New York 38/??: A footnote - Giles/Xander
New York
by Dr Squidlove
drsquidlove@@@livejournal.com
Summary: Xander is thirty-seven. Divorced. Two kids. 4000 miles from Sunnydale and his Hellmouth childhood. Also, straight. Only someone forgot to tell Giles. In fact... where the hell is Giles?
Rated R for sex.
Thanks to gloriana and antennapedia for incredibly helpful mid-construction betas, and lunabee for early and middle chapters, and to huzzlewhat for final checking on the run. And gloriana again for major late-construction revisions.
The Buffy universe is the property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. Borrowed with all due love and respect.
Please ask before archiving.
Feedback ohgodyesplease.
Full headers are on chapter one.
Wordcount this part: 3654
Previously, in chapter 37:
Our little crew descended deeper under New York, and eventually came across a thundering herd of giant rats, plus some bonus vampires, and there was some fighting and falling through railings, as if Xander needed further proof of the hazards, but everyone survived. Xander wondered how he could ever not go back to the slaying life after Buffy and crew did this for him. They trekked on until they found an enormous cavern brimming with giant rats, where four people were already lying unconscious. Things became more urgent when Giles realised Mary was still marked to lose her soul in the spell, but too far away for it to be caught safely in the vessel. Unfortunately, no one's going into battle until Riley's back-up army arrives.
New York
chapter 38: A footnote
by Dr Squidlove
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
So here they were, standing around within sight of the thing that was trying to kill Mary. Queen Rat had reached the platform and was waving her paws over the chest, and it looked like she was chanting. The rest of the plague had settled in to watch. Most of the vampires hung back, glaring like nightclub bouncers. One knelt beside her, painting fresh symbols over the black smudges on her fur with a brush, and Xander could see this time as Mary's particular swirl was laid on the queen's left flank, soon lost in the fur. It gave him chills.
Xander would have been sliding down the wall already if he didn't know Buffy could catch him and drag him back here like a runaway tortoise.
Any moment now, there could be that one last magic word and a puff of smoke and Mary's soul would start working its way free, tied down by a little red ribbon around her wrist. One scrap of charmed fabric between life as Jen and Kate knew it and Xander stumbling through playing father and mother, scaring them stupid until they rebelled and got jobs cleaning the subway just to spite him because there was no Mary around to balance him out. Xander was a good dad but he couldn't do it alone, couldn't be everything. He didn't want to try.
He needed her as his friend, too. To be his sensible voice and to tease him about Giles and to be around, because there was a long list of reasons why he'd loved her all these years.
Riley ambled over and leaned on the rocks beside Xander. "So vampires work for rats, now."
"What?" It took a second to drag his brain away from the empty bier. "Guess so. Maybe they get all the rats' cool stuff after the rapture."
"I guess rat-run yoga classes don't exactly sell out, even in New York." He looked out across the swarming cavern. "I'm all for this bunch leaving this dimension if they can find a way out without stealing souls. I'll chip in for the bus fare."
He made Xander smile. Good old easy-going Riley, who'd never once looked down on Xander for riding on Buffy's superhero cape. Xander turned to face him. "Thanks for coming."
Riley mock-tipped a hat. "All part of the service, ma'am."
"Yeah, except it's not really." Xander couldn't let Riley blow this off as nothing. "You don't break out the armed forces for every lost soul."
"I wish we could. Lucky for Mary, you aren't nobody."
Xander snorted. "I'm somebody who fetched donuts sixteen years ago, and I haven't been keeping up on my club membership fees since then."
Riley stared long enough to make Xander uncomfortable. "Do you still do that?"
"Do what?"
"Talk like that, like you're just a footnote to Buffy's epic? On the outside, looking in?"
"Uh..." Xander didn't have anything more coherent to say. That sounded pretty dead-on.
Riley's voice was quiet for the rats below, but he made it feel loud, the way he pressed the words. "Xander, you fought alongside her for six years. You were Buffy's world. You brought her back from the dead, you researched through countless nights; hell, you and Willow and Giles melded with her to defeat Adam. How many people do you think have been as close to her as you three?"
Xander wanted to say 'plenty', but as Buffy said something that made Giles smother a smile and adjust his glasses like he had a few hundred times in the library and the Magic Box, he remembered what Sunnydale life was like, and the truth was, there probably hadn't been many at all. Probably Faith and Wesley and a few others that were part of her life now, and maybe some more people in between, but not plenty. He knew Buffy better than that.
"You guys changed the Slaying rules in Sunnydale. You all did it."
Yeah, they did. And Xander was definitely a part of that.
Riley stepped back and leaned against the wall, sliding his hands into his pockets. "I was a pinch hitter for you guys for one year way back when, and I still brag about it."
