(no subject)
Alexander Harris knew that he didn’t know a lot of things.
He knew he didn’t know how to read ancient Sumerian like Giles did.
He knew he didn’t know how to play a guitar.
He knew he didn’t even know how to get past the third boss in his new Zelda game.
And lately, he knew that he didn’t know how he was going to get over Renee’s death.
He’d held her in his arms as she died in Tokyo just seventy two hours earlier and the crushing weight in his chest just kept growing.
Renee had died, looking into his eyes and there had been so much fear, and grief, and unfathomable sorrow in her eyes that he was sure he’d drown just remembering it.
And every bit of what he'd seen was being replayed across the screen of his mind with perfect clarity if sat down for more than five minutes.
He saw her eyes staring into his, and he started imagining that that’s what Anya must have looked like when she died too. Only he'd not even been there to hold her, to be there for her. And that’s when he had to get moving again, before the ghosts caught up with him.
Therefore he used what he did know to carry him through.
He started fixing things.
This was why he was where he was; on the third story of the four story tower in the Scottish castle called “home base” by Buffy and the new Watchers, and surrounded by a gaggle of newbie slayers.
“Okay, Chloe, hold that timber right there. Kim, I need you to push that arch and capstone a little higher. Kamaria, be ready, and move the arch brace into place when I nail this brace in. The rest of you, keep shoring up that support wall like I showed you. and putting in the ceiling jacks and timbers We’re going to have to take out that whole exterior wall those vamps broke through. “
“Xander, this thing is heavy, hurry up.” Chloe complained.
He smirked when he turned his back to her and dug into his rolling toolbox for his nail gun and a belt of fasteners. Chloe was a handful and Buffy had rolled her eyes when he’d asked for her to be put on rebuilding detail.
Over a year after having been called and she still couldn’t wrap her head around the idea of how strong, how durable, and overall how untiring her body was now. She complained about the heavy lifting and how tired it made her, but he kept pushing her in the hope that once she saw how much she was capable of lifting, how much work she could do, and how little actual impact it had on her, that maybe her mind would catch up to where her body knew it was.
So he kept digging in the toolbox for a good three minutes, even though he had the nailgun in hand the whole time.
“Xaaaander, hurry up, I think it’s slipping.”
“Just another minute Chloe, just hold on a little longer, I’ll be right there.”
Xander looked over his shoulder at Kim and winked. She was doing exactly what he’d told her to do. She was letting the weight of the arch fall on Chloe’s beam while pretending to hold it up. Chloe was holding up something along the lines of 500 pounds of stone on top of a four by four post that she was holding parallel to the floor and above her head.
Xander hooked up the nail gun with a hiss from the pneumatic line and grabbed four brace stays.
“Say, hello to my leetle friend, Mister brace.”
Eight quick “ftumph”s from the nailgun later and the brace was nailed in place and the arch and doorway was firmly shored up.
Chloe made a huge production of rubbing her arms tiredly and sagging against a wall after finally letting the four by four go.
Kim just rolled her eyes at her, cocked her bright yellow hard hat back, and walked over to the group of other Slayers hard at work.
“Xander, you help over here, yes? Can we fix this?” One of the girls called out with a slavic accent and pointed at the wall.
Someone had, while nailing crossbeams into the support wall, pounded a nail in with her hammer a little too forcefully. The result was that the hammer had blasted half way through a support timber, ruining it.
“Aye Aye Aye, ladies.” He said with urgency in his voice and moving his hands as though gently pushing the air. “Gently. Just remember. easy does it. The thing to do is keep the Slayer strength under control. Tomorrow you can go nuts with the sledgehammers all you like on the outside wall, but for now… gently. You, Svetlanna, that timber is useless now. Get a ceiling jack over there, tear the timber out and put in a new one from the stack, and put that one with the shorts pile. I’m sure I can use it elsewhere.”
“How goes the construction destruction, demolition Xand?”
Xander turned to catch Buffy as she walked further into his worksite.
He glanced at Chloe and asked, “Chloe, that retaining wall isn’t going to build itself. Hop to it and give Kim and Kamaria a hand. I’m sure they can use your help.”
