Disclaimer: Not Mine.

Oof, I'm sorry about the long delay. As usual. I did not mean to take four months and change to do the second installment. As I've learned to now, I'm not going to try to make promises or predictions as to when you can expect more though.

Thanks to Starway Man and Deiticlast for beta-reading and creative consultancy.

Iron Coin Chronicles: The Silver Summer

By Kylia

Installment 2

May 23rd, 2000

Cemetery, Sunnydale

"The Jester?" Buffy looked him over... she didn't see what was particularly funny about him. Shouldn't jesters wear those funny little hats? The ones with all the bells and multicolored, like in the movies with castles and princesses and stuff?

"If you're about to tell me I'm not dressed right for the part, don't bother," the Jester told her flatly.

"Sore spot?" Buffy raised an eyebrow.

"I'd be offended by the implication, if your words and opinions mattered to me," the Jester replied, then stopped flipping the coin in his hand, producing a deck of cards from his sleeve and shuffling it. Buffy wondered if he ever stopped moving his hands, busying them with something.

"Sounds like you're offended and don't want to admit it," Buffy quipped, smirking a little. "Xander must love talking to you."

"Not as much as I love talking to him. He's quite entertaining, for something so insignificant. And so are you," the Jester continued to shuffle the cards, then flourished them from one hand to the other, like he was about to do a card trick.

"And yet you're bothering with insignificant worms like us. Sounds familiar," Buffy replied. Lots of demons and vampires had tried to declare her and her friends nothing against them...

Pretty much all of them were dead.

"And that's useful segue, thank you," the Jester chuckled. "I'll try to be as brief as I can, but still allow you to understand. I am a Power of Chaos, one of the Three Corners of it, in fact." Buffy could practically hear the capital letters as he spoke. "Chaos is but one of the primal forces that move reality. You might be more familiar with two of them - Good and Evil."

"I've heard of them," Buffy deadpanned. So there really is a big capital G Good in the world. Would have been nice for them to help out once or twice. Does Whistler work for them? He said something about maintaining balance, though. She didn't remember much more than about her conversation with the demon in question, beyond threatening to make him wear his ribcage as a hat.

"Well, there's a fourth one. One you don't think about. Fate."

"Fate." Buffy blinked. Fate. Destiny. I'm the Chosen One, so... yeah. That makes sense.

"Fate. They don't really control everything you do. That's micromanagement. Ultimately, they're concerned about the big picture stuff - keeping galaxies spinning, the speed of light constant, the dimensions separated from one another. That sort of thing. They do interfere directly here and there, and sad to say, you feature pretty prominently in their plans for this planet in this dimension."

"Which means...?" Buffy prompted, glaring at him - to no avail.

The Jester flicked his hand and the cards flew in a small storm at her, but as Buffy raised her arms to block them, they all vanished before they reached her.

"Imagine, if you will, that your life is a book. That everyone's life is one giant book," the Jester said. "Most things that most people do, they write for themselves in that book. You woke up this morning and chose to have three bowls of cereal and two bananas. No one made you do that."

I should be a little creeped out; he knows what I had for breakfast, but he can read my thoughts so...

"But sometimes... well, you don't write what happens in your book," the Jester added vaguely.

"If you're about to tell me free will is an illusion..." Buffy warned. She'd had enough of that from one of her professors that thought he was teaching philosophy, not English Lit. Not that English Lit had always been that much comprehensible.

"No, no, nothing that simple. You have free will - most of the time. All the time, really, when you get right down to it," the Jester shook his head. "At least, as you'd understand it."

You really like drawing attention to 'you mortal, you dumb', don't you, Joker-man? Buffy thought to herself in annoyance.

The Jester went on, his tone suddenly in earnest, rather than the cheery joke-y, amused-by-everything one he'd been offering for most of his talking up to now. "When Fate writes something in someone's book, then it bends the universe to make it happen. It's more complicated than just 'David crashed his car into a tree'. Everything is forced into alignment to make it happen - unless something unexpected happens. Something Fate didn't account for." There was a smug note in his voice there.

"You, I take it?"

