Hello again! This is a gift to my lovely Kyra (who is currently reading it over on LJ). Figured I'd post it over here so...here you go! Hope you like!

Spoilers: Post-Graduation for BTVS and Post-Second David Job for Leverage. Only real spoiler is if you don't know where the Leverage team went after the finale.

Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing. :(

Who He's Become
One-Shot

He never went back after graduation.

He was supposed to, but the cross-country trip had turned into cashing in his second piece-of-crap car and flying off to Europe, working his way through. His first couple months had been rough, jobless and saving his money for food rather than shelter. It had been summer, though, so when he'd curl on the thin blanket he'd bought at a second hand shop, he hadn't really had to worry about freezing to death. Though, he had taken to wearing crosses around his neck and wrists, ready to protect him if a vampire came by at any point.

He knew they'd never forgive him for not coming back.

Did they think he was dead, turned and terrorizing some random town, or maybe lying nameless and dead in the middle of nowhere?

He'd left Sunnydale after graduation, ready to see what else the States had to offer. He'd wanted to see towns that didn't have a growing vampire population. Then the engine dropped out of his car before he even got out of Oxnard, and left him stranded, his cell phone gone, smashed beyond repair in a mugging.

That was where he'd first met Elizabeth, dressed to kill in the middle of the Fabulous Ladies Night Club. She'd stood in the sea of barely dressed and barely legal men, and grabby, drunk women, standing tall in her suit as she conversed with the pudgy, shifty-eyed owner. The first night he'd seen her was the first night he'd danced.

He felt humiliated up on stage, face beet red and trying his best not to flinch away when slim fingers with glinting wedding bands would slip a bill into the hem of his too-small shorts. The bills were dirty and wet with whatever the women's drink of choice had been, but it was money, and money was what he needed to get Uncle Rory's car fixed so he could get out of here and go on with his trip as planned.

He kept his eyes focused on anything but the audience as he hooked his leg around the pole and slid down, prompting shouts from the women as he tried to ignore them and just how tight those shorts really were. Tiny and leather, he felt like he was out on display for these women and the occasional male, and technically that's what he was doing right now. He wasn't even supposed to be dancing. He'd been hired to wash dishes, but there hadn't been much other choice, not when Lucas walked in, bruised and red-eyed, still—and understandably—upset from his beating the previous night, courtesy of their wonderful employer, Isaac. He'd sent Lucas home before the nineteen year old blonde had crossed the threshold, telling him to go home and rest, that he'd handle it.

He'd handled it right onto the stage.

Isaac had been less than happy to find out that one of his biggest moneymakers had taken ill, and it had taken everything in Xander to withhold the snide comment that was begging to come out and ask what Isaac expected when he forced these boys to dance. None of them had even wanted to be there, not Lucas, Caleb, Tim, Derek, Max, or Sam. None of them wanted anything to do with this place, maybe once upon a time when it had been a gag with friends or a short-time thing, but Isaac didn't let them leave, flaunted his cash and his threats, made these boys—not a single over twenty—stay.

He closed his eyes as he rose back up the pole. He shouldn't even be on this stage. His eighteenth birthday wasn't for another week. But he couldn't let Lucas stay here, not in the state he was in. God knows what Isaac had done to him beyond the beating. And still no one went to the police. Who'd care about a couple battered strippers?

He all but ran from the stage when the music stopped, ignoring the catcalls from the women. He could feel the leather shorts bunched up in the back, giving every woman a good view of the fact that there had been no way to fit underwear of any kind under the shorts. He stumbled back when he banged into a slim body, grabbing a delicate arm before she could fall back. "Sorry," he grimaced as he noticed that it was the smartly dressed woman that Isaac had been speaking to, "I wasn't looking where I was going."

She smiled softly, waving a hand. "It's quite all right," she said, her English accent reminding him of Giles and home, "I wasn't either."

He bit his lip. "Employees…um…we're the only ones that are supposed to be back here."

She blushed softly, looking a bit embarrassed. "I got a bit lost. I thought Mr. Chaucer and I were going to continue our conversation in his office." She bit her lip, looking around. "I'd wanted to see if we could reach a compromise for his sculpture."

Xander's brows furrowed, thinking back to his first and only time in Isaac's office. "You mean that evergreen thing?"

Her face lit up. "Yes! That. Isn't it lovely?"