Chloe looked at his nail gun, “Can I use that? “
Xander looked at her with a stunned expression on his face , then smirked, crouched down dramatically,and hissed while holding the nailgun far from her. “No! You can't have it. It’s…My precious.”
“Xaaander.” Cloe stamped her foot.
Standing up straight once more he replied with a finger wagging in the air and used his finest lecturing tone.
“Chloe, as a girl, and a particularly girly girl at that, I’ll forgive your impertinence. I don’t expect you to know the guy code, much less the construction guy code. But, you are treading on sacred ground here, Bustress. As such, let me impart the wisdom of the Foreman upon you. Thus spake Manny, forman to Xander; The three main rules are. Never ask a man if he watched the ice dancing competition last night. Or ever for that matter. The answer is always no. Never suggest quiche or sushi in place of a steak. The answer is always, no. And finally, the most important rule; never, never ever ask a man for one of his very expensive air driven powertools. Ever, the answer is always, no.”
Chloe grumbled and stalked off.
"Bustress?", he heard Buffy ask.
"Feminine form of Buster"
"Ah...A good word."
Xander turned back to Buffy and replied while unhooking the tool with a “pftt” of pressurized air.
“Have I mentioned how much I hate living in a Scottish castle, Buff? “
Buffy regarded him with a tilt of the head and a wry grin, “Within the last ten minutes? I don’t remember. What’s the reason this time?” She gestured for him to follow her.
“Hey, ladies, finish nailing and take a break, I’ll be back in a few.” He called to his crew, and after a second added, “And keep your damn hats ON. If I see a girl without a hardhat in here when I get back, It’ll be ten laps around the grounds for everyone.”
Xander fell into step with Buffy as they exited the floor and started down the steps.
“So what’s the what?” Buffy asked. “Just looks like a hole in the wall. Can’t you just patch it up?”
Xander shook his head.
“That’s why I’ve got my Scot-hate running today. If these were plain old framed walls, no problem. Brace the frame, strip the drywall, and put in new studs and drywall, no muss, no fuss. But these are old style stone walls, and that means if you get a big structural hole in the center of them. Like say, from some whacky japanese vampire blowing through them, you gotta tear the whole wall down and rebuilt it from the bottom up. Otherwise, collapsisity will ensue. And the floor above this one will fall as well, so that means lotsa supports, and we go from the top floor down to this one, all the way to the bottom floor to provide structure.“
He paused and added, “On a positive note, I’m, gonna put some conduits in the wall for electricity, and cat 5 and coax cable. You’ll be able to do away with the rabbit ears on your TV at last.”
Buffy perked up at the news. “That’ll be nice.”, but then gave him a sidelong glance. “How are you holding up, Xander. I… I ‘m worried about you.”
“Hey now, no reason to worry, I’m fine.”, he protested.
She looked him hard in the eye. “No, Xander, no you aren’t. You haven’t let yourself go to sleep since we got back. That’s not normal, and it’s not healthy. “
She paused, then added. “And what was up with you and Dracula when you two talked?”
Xander paused, then replied, “He wanted me to come back with him I think. Honestly, I think, in his own weird, Transylvanian sorta way he was worried about me too, and figured that hanging with another guy would maybe help.”
Buffy looked away quietly for a moment, then turned back with an uncomfortable expression and asked , “Would it? I mean we are kinda doing the whole Castle de la Femme thing out here. It must be hard on you sometimes.”
Xander snorted a little, “Oh, yeah, castle full of gorgeous girls between sixteen and twenty three. It’s a nightmare. Never mind the whole Monty Python aspect of it. You know, they may sue us over the whole Castle Anthrax theme if you all don't start sexually harrassing me soon.”
Buffy hit him in the arm, making him wince and let out a yelp of pain. “Ow, Hey, Summers. I need this limb.”
“You know what I mean. If you need some time to… I don’t know… decompress or whatever. I know there are times when I want to get out of here.”
“I’m good, Buffy. Well as good as we all get. And seriously, the work thing is how I’m coping. But on the plus side, I think I’m immune to Drac’s juju mojo mind whammy now. He tried it and got bupkiss.”
“Bupkiss?”
“Yep. Didn’t even have the slightest craving for crawlies. “
Buffy slowed to a stop. Somehow her feet had walked them to the door outside his room.
