Archive of Our Own

It's a warm May night, so Xander takes Faith to Dick's drive-in for a bag of burgers. They manage to slide in ahead of the softball team ordering two dozen deluxe burgers, finding a picnic table farthest from a guitar-wielding guy in patchwork jeans who haunts the place. "This joint is even more of a scene around two in the morning. They're open all night."

"Have you been patrolling here?"

"I check it once or twice a night, when I'm out. As my friend Willa said -- she's your future student -- it's not so easy to use last decade's look as a clue."

"Yeah, I noticed. Not to mention just about anyone looks pasty under these lights."

"I haven't been out since I got hurt. Plus I'm on third, so most nights I only do a quick round. That's another reason it'll be good to have you here."

She licks a trickle of burger grease off her hand. "So what happened the night you got hurt?"

He describes his stakeout of the alley, the first vamp dusted, his close-but-no-cigar shot at the second, and what happened on the roof.

"Damn. You're lucky."

He smiles. "I tell myself that, when I've passed out from lifting a suitcase."

"Also, sounds like you're a pretty good shot with one eye. How come you never got anything done with that? Dawn says -- I've heard they make fake ones so good now you can't tell."

It's been a topic. Interesting. He can't say it makes him happy. "Wouldn't change anything."

She reaches for her huckleberry milkshake. "You'd be prettier."

"I'm already prettier than most people can take."

"Not too pretty for this Kevin."

Xander nearly chokes on his cheeseburger. "Jesus. Where are you getting this?"

"Oh, c'mon." She wads up her burger wrapper and pitches it into a nearby trash can. "He's at your house in the middle of the day."

"He brought me home from the emergency room. I called him because he works second and I knew he'd be home." He finishes gathering up his trash and throws it out, then makes a doomed attempt to remove the grease from his hands.

Once they're back in the car, Faith says, "Plus you invited him into the super secret vampire fighter's club. Unless that whole thing over the phone was just a joke."

"No, it wasn't a joke. But I can't say he's joined the club. He doesn't exactly believe, but he doesn't not believe. He's still mulling it over, I guess. He hasn't been around."

"Yeah, well, I've got some experience with that. Start telling the boys you're the chosen Slayer -- or in the ladies' auxiliary, like you -- and that's pretty much the last you'll see of 'em."

Xander feels his jaw pulsing as he pulls the car into his drive, debating whether to say anything.

"This your place?"

"This is my house."

"Not bad. It's got a garage, good. We can set up the training area there."

"No." Faith starts to open her door, but he stops her with a gesture. "This is my house. We leave the 'ladies' auxiliary' shit outside. You have no idea what I've put into the fight, and that's fine. But you're not going to undercut me with Willa. I'm training her as much as you are."

Faith shrugs. "Sure, whatever." She pushes her door open and steps outside.

"You can dump your bags in here." Xander leads the way down the hall. "We'll have to come up with an arrangement when Willa gets out of rehab. Her apartment is compromised, but her parents' house might be safe. I'm just not sure if it's a good place for her. There's a basement we -- well, you, mostly -- can set up for training. Shouldn't need too much muscle to clear the space; I never collected a lot of stuff after Sunnydale. It's roomy down there." He shows her the guest bath, the extra towels and soap, the quirks of the shower.

As they re-enter the kitchen, Faith asks, "What's the deal with the garage?"

"The deal is I'm using it."

She opens the door, flicking on the light. Peering around, she says, "Whoa, somebody sure busted the hell out of his guitar."

"Not exactly."

But she's already figuring that out, stepping inside his workshop to examine the braced and glued back, bristling with clamps; the rosette channels he's cut on scrap; the plans tacked to the bare wall studs above his bench. "I don't get it. What is all this?"

"It hasn't all come apart, it's just now coming together. I'm building a guitar."

"You can do that?"

"Well, I'm going to find out."

"I meant --" Faith bends over to peer at the bracing on the back. "I didn't know -- well, it sounds stupid, but it never occurred to me that a person could do this. It seems -- to me, anyhow -- like a guy deciding to build himself a refrigerator. What is all that?"

"These are clamps. I glued the braces in, so it all has to be held together until it dries. Once you get the strings on, there's an enormous amount of stress put on the guitar -- this is going to be a steel-string, which needs a different kind of bracing than classical, which uses nylon strings, and that's way more than you were interested in hearing, I know."

She doesn't react to the babble. "I always thought they were totally hollow. About how many of these have you done?"

He smiles. "About one. This is my first." He shows her one of the sides of curly maple. "This is the what the back and sides will be."

She strokes a finger over the figured wood. "Damn. What makes it look like that?"

"The grain. The way the light hits it. I'm a sucker for it. I could've picked something a lot easier to work, but once I saw this stuff, I was gone."

She's gone all quiet, which makes him self-conscious.

"Faith, you've had a long day, not to mention it's three hours later to you. You head on to bed anytime you like. Depending what time you get up in the morning, I may see you before I go to sleep."

The self-consciousness is catching. "Yeah. I could stand to turn in. Tomorrow I'll take a look at the basement, start setting that up."

"Great."

"Yeah. Well. Goodnight."

"Yeah. Sleep well."

Better than he's likely to sleep with Faith under his roof.

He finishes up his work for the morning and realizes he's starving. Though he's had nothing but scorn his whole life for people (and it's only been women, in his personal experience) who get so busy they forget to eat, that's what he's done. He puts his safety glasses in their assigned cubbyhole, shuts off the lights, and heads into the kitchen.

Faith's already awake, working on a cigarette, a pot of coffee and one of the books from his little shelf. Betting on the Night -- not surprising the title drew her attention.

Xander suppresses his irritation not to have his winding-down time to himself, and sets up his espresso-maker with the decaf grounds. "Morning."

"Hey." She's still got her nose in the book. "There's coffee already made."

"I'm decaffing it at this hour, thanks." He rummages in the cupboard for some cereal. This close to bedtime anything too seriously meal-like will give him what he calls Tales of Sunnydale dreams.

She finally looks up, the corner of her mouth quirked up. "Poetry, huh?"

"Don't start." All he can find is the health-food stuff. Kasha and Muselix (Dawn calls it Mooselips). He'd give a lot for a bowl of Cocoa Puffs right now.

"What'd I say? God, you're touchy. You been living alone all this time?"

"Yeah, exactly, I'm like one of those hermit prospectors. I've been up in these here hills for four years, just me and my mule. I got me a shotgun, so back away slowly." Dang smoochers, he almost adds, but he knows Faith won't get the reference.

"Oh, it's your mule. My mistake."

He dumps some cereal and milk in a bowl, hunching over it to eat without dripping.

"How's the guitar coming?"

"Slowly. It's how they do." The espresso pot gurgles and Xander gets up to fix his Americano. "You want some breakfast? You're welcome to whatever's around."

"I'll make some toast in a minute." She mashes her cigarette in the ashtray. "The shit I say, Harris. I don't mean half of it."

He wonders if this is meant to be an apology of some sort. "That's not exactly what I remember."

She rises and takes a couple of slices from the loaf on the counter, drops them in the toaster. "I'm not talking about then."

"I don't mention it much myself." Leaning against the counter to drink his coffee, he watches the blood rise in Faith's cheeks. She's not what he expected, and she is -- he can't get a handle on her. "Write a list of anything you need that you don't have. Food, supplies for the training space. Whatever. I'm off to bed."

Though he never does so under normal circumstances, he sets his dishes in the sink and heads down the hall.

Dreams aren't so much the problem.

It's hard just getting REM-y in the first place. Lying in the darkened room. Xander's throat feels tight, constricted. Just enough to create a little whisper of panic somewhere in the dark, primitive recesses of his brain.

This is stupid.

That was nearly ten years ago. She has changed, willingly gave herself up to do her time in prison, according to Angel. (And how weird is that, Angel playing sponsor in Psycho Killers Anonymous?) People change, hell, even Spike threw himself at an apocalypse or two, pre-soul and post. Faith proved herself several times over.

You can tapdance all around things in your head, but the body's memory is long and vivid. Xander's is raising the alarm at having his near-murderer in his own house. Every breath is something that requires effort, squeezing past a hard knot of the past.

This hasn't happened before. Most of the time she'd been back in Sunnydale to fight the First, his body had been too preoccupied with the shock of his injury to send up any warning flares. And in Italy he'd effectively drowned any physical symptoms of the past in alcohol. Only now is he safe enough -- and sober enough -- to feel the fear stored in his body all these years.

After an hour of thrashing, he raises the blackout shade, lights up a smoke and grabs his sketchpad to doodle rosettes. The one he's already installed is one he bought, but in his spare time he tinkers with wood scraps and thinks about inlay. He liked the bloodwood and maple together on the picture frame, and he's seen some nice work with abalone. He's put some thought into the headstock inlay too, but nothing satisfying has come to mind. Whatever it is should be a kind of trademark, something he puts, in one variation or another, on all his guitars. (And yeah, he's already thinking in terms of all his guitars.) Abstract rosettes are easier.

But this morning the sketches are for shit. He can't even escape into drawing the patterns in his head; they've all gone jagged with her presence in the house.

Eventually he tosses the pad aside, stubs out his sixth cigarette and pulls the shade.

It's a long, restless time before REM finally makes the scene. The dream is familiar, yet different. Inhumanly strong hands close around his throat, but through the red mist that obscures his vision, it's Willa he sees.

Xander stands under the hot spray for a long time, trying to pull himself into some semblance of wakefulness. He slept later than usual, but feels more dragged out than he had during Willow's whole visit, when he'd gotten damn little sleep. Pulling on jeans and a tee, he shambles out of the bedroom, greeted by the smell of garlic and tomatoes in the hallway. Faith must've found his stash of takeout and delivery menus. He can't remember what place makes Italian that smells this good.

Once he makes it to the kitchen, he knows by the intensity of the aroma and the humid warmth in the room that actual cooking's going on. It's apparently at a non-critical stage, because Faith's sitting with a book again, ignoring the big pot simmering on the stove. Not poetry this time, but a mass market paperback, maybe one of the library sale books he stashes in the guest room when he's finished with them.

"Okay to lift the lid?" he asks.

"What? Oh -- yeah. It could probably use a stir. I keep getting caught up here. This is a fuckin' great book."

He stirs the chunky sauce, catching a little on the spoon to taste. It's not his usual breakfast food, but he could get used to it with no problem. "What is it?" While he's at the stove he begins his espresso pot ritual.

She flashes him the cover. "Gates of Fire -- it's about the Spartans and the battle of -- Thermo-something. You read it? It's yours, I found it in the guest room."

"Yeah, I liked that a lot too."

"Gwen Post told me about the Spartans. You remember her, the crazy Watcher bitch."

Xander nods. "She did make an impression."

"Yeah," she says, shaking a cigarette from her pack, lighting it. "She did."

For the first time in years he wonders what that must have been like for Faith. Fifteen or sixteen, fresh from seeing your first watcher killed. Taken in -- in the scammy sense -- by the next adult who took the slightest interest in her. It sent her on a tailspin, all right, straight to the Mayor.

"I thought about them a lot in prison."

"Who?"

"The Spartans. I remembered her telling me how they didn't need luxuries. They kept things clean and simple. I --" She clams up, brushing at an invisible fleck of ash on her jeans.

"What?"

"Ah, nothing."

He gets it, though. Envisions her imagining she's a Spartan in her tiny cell. It's got to be easier being told what to do every minute of the day if you're a soldier instead of a prisoner. But it's not a very Spartan thing to do to admit to playing pretend games.

She shifts, flicking ash into the astray. "I suppose you know, there's some seriously strange shit in your refrigerator. Especially the ice trays."

He smiles. "You'll want the ice maker for ice. The trays are for glue."

"Glue cubes -- this what all the cool kids are doing now? Like Jello shots?"

"Well, it's made out of the same stuff. It's for the guitar. I mix it in big batches, freeze what I don't use. So what's for dinner?"

"Depends on whether you want to run out for some mozzarella. I could bake some ziti then. Otherwise, we can just do stovetop. Spaghetti, then we can use the parmesan in your fridge."

"Ziti sounds nice. That gives me time to work up some hunger. It's early yet, for me."

"I can do the grocery store run, if you want to stay and chill."

He assembles his Americano. "I don't mind going. Plus I've got an employee discount." He leans against the counter, sipping at his coffee. "You had some shit luck with your watchers, didn't you?"

"Or else they had shit luck with me. Poor Wes. Poor --" She bites that off, shaking her head.

"Buffy's first watcher died."

Faith glances sharply at him. "I never knew that."

"She hardly ever talked about him. We got drunk together one night in Florence and she gave me a little of the story." One of the rare nights there that being drunk hadn't evolved into some unpleasantness. "I think she's always blamed herself."

"Maybe that's how it goes. The watchers feel guilty over their slayers, while the slayers blame themselves when they can't save their watchers." She jumps to her feet to stir the sauce. "Maybe you should get that cheese now. The ziti has to bake for a while once it's made."

"Good idea." He finishes his coffee, puts the cup in the dishwasher rack. "Anything else on your list?"

Dinner conversation's a little awkward, once they get past the initial talk about how great the food is. Besides the mozzarella, Xander returned with a loaf of asiago cheese bread, some salad ingredients and various other staples for more meals from scratch. He figures having cooking to focus their attention on might distract them from the tension. It feels to him like he's aware of every molecule of air that moves between them, and not in that good, buzzy, sexy way.

