Just Short of Peace
By:Cheddar
Chapter Six: Adam and Alex
Disclaimer: I don't any of the implied people places or beings represented in this here fanfic. Ya'll understand that?
Note: Well, Here it is. I hope you all like it as much as the rest of it. I fully intend to finish this fic. It's going to be ten chapters and it's all just a matter of typing them out. But I'm really busy so there you go. Please review!
***
The drive home wasn't as akward as I thought it should have been. Adam turned out to be a nice guy once you got past the whole I'm-a-jerk thing. We ended up getting along well but not great. There'd be times when He'd bury himself away in his books and journals. All of which looked like they'd seen better days... as in centuries ago kinda better days. It was weird.
He'd been everywhere and found it hard to believe that I'd only ever been to LA before. He told me great stories about the places he'd been over beer and sandwiches on stale bread. The latter was for me. As far as I knew, Adam didn't eat anything but pretzels and buffalo wings at Joe's.
We went to Joe's just about every night. Some times The others would be there too. Duncan and Amanda came less often than Richie who never let a night without their presence go by uncommented upon.
They seemed like an interesting group of people but there was something in their friendship that ran far deeper than I could have ever understood. There were times they'd be talking and suddenly stop and look at me as if afraid to say something in front of me. It was the way people act when they have a long shared history and a new comer appears on the scene. Lucky for me I was the new comer. But I didn't hold it against them. Back home we'd been the same and yet always managed to integrate the new person eventually. And besides, I had my own secrets didn't I?
None of them knew about the things that go bump in the night. (Well, I have to say that never once did one of them 'go bump'. Normally they roared or screamed or yelled or something like that. Sure, there was the time with the gentleman and the not making any sound at all and Sweet the demon and the singing... Shudder... but for the most part the things that go bump in the night never really go bump.) And I didn't want them to know about it. Them... Whatever. I just didn't want them to have to be a part of that. If I could, I wanted to spare them.
I think I might have been happy to spend the rest of my life there. It was as close to my old friends as I was ever going to get and as the months slipped by I stopped comparing each of my new friends to each of my old and began to accept them as the very colorful characters they were. I was happy... But maybe I shouldn't have been. I don't know. I doubt I ever will.
***
The kid was a complete puzzle to me. He seemed to know things but it wasn't the kind of stuff you'd expect a kid like that to know. Like the time when I was reading the paper and there was an article about a man they'd found in an alley drained of blood. Alex just went off telling me about how it could have been caused by several things. That if one knew which arteries to hit and all that. And it wasn't even that. He used a lot of technical terms like you'd find in a coroner's report. I couldn't help but ask how he knew all that. "I used to want to be a coroner person," he lied. But it was funny watching him stutter like that.
"Or it could have been a vampire," I said to see how he'd react. I had a feeling there was a lot he wasn't saying and I wondered how he'd react to that. He gave a nervous little laugh and some inane comments about Dracula before he made a dash for his room.
Later that night I was online doing some of my own research. Ever since that demon had taken a liking to MacLeod I'd been researching whatever I could on the web. (Useful thing by the way. There were a few times in the past I could have used it but no...) Tonight, though, I wasn't just wandering around the 'net on a random search. I was after something. Something that would be in the watchers' files.
And by Watchers I mean the same organization that watches both Immortals and the Slayer. They were one in the same but they almost never interacted. But it was in their archives that I found it. A reference made by the watcher of a slayer who'd turned out to be immortal. She'd told him that when he'd touched a certain demon's blood, it'd worked it's way into his blood stream and ever after he felt like a pre-immortal in her mind. But that was all I could find. Not a scrap of anything else. Now if only I knew if Alex were really immortal or not. I decided to train as if her were one. If nothing else it might starve off attacks from other immortals.
***
When Adam said that I should learn to sword fight, I thought he was kidding. I wouldn't have put it passed him but he was very serious. I think I surprised him with how quickly I took to it. I know I surprised myself. Maybe it was all those years of watching Buffy train with Giles. I remember sitting with Willow and sometimes Oz and/or Cordy and watching Buffy give Giles bruises like you wouldn't believe. I believed it. I was a punching bag too and even under all those pads I still felt each hit like there was nothing but skin on skin. That's how hard she hit. I have to say, I didn't miss it.
