Date written: Mon 5 Oct 2009
Author: Starway Man
E-mail: theop at hotkey dot net dot au
Disclaimer: The Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel characters are the property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Sandollar, Kuzui, Fox, WB and UPN; I don't own 'em, and I never will. I also do not own any other characters from any television shows, movies, comics, videogames or literature that I might use. This work is meant merely for enjoyment, and no profit is being made off of it. Some of the text is from various TV episodes or movies or comics or videogames or literature, and so does not belong to me of course.
Symbols: " " denotes speech, ( italics ) specifies thoughts, and # # indicates phone voice.
Main characters: Xander, ensemble
Warnings: There is some violence, bad language, character death and mention of sexual situations in these stories.
Author Notes: A couple of years ago Night Hunter MGS (a.k.a. Matt) wrote an awesome series of stories called "31 Days of Xanderween" (http://www .fanfiction .net/s/3813208/1/31_Days_of_Xanderween), where he published one Halloween fic for each day of October. I was inspired enough to want to do my own version of the concept, and he has graciously allowed me to use his idea for this series of fanfic stories.
Author Notes 2: This story underwent a major change in tone and direction from the original version to what you're reading here today. One of my beta readers said the first edition was too dark and too many people got killed, and suggested this alternative storyline instead. I liked it, so instead of Giles and Willow abandoning the ruined remains of Sunnydale after the Judge's rampage, I give you this! Oh, and thanks to everyone who's reviewed and sent feedback so far, I truly do appreciate it.
Acknowledgments: My thanks of course to Matt for allowing me to dabble with his original idea this way. Also, my deepest gratitude to all my beta readers – Francis Eugene, Greywizard, American Soldier and Nodakskip – for all their help in getting these stories finished on time!
Classification: Alternate Universe, Angst, Crossover, Romance, YAHF
Summary: Thirty-one versions of Halloween, Xander-style. Fic-a-day series.
Title:31 Days of Xanderween Part Deux
***
Story 5: Xliders
Partytown Costume Shop, Sunnydale, California
October 22nd, 1997
The store was dark and silent, and the rent-a-cop security guard was snoozing in his chair instead of patrolling the way he was supposed to be doing. Well, this was the Hellmouth after all; mundane crime wasn't exactly common around here, even if the number of murders and 'wild animal attacks' were on par with some of the worst parts of East LA and New York City.
Still, the guard should have been awake and functional tonight. If he had been, perhaps he would have noticed the dark-clad intruder who snuck into the store and left a time-delayed smoke bomb in one corner of the costume shop. The guard might have been able to prevent the store's automatic sprinkler systems from activating, flooding the place with water and ruining all the costumes.
If he had, the guard might have been able to prevent Ethan Rayne from being an evil capitalist fiend – someone out to not only create chaos on All Hallows' Eve, but make an even bigger buck by ruining his competition for the upcoming holiday festival.
***
Ethan's Costume Shop, Sunnydale, California
October 30th, 1997
Xander Harris whistled at all the various costumes and gadgets this store had, he hadn't been expecting it to be so well-stocked for such a new place. When he mentioned it to his friend Willow, the redhead replied, "I know, but didn't you hear about what happened to Partytown last week? All their outstanding orders had to be transferred somewhere. I mean everyone's been coming here, Xander, there's no other place in Sunnydale to go for a Halloween costume now..."
Panicked, Harris immediately went to check out the store for a toy gun that he wanted to complete the Vietnam-era soldier look; but it was too late. The big influx of customers meant that there were no more such guns left in the store. Disgusted, Xander was about to give up and resign himself to the punishment Principal Snyder would doubtless inflict upon him for not having a costume tomorrow night, when he saw something.
( I wonder... ) Xander picked up a toy that looked like a Motorola cell phone. He had an idea, based on what had been one of his favorite TV shows; well, up until it had been cancelled by the FOX network back in May anyway.
***
Somewhere on the streets of Sunnydale, California
October 31st, 1997
Xander was feeling pretty good as he escorted his little kids back towards the high school, having taken part in the Sunnydale High 'volunteer' safety program. He'd managed to score some free candy, and what's more he had successfully thumbed his nose at authority when Principal Snyder had demanded to know where his costume was.
"You're looking at it, Principal Snyder sir," the male Slayerette had said, holding the cell phone-like toy up to the commandant of the high school.
"What? What are you talking about, Harris?" Snyder had demanded, looking at the object in question. "What is that?"
"It's my timer, sir. I'm Quinn Mallory from the TV show, 'Sliders'," Xander had explained proudly.
"Sliders?" Snyder hadn't looked happy, getting the horrible feeling that he wouldn't be able to punish Xander for failing to obey orders after all.
