Chapter 16.

The last thought that went through his mind was, 'I wonder if I'll become Immortal after this? I kinda wish I'd had time to run that test so I'd know.' And then he was falling. Not far. Merely too his knees as the strong arms that were holding him up disappeared in a puff of dust. He turned around and there was Willow, looking very fierce and holding a stake.

"I'm the only one who gets to kill Xander." she said wrathfully.

They looked at each other for a second before Giles joined them. "Is everyone alright?" he asked as he picked up Xander's Taser.

"Yeah." said Willow.

"I'll live." said Xander.

At that moment, Buffy dusted one of the last three vamps and the other two took off. "Let's go get Angel," she said seriously. "You guys coming?"

Xander shook his head and got to his feet with as much dignity as he could. "Yell if you need backup. Otherwise, I'm just going to sit and wait." he motioned to some wicker chairs that matched the table the Oreos and apple juice amazingly still rested on.

Buffy nodded and she and Giles disappeared into the sanctuary itself. Xander made his way stiffly over to the chair and collapsed into it. He was then looking out at Willow standing among the dust piles in the vestibule. "Thank you for saving my life." he said.

She looked up at him from contemplating the dusty carpet. "Thank you for saving mine."

There was a 'pop' sound from inside the church and a male voice cried out in pain but it didn't sound like Giles, so Xander didn't worry about it. "I didn't even get to use the Taser. I was looking forward to that." He gave Willow a small smile. "Sorry about spitting holy water in your face by the way."

She shrugged. "I'll live and I wouldn't have if you hadn't."

An uncomfortable silence reigned for a bit. "Could I ask you to gather up my stakes and water bottles? I'd do it, but-"

"You're already injured and had no business fighting this many vampires?" Willow finished for him slightly tersely.

"Basically, yes. But in my defense, I didn't expect there to be more than six or seven. I figured I would only have to deal with one or two. And then that ass-hat Ford had to go and tackle me like he still played football or something. Hit my head on the ground outside."

Willow took a half step towards him at that, then visibly stopped herself and pulled back her arm that had instinctively reached out to him.

"I'm fine. At least I was on the grass and not the sidewalk. No double vision, no concussion, just a bit of a headache. And he made my ribs worse."

Willow didn't know what to say to that, so she started picking up the two discarded water bottles and a few stakes, two of which were Xander's. "Here." she said as she handed them back.

"Have you ever heard of the Westermarck Effect?" Xander asked as he accepted the stakes. "I knew what it was, but I had to do a little research to find the name for it, so you could research it yourself. Shall I summarize?" At a nod, he went on. "Basically, young children who spend a lot of time together are... desensitized to each other and don't generally develop sexual attraction to each other later in life. I'm not sure why it only affected one of us, and I'm very sorry that it did. Because any neutral third party would certainly say you're a very beautiful young woman. But I can't ever be attracted to you sexually. My brain thinks of you as a sister and I can't ever change that."

Willow's eyes filled with tears that didn't fall. She turned away. "Thank you for explaining." she said with her back turned before she walked to the other side of the room.

A minute later, Giles opened the inner doors and walked out, supporting a tearful Slayer.

Surprisingly, it was Buffy that spoke. "We- we were too late. They killed him." she said sobbingly.

"But, we did get them in the end." Giles added. "It's over now."

"Mostly." Xander said getting stiffly to his feet. "Ford ran away, I wasn't in any shape to chase him." he explained briefly.

Buffy just nodded through her tears and went to hug the other crying girl in the room.

"You're back early." Chantarelle said as he entered their lair. She stood in surprise. "You're hurt! Where are the others?"

"Probably dust along with all of Spike's minions if the Slayer's backup all fought like that." Ford said.

"How many did she have?" Chantarelle asked.

"Just three that I saw. But I fought one of them 1-on-1 and he did this to me. Next time we either need to get her alone or have a whole lot more minions. Preferably both."

"What about the food?" she asked.

"It didn't look like they'll eat it. But poisoning the Oreos was always a long shot." He frowned. "Speaking of food, we got anything around? I could use a healing boost."

"That older, Asian lady might still be alive unless the boys drained her before they left." Chantarelle said. "Otherwise, there's some bags in the fridge."