Xander grinned. "You're a pretty cool guy, Riley Finn."
"So my mom tells me."
Buffy stepped up on Xander's other side. "Can I tag team in?"
"No problem," said Riley. He patted Xander's shoulder and gave him a 'think about what I told you' look and ambled off to chat to Giles, who had all his attention focused on the spell-making going on below.
Buffy seemed to think Giles had it all under control, turning her back on the show to face Xander. Silhouetted against the glow of the fires, he could barely see the lines in her face but she still seemed so much older. There was something about the way she carried herself that he'd glimpsed sometimes way back then on her strongest days, but now she carried it. Owned it. Xander had been part of that.
And left.
Hadn't Xander's total irrelevance been the reason why it was okay to abandon her? Him and Willow and Giles, the ones who'd been closest to her of anyone, and each of them left her in one way or another in the space of a year. Xander was the only one who stayed away by choice. And here he was, sixteen years later, all grown up and still choosing to stay away.
Xander wasn't ready to start that talk so he looked out at the Rat Queen, who seemed to have started a shuffling dance. "I'm so not telling Mary I fed her magical rat blood."
"I can totally support that." Buffy smiled for about a second, and then turned serious. "But you are going to tell her the rest?"
Xander looked at her, surprised.
"I get why you haven't. I mean, I understand. I don't think it's right but I'm not in your shoes so you don't have to listen to me. But you can't keep it a secret now. You know that, right? Not after this."
Xander looked down at the people laid out on trash piles, all of them still, like Mary. "If we get her back, she can have anything she wants."
"We'll get her back, Xander. This isn't even hard. Look." She lifted up a foot so he could see it in the trashfire-light. "I'm not even wearing old shoes."
Xander managed a smile for her. He loved this woman as much as he ever had. "Thank you for coming, Buff. This is... You didn't have to but here you are."
"Of course I'm here." She looked at him like he was crazy. "You know I'll always come. I hope you never need me again, but if you do, you have to know you only need to call. You, your family, it doesn't matter. And it goes for all of us. Dawn, Faith, Wes, Tara. They all wanted to be here for you, but Giles said no."
Xander's eyes pricked. "Like all the times I haven't been there for you?"
"Xander..." Buffy stepped closer, looking all grown up with her bobbed hair and lines in her face but those same green eyes he remembered. "Do you think I'm mad at you? It hurt when you left, but I was glad you got out."
Xander snorted, but she grabbed his hand.
"You don't have to be dragged back into this."
Xander out over the field of soul-thieving rats. "Not much choice, just now."
"No, I mean, afterwards. Do this, save Mary, but as soon as she's okay, you can stop." She tugged his hand until he looked back into her eyes. "This is what I want you to do. Have a life. Be a guy. Keep your girls safe. Be my reason to keep on saving the world."
Xander pressed his lips together, hard, but finally he couldn't hold back the smile. "Man, that was corny."
She grinned. "Yeah, but one hundred percent true. I need to know there are people I care about that aren't drowning in death and misery." She pushed his shoulder. "Next time you have to nag your girls to do their homework or clean their rooms, remember how Faith and I saved the world so you could do it."
That sounded pretty fantastic to Xander. Too good to be true. "I can't believe how grown up you are."
"Funny, 'cause I was thinking the same about you, with your family and your job and your life. The seriously grown up boyfriend..."
Xander shook his head. "I'm the same stupid kid. Just pretending."
She lifted her chin. "Tell you a secret? Me too."
Well, good. If Buffy could fake it, then faking it was good enough for Xander. "It seems like you're carrying the weight of the world pretty well these days."
She stubbed the toe of her shoe against the rocks. "There's been some ups and downs. There was this big weird magical episode where I got to experience my life without the Slayer gig and the big moral of the story was that it wasn't so bad being able to save the world."
Buffy threw that out like it was a wacky fun adventure but Xander figured it probably wasn't, at the time. Still, if she didn't want to make a fuss about it. "It's a pretty good perk."
He could see how her shoulders relaxed as he let that drop. "And there's this whole spiritual side of it that I didn't get when we were kids. Faith figured out a lot of it while she was in jail."
"No way can I imagine you and Faith living together."
She grinned. "Not really the future I was anticipating at graduation, but she's a different person now. I mean, who isn't, right? The guys who started the whole slayer line - who I'm majorly not a fan of - they seemed to think it had to be one girl. But trust me, two women: way better."
"So you're okay?"
"I really am. The couple of years after I came back were pretty much the low."
Xander dipped his head. "I'm-"
She threw up both hands to cut him off. "Nah, let's not do that conversation, okay? If you start apologising for not being around, then I'll have to apologise for not pulling you aside at Willow's funeral and telling you how good it was to see you."
