Fanfiction: Five by Three

Xander returns to consciousness like Bruce Willis kicking in a door in some third-sequel action movie. Considering the rambling, rocky path he took to sleep the night before (more like three hours ago), he hoped for a couple more hours of cottony-brained drifting. Smell of coffee, close by. Soft click of the door latch. A presence. Some part of his mind registers these and rockets him out of the weirdass Windsor McCay rarebit-fiend dreamland he dropped into sometime around dawn.

Faith seats herself on the bed as his eyes fly open. A mug of coffee is cradled in her hands. “I thought I’d have more of a struggle than this, getting you up,” she says.

“Time is it?”

“Nine. I let you have an extra hour.”

“Extra? I don’t have to be anywhere, why—”

“You need to get on track, or you’ll never have your nights back.”

Xander shoves himself upright and reaches for the coffee. “Thanks, Faith.”

She pulls the mug back. “The fuck you think I am, your servant? This is mine.”

He blinks. “Shit. Sorry. Got used to people waiting on me hand and foot in the hospital.”

Right answer, apparently. She proffers the mug again.

“No, you.”

“I brought it for you, loosah, take it.” She reaches for a matching mug on the bedside table. “Look, I know you’ve been living the domestic life for, what, a couple of years? I don’t know what your deal was with Anya, but you don’t want to be taking me for granted.”

“Sorry again. It’s hard to think. Not much sleep last night.” He works on the coffee, made exactly as he likes it, like some entirely different category of beverage from the hospital coffee.

“I know. Xander, about last night.” Faith pins him in her gaze, pauses to let this sink in. “You touch me like that again — without seeing me, without it having anything to do with me — and your next time is your last time.”

His heart seems to do a fast freefall into the pit of his stomach. Xander opens his mouth for his third apology of the morning, then closes it.

“It’s no worse than what I did to you that first time we screwed,” she says, and he knows he flinches. “Didn’t particularly care to see who you were. You were there, which was pretty much my only requirement. So last night I owed you one. But I didn’t think that’s what we were doing anymore.”

Xander rubs a hand over his face, then lets them drop into his lap. “I’ve already used up ‘sorry’ this morning. I know. I — It was a shitty thing to do.” Other words back up behind those: I was tired, I was scared, some dark worries I can’t even name crouching back there in my head. No way he is letting any of them out — nothing but lame excuses. He reaches for her hand, but she keeps them both cupped around her coffee mug. Xander nearly pulls back, but instead he puts his hand on her forearm. “I am sorry. Come on — sit up here with me for a minute.”

Faith hesitates, then lets him draw her to the head of the bed. He doesn’t speak, though, or try to justify himself, as she expected. Xander just looks at her. It’s more than that: he sees her, takes her in. Time seems to stretch itself out and he shows no sign of tiring of her; it’s hard for Faith to bear. She puts her coffee cup on the nightstand and leans toward him for a kiss. He raises his hand to her face, feathers his fingertips across her lips.

“Not yet,” he says. “Let me look.” His touch now accompanying his gaze. His fingers find the places that dimple when she gets that extra-wicked grin, and he smiles.

She squelches the urge to jump to her feet with a curse or a joking insult, and suddenly, she is on the other side. Her terror of being seen for who she is passes, and she relaxes into his attention. It’s then that they melt toward each other, exchange one slow, lazy kiss.

When they part, Faith’s heart is galloping. “How’s the leg this morning?” she asks.

“It aches,” he tells her. “It’s worse at night, but I’m still feeling it.”

“You keeping up with your pain meds?”

“I’ve been spacing it out some. Don’t want to end up in all the gossip columns when I skulk into the Betty Ford.”

“Talk to Dr. Michaels about all that. I called and he’s working you in today, 2:30.” God, this sounds so domestic. Was this the kind of talk that filled his and Anya’s life together? How’d you sleep, here’s today’s schedule, don’t forget to stop by the packie on the way home from work. Abruptly she stands. “Anything you need before I head back downstairs?”

“About six more hours of sleep. Failing that, a clean towel and a potential-free bathroom.”

“That’s one dream I think I can make come true.” She swats his good leg. “C’mon. Up.” Faith collects the empty mugs and leaves Xander to rise as she heads down the hall to hammer on the bathroom door.

Xander’s appointment with Michaels is just full of good news. Xander is officially one of his quickest healers ever, and he can start returning to his usual activities if he takes it slow. Certain amount of pain: normal. Take the meds as directed, it won’t turn him into Fuckhead in Jesus’ Son. (Not a direct quote, but the basic idea.) And Michaels is certain he left nothing behind when he removed the knife in surgery, no fragments.

“I kept that bad boy for my collection,” he tells Xander and Faith. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Anyway, the blade’s perfect, not even a nick.” He goes on to explain the healing process, pain and unusual sensations. Again, Xander is Normal Guy.

“Do an X-Ray,” Faith says. Michaels seems the slightest bit less enchanted with her than he was in the hospital. “Humor us, put our minds at ease.”

Michaels relents, orders the X-Ray. The result, shockingly enough: normal.

As they leave his office, Xander now graduated to a cane, Faith says, “Did that help settle your mind?”

“Yeah,” he says. Sounds like a lie to him. He watches her for a reaction, but there’s nothing out of the ordinary. His response must have struck her as, well, normal.

His mind seems like it’s elsewhere as Faith aims the car back toward Revello. She’s been trying to figure out this mood, which hasn’t lifted with the good word from Dr. Michaels. “So this collection of Michaels’ — what do you think it is?”

“What?”

“He said he kept the knife for his collection. You think he has a hard-on for bright, shiny blades, being a surgeon and all? Or maybe he keeps all the weird stuff he’s removed from people over the years. Y’know, lost sex toys, shivs, bezoars….” She suddenly realizes she’s the Xander — the motor-mouth seventeen-year-old version she remembers, anyway. Yammering away in hopes of some kind of response, even if it’s shut the fuck up.

“Oh.” A pause until he senses she’s waiting. “I don’t know.”

Way to encourage the unaccustomed prattle for the sake of cheering you up, chief. She falls silent for the rest of the drive home, and he seems to like it just fine.

There’s an unfamiliar car outside Buffy’s house when she turns onto Revello. “Company,” she says.

“No,” Xander says in a reckless burst of chatter. “That’s Giles’ car.”

She hits the gas and bangs a left at the next cross street.

“Hey, what’s the deal?”

“Why rush back? We’ve got an excuse to be out of the Summers Youth Hostel for a while. It’d be criminal to waste it. Why don’t we head up to the local park ‘n’ pet, do a little scoopin’?”

“Scooping? Do you mind translating?” Something, anyway. At least he’s talking to her instead of beaming faint messages from Planet Distracto.

“Christ, Xander, what do couples do at makeout spots?”

“Nothing, in broad daylight.”

“Fine. Don’t think outside the box. Let’s go tank up on espressos then.”

“Faith, why don’t you want to see Giles?”

“You really have to ask me that? How about this? He’s the biggest reminder of the fuck-up I was. In the The Watchers’ Council Book of Disappointing Slayers, I’m probably Top 10 material. Clue up, Xander. I’m scared.”

“Running away from a confrontation isn’t like you.”

“You ever stop and think maybe my big life ambition is to be not like me?” She finds an empty space two doors down from the espresso place and whips into it. “It’s the only goal I’ve ever had that everybody I know can get behind.” Faith propels herself from the car and waits on the sidewalk, turning to face the other way. Though it’s less of a production getting out with a cane than with the crutches, it still takes Xander a minute.

“I’d be disappointed if you succeeded,” he says quietly.

Her eyes sting and blur, which pisses her off. Faith walks ahead of him; she tells herself it’s so she can catch the door for him. “I’m buyin’.” Her voice sounds huskier than usual.

After she brings their coffee drinks to the table in the corner where Xander waits, he says, “What’s wrong with your shoulder?”

“What makes you think there’s anything?”

“The way you carry yourself,” he says. “And that hard left turn you made. You winced a little.” He stabs his straw into the ice in his drink a few times. “That from last night?”

“Yeah, but not how you’re thinking. It’s from a fight.”

Xander hooks his finger into the neck of her jacket, gives a light tug. “Let me see.”

She leans forward and lets the jacket slide down her arms. The bruises are mostly hidden under the wifebeater she wears, but she knows there’s enough showing to give him a good idea. He pulls at the back of the shirt, peeps down inside for good measure.

“Holy shit, Faith. You should have — I don’t know, iced this.”

“I got busy,” she says. “It was better than sittin’ with a bag of ice.”

He gently lays a hand on her other shoulder, presses a soft kiss right at the base of her skull.

While she’s still facing away from him she says, “I almost got killed last night.”

Faith feels more than hears his sharp intake of breath. “What happened?”

“Me not knowing when to quit, like always.” She pulls the jacket up. Before she can reach back to lift her hair out from under, his hands are there to attend her, and she is almost undone. Faith leans her head back into his hands. “Buffy went home, I stayed. I got two vamps to come after me in an alley. Kinda miscalculated.”

“Jesus.”

She sits up straight, shifts in her chair to face him once more. “‘All’s well’ and that shit.”

Xander takes her face in his hands, leans in to kiss her. When he pulls back, he says, “I’m not going to harp on this. I know better than almost anybody what being the Slayer is. But I have to say it once. I don’t want to lose you. You’re my date for the apocalypse.”

Faith laughs. “And it’s always so hard to get another at the last minute.”

They kiss again, which leads to a series of long, unhurried kisses in the midst of the lone coffee drinkers hunched over laptops and pairs of pseudo-beatniks working at important conversations. Faith has never before given herself to exploring the slow pleasures of kissing. She always was about getting down to it, and stopping for something like this (if she’d ever met a man who wanted it) would have felt like being stuck out on the L.A. freeway five miles from where she wanted to be. This, though, is like a Sunday drive, meandering, unrushed, undertaken solely for its own sake. And Xander is a talented driver, taking time to show her all the points of interest. There are a lot of them.

The manager, who knows Xander, comes over. He engages them in chat instead of saying “get a room,” but the intent and effect are the same. They finish their drinks, then Xander touches her arm. “Are you ready for Giles?”

“Why not? After all, he’s just a minor apocalypse.”

Faith has crossed this threshold any number of times in the last couple of weeks, but this time it feels like she’s standing at a border. It’s not as though Giles’s will be the first hostile face she’s seen since she got back. But his disapproval carries more weight. For the reason she outlined to Xander, but she left the other big one off the list. Rupert Giles is Richard Wilkins’ opposite number. Not in the whole boring Good vs. Evil way, but something more important. Rupert could have been to her what Wilkins was — mentor, father figure. But he hadn’t offered her quite the same deal. No unconditional adoration — Giles expected her to earn his approval, and she fell way short.

Pausing at the door, Faith sucks in a deep breath. She’s been a little short on air since the kissing session. Xander touches her briefly at the small of her back. It gives her courage, but doesn’t help the breath situation.

When they enter, Giles is sitting alone in the parlor (“paaaaah-luh,” the potentials shriek in glee whenever she says it out loud), one hand to his face, his glasses dangling from the fingers of the other.

Willow is rounding the corner from the dining room, carrying a tray with teapot and cups. “Hey, I’m glad you finally made it,” she says quietly to Xander and Faith. “He’s pretty jet-lagged.” She kneels to set the tray on the coffee table, talking loud enough to wake Giles while not letting on she knows he’s asleep. “So I hope English breakfast is okay. I mean, you’re English, which works out great, but it’s so not the breakfast hour. Unless it is, Bombay-time, then we’re good.”

Giles rouses and puts on his glasses, and Faith is relieved that it’s Xander his gaze falls on first. His haggard face lights up and he surges to his feet. “Good God. Xander. I’m delighted to see you looking so well.” He charges over, hand extended for a manly British handclasp, but then he changes the plan, embracing Xander instead. Much Anglo/American male back-thumping. “Willow made things sound rather grave.”

“They were,” Xander says, instead of making a joke. “I’m lucky. Faith, actually, has a lot to do with that.” He puts his arm around her — careful not to hurt her injured shoulder — and draws her to his side.

“Hello, Faith,” Giles says neutrally.

She’s filled with gratitude, though, for his obvious love of Xander, and it calms her fear. “Good seeing you, Rupert.”

He takes in Xander’s arm over her shoulder, decides to misinterpret. “Here, Xander, you must sit.”

He does — they all do. Xander slings his arm over the back of the sofa, lightly resting his hand on the back of her neck. At this moment she loves him more than she could possibly say.

In many ways, Giles looks little changed from when she first met him. The same comic book action hero chin and slightly prissy mouth, a contrast that always cracked her up. Tweeds, wire-rimmed glasses, slightly pinched look of worry — she never had determined whether that was a trait of the English or just watchers — all as she remembered. But he’s aged in the last three years. No surprise, she supposes, considering the death of his slayer and his favorite protege’s balls-out plunge into evil. What Willow put him through physically was in itself enough to mark him permanently.

“So did you bring us another potential to squeeze in upstairs?” Faith asks.

“No,” he says, and a few more years seem to press upon him. “The Bringers got there first.”

“Shit,” Xander murmurs. Faith feels a slight tremor ripple through his muscles.

“It was all very carefully orchestrated so I’d arrive just moments after they’d left.”

Xander shifts on the couch, rubbing his injured leg. “I hate to say it, but we’ve all fought an enemy this sadistic before. Who leads us around by the nose and plants —” Something he sees in Giles face brings him to a halt. After a pause he continues, “I say no more chasing after new potentials. This thing wants us split up. If it can’t do it psychologically, it’ll do it physically. It’s time we stopped giving the First what it wants.”

