Fic: See Noir Evil (61/?)
Sixty: Promises, Promises
Riley was behind another car, bent over Erica and attempting to stop her bleeding. Buffy and Willow were out on the lawn, both with their hands up and in wary stances. Spike was lying in front of them, clutching his stomach while blood spilled out over his fingers. He was looking paler than usual. Giles was several paces back behind Buffy and Willow, his own hands up at head-height as well. Dawn was just a few steps behind him. All eyes were on Xander.
He was standing at the broken window. He had a gleaming black handgun in one hand, and the barrel of it was pressed against the temple of one of the girls that had been assigned to watch him. He must have found where they’d put his weapons, because he had his watch back on, as well as another handgun strapped to his chest. He was half-dressed in a white t-shirt and the camouflage pants he’d been wearing when they’d captured him. There were also thousands of tiny little suction cups sticking out from his skin all over his body. Xander had no idea where he’d gotten those.
Both of his perfect eyes had been staring at Buffy, but the moment that Xander had stood up, those eyes slid towards him.
Gunless-Xander stood partially concealed by the car in front of him, and stared into his own un-scarred and undamaged face. He wasn’t exactly sure what to do. His plan had been to stand up and be a target, because to stand up and be a target was pretty crazy when the person doing the target shooting was your own gun-toting evil twin. Now that he was actually doing it he was beginning to question if it was the right kind of crazy. He’d been going for crazy-like-a-fox, but he was afraid all he’d succeeded at was crazy-like-an-idiot.
The gun was away from the girl’s temple before Xander realized what was going on. The barrel sliced through the air to bear down on Xander, and for a single moment, Xander was certain that the barrel was actually the grinning mouth of a truly terrible demon.
“Um, stop?” Xander tried. It was the only thing he could think of.
“No more underestimating,” that perfect and undamaged Xander said with a cold snarl. He pulled the trigger with calm professionalism.
Buffy sprang forward, but she wasn’t Superman. She couldn’t move faster than a speeding bullet, nor a speeding demon with little buzzing wings and chomping teeth, and so when that little demon sped out of the bigger demon’s mouth and towards Xander, there was nothing she could do to stop it.
Willow threw her hands forward with a, “No!” and a dazzling pink wall of energy exploded into existence between Xander and gunful-Xander, but the little demons crashed through it as if it were glass.
Because it was glass, Xander saw. He watched the shards of it shatter apart, tinkling like little bells as they fell to the ground. It was fascinating. It was-
The demon bit into his shoulder even as the other Xander was pulling his hostage backwards and placing the barrel of his gun back against her forehead, forcing Buffy to a halt. The girl in his arms was hardly able to stand, and there was blood staining her shirt.
Come to think of it, there was blood staining his own shirt as well, Xander realized. He looked down at his left shoulder and saw the slowly growing stain of redness. The demon had bitten him just to one side of the strap of his habitually worn backpack, and the blood was seeping through his shirt and into the strap.
“Huh,” he said. There was a distant sense of pain, but it wasn’t the tongs, so he didn’t really care. “It bit me.”
“Goddamn it,” the other Xander spat. “That was dead-on!”
“Don’t!” Buffy cried in warning, stepping between Xander and Xander. Her cape was flapping in the breeze as she stood before him, hands on her hips and long blonde hair flowing behind her. Xander smiled wistfully. Of course. She wasn’t Superman. She was Supergirl. Or maybe Superwoman, except Superwoman really didn’t have a very good ring to it. Superslayer, maybe. That was pretty good.
“Don’t yourself!” the other Xander snapped back. “Step back, or I’m introducing her brain to my bullet.”
“If he’s hurt...” Buffy growled.
“You’ll what? Pretend to care? Don’t make me laugh.”
Xander gingerly touched the spreading stain of blood on his shoulder and frowned at the distant sensation of pain it produced. He looked back up to the other Xander.
“It’s okay,” he said, rotating his shoulder, producing a slight squishing sound. “It’s fine. I’m not allergic to it. Good thing it wasn’t a bee.”
“Xander, keep still,” Giles said warningly. He turned to the other Xander. “That goes for both of you.”
“No thanks,” the other Xander said. He was slowly dragging his hostage away from Buffy and Willow and out into the street, careful to remain far away from both them and Riley behind the car. Every muscle in his body seemed to be flexed and strained as he moved. The tendons in his neck stood out with sick prominence, and there were a thousand tiny suction cups along his limbs, up and down his body, nearly covering him completely. Even tinier demons were running along his limbs as well, racing around the cups and cackling with mad laughter. “How about you all keep still and I don’t kill her right here?”
Xander hissed an inward breath. The cobwebs in his head seemed to clear away somewhat, and he took a staggering step backwards. Right. That’s what was going on. This Xander, this imposter, he was going to kill a girl. A Slayer.