Faith gets them jumpstarted by asking what he can tell her about Willa. It's kind of embarrassing how little he knows about her personally: her parents teach English, she works at a record store, she's interested in the nature of creativity and can even make a case for NASCAR, she has an intimate relationship with hair dye, she's been in the psych ward. He filters some of that out, and adds her description of her two encounters with Spokane's vamps. "I want to be the one who tells her. That she's a slayer. She's going to be shaky enough, so soon out of rehab."

"Sure, yeah. We can figure it out later, but I can make myself scarce when you need me to. I hear there's good hiking around here, other kinds of that healthy, outdoorsy shit. She switches the conversation to the efforts she's made with the basement, what equipment she'd like to get. "I'll show you when we're done eating. What about money, though?"

"What about it?"

"Well, the stuff's not cheap. What if we get in touch with Giles? He's sitting on that big pile of Council --"

"No. I don't want the Council in this, I don't want Giles."

"You're getting ready to wade into deep water, Xander. We both are. If there's help we can both get -- financial and otherwise -- why not?"

"Because we can help this girl. We can understand her in a way Giles never will. You know once we ask for help, we give up control. She's theirs then." He saws off another slice of the bread. "I'm not the most brilliant guy in the world. But I've been around for seven years of Buffy's career. I took in a lot of her training, and I've fought an enormous variety of bad shit."

"What exactly went on with you and Giles?"

"Nothing I'm talking about."

She lapses into silence.

"We'll pull out the classifieds," Xander says, "see if we can find something used. If we don't come up with something, I'll check in with my friend Peggy. She's got a line on every bargain in this town." He's been meaning to look in the ads for a second-hand drill press and a bandsaw; he might as well expand the search into athletic equipment.

They finish up dinner and do the dishes together, the vibe a weird combination of companionable and tense. Then Faith takes him down into the basement to see what she's accomplished and what she plans.

Xander starts to feel a little short of breath downstairs, even as he tries to concentrate on what she's saying. He doesn't like being underground with a set of wooden stairs his only escape route. Stupid, he tells himself. There's going to be no need to escape.

Except he's getting the sense that Faith is dragging things out. "Did you ever do that thing, the making amends business they talk about in AA?"

What's this, more pressure about contacting Giles? "Some. There are still some people left on my list." Everyone who matters, pretty much.

"I've only heard about it, I don't know exactly how it works. So if I fuck it up...." Faith takes a deep breath. "See, I've been doing this self-defense training work. There's a lot of sitting around working through your feelings, because the stuff we're asking them to do, it cuts right to the bone. Shit, I thought I knew something about courage, but --" She shakes her head. "So. About what happened the first time I was in Sunnydale." Her face twists in disgust. "'What happened,' how chickenshit is that? 'Oh, look what happened.' About me trying to kill you. About everything I did to you --"

"Faith, this isn't necessary."

"Bullshit. I think we both need it."

Every cell of his body wants up those stairs, now.

"Willa needs it," she adds.

"What do you mean?"

"All that history, it's been like this freakin' elephant in the room, but neither one of us will mention it. Way things are now, there's no room for Willa, and I imagine with her problems she's going to need to take up a fair amount of space."

All the arguments backed up behind his teeth and tongue melt away. "That's fighting dirty," he says faintly.

"It's true."

He drops into a canvas director's chair and Faith perches on one of the bottom stairs (blocks his escape). "I didn't see you at all in those days. Nothing personal, I didn't really see anyone but B. She was the only person on the face of the earth who was like me. 'Course, she wasn't much like me at all, but still. You got a cigarette down here?"

Xander passes her the pack and lighter, looking around for anything they could use as an ashtray.

"I left a coffee mug down here somewhere," Faith says.

He spots it on the floor near his heavy bag, and brings it close by her, then pulls his chair closer. Not that he so much wants to sit by her, but a smoke, yeah. Faith hands the pack and lighter back, and he follows her lead.

"Like I said, wasn't personal. I didn't even want to look at myself."

"I'm not trying to be contrary here, Faith, but having someone's hands locked around your throat feels really damn personal."

"Yeah." She's silent for a long time, and Xander lets it stretch out. "That night we screwed. The reason I kicked you out was the way you looked at me. Most people in my life, I was just furniture to them. Or maybe they saw someone there, but it was their fantasy of whatever they wanted. Nobody ever looked at me and saw me until I met you. It scared the shit out of me."

"What did you think would happen?"

"Hell, I don't know. You'd eat me alive, you'd hate me once you knew who I was -- I don't know, and I've thought about it enough."

Xander flicks ash into the coffee cup. "So somehow we get from me looking at you to you choking the life out of me."

"Yeah," she says again, leaning back on her elbows and stretching her legs out below her. "'I'm sorry' are the two most sorry-ass words in the English language for something like that. Oops, my bad. Sorry I nearly killed you. Maybe it's why they're so hard to say."

"Now that we've brought it up, I wouldn't mind hearing you try."

She draws her legs up again, wraps her arms around them. "I am. I'm sorry for what I did to you. And to be completely honest, at the same time I'm sorry for screwing myself over."

"How's that?"

"You offered to stand by me. I saw it as pity. It's like someone gave me a winning lottery ticket, and I threw it away because it was a stupid piece of paper. I didn't have friends. It took me a long time to see what they're worth."

A winning lottery ticket. He's not sure any of his actual friends would go that far.

"When I was in prison," she continues, "that's when I got enough distance to really see you. Too late to do me much good, but maybe it'll do us both some good now. Mind if I mooch another?"

He hands over the pack and lighter without a word, and she busies herself with getting her smoke lit. She picks a fleck of tobacco off her tongue.

"I couldn't believe it when you called me. That you'd offer me that kind of trust after everything." When he hands the pack back to him, her fingers brush his hand. "Guess that shows where things are with you and Giles, huh? I know you're doing it for this girl, but I'm thankful anyway. I've learned enough to take the grace I get, even if it's just slopping over onto me from somewhere else. This girl is damn lucky, and I'll make sure she realizes it."

Now it's Xander who needs the stage business of fiddling with a cigarette. How did he ever have uncomfortable conversations before he smoked?

"Jesus, Harris. You're the same man you were when I first knew you. After everything that's happened." This time Faith is the one who holds him in her gaze, seeing him for maybe the first time. Finally he gets her terror back then, but he manages to sit still.

"I'm not so sure," he says. His voice is rough, his eye irritated by the unvented smoke.

"Maybe you don't have to be." She cocks her head to catch some sound he doesn't hear. "Shit. Your phone."

"Screw it."

"It's late. Might be important."

He curses softly and rises to his feet, but she's halfway up the stairs, calling out, "I'll get it." If it's Willa and she hears a woman answer --

When he makes it into the living room, Faith's holding the phone at arm's length toward him. He takes the cordless. "Hello."

"Jesus Christ." It's a voice he doesn't recognize, and he's about to make a smartass remark and roll his eyes over the drunk at the other end of the line when something stops him.

"Who's this?" His own voice sounds unnaturally calm.

"It's Kevin Straley. I just --" He drops to a near whisper. "Christ, Xander, I just killed myself a vampire."

"No, I still don't think you're in any shape to drive," Xander says. "Just sit tight. We'll be right there." He tears the top page off the memo pad, drops the phone on the closest chair and grabs his keys. "Faith, you want to come?"

"Wouldn't miss it. I'll get my weapons bag."

"Where we're going that might not be a great idea. There are stakes in the car."

On the drive over, Faith asks, "So what's the story?"

"He couldn't really say much; there were people around. He killed a vamp. It didn't sound like he got hurt. Plenty shaken, though."

"Guess he's a believer now."

Xander thinks about his own skepticism, how quickly it melted away when confronted with Darla. Straley had a little easier time of it when the ground shifted beneath his feet -- quick reactions are part of his job. "This looks like the place." He finds a parking spot across from the row of patrol cars.

"Aw, don't tell me he went to the cops with this story."

"No. This is where he works."

It's not a look he's seen often on her face, but he recognizes it just the same: a flash of blind panic. "Shit, you've gotta be kidding me. He's a cop?"

"What, I thought you had everything squared away before we even went to Europe. Didn't Angel have Wolfram & Hart --"

"Yeah, yeah. He made it all go away. Except for my deep dislike of the boys in blue."

"Well, I can't say Sunnydale taught me 'The policeman is our friend' either. But Straley -- Kevin -- is all right. Just try not to act like you're fresh from a prison break."

"No, I'm five years from a prison break."

"Faith --"

"Go. Go. I'm good. I'll wait in the car."

"Do not go anywhere."

"Promise. I'll just have a nice, calming smoke. If you'll give me one."

Xander sighs and hands over the pack, then gets out of the car. Great. A freaked-out cop and a nervous ex-rogue Slayer. This is going to go really well.

It's not exactly Barney Miller in there, sort of quiet and depressing. A cop (desk sergeant, his brain supplies from a hundred movies and tv shows) sits at a high counter, reading some papers. Across from him is a bench where a woman sits, her fingers ceaselessly fidgeting with her purse -- the clasp, the straps, the pockets. She looks completely colorless, as if a fine dust has settled over hair and skin and clothes. At the other end a sullen teenaged boy sits on his spine, his ass hanging out over thin air, his knees splayed as wide as his baggy bad-boy jeans will allow.

Xander quietly tells the sergeant he's looking for Officer Straley. He picks up the phone, and in a moment, Straley comes down a hallway to meet Xander, looking pale enough to have donated a couple of pints to the vamp he killed.

"You all right?"

"Not so hot," he says, louder than necessary. "I think I got some bad Chinese food."

"I'm parked just outside." He leads Straley out to the car, half surprised to see Faith still there, leaning against the fender finishing her smoke. "Faith, this is my friend Kevin. Kevin,this is Faith. You spoke on the phone a couple of weeks ago."

"Hey," she says.

Straley nods a greeting.

Faith installs herself in the back seat, turning down Straley's offer of the front. She sits directly behind him, where it would take effort for him to turn and see her. Xander takes his place behind the wheel. "Where to?"

Straley gives an address in Browne's Addition, which is about what Xander expected, since he shops at the Rosauers.

"You hurt?"

"Nuh."

"You sure? Cause I have to say, buddy, that you don't look so great."

"Little rattled, that's all. Never expected to run up on something like that, even though you warned me." That hadn't stopped him, apparently, from keeping a stake on him.

"You're a member of the club now."

"Yeah," Straley says, "a -- what'd you call it? A slayer."

"No," Faith says.

"Faith is a vampire slayer," Xander says. "You and me, we're regular guys who've killed vampires. There's a big difference. There's a whole lore here that I need to fill you in on. But I want to hear about tonight first."

By the time they get him home, Straley's less shaky, maybe just from being able to put his experience into words -- even the few that have already passed between them. He invites them in, leading them to the kitchen where he opens the fridge and pulls out some beers, cracking one open before he stops and looks at Xander. "Shit. Sorry, I --"

"Don't worry about it, I'm good."

"It's probably not the best coping mechanism --"

"I'm not a proselytizing member. Never got that step down. Faith, if you want to, feel free."

"No, I'm good," she echoes. Xander's not sure if she's showing solidarity with him, or just doesn't want to drink with a cop.

Straley scrounges a couple of sodas left over from his kids' last visit, then settles in and tells them what happened. Your basic shift till almost the end, a couple car accidents, a B&E, a guy with no taillights who turned out to have weed in his car. They'd stopped at a convenience store half an hour before the end of their shift so his partner could use the jakes. Straley waited in the patrol car, till he spotted a couple engaged in some get-a-room level macking in a recessed door in the next building. He strolled over and tapped the man on the shoulder to suggest they take it elsewhere, and the guy wheeled, blood glistening on his teeth and lips. The vamp grabbed him by the throat, slammed him against the wall, but Straley had stitched a slender sideways pocket into his body armor to hold a stake (maybe not a believer, but a practical guy), and instinct drove it home.

"That thing just exploded into dust," he says, as if he's trying to convince them.

"They do that," Xander says. "What about the woman?"

"Alive, but not in good shape. She's at Sacred Heart."

"Did your partner see anything?" Faith asks.

"No. No one did, that I know of."

"What'd you say?"

"That I saw what looked like a movement off in the shadows at the edge of the building, then I spotted her on the ground."

"You're a champ at this already," Xander says. "So they're thinking it's the icepick guy?"

"Yeah, the same detective's on the case." Straley takes a long pull at the beer. "I can't believe you're still in the game. I didn't come near as close to dying as you did, and I never want to see one of those things again."

Faith turns a sharp gaze on Xander, but says nothing.

"Well, once you're in the Scooby gang, it's kind of a lifetime membership."

"The what?"

Xander makes a dismissive gesture. "It's a thing. Old in-joke. So what did this vamp look like? The one I had my run-in with looked like your average early-twenties metalhead, medium brown, medium long mullet, black t-shirt, jeans."

"Nah. This one looked older, wore a trench coat."

"Shit. I keep hoping we'll finish off the ones that attacked Willa, and that'll be the end of them. But either we've already got an infestation, or they're making more."

"I think of 'em like roaches," Faith says. "See one, and you've got hundreds. Maybe not hundreds, this ain't exactly the city that never sleeps, but I'd bet a dozen or two. And there'll be more."

