"Xander is a vampire?"

"Yes."

"But not the same kind as Angel?"

"Right, I knew I'd have to tell you about it so I brought the book the demon used for inspiration." Buffy pulled the book 'The Accidental Vampire' out of her bag and handed it to Joyce. "He's still alive, he still has a pulse and a heartbeat and a soul and there's no demon possessing his body. Basically he's the opposite of Angel. Angel is forced to be a dead body frozen at one age. Xander's forced to be alive and frozen at one age, the optimal age as far as the technology used to create the vampire in the book is concerned, 25. He's 18 and he looks twenty five."

"Does he drink blood?"

"Not so much drink it, as his teeth suck it up into his body. A couple of blood bags a day as long as he doesn't get hurt, than he needs more."

"Blood bags, like from the hospital?"

"Expired blood that would otherwise be thrown out."

"I see and this was when Mr. Giles finally realized there was a problem, not when you got involved with a vampire or the vampire went back to being a monster or when he killed people or tried to end the world, but when you made a wish and Xander got turned into a vampire out of a romance novel."

"That's when he remembered Angel was a dead body and me having sex with him was necrophilia. Which is illegal."

"And disgusting, who knows what kind of diseases he has, his immune system could hardly be functioning when the body is dead." Joyce looked sick at the very idea.

"I guess so."

"I still don't understand why you think you're in danger of going to jail though. I mean, yes, necrophilia is illegal, but the police could hardly prove it and they don't even know vampires are real, do they?"

"The police aren't the problem, Mom. The Watchers Council is, they have a legal authority over me because they provide oversight over the Slayer and the governments of the world let them, to keep governments from using me against normal humans. Vampires are the enemy of humans and I let a vampire go, repeatedly, over the course of five months. People died every time I did that. Legally, that's accessory to murder. There are extenuating circumstances, like Angelus was messing with my mind during that time."

"And Angel was manipulating you before that." Joyce pointed out. "So they have legal grounds to what, prosecute you? The circumstances might affect the outcome, but you'll still face some kind of punishment, which could include jail."

"Yes."

"But if all of this happened last year, why haven't they done anything yet?"

"Because Giles hasn't told them any of it, at all. Not about Angel or our involvement or Angelus playing mind games with me."

"Why not?"

"Because Angel made me more accepting of being the Slayer, of doing my job and Giles thought being the Slayer was something a higher power decided was needed to protect people. Then we met a Xander from another reality, he was cursed because of the other me also made another wish, to have him know what her life is like being a Slayer. The demon again used a book as inspiration and made him a fictional version of a Slayer, when it couldn't be undone, their Giles went to ask some beings that live outside time and space why and they said that Slayers were originally made by men, unnecessarily and because we're not natural, we didn't evolve here and the world doesn't need us but can't get rid of us, rules had to be created and oversight established. Magic created him too, based on other me's wish and he's stuck too. But Giles knows Slayers are unnecessary and that focusing just on me being the Slayer, which led to him allowing me to have a relationship with Angel, has caused a lot of problems."

"He's covering it up, protecting himself and you?"

"And it's endangering more people. Faith's new Watcher has no idea what Sunnydale's actually like because Giles left so much out of his reports. People are already dead because of my choices, I don't want more dead people on my conscience. I told him to tell Faith's Watcher the truth about Sunnydale and that you and I would decide what to do about the rest."

"What I want to do is take you as far away from all of this as possible and keep you safe, but I can't, eventually they might catch up to us and it would be worse then. So, we do the right thing, the hard thing and hope they understand that you need help, not jail. With everything that's happened, Buffy, the problems in Los Angeles, being institutionalized, being the Slayer, Mr. Giles and this Angel and the monster he became, it's like you've been cut thousands of times and not been allowed to heal. You need help to get better and I just hope they see that putting you in jail won't help anyone. But helping you will help you get better."

"One way or another, Mom, they may also decide to permanently strip me of my Slayer powers. Giles says me living in Sunnydale if they do that will probably get me killed. If they decide to strip my powers, we may need to leave Sunnydale, even if they don't put me jail."

"If it helps keep you alive, I'm all for it, it means starting over again, but I'd rather do that, than lose you, Buffy. We'll do the right thing, no matter how hard it is. Let's go talk to Mr. Giles, you may have to hold me back, literally, because I'm even angrier at him than I was when I first found out about all of this. He had no business making you keep any of it from me. Things would have been different if I'd known from the beginning."

"How different?"

"I'd have set Angel on fire before I let him near you."

"Oh, that different."