“He’s right,” Faith says.

Giles is silent for a moment, exhaustion seeming to roll off him in waves. “Yes. I believe he is.”

“Faith and I both had our experiences with the First while you were away,” Xander tells him. “Each of us saw it as Buffy. It nearly did major damage both times. We all have to be on our guard. I know you’re tired, Giles. We can give you the details later. But you should know, since this thing comes when you’re at your lowest ebb.”

Giles nods and sets his tea cup down. “I think perhaps a walk would revive me.”

“But don’t you think you should —” Willow cuts herself off as he gets to his feet.

He lifts an eyebrow and says, “Faith?” and without comment she accompanies him out the door.

The next-door-neighbor is home from work, getting out of his car as she cuts across the lawn to the sidewalk. Faith raises an arm in greeting as she waits for Giles, who travels via the front walk. “Bless you, Brother Randy. His time is coming, hallelujah.” Randy scurries inside his house.

Giles fixes her with a look and Faith grins. “Just a little friendly chain-yanking. He thinks we’re a doomsday cult.”

“And whyever would he think such a thing?” he says drily.

“Could be because Xander told him.” She sees the curtains twitch as Mrs. Randy checks out the music minister and the new convert, leather and tweed out for a stroll. Faith waves. “He needs something to do, Giles. He’s got talents that are going to waste around here, and the stakes are too high for that to be okay. He’ll never say anything to Buffy, and I can’t — that would be the end of the subject, now and forever.”

“I’ll speak with her. She takes too much on herself, and it’s only grown worse these last months.”

“Make it soon.” She surprises herself, laying down orders to Giles. Another thing she’ll do for Xander’s sake, it seems. “Something’s eating at him. I haven’t found out what, not yet, but I know he’s better when he’s focused on someone else.”

“Things have progressed rather quickly between you and Xander.”

“It might seem that way to you,” she says, “but from where we stand it feels like months.”

“I’d just hope that you’d—”

Faith cuts in. “Be careful? Not hurt him? Way ahead of you.”

Something, apparently, tells him not to pursue it. They walk, and she can feel him working around to whatever his purpose is for this stroll. She could wait, but she has her own agenda. “I wrote you a dozen letters when I was in prison,” she says.

Giles looks at her, startled. “I never received a one.”

“I know.” She smiles, but knows it looks pained. She wishes he’d turn his attention elsewhere. “I never sent any of them.”

He doesn’t answer for a moment. “Soul searching is never an easy thing.”

“Gets easier when you’ve got three years or so to do nothin’ else. You might not get good at answers, but you can become frickin’ wicked at questions. Some you keep for yourself, some are for the people who are important to you. If you’re lucky, you might get to ask some of those, maybe of someone who has answers.”

This appeals to Giles, who’s made a career of having the answers. “If there’s anything I can clarify for you—”

One of the neighbor dogs, a border collie with a red bandanna around his neck, comes to sniff at her ankles. Faith drops to her heels to rub her hands along his sides. “One of the big searches I’ve had for my soul is for the reason it’s so difficult to—” love, she wants to say — “to look after.” She murmurs to the collie, gives it a last pat on its flank and comes to her feet. “Oh, I know I’m a handful. Always have been.”

They resume walking and she keeps her gaze on the sidewalk ahead, the houses along the way and the kids pinballing across their front yards — anywhere but Giles. “You get in prison, and you hear everyone’s story. Then you start putting things together, seeing how things look from outside. Context, the big picture, whatever. And so I start asking, why’s a girl who’s gone to her protectors — and a minor, don’t forget — living at the Hot Sheets Spa and Resort? Why is it that the first person to see I need a decent place to live and the occasional real meal is the guy who’s planning to eat the entire population of Sunnydale? How do the crazy rogue watchers and the wet work division know how to find me, but the Council can’t seem to send me a watcher of my own? I’ve gotta think it’s me, something I did or didn’t do, because for about five minutes there, you thought I was the shit. So how did I fall through the cracks?” Her hands are in the pockets of her jacket, the nails biting half moons into her palms. “Something I did, something I was. Something changed everything, and I still can’t put my finger on it.”

She chances a glance at him now, and has to look away. There’s dawning realization, followed by defeat and horror and pity all mixed together — the same expression he had when he spoke of the slaughtered potential in Bombay. Part of her feels sorry for him. The rest (a lot more of her) wants to fucking slap him. How can this be news to you?

“It was what you were,” Giles says, his voice half strangled.

She thought nothing could wound her further, but she was wrong. The words are a blow as savage as the vampire’s chain slash in last night’s fight, and just as completely rob her of her breath. She stumbles to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk.

Giles turns to face her. “You were too much like me.”

Faith laughs, but that doesn’t feel like what’s happening in her chest.

“It’s true.” He begins walking again, and Faith is forced to tag along. “I went through a wild, dark period in my youth. My destiny was laid out for me from the time I was a child, and I rebelled against my training. I did stupid things, called on forces I couldn’t control. People died because of what I did. When I saw that same sort of wildness in you, I backed away.” He stops once more, his gaze searching her face. “I’m so terribly sorry. I failed you in so many ways.”

Here it is, what Faith has wanted for so long now, handed to her on a silver platter. And she doesn’t know what to do with it. She shrugs. “Water under the bridge. Over the dam. However that fucking expression goes.”

They walk for blocks in silence. When they’re back in sight of Buffy’s house, Faith says, “Guess I hijacked your conversation. What was it you wanted to talk to me about?”

A bitter laugh from Giles. “Oh, it was a wonderful post-prison speech, really. All about how I’d had a troubled past too, and rose above it. Filled with inspiration about how you could be — a grand failure — like me.” Now it’s Giles who refuses to make eye contact, even a sideways glance.

“Well, you make it sound so appealing,” she says breezily.

He manages a laugh, however brief, that sounds almost real. Faith cuts across the lawn toward Buffy’s front porch, and after the slightest hesitation, he steps onto the grass and walks by her side.

Xander’s given up on sleep. The ache in his leg has flared up in the night — another thing Dr. Michaels told him was completely normal. The black mood that’s sunk its claws into him is stronger in darkness too — the only thing that seems to loosen its grip is the sound of Faith’s voice. She’s stayed awake with him, indulging him with a late-night talkfest that has so far rambled all over the map.

They talk a bit about the year they met, but there’s not all that much material that’s safe. He dredges up the memory of the Christmas snowstorm.

“I thought that was such a crackup at the time,” she says. “I couldn’t get over how nuts it made everyone. It’s just snow, I kept thinking. For crissakes, it’s Christmas. Hell, I was used to a nor’easter every other week. I was so busy bein’ cool about it, oh yeah, snow, yawn that I forgot there was something amazing about it.”

Xander strokes the bare skin of her arm, thinking about how she was out of sync with them in so many ways back then, even small ones like this. The whole mood of Sunnydale was transformed that day, and she stood outside it. He feels her loneliness as if it were his, as if it were now, and the emotion is so strong it’s almost physical.

“While I was in the joint, though, I went back to that day a lot. That’s one of the things you do, when you have all that time. Pick the days — or moments — when you were happy or would have been happy, if you’d known enough to stop and let yourself be. You go back, inhabit ‘em, sometimes you do things a little differently.”

“So what did you change about that day?”

“Don’t make me say.” But he strokes her face, teases at her lips with his fingertips until she says, “Aw, just small dorky stuff. Snow angels and hot cocoa with Joyce. Once or twice I think I looked you up and we built a snow fort in your backyard.”

“That would be a lifetime first, but it sounds good to me.” He wishes now that she had come looking for him. Give them a few more things to talk about than hey, remember that time we went to kill Angel together? Some different Christmas memory to replace one of his Hit Parade of Depression standards.

Xander can sense Faith starting to drift into sleep, and he should let her go, but Lonely & Awake is not the corner where he wants to be dropped off. Besides, she told him she’d keep him company as long as he needed. “Did you ever play Anywhere But Here while you were in prison?”

She rouses herself to answer him. “Sure, lots of times. Though it didn’t really work as well without the other part.”

“What part is that?”

“Well, I never gave it a name, but I guess you’d call it Anyone But Me. The old geographic cure has one problem; wherever you go, there you are. So I started imagining I was somewhere else and someone else.”

“Like who?”

“Not like that, nobody real. I’d just, y’know, make up a life.”

“Tell me one.”

“No. Jesus, what a loser thing to do. ‘Let me introduce you to my imaginary friends from the joint.’”

“You think that’s how I see it?” He puts an extra helping of aggrieved on that.

“I don’t know. No. It’s just — this is the stuff you think about to get through, it’s not something you ever talk about.”

“You’re not in there anymore,” he says softly.

“No,” she agrees. She shifts position, curls herself against him, head on his chest. She says nothing for a long time, but he can tell from the tension in her body that she’s not fading into sleep. He strokes her hair, lets her be.

“There’s this tattoo artist, a girl,” she finally says. “Nobody knows where she comes from or what her name is. She just calls herself Obsession. She goes from place to place, no real plan. She shows up in a town and presents herself at the nearest tattoo shop, says she’ll work there or not, whatever, it’s up to them, she doesn’t really give a fuck. They always take her on, though, because she’s as famous as you can get in the underground. Within a day of hitting town she’s booked solid for a month. The deal is this, though: you don’t tell Obsession what you want. She just — reads you, then she gets the gun and inks the piece on you freehand. You submit to her, in this wholly personal way, without ever speaking to her. It’s permanent commitment, but she’s gone in a few weeks.” Faith uncurls herself, stretches her arms and legs, still nestled up close to Xander. “I got a lot of mileage outta that one,” she says dismissively. “Since I could pick her up and take her anywhere. Worked our way through every National Geographic in the library.”

Xander is not willing to let this go — or maybe it’s that her story won’t let him go. “Suppose I went to Obsession,” he says. “What kind of tattoo would she give me?”

“Full back piece,” she says without hesitation. “Turn over.”

Xander stretches out on his belly and Faith begins tracing a finger along the blank canvas of his back. What she draws is nothing like he expected, no sketchy tiger or coiled dragon. It’s pure line, dense and intricate, labyrinthine and mysterious. It spooks him a little that this is what Faith sees when she tries to read him. He has to admit he also finds her light touch fantastically sexy. She’s still working on a tightly filigreed section of his left shoulder when he turns beneath her hand and pulls her down to him.

Where they go is nothing like the dark place they went last night. This is languid, underwater sex, slow-moving and dreamlike. When they disengage, Xander falls into the first deep sleep he’s had in two nights.

He does not dream.

He awakens later in the night to throbbing in his left leg. He left the pain pills in the bathroom, and since he’s reluctant to rouse Faith, he tries to ride it out, fall back to sleep on his own. Thoughts start nagging at him, though, even more insistent than the ache.

The one thing they haven’t talked about in the hours they lay awake was what happened between her and Giles. They returned from their walk around dinner time. Giles turned in as soon as they came back, pleading jet lag, but Xander caught sight of him and he looked like shit. Faith wouldn’t say what they’d talked about, telling him it was as much Giles’ story to reveal as hers. So. It had been about Xander. He made another try each time Faith was close to fading into sleep, but each time she was sharp enough to resist. “Cut it out,” she said on his last attempt. “Jesus.”

Xander carefully removes himself from beneath Faith’s outflung arm and slips out of bed. After a stop in the bathroom to toss down a couple of pain pills, he makes his way to the kitchen. He’s not exactly hungry, but he pokes around in the refrigerator and unearths some pasta with chicken and vegetables. Smells okay, so he grabs a fork and eats it cold from the Tupperware, leaning against the counter, occasionally flexing his leg.

He’s worked his way through half the pasta when Buffy wanders into the kitchen in rumpled sweatpants and tee. “I thought I was the only midnight rambler around here,” he says. A thought occurs to him: “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“No. I’ve been thrashing around for a while. I heard you come down, and decided I might as well have some company.” She glances around the kitchen as if something is there other than the pots and pans and knickknacks and the stacks of Costco supplies they can’t find storage space for. “I can feel it gathering, can’t you? I’m not going to get much sleep until this is over.”

Xander offers the plastic container. “Here, finish this off. Pasta — the great coma-inducer.”

“No. Thanks. I’m not much for eating right now, either.”

“Willow’s got some kind of nasty, meadowy tea around here. That’s supposed to work.”

She shakes her head. “I just wanted to talk.”

But then she doesn’t, so he fills in. “Faith and I were talking earlier tonight. About that Christmas snowstorm, back when you first kicked the First’s ass. Remember that day?”

“I never kicked the First’s ass — where’d you get an idea like that?”

Xander puts the Tupperware bowl on the counter. “You didn’t die, Angel didn’t — uh, well, get any deader. No one else died. That’s usually what we call winning.”

“The First got bored with us. Or decided to keep us around for entertainment at some later date, like right now. It can wipe us all out any time it wants — it’s got all eternity, so what’s the big hurry?”

This might be Buffy’s idea of good company in the middle of the night, but it isn’t Xander’s favorite insomnia cure. “Yeah, right, the whole primordial evil, dawn-of-time thing. I keep forgetting that. Hard to hold eternity in the human brain.” Dawn of time. Funny coincidence, Dawn being the other entity he knows who’s been rattling around since before time was even a notion. Something sparks in his head, a beginning of an idea about eternal energies, and he struggles to shape it into words. Before he can even get it fully developed, much less mention it to Buffy, she breaks into his thoughts.