So we spent hours a day practicing. Adam was good. Amazingly so. More than once I wondered how the Slayer would fare against him but for the life of me I couldn't figure out who would win. Maybe neither. It didn't matter. She wasn't fighting him. I was. And as the weeks turned into months and those months almost made up a year, I got better an better and Adam and I fell into a routine. We'd sleep in late having stayed up late the night before and then train for a few hours either at his place or at Duncan's. In the afternoon we'd each do our own thing until about six or so when we went to Joe's and stayed until closing. It was a nice normal life. Comfortable. But then it was all thrown into a deadly tailspin.
We were all at Joe's. Richie was talking about something I didn't care to listen to and so I sat sipping my water watching the crowd.
"So, Alex, I've been dying to know, man. Who's that girl in your wallet?" It was Richie and how he'd ever found the picture, I'll never know.
"Which one?" snorted Adam. "There's about four girls in there. And a guy." He wiggled his eyebrows at me. "Is there something you aren't telling us?" Rich was trying not to giggle. Amanda had already lost that fight and was giggling like crazy.
"What's this now?" asked Duncan. I had a feeling this had all been set up by Adam, Rich, and Amanda but I couldn't prove it.
"Oh!" Amanda squealed in a manner that was not very like her. I rolled my eyes. It must have been her that found them. She had a knack for that's for sure. "He's got some pictures of some girls in his wallet. They're all really pretty." She turned back to me. "Come on, Alex. Who are they?"
I relented and pulled out said wallet. Pulling out the pictures I lay them on the table. "That's Buffy, Willow, Cordy, and Willow's girlfriend Tara. They're friends of mine from back home in high school. Buffy and Willow were my best friends. You know, the kind that share everything? Yeah, it was like that." I got real quiet and when I looked up I couldn't help but notice the way that Duncan and Amanda fit so perfectly. Like me and Anya had once upon a time. I felt bad for lying to them and saying that Anya's picture was that of Tara but I wasn't going to get into that. They needed to hear something about the girl in the picture and It sure as hell wasn't going to be the truth.
That night I got lost on the internet. Amanda's words of "who are they?" hung in my mind. It made me realize for the first time in almost a year how much I missed them. So I log onto find back issues of he newspaper. I found lots of deaths. That shouldn't have been unusual for Sunnydale but several times I came across cases of missing corpses and there were more PCP gang related incidents than I remembered. Maybe I didn't remember so many since I hadn't been there but it still seemed off.
But that wasn't all I'd found. Oz was killed. Shot by police when he'd suddenly lost control one night while in human form and started attacking people at a cafe downtown. I wondered what had happened to him. It wasn't like him. Not our quiet Oz with the crazy shirts and few words.
And some crazy old men had gotten it in their heads that there were witches living in good-old Sunnyhell. They burnt their coven house to the ground one night when they were having a meeting. Tara MacClay was among the dead.
But of Willow and Anya and Buffy there was no sign. I wondered if Willow knew about Tara and Oz. I wondered if she knew what had become of Buffy and Anya. I wondered...
With a shake of my head I knew that I could sit there wondering what had happened and who knew what or I could go and find out for myself. It never occurred to me just to call. No, I had to go. And once my mind was made up, I went to pack. I could be there in a few hours. If only to put my mind at ease. It should have been simple.
I told Adam where I was headed. He said simply, "I'll go with you." I looked at him for a moment before I got it off my chest. Something that'd been bugging me for a while.
"Look, I'm not... you know. Like that." I hoped he'd apologize but he just laughed.
"Alex, I may be many things but attacked to you in that way isn't one of them." I didn't know whether to be grateful or offended and in the end just ignored it. Friends and all that right?
So here I go. I'm on my way back home. I don't know why I was so frightened as we drove to the airport. I was just going to Sunnydale... right. And we all know that Sunnydale is the last place on earth that a person could be killed in a million horrible ways. Yep. Good old Sunnydale.