He had to close his eyes a second, because damn, he wished she had. "And then I'll have to apologise for not being there when Will fell off the wagon." Xander paused, but he couldn't leave it there. "Maybe if I hadn't left she'd still..." He trailed off, because he couldn't say it.
"Maybe. Maybe if Giles hadn't yelled at Willow for bringing me back to life after Glory."
Xander looked at her in surprise and then they both looked over at Giles, but he was absorbed pointing rat stuff out to Riley.
"Yeah, I know about that," Buffy said quietly. "I heard him say it."
Wow. Xander wondered how that had felt. Dragged out of heaven and fresh from her grave and Giles mad that she was alive.
She took a little breath. "Maybe Willow'd still be around if I hadn't told her she was the strongest of all of us when I needed her to help me fight Glory."
Xander felt his eyebrows rise. He hadn't known about that either.
"Or how about maybe if Willow hadn't decided to blow us all off and save the world with her own ego?" Her voice softened with regret. "I wasted sixteen years blaming Giles and look at the price he paid. I'm not going to start on you."
Xander let that just sit there a minute. "Okay." Nobody blaming anybody. That worked for him. "I miss her."
A few silent seconds passed before Buffy added, "Me too."
"Giles is back now." Xander watched him frowning at Riley's data tablet, scratching his neck as he thought. Xander hadn't spent much time kissing that neck yet, so he made a little vow to start. When they were finally out of here and Xander could go back to his new Giles-flavoured life. "It's hard to believe he's the same guy we knew in the Magic Box when we were kids."
She was watching him with the same warmth Xander was. Not exactly the same, maybe, but close. "Yeah. Except then you realise he's not the one who changed. Kinda blows the mind, doesn't it?"
Being down here with Buffy and Riley and the mission afoot, it really did. "I guess we did grow up."
"I didn't know how much I'd missed him until he climbed out of Tara's car and it was like I got my hearing back, or my sight. Maybe an arm. Now I call him every day just to make sure he's still there." She looked at Xander. "I like how happy he sounds, now."
Xander liked that too. Buffy had the same thinky expression she'd had upstairs, when she asked if he really got it. Yeah, he did. "I actually do know he's crazy about me. I don't know why, but I like it."
"Ask him why. He's probably got the list alphabetised and indexed."
Xander slid his hands into his pockets. "Talked about me for hours, huh?"
She rolled her eyes, and it whooshed Xander all the way back to Sunnydale, to the best parts when him and Willow and Buffy traded jokes about Snyder and did their own commentary on Bollywood movies and Xander was madly in love with Buffy. And Giles was always around, being the guy Xander wanted to be when he grew up.
Now Giles was the guy watching Xander while nodding at Riley as if he wasn't concentrating on Riley at all, and Xander liked that even better.
"Go on," said Buffy.
Giles let a smile slip through the worry-face as Xander came closer. Riley was facing out over the rats, talking about maps and areas of concentration and the 4,5,6 line, but just as Xander opened his mouth to say hello to Giles, Riley straightened. "Let me guess - we don't want to fall down that hole."
"What hole?" asked Xander.
"The one that just appeared down there."
That hole. It was two foot across with whirly, fuzzy edges to make it perfectly clear it wasn't natural and it was right where the soul-trunk used to be. It hadn't been there a minute ago. Queen Rat ripped out a chunk of her own fur and sprinkled it in.
"Oh, fucking hell."
"Giles?"
"She already has their souls. All this time she's been working on the gate."
Xander looked between Giles and the floorshow, swallowing back the bile pushing its way up his throat. "Wait. We missed the whole soul-extraction thing? Mary's already gone?"
"I told you, Xander, Mary has time." He was trying to sound reassuring and it made Xander want to shake him.
"No. No, she had time. If we've been watching the wrong fucking spell this whole time we've been here then we don't know how long ago Rizzo waved her paws and released their souls. Mary could be floating around New Zealand by now."
"Keep your voice down."
Xander almost raised his voice just to spite him, until he remembered they were only half-hidden from a few thousand magic rats. He moved closer instead, hands fisting by his sides. "You don't get it, do you? This is my wife slipping away."
"I do get it."
"I need her. I can't do it without her." He couldn't raise the girls, make them whole, be a mother to them. He barely coped as a father. "Jen and Kate need two parents."
"I know," Giles said, gently enough to remind Xander he was being an asshole to totally the wrong person, but Xander was shaking and it was all he could do to stop running his mouth.
Buffy stepped in. "Since it doesn't help us to assume otherwise, let's assume we have time. Xander, as soon as we get the antidote, you need to get it back to Mary. We'll need to shut this down and restore the people down there, but you can't wait."
"Believe me, I won't."