"Among others. Chaos exists to muck up Fate, just as Fate exists to constrain Chaos. We're always at odds - but Fate always seems to think they can somehow get everything just right, and then... well, we won't be able to fuck them over." He grinned almost manically, "It never works, much to their annoyance."

"None of this really answers why you help Xander, or what you want with me, or... really, anything else?" Buffy wasn't sure what she was supposed to think about the news that Fate sometimes... what, re-wrote reality to make things happen? How did that even work? She was still trying to make sense of this.

Buffy knew she shouldn't just take this guy at his word either, but somehow, she knew he wasn't lying. He seemed smug and smarmy enough to omit, misrepresent... but not lie.

But how do I know he's not lying? Why am I so sure of it?

"You should care because Fate tried to kill you. Twice, actually," the Jester told her, chuckling. "Oh yes, you're not supposed to be alive."

"I'm one of the few Slayers to last as long as I have. That's not really surprising. I did die once," Buffy pointed out.

"By prophecy at that, too," the Jester agreed. "Had Fate had their way, you'd have stayed dead. Thing is, they never stopped to think about your friend. Mr. Harris... he was too normal, too standard, too mortal to bother with. I guess they never figured he'd matter. But since they didn't account for him..." He trailed off.

Buffy followed his logic. "That's how Xander was able to save my life that night."

"Indeed. And had he not shown up when he did to interfere when you went up against your undead boyfriend and Acathla, you'd have died there too. Stopped Acthla still, but dead all the same," the Jester chuckled. "It was such a small thing he did, but it changed everything. Harris ruined Fate's plans again... he became something more than human. He took a tiny, miniscule amount of Chaos into himself - at that point, even if Fate wanted to write him out of their way, they couldn't."

"So Xander is a special Fate-ruiner?"

"Not exactly. Not in and of himself. Lots of people end up becoming unwriteable by Fate, you see. It hardly matters, either; Fate usually just writes... around them, so to speak. But I took a liking to your friend, and decided to interfere." The Jester stopped flipping his coin.

"And gave him a coin. Made of... steel, or iron." Buffy said, thinking back to that alternate universe she'd found herself in.

"And just how did you know-" The Jester looked at her pointedly, then chuckled. "Ha! Well, isn't that interesting. I suppose I need to have someone go and have a word with D'Hoffy."

Buffy started to ask what the heck he was talking about - he must have read her mind again - and the Jester waved a hand dismissively. "It doesn't matter. You're very unlikely to ever have to worry about that little big man. Fourth-dimensional being obsessed with pretending he's a true Power."

"Points. Do you have them, or do you need me to show you what one feels like?" Buffy raised up her stake, even if she was pretty sure she'd not be able to hurt this guy - at least, not so easily. Sooner or later I could find a way to hurt him. Right? They'd found a way to beat everything else, so... probably.

The Jester chuckled at her threat, "So feisty! But yes, I did give Harris my Iron Coin." Once more Buffy heard the capital letters. "To summarize it for the mortal studio audience, it lets the user get a 'peek' at Fate's book for any given person. Which is how your friend's often been able to stop some things from happening." He shook his head, still grinning. "Not everything, of course, but he's consistently thrown all kinds of wrenches into Fate's plan. Very amusing wrenches, at that! If not for Harris and my Coin, your sister Slayer should be in prison right now, and her girlfriend should be a rat... Xander's dating the wrong person entirely, according to Fate's plans..." The Jester actually threw his head back and laughed uproariously for a minute, like a cartoon character. "Chaos. That is the point."

Faith in prison... yeah, I suppose that could have happened. Amy should be a rat, though? I don't - when would that have happened? And Xander dating the wrong person? How is that supposed to work? By this point, Buffy couldn't imagine Xander being with anyone other than Cordelia.

It had been over two years, after all. Those two managed to avoid being too sickly-sweet together, at least where she could see; but all Buffy had to do was look at them and see how much in love they were.

Oh, wait. Maybe Cordy would have left town, after her family lost all their money? That was the only thing Buffy could think of, and even that didn't make much sense. Cordelia didn't really like living in Sunnydale, sure, but she couldn't see the woman just up and moving away from Xander either.

