Between Shadows
Episode V: Dust N' Bones
Title: Between Shadows (Episode V: Dust N' Bones) part 1/4
Author: Scb047 ([email protected])
Summary: Xander's spin-off series, set a few years in the future in New York. Recovering from his injuries, Xander is suddenly beset by an uncontrollable series of visions that threaten his sanity as well as the lives of everyone around him.
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Disclaimer: If you want to sue me, first you gotta catch me. Long live the joys of copyright infringements!!! Avenge Napster!!! We remember…
Sitting on the side of a small rolling hill in the early afternoon sun was a simple pleasure. However, it was one the young man sitting on the red-checkered cloth, with his girlfriend fiddling with the wicker picnic basket, had a unique appreciation of. He smiled to himself, watching her golden hair dance in the soft breeze. It was strange, he thought, that most people with their 9to5 lives and their consumer obsessions, rarely took the time to enjoy the simple things. It seemed that until you had seen death in you're friends eyes, until you had to wash their blood from your clothes, enjoying fresh air and a few laughs was too simple a thing for people's modern lives. How many friends did you need to bury, he wondered. How many times had he had to think of a few words to say at the ceremony or write a letter to his subordinate's family, unable to reveal the true circumstances surrounding their beloved death? Too many, but now, he sure enjoyed the simple things.
"What type of tea you want? Chai? Green?" she asked cheerily, placing a kettle over a small butane stove. She held up both pouches, an infectious smile on her lips.
"How 'bout Earl Gray?" he asked, her eyebrow rising at the question.
"Earl Gray? Xander, how Giles-ish of you," she teased him, producing another pouch from the picnic basket.
"Hey!" retorted Xander, throwing a sandwich at her, which she caught effortlessly. "I did spend a year in England, you know, Dragon-12, and all."
"See, I never understood why it had to be based in London, I mean, you and Riley are both American, and so were a lot of your guys from what you told me?"
"Well, we were basically a worldwide response team and it was easier to do that from London. All airline leads to London, it's like the traveler's center of the world. And we had a lot of Brits, Germans and French too, for your information."
"Not boring B. with your shop talk again, are you Boy Toy?" asked Faith as she appeared over the hill, swaggering down, Dawn in tow. Both the girls quickly joined the couple on the picnic tablecloth, Faith assaulting the basket for some food.
"My bad, Faith," explained Buffy, "I kind of stepped on that land mine."
"Ouch, major bore-damage," responded Faith, gulping down the sandwich and reaching for a new one.
"Well I find Xander's stories very interesting."
"Thank you Dawnster, I feel a big Birthday gift coming up for my favorite little suck-up."
"Hey!" said Buffy lightly, bombarding Xander with sandwiches. "Do not call my sister a suck-up."
"… moronic waste of human genes? Walking virus? Lousy lay? Idiotic two-bit…" offered Faith merrily until a sandwich hurled from Xander's direction hit her square on the chin. She laughed it off and the group tightened, rapidly exchanging pleasantries and comments on their lunch spot, the brand new Sunnydale cemetery 12. Not long ago, this long stretch of fenced rolling hills had been called the Grant Memorial Park. It had been converted only three months ago into the newest addition to Sunnydale's disproportionately large family of final resting places. Marble tombstones were starting to sprout from the luscious green grass, mausoleums snuggled themselves between elm trees and willows.
"So how come you guys were late?" asked Buffy between bites.
"Little sis here is puttin' up a song and dance number for the school talent show. So I was just showing her some of my wicked dance moves," answered Faith.
"You do know she can't win if she's expelled for indecency, right?" quipped Xander, summing up the worries on Buffy's face.
"Don't worry guys," reassured Faith, "all moves are poles and twenty dollars bills free."
"I wish Spike could be here," said Dawn as she looked up in the blue sky. "Of course he wouldn't be eating anything, and probably would be burnt to a crisp, but it still be fun to have him around."
"We'll go see Evil Dead afterwards, Dawny, scouts honor," said Xander.