"Riley, we need your-"
"Hold on." Riley lifted a hand to his earpiece and checked out the screen on his waist. "Got them. Squad one are just behind that outcropping, squad two are almost dead ahead. Give the word, boss."
Xander ran his hands over his pockets, double-checking his stakes, rolled his aching shoulder and got a good grip on his axe. Unconscious yoga people surrounded by vampires over to the right and a half-mile dash through rats in between. He was going to get Mary back.
"Okay," said Buffy. "Riley, they're ready to light this place up?"
"Ready to go."
"Giles, you've got your eyes on her?"
"Of course."
"Xander, you're ready?"
"An hour ago."
"Count it, Ri."
"Three, two, one."
Xander twisted away and closed his eyes but the simultaneous flash-bombs burned his eyelids; heat washed over his back. He'd expected shrieking but it was a roar, shock and fury echoing around the chamber, and when Xander looked furry bodies were scattering everywhere except at the stage of biers where the spell jumped into double-speed.
The two squads could be seen dropping into the far reaches of the cavern and Buffy and Riley were already moving, sliding down the sloped cave wall to the floor and then hacking their way through swirling rats that stood as high as Riley's waist on their back paws.
A hand squeezed Xander's. "Take care."
Giles was gone so fast he probably didn't hear Xander's "You, too." Xander ploughed after him.
Most of the rats turned tail and ran but there were plenty left to stand their ground. Riley was hacking away like a guy who really hated rats. Buffy was magical, unstoppable, a pure force like wind or fire, throwing rats aside and never slowing. Xander was so awed he didn't realise when he reached the floor himself until claws scratched across his ankle and he felt the wind of a sword past his hand as Giles swung in to save him. Shit. Xander was supposed to be protecting Giles, not the other way around. He snapped his attention back to the room, but Buffy and Riley were already pushing on. Xander muttered a 'sorry' as he met Giles' worried gaze, and together they chased after them.
Now Xander's eyes weren't leaving Giles' back except to catch the few that tried to sneak up behind them. Xander hacked and slashed with his axe and sometimes Giles was there too, sword flashing.
Steadily forward until they reached four vampires halfway across the cavern. Bigger, stronger, better fighters than the rats, but Buffy and Riley had been killing vampires since they were kids and four was an easy night for them so Giles and Xander just had to keep off the rats for a couple of minutes and then they were moving again.
Sometimes Xander glimpsed the army guys in the distance, coming more slowly but headed in the same direction.
"Do you see her, Giles?" called Buffy, and Xander turned in surprise. They'd made it.
But the stage was in chaos. The nearest burning trash pile had been knocked over so there was soot everywhere, across the ground and staining all the rats black just like the paint-smudged Queen.
"Can you see her, Xander?" yelled Giles.
"They all look the same! They're fucking rats!"
"Over there!" yelled Riley.
"That's not her!"
"That one?"
A rat slammed into Xander's knee and he pitched sideways, threw his arms up for balance and choked on the pain as his shoulder howled.
A couple of rats raced up the wall but a bullet shattered the rock above them and they dropped back down with cries of rage that echoed around their friends. Riley re-cocked his gun and kicked a couple more escaping rats. "Nobody's going anywhere until we get our hands on Queenie."
"You two find her," called Buffy, "We've got your backs."
Giles and Xander dodged between scurrying rats like a dance.
Xander dropped his axe to free his hands and grabbed a leg of any brown rat and flipped it - boy. He let go. Paint. He was looking for smudged black paint, so he gave up trying to see patterns and started wiping his hands across every bit of fur he could reach, dodging snapping teeth and swiping claws.
Soldiers had caught up and were hemming the rats in.
"That's her!" cried Giles.
Xander turned around just as Giles dived into the pile, rolled over a rat and disappeared under another five and Xander couldn't see what was going on but red blood sprayed and then Xander couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Giles came up with his knife bloody. "Xander!"
Giles threw something. Xander caught it and yelped in triumph: it was the bottle filled with dark blood. Now they could-
"That's it, Xander, go!" Giles was yanked backwards and his head hit the ground. Xander saw a tail wrapped around his ankle and suddenly Giles was flying backwards in swarm of fur towards the now-gaping hole.
"Giles!" Xander rushed forward until a hand clamped on his wrist.
"We've got him Xander! Go before you lose her!" Buffy shoved him back and raced past, Riley at her heels.
Giles was gone in the half-second he'd stopped watching. Xander got two steps after them and stopped, bottle clutched tight in his hand.
"Mr Harris, sir, you've got to go. Your wife can't wait." The soldier pointed to the bottle.
This was Mary's antidote. Buffy would get Giles. Buffy would get him.
Xander forced himself around and started running for the surface.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
end chapter 39
:-) What?