Never had she been more glad for the poor lighting, because her mind started replaying her dream of a few weeks earlier. In it she’d ended up asking Xander to take her into his room. Smooches had followed in the dream. Good, but bad ones.
She looked at his face. Half of it was in deep shadow, hiding his missing eye.
In that shadow she could almost see the Xander she remembered from years ago. He’d had such a beautiful face. How had she missed how handsome he’d become till it was gone.
They stood quietly and she felt her hand come up and cup his cheek, her thumb rolling over the cloth of his patch.
A moment later she was hugging him. Holding on probably harder than was comfortable for him.
“God, Xander, why do we keep losing people we love? Anya, and then Renee. Me and mine. Willow and Tara. It’s like it just never stops. It just hurts.”
At that moment she wasn’t sure if the shaking sobs were from him crying, or herself.
She didn’t want to think it was both of them, that’d be too much to bear.
She heard him whisper back, “I donno, I donno.”
For a time, they just stood, shaking, crying quiet tears of their own losses, but drawing strength from each other before parting.
A few mutual wipes of cheeks and eyes, and the shadows of the hallway hid the rest of the evidence.
“Geeze, look at me. I come to be all supporto gal, and end up crying all over you.”, she sniffed. “How pathetic is that?”
He gave a slightly bittersweet laugh, “Yeah, yeah, guilty as charged over here too.”
She sighed sadly, then commented. “I wanted to tell you that Willow finally got to work on Dawn's issues. Only... ”
Xander groaned, “If it’s something 'only', then I take it that it didn’t go goodish. What now?”
Buffy smiled slightly, and replied, “Let’s just say that Dawn's request for a horse for her birthday is on hold, as in 'whoa, girl'. “
Xander just looked baffled.
“I don’t get it.”
Authors note: This is where this story diverges from the season 8 comic. Everything up to issue 15 has happened. Issue 16 and later is not used. Frankly, the plot devices used in 16 were horrid. A "magic missle" For goodness sakes. You'd figure that Willow would have planned for exactly that sort of thing knowing the military had Ethan as a resource.
He knew he didn’t know how to read ancient Sumerian like Giles did.
He knew he didn’t know how to play a guitar.
He knew he didn’t even know how to get past the third boss in his new Zelda game.
And lately, he knew that he didn’t know how he was going to get over Renee’s death.
He’d held her in his arms as she died in Tokyo just seventy two hours earlier and the crushing weight in his chest just kept growing.
Renee had died, looking into his eyes and there had been so much fear, and grief, and unfathomable sorrow in her eyes that he was sure he’d drown just remembering it.
And every bit of what he'd seen was being replayed across the screen of his mind with perfect clarity if sat down for more than five minutes.
He saw her eyes staring into his, and he started imagining that that’s what Anya must have looked like when she died too. Only he'd not even been there to hold her, to be there for her. And that’s when he had to get moving again, before the ghosts caught up with him.
Therefore he used what he did know to carry him through.
He started fixing things.
This was why he was where he was; on the third story of the four story tower in the Scottish castle called “home base” by Buffy and the new Watchers, and surrounded by a gaggle of newbie slayers.
“Okay, Chloe, hold that timber right there. Kim, I need you to push that arch and capstone a little higher. Kamaria, be ready, and move the arch brace into place when I nail this brace in. The rest of you, keep shoring up that support wall like I showed you. and putting in the ceiling jacks and timbers We’re going to have to take out that whole exterior wall those vamps broke through. “
“Xander, this thing is heavy, hurry up.” Chloe complained.
He smirked when he turned his back to her and dug into his rolling toolbox for his nail gun and a belt of fasteners. Chloe was a handful and Buffy had rolled her eyes when he’d asked for her to be put on rebuilding detail.
Over a year after having been called and she still couldn’t wrap her head around the idea of how strong, how durable, and overall how untiring her body was now. She complained about the heavy lifting and how tired it made her, but he kept pushing her in the hope that once she saw how much she was capable of lifting, how much work she could do, and how little actual impact it had on her, that maybe her mind would catch up to where her body knew it was.