READ?/REVIEW!
Chapter Six: Adam and Alex
Disclaimer: I don't any of the implied people places or beings represented in this here fanfic. Ya'll understand that?
Note: Well, Here it is. I hope you all like it as much as the rest of it. I fully intend to finish this fic. It's going to be ten chapters and it's all just a matter of typing them out. But I'm really busy so there you go. Please review!
***
The drive home wasn't as akward as I thought it should have been. Adam turned out to be a nice guy once you got past the whole I'm-a-jerk thing. We ended up getting along well but not great. There'd be times when He'd bury himself away in his books and journals. All of which looked like they'd seen better days... as in centuries ago kinda better days. It was weird.
He'd been everywhere and found it hard to believe that I'd only ever been to LA before. He told me great stories about the places he'd been over beer and sandwiches on stale bread. The latter was for me. As far as I knew, Adam didn't eat anything but pretzels and buffalo wings at Joe's.
We went to Joe's just about every night. Some times The others would be there too. Duncan and Amanda came less often than Richie who never let a night without their presence go by uncommented upon.
They seemed like an interesting group of people but there was something in their friendship that ran far deeper than I could have ever understood. There were times they'd be talking and suddenly stop and look at me as if afraid to say something in front of me. It was the way people act when they have a long shared history and a new comer appears on the scene. Lucky for me I was the new comer. But I didn't hold it against them. Back home we'd been the same and yet always managed to integrate the new person eventually. And besides, I had my own secrets didn't I?
None of them knew about the things that go bump in the night. (Well, I have to say that never once did one of them 'go bump'. Normally they roared or screamed or yelled or something like that. Sure, there was the time with the gentleman and the not making any sound at all and Sweet the demon and the singing... Shudder... but for the most part the things that go bump in the night never really go bump.) And I didn't want them to know about it. Them... Whatever. I just didn't want them to have to be a part of that. If I could, I wanted to spare them.
I think I might have been happy to spend the rest of my life there. It was as close to my old friends as I was ever going to get and as the months slipped by I stopped comparing each of my new friends to each of my old and began to accept them as the very colorful characters they were. I was happy... But maybe I shouldn't have been. I don't know. I doubt I ever will.
***
The kid was a complete puzzle to me. He seemed to know things but it wasn't the kind of stuff you'd expect a kid like that to know. Like the time when I was reading the paper and there was an article about a man they'd found in an alley drained of blood. Alex just went off telling me about how it could have been caused by several things. That if one knew which arteries to hit and all that. And it wasn't even that. He used a lot of technical terms like you'd find in a coroner's report. I couldn't help but ask how he knew all that. "I used to want to be a coroner person," he lied. But it was funny watching him stutter like that.
"Or it could have been a vampire," I said to see how he'd react. I had a feeling there was a lot he wasn't saying and I wondered how he'd react to that. He gave a nervous little laugh and some inane comments about Dracula before he made a dash for his room.
Later that night I was online doing some of my own research. Ever since that demon had taken a liking to MacLeod I'd been researching whatever I could on the web. (Useful thing by the way. There were a few times in the past I could have used it but no...) Tonight, though, I wasn't just wandering around the 'net on a random search. I was after something. Something that would be in the watchers' files.
And by Watchers I mean the same organization that watches both Immortals and the Slayer. They were one in the same but they almost never interacted. But it was in their archives that I found it. A reference made by the watcher of a slayer who'd turned out to be immortal. She'd told him that when he'd touched a certain demon's blood, it'd worked it's way into his blood stream and ever after he felt like a pre-immortal in her mind. But that was all I could find. Not a scrap of anything else. Now if only I knew if Alex were really immortal or not. I decided to train as if her were one. If nothing else it might starve off attacks from other immortals.
***
When Adam said that I should learn to sword fight, I thought he was kidding. I wouldn't have put it passed him but he was very serious. I think I surprised him with how quickly I took to it. I know I surprised myself. Maybe it was all those years of watching Buffy train with Giles. I remember sitting with Willow and sometimes Oz and/or Cordy and watching Buffy give Giles bruises like you wouldn't believe. I believed it. I was a punching bag too and even under all those pads I still felt each hit like there was nothing but skin on skin. That's how hard she hit. I have to say, I didn't miss it.