The sun grew cold and the warm feeling of belonging disappeared as an unexplainable chill coursed through Xander. He felt ill, looking up at the sky, seeing it darken inexplicably, his sandwich tasted like sulfur. "What are you doing here?" asked Buffy, looking beyond Xander, dread in her eyes. Something was wrong and he knew it way before turning around, something was out of place. What he felt then, as his eyes widen at the form behind him, was sheer horror.
Willow stood before them, blood sliding down her face, a huge chunk of her cranium missing. She was calm, her eyes zombie-white and her skin pale, bluish veins webbing all over her cheeks.
"I wanted to join you," she said calmly, before raising her voice. "But I can't, can I? Can I, Xander!"
"No," he responded faintly, backing away as she followed. This wasn't real, this had never happened. Dawn and Faith continued to eat their sandwich as if nothing was going on, Buffy horrified but unresponsive.
"Why is that Xander! WHY IS THAT, XANDER!" she screamed, Xander on the verge of tears. Suddenly, Faith caught his attention, talking between bites of her sandwich.
"Oh that reminds me, Boy Toy" she said casually before her voice changed to the baroque cry of thousands of souls. "Don't you know I'm waiting for you."
No standard scream.
Xander woke up in sweat and quickly sated the desire he felt to destroy something by clearing his desk with one swipe of his left arm. Grunting, yelling, he then buried his fist in the closest wall. His erratic breath calmed itself after a moment as he stared at his bloodied hand, his other arm slung in a blue support and cased in solid plaster for the next few months. A third break of the elbow was no small thing.
After a moment of hesitating between reaching for the bottle of whiskey he'd purchased the night before in a moment of weakness, he opted for a more sensible alternative: that lovely thing called pain. Dropping to the floor, he started pushing, his bloody knuckle carrying painfully most of his weight. He rose slowly and methodically, using the same attention to details on the way down. Perfect movement. One handed push-up without any momentum.
"One… two… three…" Mid-way through the fourth movement, Katrina came bursting in through the door wearing a nightgown, baseball bat in hand. She looked down on Xander, who chose to ignore her, and then at his personal effects that were spread across the floor. She sighed, pushing back blond strands of hair from her eyes.
"What's going on? I heard a scream?"
"My desk attacked me," responded Xander as he kept pushing, his medallion banging on the floor with every downward movement.
"Xan, you wan to talk about this?"
"What push-ups, sure. You see, there are two movements to a push-up, up and down. It is of the outmost importance that your back be straight at all time, or you're cheating. If you go too fast than you cheat as well. I used to be able to do thirty one hand-push up with my left, it's been a while, but I think I can manage 35, if I really drive it."
"Are you done?"
"Oh also, the more your arm is away from your body, the less you work you're triceps and the…"
"Xander, I'm not laughing. If you don't want to talk about it, just say so, I don't need you jerking me around."
"You normal people always have the impression that if you talk about it, it'll just go away. Well, I've got news for you, some stuff, the real heavy stuff, it never goes away. It's more consistent than death and taxes." As he spoke, her eyes caught a shiny golden object on the floor next to her feet. She seized it realizing she'd never seen it before. It was a piece of something bigger, one his side semi-circular. It was beautiful.
"What's this?" she asked.
"26…oh that, that's just something I picked up," he said with a grin.
"Mais Foutre!" yelled out
LaMontagne, his face seemed to be turning red with anger. The Frenchman paced
around Mason's lavish office on the top floor of a skyscraper. His taste in
clothing spoke of exceedingly expensive habits. Silk shirts and ties, bright
burgundy framed by a pitch black Verscache, single-breasted suit.
"So the other piece of the Oerta was missing when you got there," asked Mason very serenely. He sat behind his desk, dressed in a less flashy beige suit that was worth probably three times as much as his henchmen's entire wardrobe.
"Yes, instead, I find this," continued LaMontagne, handing over a piece of paper to his boss. Mason carefully unfolded the paper and after scanning it a moment held it toward Faith who sat bored in one of the chairs on the side of the room, looking idly between the multitude of expensive artwork that decorated the office, and the large set of bullet proof windows, creating a convex wall of night behind Mason.
"It's for you." She snatched it from his hand and sighed before reading the message out loud.
