"How do you know Leo?" Piper asked.
"He's been teaching me boxing at the Y in Oxnard."
"Why go to Oxnard?" Cordelia asked. "There's a Y in Sunnydale."
"When I met Leo and he offered to teach me boxing, he said he didn't like Sunnydale, it made him uncomfortable. And you can't blame him. The Hellmouth makes everyone feel uncomfortable, it's just that most humans have learned to ignore it. Which is why humans in Sunnydale are the way they are."
"How are the humans in Sunnydale?" Prue asked.
"Most are oblivious. They can see a demon and it's like their eyes just skim over it. Leo was passing thru and saw me deal with a bully, Larry. He's a lot bigger and stronger then me, but Leo said he was impressed that I did as well as I did. Well, I have learned a few things fighting vampires."
"Leo." Piper said sweetly. "Is he a charge and are you aware of the Hellmouth?"
"Yes to both. You can't do anything about the Hellmouth. It's energies are corrosive to natural born witches and whitelighters. When Xander was assigned as my charge, I had to find a way to watch over him from a distance."
"Your charge?" Cordelia asked. "What does that mean?"
"Normally, it means we guide good witches and whitelighter candidates."
"Normally? I take it, he's not either of those things." Cordelia asked.
"Well, normally we'd be considering him as a whitelighter candidate, he's very protective. But your circumstances are a little different, Xander. Your great grandmother on your mother's side, was a whitelighter. A dark lighter killed her many years ago."
"A dark lighter?" Cordelia asked.
"Demonic version of their kind." Xander answered. "But what does my great grandmother being a whitelighter have to do with me?"
"You're showing signs that you're manifesting whitelighter abilities. If you do fully manifest, you wouldn't be able to stay in Sunnydale. The Hellmouth will turn you into a dark lighter."
"Great, I could become a demon. As if being possessed wasn't enough."
"You've been possessed?" Phoebe asked.
"By a Hyena spirit. I was trying to stop some bullies from messing with a kid and accidentally triggered a transpossession ritual a Primal Mage had set up. The other four kids affected, ate the principal of our school. I rather forcefully tried to convince my friend Buffy to be my mate. She knocked me out and locked me in the book cage in the library until they could depossess me."
"It wasn't your fault." Leo told him. "You weren't in control."
"But I have to live with the memories. That is not the kind of man I want to be."
"And what are these whitelighter abilities he's supposedly manifesting?" Cordelia asked.
"So far, resistance to injury and fast healing. In the year and half you've been fighting vampires, you've only been injured twice. The concussion should actually have been a skull fracture, you were hit that hard. And the broken arm that should have taken at least six weeks to heal, but healed in less then three."
"Does this have anything to do with why I can sense the Nexus under us?"
"You can sense it? Yes, sensitivity to something like the Nexus would be a sign of whitelighter abilities. I can sense it myself."
"What else?" Xander asked.
"Once you fully manifest, the ability to heal others and the ability to orb, which is the white lights thing you saw when I arrived here. It's how we teleport."
"I haven't seen either of those abilities. Not yet anyway. We came here to figure out Cordy's family secret and ended up finding out I have a family secret."
"Miss Chase has a family secret?"
"You know who I am?" Cordelia asked.
"Xander has pictures of you in his wallet and he talks about you alot.
"You do?" Cordelia asked.
"Yeah, I do. I like you. Alot."
She smiled at him. "I like you. Alot."
"You said you were investigating a family secret. What's the secret?" Leo asked.
"Apparently we're related to her." Prue said. "She has letters that Mom wrote to her mother, in them they talk about being sisters, twin sisters. We thought Mom was an only child and she thought her mother was an only child."
"As far as I know, your mother was an only child. I can check with the Elders if you want."
"Do that, please. If we have to, we'll summon Mom and Grams for answers. Especially as to why we didn't know about this." Prue didn't like secrets being kept from her.
"I'll go now." He orbed out.
"Are you two hungry?" Piper asked. "I was just about to start supper. You can stay, that way you'll be here when Leo gets back."
"I can always eat." Xander said.
"It will give us a chance to start to get to know each other." Cordelia agreed.