Xander sips at his soda, sublimating the urge for a cigarette. "That's the safer assumption to make, so if I were you I'd take that point of view."

Straley rouses himself, sets his bottle on the kitchen table. "I prefer the point of view that I'm having a hell of a pepperoni dream. And I think I'd like to roll over and go back to sleep, if you two don't mind."

Xander finishes his soda and gets to his feet. "Call me tomorrow if you want the full seminar. In the meantime, don't invite anyone into your house at night if you don't know them or haven't seen them in a couple of days."

Faith follows suit and they head back out to the street.

Over the next couple of days, Xander slowly becomes aware of something. There's a weird peace in the house around the conversation he and Faith had the night Straley called. He hasn't forgiven her. He doesn't even think he gave the impression he was seconds away from forgiving her if only the phone hadn't rung. But he senses an acceptance of that from her, a willingness to wait that he recognizes from Evan's patience and his own growing feeling that guitars take time.

When he's settling in during the mornings, trying to sleep, his thoughts keep curling back in on themselves, taking him back to the days after his botched wedding. Much as he professed his love for Anya, he hadn't been able to give her what Faith is giving him: the time to process what she'd said the way he needs to. Xander had merely disappeared for a few days, then showed up, asking Anya if they could just go back to the way things had been. Jesus. It hadn't been about making Anya suffer less, but about him. No wonder she'd gone running in the other direction, ended up having sex with Spike.

He'd thought hell would freeze over before he ever forgave Faith, but he thinks now that'll happen long before he does the same for himself.

Thursday after his shift he swings by the morning meeting before heading home. Xander pulls into his drive, grabbing the bag of groceries he'd picked up.

The change is noticeable the moment he steps inside. The living room is bathed in sunlight and a soft breeze rustles the sheers at the window. He so rarely has opened the curtains he'd sort of forgotten there were sheers. His luthier supply catalogs lie where he left them, opened and scattered with Post-it notes and slips of paper, but he can see the vacuum cleaner tracks on the carpet.

Xander's house has always been neat; even when he was still drinking he maintained that carpenter's love of order. But the feeling of it is different now. The scattered catalogs remind him of birds on the wing -- of life. It makes him feel unaccountably cheerful, a little goofy, and he calls out in a sitcom-dad voice, "Honey, I'm home."

There's no response, which causes a surge of relief. It's been a fairly long time since his mouth got him into trouble, and he'd like to keep it that way. Xander heads into the kitchen and sets down the groceries, spotting a flash of movement out in the back yard. She's out there, her hair pulled back into a ponytail, doing a slow series of tai chi moves in loose pants and shirt.

He's never seen her move like that, with meditative grace and deliberation. It's like he can see through her to the quiet place inside, like the one in Xander that woodworking touches. He'd never have suspected she had that within her. Three years in prison, he supposes, would either help you find that place or make you crazy. He's caught for a moment, unable to look away, then he suddenly finds himself feeling like a voyeur.

He turns away and starts unpacking the groceries, opening himself to the changes in the house. He'd expected to resist her occupation -- partly because it's Faith, partly because, well, he sometimes wonders if he's destined to turn into a crotchety bachelor before he even hits thirty. Xander remembers how particular Giles could be whenever they all invaded his place in Sunnydale. There always seemed to be something they -- or specifically Xander -- would do wrong. Don't move that, don't rifle through the record albums, for the love of god, please restrain yourself.

Blinking, he catches himself staring at a can of diced tomatoes in his hand. He'd tried so hard. All the trying he'd stopped throwing away on his father got turned onto Giles. He couldn't really compete with Willow, so it came out in a variety of other ways, most of them doomed. Will used to insist that of course Giles liked him, don't be silly. Xander wasn't so sure.

As he's shoving the last can in the cupboard, the phone rings.

"Hi," a small voice says in response to his greeting. "It's Willa."

"Hey, Eudora, it's great to hear from you."

"Don't say that till you hear why I called."

"Why, what's up?"

"I need a favor."

"Ask away. I'll do whatever I can."

There's a pause on the other end anyway. "I get out of here on Saturday," she says. "I kind of need a ride. My parents are busy."

"Sure, I can do that. Wherever you want to go."

Another pause, a little longer. "I kind of need a place to stay, too. Just for a couple of nights. My parents are having a party that night -- for an honest-to-god literary light who's visiting the university, so they can't unhave it. It'll all be very Wonder Boys, and it's not a good place for me to be. I'm not asking to stay with you, but maybe you know someone --"

"Willa, stop. My place is fine. There's more we need to sort out about what's going on around Spokane, anyway. And listen. You're okay here. I don't feel right about what happened before. I promise it won't happen again."

"I jumped you, you know."

His fingers twitch with the sudden desire for a cigarette, but there's no pack in his shirt pocket. The meeting finished that one off. "I didn't have to go along."

"You beat yourself up too much. Just come and get me, and we're even."

"Sure, yeah, I can do that." He scrawls the time and address down, and assures her he'll be there.

When he hangs up and turns from the phone, Faith is standing in the doorway from the back. "I didn't hear you come back," she says, "so I came to get the phone."

Xander nods. "That was Willa."

"I figured. I never asked -- how'd you realize she was a slayer? Maybe when you slept with her?" A quick burst of laughter, then: "You should see the look on your face."

That laugh pierces him, goes straight to memory that's much closer to the surface than it's been in years. She'd laughed just like that the night he'd gone to her to offer his help. Buffy had warned him that he was just a joke to Faith, but he'd tried to be more than the largely useless appendage he normally was, tried to forge a connection with her. He looks at her now as her dimples begin to fade. "Yeah, I'll bet it's priceless. I'll be in my workshop."

"Oh, shit. What'd I say?"

"Nothing. I've just got things to do."

She follows him into the garage. "I can't tell what you think I meant by that, but I guarantee you, it's not what you're thinking."

"Yeah? What did you mean?" He switches on the power to his bending iron.

"I just -- you looked so guilty and worried. It struck me funny, that's all. It's just sex."

Xander selects a couple of maple lumber-yard slats Evan milled as practice sides. "I guess it's still a big joke to you."

"Why do I get the feeling we're having two different conversations? Yours is about something that happened a while ago. 'Still a big joke,' you said. Why don't we get that out of the way first?"

"Let's not."

"Okay, then. We were talking about Willa." Xander doesn't remember Faith being this much of a bulldog when he knew her before. Actually, he doesn't remember her having this long an attention span. Certainly not when applied to him. "I heard you say you didn't feel right about what happened. The two of you screwed. If I hadn't known it from your half of the conversation, that look on your face totally gave it away. I know you, and like I said the other night, you haven't changed, not where it counts. If you two did the deed, you treated her right."

He grabs his safety glasses, puts them on. "Say what you want, but you weren't there. I want to get some work done before I head for bed. There isn't an extra pair of safety glasses, so hanging around really isn't such a good idea. There could be shards."

Faith gets this look like she wants to say something, then she shakes her head and goes. Xander tests the hot pipe, then grabs a practice side. He breathes in the smell of hot metal and wood, giving himself up to the feel of the work. Taking it past the point of perfection, familiarizing himself with the stink of scorched wood, the feathering of grain as it separates.

The startling snap!, even though he expected it, of a side as it breaks.

He stumbles out to the living room an hour earlier than usual. Tough time sleeping today -- not fear, that's throttled back since their talk about their history. A gathering tension.

Xander finds Faith sitting on the carpet, her back to him. Legs drawn up, her body folded against her knees, head bent. Some yoga pose, he guesses. Her low-slung sweatpants reveal skin at her lower back, and another tattoo. Too narrow a slice to tell what it is, but it's colorful and elaborate.

She turns her head as she senses his presence, and as he comes up beside her he sees that her yoga pose is actually Faith engaged in toenail polishing. "Hey," she says.

"Hey. Is that dinner I smell?"

"Yeah, I threw together some stuff. I hope it's soup. Won't be ready for a while, though."

"That's okay, neither will I."

She twists the cap on the polish bottle, sets it on the newspaper she's using as her work surface. "Listen, when Willa comes, I thought I'd move to the basement. There's that little alcove down there, wouldn't take much work to get it set up. A cot, a trunk underneath, a blanket or something across the opening, and --"

He drops into a chair. "Faith, no. I'm not banishing you to the basement. Christ."

"Well, you're not gonna put Willa down there. She's coming straight out of rehab, she needs someplace nice to be. I'm not sayin' your basement's a pit -- there's light, it's clean and dry -- I can make it nice for myself. But she's probably a rich girl, huh? She won't see it the same way."

"She's not a rich girl. Her parents are college teachers."

Faith gives him the yeahrightwhatever look.

"You're right. I'm not moving her in down there. I'm going. You'll stay where you are, she'll take my room." It's embarrassing to be outplanned by Faith; he hasn't really thought about this.

"Problem. You need to be sleeping during the day. We need to be training. Tiptoeing around down there until you're up would be a big pain in the ass." She watches him trying to work out some way around her arguments. "You know I'm right."

Dammit. She is. Xander gets to his feet. "Let's take a look down there, see what we need." He makes a detour to the garage for his tape measure, pencil and notepad. Downstairs, he stands in the opening to the alcove, looking at the gray cinderblock walls. "I don't know, Faith. It's --" It's depressing as hell, but he doesn't want to say.

"Spartan?"

"Yeah. Haven't you had enough of the Spartan?"

"It's bigger than what I had. All I do in my room is sleep, anyway. I'll take a few books from the guest room so I can get to 'em when I need to, and here's just as good as anywhere."

All Xander can see down here is flashbacks to one of the two most fucked-up years of his life. Faith sees a place that's as good as anywhere. He shakes his head and begins to measure.

"I could get a door up there by Saturday, no problem." He puts away his tape measure, straightens a couple of tools on the pegboard. "Little fold-in number, like a closet door. Since the ceiling's higher than average, I'll rig up a transom overhead. Clear glass or frosted, whichever you prefer."

"Really, a blanket's fine." She's leaning against the doorjamb, a thumbnail of bare skin peeping between her shirt and pants, bisected by a pale slash of scar.

"It looks crappy." He comes in from the garage, backing Faith out of the doorway. She heads into the kitchen to check on the soup. "I won't have time to build you a chest or bed or anything."

"Let's just go to the surplus. A cot and a trunk are all I need." She dips a spoon into the pot, blows on it, tests it.

"We might find something good in the ads. I always prefer that to some piece-of-shit particle board furniture at WalMart, but that's your call. Some people don't like used."

"Xander, I made my call. Here, taste this." She dips the spoon in again, holds it out to him. He takes it too fast, burns his mouth as she says, "Really, a cot's fine, I don't care."

"I fucking care!" His eye tears from the burn. Throwing the spoon into the sink with a clatter, he stalks out of the kitchen.

Faith turns and follows on his heels. "Why don't we stay in the same room and finish one of these conversations for once?"

"Because I have to dress for work and go run some errands."

She steams on down the hall after him. "Doesn't bother me. I'll come with." Plopping onto his bed, she pulls her legs up and wraps her arms around her knees. "So okay, this whole basement-cot thing is important to you. Try talking to me. Tell me why."

Unfuckingbelievable. Xander refuses to be what she'd call a priss, to chase her off or dress in his bathroom. If it's a bluff, he's calling it. He pulls off his t-shirt. "I lived in my parents' basement for about a year. I had a fold-out couch, not a cot." He hooks his thumb into his sweatpants, pushes them down and off. He's commando-guy after his afternoon shower, so she gets the full Monty. "It smelled like bleach and mildew --" And sex a lot of the time, he doesn't say. Solo and with Anya. "Everything was cruddy and broken down -- I got the tv that only got three channels, the chairs that needed a book shoved underneath to make them sit level." Difficult as it is under her gaze, he follows his unhurried post-waking routine: strolls to the closet, decides which dark pants and white shirt he's wearing tonight, chooses a tie. He lays it all out on the bed before he pulls a pair of boxers out of the drawer and slips them on. "I used to say that shit didn't matter. But it does. It curls inside you like smoke, and --" Xander stops himself. He's not getting any nakeder in front of Faith. "I'm not having you live down there behind a goddamn blanket."

"Nothing stinks down there. Nothing's broken down. This is now." She watches as he pulls on a crisp white shirt, buttons from the bottom upward. "In a way you're lucky. Your past is in the bottom of a big pit. You could leave it there."

"Nice bit of philosophy. Is that how you live with the shit you did?"

Faith shifts on the bed, crossing her legs Indian-style. "A lot of my past is still above ground. I'm not talking about what you did or I did. You happened to live in a crappy place for a year. That doesn't say a thing about who you are. Whether I sleep on a cot or a fancy-ass canopy bed doesn't say anything about me."

He zips his slacks, slides a belt through the loops, finishes tucking his shirt. "In other words, 'get over it.'"

"If you want it short enough to embroider on a wall hanging, yeah."

Grabbing his tie, Xander walks into his bathroom.

"Nice knife scar you've got," Faith calls after him.

Absently he touches the scar through his clothing. One of his last mementos from Sunnydale, one last date with a wacked-out demon chick to remember it by. "Yeah, I learned a lesson there." He finishes knotting his tie. "Never go to a place called Jiffy Vasectomy."

As he finishes combing his hair, Faith appears in the mirror, leaning in the doorway behind him. "You don't want me to know."

"Know what?"