“How are things going with Faith?” Obviously working a little harder on the company concept. He’s grateful — since their fight, she’s mostly been ignoring the fact of Xander-and-Faith. She sits on one of the breakfast bar stools.

“They’re great, they’re great,” he says. “I think they’re going great.”

“Uh-huh,” she says dubiously. “You just said that three times. Why don’t you tell me what’s really going on.”

“Well, I don’t know for sure. I mean, it has been going great. She’s changed a lot, Buffy. I wish you’d get to know her again.”

“But—?”

“I think maybe she’s keeping things from me.”

“Like what?”

“The only one I’m sure of is what’s actually going on with my leg.” He realizes he’s been unconsciously rubbing it this whole time, ever since he put down the pasta bowl. He crosses his arms over his chest, hands jammed into armpits.

“Didn’t you see the doctor today?”

“Yeah, and I got this big song and dance about how well it’s healing. He even showed me an x-ray, pretty convincing looking, but how the hell would I know if it was the one they just took, or a ringer? Nobody will explain to me why it feels like there’s something wrong, something still in there. They just tell me I’m fine and to shut up about it.”

“Well, why would the doctor tell you it’s okay if it’s not?”

Xander shakes his head. “Beats fuck out of me. But Faith talked to him first, she’s the one who got me worked into his schedule today.”

Buffy rubs at her neck, lost in thought. “You know, there’s a vibe in the house I’ve been picking up on. Something secretive, you know? Goddammit. This is not the time to let something like that slip out of my notice, but I did.”

“I think she’s got Giles involved in this too.”

“Shit,” she says. “I’m glad you trusted me enough to tell me this, Xander. But be careful who else you talk to, okay? I’ll see if I can figure out what’s happening.”

The idea that someone’s finally taking him seriously suddenly makes him want to weep with relief, but he masks it. “Yeah, well, hurry, would you?”

“Count on it.”

So Faith did this thing. A stupid one, in retrospect. She saw a demon about a truck.

While she’d stayed with Xander at the hospital, Willow had helped try to sort things out with the pickup. No detailer in town would touch it; they all claimed the blood-soaked cab was a hopeless cause. Anya had helped dig up Xander’s insurance papers, but the agent was no help either. According to Willow, if Anya had any remaining influence with the dark powers, there’d be a toad working in insurance adjustments in Sunnydale. Faith asked Willow about a spell, but the only one she could find to get rid of the blood had to be done inside the truck, and that was something Faith wouldn’t dream of asking.

So Faith asked Spike if he had any ideas. He put her onto a sweet but butt-ugly demon named Clem, who introduced her to a couple of demons who were fond of aged blood. She offered them ten bucks each and all they could eat (which she resolutely does not think about), and the deal was done.

So now the demons tell Clem who tells Spike who tells Faith that the truck is ready. Informing Xander that she’s headed out to the packie to get some respectable beer to drink, she sets off on foot to the place they’ve agreed to meet. Clem’s there to facilitate, a real peacemaker of a demon, which is a good thing, since these fermented-blood freaks are a nervy pair of bastards, trying to wheedle a tip out of her. If Clem weren’t there, she’d just behead the annoying fucks, but instead she suggests in vivid terminology that they shut up while she inspects their work.

Faith reaches for the door handle but has to take a couple of deep breaths before she can pull it open. She’s had some dreams about being trapped in the cab, with the sticky heat and smell of all that blood. Sometimes Xander is there with her, dead or dying; sometimes it’s just her and the gore. She has to stay the hell away from the kitchen whenever Spike is anywhere near the microwave, for fear that the scent of hot blood will kick her back into that nightmarish drive to the hospital.

Behind her, she can feel Clem’s sympathy melting off him much as his flesh does, and that makes her butch up. She seizes the handle and yanks.

It looks perfect inside, just as it had been, freshly detailed, when Xander drove her back to Sunnydale from prison. There’s no residual smell, no rusty flecks missed in seams or crevices.

“I told you we do nice work,” one of the demons says as pulls two tens from her pocket. “How about a little extra?”

“Sure,” she tells them. She reaches under her jacket for the blade sheathed at her waistband. “I’ll give you an extra thirty seconds’ head start, on top of the thirty seconds I was gonna give you.”

They don’t stick around to find out if she’s bluffing.

“Sorry,” Clem says. “They’ve cornered the market in this kind of work, so they can afford to be schmucks.”

“No problem. I’ve run into enough of that type in the prison system. Only with these guys I don’t have to put up with their shit.”

Faith gives Clem a lift to the cemetery, stopping first at the store to buy him some beer and junk food as thanks for helping out. She picks up a couple of sixes for Xander, the darker microbrews he seems to favor, for when he can go back to his nighttime beer in the truck ritual. Once she’s alone again, she realizes her hands are clamped, bloodless, on the wheel, her heart racing. Faith has no idea how to do this; she’s no good at gifts. She’s never had any money to buy them, never had a talent for making something out of nothing or even picking up on the dumb little things that make a person feel you’ve noticed what they like. Like those Japanese cookie sticks Willow brought him in the hospital. This is the biggest thing she’s ever had to give to another person, and it scares her.

She pulls up in front of the house and goes in search of Xander. When she finds him, he’s sitting on the back porch steps with Willow, deep in conversation. It looks serious, and she thinks maybe she should leave them undisturbed. Willow senses her presence, though, turning to greet her, so she steps out onto the porch.

“Hey,” Faith says. She feels like puking, though that’s stupid; he’ll be glad to have his truck back. “I’ve got somethin’ to show you. Out front.”

Willow lends him a steadying hand and he rises and follows Faith to the street. Willow tags along, keeping back a bit to let Faith get all the glory.

“My truck,” he says. “I thought everyone said it was a total loss.”

“Yeah, well, I kept asking around till I shook something loose. Look inside, it’s just like after you had it detailed.”

Xander opens the passenger door, strangely quiet. He runs his hands over the seat where he’d sprawled, bleeding almost to death, and the dashboard. “How’d you do this?”

She tries a smile. “Strictly don’t ask, don’t tell.”

He wheels on her, his expression closed down, his eyes hard, unreadable. Instinct pushes her to take a step back, but she fights it and holds her ground.

Willow steps in. “This is fantastic, Xander. You don’t know what Anya and I went through, trying to get this fixed, and everyone told us it was impossible.”

“How’d you do it?” he asks again, and now some of the potentials are drifting out to the front yard, exclaiming over Faith’s surprise, but quickly falling silent as they catch the tension between her and Xander.

“I’m not so sure you’ll want to know,” Faith says again. “One of those ‘ignorance is bliss’ special cases.”

“I want to know,” he says, his voice with that same cold steel it had held two nights ago, when they’d had the fight about his leg. “I want to know everything.”

“Fine.” She shrugs. “Spike’s friend Clem knows a couple of guys.”

“Guys?”

“Demons, if you want to get technical. They have a thing for old blood, you’ve got a shiny new truck again. Everyone’s happy.” Clem, maybe, was happy, but why get all legalistic about it?

“You let demons work over my truck. And I’m supposed to ever want to use it again?”

“Xander—” This from Dawn. “You know she meant—”

Faith can’t bear hearing the end of that sentence. She cuts in: “You do what you want with it, it’s your truck. It was fucked before, it’s no worse than fucked now. Just let me know if you want me to push it over a cliff for you; at least then there might be insurance.” Turning for the house, she pitches the keys into the bushes as she climbs the front steps.

She heads down to the basement, all the while telling herself she should have known better. Never been any fucking good at gifts, she knew that, she’s always fucking known that. She winds a couple of loops of tape around her hands. Why hadn’t she paid attention to the queasy feeling she had on the way back to the house? Or hell, taken the easy way out, left the truck to be scrapped or torched it before she’d gotten those insurance fuckers involved. The bag hangs there on its chain but all desire to lay into it drains from Faith’s muscles. She paces instead. Fucking worthless. Who could love her? Not her mother. Not Giles. Xander gave it the old college try, but she’s seeing now how well that’s going to work out. She’s got one person out of a whole lifetime who she can say loved her, and his heart was connected straight to hell.

Faith slams a fist into the meat of her thigh, as hard as she can, then drops onto the pile of exercise mats and sits with her head in her hands. Only when she watches the skin redden and thread with its first faint purplings does she realize this is the same spot the Bringer’s knife sank into Xander’s leg.

The girls skulk off, embarrassed. A look passes between Willow and Dawn and then Dawn disappears too. “That was pretty harsh,” Willow says quietly. “Faith went to a lot of trouble to do that for you.”

“I didn’t ask her to.”

“No. You didn’t have to ask her to.”

“She went behind my back, Willow.”

“It’s called a surprise.”

“Let’s just stop talking about this, because you don’t understand.”

Willow reaches for his hand, the one that’s not busy white-knuckling the cane. “Make me understand.”

“There’s nowhere private to talk.” The house, the front porch or back, there’s no place to go without someone stumbling over you sooner rather than later.

“There’s your truck,” Willow says. “Sorry. Not funny. Wait — what about this?” She unlatches the pickup’s tailgate and lets it down. “It’s a place to sit, and I suppose it’s demon-free.”

After a moment he hoists himself onto the tailgate, shifting so his back is against the side wall, his legs stretched out on the truck bed. Willow positions herself opposite him, her left leg touching his right.

“So talk to me, Xander,” she says quietly. “What’s got you so worked up?”

“Now there’s a conversation starter that really makes a guy want to open up. It’s almost as good as ‘what’s your fucking problem?’”

Willow bristles. “What is your fucking problem? I’m trying to figure out what’s going on with you, but I’m not getting you at all.”

It always takes him aback when Willow lobs a fuck into a conversation. The F-bomb, she calls it, and with her it is the heavy ordnance because she uses it so sparingly.

He blinks, takes himself out of attack mode. He considers telling her everything, then remembers Buffy’s warning. “I don’t know.” But this is Will, he tells himself. He owes her something. Their friendship is almost old enough to vote. He owes her the truth. “I do know. There’s some piece of that knife still in my leg, Will. I can feel it in there, and it’s doing something to me. I’ve been saying it since I was in the hospital, but nobody will listen. Nobody will tell me the truth. If you know what they’re hiding from me, tell me what it is.”

“All I’ve heard is the same thing you have, that the doctor says you’re doing great.”

“Swear to me.”

“I swear.” Her voice quavers. She reaches out in the gathering darkness to take his hand. “Xander, I don’t think anyone’s keeping things from you—”

“Believe what you want to believe,” he says flatly. “But I need your help.”

“Anything I can.”

“Find out for me. However you have to: get it out of Faith, or do the research on those goddamn Bringers and their knives. Whatever. But I need to know what’s inside of me, and how to get it out.”

Willow promises, and he relaxes just a bit. She says the whole truck thing will be okay, that there’s a ritual she can do to clean the cab of any leftover demon mojo. She talks about Faith, making a case for her. The more she talks, the more his leg aches. Finally he makes his excuses, heads into the house.

He cannot sleep with that thing in his leg, that bitch in his bed.

He couldn’t believe she had the goddamn nerve to show up here as if nothing had changed. She came into the room just as he was pulling a tee shirt over his head and leaned against the door jamb, watching him. Taking in the fine scratches cross-hatching his right forearm.

“Sorry about the keys,” she said. “That was juvenile.” He had nothing to say. She held his gaze. “If you want me to get what the cold black stare is about, you’ll have to tell me. I don’t score so big on the non-verbal comprehension.”

“You’re planning on sleeping here?”

“Fuckin’ A right, Xander,” she said. “Go ahead and be pissed off. It’s your right. But I’m not bunking out there in the dorm. Bed’s big enough for two.”

She sleeps beside him, on his right as always so she doesn’t bump the leg. But she’s curled away from him, not against him, and there’s been no conversation. The effort not to touch her inadvertently in his restless movements spreads tension through his body, and the ache radiates along with it.

To say the pain’s worse would be a joke. It ranges from baseline red-hot to searing white heat. Xander can’t quite locate it — sometimes it seems to be in his head, the kind of broken-glass headache that comes with a high fever; other times it’s in his thigh. Finally he throws back the sheet and gets out of bed — easier without her sprawled all over him. He stops in the bathroom to slam back a few pills, and heads downstairs.

He ransacks the kitchen for the Yellow Pages and hunches over it, leaning on his forearms on the counter. He’s got cousins — the branch of the family that rarely speaks to his side — a couple of them are doctors. Though he’s paid a psychic price for every favor they’ve ever done for him, he thinks he can trust them to help. He riffles through the physicians listings until he finds the handful of Harrises. Topher. Jesus, was there ever a Christopher in the annals of history who went by “Topher” who wasn’t a completely unbearable specimen? Ah, and he’s gone into proctology. Takes one to know one. His brother Jared, mostly an okay guy, but he’s a gynecologist. Huge help.

Another wave hits, worse than any he’s felt since the hospital. Christ. He bows his head over the phone book, trying to deepen his breath, but it’s going shallow, rapid.

“Xander.” It’s Buffy, but he can’t respond, can’t even look up at her. All he can do is try to ride this one out, hope there’s an other side to it. “Xander, listen to me. I got some demon cornered at Willie’s, and he told me what he knew about this thing. You’ve gotta get it out of your leg.”

The pain eases off just a notch, enough to let him speak. “First thing tomorrow, Buffy. I’ve got a cousin who’s a—”

“It’s killing you, Xander. Now.”

“But how—”

She’s standing by the butcher block. Of course, simple. He seizes one of Faith’s big knives — he thinks of them as hers, though they’ve been in this house since he’s known Buffy — and takes a shaky breath.