"Uh…yeah, sure." He shook his head, pointing further down the hall. "His office is that way; all the way down and turn left. His name is on the door. You'll have to wait for him, though. The door has about six locks."

She giggled. "Six?"

He grinned slightly. "Just about." He tensed a bit as he heard approaching voices. "I should…" he trailed off, pointing at the door of the dressing room.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she smiled at him, holding out a hand, "Elizabeth Abbott."

"Xander Harris."

She released his hand, taking a step towards the far end of the hall. "Left, you said?"

"Yup," he replied, one hand on the door as the voices grew closer. The other guys were all still out dancing and he really didn't feel like hanging around to find out just who the voices belonged too.

She smiled at him once more as she turned and walked down the hall, allowing him to duck into the dressing room.

The next day he'd come in to hear Isaac screaming and plates smashing as he yelled into a phone about his evergreen. None of the others had known what was going on, shrugging shoulders as police filed in and began to ask questions. Had they seen anyone in the hallway? Did they see anyone leave with the sculpture? Had there been anyone there yesterday that looked suspicious?

He hadn't mentioned Elizabeth to the police, never had a chance to before one of the cops recognized Lucas' bruised face from a missing poster from somewhere in Phoenix, and twenty minutes later the missing statue didn't mean anything, not with Isaac being put in handcuffs and the cop talking about kidnapping and five years missing.

He'd only had time to slip the two hundred dollars he'd earned the night before into Lucas' hand before he ducked out of the building and all but ran to his barely running car.

And there it was on the seat, a stack of hundreds and one tiny, emerald that he knew was from a branch on that damn evergreen sculpture. There was a little note beside the little baggie that held the gem, neat cursive just telling him to take care.

He'd traded in the car after that, getting in return a beaten yet working red '84 Lincoln and drove back to Sunnydale and straight through. He wasn't sure why he hadn't been able to bring himself to stop. Maybe he wasn't ready to go home to parents that were too drunk to even get his name right, or maybe he just wasn't ready to go back at all. The others were moving on to college and where was he going?

He ended up in Portland, getting a job in a diner when his car battery finally died. Two months he spent, living the nine to five job, serving greasy, fattening burgers to strangers before he finally sat back and decided that he wasn't going to find a car on his budget to get him cross-country. He cashed in his car again, pocketing the money and handing over enough to get a passport and a one-way plane ticket to England.

Why he chose England he hadn't really been sure. He'd decided on Europe when he walked into the airport, but he'd had to wait another three hours for the flight to London when they'd had one going to Paris taking off in one. Part of him still wondered if there'd been some kind of subconscious hope that he'd run into Elizabeth again even though the other part of him knew he wouldn't.

Another place, another job. This time working as a bartender at this hole-in-the-wall pub that had him checking every few minutes to make sure that there weren't any weapons or pool sticks being waved around.

He looked up at the sound of an American voice, noticing a hint of a country twang, half of him expecting to see a cowboy. But the voice didn't fit his mental image, instead of what he'd imagined, he saw a big, muscled man with long hair hanging in his face as he bent another man's arm almost to the point of breaking. He let his head fall forward, dropping the dish rag as he hopped over the bar, narrowly missing the glass belonging to a man in an RAF that was eyeing his dryer shrunken jeans a bit too much. He ignored the man—though he was sure he felt a hand slap his ass—as he strode over to the pool table trying to look more confidence than he was.

"Still wanna rip me off?" the American asked, smirking as the man below him grunted, trying to break free.

"Uh…can you not do that in here?" Xander tried, looking to the ceiling for a moment when he was ignored. "Uh, excuse me."

"Just take your sodding money!" the other man shouted. He sighed as the grip on his arm loosened, but cried out a second later as a crack sounded and his right index finger bent backwards. He groaned curses at the American, holding his arm to his chest when the hold on him was released and his wallet was dropped onto the pool table, completely empty.

"Interest," the American said before the protest was voiced, "And you pissed me off."

Xander turned at the sound of his name, and returned to the bar at his boss' beckoning.

"Don't get involved," Evan said, shaking half brown, half gray hair as he placed a pint in front of a patron, "Not when he's involved."

"He?"

"Eliot," Evan replied, waving the dirty dish rag in the direction of the American, "He's not the kind of guy you want to piss off."

Xander nodded, watching as Eliot finished counting the money and shoved it into his pocket as he grabbed a leather jacket from a chair. His eyes followed the other man from the bar, finally losing sight when the wooden door swung shut.