"Ho Ho Ho, look at that Firecracker, I can still pick a lock with just my left hand." She crushed the paper into a small ball and threw it angrily in the garbage can. Mason never took his eyes off of her.
"So he's still alive. Of course, I suspected as much when his body wasn't recovered by the police after they raided the place."
"I swear, he looked dead…"
"That's quite alright, Faith. I understand that you have been involved with him a long time and that might hinder your objectivity a bit. That's completely acceptable, I know at the end of the day you are a true professional, anyways I would rather have Xander alive as well."
"Why, he's worthless, just say the word and I'll bring you his head on a plate," remarked LaMontagne, leaning back against the closest of the sixth Corinthian columns that lined the gigantic office. Faith rolled her eyes.
"Tell inspector Clouseau he best put a lid on that stupid macho contest he has with my Boy Toy or he's liable to end up more bent over than his entire country was in WWII."
"Are you threatening me?" he asked, closing the distance between them.
"No, I'm saying if you keep underestimating him, he'll kill you, or make you wish he did. He's probably one of the most dangerous man on earth, he's in my weight class, you're not even close."
"I was
"Then I'm sure you got the memo about not to fuck with Captain Harris from Dragon-12, he was and still is the best in the world."
"I heard all the stories. He was good, 'cause he had a Slayer backing him up, I'm better."
"Please," intervened Mason. "I have a solution to our Xander problem, one that I'm sure will please all." He reached under his desk and pressed a button. There was a buzz and the doors to the side of the room swung open, revealing a mysterious figure, clothed in a thick purple domino, the hood hiding the person's face. The figure glided over the floor until it stood in front of the desk. LaMontagne shied away, uneasy by the figure's presence.
"I've hired a witch to help us take care of Xander."
"What is she gonna do?" asked a worried Faith. The figure was utterly silent, hovering half a foot above the floor.
"Don't worry Faith, she's just gonna weaken him mentally. Destroy this resolve he has of doing the right thing, so instead he'll come work with us."
"Five by Five, but exactly what is the bitch gonna do to him?"
"Make him remember," answered the witch, her voice delicate, yet full of hatred.
"What is it you're not telling me, Xander?" asked Giles, his voice crackling over the phone.
"Oh, nothing! It's just I didn't get the first piece that's all. They'd already snatched it when we got there."
"I have to say, I find your story rather peculiar Xander, considering I'm holding a New York times from last week and on page twelve is a story about the Manhattan mall being burglarize. It says here that the police found lots of blood at the scene and various signs of struggle, including and I cite, a .45 caliber pistol and a Japanese sword. You care to explain?"
"Well okay," said Xander, scrambling for a lie, "we got our butts kicked, is that want you wanted to hear, Giles? Me and Faith took a pounding, I got my arm broken and everything. Happy?"
"Let me talk to Faith, would you Xander?"
"She's not here. She… she went shopping." Xander winced, knowing too well the lie wouldn't stick. Giles had called out of the blue, Xander having all but forgotten about the watcher, and he hadn't had time to come up with a few intelligent and rehearsed lies.
"This early in the morning? I think not Xander. You mind telling me what happened or should I just assume you're covering for Faith?"
"Alright," conceded Xander, his shoulders slumping down as he stared outside the window of the living room. "She switched sides again, but Giles, and I mean it, let me handle this."
"I would love to Xander, but a slayer? By yourself? I certainly think I should send a few watchers to help you out, maybe contact Riley, I certainly think he would…"
"No. I'll handle it by myself. As much as I trust you and Riley with my life, I think anybody else you'd send me to deal with this problem might be a tad trigger happy about the whole deal. I'm not ready to give up on her, I can bring her back, I know it. Otherwise I wouldn't be talking to you right now."
"Please don't be offended by this Xander, but remember when Angel went bad. Remember how you criticized Buffy for not killing him, for letting him live and continue the killing. What about all the people Faith is going to murder now, Xander?"
"Well, G-man, things look a whole lot different in this seat, not that I haven't been there before if you recall, and frankly, I'm not the idealist kid I used to be in High School. If she kills a few people, so be it. I can live with a few more deaths on my conscience."
