"Ok!" Xander took charge again. "Giles, you and Wesley get that thing out of Willow so we can let her out of the containment circle. Go!" Again Wesley jumped at the whip of command and he and Giles got to work depossessing Willow.
"And as for Faith's announcement. Buffy said earlier that you were confused and trying to figure out if you're gay because of the Willow kissage. Am I right in assuming there was some experimentation to help you figure it out?" Xander asked Alex.
"Kinda, sorta. It wasn't planned or anything. It was a very weird night and Faith was definitely interested and I kinda got caught up and just decided to try it. See if I was interested."
"You're conclusion?" Faith asked.
"I don't think I'm gay. Don't get me wrong, it was good. It's just, it's not what I think about when I think about stuff, you know when I'm..."
"Getting yourself off?" Cordelia asked bluntly.
"Yeah, that. But I think it did help me to understand that. I mean I'd never really thought about it before the Willow kissage. And I really didn't understand why I kissed Willow. I'd never been interested in girls, let alone Willow specifically, so I was confused. I'm sorry Faith, I just don't think I'm actually gay."
"No probs. If you're not, you're not. Thanks for being honest with me though."
"Well, once I'd figured it out for myself, I meant to try to talk to you about it. It hasn't been that long after all."
"Yeah, not even two weeks." Faith agreed.
"So you're definitely not gay?" Cord asked. "And it sounds like Willow was responsible for the whole Willow kissage thing."
"Let me ask you a question." Cordelia said to Alex. "When it's just you and you need a release, what do you think about? Especially since getting it on with Faith."
"The same thing I did before, Cord."
"Really?" Cord asked.
"Yes. I miss you. I'm sorry about the Willow thing. I really was confused by it all."
"I can understand that myself since I've been plenty confused myself. It totally came out of left field. You've never shown any interest in girls let alone Willow. Maybe we could talk, you know."
"About us?" Alex asked hopefully.
"Yeah, about us. I guess it'll have to wait though. We do have a couple of things to deal with right now."
"Yeah, we do. But, at least you're talking to me again. The silent treatment was hard to deal with."
"My Cordy verbally shredded me for a couple months after my own Willow kissage." Xander said. "It was definitely not fun. But I can't blame her for being mad and hurt."
"Why was it a weird night?" Buffy asked. "That kind of implies there was more going on then just you and Faith."
"Well there was and I tried to talk to both you and Giles about it, but you were on that whole stupid 'make Alex fray adjacent' thing and Giles, as usual, was going along with whatever you wanted."
"I was just worried you were going to get hurt, Alex. You don't have any powers to protect yourself with. It's not like you can do Magic or anything, like Willow can."
"Anyone can do Magic." Wesley said absently as he set up for the depossessing ritual, while trying to ignore the conversation going on between the teenagers. "Everyone has the capacity to work Magic in varying degrees."
"In the last reality we were in, there's an organization that's existed since the time of Alexander the Great. The people who work for it, their sole job is to find artifacts that have been created by accidental or for purposeful use of Magic." Xander said. "The oldest artifact they've discovered was a partial jawbone for a hyena that went extinct two million years ago. Long before spoken language, let alone spells were created. Spells aren't Magic by the way, they'd for focusing Magic. She and Cord could learn to do Magic if they wanted to. They just need to follow the rules. Which is one of Willow's problems, she doesn't follow the rules."
"Besides." Cordelia pointed out. "They have something Willow doesn't, natural born powers."
"How do you figure that?!" Buffy asked, astonished. "Just because you do?"
"Because psychic ability comes from the soul." Xander told her. "The powers I have are acquired, but the ability to See what is hidden, that comes from my soul."
"And the visions I would have gotten as a Seer, those come from the soul too." Cordelia added. "So Alex and Cord have those abilities as well. They'll awaken on their own. Forcing them to activate before they're ready is a very bad idea and can cause an enormous amount of damage. Generally they awaken some time between your twentieth and twenty fifth birthdays. Though they can awaken naturally a little before or after, as well."
"And let's just toss in the fact that Buffy has absolutely no right to tell anyone what to do, ever, in any capacity. As another Seer put it, Buffy's not meant to be in charge of anything, Buffy's meant to be dead. Alex and I, independently challenged death and a prophecy in the Pergamon Codex. Buffy doesn't live because she's special, she lives because we found a way to save her life."
"So Buffy isn't meant to be in charge of our group, let alone deciding who's good enough to be apart of it?" Alex asked.
"But I'm the Slayer! I'm the strongest!"
"I told you before, Buffy. You're not the Slayer, Faith is. The line passes though her. But being strongest doesn't mean you're automatically the leader. A true leader is someone who can take a disparate set of individuals and combine their strengths into a working whole. Who sees the weaknesses and tries to help overcome them. You just like giving orders you think sound good. You don't come up with plans and you take credit for other people's work. And Giles lets you, because he has no idea how to handle you. There are more people that could contribute toward keeping Sunnydale safe. The Watchers Council is wrong in limiting the Slayers' training, weapons and support. But you're wrong in your approach as well. You could build a true team, but not with you as the leader. We've seen how bad your choices are in a variety of realities. More people die because of your choices then anyone else's. And you don't care. A true leader cares. Until you learn to care about more then yourself, you shouldn't be leading anything." Xander concluded.