Eliot returned to the bar a couple more times in the next week before disappearing all together. Evan had shrugged, saying that he'd be back someday, always was. He didn't come back before Xander left two months later for Paris.

It was raining when he arrived and he scowled, glaring at the rain as if it had purposely followed him from London. Three months of rain. He missed the sun.

He missed Sunnydale.

But he wasn't going back. Not yet. He wasn't done yet. What he wasn't done with, he honestly wasn't sure, but there was something out there. He knew it.

Maybe he couldn't return to them. Maybe those months away had changed him; his appearance had. He'd lost the loud shirts back in Oxnard, in turn opting for jeans, a solid colored t-shirt, and—depending on the weather—a worn leather jacket or a gray cotton zip up. His hair hadn't changed, hanging in his face a bit more than it had in high school, enough that it covered some of the still healing scar that marred his face; three inches long on the right side of his face, stretching from his temple down to his jaw, a wonderful gift from the millennium celebration when he tried to break up a fight and ended up in one verses a table corner. Sadly, the table corner had won and he'd won a trip to the A&E for a nice collection of stitches.

He avoided working in bars when he finally found a cringe worthy place that he could afford. The walls were cracked and there was a leaky ceiling in the corner of the kitchen, but there weren't any bugs and it came with a bed, filthy and probably diseased, but it wasn't a floor and he paid weekly.

He'd been working in a factory for a week when there was an accident that resulted in his arm spewing blood like a fountain and a hurried trip to the hospital yet again.

The doctor was getting agitated as he spoke to him, asking the same questions over and over. But he didn't know French and the doctor apparently didn't know English. He was getting dizzier by the second as the doctor stitched him up, leaning back in the bed, arm held out as he watched the needle thread in and out of his skin, pulling it back together.

"No…I…I don't know," Xander paused, trying to find the word that had been on the tip of his tongue a moment ago, "French. I don't know French."

The man in the bed beside him huffed, and Xander couldn't focus hard enough to figure out if he was annoyed or not. He interrupted the doctor's fiftieth repeat of the same question, speaking to the doctor in what he figured was French but was too tired to care. "Are you allergic to any medications?" he asked. It took Xander a moment to realize the man was speaking to him.

"Nope," he replied, staring at the light above him, and watching as one became two.

The doctor sighed, probably relieved that he could stop asking. He turned an eye to the man this time, directing a question at the man that Xander finally realized was American too, like Eliot. Hey, maybe they knew each other.

"What did you cut yourself on?" the man asked.

"Factory," Xander answered, watching the one light turn into three and begin to dance, "Hand slipped working on a saw." He turned his gaze to the American man. "Am I gonna get fired?"

The man snorted, shaking his head and sending brown hair flying. He relayed the reply to the doctor, sitting back as the doctor turned away from him completely. Xander's eyes followed the man's hand to where they laid on the left side of his chest, a white bandage on bare skin with a small spot of red peeking through. It wasn't growing.

The doctor spun to him, snapping something as the man tried to slide from the bed.

The man sighed heavily, settling back into the thin mattress.

"I don't like hospitals."

The man shook his head. "Neither do I."

"The one back home had a demon in the basement." He was fairly certain he wasn't supposed to say that.

"Did it," the man chuckled as spots began to join the lights in the dance across his vision.

A nurse scurried into the area, holding a phone to the American. "Monsieur Ford," she said, holding the phone out to the man.

"Heh," he laughed, "Like the car."

"Like the car," Ford agreed with a smile before he turned to his conversation.

Ford was gone by the time he woke up again, leaving him stranded in a hospital with his doctor that still didn't speak English and a blood bag that made him think of vampires back in Sunnydale.

He ended up staying in Paris long enough that he came to know the language as well as he did his mother language. After he did indeed get fired from the factory, he ended up spending his following three years in the city bouncing between jobs. In those three years he didn't contact anyone back in Sunnydale. He kept updated through keeping an eye on whatever means he could. He cried when he saw that Joyce had died, cried when Buffy followed. He cried again when Buffy came back.

He'd been working in a law firm as a security guard for a week when he decided that Paris was nothing more than a job cursed city for him.

"Monsueir," a small woman said, nodding to him as she shut down her computer for the night, hours after closing.