Dr Squidlove appreciates feedback. Tasty, tasty feedback.
by Dr Squidlove
drsquidlove@@@livejournal.com
Summary: Xander is thirty-seven. Divorced. Two kids. 4000 miles from Sunnydale and his Hellmouth childhood. Also, straight. Only someone forgot to tell Giles. In fact... where the hell is Giles?
Rated R for sex.
Thanks to gloriana and antennapedia for incredibly helpful mid-construction betas, and lunabee for early and middle chapters, and to huzzlewhat for final checking on the run. And gloriana again for major late-construction revisions.
The Buffy universe is the property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. Borrowed with all due love and respect.
Please ask before archiving.
Feedback ohgodyesplease.
Full headers are on chapter one.
Wordcount this part: 3654
Previously, in chapter 37:
Our little crew descended deeper under New York, and eventually came across a thundering herd of giant rats, plus some bonus vampires, and there was some fighting and falling through railings, as if Xander needed further proof of the hazards, but everyone survived. Xander wondered how he could ever not go back to the slaying life after Buffy and crew did this for him. They trekked on until they found an enormous cavern brimming with giant rats, where four people were already lying unconscious. Things became more urgent when Giles realised Mary was still marked to lose her soul in the spell, but too far away for it to be caught safely in the vessel. Unfortunately, no one's going into battle until Riley's back-up army arrives.
New York
chapter 38: A footnote
by Dr Squidlove
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
So here they were, standing around within sight of the thing that was trying to kill Mary. Queen Rat had reached the platform and was waving her paws over the chest, and it looked like she was chanting. The rest of the plague had settled in to watch. Most of the vampires hung back, glaring like nightclub bouncers. One knelt beside her, painting fresh symbols over the black smudges on her fur with a brush, and Xander could see this time as Mary's particular swirl was laid on the queen's left flank, soon lost in the fur. It gave him chills.
Xander would have been sliding down the wall already if he didn't know Buffy could catch him and drag him back here like a runaway tortoise.
Any moment now, there could be that one last magic word and a puff of smoke and Mary's soul would start working its way free, tied down by a little red ribbon around her wrist. One scrap of charmed fabric between life as Jen and Kate knew it and Xander stumbling through playing father and mother, scaring them stupid until they rebelled and got jobs cleaning the subway just to spite him because there was no Mary around to balance him out. Xander was a good dad but he couldn't do it alone, couldn't be everything. He didn't want to try.
He needed her as his friend, too. To be his sensible voice and to tease him about Giles and to be around, because there was a long list of reasons why he'd loved her all these years.
Riley ambled over and leaned on the rocks beside Xander. "So vampires work for rats, now."
"What?" It took a second to drag his brain away from the empty bier. "Guess so. Maybe they get all the rats' cool stuff after the rapture."
"I guess rat-run yoga classes don't exactly sell out, even in New York." He looked out across the swarming cavern. "I'm all for this bunch leaving this dimension if they can find a way out without stealing souls. I'll chip in for the bus fare."
He made Xander smile. Good old easy-going Riley, who'd never once looked down on Xander for riding on Buffy's superhero cape. Xander turned to face him. "Thanks for coming."
Riley mock-tipped a hat. "All part of the service, ma'am."
"Yeah, except it's not really." Xander couldn't let Riley blow this off as nothing. "You don't break out the armed forces for every lost soul."
"I wish we could. Lucky for Mary, you aren't nobody."
Xander snorted. "I'm somebody who fetched donuts sixteen years ago, and I haven't been keeping up on my club membership fees since then."
Riley stared long enough to make Xander uncomfortable. "Do you still do that?"
"Do what?"
"Talk like that, like you're just a footnote to Buffy's epic? On the outside, looking in?"
"Uh..." Xander didn't have anything more coherent to say. That sounded pretty dead-on.
Riley's voice was quiet for the rats below, but he made it feel loud, the way he pressed the words. "Xander, you fought alongside her for six years. You were Buffy's world. You brought her back from the dead, you researched through countless nights; hell, you and Willow and Giles melded with her to defeat Adam. How many people do you think have been as close to her as you three?"
Xander wanted to say 'plenty', but as Buffy said something that made Giles smother a smile and adjust his glasses like he had a few hundred times in the library and the Magic Box, he remembered what Sunnydale life was like, and the truth was, there probably hadn't been many at all. Probably Faith and Wesley and a few others that were part of her life now, and maybe some more people in between, but not plenty. He knew Buffy better than that.
"You guys changed the Slaying rules in Sunnydale. You all did it."
Yeah, they did. And Xander was definitely a part of that.
Riley stepped back and leaned against the wall, sliding his hands into his pockets. "I was a pinch hitter for you guys for one year way back when, and I still brag about it."