So he kept digging in the toolbox for a good three minutes, even though he had the nailgun in hand the whole time.
“Xaaaander, hurry up, I think it’s slipping.”
“Just another minute Chloe, just hold on a little longer, I’ll be right there.”
Xander looked over his shoulder at Kim and winked. She was doing exactly what he’d told her to do. She was letting the weight of the arch fall on Chloe’s beam while pretending to hold it up. Chloe was holding up something along the lines of 500 pounds of stone on top of a four by four post that she was holding parallel to the floor and above her head.
Xander hooked up the nail gun with a hiss from the pneumatic line and grabbed four brace stays.
“Say, hello to my leetle friend, Mister brace.”
Eight quick “ftumph”s from the nailgun later and the brace was nailed in place and the arch and doorway was firmly shored up.
Chloe made a huge production of rubbing her arms tiredly and sagging against a wall after finally letting the four by four go.
Kim just rolled her eyes at her, cocked her bright yellow hard hat back, and walked over to the group of other Slayers hard at work.
“Xander, you help over here, yes? Can we fix this?” One of the girls called out with a slavic accent and pointed at the wall.
Someone had, while nailing crossbeams into the support wall, pounded a nail in with her hammer a little too forcefully. The result was that the hammer had blasted half way through a support timber, ruining it.
“Aye Aye Aye, ladies.” He said with urgency in his voice and moving his hands as though gently pushing the air. “Gently. Just remember. easy does it. The thing to do is keep the Slayer strength under control. Tomorrow you can go nuts with the sledgehammers all you like on the outside wall, but for now… gently. You, Svetlanna, that timber is useless now. Get a ceiling jack over there, tear the timber out and put in a new one from the stack, and put that one with the shorts pile. I’m sure I can use it elsewhere.”
“How goes the construction destruction, demolition Xand?”
Xander turned to catch Buffy as she walked further into his worksite.
He glanced at Chloe and asked, “Chloe, that retaining wall isn’t going to build itself. Hop to it and give Kim and Kamaria a hand. I’m sure they can use your help.”
Chloe looked at his nail gun, “Can I use that? “
Xander looked at her with a stunned expression on his face , then smirked, crouched down dramatically,and hissed while holding the nailgun far from her. “No! You can't have it. It’s…My precious.”
“Xaaander.” Cloe stamped her foot.
Standing up straight once more he replied with a finger wagging in the air and used his finest lecturing tone.
“Chloe, as a girl, and a particularly girly girl at that, I’ll forgive your impertinence. I don’t expect you to know the guy code, much less the construction guy code. But, you are treading on sacred ground here, Bustress. As such, let me impart the wisdom of the Foreman upon you. Thus spake Manny, forman to Xander; The three main rules are. Never ask a man if he watched the ice dancing competition last night. Or ever for that matter. The answer is always no. Never suggest quiche or sushi in place of a steak. The answer is always, no. And finally, the most important rule; never, never ever ask a man for one of his very expensive air driven powertools. Ever, the answer is always, no.”
Chloe grumbled and stalked off.
"Bustress?", he heard Buffy ask.
"Feminine form of Buster"
"Ah...A good word."
Xander turned back to Buffy and replied while unhooking the tool with a “pftt” of pressurized air.
“Have I mentioned how much I hate living in a Scottish castle, Buff? “
Buffy regarded him with a tilt of the head and a wry grin, “Within the last ten minutes? I don’t remember. What’s the reason this time?” She gestured for him to follow her.
“Hey, ladies, finish nailing and take a break, I’ll be back in a few.” He called to his crew, and after a second added, “And keep your damn hats ON. If I see a girl without a hardhat in here when I get back, It’ll be ten laps around the grounds for everyone.”
Xander fell into step with Buffy as they exited the floor and started down the steps.
“So what’s the what?” Buffy asked. “Just looks like a hole in the wall. Can’t you just patch it up?”
Xander shook his head.