"I'm not sure that I can, Xander."
"Well, you just remember this, Giles. I could never hurt you, but you send people after her, and I'll send you their heads in boxes, you understand? And if you get lucky, and one of them succeeds, I'll burn the watcher's council to the ground. I'll kill all your people, you'll be the only one spared. Am I clear?"
"Yes, crystal, but what if she doesn't stop? What if the body count keeps rising?"
"Then I'll either take care of business or join in on the fun. You just best keep out of my business either way."
"I can't say I'm too thrilled by your attitude, Xander, but if this is the way it has to be. I just hope you remember Buffy and what she stood and died for. I hope you honor her memory by following her example."
"I'll try too, Giles. Lord knows I keep trying."
"I hope so Xander. For now, I leave Faith in your capable hands, but if you should follow her into darkness… Suffice to say I have my own duties to live up too. I would hate for us to become enemies."
"Me too. I'll send you my piece of the Oerta, priority mail. In the meanwhile, I'd like to mention something about the dreams I've been having lately," said Xander, contemplating the broken piece of the gilded seal in his hands. Suddenly, his attention was drawn upwards by movement somewhere outside the living room window, but there was nothing there now. He raised an eyebrow, squirming uncomfortably on the couch, a strange feeling bubbling inside him. He could have sworn he'd seen something.
"Please go on." Giles voice snapped him back to reality.
"Huh, yeah. I get this particular dream, I'm standing in the Fields of Blood, and I'm surrounded by two armies of demons. One of the two got this guy riding around in front of them on a horse of bones. He looks human, but he's got fire coming out of his left eye socket, just like an archdemon."
"Did you get a good look at his face? Is he doing anything particular?" asked Giles. Xander took a moment to answer as he looked back into the kitchen, an image of someone had lurked there a moment ago, but had been gone once he had completed his turn, as if it existed only in the edge of his vision. He grew quiet a moment, nervously checking if his medallion was becoming warm. It was cold.
"No," he said absently, scanning his surrounding. "His face is always away from me, but he does say something. "I am the pale rider, and today all hell rides behind me". Then he draws a dark blade and he dashes off army in tow."
"Mmm. A bible paraphrase."
"Yeah, I know Giles, "Revelations", the fourth horsemen, Death. I remember."
"Well it's all very peculiar, but there's not much to go on, perhaps you have something else?" Xander felt a hand on his shoulder and instantly spun around, ready to fight. His heart was pounding and terror settled in with a grim cold chilling his back. Nothing there. There was no one around, the house as silent as it was deserted, everybody were off to their morning classes which Xander had decided to skip. Something freaky was going on, but after a moment Xander turned back his attention to Giles.
"Huh, yeah. He wore a glove on his left hand, and the troops of demons were yelling something. Kasoosh, katoosh… huh, wait… karoosh, that's the one, karoosh. Over and over again."
"Mmm. Sounds like Noble Speak, I'll have to research it. As you know, it'll probably take sometime, Noble Speak being what it is."
"I know Giles, just do your best…" Xander's voice trailed off, the phone slipping from his grasp. He stared outside the window at the horror that stood there. He was frozen, horrified beyond any description. She stood there in the morning sun, as she had in his nightmare. Willow, stared at him, with her zombie-white eyes and her blue veins streaked face. The blood slid gently from her half-exploded cranium, her bluish lips mouthed off soundless words mechanically, but Xander knew how to read lips.
"Xander…?" Giles voice echoed from the ground, but his friend's mind was somewhere else. Somewhere, in the frozen eternity of that moment, staring back into those dead eyes, the training kicked in, that part of Xander's mind that took over when he saw something so horrible he felt like curling into a ball and weeping the hours away. Before he knew it, he stood outside, the front door wide open behind him. She was gone, his senses quickly returning with that realization. He looked from left to right and all around and saw nothing, she was gone, just as if he'd woken up from a dream. Cold sweat was running down his face.
Unbeknownst to him, across the street skulked a robed figure, hidden from view by a tree. The witch hovered, her face hidden under the purple hood and a smile on her lips as she secretly watched Xander Lavelle Harris terrified and frantic, pacing around on his front lawn, repeating in his mind the words Willow had been saying.