"When I first got here, you said I didn't have any idea what you'd put into the fight. I'm not sure you want me to. You hide how bad you're hurt, you make jokes. Are you scared I won't take you seriously even if I know? Or are you scared to be taken seriously at all, by anyone?"

"Ah, for Christ's sake." He pushes past her, finds his socks and dress shoes.

"Why? Easier to work with other people's low expectations than high ones?"

"I'm going to Home Depot. You're free to come, if you lay off the goddamn Dr. Phil routine."

She shrugs. "Sure. Let me get my shoes and turn off the soup."

Something seems to quiet within Xander during the trip to Home Depot. He's always been a sucker for hardware stores. The smell of cut lumber, the neatly organized rows of tools, bins of nails and screws and bolts. All this stuff appeals to his love of creating things, makes him feel almost as good as the work itself.

He wanders up and down a couple of aisles before going to look at doors, letting it all settle in. Faith tags along, not questioning, not even speaking -- but he's sure she's missing nothing. Once they get to the doors, she listens to his suggestions and gives her input on paint or stain. "I wish we had time to make it nicer," he says. "Get some decent wood and custom build it."

"Seriously, Xander. I've got no complaints. It's more than I expected."

He forces himself to keep his mouth shut.

"You could be spending your time and money on your guitar. Why guitars, anyway?"

His answer is postponed by their arrival at the checkout. He chats with the clerk, hands over his debit card, signs the slip, and all the while he reaches for an answer. After they get the door slanted out the back window with a red flag fixed to its end, he aims the car toward the surplus store. "I'm not sure I know," he finally says. "I saw some in a shop, and they made me want to work with wood for the first time in years."

"Do you play?"

"No. I used to have one, but it was more a teenage stage prop than anything else. My parents didn't have money for lessons -- didn't have any interest in spending it on something that frivolous, to be more accurate. Too bad I wasn't one of those musical idiot-savants."

"A what?"

"Idiot-savant. I used to read about 'em in these old Tales of the Weird paperbacks my dad had. People who were profoundly retarded or autistic or something, but they could hear a classical piece one time and then play it perfectly. There's probably some culturally sensitive term for it now, but that's what these crumbling old paperbacks called it. There were math prodigies too, same sort of thing."

"Oh, like Rainman."

"Yeah. Anyhow, not an idiot-savant, just an idiot. So I turned around and sold it to some other kid."

Faith lowers her window and lights a cigarette. "You should knock that off."

"Knock what off?"

"That self-effacing shit. You've been doing that ever since I've known you. You cut yourself down before anyone else can do it."

"Why do you care?"

"Why do you care if I sleep on a cot or a regular bed?"

Good question, and he's still not completely sure of the answer. "Well, I'm giving in. You're getting your cot, so by that token --"

She fixes him with a look. "There's a difference. Sleeping on a cot isn't gonna hurt me."

Miracle of miracles, he finds parking right by the store. "Faith, it's just talk."

"Bullshit." She mashes her cigarette into the ashtray. "I used to say that kind of crap myself. I still catch myself. 'Just talk,' my ass." Faith opens her door. "Let's go see what's what."

Once they get everything back to the house and squared away, there's enough time for a bowl of soup before he heads in to work. Faith plans her night's patrol -- she's taking the car for the first half of his shift. At closing time in the taverns, she'll pick up Xander and they'll see what action they can find during his lunch hour.

He hands her the Spokesman and the downtown tourist map. "I'd check the movie times for Riverpark Square. You might get some vamps hanging out in the park after the last showings. You might want to see if anything's shaking over by Clinkerdagger's, across the park. It's a big spot for special events and parties and that, especially on weekend nights." He runs his finger along the map. "This pedestrian bridge seems like a likely spot, too. People stop there and look at the falls. There's a place or two near this end that are sort of prime lurking areas."

They'll see where things stand once they've met for his lunch break, but the plan is for him to drop her back at the house, where she'll stain the new door and transom frame so they're ready to install.

Xander makes himself an Americano, leaning back and closing his eyes for a moment as Faith studies the map and movie schedule.

"What's the tattoo on your shoulder blade?" she asks. "I've never seen one like that."

He doesn't really feel like talking about it, but evading seems like more energy than it's worth. "It's a Norse rune. A compass."

"What the hell kind of compass is that? From what I could see, everything was an E."

"They're runes. Each one is a little different, but yeah, most of them do look like E's."

"Why'd you want a compass?"

"It's a sea charm. Kept the Vikings from losing their way."

"Guitars and Vikings. You're hard to keep up with sometimes." Faith dumps more sugar in her tea. "Think it's working?"

"I used to. I'm not so sure now."

"It said something else. A-U-something. B? D?"

"Aud," he says softly.

"What's it mean?" He can tell from her voice that she knows she's treading on sacred ground.

"Anya told me once about her old life. It was her name. Her people were Norse." He checks his watch, finishes his coffee. "I need to get to the store."

He lets Faith take the wheel, grateful to discover that she's a decent driver. She says little on the way to Rosauers, beyond a couple of mild bitches about the state of the roads.

"Happy hunting," he says as he opens his door.

"Xander --"

He pauses with his right foot on the pavement, then turns toward her.

"It's working," she says.

Clipboard in hand, Xander is checking over the bakery section. The cookies are moving, the cakes are not. He'll hand Damon a roll of red Manager's Special stickers and knock fifty cents off the small ones, a dollar off the large. It'll be a little more time-consuming for Xander than using the stickers himself -- Damon's not the best independent thinker on the cases that could go either way, but he loves any scrap of responsibility that's handed to him.

He's about to go look for Damon when Straley rounds the corner, red plastic shopping basket in hand. "Oh, hey, I was hoping you were on tonight. You said there's more I should know, and I --"

"This is not a good time. I don't stand around my workplace talking about --" he glances around the bakery department, lowers his voice -- "vampires -- any more than you do."

"Oh, sure. I was just thinking maybe we could go out for a bee-- uh, burger. Catch up on things there."

"Kevin, no offense, but I've got a lot going on. In a little over a day I've got someone coming to me who's called to this work, and she's not going to know what hit her. She's my priority. I don't have time to deal with someone who finds out something that shakes his worldview then disappears for two days, two weeks to get it all sorted out. You know enough to keep yourself safe, let's leave it at that."

"What about you? You said you were just a kid when you joined the fight."

"I got drafted. My friends were in trouble, and I didn't have the luxury of deciding how I felt about it all." He softens his tone. "Listen. I don't mean to be a hardass. And if you happen to hear something on the street that might be useful to us, we'd like to know. I think it'll be useful to your side to have us in the loop. We can do the same for you. But for the next couple weeks, at least, I don't have time to give you the whole semester's worth of lore and history. That's the way it is."

"Fair enough, I guess. I'll see you around."

"Yeah. And be careful out there."

Straley heads for the bread shelf and Xander sets off for his office to get the roll of red stickers.

An hour later Xander's leaning against the checkout stand next to Peggy's, carefully paging through The Weekly World News. He likes to keep an eye on the latest apocalypse news, so he skims all the tabloids. You never know when one of them might get something partially right. He's spotted a couple of demons in these pages that he's actually fought, though they're usually identified all wrong.

The phone rings and Peg catches it. "Alex, it's for you."

He picks up, punches the right line. "Rosauers. How may I help you?"

"You know, a guy my age hates to think a teenage boy has bigger stones than him." Straley.

Xander laughs. "A teenage boy doesn't really know how close he can come to losing 'em. You've got more at stake, I realize that."

"Yeah, well, I think I'd like to know more about what you're doing. No more disappearing act, I promise. If you're gonna be that busy in the next few weeks, you could probably use some help."

"You're sure you want in."

"Yeah. I don't like this shit going on in my town."

Xander thinks about it for a moment. "All right. I still need to concentrate on --" He's suddenly aware of his proximity to Peg, who's not exactly eavesdropping, but is standing at her stand doing her own careful read of the merchandise -- chuckling over Paul Turner's column in the Spokesman, in her case. "On my houseguest, for the first few days anyway. Faith and I are getting things ready tomorrow -- we're making like Habitat for Humanity down in the basement. If you want to help out with that, we can fill you in at the same time."

"Sure. I'd like to give you guys a hand."

"Hate to do this to you, but we're getting an early start. We'll probably put in a couple of hours or more after I get off work, then when I get up. You'll be at work by that time, so it's gotta be morning."

"Seven-thirty work for you?"

"That'd be great. See you then." Xander hangs up.

This is a good thing. The Scooby Gang, Northwest Branch, is about to open for business.

Damn. He's gonna need a bigger coffeemaker.

Straley shows up at the appointed time with a box of donuts. "No cop jokes, all right? I just happen to live down the street from this place."

He and Faith both look a little rough around the edges, both thrown off their schedules.

Faith, still in her sleep boxers and undershirt, grabs the box and lifts the lid. "Thank god you don't live near Krispy Kreme. I do not get the breathlessness over that freakin' place." She's already retreating into the kitchen with the box, tearing through a double chocolate donut. "Dunkin' Donuts -- any Mass. girl can tell you, that's the Temple of the One True Donut. And their coffee is superior to anything I've had out here, no offense." This doesn't stop her from pouring herself another cup from the new coffeemaker.

Xander scores a jelly and freshens his cup from the decaf in the old Melita, which he's also fired up. "Faith believes in speaking her mind."

"I like that in a person," Straley says. "So what's first? Building or the vampire seminar?"

"The donuts," says Faith.

"And maybe some preliminary seminar stuff. If you've got questions."

Straley's a plain donut guy. "You said Faith's a slayer, but you and I aren't. Why's that, and how do you know?"

"Well, for one thing, we're men, which automatically puts us out of the running. The Slayer line goes through women only -- girls, if you want to be precise about it. They're usually around fifteen or sixteen when they're called. It's not just killing vampires that makes her a slayer. She gets a superhuman strength, heightened senses, the ability to heal faster than average people."

Faith licks off her fingers, dives back into the box. "And a set of Ginsu knives, if you call in the next ten minutes. Operators are standing by."

"You've been doing this since you were sixteen?"

"I got a few years off for ... behavior. But yeah, essentially." She roots through the donuts, apparently unsatisfied. "More double chocolate next time."

"You missed one, I think," Xander says.

"What, a chocolate?"

"No, I just think there's one you didn't manage to touch."

"Don't be such a pussy." She settles back with a maple. "It might be Watcherly and all, but it's definitely unsexy."

"Who said I wanted to be --" Xander clams up. "Forget it."

"So who does this calling?" Straley asks.

"I don't think it's exactly a who," Xander says.

"Angel calls them the Powers That Be. I mean, I guess it's the same Whatever that makes him and me both feel like we're being moved around on some cosmic chessboard. Anyway, I just ... knew I was changed. And then my watcher came to me, tried to explain what I was and what I was meant to do."

"Watcher. What's that, a Power of some kind too?"

"No, they're just people," Xander says.

"Well, they have the superpower of being more tight-assed than any human alive. Or maybe that's because they're English, I never could get that sorted out."

"There's a Council." He seems to be stuck for more in-depth detail. "They kind of own all the books."

"How many books do you need for vampire-killing?"

"Well, there's more than vampires," Xander offers. "There are demons of every stripe, hellgods, ancient prophecies, apocalypses -- hey, there's a word you never thought you'd need a plural for. So you need a good library to keep all of that straight."

"All that stuff is running around Spokane?"

"No," Xander says. "At least I don't think so. Sunnydale was built on a hellmouth. All kinds of nasty things were attracted to it. The last four years in Spokane, I haven't sensed anything going on, not till those vamps attacked my friend Willa." He finishes off his second donut and gets to his feet. "Let's make with the hammering. Top up your mugs and let's hit it."

He always could think better with a tool in his hand.

Xander wakes to late-afternoon light, stretching some kinks in his muscles. The three of them did good work together. Straley seemed to take Faith's spikiness in stride, and she seemed marginally more at ease with him. The slayer-watcher-council briefing was a bit more scattered than he'd have liked, but ultimately they got it all covered. He'll get it together for the discussion with Willa.

After his shower, Xander reaches for his sweats and t-shirt, pausing as he considers maybe slipping on some boxers under the pants. Yesterday had been -- Jesus. He didn't exactly know. How strange was that, sliding off his sweats in front of Faith, walking around naked under her gaze? Considering their history, he'd never have believed he'd make himself that vulnerable again. Dumbass macho pride, he supposes, does wonders for human behavior.

It's actually harder to believe he'd let her see his tattoo than his dick. That she'd seen before, but until the last few weeks, nobody except his doctor had seen the compass. Faith was the first to ask him what it meant.

According to some stuff he's read on the internet, a runic charm is pretty powerful on paper, much less permanently inked on flesh. But he wonders how true a compass can be under the magnetic pull of one slayer, much less two. Will he even be able to tell if he loses his way?

Xander shakes off his thoughts. He's got Patrick and Straley to help keep him on course; he's got his own experience of the last four years.

He heads for the kitchen, dumps out the stale coffee and starts some fresh brewing. Faith's nowhere to be seen; not even in the backyard. He calls downstairs into the basement and Faith answers over the sound of the clothes dryer.

"Getting in some training time?"