Xander grinned. "You're a pretty cool guy, Riley Finn."
"So my mom tells me."
Buffy stepped up on Xander's other side. "Can I tag team in?"
"No problem," said Riley. He patted Xander's shoulder and gave him a 'think about what I told you' look and ambled off to chat to Giles, who had all his attention focused on the spell-making going on below.
Buffy seemed to think Giles had it all under control, turning her back on the show to face Xander. Silhouetted against the glow of the fires, he could barely see the lines in her face but she still seemed so much older. There was something about the way she carried herself that he'd glimpsed sometimes way back then on her strongest days, but now she carried it. Owned it. Xander had been part of that.
And left.
Hadn't Xander's total irrelevance been the reason why it was okay to abandon her? Him and Willow and Giles, the ones who'd been closest to her of anyone, and each of them left her in one way or another in the space of a year. Xander was the only one who stayed away by choice. And here he was, sixteen years later, all grown up and still choosing to stay away.
Xander wasn't ready to start that talk so he looked out at the Rat Queen, who seemed to have started a shuffling dance. "I'm so not telling Mary I fed her magical rat blood."
"I can totally support that." Buffy smiled for about a second, and then turned serious. "But you are going to tell her the rest?"
Xander looked at her, surprised.
"I get why you haven't. I mean, I understand. I don't think it's right but I'm not in your shoes so you don't have to listen to me. But you can't keep it a secret now. You know that, right? Not after this."
Xander looked down at the people laid out on trash piles, all of them still, like Mary. "If we get her back, she can have anything she wants."
"We'll get her back, Xander. This isn't even hard. Look." She lifted up a foot so he could see it in the trashfire-light. "I'm not even wearing old shoes."
Xander managed a smile for her. He loved this woman as much as he ever had. "Thank you for coming, Buff. This is... You didn't have to but here you are."
"Of course I'm here." She looked at him like he was crazy. "You know I'll always come. I hope you never need me again, but if you do, you have to know you only need to call. You, your family, it doesn't matter. And it goes for all of us. Dawn, Faith, Wes, Tara. They all wanted to be here for you, but Giles said no."
Xander's eyes pricked. "Like all the times I haven't been there for you?"
"Xander..." Buffy stepped closer, looking all grown up with her bobbed hair and lines in her face but those same green eyes he remembered. "Do you think I'm mad at you? It hurt when you left, but I was glad you got out."
Xander snorted, but she grabbed his hand.
"You don't have to be dragged back into this."
Xander out over the field of soul-thieving rats. "Not much choice, just now."
"No, I mean, afterwards. Do this, save Mary, but as soon as she's okay, you can stop." She tugged his hand until he looked back into her eyes. "This is what I want you to do. Have a life. Be a guy. Keep your girls safe. Be my reason to keep on saving the world."
Xander pressed his lips together, hard, but finally he couldn't hold back the smile. "Man, that was corny."
She grinned. "Yeah, but one hundred percent true. I need to know there are people I care about that aren't drowning in death and misery." She pushed his shoulder. "Next time you have to nag your girls to do their homework or clean their rooms, remember how Faith and I saved the world so you could do it."
That sounded pretty fantastic to Xander. Too good to be true. "I can't believe how grown up you are."
"Funny, 'cause I was thinking the same about you, with your family and your job and your life. The seriously grown up boyfriend..."
Xander shook his head. "I'm the same stupid kid. Just pretending."
She lifted her chin. "Tell you a secret? Me too."
Well, good. If Buffy could fake it, then faking it was good enough for Xander. "It seems like you're carrying the weight of the world pretty well these days."
She stubbed the toe of her shoe against the rocks. "There's been some ups and downs. There was this big weird magical episode where I got to experience my life without the Slayer gig and the big moral of the story was that it wasn't so bad being able to save the world."
Buffy threw that out like it was a wacky fun adventure but Xander figured it probably wasn't, at the time. Still, if she didn't want to make a fuss about it. "It's a pretty good perk."
He could see how her shoulders relaxed as he let that drop. "And there's this whole spiritual side of it that I didn't get when we were kids. Faith figured out a lot of it while she was in jail."
"No way can I imagine you and Faith living together."
She grinned. "Not really the future I was anticipating at graduation, but she's a different person now. I mean, who isn't, right? The guys who started the whole slayer line - who I'm majorly not a fan of - they seemed to think it had to be one girl. But trust me, two women: way better."
"So you're okay?"
"I really am. The couple of years after I came back were pretty much the low."
Xander dipped his head. "I'm-"
She threw up both hands to cut him off. "Nah, let's not do that conversation, okay? If you start apologising for not being around, then I'll have to apologise for not pulling you aside at Willow's funeral and telling you how good it was to see you."
