Wonder Woman, he couldn't make them out.
--Flash--
He was now in the high school library, and he was watching himself and Willow watching Buffy and Angel having a heart to heart.
"Personally, I think Angel's fooling himself by thinking he's actually in love with Buffy," the other him said.
"What makes you say that?" Willow frowned.
"Just like last time around," Xander shrugged, "he got his moment of happiness when he slept with Buffy. Not when she told him she loved him. Not when they kissed. When they screwed. Then, after killing a lot of people, including some friends of ours, he got cursed again and spent a century in hell. When he got back, though, she immediately forgave him, still loved him... and that didn't give him a moment of happiness."
Willow gaped at the implications.
"Think about that," he continued. "Imagine how you'd feel if, say, you skinned a man alive before turning him into a bonfire, sicced zombies on Buffy, nearly killed Giles, tried to kill me, and were trying to blow up the world, and at the end of the day, someone -- say, me -- loved you so much that he'd be happy to just be there with you when you blew it all up?"
Xander groaned at the other him's idiocy. He obviously wasn't thinking about what he was saying.
Willow's eyes widened to the size of dinner plates, and in a very small voice, she asked, "...I did all that?"
The other Xander started and looked at her, "No! Of course not! That was just a hypothetical example!"
"Translation: Yes, I did, and you're trying to keep from freaking me out."
"No, Will, it was hypothetical. And even if any of that actually did happen, that... that timeline doesn't exist. You aren't her, you haven't made her mistakes, and your first real spell won't be a vile, dark curse. You aren't responsible for -- or guilty of -- any of the hypothetical things I just tossed out."
Willow began to hyperventilate, "No, I'm okay. I can deal with this. I'm not hyperventilating. I'm not passing out. I'm okay."
She passed out.
"Good one, me," Xander snorted.
--Flash--
Space. The final frontier. These are the voyages of...
Well, it was space anyway. There was an enormous metal ring the size of a planet floating there, with a glowing, silvery, water-like substance suspended within it. Four gigantic starships that looked an awful lot like toilet bowls to Xander emerged.
Confronting them were several smaller starships... and hundreds of Green Lanterns, led by... himself.
"We hold the line!" the other him bellowed. "Nothing gets through!" His face twisted into a grim smile as he murmured, "Welcome to the Corps."
--Flash--
He found himself in the Summers' living room. He saw Joyce, Buffy, and himself there. Both of the teenagers were tense and alert.
"What... what is going on?" Joyce asked, utterly confused.
"It's really simple, Mom," the other him said, transforming into his uniform. "I'm Green Lantern, your daughter's Wonder Woman, she's dating a vampire, and we've got to go save the world."
Buffy scowled, "Did you have to mention Angel?"
"Angel?" Joyce blinked. "He's a vampire?"
"Yeah," he nodded. "He's also two hundred and seventy-something years old or twenty-six if you only count his mortal years."
Joyce frowned, "Buffy..."
"Can we do this later?" the Slayer asked. "We've got a world to save."
The two young heroes turned to leave, and Buffy whispered, "So... he's really twenty-six?"
"When he was turned, yeah."
"I've been dating an old guy?"
"Buffy, you know he's over two hundred years old. He's older than this country, and you're just figuring that out now?"
--Flash--
Xander stumbled as the torrent of images flashed by, faster and faster, until they overwhelmed him. When the flood stopped, he latched onto the first thought to enter his mind, "What the hell? Angelus lived long enough to get his soul back?"
"It is the intent of the Powers of this world," Phantom Stranger said. "Your death was never their purpose."
"Could've fooled me," Xander muttered. "That's why Whistler only stabbed me. To take me out of the picture long enough that I wouldn't dust Angelus before he got his soul back. And all those people he's going to kill are just collateral damage." He looked up, "What can I do to stop it?"
"Have you forgotten the first rule of the Green Lantern Corps?" Ganthet reprimanded him. "Willpower is everything."
Xander woke up.
Author's Postscript:
How do you like that? Had some neat scenes I couldn't use, along with some foreshadowing I wanted to do, so I stuck this in.
Did I fool anyone with the opening? Did any of you double-back to see if you'd missed a chapter somewhere?
And can you guess who the Leaguers are? Not counting Xander or the three shadowy figures, there are four characters from three shows, all of which are live-action American television series.