Yeah. So none of that makes any sense.

His hand on his chest, the Jester finished laughing and straightened back up, twisting his neck in a decided unnatural way, then looking back at her.

"In short, Harris has changed a lot. But Fate tried to respond - that's how and why the wolf-boy got killed."

Wait. Fate killed Oz? Buffy inhaled sharply, feeling a sudden cold anger burning at the idea that Oz's death hadn't been a tragic accident, that someone had deliberately put Willow through that, had murdered her friend...

Someone trying to kill her - well, that was par for the course. Her friends were off-limits, though. Always had been, always would be.

"You're telling me all this because you want something from me," Buffy said, eager to hear what it was now. If it meant hurting the people who killed Oz... "You stopped Xander from telling anyone about you, and about that coin of yours. Right?"

"I did. It's more fun when he can't just tell everyone what's coming, of course. Watching Harris try to talk around the issue, convince everyone he knows what's coming without actually saying it, work around the problem." He started flipping his coin again. "He still won't be able to tell you, and if you try to tell him that you know now... well, you'll have the same coughing fits he has a penchant for. Push the issue, and I'll just take this back." He flipped his silver coin at her, and as much on instinct as any deliberate action, Buffy caught it easily in one hand.

"Fate tried to stop Xander Harris from acting. They failed. Then they tried to write around him. Plan for him. That didn't work, either. So now, they've decided on something a little more... direct. Your friend's a hunted man now. Fate's sent some of their... favorite killers, for want of a better term... to just get rid of him, once and for all."

Buffy stared at him, waiting for him to go on, tell her more about these killers, how she was supposed to stop them. I suppose a new threat was always going to happen. "And I'm supposed to fight them. With a coin? Do I flip it at them, or what?"

"Something like that," the Jester pointed. "Go ahead, flip it."

Buffy looked at him, then at the coin. After a moment, she rolled her eyes and flipped it, her thumb pushing it up and into the air... it came down, towards her hand, she caught it, about to say nothing happened when suddenly she wasn't holding a coin, but the hilt of a three foot-long sword. It looked like it was made of pure solid silver, but when she ran her hand over the blade, it felt as sharp as a real sword.

Despite weighing less than a stake, it felt like.

"Possibility. The Silver Coin is possibility and probability both - weaponized." He was now juggling three coins - gold, copper, and... maybe tin? It was hard to say on the last one. It was a dark and dull sort of grey. "Every hit you can make, you will make. Works against regular enemies too, but it's also the only way you're going to be able to hurt the fourth-dimensional killers that are coming for Harris."

"You keep talking about - fourth dimensional... what does that even mean? You sneer when you're saying it. What are you, fifth dimensional or something? Is this... some sort of dimensional racism? That's a thing now?" Buffy scoffed at the idea, but then... none of this made a lick of sense, and she could barely wrap her head around it. She was pretty sure thinking about all this was going to end up driving her mad for weeks, at least.

I think it's been driving Xander a little crazy, since it started for him. Now that she thought about it, all this explained so much about Xander over the last... two years? Had to be two years, based on Xander's behavior, on what this guy was saying...

"Fifth dimensional? Don't insult me," the Jester scoffed, not sounding remotely offended. "I'm a 23-dimensional superspace being, you might say. But the thing that's actually talking to you is a ninth dimensional fragment occupying a fifth dimensional space interfacing with your ridiculously boring third dimension." He tossed, then caught all three of his coins in one hand and started to flip them between his fingers. "You know, the place where cause precedes effect, gravity pulls things towards large masses and time moves only in a linear direction. Boring, as I said."

Buffy stared at him... and then decided she didn't even want to deal with it. 23-dimensional superspace? Ninth dimensional fragments?

What was more important was that someone, or rather something - several somethings, from the sounds of it - was coming to kill Xander.

"So, bottom line, you want me to keep Xander alive?"

"You want you to keep Xander alive, unless I've missed something. I, personally, just want to keep things... interesting," the Jester corrected. "Granted, things will remain more interesting if my Iron Coin-bearer stays alive hence why you now have my Silver coin now. So when the Legion of Necessity comes for Harris, you can actually kill them."