Ford frowned. She was a smoker and he wasn't particularly fond of the taste of smokers. But beggars couldn't be choosers. He went to the back room to find some blood to drink.

If she was dead, he could always go out and buy some blood now. His deal with Spike had made them fairly wealthy. Not live-your-entire-unlife-in-luxury wealthy, but good enough for now. The downside was they he was now injured and very low on minions. It would be a while before he could strike back at the Slayer. And that friend of hers. He wanted that guy now too.

It was over a week later before Xander felt up to putting his potential Immortality to the test, mostly because he was finally healed enough that the testing would no longer hurt him. And so it was that he was in the science lab after school one day, masturbating into a glass beaker. Not his proudest moment and he hoped to god that nobody walked in on him right then. Luckily no one did and he was able to collect his sample in peace. He took a small drop of his specimen and placed it on a slide before setting the slide under a microscope.

Nothing.

He searched all over the slide. First frantically and then in a set pattern. Then he readied another slide just to be sure. Still nothing.

He didn't know what it was about Immortals or pre-Immortals that caused them to not produce sperm or eggs, but it was a fact that he'd known about since he'd become a doctor. Which was actually long before the so-called 'invention' of the microscope in the 16th century. There had actually been a Roman inventor in 200 BC that invented it first. He had, of course, wondered what his own 'seed' had looked like. Methos had seen that and compared it to his own way back then. The lack of 'seed' explained his own infertility.

Xander reeled with the news. He was a pre-Immortal. Either that or he simply suffered from Azoospermia but that affected slightly less than 1% of the male population. Theoretically, he could see a doctor about this. If they couldn't find a cause, then Immortality would be the likeliest answer. As it stood he couldn't think of any other test he could run himself that would tell him anything. So (very likely) at his first death, he would stop aging and would receive his Immortal healing. The slight ache still affecting his ribs wanted that healing now, but the rational part of his brain certainly didn't want to get stuck being 17 forever. The younger you were when you first died, the more you had to move around and change your identity as it was harder to hide your agelessness when you were young. A bigger and bigger problem as documentation for living in the world got more and more complex.

He thoroughly washed the instruments he'd used then he went to the library.

"Hey Amy. Will." Xander greeted the two women who were sitting and reading at the table. They both looked up and smiled at him. He was glad that Willow had made a 'new' friend, even if she was stretching the definition of the word 'new' since they'd both known her since kindergarten. Still, it was good that they were hanging out again. Amy, it turned out, was on her way to becoming a witch like her mother. Or very much not like her mother, as she insisted. Jenny Calendar, their resident techno-pagan had rejoined the group since the fight at the church and was taking on the role of mentor to both of the girls, as it had turned out that Willow also had an affinity for the craft. She would likely be more techno than pagan, but it was a new interest, with new friends, and Xander heartily approved.

"Hey, Xan! Care to spar?" Buffy offered.

"Very much no, Buff." Xander shook his head. "Not all of us have Slayer healing. My ribs are still wishing I was Immortal right now."

He didn't bother hiding that feeling though he didn't share his recent test results. They had explained to Amy what had happened to them on Halloween and who they had gone as. It turned out that Amy had gone as a witch named Elphaba. Who, she explained, wasn't a bad witch, just a bit untrained and had taken the blame for some things she hadn't done. It had given her a bit of a short temper and a desire to take shortcuts, but Jenny was nipping both of those things in the bud.

Still, it seemed to have jump-started any latent magical talent she might have had and Ms. Calendar was insisting on giving her proper guidance and training. Which meant that she was spending a lot more time in the library with Giles and everyone else ever since Angel died. Which was apparently a switch since Giles' pet demon had possessed her, she had mostly shunned their group. Until she saw a bandaged Rupert and found out the story behind the wounds including the fact that the entire Scourge of Europe was finally gone, including Angel. She had insisted on playing nursemaid after that and had quickly reintegrated herself into the Scooby gang.

Xander walked through the front library to the rear stacks where he found several issues of the Sunnydale Gazette and a comfy chair to read them in and started reading. He knew Ford was still out there and likely would strike again. He was looking for clues that might tell him what the vampire was up to. Because of all the vampires they'd faced so far, Ford was the only one he knew of to successfully carry out a plan. And that worried him a great deal.