“Don’t,” Xander said, blinking several times as he tried to stay alert. “Don’t kill her.”
“Hey, as long as everyone stays frozen, she stays living. You start getting all movey on me and it’s Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang.”
“What?” Xander asked. He scratched his head, hardly noticing the way his shoulder twinged at him when he rotated it. He turned back to the others. “I didn’t understand any of that. Can’t he talk normal instead of going all ‘Shaka, when the walls fell’ on us?”
“God, you’re an embarrassment,” the other Xander said, rolling his eyes. “And I thought you made me sick before. Why don’t you go inside and pledge your undying loyalty to a slug-demon or something? Maybe if you’re lucky you can be in charge of licking up pus for the rest of your life.”
“Okay, first of all: ew. And second of all, I think you must have me confused with some other Xander. I am firmly in the against-camp when it comes to slug demons. Slugs in general, really. Anything with slime, pretty much, except for Slimer, Nickelodeon, and Slimey the worm. So maybe you should think before you start throwing out wild accusations with no basis in facts!”
He shook an angry finger at the other Xander, and then stumbled several steps to his right. The world spun around him for a split-second, and when he could think again he found himself leaning against the side of the car and hardly able to stand. He was suddenly very cold.
Tara was there, and she begged him not to move. “You’re losing a lot of blood, Xander. Please, just stay still.”
“I don’t have to think about anything!” the other Xander shot back, uncaring of Xander’s sudden dizziness and oblivious to Tara’s warning. “I know all about you and your sick demon fetish!”
He drew the gun away from the girl’s forehead once more and aimed it as Xander. Though there was rage in his eyes, his hand was steady and strong.
“No!” Buffy cried, but the other Xander quickly pressed the gun back against the girl’s head and shot her a warning look, forcing her to stay where she was.
“I should just kill you right now,” he snarled, turning his eyes back to Xander. “You make me sick.”
“No, you make me sick,” Xander replied. Then as an afterthought he added, “Plus you’re a jerk.”
“You’re an idiot!”
“You’re an idiot jerk!”
“You-” the other Xander sputtered. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and then spat out, “F-fuck you! I’m the one with a gun here!”
Xander puffed out his chest, an act that made him only slightly dizzy. He had successfully goaded his opponent into an angry and sputtering curse instead of an actual retort. Victory. “Ha! I win!”
“What? You don’t win! I’m in control here!”
“No, I win the argument. You lost and I won. Pay up.”
The other Xander frowned. “Pay up? What are you even talking about? You’re crazy!” He looked to Buffy and Willow. “You see that he’s crazy, right?”
“I only see one crazy Xander here,” Buffy said, eyes narrowed.
“Is it him?” Xander asked, pointing to the other Xander. He was a little afraid the answer would be no.
“It’s him,” Buffy said, giving him a sidelong glance. “Just stay back, okay, Xander?”
“Yeah, Xander,” the other Xander said with a sneer on his lips. “Stay back. You might get hurt, Xander. You’ll get in the way, Xander. Don’t bother us all the time, Xander. We’re busy having sex with demons and condemning the world to eternal darkness, Xander! Just go hide in the basement and never talk to us again, Xander!”
The last of this was screamed at them. Specks of spittle shot from the other Xander’s mouth and the arm that was gripped around the girl’s throat tensed and bulged with muscle.
“Has anyone ever told you that you have anger issues?” Xander asked.
“Shut up!” The gun swiveled around again, but Buffy sidestepped between the two Xanders. Her presence was not enough to stop the gun-toting Xander this time, however. He pulled the trigger six times in rapid succession. “Shut up!”
The wall of pink energy exploded into existence again. Xander let out a wordless scream and dove forward, hoping to knock her out of the way. He was too far away, and there didn’t seem to be any strange vision ready to help them. There was no ragtag group of little demons, Boba Fett was nowhere to be seen, and there were no talking animals to assist him.
He braced himself for the sickening sight of watching the bullets crash through the pink wall and punch their way through Buffy’s chest. He had seen it happen before. He had seen it happen in his nightmares. He was going to see it happen again.
Except this time, the shield held.
Each bullet struck the shield with a strange reverberation, creating an electrical yellow shockwave that rippled across the wall before fizzling out into nothing. A strange whomping noise issued from the wall with every hit, but it did not break.
Xander, both of them, stared at the wall in amazement. The Xander with the gun immediately replaced the barrel at his hostage’s temple. He glanced past Buffy and stared at Willow.
Xander, feeling decidedly woozy now, turned to look at Willow as well. The crackling sense of energy that surrounded her was enough to make him go slack-jawed. A sickening kaleidoscope of colors swarmed around her body. Her eyes had gone gray, and to Xander they looked like raging stormclouds. He could actually make out tiny little lightning strikes seeming to go off inside her eye sockets. He found the whole effect creepy as well as awe-inspiring.