He had to close his eyes a second, because damn, he wished she had. "And then I'll have to apologise for not being there when Will fell off the wagon." Xander paused, but he couldn't leave it there. "Maybe if I hadn't left she'd still..." He trailed off, because he couldn't say it.
"Maybe. Maybe if Giles hadn't yelled at Willow for bringing me back to life after Glory."
Xander looked at her in surprise and then they both looked over at Giles, but he was absorbed pointing rat stuff out to Riley.
"Yeah, I know about that," Buffy said quietly. "I heard him say it."
Wow. Xander wondered how that had felt. Dragged out of heaven and fresh from her grave and Giles mad that she was alive.
She took a little breath. "Maybe Willow'd still be around if I hadn't told her she was the strongest of all of us when I needed her to help me fight Glory."
Xander felt his eyebrows rise. He hadn't known about that either.
"Or how about maybe if Willow hadn't decided to blow us all off and save the world with her own ego?" Her voice softened with regret. "I wasted sixteen years blaming Giles and look at the price he paid. I'm not going to start on you."
Xander let that just sit there a minute. "Okay." Nobody blaming anybody. That worked for him. "I miss her."
A few silent seconds passed before Buffy added, "Me too."
"Giles is back now." Xander watched him frowning at Riley's data tablet, scratching his neck as he thought. Xander hadn't spent much time kissing that neck yet, so he made a little vow to start. When they were finally out of here and Xander could go back to his new Giles-flavoured life. "It's hard to believe he's the same guy we knew in the Magic Box when we were kids."
She was watching him with the same warmth Xander was. Not exactly the same, maybe, but close. "Yeah. Except then you realise he's not the one who changed. Kinda blows the mind, doesn't it?"
Being down here with Buffy and Riley and the mission afoot, it really did. "I guess we did grow up."
"I didn't know how much I'd missed him until he climbed out of Tara's car and it was like I got my hearing back, or my sight. Maybe an arm. Now I call him every day just to make sure he's still there." She looked at Xander. "I like how happy he sounds, now."
Xander liked that too. Buffy had the same thinky expression she'd had upstairs, when she asked if he really got it. Yeah, he did. "I actually do know he's crazy about me. I don't know why, but I like it."
"Ask him why. He's probably got the list alphabetised and indexed."
Xander slid his hands into his pockets. "Talked about me for hours, huh?"
She rolled her eyes, and it whooshed Xander all the way back to Sunnydale, to the best parts when him and Willow and Buffy traded jokes about Snyder and did their own commentary on Bollywood movies and Xander was madly in love with Buffy. And Giles was always around, being the guy Xander wanted to be when he grew up.
Now Giles was the guy watching Xander while nodding at Riley as if he wasn't concentrating on Riley at all, and Xander liked that even better.
"Go on," said Buffy.
Giles let a smile slip through the worry-face as Xander came closer. Riley was facing out over the rats, talking about maps and areas of concentration and the 4,5,6 line, but just as Xander opened his mouth to say hello to Giles, Riley straightened. "Let me guess - we don't want to fall down that hole."
"What hole?" asked Xander.
"The one that just appeared down there."
That hole. It was two foot across with whirly, fuzzy edges to make it perfectly clear it wasn't natural and it was right where the soul-trunk used to be. It hadn't been there a minute ago. Queen Rat ripped out a chunk of her own fur and sprinkled it in.
"Oh, fucking hell."
"Giles?"
"She already has their souls. All this time she's been working on the gate."
Xander looked between Giles and the floorshow, swallowing back the bile pushing its way up his throat. "Wait. We missed the whole soul-extraction thing? Mary's already gone?"
"I told you, Xander, Mary has time." He was trying to sound reassuring and it made Xander want to shake him.
"No. No, she had time. If we've been watching the wrong fucking spell this whole time we've been here then we don't know how long ago Rizzo waved her paws and released their souls. Mary could be floating around New Zealand by now."
"Keep your voice down."
Xander almost raised his voice just to spite him, until he remembered they were only half-hidden from a few thousand magic rats. He moved closer instead, hands fisting by his sides. "You don't get it, do you? This is my wife slipping away."
"I do get it."
"I need her. I can't do it without her." He couldn't raise the girls, make them whole, be a mother to them. He barely coped as a father. "Jen and Kate need two parents."
"I know," Giles said, gently enough to remind Xander he was being an asshole to totally the wrong person, but Xander was shaking and it was all he could do to stop running his mouth.
Buffy stepped in. "Since it doesn't help us to assume otherwise, let's assume we have time. Xander, as soon as we get the antidote, you need to get it back to Mary. We'll need to shut this down and restore the people down there, but you can't wait."
"Believe me, I won't."