She keeps her blades so sharp the first cut doesn’t even hurt until he’s already begun the third.

Faith flashes awake as Xander leaves the bed. It hasn’t been the worst sleep in her life — there’s about a thousand nights in prison that vie for that honor — but lying next to someone who loathes her has much of that same flavor. When the door closes behind him, she rolls onto her back, grateful to have a moment where she can take up some space without crossing into his danger zone.

She wishes she’d never opened herself up to this. Her life has taught her pretty well to keep things superficial and — well, maybe not always safe. But she knew better than to leave herself vulnerable to this sort of shit. Xander seemed different, though, and that’s where she got caught.

Different. She sits up in bed. Last fucking thing she wants is to go into any room he’s occupying. But her sense that something’s wrong is so overwhelming that when she makes her move for the door, her feet barely touch the floor on the way there.

Faith races down the stairs and rounds the entryway to the dining room. What she sees through the kitchen door does not surprise her somehow.

Blood. At one time she might have said it was a lot of blood, but now she knows better. Xander’s hand — the one not holding the knife — is covered in it, and his left leg, which he has raised, a foot resting on the low rung of one of the kitchen stools.

She slows her step, not wanting to provoke him into doing anything worse. “Xander. Put that down.”

He seems not to hear her; his attention is focused on a point close by, as if there’s someone with him. Fuck. The First.

“Xander!”

He switches his grip on the knife, readying himself to plunge it deep. Now there’s going to be a lot of blood. Faith abandons caution, running at him full tilt, screaming at him to drop the fucking knife, drop it now.

They crash to the floor together, the stool clattering down beside them. Every bruise on her body feels the impact, and Xander howls and curses. Faith tries to pry his fingers from the knife hilt as his bloody fist winds itself into her hair, yanks hard, breaking her hold.

She grinds her elbow into a pressure point at his shoulder, and he releases her hair. She dives once more for his knife hand. “Xander, listen. You put that blade in your leg and you’ll die.”

“I’m dying now, bitch.”

Blood smears between their bodies, making every point of contact greasy and slick. She locks both hands around his wrist, but before she can try to knock the knife loose, he swings a fist into her ear, and she tumbles off him. Through the roaring in her head, she hears the slap of bare feet and murmur of girl voices. What the fuck do they think, this is another rough sex fest? “A little help, yo,” she calls out, a split second before he clocks her again and she snaps her head against the sink cabinet. Xander raises the knife in his fist, but suddenly Spike is there, twisting his arm up behind him, and she hears the knife clatter on the tile. As she’s trying to rise, a pair of legs flash past her and there’s another howling curse from Xander.

Kennedy stands over him, panting. In the meat of his upper arm quivers the dart she has jabbed into him. “Trank dart,” she huffs, pleased with herself.

Already Xander’s struggles are growing clumsy and weak. “Buffy,” he says. “Tell them.”

Faith shoves past her, yanks the dart out of his arm. “Dumbass,” she snarls. “No way of telling how that shit’ll react with the drugs he’s on.”

Xander slips out of Spike’s grasp, unconscious.

Behind her, she hears Amanda’s reedy voice. “Oh my god, Faith. You’re bleeding.”

A few minutes later, Giles, Willow, Anya and Dawn are down in the kitchen too, and the potentials have been sent back to bed. Dawn sits cross-legged on the floor beside Xander, holding his hand as Giles cleans and bandages the new wound on his thigh. Willow is doing the same for a cut on Faith’s arm that slashes across her tattoo. All those wicked fight-or-flight chemicals still cruise through Faith’s body, nowhere for them to go, and she trembles violently on the kitchen stool as Willow attends her. At Giles’ suggestion, Anya puts on water to boil, starts gathering tea supplies.

“He called out to Buffy,” Faith says, “just before he dropped. And when I walked in on him, he was listening, but there was no one else in the room.”

“The First,” Spike says. “So how does this happen? He already knows the First can appear as Buffy.”

“He was the one who warned me, just yesterday,” Giles says.

“Right. So how does he fall for it again?”

Willow’s hands stop moving for a moment, coming to rest on Faith’s shoulders. “It told him what he wanted to hear.”

“Come on, Red.”

“I’m serious. He talked to me earlier tonight about the knife wound, asked me to help him. He thinks there’s a piece of it still inside. He said it’s doing something to him.”

“The wraith knife,” pipes up a voice behind them. Andrew. He’s good at fading back, being invisible — till he opens his mouth. Faith reminds herself not to forget this. “You know, when Frodo gets stabbed by the knife of Mordor and the shards keep working their way —”

Faith turns, gives him her own version of the cold black stare, well honed in prison. “There are no shards. The x-rays were clean.”

“Could there be something else?” Dawn asks. “Poison, maybe? Or a spell?”

“I think we have to consider the possibility,” Giles says.

Faith digs her thumb into the bruise on her thigh, the one she made with her own fist. “Jesus. He’s been begging me for help since the first time he woke up in the hospital. And I —”

“Nobody knew,” Willow says. She gives a gentle squeeze to Faith’s shoulder. “You did the best you could — got him to the doctor, made sure he took an X-ray. None of us thought to consider —”

Andrew jumps in again: “If whatever it is reaches his heart, do you think he’ll become a Bringer?”

Faith is off the stool and halfway to him by the time Willow catches her uninjured arm, pulls her back. “You can leave before I hurt you,” she tells Andrew, “or after. I really don’t care.”

He disappears without another word.

She turns back to the others. “We have to decide what to do about Xander. We don’t know how long he’s going to be out, so we’d better figure out what we’re doing with him until we can learn what’s wrong and fix it.”

“Well,” Spike says, “like any well-equipped basement, this one has a set of chains.”

“No. Jesus.”

“It might be necessary, Faith,” Giles says. “At the very least he needs to be under guard, but our strongest warriors may be needed elsewhere.”

The door off the back porch opens and Buffy steps in, returned from patrol. “The whole house is lit up, what’s —” She takes in the scene in the kitchen, Xander sprawled on the floor, Willow and Giles finishing up their bandaging. “What happened?”

Willow fills her in, with a couple of additions by Giles and Spike.

“We need to get him somewhere safe before that stuff wears off,” Buffy says.

Faith bristles. “Working on it.” She silently curses herself for letting Buffy get to her. Ego doesn’t matter, she tells herself. Xander does.

“How violent was he?” Buffy asks. “Do we need to get him down to the basement?”

“Was a helluva fight,” Spike comments. “He knocked Faith here half cockeyed.”

“I don’t want him chained in the goddamn cellar like some kind of lunatic.” Faith casts a glance at Spike. “No offense.”

“But he is a lunatic,” Anya offers. “At least right now.” Faith gives her a double dose of the look that chased Andrew off, but Anya’s impervious. “I’m not saying it out of spite. It’s not like it reflects that well on me, having been engaged to him and all.”

Faith’s about ready to rise to her feet again when Giles says, “Anya—” in a tone of warning, and Anya presses her lips together.

A faint groan escapes Xander, which takes the discussion out of the realm of the purely theoretical. Faith is swiftly outvoted, and the men hastily get him down the wooden stairs and onto the bed Spike’s been using.

She follows, her heart twisting when she sees the shackles bolted to the cellar wall. “Just the one wrist,” she says. “All we have to do is keep him away from anything sharp.”

Spike and Giles exchange a glance, decide there’s no harm in doing it her way. She turns away when she hears the wrist band snap shut. Lot of memories attached to that sound, none of them good.

Willow’s troubled gaze meets hers. “Let’s get upstairs,” she suggests. “He’ll be okay.”

They leave Dawn to sit with him, keeping watch until he wakes. When they reach the kitchen, Anya’s made the tea, and Faith accepts a mug. She wishes it held something stronger.

Willow gestures to the bandage on her arm. “I’m afraid that’s going to leave a scar.”

She shrugs. “Won’t be my first.” By reflex, her hand travels to her belly, where she still carries the fading scar from that night she and Buffy fought. “So Willow, did you find anything yet on this knife?”

Willow doses up her tea, using that as a reason not to look at Faith. “I haven’t started on that.”

“Well, what the fuck were you waiting for?”

She meets her gaze. “There was something else Xander asked me to research. Earlier, before you came with the truck.”

“More important than this?”

“Only in an apocalyptic sense.” That silences Faith, and Willow goes on. “He came up with something that might be a way of fighting the First. It goes back before the beginning of time, and well, so does Dawn. Xander thought the First could be fought with the energy those monks placed in Dawn. That maybe there was some way of — I don’t know, activating it. I’ve been trying to look for some way of doing that without hurting her.”

“That’s a terrific idea,” Anya says brightly. “It’s always good to get your anti-apocalypse strategies from someone who’s crazier than a shithouse rat.”

“Anya,” Giles says, “if you can’t say anything useful, do shut up.”

“Fine. Suppress dissent. It’s the in thing these days.”

“I can’t do this,” Faith says. She stands. “If I spend five more minutes in this room listening to this shit, I’ll kill something.” She looks meaningfully at Anya.

Just then a shriek rises up from the cellar. “Oh god oh god oh god! Buffy! Spike! Giles!”

Faith shoves past all of them and runs downstairs. Dawn stands rigid by the base of the stairs, both hands pressed to her face.

Blood again. Xander has come to and torn off the bandages, and now he’s clawing at the knife cuts he made. Tackling him again, she keeps up a frantic litany in an almost unbroken stream. “Xander don’t don’t Xander we’re getting you help please….” She scrambles to catch hold of his unchained wrist, but he swings the other, clipping her in the temple with the shackle. Faith rolls off the bed, shooting stars across her vision. This is fucking getting old.

Buffy and Spike move past her to the bed.

“Help me, Buffy, get it out, get it out —” He doesn’t lash out at her, instead pawing once more at his leg. In tandem they tackle him, shackling the other wrist. “Tell them what you told me.”

“Xander, listen. That wasn’t me. It was the First. It wants you to hurt yourself.”

He yanks at the chains, then falls back, panting. “For god’s sake, Buffy,” he says. Faith can barely hear him over the renewed noise in her head. “Why are you doing this to me?”

Faith scrambles to her feet and flees the cellar.

His friends have done this to him.

Ignored every plea for help. Chained him like an animal — like Spike — in the basement, and bound his legs with rope for good measure. Left him here to die and — this is the kicker — told him the whole time they were trying to help him, keep him from hurting himself.

Or maybe this is the kicker. They left him down here with Anya, just so he could know how truly alone he is.

His friends did this. His lover.

Anya is fucking around with the first-aid kit, re-bandaging his leg. Funny. Like aiming a pistol at his head, but offering him a couple of aspirin first.

Xander addresses the cobwebs in the wood beams of the ceiling. “I bet you’re just loving this.”

“Not especially.” There’s no smug satisfaction in her voice. Surprising — that’s what she does best.

“Oh come on. Your ex-fiance is dying and you’ve got a front-row seat. It’s got to be the most fun you’ve had since you were a vengeance demon.”

“You’re not dying. We won’t let you.”

He laughs bitterly, but says nothing. He’s fallen into a place beyond words.

Anya continues attending to his leg, her touch confident and at the same time gentle. It’s a kind of mockery subtler than any she’s ever displayed before, and he’s seen the whole range. “There,” she says as she finishes. “I can untie your legs now if you want.”

Give her nothing. He breathes, stares into the rafters, fighting the fear and the pain.

After a moment he feels her hands working again, this time by his ankles, unknotting the ropes. “You can thank Faith that you’re not going to be left hog-tied in your boxers.” Anya produces a pair of sweat pants and begins tugging them on him; Xander doesn’t cooperate, but he doesn’t resist, either. “Personally I think it’s a bit ridiculous to worry about someone’s dignity when you’ve got him chained in a basement, but she’s a strange girl all around.” She gets the sweats pulled up over his hips, studies him a moment, then tugs at a few places where the material has bunched. “There,” she says again.

She settles back into the chair she’d moved to the bedside, and Xander can feel her watching him, but he refuses to meet her gaze. Time passes — feels like days. Could be fifteen minutes.

“If I’d known you were going to be like this,” Anya says, “I would have brought down a magazine.”

“What were you hoping for? Screams? Convulsions? Sorry to disappoint. Maybe later.”

“Goddammit, Xander, listen to me for once. You’re not dying. I know you feel—”

He turns to her now. “You don’t know shit.”

“It’s the loneliest feeling in the world,” she says softly. “You’re certain you’re going to die, but no one else thinks so. The terror of that is huge, it’s overwhelming, but the loneliness is worse.”

How’d she come by the truth of this, he wants to know. But he doesn’t want to know.

Sleep won’t take him so he follows the pain instead. It leads him to someplace dark and solitary, where Anya can’t reach him, where the betrayal of Faith and his friends is hardly important at all. The pain is very large and Xander is small, hardly a pinpoint, and it surprises him how comforting it is to be so small.

Faith comes down to the kitchen after a couple hours of tossing and turning. The potentials are doing drills out back; Andrew’s the only one in the kitchen. She gets down a mug and pours herself some coffee, wondering how long it’s been on the heater plate. “Anything new?”

Andrew shakes his head. “It’s been pretty quiet. I guess that’s good. Anya’s still down there.” He flicks a glance at the bandage on her arm. “That must really hurt.”

“‘Throb’ is the word. Nothing serious, though. You wouldn’t know how Anya takes her coffee?”

“Cream, I think. But just a little.”

She pours another coffee and heads down the cellar stairs. Anya’s sitting on the second step, arms wrapped around her knees. Faith offers the second mug.