The other Xander did not seem so awed. His eyes were wide and his fingers worked to adjust his grip on the gun in his hand. He stared back at Willow. “Y-you can’t shield against these bullets.”
“Not on my first try,” Willow replied. Her eyes narrowed and she drew one hand up the side of her body and then extended it outwards in the other Xander’s direction. He quickly took a step back and forced the barrel of the gun against the girl’s temple.
“Don’t!” he screeched. His voice cracked and there was sweat beading on his forehead. “I’m point blank, here! I can still kill her!”
“Why?” Xander asked. He took a tentative and somewhat staggering step forward. He was close enough to Buffy then that she put an arm out to hold him back and provide him with something to lean on. “I mean, really. What’s your problem, anyway?”
“Xander, don’t,” she whispered, looking back at him from over her shoulder. Her eyes were so filled with worry that he was reminded of Tara. He turned back to find her right behind him.
“Don’t antagonize him, Xander,” Tara said. “Please, listen to me. You’re losing blood, you have to-”
“My problem?” the other Xander said in a huff, interrupting Tara. “Oh, gee, I dunno, what could it possibly be? Maybe watching traitors like you people with your dark magic, your demon powers, and your vampire lovers?”
“Vampire lovers!?” Xander exclaimed. “I resent that! I’ve never loved a vampire in my whole life, and frankly I’m insulted by the accusation! Can you believe this guy?” he asked Buffy, shaking his head ruefully. Then he remembered Buffy had been known to have a vampire lover or two in her time. “Oh, I mean, uh, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Well, I mean, there is, but I mean, if the circumstances are, um, circumstancy enough, then I guess it’s okay if you, uh, that is to say, when two people love each other very much then it doesn’t matter if one of those people is a blooduscking demon that may or may not have done scourging in what may or may not have been Europe. Who are we to judge, really? The heart wants what the heart wants, and sometimes-”
He was saved from trying to talk his way out of a hole by the sound of the dragon roaring. Xander whirled on the spot, causing him and Buffy to nearly topple over as she tried to keep him steady. They both staggered to one side thanks to his action, giving the other Xander the opportunity to take several more steps backwards down the street.
“Stop!” Buffy shouted, trying to get away from Xander without hurting his injured shoulder. Xander tried to help her but he kept tripping as he tried to get up, which inevitably meant Buffy had to catch him before he’d do a faceplant on the pavement.
He might feel embarrassed about his clumsiness, but he was too busy staring up at the dragon as it swooped overhead, breathing fire and flapping its huge wings.
“Tara!” he screamed over the dragon’s roar and the wind that was kicking up all around them. “Tell me that’s not a dragon!”
“It’s a helicopter!” she shouted back.
Right. Yes. A helicopter. That was good. The way he figured it, consistent insanity was better than inconsistent insanity. At least his warped mind was keeping a common theme. He’d have to remember that dragon equaled helicopter.
Wait.
“What’s a helicopter doing here!?” he yelled, just as Buffy managed to get to her feet. She slipped her arm under his good shoulder and around his back and then hefted him up with absurd ease. He thought she’d let go once they were upright again, but she kept her arm around him and held him close.
“That’s my ride,” the other Xander said, grinning as he slowly dragged his hostage back down the street. The dragon was flapping its wings in slow and powerful strokes as it came to a landing in the center of the street. Xander was amazed.
“Can I really look so smug?” he asked, astonished by the expression he was seeing on his own face.
“No,” Buffy assured him absently. She was staring at the other Xander, but then turned to look up at Xander’s face. “Xander, you have to promise me something.”
“For you?” he said happily, always willing to do a favor for Buffy. “Anything. Just say the word.”
“Stay here. Don’t try to move. You’re hurt.”
“I am?” he asked. Then he remembered the little demon biting him on the shoulder. “You mean my shoulder? It’s fine. Just a little demon bite. No big deal.”
“Listen to her, Xander,” Tara said. “You’re hurt.”
“I’m listening.”
“Promise me, Xander. Me and Willow can take care of this.”
Xander looked down into her eyes. They were Buffy’s eyes. They were Slayer’s eyes. You didn’t argue with those eyes when they made such a heartfelt plea. He nodded.
“Promise,” he said quietly.
“Good,” Buffy replied, nodding as well. She turned back to face the other Xander. He was slowly making his way back towards the dragon, dragging his hostage along with him. Xander didn’t even know her name. She was just one of the Slayers that had been trapped in time with Buffy and the others. First she’d spent months trapped in limbo and now she was bleeding, weakened, and being held hostage by a crazy (or perhaps slightly-less-crazy) version of himself.