She comes out of her alcove. "No, just finishing setting up my room. Want to see?" She folds the new door in on itself -- she did a nice job with the stain -- and steps back. The army cot takes up most of one wall, but it's been transformed by a set of sheets in a soft blue sky-and-clouds pattern, folded back over a cobalt blue comforter. There's a rectangle of blue rug on the floor where she'd put her feet in the morning, which Xander suspects was originally a bathroom rug. Her new trunk is tucked beneath the cot, but there's also a nightstand with bookshelf and a lamp he's never seen before. Hanging from a ribbon on the wall opposite her bed is an 8 x 10" rectangle of stained glass in a burgundy and gold abstract pattern.

"This is really nice," Xander says. It is; it's much homier than he'd anticipated, in a spare sort of way.

"I kind of thought of it as a cell -- you know, the monastery type. So when I found the stained glass, I thought it would sort of go." He doesn't remember ever hearing her speak with such hesitancy. Kind of. Sort of.

"I see what you mean. It really does. Where'd you find this stuff?"

"I got a wild hair after lunchtime and borrowed your car to hit a couple of thrift stores. You said I could use --"

"Sure, absolutely. This is nice," he repeats. He's not sure why he feels so awkward. "I feel better about this, I really do. You sleeping in the basement, I mean." He's aware of how small this alcove is, how close she stands to him.

"I don't get you sometimes," she tells him. "The things you care about. I'm still not sure why I'm one of 'em." Xander stammers for a moment, which makes her laugh. "I'm not fishin', Harris." She puts her hand on his chest. "It's kind of a mystery to me, what goes on in here. But I guess I wouldn't change it." She turns her face up, her hand still over his heart.

He means to step back. He does. But instead he leans into Faith as she leans into him, feeling their breath on one another's lips as they hold there, not-kissing for what seems like a very long time, if time hadn't just melted. As this thought flits across his mind, the sheer overwrought dorkiness of it makes his lips twitch in a smile, which breaks whatever it is that suspends them there and brings them together in a soft kiss.

The second their lips touch, Xander stumbles back, bumping into the door. "Oh god. Oh no. Things are getting way too complicated."

"Seems simple enough to me."

"Trust me. The timing is -- I'm, uh -- I've got to head for bed now."

He blunders out of her room and upstairs, and it's only when he reaches the kitchen that he realizes it's not bedtime at all, in fact he's just gotten up.

Xander pours his coffee into the big thermal mug he's recently bought himself after too many forgotten cups grew cold in his shop. Carrying it into the garage, he switches on the bending iron. Oh god, his brain keeps saying. That was unbelievably -- Stupid? Sexy? Not-expected? In his agitation, it takes a moment to realize his feet are still bare. He heads to his bedroom for his steel-toed boots and a pair of socks, encountering Faith in the living room on his way back to the workshop.

She's smiling. "That was different. Historically, I've been the one who runs."

"Faith, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have --" He shakes his head.

"Kissed me? Taken off?"

"Yes."

"I've got no problem with being kissed. I seem to remember we were both kissing. Could have gone on longer, that's my only complaint."

"We can't. Not with Willa coming. We both have to focus on her. She's gonna be right out of rehab when I tell her she's a Slayer, and it's going to be enough emotional stuff for her to deal with."

"Her? Or you?"

"I -- It all ties in together."

"Is it because you two did the deed? You're hung up on her?"

He sits on the sofa, pulls on his socks instead of looking at her. "We're friends. I want to help her. But that's it."

"She's hung up on you?"

"I don't think so. She, uh, did a disappearing act right after."

Faith sits on the arm of a chair. "She's got one Slayer power, anyway."

"Neither one of us -- it was a lot like that night that you and I --" Xander focuses his attention on lacing his boots. "She was freaked out. She'd had vamps outside her apartment all night, trying to get in. I -- I can't tell what I'm feeling anymore."

"You don't have to explain yourself to me."

"That's not --" He stops fiddling with his laces, looks up at her. "You should probably know. I've had this nice, safe life here. Nobody knew much about who I was, and nothing ever got through this -- shell, or whatever you want to call it. I thought that was what I needed to do to keep sober. It probably was, when I first came here. All these things started happening -- new people in my life, Willow coming out for a visit, you being here. I've gone from social deprivation to complete overload. I need to be clear-headed when Willa gets here."

Faith moves to the couch, close -- damn close -- to Xander. "She's not here now." She touches his face. "I get safe. I do. But after a while, maybe it stops being healthy. And listen to me, poster girl for mental health."

"Stop. If I can't cut myself down, you're not allowed either."

Her breath flutters against his lips. "Give me something better to do."

Just like before, it's impossible to say who's the kisser and who's the kissed. Only this time he gives more time to trying to figure it out. This isn't like the night back in Sunnydale, all heat and hurry. They've both learned something about taking their time, and a few gentle kisses go by before their tongues even engage.

The pace has picked up when Faith pulls back. "Something smells hot."

It takes a moment for her words to sink in. "Oh. It's my iron."

"No, it smells like metal." She grins at his response. "I knew I could make you laugh." She kisses him again. "Go turn it off."

"No, I -- no. This isn't right. Not yet. We've done all this talking about what I've been through, but I haven't even asked you where your life has led you."

"We can talk about that after."

"Faith, no. I'm going to do some things in my shop. I need to get my thoughts together."

"Can I come and hang?"

"Normally I'd say yes, but I'm bending the sides. I've only got one pair of safety glasses, and I'm kind of a nut on eye safety."

She gets to her feet. "Like I said, I get safe." She moves into the kitchen and pours herself some coffee.

Xander pauses at the garage door, but can't think what to say. He goes in, puts on his glasses, tests the iron. As he raises up from retrieving his stickered sides of curly maple, he sees Faith walk in with her coffee mug, pulling his wooden stool closer to his work area.

She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a pair of safety glasses, and sits herself down.

Xander gives her one of his practice sides -- one of the later, less crappy ones. "This is what I'm going to do with the curly maple today."

"You do it on that pipe?"

"Yeah." He thinks of Anya and her many hairdos. "It's kind of like using hot rollers on your hair -- well, if your hair was completely stiff and wouldn't wrap around the roller and might break in half if you do it wrong."

"You need me to be quiet then?"

"It'll help. There's a lot to keep track of when you're bending. Sometimes you can hear if it's beginning to fracture, or you see the grain start to lift. You can smell if the wood starts to scorch -- I guess if anything gets me to stop smoking, it'll be so my sense of smell is sharper for that."

"Anything I can do to help?"

"Maybe hand me something as we go along. I'll let you know."

Evan had let him get the feel of bending different kinds of wood with scraps of tonewood he had lying around. There are easier woods to work with than the figured types, but he fell for the curly maple despite Evan's best efforts to talk him out of it. Xander had put in a lot of practice time on plain maple, developing a feel for the careful combination of heat and pressure that made the wood take a new shape under his hands. This is something he's gotten good at.

Making sure his work gloves are nearby, he takes up his side and starts to rock it over the oval pipe. "It takes a slow, steady rocking motion to get it right," he tells Faith. "You want a nice, fair curve, not a series of straight bits and bends."

Xander feeds with his right hand and applies pressure at the pipe with the other, rocking the side while keeping the template fixed in his mind, waiting for the feel of the wood relaxing under his hand. When the side gets too lot to handle, he slips on the left glove and keeps feeding and pressing. There. There's the moment where the maple becomes plastic, begins to mold to the shape he has in mind.

He barely has time for a moment of satisfaction before the side snaps with a crack that makes him cry out.

"Jesus!" Faith wipes her coffee off her leg. "What happened?"

"It's fucked, that's what. Shit." He lets the pieces of the side hit the floor, and turns away from Faith, a knot in his throat. "Fuck."

"Xander, I'm sorry. Did it screw you up, me being here?"

"No," he says quickly. Trying to calm himself, he takes up his thermal mug. "No, it's nice having you watch. It's my first time bending figured wood, and I should have paid more attention. It's less flexible than the plain I've practiced on --"

There's a look on Faith's face he's never seen before, almost like she wants to cry. Without thinking, he reaches out and brushes a strand of hair back from her forehead.

"It's all right. Maybe I can find a close match for some new sides. And I'll get in some more practice on the broken side." He offers her a smile. "Evan warned me the first guitar wouldn't be perfect. Actually, I think he said the first ten."

"Doesn't that make you nuts?"

"Yes. No. What it does is scare me. Thinking about what happens after tomorrow. The worst thing that happens in this workshop is maybe a few sides break before I figure out what I'm doing, or the final product doesn't look or sound as good as I want. I'd hate that, yeah, but compared to other things -- compared to screwing up with Willa --" He takes off the work glove. "I could get her killed, Faith. Or vamped. Or maybe I'll just louse things up so badly she starts drinking again and never finds her way back out."

"You're saying all this like she's got no influence at all on how things go." Moving in close to him, she puts her hand over his heart again. "How'd this dorky kid I knew back in the day wind up taking the weight of the whole world on his shoulders?"

He thinks of Buffy clawing her way from her coffin. Anya, lost, after unwittingly sacrificing her friend to be human again. "By seeing what happens when I fuck up."

"It's not 'I' anymore, it's 'we.'" I came out here to help. And Kevin -- there's a reason you told him what was going on even before he ran into that vamp. You surround yourself with pretty good people, if you'd just pull your head out of your ass long enough to notice." Her voice is still soft despite her words, the heat of her hand on his chest doing strange things to his breath. "There's Giles, too, if your common sense ever grows bigger than your case of hurt feelings."

"I don't want to talk --"

"Neither do I." She moves her hand in feathery strokes over his chest. "You're not going to help this girl by worrying all night. Trust what you've learned. Trust your friends. Trust your heart."

Xander's heart may have something to say, but right now other parts of his anatomy are talking louder. He's not so sure their advice is the smartest.

"I think you should get in more practice with the slow, steady rocking." Faith takes off her safety glasses. "I promise I won't break."

Xander switches off the bending iron.

Faith catches his hand as he turns back, tracing her fingers over the tender places that were calluses so many years ago, stroking her thumb over the palm of his hand. "I never knew anyone in my whole life who could make things." She presses a kiss into his palm. "I had no idea how sexy it could be."

Another kiss, then she turns her face so he's caressing her cheek, guiding his hand with her own along her jawline, down her neck. The realization comes as he takes the lead that she's handing it to him, and just after that arrives a flash of memory: Faith pulling his shirt off, throwing him down on her bed.

Throwing him down on her bed --

"Hey, what just happened? Where'd you go?"

"Nowhere, nothing. I just --" He shakes his head. "Voice of reason."

"I don't think so. You kind of -- froze."

"Let's not go into it." He backs away, bends to pick up the broken sides.

Faith takes him by the arm, gently pulls the maple pieces out of his hand. "Let's do. I'm not just playing around here, Xander, this isn't just a quick fuck to me. Something moved in between us just then. I could feel it." She searches his face. "It's her, isn't it?"

"God, no, I told you --"

"Her, Stupid-Faith, the girl who's always following me around with her big mouth and her bad decisions. I keep hoping someday I'll shake her, but she's like this retarded sister who tags after me, fucking everything up. Except it's worse, because it's me. Am I right?"

Xander starts to lie, but her face makes it clear she sees through him. "I need time."

"Right." She takes two steps back, then whirls and strides into the kitchen. By the time he follows she's out the back door and into the yard.

"Faith, wait."

She stops without turning to face him.

"I didn't say 'time alone.'" He reaches for her hand. "Come sit with me a while." He draws her to the back porch, sits on the top step. After a moment's hesitation, she seats herself by him. Xander keeps his hold on her hand, and she lets him. "There are certain memories stored in my body. I pretty much had my head fooled during the last few years, put a big wall around most of my past. But muscle and nerves and sinew -- can't get anything past 'em. Certain things trigger a response." He smiles. "You should have seen the date who said, 'You've got an eyelash' and came at my eye with her fingers. That was a fun first-and-last."

It doesn't tease a laugh from her. "There's a difference. I'm not some innocent bystander."

"Well, no. But you're not the same Faith, either. If we take it slow enough, maybe even the muscle and nerves and sinew will clue in. It's like Evan -- the guy who's talking me through building this guitar -- says, guitarmaking will teach you to wait." He gets to his feet. "Come on. I have an idea."

Xander leads her back to his bed, where he and Willow had argued and talked and not-talked and laughed at South Park together. "We'll ease into it. We'll talk, we'll kiss some. We'll take our time."

"I don't know --"

"We'll just lie here together. Pretend we've already done the slow, steady rocking."

"That's always the hard part."

"What?"

"After."

Sitting on the bed, he begins to unlace his work boots. "Well, see? That's good. Then it's the both of us trying to ease into something that's not so simple." He swings his legs up, scoots to make room for her.

Faith yanks off her boots, alternating in a one-legged stork pose. She puts one knee on the bed. "This feels weird."

"Who's going to know?"

She settles next to him, her legs tucked under her.

"Who are you, the White Rock fairy? C'mere."

"How do you know about White Rock, California boy?"

"My Uncle Rory sent me a case once. I used to have carnal thoughts about the fairy. I think I still had a couple of the empty bottles when Sunnydale caved in."

"Are you having carnal thoughts about me?"

"I will if you'll come down here." Finally she slides down next to him and Xander unbuttons the top button of her shirt, planting a kiss on the silky skin revealed beneath.

Starting to sit up, Faith reaches around behind her to unhook her bra.

Gently he pushes her back. "Not yet." He opens another button, plants another kiss. "You said something the other day, about telling men about the Slayer thing. You must've had some actual relationships since I knew you."