“Hey, thanks,” she whispers.

Xander is lying on the narrow mattress, completely still.

“He’s sleeping, anyway,” Faith murmurs. “That’s something.”

Anya shakes her head. “I don’t think it’s sleep, and I’m not sure it’s good. Something’s got him.”

“Well, we just have to take him back.”

“Figure out how, and I’m with you.”

Neither woman speaks for a while. Finally, Anya says, “I think the less we have to say to each other, the better.”

Faith casts her a sidelong glance; funny, she looks like someone just gearing up for a speech. “Suits me fine.”

“Because I can’t get behind all this happy exes-and-currents friendship crap. People pretend it’s so Oprah, so self-goddamn-actualized and all, but it’s laziness pure and simple. Nobody is willing to take on vengeance anymore. They find out there’s some work involved with the ex-hating, and they can’t be bothered.”

“Your people with standards,” Faith says, “they’re all in the joint.”

“Exactly. So I’m not looking to be your new best friend here. Just so we’re clear.”

“Gotcha.” Faith is waiting for a point to announce itself, but she decides it’s best not to be married to the idea.

“I’ll say one thing, though.”

Here we go.

“God knows Xander’s a typical specimen of the male species. His personality’s about 75 percent irritating traits, 24 percent maddening. But he’s as good a man as you’ll find.” Anya’s voice has softened just a touch, but she hones its edge. “Don’t let yourself think about that too long, or you’ll get completely depressed. Still. Much as I loathe saying it, you seem good for him. There’s just one tiny thing you should know.”

She seems to be waiting for a response, so Faith says, “Okay.”

“Treat him well, or I’ll hurt you. I’m not a demon anymore, but I’m still a very creative person.” Anya reels in a breath and lets it go, then turns to Faith and says brightly, “I’m glad we had this little chat.”

Faith can’t suppress a grin. “Me too. Maybe we can do it again sometime.”

“Or not.” She thrusts her empty coffee mug at Faith. “Go get some more sleep. You look like death on a cracker.”

She takes a last look at Xander, who hasn’t made the slightest movement since she came down. Faith can’t think of a fiercer guardian to watch over him, so she gives in to her exhaustion and heads upstairs.

Everything turns on you eventually. Friends. Lovers. Even comfort.

This blank, open sea of pain that he’s been drifting on no longer feels like a safe place to hide. Xander struggles to distinguish where the pain ends and he begins. If he begins at all. He is losing himself. A moment ago, he might have let himself slip under the waves. But now there’s no peace there, only terror.

He thrashes against the shackles, welcoming the bite of metal into his wrists, anything that calls him back to his body. Screams a long string of curses just to hear himself, to feel the rawness of his throat. Then there are hands pressing him down on the mattress, too tentative to have much effect. A voice, distraught.

“Xander, please, stop.” Willow. She speaks to someone else then: “He’s been catatonic all morning. Then suddenly, he’s like this.”

More hands, more pressure, and he struggles harder — not so much to fight them but to feel, to locate himself. Willow makes the mistake of coming too close, and he seizes her by the hair. “Why won’t you fucking help me?”

“Right. Enough of that, mate.” A thumb jabs into some pressure point at his shoulder, and the whole arm lights up in that funny-bone combination of agony and numbness. Xander’s hand jerks open, releasing Willow. And now he’s back — lying on this piece-of-shit futon mattress in this pisshole of a basement, his arm consumed by cold fire, his wrists raw, breath sawing harshly in and out of his body. The pain, now, is inside of him. Relief floods through him, and he stops thrashing.

Willow’s hand stays on his chest. “Xander.” There’s relief in her voice, too — does she know how close he came to disappearing? “Xander, it’s all right. You’re all right. I’m here.”

He wishes he could bat her hand away. “You’re here? What fucking good does that do me? You’re no better than the rest of them. Worse.”

“Xander —”

“You said you’d help me. Lying bitch.”

“I’m trying every way I know to find out how to help you.”

“Wait much longer, and you can just raise me. At least that’s one thing you know how to do.” Hurt flickers in her eyes, and something in him feeds off it. “You never have been much use to me. Back when we were kids you couldn’t stop my old man from knocking me around. Nobody expected you to, you were just a weak little girl. I thought it was enough back then that you were my friend. Guess what, Willow — it’s not enough anymore. Now you’ve got the power to end the fucking world if you want, but you won’t lift a finger to help me. I’d rather be at the mercy of my old man again. At least I always knew where I stood.”

“Oh, give it a bleedin’ rest!” Spike, who has backed off to a corner of the basement, enters the fray again. “Or I’ll dart you my own bloody self.”

“Spike — don’t.” Tears slick her cheeks now.

“I should’ve let you do it,” Xander says quietly. “Well, you know what they say about hindsight.”

A faint cry escapes Willow, and her hand flies to her mouth.

“Go,” Spike tells her. “I’ll mind this cretin.”

Xander closes his eyes. Hears the quick tread of Willow’s feet up the wooden steps, the slam of the cellar door. The metallic rasp and flick of a cigarette lighter, the snap of it closing.

“You’re a right cunt,” says Spike.

“When I want your input, you’ll be the first to know.”

Spike has stamina. And also noplace else to be during the daylight hours.

He sits by Xander’s bed until the smudgy light leaking into the dirt-caked windows goes late-afternoon gold, refusing all offers to give him a break. Dawn made an appearance after school, wanting to join the two of them, but he sent her away. “No, pet. Not such a good time now.”

He is worthless as an opponent, as slippery as soap. Nothing Xander says to him does any damage, because he plain doesn’t give a shit. Spike offers no friction, no purchase — there’s nothing to hang onto to stop Xander from drifting back into the void. When Xander gives up the attack, Spike turns on the crappy little black-and-white portable that gets only one channel, and seems engaged in Dr. Phil’s advice to the loser population. If “engaged” means offering up a running commentary of ridicule, derision and, for a change of pace, mockery, all laced with obscene alternative suggestions for every participant, including Dr. Phil.

This soundtrack of creative abuse burrows somewhere deep in Xander’s memory, sparking associations. His father was no less inventive with verbal lashings, if you caught him at just the right time — once the booze had revved his imagination, but before it made him stupid. Xander usually escaped by heading to the basement — it never occurred to the old man to follow him downstairs and chain him up as a literal captive audience.

If he has to listen to another minute of this, he’ll go crazy. “Spike — for god’s sake. Please. Just shut up.”

Something in his voice makes Spike look around at him. He studies Xander a moment. “Sure. Meant nothing by it, just having a bit of fun.” He swats the on/off button, and the basement goes quiet.

“You’re watching me die, pal. Since when is that not enough fun for you?”

“Xander. Listen to me. You’re not going—”

“Bullshit.” He says it softly, without anger. “It’s not convincing from my friends; why should I believe it from you?”

Spike starts to talk about being in a similar dark place when he came back with his shiny, newly-minted soul, and how the First is a master manipulator. Xander curls on his side, facing the wall, and shuts him out.

When she wakes up again in the afternoon, Faith takes a few aspirin for her pounding headache and makes her way down to the basement. No apparent change, except Xander’s now turned toward the cinderblock wall, pulled halfway into a fetal position. Spike’s slouched in a chair some distance away, head tipped back, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lip.

“Has he been like this since this morning?”

Spike shakes his head. “He was right chatty there for a while.”

“That a good sign?”

Again he shakes his head no. “Whatever’s happened to him — it’s gettin’ worse.”

“How bad?”

“He savaged Willow. Said he wished he’d let her destroy the world.”

“Shit. Shit.” She turns and bounds up the stairs, in search of Willow. Finds her napping on the living room floor, musty reference books fanned out around her. Giles has his own pile of books on the couch, a huge leather-bound volume with crumbling edges open on his lap. He looks up as Faith walks in, his face grim. “Willow,” she says. It takes three more repetitions of her name before Willow rouses. “Tell me something. Would having the knife make it easier to help Xander?”

She blinks sleepily. “There’s a chance. I could find out if there’s a spell on it, for sure.”

“Then get me the address for Dr. Michaels. I don’t know his first name, but he’s the trauma surgeon on staff at the hospital. They’ll have him on the directory. Get me anything else you can, especially his schedule and anything you can find on his security system. I’ll go up and change.”

Faith snatches up the pages as they emerge from the printer, frowning over them.

“I still don’t know,” Willow says. “Shouldn’t you try asking him first?”

“Then he knows just who to come for when it disappears. I’m telling you, Willow, I got a creepy feeling from him when he talked about that knife. It gives him major wood. Maybe just because he’s a collector, but maybe it’s gotten under his skin somehow, too.”

“You think he’ll suspect when it does disappear?”

Faith smiles. “Not the way I’m gonna do it.” She saunters to the entryway mirror and gathers her hair up into an elastic, wincing as it pulls at the bruised flesh by her temple. Tucking the ponytail beneath a dark knit hat, she studies her reflection. “Well, except for the fashionable prison pallor that makes my face glow like the frickin’ full moon, I’m good to go.”

“Do you need something for that? Soot, or something?”

“What, blackface, like in the movies? I thought I’d just go with the big neon ‘cat burglar’ sign.” Willow looks so dismayed that Faith impulsively reaches out to ruffle her hair. “Don’t worry. I lived a life of crime back in the day. I was pretty good at it.”

“Be careful.”

She responds with a dismissive wave and sets out. But Willow’s words echo within her. She can’t number how many people in her life have said “be careful” to her, but she’s sure it’s less than a handful. Two words, but they go to a place in Faith almost as deep as Xander’s declaration of love.

Love. Well, that’s Faith’s luck for you. She finds Xander — reconnects with him, to be more accurate — and now he may be lost to her. Not just to her — lost to his friends, to himself.

Screw that. She turns onto the boulevard where the swanky neighborhood begins. Faith doesn’t give a shit what it takes. She will find him and bring him back.

Sweet setup Michaels has here. There was a rambling, fancy-ass Tudor like this in Faith’s hometown, but it was the town library. He doesn’t live with a wife or family — Faith heard plenty of gossip from the orderlies and nurses who befriended her while Xander was the hospital — so what does he do with all that space? More to the point, how is she going to find what she’s looking for and get the hell out before it turns into a cluster-fuck? She doesn’t have all night to stand here thinking about it; this is one of those neighborhood watch sorts of enclaves. Her town had that, too. When some junkie broke your door down, the neighbors watched him haul your shit away.

She breaks from the shadows and strides across the street. It’s only a few seconds before she’s up and over the wall.

He must have fallen asleep in the library again. The whispery sound of book pages being turned is one he never regarded as comforting before, but it blends with murmuring voices into a familiar kind of music. Library smells different, though. Dank, faint tang of mildew. Weird. Giles is usually a maniac about the proper care of books, even worse than Xander is about his tools. The odor, now that he’s noticed it, sets up an unpleasant itch in his nostrils.

He decides it’s time he joined the land of the living, lent a little research help. Xander stretches but the motion is brought up brutally short by some kind of restraint, something biting into chafed wrists as if he were—

Chained.

Something has got him then.

When he opens his eyes it takes only a second to get his bearings. He hasn’t spent that much time in Buffy’s basement, but it’s burned into Xander’s memory. And now the rest of it comes back. “Jesus God.”

A book closes. The creak of a chair. He looks toward the sound, and finds Giles sitting where Spike had been. “Jesus,” he says again. He tugs on the chains. “Giles. I know you’ve never been my biggest fan, but I never thought you’d —”

A pained look crosses Giles’ face. “Xander, believe me.” He removes his glasses, polishes them. It’s always a betrayal of some inner state of mind, this habit. Paired with believe me, Xander’s sure it prefaces a lie. “We’re doing everything we can to find a way to help you.”

Right. Easy to see that one coming. “Go to hell.”

“Giles, let me talk to him.” Buffy rises from another chair, puts down a leather-bound book, no doubt Volume LVIII of The Big Book of Very Bad Things. “Why don’t you go upstairs, see if you can find something he might eat.”

“God, Buffy. I’m so glad to see you.” Xander reaches a hand toward her, as far as the chains will let him. It takes everything he has not to break down.

Giles regards him briefly, then turns to go upstairs. “Be careful.”

Buffy takes Xander’s hand, sits in the chair Giles has abandoned. “Ah, Xander. Look at your wrists.”

“Buff, you’ve got to help me. I don’t have a lot of time. Help me get this thing out of my leg.”

“I know you’re scared. We’re going to bring you through this.”

Something knots in his chest. “‘We’? You’re with them now?”

Buffy strokes his cheek. “I’m with you, Xander. We all are.”

He jerks away from her touch. “All of you. You keep lying and lying and lying. Why are you doing this to me?”

She closes both her hands around his left. “I know this is hard.”

“You said you’d help me. You said this thing would kill me if I didn’t get it out.”

“The First said that.”

“No.”

“Listen to me, Xander. It tells you what you want to hear because it wants you to destroy yourself. It tried that before, and you beat it.”

A bitter laugh escapes him. “What it said in the hospital — you think that’s what I wanted to hear, that I’m a worthless fuck-up?”

“No, no — that’s not what I meant.” She closes her eyes a moment. “The First has been around forever because it adapts. It couldn’t kill you that way, so now it’s trying to seduce you. Either way, it wants the same thing.”

His chest is so tight that he can barely breathe. “It was you. They got to you, made you change, just like Willow. But I know—”

“Xander. Did I touch you? When I said you would die, that you had to cut yourself open —” She raises their hands, hers clenched so tightly around his that it hurts. “Was I doing this?”