"That's right, Principal Snyder. It's a show about a group of people who go from one alternate reality to another, where history turned out different in every single one of them. I mean, there was one world where the Germans won World War Two, and one where JFK decided to use an armoured car in Dallas that day, and even one where George Washington decided that tea just wasn't that expensive, after all-" Xander had really begun expounding on his theme, even if his memory of the various episodes wasn't exactly accurate.
"I get the picture!" Snyder had growled, cutting Xander off. "Just get on with it, then. Bring your group of brats back in one piece – and I won't expel you." He had then walked off, slightly steaming.
Xander was suddenly brought out of his happy memories of the recent past, by a cold wind blowing down the street. The very next moment, he was hit by a blast wave of chaos magic; as everyone who had bought something from Ethan's store became whoever and whatever they had dressed up as.
Quinn Mallory straightened up, feeling very confused. The last thing he remembered – thanks to the last time Xander had seen him on TV, at the end of season three of the show – was sliding with the woman named Maggie Beckett into an unknown world, failing to follow his friends Rembrandt Brown and Wade Welles back to Quinn's homeworld. But now Maggie was nowhere to be seen, and Quinn blinked at the timer he was holding in his hands.
( What the hell? ) This looked like the timer he had originally constructed to slide between parallel worlds, via wormholes known as Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky bridges. But that particular device had been lost a long time ago. ( Where did this come from? And where the heck am I? )
"Xander! Xander!" a female voice behind him said, as Mallory turned around to see someone who looked like a bordello worker running towards him. He also saw a lot of monsters chasing people around on the streets, and instantly he grew a lot more concerned.
"Sorry, are you talking to me? Uh, you must have mistaken me for someone else, miss – my name's Quinn. Quinn Mallory," the young man said hesitantly. After the last three years, he had learned never to take anything for granted; in this reality he might indeed have a double named 'Xander', for whatever reason.
"Xander, knock it off! This is no time for jokes!" Miss Rosenberg said in annoyance. "Come on, we gotta find Buffy!"
( Who's Buffy? ) But before Quinn could ask that the timer started beeping, having reached its countdown to zero. Mallory immediately pressed the button, and a bluish-white whirlpool opened up in the air before them.
"Oh my God..." the Willow ghost said in complete awe. "Is that – that's a genuine Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky bridge, isn't it? You – you're really Quinn Mallory, aren't you?"
"Well, yeah. Look, Miss...whoever you are, if you know who I am – any chance you can tell me where Maggie Beckett is? I've got less than a minute before the wormhole shuts down, and I don't want to wait another 29 years to get off this world," Quinn said with a slight shrug.
"Xa – no, Quinn, please listen to me," Willow said desperately. "You're not who you think you are, do you understand? Sliders is just a TV show, it's not real! Maggie and Wade and Rembrandt and everyone else, they don't actually exist. Heck, YOU don't actually exist either! You're really my best friend Xander Harris, he dressed up as you for Halloween – and, and somehow he BECAME you! Do you understand what I'm saying? Something weird is going on!"
"Uh-huh, whatever you say," Quinn said nervously as he backed away from the ghost.
"NO! Xander, DON'T!" Willow shouted, but it was too late.
Quinn Mallory leaped into the vortex, and then it vanished before Willow's astonished eyes.
***
Sunnydale, California, Alternate Reality
A moment later
The swirling wormhole opened up in the parking lot of a motel at the south edge of town. Xander flew through and landed on his back, his head only just narrowly missing the concrete curb. "OW!" Xander yelled in pain, as he got up in time to see the wormhole close. "No, wait!" he called out, but the tunnel between worlds blinked out of existence.
"Oh, you can NOT be serious!" Harris yelled, as the memories of the last few moments came back to him. Somehow, he'd really become a character from a TV show, and somehow a make-believe device had worked. Not only could he remember Quinn Mallory's life as if he'd lived it himself, Xander had actually slid to another universe using a tricked-out cell phone.
"Wait...where is that...thing?" Harris trailed off as he saw he had landed on the timer device, shattering it. Though it wouldn't do much good now, anyway, since it looked as if it had returned to the toy it had once been before it had been destroyed.
"Now what the hell am I supposed to do?" Xander looked around and saw that he was near Main Street. "Great, I get to walk across town at night. Lucky me." Feeling glad he had the stake he always carried these days, the young man started down the long street. But during the twenty-minute walk, he started to notice things.
First, all the Halloween decorations from the various places they'd been before were gone. Also, the town that normally had an old-style Spanish style to it, now looked like it was straight out of an ancient history book. Every other building seemed to be made of, or have the face of, marble. Stone pillars decorated the fronts of many of the buildings.
After he reached the high school, Xander snuck around the back and tried his key that Giles had given him last year. "Come on, work..." When the key easily turned with a click he let out a small yelp of happiness. "Yes! At least some things are the same here. Now we just need Mirror Universe Giles to have a good 'get me back to my own universe' book or spell or whatever."
He cut through the school's courtyard and entered the building again to see no lights on in the library. "He's not here?" The teenager shrugged and went to the stacks. "Okay...if I was a book of magical 'another universe travel', where would I be?"