"Riley, we need your-"
"Hold on." Riley lifted a hand to his earpiece and checked out the screen on his waist. "Got them. Squad one are just behind that outcropping, squad two are almost dead ahead. Give the word, boss."
Xander ran his hands over his pockets, double-checking his stakes, rolled his aching shoulder and got a good grip on his axe. Unconscious yoga people surrounded by vampires over to the right and a half-mile dash through rats in between. He was going to get Mary back.
"Okay," said Buffy. "Riley, they're ready to light this place up?"
"Ready to go."
"Giles, you've got your eyes on her?"
"Of course."
"Xander, you're ready?"
"An hour ago."
"Count it, Ri."
"Three, two, one."
Xander twisted away and closed his eyes but the simultaneous flash-bombs burned his eyelids; heat washed over his back. He'd expected shrieking but it was a roar, shock and fury echoing around the chamber, and when Xander looked furry bodies were scattering everywhere except at the stage of biers where the spell jumped into double-speed.
The two squads could be seen dropping into the far reaches of the cavern and Buffy and Riley were already moving, sliding down the sloped cave wall to the floor and then hacking their way through swirling rats that stood as high as Riley's waist on their back paws.
A hand squeezed Xander's. "Take care."
Giles was gone so fast he probably didn't hear Xander's "You, too." Xander ploughed after him.
Most of the rats turned tail and ran but there were plenty left to stand their ground. Riley was hacking away like a guy who really hated rats. Buffy was magical, unstoppable, a pure force like wind or fire, throwing rats aside and never slowing. Xander was so awed he didn't realise when he reached the floor himself until claws scratched across his ankle and he felt the wind of a sword past his hand as Giles swung in to save him. Shit. Xander was supposed to be protecting Giles, not the other way around. He snapped his attention back to the room, but Buffy and Riley were already pushing on. Xander muttered a 'sorry' as he met Giles' worried gaze, and together they chased after them.
Now Xander's eyes weren't leaving Giles' back except to catch the few that tried to sneak up behind them. Xander hacked and slashed with his axe and sometimes Giles was there too, sword flashing.
Steadily forward until they reached four vampires halfway across the cavern. Bigger, stronger, better fighters than the rats, but Buffy and Riley had been killing vampires since they were kids and four was an easy night for them so Giles and Xander just had to keep off the rats for a couple of minutes and then they were moving again.
Sometimes Xander glimpsed the army guys in the distance, coming more slowly but headed in the same direction.
"Do you see her, Giles?" called Buffy, and Xander turned in surprise. They'd made it.
But the stage was in chaos. The nearest burning trash pile had been knocked over so there was soot everywhere, across the ground and staining all the rats black just like the paint-smudged Queen.
"Can you see her, Xander?" yelled Giles.
"They all look the same! They're fucking rats!"
"Over there!" yelled Riley.
"That's not her!"
"That one?"
A rat slammed into Xander's knee and he pitched sideways, threw his arms up for balance and choked on the pain as his shoulder howled.
A couple of rats raced up the wall but a bullet shattered the rock above them and they dropped back down with cries of rage that echoed around their friends. Riley re-cocked his gun and kicked a couple more escaping rats. "Nobody's going anywhere until we get our hands on Queenie."
"You two find her," called Buffy, "We've got your backs."
Giles and Xander dodged between scurrying rats like a dance.
Xander dropped his axe to free his hands and grabbed a leg of any brown rat and flipped it - boy. He let go. Paint. He was looking for smudged black paint, so he gave up trying to see patterns and started wiping his hands across every bit of fur he could reach, dodging snapping teeth and swiping claws.
Soldiers had caught up and were hemming the rats in.
"That's her!" cried Giles.
Xander turned around just as Giles dived into the pile, rolled over a rat and disappeared under another five and Xander couldn't see what was going on but red blood sprayed and then Xander couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Giles came up with his knife bloody. "Xander!"
Giles threw something. Xander caught it and yelped in triumph: it was the bottle filled with dark blood. Now they could-
"That's it, Xander, go!" Giles was yanked backwards and his head hit the ground. Xander saw a tail wrapped around his ankle and suddenly Giles was flying backwards in swarm of fur towards the now-gaping hole.
"Giles!" Xander rushed forward until a hand clamped on his wrist.
"We've got him Xander! Go before you lose her!" Buffy shoved him back and raced past, Riley at her heels.
Giles was gone in the half-second he'd stopped watching. Xander got two steps after them and stopped, bottle clutched tight in his hand.
"Mr Harris, sir, you've got to go. Your wife can't wait." The soldier pointed to the bottle.
This was Mary's antidote. Buffy would get Giles. Buffy would get him.
Xander forced himself around and started running for the surface.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
end chapter 39
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