"A whole Legion?" Buffy swallowed a moment, wondering how she was supposed to take on that many enemies at once.

"No, no. Just a detachment. A few dozen discrete entities, but they won't all come at once. Probably."

Gee, thanks for that vote of confidence. Buffy looked at him, wishing she could use this sword against this clown - though she doubted it would work. I don't suppose there's any chance you'd find it amusing to give me some extra clues about these legion guys, so that I actually have a chance of surviving the upcoming battle and saving Xander?

The Jester smirked, and then laughed. He went on, "The Legion of Necessity is one of Fate's more capable lower-order soldiers, for dealing with lower-order threats. Raven Knights, Dimensional Gremlins, that sort of thing. Overkill to send them for piddly-little Harris, really - but then, the Strategem never was one for just enough kill." He waved a hand. "Force of Fate, you don't need to know. Point is, they're being sent to kill him. You'll recognize them because... well, to you they'd look like what you'd call angels cosplaying as ancient Roman soldiers. To most people, humans and demons alike, they'll just look like normal people. Most of the time. Until they sense Chaos. Like your sword."

Buffy had tensed until he clarified that last bit. She didn't want anyone to think she was running around killing people. The cops would be bad enough... but she didn't want her friends to think she was killing people. When she wasn't.

"So they get near me or Xander-"

"And they break out the sharp, pointy bits of metal - and it won't be pretty. We're talking violence, strong language, adult content. All the viewer warnings," the Jester replied, and Buffy just knew the guy was mocking her deliberately.

"If they decide to come after Xander, they'll find out what happens when you roughhouse," Buffy said, remembering that first fight in Sunnydale. Darla and that... other guy. The one who looked like DeBarge.

"I suppose they will. Stay alert, Slayer. They'll be here soon." The Jester's blue eyes seemed to twinkle with mirth, like Santa in those old-timey Coca-Cola commercials, and then he vanished, an explosion of playing cards filling the air where he'd been quickly flying towards her and everywhere else - Buffy didn't bother to try to raise her arms to block them this time, and sure enough, they disappeared before they could hit her.

Buffy stared at the spot for a moment, then twirled the sword in her hand. It was so light it nearly flew out of her hand entirely, but she managed to tighten her grip at the last second.

I'm going to have to learn how to use this particular sword properly. Same techniques, yeah, but the balance would be completely off. Buffy wondered how she was supposed to make it a coin again... and what would happen when someone else saw her use it. Should she hide that she had a magic sword? Could she? She couldn't tell anyone where she got it, if she was to believe the Jester - and given what happened to Xander, when he'd tried to share details this Jester didn't want shared...

She believed him.

Buffy suddenly had a thought, and she looked at the sword. "It can't be that simple. Can it?" She tossed it up in the air like she might a knife, ready to catch it by the hilt if she had to... but by the time it fell back down... it was a silver coin again. "Huh... I guess it can!"

Buffy looked the thing over. It looked like it had a heads and tails, but the symbols were worn away to the point of being unrecognizable.

I have no idea what I'm getting into, but I'll be damned if I let the bastards who killed Oz kill Xander too.

June 16th, 2000

17619 White Oak Drive, Sunnydale

Cordelia let out an aggravated sigh, as she stepped through the door into the living room. Xander immediately muted the TV, and walked over to meet her by the door. Despite her exasperation, Xander smiled teasingly as he put a hand on her shoulder.

"And now that your first week of employment is done, how do you feel about being a working stiff?"

Cordelia grounded as she took off her heels. "The worst. The stupid questions, the people trying to demand a discount they aren't supposed to have... the standing around all day! Especially in those." She gestured to the heels she had to wear while working at April Fools. Xander knew more about women's shoes since dating Cordelia than he did two years ago, so he knew these were relatively comfortable ones, with a small heel - but standing for eight hours in them was still probably no fun at all.

Cordelia walked to the couch, Xander sitting next to her after she did. She pulled her legs onto the couch and put her feet on his lap. Xander chuckled, but then he obliged his girlfriend, rubbing her feet gently - which caused her to make a sound he normally only heard, when they were alone in their bedroom.