He started to research, and even though he didn't find the information he was after, Xander quickly learned that on this Earth, the Roman Empire had never fallen apart back in the 5th century AD. Thus, America had not been colonized by France, Spain and the UK; it was and always had been a Roman colony, ever since the 9th century. Europe, Africa, Russia, Asia and the Oceania-Pacific region were all part of the Roman Empire as well, which encompassed the entire planet.
On the plus side, the technology of this world was a lot more advanced than that of his own; these people had had over two thousand years to experiment and get it right, after all. But on the minus side, slavery still existed here; there had never been a Magna Carta or a Bill of Rights in this world. If someone was convicted of a crime and subsequently sold into slavery, or someone was poor enough and decided to sell themselves into slavery, then that was perfectly legal within the Roman Empire.
Several hours later, he was shaken awake. "I'm up!" Xander said quickly. "What the-?" Harris jumped up from the chair he was in, causing one of the books to hit the ground. "Someone called the cops?" he asked, surprised.
The police officer looked at him in surprise. "Alexander Harris?"
"Ah, maybe..." Xander said, and then he noticed something else apart from the guns which the cops were wearing on their hips. "Um, why do you guys have swords on your belts?"
The first cop looked in confusion at his partner. "Harris...what are you doing here?" The officer looked at the piled books. "Are you doing some sort of research for Senator Chase?"
"Senator Chase?" the male teen asked, amused. "Ah...yes, that's why I'm here. Big important mission for the Senator."
The second cop was puzzled. "Why would he send you to the high school library, and not the law library?"
Xander shook his head, still thinking this was all a gag. "Would you buy that I didn't ask him?"
"Let's get you back home, son," the first cop said as he ushered Xander out. "I think you might need a little more sleep."
"Oh, I can do just fine on my own..."
"No, I'm afraid I have to insist. Let's go," the cop said to him as they all left the library.
As Xander walked before them to the front door of the school, the second cop asked his partner with a low voice, "Why do you think he's wearing those...well, clothes, for want of a better word?"
"Maybe the Senator's daughter dressed him."
"Ms. Chase made him wear that?" the other cop shook his head. "No way."
***
No. 4 Parkview Crescent, Sunnydale, Alternate Reality
A short while later
"Holy crap," Xander whispered as he got out of the police cruiser. This was the same address that he knew of for his high school nemesis, but the Chase family's mansion was at least three times as large here. And they even had old...Roman-style guards at the gate.
An older guard came up to him. "Alexander? I didn't realize you'd left the grounds."
"Ah, neither did I, apparently," Harris replied in confusion, as the cops left and the large gate was opened.
"Well, Mistress Cordelia has been notified, and she's waiting for you in the bath house."
Xander suddenly lost all ability to play it cool. "MISTRESS CORDELIA!?"
"Yes..." the older guard said, unsure. Soon, they reached an old-fashioned stone building. "You know the way."
"Yeah...I do," Xander said nervously, as the guard didn't enter with him.
Now that he was alone, Xander walked slowly though the stone building; he knew it had a modern water supply at least, as he could smell the chlorine. He reached the end of the short hall and pushed open the large doors to find a massive Olympic-sized swimming pool, along with a large hot tub set into the ground. But then his attention was drawn to the right, as he heard splashing. There was a pool there much smaller than the main pool, and Xander could feel the heat coming off of it.
"About time you got here, Alex."
As he saw who spoke, and her condition, Xander suddenly lost most of his ability to speak. A few feet away, looking right at him, was a very naked Cordelia Chase swimming in the pool. "Oh dear God..."
The girl ignored his surprise. "Now what's all this I hear about you going out in that...horrible outfit...all by yourself?"
Xander didn't reply, his brain just couldn't seem able to force his mouth to form words; he just kept staring as the brunette girl swam to the ladder and then climbed out of the hot water. But after that, whatever coherent thinking Xander had been capable of before completely disappeared as he saw Cordelia's wet, naked body walk towards to him.
"Ah...what?" Harris finally choked out with a high squeak in his voice.
Cordelia just looked at him and laughed gently. She wrapped a towel around her waist, but left her chest exposed. "Since when are you so shy around me?" Miss Chase demanded as she raised her hand, lightly touching her breast. "It's not like you haven't seen – and done lots of things to – my body before."
"I whaa..." Xander fumbled out to that, he was unable to believe what he was hearing come out of this girl's mouth. The implications alone were mind-boggling, at least to his way of thinking. ( Have, have I slid into some sort of wet dream fantasy world? )
Cordelia got within a few feet of him and stopped. Her face instantly lost any trace of amusement as she said, "But then you're not my Alex, now, are you?"
Suddenly Xander was grabbed from behind, a nasty-looking knife at his throat. "Hey!"