He smiled back at her in reply, knowing from past experience that Madeline would decline any offer to have an escort to the ground floor. She wished him good night as she got into the elevator, waving as the doors slid shut and began the twenty-five floor descent, leaving him alone. He leaned over, switched off a light someone had left on, and looked up as he heard movement above him. He frowned, eyes on the ceiling as he walked to the door that led to the roof.

There was definitely someone up there. He could hear the sound of snow crunching beneath extra weight and his hand strayed to the gun he'd been issued. His breathing stilled as he pushed the door open, peeking around the heavy metal and cold winter air rushed at him.

And blinked.

His eyes followed a complicated twist of ropes before falling on…a girl.

Oh, great.

He stepped out into the snow, shivering against the near-Christmas chill as the girl spun to face him. She didn't look scared or nervous. Hell, she didn't even look cold. She was strapped up to a harness, standing dangerously close to the edge of the building.

Another blink.

"Uh…Madame?"

She grinned, sweeping her blonde hair up into a black cap before she waved a gloved hand at him. "You're cute."

Then she dropped.

Right off the roof.

The roof of a twenty-five story building.

Another blink.

"I am so fired."

And he was.

He'd seen the police outside the next door museum the next morning, people shouting that the Caravaggio was gone and police cursing some blonde nut job named Parker. He'd been questioned. Why had he been up there? What had he seen? Why hadn't he called the authorities? Had he seen her before?

He really didn't know why he hadn't called anyone. Oh, wait. Maybe it had been the mind numbing shock of seeing a girl his age jump off a building. In the end they'd let him go with a shake of their head and a request to turn in his ID, gun, and uniform.

He'd been back in the States by the time 2004 rolled around two weeks later.

He stopped at the crater that had become Sunnydale and stood there for a while, just standing and staring at the hole that had once been his home. And he closed his eyes, remembering how he'd panicked when he heard the news, how when he'd finally tracked down each of their numbers, he had called over and over, listening long enough to make sure he heard everyone's voices before he hung up. He'd wanted to speak, wanted to say so much to them, but he hadn't been able to, too afraid that they'd hate him by now. He hadn't called, he hadn't written, he hadn't come back for the big battle, he hadn't gone to Joyce or Buffy's funerals.

He didn't stay in California. This time his car—in much better shape than his last ones—had gotten to Des Moines before he got tired of driving and settled down for a year, working for a construction company. He'd liked it, building homes and buildings for the surrounding small towns. He'd gotten stronger doing it too, started working out and doing stretches that eventually turned into his imitations of things he remembered from seeing Buffy train. It was there in Iowa that he'd taken to hiding in the bookshelves of the local library, researching the mechanisms involved in bombs.

That soldier from that hellish Halloween was still in his head, memories of codes and regulations, and a more than a bit annoying voice telling him to cut his hair. He'd kept his hair shaggy out of spite, smirking internally every time the soldier would huff and grumble, but he'd followed the hyped up urge to learn about explosives. The soldier had been craving new knowledge since graduation.

God, that explosion.

Xander smiled at the memory of Sunnydale High going up in a happy mix of dynamite and gunpowder.

He'd had to plant explosives in the occasional building for a demolition before a rebuild, and those were fun for a while, watching a cloud of dust as a building collapsed in on itself. The thrill faded quickly, though, leaving the beginnings of a pyromaniac in him aching for more. He wanted the fire, the big explosion that made the ground beneath him shake and send stray, burning papers fluttering to the ground.

And those desires led him to an old abandoned farmhouse, far out in the middle of nowhere. There wasn't another house for miles and the only beings inside were the nest of vampires he'd found when people began to turn up dead. He went when they were hunting, laid the explosives and waited for day when they'd all come back to hide from the sun.

Then he watched the house explode.

He may have used a bit more than was actually necessary, but the final product was so perfect. And he knew there was no chance of a vampire escaping that.

He arrived in Philadelphia on his twenty-third birthday and spent the day in a crappy motel room, browsing the classifieds with cheap travel sized bottles of alcohol.

Another construction job, more unsatisfying explosions. He'd been there for only a few weeks when he'd run into their computer guy Alec. They had hit it off, and though Alec and Willow were completely different kinds of computer genius, he'd liked the other man, had fun watching Alec set up the simulations of the explosions on his computer, calculating this and that, making sure that it would be big enough to send the building down and small enough that they didn't have to worry about injuries.

He jerked as a balled up piece of paper smacked him in the back of the head and turned, launching the ball back at Alec. His face split into a grin that he knew shouldn't be there when he saw the excited gleam in Alec's eyes. "Time?"