The last patch of firm ground he has to stand on crumbles away, and he feels himself falling. Buffy has abandoned him, or she was never with him. It no longer matters which. Xander pulls his hand out of her grasp, gives her what Faith called the cold black stare. “I let you kill him,” he says.

He watches his words settle in. She knows who him is — there’s never been any other him, not really, for almost as long as he’s known her.

“I knew Will was working on the spell to get his soul back. I was supposed to tell you to stall, give her time. Remember what I said?”

She can’t look at him now. “‘Kick his ass,’” she whispers. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Just saying I understand. Sometimes the hard decisions have to be made. Exterminate a vicious vampire before he has a chance to kill again. Chain one of your best friends in a moldy basement to die. It’s all about the greater good. You can’t let personal feelings cloud your vision, right?”

He watches her face as she struggles to maintain control.

“Just leave me alone,” Xander says.

But he knows he has been all along.

French doors — what a wicked frickin’ gift to the burglars of the world. Sure, these are wired into an expensive security system, but Willow has successfully hacked into it, so all Faith has to do is punch out a pane and let herself in.

She’s decided on a system. First, go in search of a display case, in the parlor, or some kind of den, something like that. If that doesn’t pan out, there might be a private collection upstairs or maybe a safe. If it’s in a safe, she’ll be well and truly fucked, but her money’s on a more public display. He enjoyed talking about “that bad boy,” as he called the blade. No point having something that shiny and exciting if you can’t show it off.

Too many damn rooms in this place — it takes three tries before she finds his toy collection in an office with leather chairs and a desk the size of a battleship. Oh, Michaels likes glittery sharp things, all right. There’s a whole case on one wall of what she assumes are scalpels and other medical instruments. Some of them are probably valuable, she supposes, but she’s cultivating the junkie mind, looking for a few highly fenceable objects to take along with the knife.

First things first. A couple of table-type display cases contain the good stuff. Knives, swords, daggers. Some look like museum pieces, etched, jeweled and inlaid with gold. Others — well, it’s amazing how some objects can give off their own stink of evil. The Bringer knife is one of those. It’s not about the pleasure of crafting something beautiful, but about joy in killing.

Faith punches a leather-clad elbow through the top of a case. Long time since she’s done this, but there’s still a thrill that charges through her blood at the sound of shattering glass. She snatches up the Bringer knife and zips it into one of the jacket pockets. She scoops up a couple more of the nasty-looking blades, but concentrates on the jewel-encrusted stuff, jams them into the canvas bag slung over her shoulder. The most spectacular piece is a sword, which she reluctantly leaves behind. Can’t fit it in the bag, can’t run with it or go over the wall. Even a junkie wouldn’t be that stupid.

Just for form’s sake she rifles the desk and pockets some cash, a gold lighter and a pistol. Nice fancy box stuffed with cigars; she takes a handful. She’s about to step back into the hall when she hears a voice from that direction.

“Who’s there?” Michaels. She’s heard him shout before, that time he was ripping Xander a new one. There’s fear mixed in this time, a lot of it. Dangerous. “I’ve got a gun. Come out with your hands up.”

Shit. She moves toward the hallway door. Then takes a running start and cannonballs herself through the office window. A shot rings out behind her, and then another as she clambers up the wall. Then she’s over and running full tilt.

She doesn’t know if he called the cops before he made his macho stand, but just in case she cuts through the cemetery. Just like there were parks back in her old neighborhood the cops would never enter after dark, no Sunnydale officer’s going to risk his ass walking into the boneyard at night. Behind a big mausoleum she opens the canvas bag and takes out the tee shirt she’d worn last night, now smeared with her and Xander’s blood. She rips it down the center and drops it onto the ground, and swings the bag by the strap and lets it fly. A few yards along the way, she pulls off the cap and flicks it into a bush. With any luck the evidence will either disappear or the cops will believe some poor junkie made a score he didn’t live long enough to celebrate.

By the time Faith makes Revello, she’s just a girl taking an ill-advised walk after dark.

When she lets herself in, she finds Willow curled up in the corner of the sofa, Giles’s old books still scattered around her. She’s abandoned them for a mug that’s giving off some unpleasantly herbal smell. Faith unzips her jacket pocket. “I got the knife,” she says, then notices as Willow looks up. Her eyes are rimmed with red.

“Aw, Jesus, no.” She lets the knife clatter to the floor and wheels blindly toward the kitchen.

Willow scrambles to her feet and goes after her. “Faith, no, wait.”

Wait? Wait for what? She bats at a lamp in the entry way, spins it shattering onto the floor. Willow makes a grab for her, catching her above the right elbow, where the arm is slashed. Faith yowls in pain, then sends Willow reeling into the wall.

“Faith, listen to me. He’s okay, he’s — well, not okay. But he’s alive.”

That throws off her stride, and she smashes her hipbone into the dining room credenza. She folds herself over, trying to breathe, trying to stop shaking. Then Willow is there with her, murmuring. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to make you think — He’s just so not himself that I couldn’t help crying. Maybe you should sit —”

“No. I’m going down there.” She straightens, steadies herself with a hand on the top of the credenza.

“I don’t think you should,” Willow says. “He’s slipping away, I think. What’s left — doesn’t seem to be much more than cruelty. I don’t know if there’s much Xander left in him anymore.”

Faith steels herself, pushing off from the wall. “Then maybe you should be getting that goddamn knife and finding out how to bring him back. When you’ve got it figured out, you know where to find me.”

At first she thinks they’ve left Xander down here alone, and anger courses through her trembling muscles. He lies so still, one arm thrown up to shield his eyes from the yellowing light cast by the bare bulb above. The sight of shackles circling his wrists squeezes her heart painfully. She doesn’t kid herself — they’re necessary, just as they were when she was bound in chains. But she knows deep in her bones the desperate sense of hopelessness they represent, the belief that the whole world is against you. She watches the rise and fall of his chest, grateful for this much.

Finally she notices another presence in the cellar. Buffy perches on the pile of exercise mats, her arms hugged tight around her own body. Xander’s at rest, so Faith walks over to Buffy, sits on the mats beside her. “I got the knife. Willow’s working on it. So how is he?”

Buffy shakes her head and it’s then that Faith sees the tears that track all the way to her jawline. “He’s so scared he’s dying that all he can do is lash out.” She palms the tears from her face and turns toward Faith. “I don’t think you should stay down here. You’ve got something with him that maybe you should protect.”

Surprise at Buffy’s acknowledgment of this flashes and then is gone, crowded out by a question — what’s left to protect if she runs from him now? “What, B., you think I can’t take it?”

Buffy bristles. “Does this have to be a competition too? Can’t we just knock this crap off for a second?”

“Yeah. Sure,” she says quietly.

“I’m not sure I can take it, so the pressure’s off.” She knots her fingers together, a gesture that reminds Faith of Dawn. Family resemblance. Funny thing. “He may say something to you that you can’t ever erase. Maybe you just want to go upstairs and help Willow.”

“As Spike puts it, I went fifteen rounds with the First when Xander was in the hospital. I don’t see how this could be worse.”

“It is worse,” Buffy says, so low Faith can barely hear. “Because it’s Xander.”

“What did he say to you, B.?”

“Leave it alone, Faith. You don’t want to know. Just go.”

“I’m supposed to turn away from him now, to protect my feelings? You know the things I’ve done. So does he, and he hasn’t turned away. Not till this thing got inside his head. How can I think about covering my own ass?”

“You love him,” Buffy says.

“Oh yeah. I’m a goner.”

“Christ Almighty,” Xander shouts, and Buffy and Faith both jump. “Can we just skip the mindless girl talk?”

Faith rises and goes to his side. “Is there anything I can get for you?”

He lowers his arm, blinking even in the dim light of the basement. “Yeah. You can get fucked. I’m done asking you for help.”

“All right.” As she sits next to the bed, she hears Buffy’s soft tread up the stairs. “I’m here if you change your mind.”

“I’ve had a whole parade of people drop by to watch me breathe my last. They keep going away, so I guess I’m not dying fast enough to suit them. What about you? You’ve had to wait longer than any of them. Years. Delayed gratification is a bitch, ain’t it?”

“Maybe they’re going because you’re being an asshole.” Her heart is hammering. She takes a breath and lets it out. “I brought the knife back and Willow’s doing what she can. We are trying to help, Xander. Just hang on a little longer.”

“Every goddamn one of you has said the same thing. ‘Lie here and die, Xander. Honest, we’re doing our best. Giles is looking through a book and Willow’s working on a spell —’”

“I know you’re scared.” Faith says. “Fuck, I’m scared too.” She puts a hand on his uninjured leg.

“Get out.” Xander jerks away from her touch, a movement that clearly carries a cost. His eyes squeeze shut and a ragged breath hisses through his teeth. When he finds his voice again it’s still rough with pain. “Get the hell away from me.”

She settles back in the chair. “I’m stayin’ right here. I’ll shut up if you want, but I’m not going anywhere.”

“You can stay here till hell freezes over, Faith, but you’re never gonna get it right.”

Something cold clutches in the pit of her stomach, but she covers. “What’s that, chief?”

“This ‘stand by your man’ shit. Give it up. Oh, I’ll give you mad props for trying to have some kind of normal relationship. But someone as damaged as you — I think you’d be better off if you just stopped pretending you could live like other people.”

The something in her stomach — a knife. Slitting her right up the middle now. Slicing into her heart. She forces a smile. “You’ve been watching you some Dr. Phil.” Faith does the Real Man leg spread number, left ankle crossed over the right knee. She brushes some dirt off her shoe. “Tell me more.”

He’s turned back toward the wall now, giving off bored. “Fuck off.”

“If you want to screw with my head, you’ve gotta do better than that. After the First, well, this is just like watching Carrot Top after you’ve already seen Gallagher.” But she can’t stop from wrapping her arms around herself — just like Buffy — and when she does she feels a lump in the inside jacket pocket. She reaches inside to check — oh yeah, they survived the climb over the wall. Delicately biting off the cap of one of Michaels’s cigars, Faith sticks it into her mouth, firing up his fancy-ass lighter. It takes her a moment to get the rhythm of puffing on the thing, but soon she gets it going.

The scent of smoke makes Xander turn from the wall to look at her. “What the hell is that?”

“That, Harris, is the smell of burning money.” She holds it out to him. “Take it. Everyone should smoke a Cuban before they die. Might as well now, just in case you’re right.” He stares at her as if she’s lost her mind. Well, at least he’s thinking of something besides dying, besides shredding her soul. “Go on. Don’t be shy, I got one for myself.” She produces it from her pocket, holds it up for his inspection.

Tentatively he takes it from her, the chain making a sharp metallic noise that grates on her nerves. As she busies herself with lighting her own, Xander puffs cautiously.

Once she’s gotten hers going, Faith says, “This is a great fuckin’ smoke.”

He’s picking up the rhythm now. “Whatever happened to the notion that you were going to shut up?”

“You can’t smoke a Cuban without talking about smoking the Cuban. It’d be like — I don’t know — having an orgasm without screaming. Knocks out 47 percent of the fun, right there.”

“Where’d these things come from?” Faith could see that he didn’t want to be talking to her at all, but he couldn’t stand not knowing.

“Dr. Michaels’s house, just like the knife.”

“That prick gave you a handful of Cuban cigars?”

“He didn’t give me anything, Xander. That’s what makes them taste so extra special.” She does fall silent then, and so does Xander. They sit in B.’s grubby basement, Xander shackled to the bed, smoking expensive monster cigars like a couple of fat cats. And though it’s not exactly doctor-recommended, savoring the smoke slows his breathing and seems to calm him down.

“You’re right,” he says after a while, as if the words have to be yanked out of him. “This is a sweet smoke.”

The door at the top of the stairs opens and Giles calls down. “Faith. Willow’s onto something. Could you come up— What in god’s name are you doing down there?”

“Cuban zen,” Faith says. Before she rises to go to Giles, she puts her hand on Xander’s shoulder, and this time he doesn’t fight her touch.

She’s still puffing the cigar as she joins the Scoobies in the kitchen and helps herself to a clean saucer to use as an ashtray.

“What is that thing you’re smoking?” Giles wants to know.

“A nice Havana cigar.” She reaches into the jacket, extracts another. “Don’t worry, Rupert, I budged one for you too.” He declines and she tucks it back in her pocket. Fine. Better spent on Xander. “So what’s the story?”

Willow places the Bringer blade on the kitchen counter. Every time Faith sees it she’s struck again by how evil it looks, how it makes something want to shrivel inside her. “Well, there is a spell on this thing,” Willow says. “It’s not designed to cause physical harm, I’m sure they count on the blade itself to take care of most of their enemies. The mojo on this thing puts up a psychic attack. That’s where this obsession Xander’s had about the knife doing something to him came from. It has been doing something to him, just by creating and amplifying the idea that it’s doing something to him. Pretty soon that idea is the only thing there is — that and the fear that it’s killing him. The good news is, it won’t.”

Anya pipes up with her sunny little view of the world. “Unless, of course, he dies because he thinks he’s going to die. It works all the time in voodoo, and I used that one a few times myself, in my vengeance days.”

“Thanks for the good word, Anya,” Faith says. “If you come up with any more, feel free to keep ‘em to yourself.”

“It’s worth taking into consideration,” Giles says. “It does point up the need to counteract this quickly, whether it’s his life or his sanity we’re trying to preserve.”

Faith puts out the cigar, suddenly feeling a little sickened. “You’re not saying this thing could drive him permanently crazy.”

“We don’t know,” Giles says.