"Shut up!" he heard his own voice say from behind. "Down on your knees!" When Xander tried to look back, he got a swift kick to the back of his legs. "I said, on your knees!!" the Harris voice from behind him ordered again as Xander was forcibly shoved down to the ground.
The still-topless Cordelia smiled a nasty grin. "Now that's my Alex."
"Thank you, Mistress," the double of Xander said as he held the knife to his other self's neck.
"I..." Xander tried to say something as he saw the face of himself. "Um, listen – I think we kinda got off on the wrong foot here?"
Cordelia pulled over a plastic deck chair, and took a seat. "Really? Well, it's not my fault you're such an incompetent assassin-"
"Hey, now wait just a minute!" Xander said quickly. "I'm not an assassin! I mean search me if you want, I'm completely unarmed!"
"A spy, then?" Cordelia demanded, continuing to frown.
"No," Xander said, still looking at the blade. "Look, I don't know what you two think is going on here – but I'm not a bad guy, and I didn't come here willingly. I was in the library at school, and then the cops came in and dragged me here!"
That caused the alternate Cordelia to look at 'Alex' for a moment. "Now what would you be doing at my high school's library?" she asked.
"Looking for Giles," Xander gritted out, as the knife pressed closer. "You guys do know a Rupert Giles, right? Look, bottom line is I accidentally got hit by some stupid Hellmouth stuff, and uh, I ended up here, and now I just want to go home!"
"Hellmouth? Giles?" Cordelia said, looking upset. "You're a demon, aren't you?"
"No, no, no!" the prisoner said quickly. "I'm Xander Harris, no doubt about that! But I'm from, well – an alternate reality." He cringed a little as he said that, knowing how unbelievable it sounded even to his own ears.
"An alternate reality?" 'Alex' said in disbelief. "As in another universe, another dimension?"
Cordelia leaned back in her chair. "Say I believe you. Just for the sake of argument, say that there really is a world out there where I would actually dress you like that. Why would you come here?"
"Wait, what? Cordy...why in God's name would YOU ever decide what clothes I wore?" Xander replied in sheer incredulity, before his head was pulled back.
"Answer her question!" his double demanded.
"It was some magic thing, I don't know details!" Harris babbled quickly, the knife was now pressing right against his jugular. "I dressed up as a TV show character for Halloween that could-"
"Halloween?" Cordelia interrupted him. "What's that?"
Xander looked at her strangely. "Halloween? You know, the annual holiday where kids go trick o' treating dressed up in costumes?"
"Never heard of it."
"You...oh, right, Halloween doesn't exist in this world? Yeah, then I guess that explains where all the holiday decorations disappeared off to," Xander mused. "Okay, bear with me. The person I dressed up as was a "Slider", see, he was someone could move between different worlds thanks to a device he'd constructed. Different realities, where history turned out different in each and every one. Anyway, for some reason in my world people turned into their Halloween costumes last night, including me – I actually became Quinn Mallory, that was the Slider's name – and, uh, I used the device to come here."
Alex leaned down towards him. "Then why didn't you just use this device of yours to go back home?"
"Because it got busted right after I showed up here!" Xander told him, upset at still being held at knife-point. "I figured Giles would be able to come up with some magic way to get me home."
"That's quite a story," Cordelia said archly. "And we'll have to check it out, I suppose. But for now..."
"For now, what?" Xander asked before 'Alex' nailed him with a hard right cross. He immediately collapsed unconscious from the sheer strength of the blow.
As Xander lay on the ground, Cordelia turned to her most trusted personal slave. "What do you think?"
Alex frowned. "Well, we know that alternate realties do exist...even if getting to them is something that no one's ever been able to do, according to Professor Rayne at the Marcus Constantine Institute. And with everything we've learned about the Hellmouth over the last six months, I wouldn't put anything past this town."
"Right. Okay, I'll call Giles and have him and his Library Loser Crowd come over to check this out," Cordelia replied. "If this guy's telling the truth, then we let Giles deal with him. If he's lying...well, we'll just kill him." Here in this world the rich and powerful young woman could actually do that and get away with it, scot-free.
"Yes, Mistress," Alex said deferentially, as the slave bent down to pick up his double. "With your permission, I'll lock him up in the main dungeon."
"Good, I'll go get dressed..." Cordelia said as she trailed off.
"Mistress?"
"Oh, it's nothing," the Roman Senator's daughter told him. "I was just thinking; if what he says is true, and there really are two of you...well, by the gods, that could be fun," Cordelia said with smile, before she pinched his ass on her way out of the bath house.
***
Hammersmith Park, Sunnydale, California
November 8th, 1997
The swirling portal appeared behind the public restrooms for the softball fields, and out came two teenagers – a male and a female. The first to land was a very upset Cordelia Chase, daughter of Senator Chase, and she started to look around in semi-panic. "Alex! Alex!?"
The male teen she was calling for landed hard on the grass. "Ahh!!" Alex yelled in pain.