Alec nodded and Xander jumped to his feet, following the other man.

It had taken them two weeks to plan it, and now, on the nine month mark of his employment, they were doing it.

Alec had noticed withdrawals from accounts that weren't being used for the jobs, noticed every withdrawal slip had the greasy finger stains from their French fry gouging boss, Michael Miller. It had been happening for years, thousands upon thousands missing, all of it probably going into that Hummer that Michael was obsessed with.

Alec hadn't wanted him to know, hadn't wanted him involved, but years of Sunnydale and sneaking around his house—trying not to wake his parents with their never ending hangovers—had taught him how to walk quietly and he was able to see what Alec was working on before his shadow was cast over the computer and Alec exited out.

He didn't have a big role on the computer end of what they were doing. He was no Willow and he sure as hell was no Alec. He could barely work a computer.

Explosions on the other hand, those he could do.

It seemed fitting, to blow up that Hummer. It had almost run him over more times than he could count and if he was going to be honest, it had a huge gas tank and the explosion…it would look awesome.

He should have felt guilty or even scared of what they were planning to do. Alec was hacking into God knows what, bringing the insurance on Evan's Hummer to some ungodly number. His job was to blow up the thing. Insurance fraud wouldn't look good when the investigators came and it would lead an investigation that would eventually uncover the embezzlement.

He figured he could cancel out some of the guilt with the knowledge that no one was going to get hurt…at least not physically in Michael's case. They'd waited until everyone had cleared out, waited a couple more hours just to be completely sure.

Alec had lured Michael away with an e-mail from some higher ups telling him that he had to drive one of the trucks out to Vero Beach. He'd had to leave the Hummer and that gave them the chance they needed. He'd be heading back around now, and with the right amount of coincidences, Michael was going down.

"All rigged?" Alec asked as Xander came out from beneath the car.

Xander smiled wide. "Like a dream."

Alec had taken some money out for them and added in a fee on Michael's end for further add-ons for the car. They'd each be getting a couple grand, not much, but enough to get him to where ever he decided to wander after this. He was done with Philly, done with the boring explosions in construction, done with the greasy boss that he'd hated from the get go.

Xander was almost bouncing as he waited for Alec to give him the signal. His latex-gloved hand was clutching the remote, ready to put the Hummer in a hundred charred pieces. At the signal, all that could be heard was the explosion and the soft chuckles coming from the two men dressed in black. They both smirked as Xander placed the remote in the foam ceiling tile, replacing it just a bit off kilter, enough for the police to notice. They'd used the garage door opener that Michael was always forgetting at the site and though the explosion could have been so much bigger than it was, they needed it to look amateur. Michael didn't have the knowledge it took to build the kind of bomb the soldier in Xander was aching for.

The explosion had looked cool, though. Fire, smoke. He'd been smiling as he and Alec separated into their own packed cars. Both were leaving Philadelphia, though neither knew where the other was going. They hadn't even known where they themselves were going.

He'd driven to Miami from there and that time he really had settled down. He got a nice apartment, furnished it with things that he actually liked, he got to know his neighbors. Mrs. O'Connor in 31B made him lasagna every Thursday, always said he was too thin. He'd been sitting down in front of his laptop with a warm chunk of it when the IM had popped up.

He frowned as a pop-up interrupted his browsing, asking him if he wanted to accept a message from someone with the screen name BananasAreGood. He accepted out of curiosity, putting his eBay search to the side for the moment.

BananasAreGood: Hey, man.

Xander blinked. The name sounded familiar, but he just couldn't…no way. It couldn't be.

ItAllGoesBoom: Alec?

BananasAreGood: At your service.

ItAllGoesBoom: How'd you get this? I didn't get it until after Philly.

BananasAreGood: You insult me. You think I wouldn't be able to track you down? :P

ItAllGoesBoom: And suddenly I feel a lot less safe.

BananasAreGood: All in a day's work, my man.

BananasAreGood: I got a question for you, though.

ItAllGoesBoom: What?

BananasAreGood: You still doing explosives?

ItAllGoesBoom: A bit.

He smiled softly, thinking of the bomb he'd slipped into a vampire's pocket the night before. Burning ash and smoke everywhere.

ItAllGoesBoom: Why?

BananasAreGood: How quick can you get to Portland?