How was he doing that, anyway? A Slayer with a bullet wound in the gut was still a Slayer. She wasn’t going to struggle weakly at the arm around her throat. She wasn’t going to stare back at them all with wide, terrified eyes. Why wasn’t she fighting back? Why wasn’t she flipping gunful-Xander over her shoulder and then kicking him hard in the face until he stopped looking so smug?
The demon bite on his shoulder throbbed dully as Xander watched Buffy move slowly towards the other him. The gunful-Xander kept shouting at her to stay back, but she made it clear she was going to keep going. Her and Willow were moving slowly and inexorably forward, unwilling to let even his threats that he’d shoot the girl in his arms stop them from going after him. All they would do was move just slowly enough to keep him from panicking and shooting the girl right there.
Except he was going to get to the dragon first. And once he got there he was going to shoot the girl anyway. Maybe he’d do it in the air, or maybe he’d do it right before he got on the helicopter-dragon. One way or another, he was going to kill that girl if Buffy and Willow didn’t get there first.
They had a plan.
Of course they had a plan! That was it. Buffy and Willow had some kind of plan going on. After all, Willow had already learned how to counter the special bullets the other Xander had. Maybe they were just stalling while Willow figured out how to stop him. Yeah. That was it.
And even as he thought it, Xander could see the aura around Willow swirling and undulating all around her. Only it wasn’t an aura. It was a code. Little green numbers swirled around her in a constant stream of information as Willow processed the various possibilities of all of her spells. He was watching her mind work with that determined hacker concentration, solving the puzzle that lay before her so that she could save the day. The sight of it lit him up, and he felt a wide and triumphant smile slide onto his face.
“She’s amazing,” came the voice beside him. It was a voice filled with just as much awe as he felt. Xander looked over to find Tara staring at Willow as well. Her eyes sparkled and there was a tiny smile on her face. She looked up to Xander.
“Can you see that?” she asked.
He nodded. “I think so. She’s solving it. Matrix-style.”
Tara raised an eyebrow. “Matrix-style?”
“Little green numbers.”
“Oh,” she said, her voice growing more quiet. “I-I just see her aura fluctuating. She’s trying to figure out what he can counter and what he-”
She stopped talking in mid-sentence. Her eyes widened and she took a step forward. Her hands went to her mouth and she whirled to face the other-Xander. Her eyes grew even larger and she spun on her heels to face Xander again. “Xander! You have to warn her!”
“Warn her?”
“He’s got a soul-scraping spell!” Tara cried moving quickly to his side and pointing at the other Xander. “She won’t be able to see it! Only you can see it! She’d never expect someone would use it, you have to warn her!”
The urge to question her further lasted for all of half a heartbeat. If Tara said it was dangerous then it was dangerous. He didn’t need any further convincing. He opened his mouth to call Willow’s name.
At exactly the same moment, Willow shot her hands out towards the other Xander. Xander’s cry of “Willow!” was lost in the thunderous crack that issued from her hands. A spear of light shot from her hands and crossed the distance between her and gunful-Xander in an instant.
The bolt struck him right in the forehead, directly in the center of one of the thousands of tiny suction cups that Xander could see all over his body. For the tiniest fraction of a second, nothing happened.
Then that suction cup opened into a gigantic fang-filled mouth, and inhaled with a loud slurping sound. Willow screamed and dropped to her knees. Her aura was ripped away from her, still vaguely-Willow shaped, and was sucked into that giant mouth.
Gunful-Xander grinned.
“I was hoping you’d try that,” he said. Moving far faster than a normal human could, the other Xander turned and shoved his hostage into the dragon’s mouth. She stumbled forward almost lifelessly and collapsed within it. Buffy was already moving when Xander looked to her, racing to close the distance between them. She was as fast, maybe faster than Xander had ever seen her.
The other Xander whirled just before Buffy reached him. He cast his hand out at her, and that same spear of light shot from his fingertips with a crack of thunder. It struck Buffy square in the chest and she stumbled to her knees before falling face-first onto the pavement.
“Someday,” the other Xander said as he kicked Buffy hard across the face, sending her toppling over onto her back. “You’ll stop underestimating me.”
Then he turned back to the dragon. “Take us up!”
The wings began to flap faster and faster. Xander’s eye flicked to Buffy. She was on her back, one leg bent at the knee and one hand covering her face. She was groaning but not getting up. Willow was on her knees, gasping for air and seemingly unable to move. The dragon was flapping faster still when Xander looked back to it. In its mouth were the other Xander and the girl he’d taken hostage. She was dying in there. He was going to kill her.
“You promised,” Xander reminded himself, clenching his fists. “You promised.”
He swallowed hard. The dragon’s clawed feet began to rise from the pavement. He had to let it go. He’d promised. He had to-
No. He already knew he wasn’t going to do that.
“Guess I can’t keep a promise,” Xander muttered to himself. He took one deep breath and then sprinted towards the dragon.