"I planted a tree and watched it grow, only to see it die and cause my sorrow."
Xander sat quietly at his regular place in Professor Barnum political class. He had yet to apologize for his behavior from last time and that had been one of his priorities until the morning's incident. He still wasn't quite sure what had happened, if Skoll had been messing around with his mind again or if some bad memories were just surging all of a sudden to play games with him. Xander had done a lot of things over the years that had came back to bother him, sometimes even in fashion similar to this. He would be walking down the street when suddenly he'd get this feeling he was back in a Bolivian jungle being fired at or would catch something out of the corner of his eyes he would believe to be this Karskov demon that had almost chopped his head off back in Albania, but it never had felt so real as it had felt today. Perhaps the post traumatic stress was starting to kick in, or maybe he was just loosing his mind, he didn't know nor would it help him one bit to. That was one of the major drawbacks of being a demon hunter, you can't exactly share what's troubling you with a psychologist, unless you're fond of straight jackets.
He bowed his head, not listening to Barnum's lecture on the greatest assassinations and assassinations attempts in history, a lecture that complimented directly with last week's exploration of Cornell Brasov's untimely demise. Xander didn't listen one bit, reliving the incident over and over in his mind, as his friends carefully took notes. Was it really Willow I saw? Could it have been somebody else? It can't be, she's dead… and dead people have never been known to come back from the dead, yeah. Go tell that to Spike.
"…JFK's assassination, allegedly
by Lee Harvey Oswald, is with very little doubt one if not the most famous
assassination of the twentieth century. The story is this, on November 22 1963
in Dallas, Texas, perched in the nearby
"Sloppy isn't it?" said someone leaning to whisper in Xander's ear with a thick slavish accent. Xander turned his head to gasp at the atrocity to his right, Cornell Brasov sat next to him, smiling his forehead perforated by a 7.62 gunshot wound. "It only took you one shot to kill me."
"What the fuck!" yelled out Xander jumping back. The brown haired girl that normally sat next to him was back in her seat and the whole room stared at him questioningly.
"Please try to restrain your enthusiasm, Mr. Harris. Though it is appreciated, I would preferred if you tried not to be so loud about it. However, I understand your passion, these facts simply do not match the explanation we were given," spoke calmly Barnum as Xander sat back down muttering a sorry that was lost in the flood of giggles surrounding him. Gabe, Marcus and Garrett stared bewilderedly at him.
"Well that was rather rude of him, comrade. One with a conscience such as yours should be allowed a little leeway. Am I right Captain?" continued Brasov, back from wherever he had hidden. Xander did as best as he could to ignore him.
"That's good, captain, don't listen to them," spoke a voice he whished he had long forgotten. He caught a sight of NSA agent Clark's baldhead out of the corner of his left eye, standing like a prick in the middle of the next row. "You did a good job, kid. You did your duty as a citizen and officer of the United States of America and nothing can take that away from you. I didn't mind it one bit when you blew my car up, my children understand. Right kids?" As he finished, the two animated bodies of children, crispy and burnt black, came out of nowhere to hug their father who grinned childishly.
"Go away, you're not real, both of you," gritted Xander as he stroked the cold medallion.
"California, who are you talking to?" asked Gabe, but his friend's eyes were fixed in the distance, horror on his face. He didn't respond.
"Sir, Platoon 2, reporting to die, sir!" yelled out Sergeant Jackson the platoon filed perfectly behind him., standing at attention before their Captain. Sergeant Jackson had his throat cut, just like it had been by the claw of that Erosyr demon back in Singapore.
"Ready to die, sir! Ouah!" yelled the troop in unison. Xander remembered all their names. Thompson with the gunshot wound to the head. Gruner, eviscerated like a lab animal. Marquette with his bowels at his feet. York with the giant hole in his chest.
Xander closed his eyes but snapped them right back open as he heard Willow speaking in his left ear. "Oh, no you don't, Xander! You watch us, you watch us die again."
"Willow," the name escaped his lips as he turned toward her. She leaned over the table behind him, looking the horrific way she had in his nightmares. Tears were starting to form in Xander's eyes.