"Oh, gods!" Cordelia shrieked, as she ran over to her slave. "Alex, don't you dare die on me! That's an order!"
As he tried to stop the blood gushing from the bullet wound in his upper body, Alex tried to stay calm for her. "Yes, Mistress."
"Damn right!" Cordelia said to that. "Now where's Xander?"
"He was right behind me," Alex gritted out. "But the assassins were catching up to us fast."
"Well, he better show up. This is his damn world, if he did what he said he would," Ms. Chase said as she helped Alex up. "And we need him to-"
FOOSH, Xander was tossed out holding a metal briefcase and landed hard on the grass. "Oh man, that was close!" Harris said in relief, as he got up and watched the vortex close behind him. He adjusted the bag slung over his shoulder, and then turned and held up the case containing some gold, silver and very valuable jewels. "Think you dropped this."
"Thanks," Alex said to him simply.
Cordelia spun to face her slave's double and said urgently, "We have to get Alex to a hospital, now!"
"It's really nothing, Mistress..." Alex said feebly, as his body started to go numb from the blood loss.
"Don't lie to me Alex, not after what we just went through!" she yelled. "Xander, hospital, now!"
( Here we go again... ) Burying his annoyance at being ordered around like a slave, Xander looked around to get his bearings. "Okay, Sunnydale General should be just up the street." He slid the newly created timer device into his shirt pocket, and grabbed Alex's other side. "Come on, let's go."
Minutes later, the Emergency Room doors slid open. "We need some help here!" Xander called out.
A doctor and nurse came over slowly. "What happened?" the nurse asked.
"He was shot by...uh, a gang member," Xander told them. "He's lost a lot of blood."
"What kind of 'gang'?" the doctor said carefully.
"What does that matter, you fool?!" Cordelia growled. "Just take care of his injuries!"
Xander guessed why the doctor was nervous; he looked around and found a wooden cross hanging on the wall. He ripped it off and touched it to his double's skin. When it didn't smoke or burn, he looked back up. "Happy now?"
The older man just nodded. "Get a gurney out here, stat!"
As soon as the gurney came out, Xander and Cordelia laid Alex on it. Before they left for the OR, Cordelia took the doctor by the arm. "If you know what's good for you...he had better be alright by the time you're done with him!"
Xander could swear he saw a tinge of fear on the doctor's face. "We'll do everything we can for him, miss." Then he quickly left.
"You didn't need to threaten him like that," Xander told her tiredly.
"If you say so. But after what's happened in the last twenty-four hours," Cordelia told him with a look that was deadly serious, "I don't trust anyone right now. Not even you, at least not completely."
Xander just nodded, she did have a point. "Fine, but just keep in mind that this isn't your world any longer, okay? The rules you know and live by – they don't apply here." Harris ignored the frosty look the Senator's daughter sent him, as he took the timer he'd constructed out again and checked it. "I mean as far as I can tell, we're definitely back in my little corner of the multiverse."
"Oh, joy," Cordelia said sarcastically to that. After all, the three of them had been on the run from some very bad people over the last day or so...and Cordelia had lost almost everything she had. Her wealth, her parents and even her world.
Still, now that Alex was relatively safe, she had time to recover from all that. Brave new world or otherwise, Cordelia Chase wasn't the type to stay unbalanced and distraught for too long. It just wasn't in her nature to do so.
"Yeah, well," Xander replied to her comment. "I better call Giles and let the others know that I'm back."
***
Sunnydale General Hospital, Sunnydale, California
Twenty minutes later
The Scooby Gang rushed into the main hospital lobby, causing quite a commotion before everyone quickly turned back to their own affairs. This was the Hellmouth, after all, and poking your nose into someone else's business almost always meant bad news for any and all concerned.
"Xander!" Willow exclaimed, as everyone entered the waiting room. She looked very happy as she hugged her best friend. "I thought we'd lost you forever!"
"Nah," Harris replied as he returned the hug. "Just got stuck somewhere else for a little while, Will."
"Well, don't do that again!" Buffy ordered him as she hugged him next. "I think Willow musta checked every single book Giles had..." She trailed off as she noticed Cordelia looking at her. "What?"
"You're blonde?" the regal teen asked, surprised.
"Yeah...been that way for months now," the Slayer replied in confusion. "Cordelia, what are you doing here, anyway?"
"Uh, she kind of came with me...and, well, me," Xander told the Chosen One with a funny expression on his face.
"Huh?" Willow and Buffy said in unison.
Giles looked confused as well. "I, I don't understand. Where have you been, boy? Willow said you dressed up as, as some sort of TV character th-that travelled between alternate realities?" It was obvious that the British man didn't really believe such an outlandish-sounding story.
"Yeah," Xander told him. "See, some Earths can be really similar, or they can be..." he looked to Cordelia, who just smirked for a moment. "...very different."