"I tried. Bein' the Slayer is a deal-breaker."

"How long had you been together?"

"Couple of months, with the first. The second I waited until almost six months. I thought maybe things would have a chance to take, you know? Didn't matter, he was gone."

"That's six months longer than I've made it with anyone. It's impossible to talk about my past, and there's nothing too exciting about my life right now -- well, up till the last couple of weeks, anyway. But I can't talk about that, either."

"You're the Scarlet Pimpernel. You ever see that old movie?"

"A long time ago, I think."

"The book was even better. I read it when I was in the joint. Anyway, that's you, nobody knows who you really are."

"A dashing hero of revolutionary France? Who everyone thinks is a dork?" He unbuttons another button, drops another kiss. "You really are trying to get in my pants."

"Oui, mon petit -- um ..."

"Petit four?"

"That'll work."

He opens the last button, finds a silver ring in Faith's navel. He plants a kiss nearby, and Faith shimmies out of her shirt.

It's then that he sees the knife scar, above the waistband of her low-rise jeans. "Wow." It's longer than he'd have thought, still raised and pink. "Is that from -- you know?"

"Buffy? Yeah. Wicked ugly, isn't it? Always wondered if there was something mystical about that knife. That's the only scar I ever got that you can still see."

He traces it with a finger. "Maybe it's because another Slayer gave it to you."

"Maybe. Who the hell knows."

"Is it weird, having your scars disappear? I mean, in a way, it's your history being erased."

"I always got Fs in history. And no, I'll take pretty pink skin any day. Come on, would you keep yours?"

That question comes around to revisit him now and again. He always believed his injury brought him and Anya back together before the end. Would he have his eye back if it meant losing that? He's never managed to come up with an answer he's sure he feels in his heart.

Sensing his change in mood, Faith curls beside him. "Shit. I didn't mean to --"

"It's okay. It's nothing I haven't asked myself. I don't have an answer yet."

She rests her head on his chest, snugs her arm around him, and they lie quietly in the gathering dark until it's time for Xander to get ready for work.

Xander arrives at the store early as always to go over things with the second shift manager. Damon, as always, has beaten him there, just because it's where he feels like he's home. Once the shift has begun, Damon delivers the 11 o'clock news to Peggy.

"Alex was kissing a girl in the parking lot."

"Alex." Peg lights up. "Is it that girl who was here a few weeks ago?"

"Not her. This one had dark hair," Damon says. "It was J.J. Grimaldi."

"What?" Xander and Peggy chorus.

"J.J. has dark hair. Alex talks about her all the time."

"Damon, I talk about baseball all the time. I wasn't going out with Ichiro, and I talked about him at least as much."

Damon laughs. "That's crazy. Ichiro. J.J.'s a girl."

"J.J.'s rich and famous, and I'm a one-eyed supermarket manager. Besides, the M's are in Baltimore right now, and so is she."

Peg's sharp gaze turns on him. Xander knows why: he's never mentioned his eye at all, much less in such an offhand way. "I don't know. I think you'll have to bring her in, just to prove she's not J.J. Grimaldi. Don't you think so, Damon?"

"Good idea. Bring her in, Alex."

"I've got a good idea. Why don't you get out the Zamboni and do your thing?" Hockey is Damon's passion, so the floor polisher has been nicknamed the Zamboni. Damon bounds off to do that -- for such a big man, he's amazingly quick and light on his feet.

"Finally showing a little life," Peg says. She's tried to fix him up a couple of times, without much success.

"Don't get excited. It's early yet."

"Yeah, sure. Look at that smile."

When dawn rolls around, Peggy joins him outside for his first smoke of the new day. It's a helluva day he's got ahead of him. Change on the heels of change. He's set to pick Willa up from the rehab center at noon, try to make things make sense to her. Faith's promised to make herself scarce, but he's not sure how she'll feel about that now. For the millionth time, Xander hopes he knows what he's doing.

The sun's glimmering through early morning mist when he finally speaks. "Peg?"

"Mmm."

"When I moved to Spokane, all I wanted to do was distance myself from who I'd been, where I'd been, everything I'd lost." He feels her shift beside him, an almost imperceptible sharpening of her attention.

"Mm-hm."

"I cut loose my friends, cut loose the name they called me. I started using Alex instead." He taps his ashes at his feet. "But the last few weeks I've had visits from some of those friends, and I've been doing some thinking about a few things I pushed away instead of losing. Does that make any sense?"

"A little. Maybe more, if I weren't operating on a complete lack of detail."

That old-movie wiseacre tone to her voice makes him grin. "Sometime, maybe. What I wanted to say, though, is that my friends call me Xander. It'll take some getting used to, but I'd like it if you did, too."

"Xander," she repeats, trying out the sound of it. "I'm so used to you being an Alex."

"Me too, till recently."

"Xander. It's nice, I like it. Xander Harris."

He smiles. "Think Damon will go for it?" Damon hates change of any kind.

"Good luck. I'm not sure he's given up the idea of J.J. Grimaldi."

"We've got time." A car pulls into the parking lot, and Xander and Peggy turn back toward the doors. He stubs out his cigarette in the ashtray/trashcan, and follows her back into the store.

Xander sits in the rental car for a moment, taking in the lush landscaping of the rehab clinic. It's got a peaceful, countryish sort of name -- countryish in the sense of huge estates, not house trailers and cars on blocks and scrawny hounds. The grounds are a postage-stamp version of what those estate grounds would be like.

Faith's taken his car, headed south of Coeur d'Alene to the Indian casino and hotel. He's got the rental because --

Because the confined interior of his car smelled a little too strongly of the wild, semi-public driveway sex he and Faith engaged in after she picked him up at Rosauers. Even airing out the car on the drive to pick Willa up, he couldn't be sure there wouldn't be a trace, and the last thing he needed was to freak her out fresh from rehab.

So ... rental car.

So ... wild, semi-public driveway sex. Not to mention slightly more contained basement monk-cell sex. And then shower sex, which hadn't quite been the original point of the shower.

He can't speak for Faith, but Xander hadn't planned anything like that. More taking-it-slow, that's what had been on his agenda. But he'd made some wisecrack, and she'd laughed her smoky laugh, which had led to a kiss, which had led to necking at a stoplight, which led to everything else.

Xander can hardly think of a worse idea, or a worse time for it. Which in no way stops him from missing the hell out of Faith, and wishing she weren't disappearing for 24 hours or more. He could use another one of her pep talks about now, even though she'd given him one just before she drove off in his car.

Not surprisingly, it had been short and pithy. "Nervous?" she'd asked.

"Who, me? Nah. I'm going for terrified."

Once more she'd placed her hand over his heart. "Remember what I told you." Then she kissed him. Then she copped a quick feel of his ass.

Then she was gone.

Xander steps out of the rental, straightens his tie and cuts across the manicured lawn to the front entrance of the clinic.

This place makes him twitchy for some reason. Maybe he's just flashing back to his youth, when anything that reeked of luxury or refinement made him nervous, anxious to pick at flaws so he'd be less aware of his own inadequacies.

Okay, so this isn't a palace by any stretch, but it still represents a luxury Xander never had: 28 days to retreat from the world and get his shit together, away (if he chose not to break the rules, which could always be managed, he was sure) from temptation. He'd had a new job to hang onto, an apartment not far from a liquor store. He'd had the rooms and Patrick and a deep discomfort with the idea of a higher power. Somehow he'd managed, but he wondered what this would be like. He suspects it would make him feel trapped.

He chats with her counselor for a few minutes, then Willa comes in. She looks even smaller, more fragile than Xander remembered. Her hair's been cut short, in a style that lies close to the shape of her head, and it's a medium brown now. Giving Anya a run for her money. She's traded the vintage costumes for an oversized white shirt and black pants and pointy, stylish shoes. She looks good, healthy, like she's got her feet on the ground instead of hovering above ready to be pushed in whichever direction the wind's blowing.

She smiles shyly. "Thanks for coming. I appreciate it."

"I'm glad to help." He takes her luggage to the car while she says goodbye to friends, and has a smoke while he waits for her.

"I'm sorry to make you do this," she says once she's out on the sidewalk. "I know you're usually in bed at this hour."

"You're not making me do anything. I wanted to. Are you hungry? Or do you want to stop off at your place, get things you need?"

She settles into the passenger seat, chews a nail. "The more I think of it, the sillier I feel. About being afraid to stay in my apartment. I was really out of control, Xander; I don't remember half of what I told you."

"I remember it."

"Well, you can stop now."

"Listen to me. None of what you told me was crazy. I believed everything you said, because I've seen worse. I want to talk to you about that when you're settled in a bit. But I think you're safer if you stay somewhere besides your place."

"I don't feel that ready to be on my own..."

"My guest room's all ready. I like your hair. You look really different, though."

"My mother took me to get that last dye job fixed. I don't think she could stand me going into rehab looking like some white trash peroxide OD victim."

"You didn't look like --"

"Yeah, I did. At least it was just hair dye, not a tattoo. And you -- you got a new car."

He pulls into the parking lot at her complex, and they get out. "No, this is just a rental."

"What happened to yours?"

"I loaned it to a friend who doesn't have a credit card to rent one."

Willa slips her key into the lock, then turns to look at him. "Good friend, or are you just the kind of sap who can't say no?"

Sap. Her vocabulary is still vintage, even if she's taken a bold step into the present with her wardrobe. "Good friend." The words feel a little strange coming out of his mouth, but there's no quick description for what Faith really is. "We have a lot of history."

"I never know if history is a good thing," she says. "Most of mine, I'd say not." She ushers him into her apartment. If her place is an indicator of her state of mind, no wonder she drinks. It's not exactly messy, but there's nowhere to look where there's any sense of rest. She's a collector of pop culture, collages and photos everywhere, little toys and action figures -- it's a dead heat between Jesus and Japanese cartoon characters. Even a shrine she's made in the corner is busy as Times Square in tourist season. Xander wonders what sort of beings, if any, are attracted by the candles when she lights them. He plans not to be around to find out.

He declines a soft drink, sits on the edge of her kidney-shaped sofa while she rustles through her closet. Wondering if he and Faith will have to take her out to buy a whole new wardrobe for the slaying. Not that Faith's always had the firmest grasp on practical slaywear.

"I know this is crazy. I've got a month's worth of stuff in your trunk. I'm just sick of it all." Willa packs a few garments into a carry-on sized bag, then slings in a few bottles and jars from the bathroom. Her last stop is her bookcase, which like everywhere else in her home, is chaotic and jumbled. She pulls out a few books and puts them in her bag. "My parents have been collecting my mail and bringing it to me, so this is it."

He rises, takes the bag from her. "Willa, what happened between us last time I saw you. I was out of line. It won't happen again."

She waits for him to step outside the apartment and locks up. "Stop apologizing for that. You didn't do something to me. Neither one of us was in our right mind, but it was mutual. It was fine."

"Sure." Suddenly he feels twitchy again, willing to do anything he can think of to postpone the other big conversation. "You hungry? We can stop somewhere." There's also a huge container of soup in the fridge, but he doesn't mention that.

"No, I'm good. I had a big breakfast. Let's just get to your place. You look like you're ready to drop."

Yeah, drop a bomb. On her. He slings her bag into the car.

Let's do it. Let's get it over.

The changes in his house are subtle, but Xander sees her taking them in as he leads her into the living room: the books and lutherie catalogs, the double curl of plans he'd left spread out on the coffee table, the triangular mailing tube propped against a chair. He stows her luggage in the guest room, and she tosses her jacket on the bed.

Willa insists she's content to hang out and read while he sleeps, but Xander wants this done. The last thing he needs is a repeat of waking up to find she's bolted. He fires up the coffee pot, grateful once more to have something to occupy his hands.

"How about some cinnamon rolls?" He doesn't wait for her answer, but raids Faith's ten-tube stash of Pillsbury rolls in the fridge. An abundance of these things is some kind of security blanket for Faith, one he doesn't quite understand, but he doesn't begrudge her the space it takes. The can opens with a doughy pop as he presses the seam, and he lays them out on a baking sheet.

"Oh my god," Willa says. "I love those things, but my mother thinks they're too low class to have in the house."

The unintentional slam at Faith makes him bristle. "Sounds like your mother has a lot of ideas about things."

"She's not a snob, if that's what you mean."

Shit. This is not how he wants to start off with her. "Sorry. Didn't mean to imply." He sticks the baking sheet in the oven, sets the timer, then leans against the counter. "I need to talk to you about the things that happened a month ago. About the vampires."

"Xander, I got mugged. And then I had a freakout, and I imagined all sorts of things."

"Is that what you've been telling yourself? Or did it take someone else to convince you it was all your imagination? Your mother, maybe. Or a counselor at the clinic."

From the way her hackles rise, he suspects it's her mother. "What does that matter?"

"You're right. Who said it isn't important. What matters is, they're wrong." The coffeemaker gurgles and sighs, and he pours her a cup, then another for himself.

"You weren't there. How do you know?"

He can't believe this. He's going to have to convince her all over again that what she saw was real. "I know because I saw the same two who hurt you. I killed one of them."

"Killed one --"

Xander nods. "Staked him. Crossbow, to be accurate. The other one nearly killed me. Willa, I know you've been in a safe, secure, sane place the last month and this sounds like a remnant of whatever craziness you were going through, but trust me on this. What you saw then was real. I was hoping maybe it was a random attack, a couple of vamps passing through town, but there's more of them, and people are dying."