So we spent hours a day practicing. Adam was good. Amazingly so. More than once I wondered how the Slayer would fare against him but for the life of me I couldn't figure out who would win. Maybe neither. It didn't matter. She wasn't fighting him. I was. And as the weeks turned into months and those months almost made up a year, I got better an better and Adam and I fell into a routine. We'd sleep in late having stayed up late the night before and then train for a few hours either at his place or at Duncan's. In the afternoon we'd each do our own thing until about six or so when we went to Joe's and stayed until closing. It was a nice normal life. Comfortable. But then it was all thrown into a deadly tailspin.
We were all at Joe's. Richie was talking about something I didn't care to listen to and so I sat sipping my water watching the crowd.
"So, Alex, I've been dying to know, man. Who's that girl in your wallet?" It was Richie and how he'd ever found the picture, I'll never know.
"Which one?" snorted Adam. "There's about four girls in there. And a guy." He wiggled his eyebrows at me. "Is there something you aren't telling us?" Rich was trying not to giggle. Amanda had already lost that fight and was giggling like crazy.
"What's this now?" asked Duncan. I had a feeling this had all been set up by Adam, Rich, and Amanda but I couldn't prove it.
"Oh!" Amanda squealed in a manner that was not very like her. I rolled my eyes. It must have been her that found them. She had a knack for that's for sure. "He's got some pictures of some girls in his wallet. They're all really pretty." She turned back to me. "Come on, Alex. Who are they?"
I relented and pulled out said wallet. Pulling out the pictures I lay them on the table. "That's Buffy, Willow, Cordy, and Willow's girlfriend Tara. They're friends of mine from back home in high school. Buffy and Willow were my best friends. You know, the kind that share everything? Yeah, it was like that." I got real quiet and when I looked up I couldn't help but notice the way that Duncan and Amanda fit so perfectly. Like me and Anya had once upon a time. I felt bad for lying to them and saying that Anya's picture was that of Tara but I wasn't going to get into that. They needed to hear something about the girl in the picture and It sure as hell wasn't going to be the truth.
That night I got lost on the internet. Amanda's words of "who are they?" hung in my mind. It made me realize for the first time in almost a year how much I missed them. So I log onto find back issues of he newspaper. I found lots of deaths. That shouldn't have been unusual for Sunnydale but several times I came across cases of missing corpses and there were more PCP gang related incidents than I remembered. Maybe I didn't remember so many since I hadn't been there but it still seemed off.
But that wasn't all I'd found. Oz was killed. Shot by police when he'd suddenly lost control one night while in human form and started attacking people at a cafe downtown. I wondered what had happened to him. It wasn't like him. Not our quiet Oz with the crazy shirts and few words.
And some crazy old men had gotten it in their heads that there were witches living in good-old Sunnyhell. They burnt their coven house to the ground one night when they were having a meeting. Tara MacClay was among the dead.
But of Willow and Anya and Buffy there was no sign. I wondered if Willow knew about Tara and Oz. I wondered if she knew what had become of Buffy and Anya. I wondered...
With a shake of my head I knew that I could sit there wondering what had happened and who knew what or I could go and find out for myself. It never occurred to me just to call. No, I had to go. And once my mind was made up, I went to pack. I could be there in a few hours. If only to put my mind at ease. It should have been simple.
I told Adam where I was headed. He said simply, "I'll go with you." I looked at him for a moment before I got it off my chest. Something that'd been bugging me for a while.
"Look, I'm not... you know. Like that." I hoped he'd apologize but he just laughed.
"Alex, I may be many things but attacked to you in that way isn't one of them." I didn't know whether to be grateful or offended and in the end just ignored it. Friends and all that right?
So here I go. I'm on my way back home. I don't know why I was so frightened as we drove to the airport. I was just going to Sunnydale... right. And we all know that Sunnydale is the last place on earth that a person could be killed in a million horrible ways. Yep. Good old Sunnydale.
READ?/REVIEW!