"You actually went to a different world?" Willow asked, amazed. "Was I there?"
Xander hesitated. "Yeaaaah," he eventually nodded.
"What's that supposed to mean?" his red-haired friend demanded.
Harris hesitated. "Well, you were kinda gay...and, and I'm pretty sure you had a girlfriend?"
Willow laughed for a second, before seeing his face. "What? Xander! You can't be serious!!"
Buffy was shocked as well, given that whole 'Xander crush' thing. "Willow, gay? No way! I mean...Willow's gay?" She looked utterly bewildered for a moment, trying to visualize it.
"So what's wrong with being a lesbian?" Cordelia asked, confused. Not that she was close friends with the former Jewish girl in her world or anything, but the attitudes of these people surprised her. "You make it sound like it's a bad thing."
Willow looked at her, having never expected to hear something like that come out of Cordelia's lips. At that moment, she wondered if this truly was the Cordelia Chase she knew. "No, it's not that, it's just-"
She was cut off when a new arrival came into the waiting room. "Alright, what's going..." Cordelia started to say, and then her eyes went wide. She had seen the Scooby Gang run through the main area of the hospital whilst visiting her friend Gwen, who was having a custom nose job done, and Miss Chase had automatically assumed the worst. "Xander? I thought you'd been killed or something! So where on earth have you been since last week?"
Xander moved aside to let the new arrival see for herself. "Cordelia Chase...meet Cordelia Chase."
Cordy stood there, stunned, as she saw herself. "What the hell have you gone and done now, you loser dork?"
"Nothing! She's you...but, uh, from another Earth," Xander told the new arrival, and then he grimaced at the sight of everyone's jaw almost hitting the floor.
"Be quiet, Xander," the Roman Cordelia ordered him as she walked past her slave's double. "I'll take it from here." She slowly circled her own double on this world. "No wrinkles, or visible split ends...clothes that look fairly expensive..."
"Excuse you!!" Cordy said angrily, stopping her. "Xander? Where the hell did you find this person!?"
Xander exhaled, two of this girl was a lot more than he was willing to take. "I already told you, she's from a parallel universe. During Halloween, after I travelled to an alternate dimension, that's where I met your...and my...double."
"Well, that explains nothing!" Cordy told him with a growl, even though Willow, Buffy and Giles finally managed to get it and started looking amazed and astonished.
"It's really very simple," the Roman Cordelia told her with authority. "On my Earth, Xander here showed up last week – and oddly enough, at first everyone mistook him for a bad attempt to imitate my personal slave, Alex."
"Personal slave?!" all three native girls asked at once.
"Yes." Cordelia grabbed her twin by the hand. "Come with me, we need to talk – in private." She started to pull her other self away, when she turned back to Xander. "Alert me the moment you know anything, will you?"
Xander just nodded as the two Cordy's left the room. "No problem!" he then called out in annoyance.
Buffy grabbed his arm and ordered him in no uncertain terms, "Explain, now!"
***
Hospital Cafeteria, Sunnydale, California
A few minutes later
Both Cordelia's were seated within an empty booth in the cafeteria, and everyone who'd seen them had assumed that they were sisters if not twins. But that wasn't the case; there were few sisterly feelings between these two yet. Two versions of Cordelia Chase, with the same ego and the same attitude and the same alpha female mentality, couldn't and didn't get along just like that.
The Cordelia who belong to this reality started demanding answers, and so after the obligatory glaring contest the Roman version of Miss Chase had filled the other girl in the back story of her world. Everything from Marcie Ross attacking her during sophomore year (before Alex had slit her throat), to Jesse McNally making a fool of himself attempting to court her this year (before he'd finally moved onto the Roman version of Harmony Kendall).
"Jesse's still alive, where you come from?" Cordelia asked about the guy who the Powers had selected in that world to take Xander's place, in the cosmic scheme of things. "Unbelievable."
"Not half as unbelievable as the fact that I'm sitting here talking to you about it," the Senator's daughter pointed out simply.
"Yeah, I guess. And just between us, I have seen the TV show," Cordy admitted. "Jerry O'Connell used to look kinda hot to me...but seriously, stuff like that really exists?"
Actually it wasn't that hard for the society princess to believe; she knew that a lot of people had been turned into their costumes during Halloween, and the female teen had had her own adventure with Buffy, Willow and Angel that night. "No, never mind that right now, what I want to know about is this personal slave business. You're a slave-owner?"
"Slavery's legal in my world, so don't judge until you've gotten all the facts," Cordelia told her defensively. Then she sighed. "Still, it doesn't matter anymore; I've lost everything now. And as for the personal slave thing, all my life...well, let's just say my parents were never really what you might call 'available' to me."
"I know the feeling," Cordy said in agreement, as these two at last began to find common ground.
"I suppose they figured I need more than just a nanny," Cordelia started her story. "I was roughly five years old when they bought a few new slaves for the estate. One of them was Alex...or Xander, as you call him."