He'd made it in three days, the excitement pushing him to break enough speeding laws to make Buffy look like a good driver. He made a stop at the old diner, smiling at the head waitress that was still there when he went to the counter and ordered a coffee to go. It was just past ten in the morning when he pulled into the parking lot at the address Alec had given him.

He stared up at the building, smiling softly as he walked in, walking straight to the directory to double-check the floor that Alec had told him. Leverage Consulting & Associates…ah, top floor. "Going up in the world," he murmured as he stepped into the elevator and pressed the correct button. He smirked slightly as the doors slid shut and raised his eyes to the ceiling. "But by no doubts legally."

He hummed softly, going along with the tune of the elevator music, still humming when he exited and stopped in front of the office door.

And stopped stock still at the sight of the woman adjusting unlit candles at the front desk.

"Elizabeth?"

She turned, eyes watching him for a moment as she tried to fit a name to the face. Her mouth dropped open a fraction as she added seven years to his face and realized who she was staring at. "Xander? What…what are you doing here?"

Xander opened his mouth only to shut it again as Alec came into the room and threw an arm over his shoulder.

"Hardison, you know him?" she asked.

"Sophie Devereaux, meet the explosives expert I mentioned, Xander Harris," Alec said, smiling. He paused, looking confused for a moment. "You two know each other?"

"Sophie?" Xander echoed, confused, "Your name's Elizabeth…"

Sophie nodded, stepping forward. "For a time."

"You left the…"

"I did."

Xander really didn't know what to say, his mind was full of questions, but he didn't know which to ask first. Why was she here? How did she know Alec? Why was she going by Sophie? Had she lied to him about her name? Probably, he figured. Why did she leave him the money and the emerald?

Why is Ford standing in the doorway?

Xander blinked as the man stared at him.

"I know you."

"Paris, 2001."

"The hospital," he said, remembering. He smiled slightly, looking at Xander closely. "You're sufficiently more coherent this time."

He laughed, nodding as he got a closer look at the man beside Ford.

Eliot.

Seriously?

He began to laugh again, harder this time, knowing full well that the four other people in the room were looking at him like he'd grown another head and that Ford was probably rethinking his last comment. He bent at the middle, arms around his stomach.

"Xander? Dude, what are you…"

He kept laughing, pointing a finger at Eliot. "'99. Eddie's Pub. London."

Eliot chuckled softly. "You're the bartender."

"Yep," he laughed, looking up at Eliot as he suppressed the random laughter.

"Dude, do you know everyone here?" Alec asked, incredulous.

"I don't know. Mayb—oh, you are kidding me!"

Across the room were a set of windows and right outside them was a blonde on a harness, slipping inside.

The blonde from the rooftop.

The blonde that had cost him his job.

The blonde that jumped off a freaking twenty-five story building.

She unclipped the harness, looking at him as she came up and got right in his face.

"Uh…hello."

He could hear Alec chuckling beside him.

She smiled at him and gave a decisive nod. "You're still cute."

It had been weird as they gathered in the conference room and Alec filled him in on everyone and what they did. He listened, learned Ford's first name and the details of the job Alec had contacted him about. Parker had looked excited when Alec told his team that he did explosives.

He helped them with the job, got to blow up the yachts of some drug smugglers that had killed this couple's daughter with tainted drugs.

Then he went back to Miami.

He was back in Portland in a week, settling into Alec's guest bedroom until he could find his own place and filling his friend's fridge with enough lasagna from Mrs. O'Connor to last them a good six months. She'd been sad when she saw him packing up his car, gave him a hug and a maroon lipstick colored kiss on each cheek before he pulled out of the complex for a final time. He'd only been there for just over a year.

He'd realized as he was unpacking a suitcase into an empty dresser that his life had truly changed since he left Sunnydale. Back then, everything had been measured in hours and days, life too unpredictable to plan for things long term. He measured things in years now; a year here, a year there. He could plan things now and know that unless something went wrong in a job, he'd be able to keep them. He didn't have to worry about vampires and apocalypses. He still saw the odd vampire, but they weren't like back in his hometown.

It seemed fitting that a year later, he and the others were working a job in Cleveland.

"X-Xander?"

Her voice was quivering and Xander knew that in time, the shaky voice would be replaced with yelling, but there wasn't time for him to wait. He smiled at her, smiled at each of them. "Hey."