It was another week before Xander felt up to patrolling again. In the mean time, he'd used his recuperating time to make a couple more art deals and passed another tip onto Joyce. It wasn't going to triple her money like the last time, but high end ones like that were rare.

So he trained with Buffy after school that day just to warm up a bit and make sure he was really up for it. Then they set off for patrol together.

"How are you doing?" he asked sympathetically.

"I- I don't know. It hurts. I was sure that he'd be there forever and then he's gone, ya know?" she said.

"I really do." he answered.

"Oh. Yeah. I suppose." she tapped the side of her head.

"Methos lost a lot of friends that he thought would live forever. To the point where he swore off making friends ever again." Xander said. "It didn't last. Unfortunately, the only way to avoid pain in this world is to close yourself off from it. And then you're not really living, just existing."

"Close yourself off from the world? Like you closed yourself off from Willow?" Buffy accused.

Xander was unfazed. "Is that what you think?"

"I don't know." Buffy sighed. "It's hard to tell what you're thinking since Halloween. You used to be so open and now you're so guarded. It's hard to tell if you care for either of us any more."

"Of course I care for both of you. I'm doing all I can to help you both." Xander defended.

"Like what?" Buffy wondered.

"Well for Willow, I made sure she had you to talk to, first of all." he said. "Then I kicked the hornet's nest for her and deliberately drew Cordelia's ire so she would be so busy plotting against me that she wouldn't have time to poke fun at Willow. And since Cordelia knows we've broken up, teasing her is doubly off the board. Thanks to the way she thinks, she believes that teasing Willow would actually be what I want right now. And since she's mad at me, that's the last thing she'll do."

"Wow." Buffy said. She hadn't realized that there had been anything beneath Xander and Cordy's newest spat other than their normal sniping.

"Methos' machinations turned towards a higher purpose." Xander gave a rueful smile. What he'd told her was only half of the stuff he'd already done. And he had more stuff planned for when the time was right. But if everything went as planned, his friends would never know about those. Then again, how often did things go to plan?

"And me?" Buffy asked.

"Hopefully, you'll never know." Xander smiled enigmatically.

"Xander!"

"Would it freak you out to know that Angel patrolled the sewer access tunnels closest to your house to make sure you'd never be attacked near your house?" Xander asked.

"What? I never-"

"Of course not. We do for those we love and hope they never know the true depth of our feelings. Because it might scare them." Xander said holding her gaze intensely.

"I thought you didn't feel that way about me any more?" he voice was barely a whisper. The look he was giving her made it so she could barely speak.

"I said I didn't feel puppy love for you any more. I neglected to mention how I felt now." He still didn't mention it though his hands were now holding hers quite a bit more tenderly than Buffy would have expected if he just wanted to be friends. He suddenly dropped her hands though. "Sorry." he said sheepishly. "I forgot how soon it's been. I should never have-"

"No!" Buffy cut him off a little more forcefully than she would have liked. "It's okay." Buffy shook her head to clear her thoughts. "Listen. Why don't you come over. Mom's making meatloaf I think. And I still need to apologize to you in front of her about that whole 'dating my mom' fiasco."

"Why Miss Summers, are you asking me to dinner?" Xander smiled.

Buffy stuck out her tongue at him. "Just as friends."

Xander waggled his eyebrows at that but nodded. "Just friends."

A/N: Elphaba is from Wicked: The Musical and is based on Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. Which are both retelling of the Wizard of Oz story from the Wicked Witch of the West's perspective. The musical didn't come out until 2003 but is much better than the book, so my Elphaba always comes from there. Do not own either.

A/N2: Thank you to yog for the idea about how to tell if he was a potential Immortal or not. I hadn't considered it at the time. I had been planning on ending this story with Xander dying and not saying a word about whether he would come back until I started the sequel where we learn (shock and awe) that Xander is now Immortal. Blame yog for not letting me end it with a cliffhanger. I also wanted to point out that I really do read and take your reviews into account. If you have a good idea, I can and sometimes will change my entire story to fit your idea in. Just like this. So keep reviewing people.