"They BOUGHT him?" Cordy asked in amazement. "But, but what about Xander's parents?"
"Abusive drunks who got arrested, processed through the courts and then auctioned off at the local slave dealership, from what I've heard," the other girl told her. "My nanny pretty much raised both of us...even though we were forced never to forget that Alex was a slave. My father had him trained in many forms of combat and, uh, other less-than-pleasant things. All for one goal; to keep me safe."
"Because you lived on a Hellmouth?" the native Cordelia jumped to conclusions.
"No," was the Roman Cordelia's answer. "My father was a high-ranking Senator, even though we lived in Sunnydale he commuted to Italy every day – it only takes around two hours or so, in my world. Anyway, someone like that inevitably makes a lot of enemies. And it's not exactly uncommon for the families of men like that to be targeted, so I was to be protected whenever the parents were away in Rome."
"My God," Cordy whispered. "People tried to kidnap you?"
"Kidnap? Try kill...or rape," the Roman female said with a nasty look. "It all depended on how much they hated my father." Despite her double's expression she kept going, "Alex and I grew up together, we saw each other every single day. It's impossible for me to remember a time now when he wasn't part of my life, actually. We grew close during the first few years, and on my 13th birthday, Alex was given to me as my own personal slave. He became my best friend, my confidante, my bodyguard...not to mention my first."
"Your first?" Cordy asked in confusion. "Your first wha – oh my GOD!!" the young woman yelped in shock. "You mean, as in – SEX?"
"As in everything," her Roman counterpart replied. "First kiss, first grope, and the first man to ever go south and get hungry six months ago. All those amazing things he can do with his tongue – well, who else would I have ever chosen to lose my virginity to? Not only is he incredible in bed, Alex is closer to me than my parents are...or were."
"Were?" Cordy asked, her head spinning at all the shocking information she had just heard. The mere concept of someone with her face and DNA coupling with Xander freaking Harris was almost enough to completely blow her mind, after all.
"My family's dead now," the Roman Cordelia told her bluntly. "My parents were killed aboard that hypersonic plane, on their way back from Rome – it was all over the news. Then the assassins struck at the mansion; all our guards, slaves, servants...I'm sure that everyone on the estate was butchered, apart from me, Alex and Xander. We almost didn't escape, Alex was shot...and that was not fun to witness."
The female Slider exhaled. "And it didn't end there, I'm sure; my entire family must have been murdered by now, it's standard procedure when executing an assassination plan like that. Aunts, uncles, cousins, occasionally even friends and allies – in order to make sure that no one will come after you later for revenge. So, what with our home burning down all around us, Alex and I knew it was either come here – or else go on the run in my world, like, forever."
Cordy reached out and laid her hand over her double's. Despite the bitchy exterior, she did have a heart and the Roman Cordelia's story had made her stomach churn in horror. "I'm sorry. I have no idea what it would be like to try to cope with something that horrible."
"Personally, I hope you never do," her double told her before she wiped away a stray tear. "Anyway, Xander mentioned to me and Alex that you two aren't a couple here – and I can see for myself, now, that he wasn't telling lies. But despite all the differences between them, it's obvious that deep down, Xander and Alex share the same nature – so why haven't you had sex with him yet?"
Cordy yanked her hand back in surprise. "I really can be that tactless, huh?"
The other Cordelia Chase just shrugged, amused. "Don't let opportunity pass you by, or you'll be sorry – take it from someone who's learned that lesson in life. The odds are you'll regret it if you let your version of Alex slip through your fingers!"
***
Hammersmith Park, Sunnydale, California
January 17th, 1998
For quite some time, things had been rather tense on the Hellmouth.
Alex had been released from the hospital after the surgery which had saved his life, thankfully the bullet had not done too much damage and he would make a full recovery. With his arm in a sling, 'Alex' Harris and his version of Cordelia Chase had then started studying their new world and its customs, in order to integrate as soon as possible.
A lot of what they'd learned had shocked them, especially the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and just how primitive the technology around here was, but the young couple was nothing if not adaptable and so they'd decided to just make the best of it.
After cashing in some of the gems in the case Xander had brought with him that night, the pair had left Sunnydale to create a new life for themselves. Because those two couldn't stay in Sunnydale, for obvious reasons. The Roman Cordelia had promised to let her counterpart know where she and her future husband would eventually settle down, and to invite her and Xander to the wedding once their fake identities had been set up properly.
Granted, THAT had weirded out the native Miss Chase completely. But as the old saying goes, out of sight is out of mind, and plenty of other things had happened within the last two months in order to distract the Scooby Gang from thoughts of those two refugees from a parallel universe.
Kendra the vampire Slayer; the Order of Taraka; the Ted Buchanan robot; the vampiric Gorch brothers; and the Bezoar demons, to name just a few.
