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Author's note: Argh ... disregard my previous posting of this story, would ya? My Text2Web program has an itty bit kink in the system ... *sigh*

Disclaimer: No one in this story is mine. The "Buffy" characters belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy, if I'm covering my bases right, and the "Highlander" references all go back to Gregory Widen, Rysher Entertainment, yadda yadda.

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Prayer for the Dying
A Buffy/Highlander Crossover
by Troll Princess

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She says it so casually. You ever notice that? "I died." "It was only for a little while." Buffy treats it the way I've been wishing I could treat it for the past two and a half years. And she only did it once.

Amateur.

It never really came as a surprise to me ... dying, that is. I think Willow and I saw it coming long before it actually happened. Even now, even as she goes about her little Wiccan life with her little Wiccan girlfriend, she doesn't know that what the two of us were afraid was going to happen one day is already long past.

I snapped my neck. That was how it happened, the first time. Mom comes home pissed off from working her second job at the supermarket, and Dad's piss drunk in the living room in front of the TV. They fight, and he throws a couple of things he knows she's going to miss against the farthest wall, and then I come out of my bedroom, all hot and bothered, all ready to be the mama's boy and protect her.

Trouble is, he knew she'd miss me.

I woke up at the foot of the basement stairs, and she was watching me. I've never seen eyes that wide before.

Tell him he was drunk. Tell him he dreamed the whole thing. Tell him the blood on my shirt was red paint. Tell him ... tell him anything but what we'd patched together on our own, because if we were right, he'd try his damndest to prove us wrong.

He'd throw me down stairs all over again. Off buildings. Off bridges. Into towering infernos and onto my own sword.

Sword ... huh. I almost forgot the sword.

I can't believe I almost forgot my third arm.

It's what it's become, you know. Two and a half years of stuffing it into coats it won't fit into, two and a half years of hiding reflexes grown through practice and muscles a sidekick like me isn't supposed to have, even if he does spend his nights slaughtering bloodsuckers and demons with his best friends.

They say I'm the heart of the group. And when they say it, or imply it, I take it like I'm supposed to. I smile, play the self-conscious normal one, maybe flash Anya one of those knowing looks of ours. But all I can think of is brain death.

Yeah, big old creepy, I know. And maybe I'm being Mr. Joe Non-College Student here, but if I'm figuring it right, in brain death, brain dies, body dies ... heart goes last. Bullshit, or coincidence?

I mentioned Anya knows, right? I don't think I could have ever lied to her, even before she found the obviously used broadsword under my bed. But I think it just made it harder ... that first day we slept together, and she finds my sword.

She knew what it was, of course. She'd been alive over a thousand years. How could she not know? She didn't know that the sword had been handed over to me by the man who'd first found me, after I'd died once again at the hands of some vamp I hadn't even heard coming. That he'd trained me as best he could before going home to San Francisco. That he'd been beheaded by some cock-sure kid who'd made a mistake.

All she knew was that she'd leaned over the bed to pick up her bra and discovered that the man she'd fallen in love with was an Immortal.

I think she could have just come out and said she was still in love with me afterwards. Getting to know her later, with the doctorate in all things Anya I have now, I'm positive of it. But that sword ...

It took her a while to get used to the idea of dating an Immortal. And sometimes, I think she forgets about it. She's never come close to mentioning it in front of the others, which I'm grateful for. Truth is, I'd much rather they stayed in the dark on this one. Buffy would want to fight my fights for me, like always. Dawn would be worried sick for me. Willow, too. And with Willow worried, Tara closes up the rear in the worried department.

I think Giles knows already.

He hasn't said anything to me. But sometimes, I catch him staring at me, watching me out of the corner of his eye, and I get all self-conscious and start checking for the sword.

Yup. Still there.

Will I ever tell them? Oh, the truth will come out sooner or later, like it or not. One of these days, Buffy and Wills are going to notice I haven't gotten any older. Tara's not going to be able to ignore that funny feeling she gets around me any longer. And Dawn ... well, Dawn's a fourteen-year-old girl who's got a crush on me. She'll pick up on something.

I keep thinking back to that demon, the one who broke me in two. Suddenly, there I was ... the paranoid kid I was at heart, and the mature, responsible man I'd had to grow into too fast. Thing was, I'd been hiding that man behind the kid for far too long.

So tomorrow, come hell or high water, Immortal or demon, I'm going to walk into the Magic Box with sword in hand. I'm going to put it down on the counter next to the four obituaries of the men I've killed. And I'm going to tell my family -- my *only* family -- the truth.

I, Alexander Harris, am Immortal.

And one day, Tara will be, too. Tomorrow, in fact.

Hope she won't be wearing a nice shirt. Bulletholes are a bitch to sew up.


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Saturday, February 10, 2001 10:23 PM