"Okay, so they're real. What does that have to do with me? I'll stick close to home after dark, follow all the other advice you gave me. But beyond that, there's nothing I can do."

"Well, that's what I wanted to talk to you about. Do you remember me telling you about my friend Buffy?"

"The vampire killer, right?"

"Slayer. Right." The timer goes off, and Xander pulls the cinnamon rolls out of the oven, slathers the icing all over the tops. "There were others who came later. I think I told you about that. The line opened up to girls all over the world. There's an organization that's working on finding them, the Watcher's Council. The Slayer, some of the potentials, each had a Watcher, a mentor who had access to centuries of research about vampires and demons and that kind of thing. So these girls are all over the world, and some of them are still being found." He sets a plate on the table and nudges the rolls onto it with a spatula. "Willa, I'm certain you're one of them."

"What?"

He sits across from her and takes a roll. "You're a Slayer. I'm sure of it."

A look of pure panic flashes across her face. "Me? That's crazy. I'm not some Xena-type warrior girl."

Xander laughs. "You think Buffy was? When the Council found her, she was all about movies and shopping and boys. Yeah, she learned how to fight after she was chosen. But it's not like she gave up everything she'd been before."

"Chosen. By this council?" She takes a roll, tears a tiny piece off and pops it in her mouth. "See, nobody's come to me, so you must be mistaken."

"It's not the Council that does the choosing. That would simplify things, I guess, because tracking down the Slayer -- especially now that there's more than one -- can get tricky."

"So who chooses?"

"I never got a satisfying answer to that, myself. Destiny, some higher power -- and I might be a guy with a four-year chip, but I still have some trouble with the whole higher power thing -- I don't know. But she's chosen before her Watcher ever comes to tell her." He finishes a roll, licks off his fingers. Faith may be onto something -- the cinnamon seems to have a soothing effect. Which is so far lost on Willa, who's only torn a couple of bird-bite pieces off hers.

"Are you in this council?"

"Me? God, no." Xander snatches a second roll off the plate.

Another pinch. "So why haven't they come?"

This whole thing is getting away from him. He'd thought he'd just present everything to her in a neat little package. But all these questions pinch tiny pieces off his story the way she's picking at her roll, throwing him off plan. "They haven't found you yet."

"And you haven't told them."

"No."

"No wonder. 'Hey, look what I found you, an alcoholic slayer!'" That apparently calls for a bigger hunk of roll -- she tears off a nearly thumbnail-sized piece.

"That's not it at all. I thought I would have a better understanding of what you're going through than someone who's never struggled with getting sober. I think that should be taken into account, in every part of your training."

"Training. Who's teaching me, then? You?" There's a challenge in her voice that sets his teeth on edge.

For a split second he wonders if Giles ever wanted to pinch his slayer's head off. "You want my credentials? I can do up a resume for you, demons killed, apocalypses averted. I have a slayer lined up to train you on the fighting; she can fill out an application too, if you want. Or hell, the Council can have you. Let's put you in the hands of the generals. Why fuck around learning from the people who've fought in the trenches?" He finds he's on his feet. "Excuse me for a few minutes. Nicotine calls."

He goes outside, sits on the porch step, rubbing at the throbbing ache that's begun between his brows. Maybe he shouldn't have sent Faith off while he broke the news to Willa. But when he'd made that call, he and Willa hadn't been quite so -- well, no, there'd always been a fair amount of prickly between them. Maybe this was okay, then. She'd trusted him enough to ask for a ride and a place to stay when she got out of rehab. It wasn't like things had never gotten tense between Buffy and Giles, either. Xander finishes his cigarette and walks back into the kitchen.

In the time he's been gone, Willa's polished off two more cinnamon rolls and washed the baking sheet. She stands by the coffeemaker, staring out the window over the sink. She looks so tiny and scared.

"You don't have to clean my house every time you come over," he says gently.

"Sorry."

"I didn't mean --"

"Not about that. I ... well, I wasn't questioning whether you could teach me anything. I just -- I don't want this at all."

"I don't think many do. By the time I met her, Buffy had already sworn she was giving it up. It's dangerous, and it's lonely, and she ruined a lot of her favorite clothes."

That teases a small laugh out of her, but a wave of tears rides it. Xander takes the mug from her hands, pulls her into his arms. "It's all right, it's all right. Shhh..."

When the tears start to dry, she reaches up to touch his face, and Xander steps back, catching her hand in his.

"Willa, no. That can't happen again."

"I was just going to say how tired you look." But they both know it's a lie. "Go get some sleep. I need time to think this all through, and you need to stay on schedule."

It feels risky. He'd hoped to have her convinced, ready to join up, by the time he left her alone. It's a luxury he can't afford right now, practically weaving on his feet.

"Go," she says again.

"You stay."

"It's a deal."

He nods and stumbles back to his bedroom.

The phone drags him out of sleep, an hour and a half after his usual waking time. Xander fumbles on the nightstand, thumbs the talk button on the cordless. "'Lo."

"Morning, lover. I didn't think I'd wake you at this hour."

"Most days, not. I was late getting to sleep. How was the drive to Worley?" He retrieves his lighter and cigarettes, lights his first of the day.

"Pretty. It gave me the creeps."

"All that rolling farmland doesn't do it for you?"

"It's so fucking empty. Too much sky. How're things going with your slayer?"

The phrase brings an almost physical reaction. Not his, no, she can be someone else's responsibility. He takes a deep drag on his cigarette. "You're being highly optimistic there. I like your chances with the slots down there better than mine with Willa."

"Why, what's her deal?"

"She doubts herself, she doubts me. Not to mention the fact that she'd just rather believe none of this ever happened in the first place. She might even be gone -- I haven't been up yet to check."

"Want me to come back tonight?"

"No, go ahead and stay. If I can't make her trust me, we're screwed before we start. Maybe a little more time will do it."

"Maybe the bein' screwed part won't be so bad. As long as I'm there for that."

He finds Willa cross-legged on the sofa, buried in one of his poetry books, and he lets out a breath he didn't realize he was holding. "Hey."

"Hey." She looks up. "I hope you don't mind. I heated myself some soup and had some bread."

"That's fine. In fact, I meant to say something about that, but I forgot. Sorry."

"No problem. I'm plucky and resourceful and all that. Is your friend Buffy?"

"Is she what?" This is why he lives alone. He's not good with the conversations two minutes after he's emerged of an afternoon.

"Plucky and resourceful."

"It's her middle name. Names. Remind me to tell you sometime about the time she was trapped in a house with a psychotic vampire who'd kidnapped her mom, and she conned him into drinking holy water. Speaking of sacred liquids, I'll be in the kitchen making the blessed coffee."

She rises and follows him. "What's that do?"

"Jump-starts my heart, most days." He rummages in the cupboard for the Craven's Zags blend. His supply's getting low.

"No, the holy water."

"Oh. It burns, like acid."

"Neat. Well, disgusting, too. So -- holy water, fire, sunlight, staking and -- damn."

"Beheading." This seems encouraging. She's been reviewing the material.

"Right. Okay, I didn't forget that one, just repressed it." Willa opens the fridge door, peers inside.

"The holy water's more practical for inflicting damage rather than making a kill. You'd be more likely to splash it than get one to drink it."

"Are you having an affair with Poppin' Fresh here? Jesus, there must be a dozen cans of this stuff."

"They belong to my friend. So get the wiseass remarks out of your system now, before she gets back."

"She?" Willa emerges from the fridge, clutching one of the gourmet sodas Straley had brought over. "Open this, would you?"

"The slayer I told you about, who's coming to train you. She'll be here tomorrow." He twists the cap off her soda bottle, hands it back. "Afraid you'll break a nail?"

She shakes her head. "I tend to snap the necks off. So Buffy's coming here?"

Xander can't read her expression, but he senses she's carefully keeping it that way. "No. Her name's Faith."

"One of the new ones."

"Well, no. That's some of the lore we haven't gotten to yet. It's one of the weird little things in Council history. The line split a couple of years after Buffy was called, and there were two slayers. Faith comes from that line, she's been a slayer eight or nine years." He pours his coffee. "God, the more I explain, the more labyrinthine the whole thing gets."

Willa boosts herself onto the counter to sit. "So did she and Buffy fight together?"

"Sometimes yes and sometimes no." He'd rather avoid Faith's history, if he can manage it. "Mostly not."

"Jesus. Has anyone written any of this down?"

Xander laughs. "There used to be libraries of this stuff, since humans first started writing."

"Used to be?"

"Most of it got destroyed in the last big apocalypse I was on hand for."

"That'll happen."

Xander directs a sharp glance in her direction.

She guzzles for a moment, then says, "When I was a kid I was trying out all these different religions. I went to this Mormon visitor's center and heard the whole Joseph Smith thing, the angel, the golden tablets with the book of Mormon written on it. So after the whole presentation is over I ask where's the tablets. The guy tells me God took them back to where they came from. Which even then seemed pretty damn convenient."

"There's a thing called faith," he snaps. "You might try it sometime." This is funny. Xander Can't-Get-Past-the-Higher-Power-Thing Harris preaching the gospel of belief. He pinches the bridge of his nose, unsettled by a suspicion he's swiped this gesture from Giles. "I've seen these books, sat around with my friends in dozens of all-nighters searching the pages for whatever nasty was out there. Fallen asleep over them, possibly drooled on a priceless text or two. Set one on fire once, with an accidental spell. I don't have an ounce more evidence, so it all comes down to whether you believe me. You trust me, yeah. But I think believing is something else."

Willa's attention is on the thumbnail that's scraping at the label on her soda.

"Look, I know you were brought up by a couple of academics. There's a lot of weight put on what's rational. This takes a leap, but I can't help you make it. Just keep hanging out; I'll be in my workshop for a while."

Part of him thinks it's a wise move, giving her a little space to take everything in. But the other part -- and it's pretty damn big -- knows he's just tired out from this prickly shit.

He just wants to be with his guitar.

So much has happened since he snapped that side, it feels like weeks since he was last in his shop. Just yesterday, that's all. Xander picks up the longer piece of the broken side, switches on his iron.

Today with Willa -- actually, almost every conversation he's had with Willa -- has been like working with the curly maple. It's just a matter of seconds between feeling like things are going well, he can feel her relaxing and coming around, and snap! He's got a handful of useless scrap. He has a lot more confidence that he'll get it right with the maple someday than with Willa. And he's not that confident about the maple.

The iron will take a while yet, so he gets the cordless and calls Evan.

There's not a lot of chitchat in this relationship. He identifies himself, Evan asks how the guitar's coming. None of his accomplishments comes to mind: the neck, the soundboard and back, his awed feeling when he walks into his shop that there's not a project out here but a guitar. All he can say to Evan is, "I snapped a side."

"Only thing that surprises me about that is how soon you got this far," Evan says. "That maple's a bastard to work with."

"But I'd done so many practice sides."

"The plain will make you cocky. The only way to learn to work with the figured is to work with the figured. I can't tell you how many sides I busted in my day."

"Now the sides won't match the back."

"It's not too late to turn it into a picture frame," Evan says. It throws Xander for a moment, till he remembers what Evan had said when he'd first agreed to mentor him. If he couldn't take the certainty of imperfection, he should stick to picture frames.

He cracks a smile. "Yeah, I guess I could. But I think I'll still turn it into a guitar. I'll lose a little time; I've still got to put in an order for the new sides."

"No, you don't. Just swing by the shop when you get a few minutes. When I saw you weren't going to be talked out of the curly maple, I called Lou and told him to send me some sides from the same log."

Xander blinks. "Hell, Evan. I don't know what to say."

"Say you'll take my advice next time." That Evan. He practically makes Oz look like a chatterbox. "And get in some practice on the broken side. It's no good for anything but headstock veneer anyway. If it keeps breaking, then work on your unmatched side. Thin it more and see if that solves your problem."

"But I've already taken it to the far end of the parameters I've read --"

"This is difficult wood. Sometimes you need to go beyond what the books tell you. You beef it up again with extra side braces when you're constructing the soundbox."

"I guess," he says dubiously.

"Your hands will tell you more than a book can. Train them. Trust them."

"Yes sir. I'll come by tomorrow." He thumbs off the talk button, then turns to test his iron. Gathering up his glasses and his gloves, he gets ready for some slow, steady rocking.

He strokes the surface of the maple, thinking of Faith's skin figured with the scrolling tattoo just above the dimples of her ass.

He contemplates the tight curve of the waist on the plans tacked to the wall. Thinks of Faith's waist.

Xander shakes his head to clear it and gets to work.

When he emerges, Xander has another useless side and a lot of scraps of kindling, but he feels oddly better. Not all progress is visible. His hands are gaining a feel for the stiff-grained wood, for that delicate point just before plasticity becomes fragility. Maybe -- not that he's getting cocky -- the next set of sides will actually turn out to be sides.

Willa's sprawled on the sofa watching the tube with the sound so low it might as well be off. He checks the picture: it's a real estate infomercial offering the key to unlimited income. He's watched it a time or two himself, when he wanted to be numb without drinking. "I've seen this," Xander says. "The guy in the golf cart committed the murder."

"You sure? I'm thinking it was the perky lady in the blue eye shadow."

"Red herring. I've got DVDs, you know."

"I saw. Couldn't make up my mind. You actually have Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter?"