“Let’s get on it, then. What do we need to do?”

Willow starts explaining, diagramming things out. Never been Faith’s strong suit, keeping her demons straight or the intricacies of spells. Just point her at something that needs killing, and let her go. Her mind keeps slipping off topic, worrying at the things Giles and Anya said. Was the Xander who was down there now the one she’d get back? Or would she get him back at all?

Now Willow is looking around at all of them, confirming that each knows his or her part in this. Shit.

She swallows her pride. “Tell me again, Willow. What you want me to do. And — if I’m gonna fuck things up, tell me to bow out. I’m not on my best game, I know.”

Instead of rolling her eyes, she turns her clear, calm gaze on Faith and smiles. “All you have to do is maintain the circle, no matter what. And keep loving him. If you lose the thread of what’s going on, just concentrate on that. You have no idea how powerful that is.” Hard to believe this is the same girl she held a knife to, so many lifetimes ago. Faith, a grudge-holder by nature, never expects to be forgiven of her own crimes, much less embraced as a friend.

They set up in the cellar, the waft of incense mingling with the layers of smoke from the Cubans. Buffy unchains Xander to allow him to stand in the center of their circle. Though Willow explained what they were about to do before he was freed, Xander’s sharp-tongued volubility has deserted him, and Faith realizes his fear has kicked up to a whole new level. She longs to touch him, reassure him, but she suspects it would only make him more afraid.

The thread of this ritual slips her grasp even faster than she’d expected. There are candles and what looks like colored sand poured in a ring around Xander. Herbs and incense and Buffy’s hand in her left, Spike’s in her right, strong grips on either side. Willow and Giles are chanting in Sumarian or Turkish or pig-Latin for all she knows, as Xander stands rigid facing Willow. From her position in the circle, she sees the side of his face, the muscle ticcing wildly at his jaw. She’s grateful it’s Willow, calm, almost distant, that his eyes are fixed on, not Faith, who would only spark his apprehension with hers. Keep loving him, she reminds herself, and kicks the fear out of the center of her thoughts.

The pitch and pace of the chants rise, and a clammy heat pervades the cellar. She feels the bones of her hands grinding together under the grip of Spike on the one side, Buffy on the other. Snap of ozone in the air, and an otherworldly blue flame engulfs Xander. His head jerks back and a howl shudders out of him, and only the strength of Spike and Buffy’s grasp stops her from breaking the circle and running into the fire for him.

Then the chanting stops and the eerie blue glow vanishes and their absence is palpable. Xander’s harsh gasps for breath rise above those of the Scoobies. He sways, then collapses onto the concrete floor.

Hands unclasp, and she and Willow are at his side. Faith places a palm on his forehead, fevered and damp. He reaches out blindly for her, and she takes his hand in hers, holding fast. “It’s all right, Xander, you’re all right, it’s over now,” she murmurs.

After a moment, she and Willow help him sit up. His breath is still ragged, his head hangs down.

“How do you feel?” Willow asks. “Your leg.”

“It’s fine.” His voice is low, unsteady. “I mean, well, it hurts. From what I did. But — that’s all. Otherwise, I’m a little shaky.”

“I’ve got some tea,” Willow says. “It’ll help a lot.”

He nods. Faith can feel the tension in his body, still racked with faint tremors. He touches his free hand briefly to hers, then withdraws the other from her grasp. Xander raises his head to look at the friends gathered in a knot around him. Faith herself. Anya. Buffy. Willow. Spike. Giles. Back again to Faith. His gaze meets theirs one by one, touching briefly and then sliding away, contact too painful to maintain.

“Jesus.” He drops his gaze to his hands, which he studies for a moment, then looks up at them again. “You’re all the best friends I have. The best people I know.”

“Exceptin’ me,” Spike says. Faith recognizes that brand of snark as a feeble attempt to cut the tension in the room.

His face serious, Xander regards Spike. “No. You too, I think.” Another moment of silence, which no one is willing to break into. “I can’t — I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything now,” Buffy says. He almost flinches at the sound of her voice. “You should rest.”

He nods again. “Maybe you’re right. I think I need to be alone for a little while. I’ll be upstairs.” As he rises, still unsteady, Faith stands to help him up the stairs, but Xander waves her off.

“I’ll bring the tea up when it’s ready,” she tells him.

It’s a slow, laborious climb up the cellar steps, and the Scoobies all seem to hold their breath until he reaches the top. He doesn’t turn to face them, but says, “Thanks, everyone. For bringing me back.” The door closes softly behind him.

They sit there in the gloom of the cellar, looking at each other.

“It worked,” Willow says. “He’ll be all right.”

They straggle upstairs in ones and twos, saying little, and Anya puts on water for tea.

When Willow’s herbal infusion is brewed, Faith carries a mug upstairs to the room they share. There’s no answer when she knocks. When she opens the door a crack to peer inside, he is gone, and so are his keys. By the time she gets downstairs to the porch, Xander’s truck has disappeared as well.

Xander lets himself into his old apartment. The air has a stale smell, how loneliness manifests itself in a place. He flicks on all the lights as he passes through the rooms, hoping it’ll help, but it doesn’t.

He knows just what he’s looking for, a metal lockbox pushed far to the back of the top closet shelf, zealously guarded against Anya’s occasional purges of his most morally objectionable belongings. He rarely opens the box, most of the time doesn’t even remember its existence, but he knows it’s there if he needs it. When things get bad.

It probably says something about him that he carries the key to this box with him all the time, on the ring with the ones to the house and the truck. He finds the lockbox stashed behind a cardboard carton of sex toys that got one tryout and were abandoned. (Guess there’s an Island of Misfit Sex Toys too.) The top shelf of the closet, he decides, is not a cheerful place.

Xander sits on the bed and unlocks the box. Lets out a breath of relief to discover Anya has not somehow jimmied the lock and sold its contents on eBay. It’s all here, small but precious: his country music cd collection.

It’s all ancient stuff — or at least the new stuff is all by the old hairbags who’ve been around forever. He sits on the floor by the stereo, fans the jewel cases out across the carpet. All of it falls into the Music of Pain category, but there are important subdivisions. Patsy: ruler of Heartbreak, General. Merle Haggard: the go-to guy for Why is my life so shitty? George Jones: master of Oh. Because I fucked it up, that’s why.

He picks out a George, Cold Hard Truth. Pretty recent — the one he’d just finished making when he nearly killed himself boozing and driving. Xander slides it into the tray and lies back on the rug, hands behind his head. He still feels the weight of the shackles on his wrists, like some phantom pain.

You don’t know who I am, but I know all about you…

Amazing, how a voice so smooth can sound so chilling.

I’ve come to set the record straight. I’ve come to shine the light on you. Let me introduce myself — I am the cold, hard truth.

Xander doesn’t need an introduction. It all set in the moment the spell fell away. Everything the obsession with the knife wound had unleashed in him. And it had all been in him; it was not part of the magic that gripped him. He knew in some dark place within how to wound the people he loved most. Some he slashed at with the truth — cold and hard as tempered steel, George, you got that right — others with whatever lie that would cut the deepest. Anything to spread a little of the suffering he was enduring.

Some eighteen years of being best friends with Willow has shown him exactly where to wield the scalpel to do the most damage. Easy to zero in on Anya’s weaknesses too. Same with Buffy, though he hasn’t known her as long or been as intimate. Just aim for her feelings about Angel. Giles, never quite knowable to Xander, came in for more of a berserker-style attack. Swing the old broadsword and hack at whatever you can reach.

There is a woman we both know, I think you know the one I mean…

And Faith. She made herself wide open to his attacks, practically handed him the knife, and she did it out of love. He saved some of his cruelest jabs for her. This time it wasn’t possession. Everything that came out of him was inside him all along, the shittiest part of himself that he usually kept locked down.

You’d best remember me, my friend — I am the cold, hard truth.

There’s no illusion that it wasn’t his fault, no pretense that he doesn’t remember things he said or did. He’s no longer a boy, and the easy way out is not a road he’ll travel now. But he doesn’t know how he’ll face them, now that they know who he is.

From beneath you it devours.

From deep within you it devours.

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

She gets a list of likely places he might go, and three offers to come along, but Faith insists she’ll go alone. The Bronze she crosses off immediately. Even if he felt like getting drunk, he was in no shape for a crowd scene when he left, she’s sure of that. He’d be more apt to stop off at a packie to buy something and then hole up. The likeliest place for that, she feels, is the apartment he shared with Anya. She sets off in that direction, preparing for another glimpse into a relationship she can’t even find space for in her imagination.

When she pulls up in Giles’s car she’s not sure she has the right building. It’s not the sort of swank place Michaels lives in, but it’s undeniably nice. Big picture windows curving around the rounded corners of the building, grounds groomed like a goddamn poodle. All the lights in one corner apartment blaze in the early glimmer of dawn. She wonders if she could possibly have hit the lottery on her first try — and then she spots Xander’s truck parked around the corner. Faith glides up behind it and parks, then lets herself into the building with the keys Anya gave her.

As she approaches number 2D, she considers whether to knock or just walk in without warning. Intuition shudders through her, and she fumbles the key into the lock with suddenly shaky hands.

The living room is awash in light, but unoccupied. Music plays softly from some source other than the big stereo in the corner, and Faith follows the sound. It takes her to the threshold of the bedroom, where she freezes at what she sees.

The closet door open, light blazing in there, too, and a step stool planted in front of a high shelf, recently ransacked. On the bed a smallish metal lockbox, open and emptied. Behind the bed —

I don’t know how long I can survive, but one thing that I know is —

Behind the bed on the floor —

Come springtime the roses will return, but you never will.

A pair of legs, splayed on the carpet, visible to her only from the knees down.

She forces herself to move, rushing toward the bed, her motion fueled by the fluent string of curse words she howls. As she rounds the corner of the bed, steeling herself for more blood —

Xander sits up — alive, whole, just a little wild-eyed.

Faith falls to her knees.

“Jesus God,” Xander says, panting, “you scared the shit out of me.”

She starts to laugh and finds she can’t stop.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” she says, when she can finally speak. “God, nothing.” She reaches out to touch his leg, reassuring herself he’s really there. “We all kind of freaked when you disappeared.”

“Yeah. I kind of freaked before. Which was pretty much the point behind disappearing.” He picks up one of the jewel cases on the floor, flips it over to the back without really looking at it, pitches it back onto the carpet. “Faith, I don’t think I can do this right now.”

Her stomach lurches. This is it. The real Xander’s returned and kicked out his hateful double, and he still doesn’t want her. “Do what?” she whispers.

“I just — can’t talk about this yet. Not even to you. Especially not to you.”

She shifts, sitting on the floor with her back against the side of the bed. “There’s nothing you have to say right now. Just — c’mere. Lean back.”

He hesitates, then moves where she indicated, settling in to lean against her, the two of them nestled like spoons. “You’re all right?” he asks, and she assures him she is, threading her arms beneath his, enfolding him. She lays her cheek against his shoulder. They sit like this for a while, not speaking, and after some time Xander stretches out his foot and clicks the stereo off with his toe. Faith bides her time.

A long period passes with no sound but their breathing. Gradually, his breath changes, and she can tell by its harsh quality and broken rhythm that there are tears coursing down his face. She says nothing, just snugs her arms closer around his body.

Faith waits this out, too. Offers him the connection of their bodies. Not exactly skin-to-skin, but it means something. The steady in and out of her breath, which he slowly matches with his own.

“If our team needs a master bridge-burner for the apocalypse,” he finally says, “I guess I’m the guy. I don’t just burn ‘em, I blow ‘em up real good.”

“You missed one,” she says quietly.

“I can’t figure out how.”

“I’ve been where you were.” Faith lifts a hand and begins stroking his dark hair, gently dragging her fingers through its thickness. “Scared beyond belief. Feeling totally alone, knowing in that knee-jerk primitive part of my brain that everyone was against me, that they’d throw me to the dogs in a heartbeat. I was trapped out there on that shitty little rocky island, and somebody built a bridge out to me. I blew that sucker to hell and gone, didn’t I?”

He says nothing, but he tips his head back slightly, surrendering to her touch.

After a while he speaks again. “I deliberately savaged everyone I care about. Maybe you can put a spin on it that lets you understand it, but the others —”

“Xander, they all know where it was coming from.”

“No, they don’t,” he whispers. She waits out another long pause. “It wasn’t the spell. I said those things, not that fucking knife. Those things I said — whether they were true or not — they lived somewhere in me all along. That knife just cut them loose.”

“Those things live in everyone, Xander.”

“No, they don’t. In people like us, maybe. We grew up with them, but other people —”

“Other people too,” she says. “You’d be surprised.”

Another silence. Then: “What I said to you. None of it is true. I took the easiest path to hurt you, but it was all lies. Tell me you know that.” She hesitates, and he says it again. “Tell me you never believed it.”

She lies and tells him what he wants to hear.

Faith resumes moving her fingers through Xander’s hair and softly says,

You do not have to be good.

These words have lived in her heart for nearly three years, but she has never spoken them aloud. It hurts her chest to let them out now.

You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Xander turns to look at her, amazement written on his face.