Right now, though, Xander was sitting by himself at one of the park's picnic tables, making the final adjustments to his timer device. Xander still had all of Quinn Mallory's memories in his head; he knew all about cosmic string theory and the equations for a solution to unified field theory, and the Roman Giles had performed a mental augmentation spell on him to help the young man retain his spell-induced Halloween memories – so that Harris could recreate what he needed to return home, given that there had been no magical way to do it.
That spell had also come in very useful over the course of the last two months, because it certainly hadn't been easy for Xander to reset the homeworld co-ordinates of the timer from the Roman Empire world to this one. The young man had no desire to ever go back to that reality again, even if the rest of the multi-dimensional infinity of the universe was calling to him with its siren song.
"I thought I'd find you here."
Harris started as Cordy's voice interrupted his concentration. "Don't do that! This is delicate work."
Cordy ignored that completely. A few seconds later she asked, "So, are you done yet?"
"Just about," Harris mused. He made a few final adjustments before he said, "Okay, that's it – I'm finished. Any and all Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky bridges I create from now on will return me here, instead of that other world. By jove, I think he's got it!" Xander crowed happily in a lousy British accent.
"So, have you given any consideration to my idea of patenting that Slider stuff?" Cordelia asked, sitting directly in front of Xander on the picnic table top. "I mean, once it gets mass-produced...you'd end up one of the richest and most powerful men on the planet!"
"Cordelia," Xander shook his head. "I'm not interested in becoming the next Bill Gates, and there is no way in hell I'll ever be able to trust the government – ANY government – with that sort of power. I know all those memories are fakes, but Quinn Mallory saw exactly how Sliding technology can be abused; and I am NOT going to take the risk of our world getting invaded by someone like the Kromaggs!"
"Well, when you put it that way..." Cordy shrugged. "Okay, fine. But you can't fool me, Harris, I know you were planning to go explore other worlds once you got that doohickie thing of yours working properly. So I'm coming with."
"You're what now?" the male teen demanded.
"I'm coming with you. It could be fun," she told him with her trademark megawatt smile.
"Fun? Are you out of your mind? The last time I did this, I was stuck in Roman Empire World for a week – and I almost got assassinated as well!!" Xander said in exasperation.
"So, then, why are you planning to do it again now?" Cordelia asked with an unwelcome dose of logic. "If it's as dangerous as you say, then why not just destroy that timer thing and be done with it?"
"It's not like Willow and Buffy haven't tried to convince me to do exactly that, meeting that other Cordelia really freaked them out back then. Especially that stuff she mentioned about Willow being gay, and Buffy staking Dead Boy after he lost his soul," Xander told her. "But I'll tell you the same thing I told them. And that is, NO ONE can give me orders about something like this. Whether they like it or not, whether they accept it or not, I'M the expert on this sort of thing!"
"Look, Xander, I know the risks. But think about it, what if you get hurt? Or shot? Or stabbed? Wouldn't it make sense to have at least one other person there with you, in order to help out if things go completely south?" Cordelia hadn't forgotten her counterpart's advice to claim Xander for herself or else lose out on the most amazing orgasms in existence, and she didn't want him to die anytime soon.
Harris looked at her in annoyance. "I wanna know why you really want to come along, and don't try to feed me that 'fun' line again."
"After," she promised him. "Now hit whatever buttons you need to, and let's go!"
Xander sighed, he knew it was insane and idiotic but nonetheless it was also pointless to keep arguing with her about this. Cordelia could and would make Willow and Buffy's lives hell at school in order to retaliate against him, if she put her mind to it. So he said, "Fine...but you follow my lead at all times or I'll make you regret it, understood? Even one hint of attitude, and you'll be sorry!!"
She got up and gave him a fake military salute. "Yes sir, Captain Xander, sir!"
Harris groaned, and then he stood up too as he hit the last button to activate the timer. As they watched, a visible stream of energy came out of the device and where it stopped in the air, a huge blue swirling hole in the fabric of space and time appeared. "Just jump in...and I'm warning you, the landing isn't gonna be fun."
As Cordy watched the vortex in awe, she turned to Xander. "That reminds me, my double said something interesting about you before she and her Xander left town!" Miss Chase had to yell in order to be heard over the intense wind.
"Yeah, what's that?" Xander called out.
"That you're a great lay!!" Cordy shouted back.
Harris looked at her, stunned, as the female teen smirked and jumped into the vortex, vanishing from sight. ( Did she honestly just say that to me? Oh my God, is Cordy actually INTERESTED in me? I never once thought she'd want to follow in that other Cordelia's footsteps! )
"I swear, if she says the word 'slave' even once..." Xander griped as he jumped through the wormhole as well.
Less than a minute later, the swirling vortex vanished from sight...
...as somewhere in another universe, Xander and Cordelia started running for their lives from a couple of angry Chumash Indians, in what could best be described as Wild West World.
***
Next: Story 6 - Out Of This World