"You don't just say hey after disappearing for eight years!" Then she was hitting his chest, crying into his shirt as her tears darkened the gray fabric. "We thought…we thought you were dead."

He wrapped his arms around her, kissing her crown as he rocked them both. "I'm sorry, Wills. I'm sorry." His eyes fell on his team before they closed and he held on tighter.

He should have called, should have told them that he was okay, but he never had. He hadn't been able to bring himself to stop when he came through after his disastrous road trip and as time went on, he'd kept finding reasons to not pick up the phone; he was on his way out, they might not be there. Eventually he figured that a call wouldn't matter, that by now, he was just a memory to them and that what happened to him was nothing more than a distant question. He'd never changed his name, always figured that if they really wanted to find him, they would. Maybe both sides had just been scared about what they'd find out.

"You left."

Buffy's voice was soft, but he opened his eyes and opened an arm for her. She took the offer and pressed herself against him just as much as Willow was. She kept whispering those two words in a mantra as she held him and he looked to Giles, hearing the older man's unspoken question of why. He didn't have an answer, not one that would make up for all this lost time.

A soft cough behind them made the girls pull away, wiping at their cheeks.

Nate looked apologetic. "Xander, we need to leave."

Xander nodded, taking a look at his old friends once more. He didn't ask how or why Faith was there, didn't question the identity of the woman whose hand Willow was clutching, didn't ask who all these strangers were. He looked at Dawn who still stated at him in shock, probably remembering when she was little with her crush on him. She stood beside Buffy, looking so grown up that it made him wish he'd been there all those years. Buffy was still sniffling, putting on a brave face for her sister, but they both knew that it didn't matter. Giles was cleaning his glasses and Xander smiled at the image, remembering the high school library that didn't exist anymore. Willow kissed the cheek of the nameless woman before letting go of her hand and approaching him again.

"I don't want you to leave," she whispered.

"Need to, Wills," he whispered back, slipping a card into her hand, "My number's on the back. You won't lose me again."

She sobbed, holding the tiny paper card to her chest as she nodded. Teary eyes searched his face and her hand rested on his cheek. "You've changed."

"Yeah."

"You have a scar."

"No big," he shrugged, "It's not like I lost an eye."

"Xander," came Nate's voice again, not angry, just reminding him that as much as he wanted it, they didn't have time for a long reunion. They had to leave.

He wiped one last tear from Willow's face and stepped back. His smile was amused when Parker bounded up beside him, holding onto his arm like an excited child.

"Is it time yet?" she asked, bouncing slightly.

He freed his arm, checking his watch. "Almost."

"Should they move?" Sophie asked as Xander dropped his arm over Parker's shoulder and began to walk away with his team.

Xander shook his head. "Only some heat is gonna reach this far."

"Heat?" Buffy sounded confused as she called after him, "What do you mean-"

The rest of her question was deafened by the explosion, all boom and flames destroying the crypt behind them and every hint of its vampire inhabitants and papers detailing the trade business that had been giving young girls to vampires from their human associate. The vampires were gone and the human was in police custody, a little roughed up thanks to Eliot, but alive enough to answer to the charges of the files Alec had altered, erasing any supernatural element.

Parker giggled, bouncing a bit more beneath Xander's arm.

Xander kept walking, forcing himself to not look back, not at the explosion and not at his old friends. A part of him wanted to stay, wanted to be a Scoobie again, but there was a larger part that was telling him that his time with them was past, that he belonged here now. He'd had fun with them, but he hadn't been able to really contribute like he could with the team. He played a part now, they actually depended on him for things.

He loved Willow and everyone, but they didn't need him.

He'd had to tell the team about the things that went bump in the night back when one of their marks had turned out to be a demon. The team was learning and adjusting to the new challenges and more of their marks were taking on a supernatural element. He'd see his old friends again. Sooner or later another job would cross and their groups would mesh. Willow and everyone would learn in time about who he was now and he'd have to handle their reactions when they did.

But that was all in due time. For now, he and the others had to get the hell out of Dodge.

"Did it really need to be that big, Xander?" Nate asked, sighing when Xander did nothing more than quirk an eyebrow at him.

Alec laughed. "Of course it had to be."

"It was a bit large," Sophie commented, shaking her head free of her ponytail.

Parker tugged on Xander's sleeve, sending a pleading look to Nate. "Can we do it again?"

"There's something wrong with you."

Xander smiled. "We know."

It was time to go home.

The End