“It’s a poem.” Her chest is still tight with a fierce ache, but Faith refuses to let fear stop her from telling Xander who she is, offering her trust again. “‘Wild Geese,’ it’s called. By Mary Oliver. It saved my life when I was in the joint. A lot of her poems did.” Funny how they’d come to her. Faith had found the prison library early in her sentence. Some leftover belief from her time in Sunnydale that the library was where she’d find people who cared about her. She’d been lucky — her intuition had been right. After a few conversations, the librarian had loaned Faith her own poetry books, and she’d copied them over into notebooks and memorized them. “I rode those poems out into the world,” Faith says. “Slept on the ground wrapped inside them. Put my hands in cold pondwater and drank them. They kept me alive.” She longs, when they’ve beaten the First — if they do — to head out into the landscape and see everything in these poems. “Do you want to hear the rest of it?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I do.” He shifts, moving behind her so that she is now leaning against him, wrapped in his arms.

She starts from the beginning and recites the whole poem, the ache in her chest slowly giving itself over to warmth. When she finishes Xander asks if she knows any more, and as the world outside begins to move into day, Faith sits nestled against him, reciting every love poem to the earth that she can remember.

Eventually it occurs to Faith to call the Scoobies and let them know Xander’s been found and he’s safe. As he rattles around the kitchen making coffee, she tells Willow not to worry if they’re a while in coming back. “He’s still trying to deal with everything he said and did.” She smiles at Willow’s immediate declaration that they all love him and know what he’s been though, and tells her she’ll pass along the message.

Xander has been struck by a completely different thought as he’s been rummaging through the half-empty cabinets. “I realized something. This is the first time we’ve had away from Camp Scooby since I got out of the hospital. We’ve got all this space, nobody in it but us.” He sniffs at a carton of milk he’s pulled out of the fridge, then makes a face. “There’s the occasional down side — I hope you like your coffee black.” He pours a mug for her. “I’m thinking we don’t know when we’ll have the luxury of this kind of privacy again. I’m thinking — three-day-long shower.”

Faith laughs. She can’t recall when she last had real reason for laughter.

“I’m serious. It’s not just the time and the hot water. The bathroom here is actually clean. I mean, I’m a guy and that tub disgusts me. I don’t know how you women are dealing.”

“I hate to rain on your parade — or to refuse to rain on it — but you need to keep that knife wound dry.”

Xander puts up his hand in a not-another-word gesture and disappears for a moment, rummaging through the hall closet. When he returns he slaps a roll of silver duct tape on the counter. “The answer to everything.”

She laughs again, and he reaches across the breakfast bar to touch her face. “You have a great laugh. I want to hear a lot more of it over the years.”

“—‘if we don’t all die later this week’?”

He rubs a thumb along one of her dimples. “I don’t know, I’m not so much with the apocalyptic gloom anymore. That’s so five-minutes-ago.” His hand moves to her hair, brushing it back from her face. Suddenly Xander freezes, pain shadowing his face. “Oh god. I did this, didn’t I?” His finger traces the outer edge of the bruise at her temple, so lightly she can barely feel the contact. “I remember everything else, but not this.”

“Things had gotten kind of wild when it happened.”

“How can you even look at me? Much less—”

“I jumped you to get the knife. You were crazy scared and we were thrashing around. It wasn’t like you beat me down.”

He’s not even hearing her. “Jesus. Faith, I’m so sorry. I can never make it up—”

“I made a choice when I tackled you. I knew the risks, Xander — I took care of myself in prison for three years.”

He shakes his head. “I left Anya because I was afraid of this. Turning into my old man. Nothing I do will ever take him out of me.”

“Listen to me. No, listen.” She rounds the breakfast bar to take him by the arm. “This is not about you deciding to clip me. That’s not what happened. It was panic.”

“Don’t make excuses for me.”

“Look. You owned up to the shit you said, okay, I’m fine with that. But hitting me — that was blind terror. It was the spell. Because if you’d hit me with intent, I’d have put you in the hospital.”

“Promise?”

“Now and forever, if it makes you feel better.” She touches his face. “Don’t let this get between us. If this breaks us apart after all we’ve gone through, those eyeless fucks win.”

Xander says nothing, but she senses him gathering more arguments against himself. “Jesus, enough yak.” She slips out of the leather jacket, slings it onto the counter. “I want my three-day shower.”

“No fair,” he says. “I called it first.” His heart’s clearly not in the argument, but at least he’s making it.

Faith glides her hands beneath his tee-shirt, her fingers feathering, teasing. “I never said you couldn’t come too.” She pulls the tee over his head, drops it on the floor.

He starts to engage a little, but her black turtleneck throws him off. “This is a new look for you.” His hands hover near her waist, as if he’s uncertain how to unpeel her.

“It’s a whole burglary thing,” she says. She eases the sweater over her head and lets it fall, shakes out her hair.

“You really broke into Dr. Michaels’s house last night?” He slips around behind her, wrapping one arm around her waist, planting soft kisses along her neck. “Damn, that’s wicked sexy.”

Faith grins to hear him echoing the slang of her hometown. “Wicked frickin’ sexy,” she agrees. Even getting shot at gave her that sweet down-low tickle that actually throbbed as she was scrambling over Michaels’s wall. It awakens again now, even as Xander fumbles open the buttons of her jeans. By the time he slides his hand into her Levis, she’s halfway gone.

“So this was a commando raid,” he murmurs.

She would laugh, but her breath is already hitching, her soft cries growing louder, sharper as he uses his hands and his voice to take her to the edge, suspending her there for what seems an agonizing eternity until he finally brings her to shuddering release.

After, legs shaking, she stumbles back into him. He holds her upright, his arms wrapped tight around her. Xander breathes in the scent of her hair. “I love you, Faith. Never doubt that.”

She draws a breath to say she loves him too, but it all jams up in her throat before she can even finish inhaling. This shit is getting old, she thinks.

“I heard you tell Buffy,” he whispers into her hair. “‘Oh yeah. I’m a goner.’ Means as much to me as any flowery talk.”

She slips around in his embrace, facing him, placing a hand on his cheek. “Never doubt it,” she echoes.

After the shower, they go on a treasure hunt for their clothing. There are garments strewn over three rooms and a walk-in closet, everywhere he and Faith performed some variation of the wild thing. It feels weird to be here, where he and Anya made a life, with another woman. Though Faith is not another woman in the casual oh, by the way, I’m dating again sense. She’s like Anya was — oxygen. Necessary. He’s going to make a life with Faith, too, though he’s not exactly sure what its shape will be. It’s already begun.

He’s glad that they’re driving back to Revello separately. He’s too apprehensive to talk about the conversations he needs to have once they get back to Buffy’s house, or make distracting chitchat about anything else. Faith told him what Willow said, but it doesn’t make what’s next any easier.

Xander pulls up behind Faith, who waits for him at the curb. She grasps his hand as they walk toward the house, her grip imparting strength. At the top of the steps she lets go, lets him walk in alone. Not a word has passed between them.

As he enters, Dawn looks up from the iBook she’s working over at the dining room table. “Xander!” She leaps up and starts toward him, then reins herself in. He’s not quite sure if she’s afraid of bowling him over, or if she’s heard too much about the last day or so. Xander opens his arms, hoping it doesn’t turn into one of those embarrassing uncompleted gestures. But it’s all right — she comes and enfolds him in a careful hug.

“Are you okay? I kept trying to come down and see you, but they wouldn’t let me.”

“I’m working on okay. And I’m glad you didn’t. I would have hurt you.”

She releases him and steps back, and he knows from her face that she’s heard something. Probably not the worst of it. “You’re walking without the cane,” she says.

“Yeah. Not so steady, but not bad.”

“I must sound like a broken record, but I was so scared when you hurt yourself like that.”

“I know, sweetie. I’m sorry.” Two words that are going to get a workout today.

Anya bustles into the dining room carrying one of Giles’s old books, marking her place with her finger. “Dawn, see if this makes — Xander. Are you finished being crazy now?”

This teases a rueful smile from him. “Back to my usual level of crazy, anyway.”

“Oh,” she says. “That’s too bad. Still, I guess it’s an improvement.” She opens the book and lays it on the table by the laptop. “Dawn, could you try cross-referencing this spell? As far as Giles and I can make out, it’s only about half there.”

“Sure.” Dawn gives Xander a quick kiss on the cheek and returns to her place behind the iBook.

“Anya.”

She looks up at him as if she’s surprised he’s still there.

“Thanks. You didn’t have to be that gentle with me.”

“For crissakes, Xander. I’m a pathetic sap sometimes. Don’t turn it into a virtue.” She points out a passage in the book to Dawn. “This is where we lose the thread, you see? Something’s garbled or missing.”

Xander drops the apology he was working up to. Maybe another time. He goes in search of Willow and Buffy. Willow he finds in the kitchen, brewing some of her evil health tea. She’s lost in thought, head bent to her task, her face curtained by long red hair. “Hey,” he says softly.

She looks up and smiles, but it doesn’t light her face to maximum wattage, the way it usually does. “You’re back.”

“I’m back,” he says, but he means something else entirely. He wants to fold her in his arms, but he doesn’t have the right. “Thanks.” She busies herself with the tea, and he shifts his feet, leans against the counter. “You okay? Seemed like pretty big mojo. I could feel a lot of energy moving, and you know what an unobservant clod I am.”

“I’m a little wrung out, is all.”

She looks worse than wrung out, and Xander finds himself wishing Tara were here. She’d have known what to do. She’d have made a bridge between them. Suddenly he’s crying. “God, Willow, I’d give anything if I could take it back. I was desperate for you to hurt the way I did, so I said — None of it was true.”

“Xander.” That’s all she says as she comes toward him. What else can she say? He’s forgiven? He can’t even bring himself to ask for it. Everything will be all right? Fat fucking chance. Get out of her sight? That would make the most sense. “Oh, Xander,” she whispers, and draws him into an embrace. He’s not sure how long they stand that way, both in tears, arms wrapped around each other, but it’s a while. Distantly he hears the thunder of feet coming up the porch steps from the back yard, but the sharp ring of Amanda’s voice brings them all to a halt before the door gets opened. Then: shuffling noises that fall away to silence.

Even under the haze of incense and cigar smoke, Xander can smell the sour reek of old fear-sweat. His heart triphammers as that scent curls into his brain, which obligingly makes more wiggins-producing chemicals. Only one thing in the world could induce him to enter this basement again, especially this soon. One person.

She’s down here training with Spike. The soft slaps and grunts of their sparring cease as he reaches the bottom step. She reaches for a couple of towels, hands one off to Spike, who heads for the stairs. Xander offers his hand out to the side for the casual slap-and-shake guy ritual, and they execute it perfectly as if they’ve been friends doing it forever. “I’ll talk to you later, man,” Xander says. Then it’s just him and Buffy.

“How are you doing?” she asks.

“Little shaky, just now.”

She gestures to the narrow bed. “Want to sit?”

“I’d, uh, rather die, actually.” Waving an arm toward the stack of exercise mats: “How about here?”

They sit. He looks at his hands. “This is where I’m supposed to say I’d die before I’d hurt you. But we both know that’s bullshit. Maybe I should have. Instead I calculated the one thing I could say to you to do maximum damage. Buffy, that’s something I’m always going to know about myself, and I’ll always be sorry.” He braves a look at her then. There are tears streaming down her face, but no hate or disgust. Yet. “I need to tell you something else.”

She looks at her own hands now, and he follows her gaze. Her manicure’s shot to shit; apocalypses are hell on the personal grooming. “What is it?”

He takes a breath. “Faith and Willow. I lashed out at them, too. Told them things that weren’t true. Whatever I could say that would hurt the most. I want things straight between us, Buffy, whatever that does to our friendship. Five years I’ve been too chickenshit to let you see who I am. It takes some evil fucking spell for that.” He has to close his eyes before he can say it. “What I told you. It was true. I did that.”

The breath gusts out of her, as if she’s been kicked.

“I had all sorts of great motives. Righteous as hell, that was me. But really? The ones that counted most? The pettiest possible reasons, from the shittiest part of myself. So there’s your good pal Xander. I was jealous and—”

She throws up a hand. “Stop.”

He blinks in surprise, stumbling to a halt.

“I know you want to pile the shit on yourself as high as you can. But you’re burying me under it too, and I just can’t listen to any more.”

She’s right. Jesus Christ, even his trying to make amends is all about the selfishness. “I’m sorry.”

After a long silence she says, “I think I knew. We had that fight about Anya, and Willow let something slip. I didn’t let it sink in for a long time, but it raised a lot of questions.”

“Well. Now they’re settled. I caused you a lot of suffering. Even more for Angel.” He pushes his hands through his hair. “I think I should go away. For a while, at least.”

“Xander—”

“I’ll stick around till we’ve dealt with the First. But you need some space to deal with all this — without me in your face all the time. I need to not see my worst self reflected in my best friends’ eyes every day.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t need to say anything just now. I’ll be here until we kick the ass of this apocalypse.” He puts a hand on hers, and is gratified when she turns her palm up and laces her fingers with his. “It’s something I have to do,” he tells her.

“What about Faith?”

“She wants to come. Get out in the wide open for the first time in years. And hell, once the First is put down, it might be good to spread the slayage around a little.”

They sit for a long time, hands linked, neither speaking. Everything has changed — yet nothing has. Who he is and what he’s done remain the same. But the veil has been ripped away, and now Buffy knows who he is. She can’t bring herself to insist that he stay, but she’s able to sit here with her hand in his, which is more than he’d envisioned when he walked down here.

Xander looks at the bandages Faith wrapped around his wrists. Beneath, the skin is raw and just beginning to scab over. For a time the wounds will look even worse than they do now, then eventually pink, tender skin will emerge. A long time after that, there will be nothing left at all to mark these injuries.

He hopes that’s how it will be with the wounds he’s laid open between him and his friends. It’s hard to imagine now, with everything so raw and painful. But he hopes.

End

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