"Willow? Who's Willow, that's Marcy." Gabe's voice was distant, fading away with the rest of Xander's surroundings. Xander was besieged by ghosts of the past, the small auditorium lined only with gruesome images he whished he'd long forgotten, and he almost had until now.
"Why? Why Xander?" moaned thousands of voices all around him. He stared straight ahead his breathing becoming erratic. He was trying as hard as he could to ignore everything, but there was no way around it. Suddenly, a brown haired girl sitting in front of him spun, revealing herself to be Cordelia Chase, looking just as she had when they were both dating the first time some seven years ago. She glared at him.
"What about me? Why didn't you protect me? Was it the sex? Was the sex not good enough, Xander?"
"No!" whispered Xander, tears starting to slide down his face.
"You know what I always felt helped in a situation like this, a good whipping." A baroque voice on the far right, the voice of a nightmare. Xander glared at Asmodeus with pure hatred. The archdemon stood 8 feet tall, a gilded cup of bone in his hand, thick crimson blood overflowing its brim. He was dress in a long flowing black cloak and the rest of his lavish ceremonial garments.
"You! You're doing this to me!" spat Xander.
"Me? No, Mr.Harris. I'm afraid I'm nothing else than another figment of your insane fantasy. Bloodwine?" He offered the cup.
Xander turned away catching a
glimpse of Buffy standing calmly in the middle of a storm of yells and
accusatory glares. She seemed different than the other visions there. She
seemed forgiving and beautiful. Xander felt suddenly serene, he felt something
warm against the skin of his chest. Buffy's eyes were full of compassion and
gentleness; her mouth was moving slowly but no sound were reaching Xander's
ears. He fought hard trying to concentrate enough to read her lips but then
suddenly Faith, dressed up in a revealing cheerleader outfit, appeared out of
nowhere and cleaved the blond slayer's head off. Dropping the sword she then
join a squad of women similarly dressed, all of which Xander recognized
immediately. Ampata, Miss. French, Joyce, Miss. Calender, and a few other women
he had watched die along the way. They started a routine before Xander's
disbelieving eyes.
"Go Xander, Go, Go, Go Xander. Xander he's our man, if he can't kill us no one can. Go Xander, Go, Go, Go Xander!" His patience was wearing thin, all these voices repeating over and over again what they had said already, their voices overlapping blending into each other forming a maddening crescendo. His entire body was trembling, anger and madness coursing through his veins. His eyes were closed as he felt someone shaking him, his breathing frantic. Xander finally sprung through his feet, pushing off the imaginary fiends that surrounded him, yelling at the top of his lungs, "Shut up! All of you!"
"Mr.Harris!" said Barnum appalled. Everything was back to normal in the political classroom, else for the shocked look on everyone's faces and Gabe who had been thrown out of his chair and now laid on the floor, bruised. "What is the matter with you?"
"What is the matter with you, huh?" Xander had tears in his eyes and was simply enraged beyond any logic. "You're all so fucking judgmental, with your everyday pretty little lives and you're unstained dignity. You're always quick to point the finger at what you think is wrong, but you never see the big picture. You never stop to think that maybe some things have to be done, that the only reason you people get to live your morally satisfying little lives is that somebody else is willing to dirty their hands and live with the guilt. Just like with Brasov, you don't know the whole story. You don't know why he had to die. You're all so quick to judge the shooter, but you never stop to think that maybe he didn't have a choice. Maybe he didn't want to do it. Maybe he was coerced!" Garrett looked at Xander in amazement, coming to a realization as he watched him yelled passionately at the professor.
"Oh… my… god!" exclaimed Garrett, his voice hinting he was impressed. "You ex-military motherfucker, you took the shot didn't you? You're the one who shot Brasov."
"Shut up, Garrett!" yelled Xander pointing to him menacingly with the index finger of his one functioning arm. The entire room was starting to whisper, professor Barnum was stupefied.
"Is this true, Mr.Harris?"
"I'm out of here!" responded Xander, rudely pushing his way out to the door, disregarding his friends attempt to calm him down.