"How do you manage it?" Cordy asked, looking over at him. "I mean, I just stand around and walk in a small space - which is bad enough! But you? You have to work outside in the sun and carry heavy stuff, and all that other heavy labor."

"Well, I don't have to deal with idiot customers, so I think we might be kinda even," Xander suggested, not entirely unseriously. Cordelia, though, glared at him, and Xander shrugged. "Sure, it's harder work physically, but - and not to get all male chauvinist here, honey - I am stronger than you, physically. Plus, I've been at it for months, and we're not exactly wearing heels on-site." The mental image of himself and his coworkers all wearing heels while working on a construction site, climbing ladders in them. He laughed at the thought.

"What's so funny?" Cordelia narrowed her eyes, and Xander explained his sudden thought. "Nah. You wouldn't look good in heels."

"Definitely not arguing with you there," Xander agreed quickly. He shrugged again. "Seriously, though? I actually like working in construction. I mean, it's exhausting most days, and some days I'd rather not go, and I'll treasure every day off like this one, but still. It's... kinda fun. It's satisfying, actually building something with your hands and your tools, getting everything set right. A challenge too." He looked over at her, smirking. "You, on the other hand, hate your job, so it sucks even more than it would anyway."

"I don't... hate my job," Cordelia protested, but Xander raised an eyebrow, not even needing to say anything - his skeptical expression made it pretty clear to his girlfriend how unconvincing she was.

Very.

"Okay, fine, yes, I do hate my job," Cordelia admitted. "At least parts of it. Mostly, I hate being a name-tag person and having to deal with everyone thinking they're better than me." She grimaced, "Especially my former classmates. And they're all home from college for summer vacation and everything, too."

"Wait, so did one of the Cordettes actually show up at the shop?" Xander figured he'd have heard about that sooner if it happened during the week before today.

Cordelia shook her head, "No. At least not yet. But it's probably going to happen. Well, at least if any of them ask about Harmony, I can just say Sunnydale happened." She let out a long breath, silent for a moment. Probably thinking about her friend - not the undead version that Faith had killed months ago after the Vampire Amy from another dimension recruited her, but the one that had died when she got turned in the first place.

But Cordelia only lingered on that for a moment - she'd had time to come to terms with it already.

"But at least today was the last day of the work week, and it was payday. The whole reason I'm doing this." She laughed, "The smell of money makes it worth it... mostly." She pulled her feet off of his lap and sat up, looking over at him. "You're sure you're cool with me just putting it all aside?"

"I can keep covering room and board. Not like my mom charges that much," Xander assured her. "The more you - and I - save up money, the faster we can move into a place of our own." His mother was happy to let them stay here while Cordelia went to college, but Xander didn't want to live with her until Cordelia graduated, and his mother didn't want them to either.

Plus, then we'd never have to worry about her walking in. Okay, so his mom wasn't an idiot or super-nosy and she always knocked just in case, and his mother had never actually interrupted them while they were 'busy', but still.

"I'm going to keep my eyes open for places. Check the classifieds, weigh pros and cons," Cordelia said. "Get some ideas. I'm thinking we don't actually do anything until fall, and I have to move to working part time," she added, being very pragmatic and rational about money. Just as she had always been - even before she lost it all, she'd been pragmatic about money. She'd just had more of it.

"Makes sense to me." Xander was pretty sure that he'd have very little trouble letting Cordelia handle their finances entirely in the future. As much as she liked nice things and as much as she liked shopping, Cordy was never going to actually spend it frivolously, when she knew they couldn't afford it.

If my girl figured out how to make it rich on the stock market overnight like a character in a movie, I wouldn't be surprised by that. Not that he figured she'd actually try it.

"That's what I like about you, Xander!" Cordelia poked him lightly, "You don't try to do things you know I'm better at than you."

"So... pretty much everything?" Xander joked. "Except cooking. Which, speaking of, I'm going to get started on making dinner." He stood up, leaning down to give his girlfriend a quick kiss and headed into the kitchen.

God, he loved his girlfriend.