“That’s why I’ve got my Scot-hate running today. If these were plain old framed walls, no problem. Brace the frame, strip the drywall, and put in new studs and drywall, no muss, no fuss. But these are old style stone walls, and that means if you get a big structural hole in the center of them. Like say, from some whacky japanese vampire blowing through them, you gotta tear the whole wall down and rebuilt it from the bottom up. Otherwise, collapsisity will ensue. And the floor above this one will fall as well, so that means lotsa supports, and we go from the top floor down to this one, all the way to the bottom floor to provide structure.“
He paused and added, “On a positive note, I’m, gonna put some conduits in the wall for electricity, and cat 5 and coax cable. You’ll be able to do away with the rabbit ears on your TV at last.”
Buffy perked up at the news. “That’ll be nice.”, but then gave him a sidelong glance. “How are you holding up, Xander. I… I ‘m worried about you.”
“Hey now, no reason to worry, I’m fine.”, he protested.
She looked him hard in the eye. “No, Xander, no you aren’t. You haven’t let yourself go to sleep since we got back. That’s not normal, and it’s not healthy. “
She paused, then added. “And what was up with you and Dracula when you two talked?”
Xander paused, then replied, “He wanted me to come back with him I think. Honestly, I think, in his own weird, Transylvanian sorta way he was worried about me too, and figured that hanging with another guy would maybe help.”
Buffy looked away quietly for a moment, then turned back with an uncomfortable expression and asked , “Would it? I mean we are kinda doing the whole Castle de la Femme thing out here. It must be hard on you sometimes.”
Xander snorted a little, “Oh, yeah, castle full of gorgeous girls between sixteen and twenty three. It’s a nightmare. Never mind the whole Monty Python aspect of it. You know, they may sue us over the whole Castle Anthrax theme if you all don't start sexually harrassing me soon.”
Buffy hit him in the arm, making him wince and let out a yelp of pain. “Ow, Hey, Summers. I need this limb.”
“You know what I mean. If you need some time to… I don’t know… decompress or whatever. I know there are times when I want to get out of here.”
“I’m good, Buffy. Well as good as we all get. And seriously, the work thing is how I’m coping. But on the plus side, I think I’m immune to Drac’s juju mojo mind whammy now. He tried it and got bupkiss.”
“Bupkiss?”
“Yep. Didn’t even have the slightest craving for crawlies. “
Buffy slowed to a stop. Somehow her feet had walked them to the door outside his room.
Never had she been more glad for the poor lighting, because her mind started replaying her dream of a few weeks earlier. In it she’d ended up asking Xander to take her into his room. Smooches had followed in the dream. Good, but bad ones.
She looked at his face. Half of it was in deep shadow, hiding his missing eye.
In that shadow she could almost see the Xander she remembered from years ago. He’d had such a beautiful face. How had she missed how handsome he’d become till it was gone.
They stood quietly and she felt her hand come up and cup his cheek, her thumb rolling over the cloth of his patch.
A moment later she was hugging him. Holding on probably harder than was comfortable for him.
“God, Xander, why do we keep losing people we love? Anya, and then Renee. Me and mine. Willow and Tara. It’s like it just never stops. It just hurts.”
At that moment she wasn’t sure if the shaking sobs were from him crying, or herself.
She didn’t want to think it was both of them, that’d be too much to bear.
She heard him whisper back, “I donno, I donno.”
For a time, they just stood, shaking, crying quiet tears of their own losses, but drawing strength from each other before parting.
A few mutual wipes of cheeks and eyes, and the shadows of the hallway hid the rest of the evidence.
“Geeze, look at me. I come to be all supporto gal, and end up crying all over you.”, she sniffed. “How pathetic is that?”
He gave a slightly bittersweet laugh, “Yeah, yeah, guilty as charged over here too.”
She sighed sadly, then commented. “I wanted to tell you that Willow finally got to work on Dawn's issues. Only... ”
Xander groaned, “If it’s something 'only', then I take it that it didn’t go goodish. What now?”
Buffy smiled slightly, and replied, “Let’s just say that Dawn's request for a horse for her birthday is on hold, as in 'whoa, girl'. “
Xander just looked baffled.
“I don’t get it.”
Authors note: This is where this story diverges from the season 8 comic. Everything up to issue 15 has happened. Issue 16 and later is not used. Frankly, the plot devices used in 16 were horrid. A "magic missle" For goodness sakes. You'd figure that Willow would have planned for exactly that sort of thing knowing the military had Ethan as a resource.