"How could I not? I slip it in, point out all the glaring inaccuracies. 'Oh, that's bogus. Everyone knows that won't kill a vamp.' Always makes for a great last date."

She summons up a smile and drags herself into a sitting position. "Sorry for being a ball-buster."

"Hey, my balls are copacetic." Add that to the Library of Congress-sized file of Things He Can't Believe He Said. "I'm starved. Want more soup?"

"Sure." She trails him into the kitchen. "You're a good cook."

"Faith made it, actually." He sets the asiago cheese bread on the counter. "This is going stale. You want to turn it into garlic bread?"

"I've been trying to imagine what this Faith is like. Do you have a picture of her in that little album you showed me?"

He shakes his head. "She's not so much on the community of slayers thing, and Willow -- believe it or not, that's my best friend's name, Willow like the tree -- hasn't gone to visit her."

Willa takes the butter and garlic powder he hands her. "Willow doesn't like her?"

"She doesn't like any of my --" Holy crap. Girlfriends, he was about to say. "So Faith." He ladles some soup into a saucepan. "She's kinda one of those people who vibrate with energy most of the time. Buffy's had a bit more of a sense of the Slayer thing being a burden, but Faith's always liked it." A little too much back in the day, he's tempted to add, but something in him rises to protect Faith from Willa's sharp scrutiny. "She was pretty young when I first knew her, but she's gained a lot of wisdom since then."

"So how'd this split thing happen that made her a Slayer when there was one already. You said there's supposed to be one, right?"

"Right. One dies and the next one gets called from the pool of potentials. So that's what happened. A vamp Buffy was fighting drowned her. I -- she was resuscitated, but by then another Slayer was called. That one, Kendra, was killed a few months later, and then Faith came along."

She's busily buttering slices of bread -- more, it seems to him, than they'll ever eat. "So how'd you get from two Slayers to a whole bunch all over the world?"

"There was a spell."

"A spell. You mean like a witchy spell." Maybe it's the carry-over from the Poppin' Fresh snark, but her tone strikes him as pure condescension. "Like Samantha, like --"

"Like Screamin' Jay Hawkins," he snaps.

"Who?"

"I'm glad you think this is so cute. It changed your fucking life, you know."

"Oh, come on." She sprinkles garlic over the buttered bread.

"How old were you in 2003? In May?"

"Ready for this to go in the oven?"

"Yeah. Sixteen?"

"Yes."

"So okay. You're sixteen. Life's pretty normal; not that you're necessarily happy. After all, hey, sixteen. But you only hate your parents and your teachers and your life the usual amount. Then sometime in May, there's this morning when you suddenly feel different. I mean, from one minute to the next. There's this power that washes over you. And after this, you're stronger, you heal faster when you're hurt. All very nice, but there's the dreams --"

"Stop it."

"Pretty scary shit. Monsters, vampires. Were any of them prophetic?"

"I said stop."

"They didn't stop. Is that when you started drinking? After the dreams began?"

"I mean it, shut up, Xander." Willa moves to leave the kitchen, but Xander steps into her path.

"Did you have dreams about what happened in that alley before it ever happened? Is that why you let your friends get you drunk?"

"Fuck you!" She gives him a shove, and his feet leave the floor. When he lands, a chair clatters to the tile beneath him and splinters.

It's a good day for kindling in the Harris house. Not so great for Harrises.

Searing pain flares through his shoulder, shooting stars across his graying vision.

He's not even out for a blink, but Willa's kneeling beside him when he dials back in.

"Oh god. Xander, I didn't mean it. Are you okay?" She touches his brow, already beaded with sweat, muttering, "Dumb question. No you're not. Xander, do you want me to get an ambulance or take you to the ER myself?"

"No, I'm okay. Fuck."

"Don't try to move. I'm getting an ambulance. Where are you hurt?"

"No ambulance. It's my shoulder. You can pop it back in." How hard can it be? He's helped Faith do it.

"It's dislocated?"

"Yeah. Just hold me. Here." All he has to do is twist, and the shoulder will snap right back into place. He tries it, and his whole body seizes up from the pain. Nope, no twisting or snapping here. How did Faith do that, then have it in her to deflower him? "Just yank until you feel it go back. But be --"

Willa tugs on the arm before he can even finish the warning. An unbelievable flash of pain, then he feels the joint pop back into place. He lies on the floor a moment, panting.

"Shit, I'm so sorry."

"'S'okay." He feels a deep queasiness, the outrage of his cells over the not-rightness of his arm slipped out of joint. Another reminder of how Slayers are on some other physical plane. No deflowering planned for the rest of the night, that's for sure.

Willa helps him up, sits him at one of the surviving chairs. "I think you should see a doctor."

"No, I'll be okay." They'll probably stick a sling on it, tell him he can't do anything with it for a few days. He's got work, he's got his guitar. "Want to get the bread? A big kitchen fire would cap the day off real nice, but I'm a little beat."

She pulls it out of then oven. It stops just short of being Cajun garlic bread, but he doesn't care so much right now.

"I'm so sorry," she says again. "Is there any hope for your chair?"

Cradling his left arm, he doesn't even shift to look. "No, it's kindling. Might get a few stakes out of it." Because hell, a couple hundred is never enough.

"Can I get you something? Aspirin? Ice?"

"Both would be good. There's aspirin in the guest bath." More than the aspirin, he'll be grateful for a moment to himself.

Not so much, because she hurries, racing back with the whole bottle. "Two or three?"

"Three's good." Actually, he's got hydrocodone left after the busted ribs, which would be a hell of a lot more effective, but Xander's not so sure he wants her knowing they're in the house. She hasn't been out of rehab twelve hours.

She hovers as he takes them. "I think you should lie down. I can get you to the sofa or the bed. Then I'll bring the ice."

"Willa, you don't have to --"

"I want you flat. You look really pale."

He feels really pale. "Okay."

She gets him installed on the sofa, bringing him an ice pack, a ginger ale and some saltines, the remote, and a throw before he tells her all her flitting around is making him queasier. She sits on the closest chair and starts with the Frodo eyes. Or in this case, he guesses, it would be the Sam eyes.

He closes his own. "I'm okay, Willa. Really."

"I didn't mean to hurt you."

"I know. I've played with Slayers long enough to know sometimes us regular people get banged up. Faith'll help you learn to throttle back."

"Can I bring you anything else?"

"I just need some quiet, okay? Maybe I'll sleep."

"I think you should." He hears her settle back against the cushions. He thinks he hears her chewing the shreds of skin at her cuticles.

He definitely hears her staring at him.

Why Frodo never kicked Samwise off one of those freakin' cliffs, he's not so sure.

A trickle of icewater down his neck awakens Xander with a jerk, delivering a jolt of pain which reminds him why he's sacked out on the sofa during his usual productive hours.

His faithful Samwise is curled in her chair, asleep. She looks so tiny and vulnerable in the feeble lamplight from the table beside her.

He knows what it's like to be the fuckup, through both accident and choice. Remembers what it's like to be on the other end of the "Good lord, do be serious." Certainly recalls the feeling that your parents couldn't really give a shit, beyond hoping you wouldn't embarrass them in some way.

He feels bad for her, and he wishes she'd go away.

Xander wonders how many times Giles looked on him with his thrift shop shirts and his motor mouth and had just the same thought.

Now that his nausea's calmed down, he's hungry again, but he has no enthusiasm for getting up to graze the kitchen, waking Willa in the process. Instead he nibbles on the saltines she brought him, washing them down with flat ginger ale.

To entertain himself until Sunday dawn, he huddles under the throw and remembers every stupid remark he ever made back in high school and afterward, every exasperated look or sharp rebuke from Giles.

There are more than enough to last until daylight.

Just before dawn Xander carefully rises and goes out to his own front walk to watch the arrival of Sunday morning. He can't say when he last was home at this hour on a Sunday. The quiet's even deeper here, not even a freight train rumbling by.

He reaches for his cigarettes, which are a little worse for wear but still smokable. Lighting one up, he tells himself he should quit. It's crappy for his health, sets a rotten example for Dawn -- though at twenty one she's not an impressionable kid anymore. It robs him of one of his favorite aspects of woodworking: the fresh scent of the paper-thin curls of wood as he glides his plane over spruce or pine. That sense has been dulled almost to the point of extinction.

Cautiously he works his left arm. Stiff and sore, but not as bad as he expected. He keeps moving it, knowing shoulders tend to freeze up if coddled.

He savors the hush. In a week of huge changes, the day will bring another one. No telling how this one would go. He hopes Willa can keep her snobbery to herself, and that Faith can keep a lid on the defensive tough girl.

It's been a bitch having one slayer in the house at any given time.

Xander's not so sure he can survive two.

The idea of a walk suddenly appeals, so he strolls the quiet streets over to Coeur d'Alene, where the ground falls away sharply to the Spokane River far below. When it's green like this, the trees screening the abruptness of the drop, it doesn't bother him much. He never comes here during the winter.

Sitting on a bench along the road, Xander idly wonders what the last five years have done to the crater at Sunnydale. Has the wound healed up and haired over with the kind of scrubby vegetation that comes after a fire? Or is it still dead as if a meteor had hit? He's mildly curious, but has no desire to see for himself.

Are you sure? a long buried voice asks. It's your parents' gravesite.

He doesn't give a shit.

It's Anya's.

Abruptly he rises, turning his back on the steep dropoff to walk home.

When he returns, Willa's in the kitchen with one bowlful of batter, another of eggs. Coffee's already brewed, the remains of the broken chair are nowhere to be seen.

"You don't have to keep atoning. I know it was an accident. Though I think we should institute a no-pushing-on-the-playground rule."

"No, it's not that. I have a hard time staying still when I'm just getting sober. Which is probably why I have a hard time being sober to begin with. Do you really think it's from being a Slayer?"

He gets himself some caffeine, then sits at the table. "I can't say for sure, but it makes sense to me that it's partly what's going on. The two Slayers I know best have an unbelievable amount of energy. It's gotten them in trouble at times, even though they have an outlet for it. With you, it's been all bottled up with noplace to go. Plus the other stuff, like the dreams. Were you able to talk with your parents about those?"

Willa shakes her head. "Not since the first couple. I learned to keep my mouth shut."

"There was a lot Buffy couldn't tell her mother, too; I'm not saying everything would have been rosy if you'd always known who you are. But she could always go to Giles -- her Watcher -- about the dreams."

She lifts a pancake off the griddle with a spatula and adds it to the stack warming inside the oven. "I must be the most screwed-up Slayer of the whole crew."

"Not by a long shot. There was one who was psychotic, had been for years before she was made into a Slayer. She was on the loose for a while, and a superstrong girl with no sense of reality is really not such a great thing."

"What happened to her?"

"She was found. She's being taken care of." Xander warms his hands against his mug, watching Willa tending the pancakes and omelet she's making. She has the patience for omelets, which Xander's never had. "We thought, when we made this thing happen, that it was all good, all woman-power, ass-kicking righteousness. We'd open the power to any girl who chose to accept it. Never even occurred to us that there were girls who weren't in any position to make a choice. Funny thing, how you can look at it all kinds of ways before you do a spell, but the magic can always find a way to bite you in the ass. Especially when you think you know what you're doing." He's never seen it this way before, but he knows it's true. This was the spell to resurrect Buffy, all over again, only it's any number of girls who are paying the price for their hubris.

"Well, there was a reason for it, wasn't there? You all didn't just decide it would be fun to have a whole posse of supergirls to run around with."

"True. We thought it was the only way to save the world. We might even have been right. But still --"

"You're just as bad as me, with the guilt."

He smiles. "I knew there was a reason we got along so well." As he watches her finish making breakfast, everything settles into place for him. It's time to let go of the notion that he knows what's best -- for Willa's sake, for the sake of his own conscience down the line.

It's time he put in a call to Giles.

Willa's a pretty good cook, it turns out, but the thought of calling Giles makes him so nervous he can barely eat. The last time they spoke --

"I'm sorry," she says. "I overdid it on the pancakes, didn't I?"

"Not at all. They're great."

She did something to them that makes them taste faintly orangey, and she's heated up the syrup. "My father hates it when I screw around with food, as he calls it. He likes things to taste honest, he says -- which means don't put anything but salt and pepper on it and don't go wild with that, for instance don't even think of using a pepper mill. He's such a Calvinist."

"Where does he stand on the creativity issue?"

"He's all for it in theory. It's just the practice that he hates. Speaking of which, why'd you tell me you don't do anything creative? When I put the broken chair out in the garage, I saw what you've been working on. How long have you been doing this?"

Xander laughs. "Maybe three weeks. It wasn't even a glimmer in my imagination when we had that conversation."

"It's going to be beautiful, I can tell. But why a guitar?"

"Well, I --" It's strange to hear the throb of his own car's engine pulling into the drive, but he recognizes it immediately. "Faith's back." He rises and hurries out front to meet her.

She's taking the gym bag she packed out of the car, along with a couple of plastic shopping bags with the casino's logo. When she sees him, she lets them all tumble to the driveway and throws her arms around him.

He hisses from the pain. "Careful, sweetie." Strange hearing it come out of his mouth at this stage of their -- is it a relationship? -- but he doesn't want her to feel rebuked.

"You're hurt."

"Dislocated shoulder. Frankly, I don't quite get the aphrodisiac qualities."

Faith gives him a bemused half-smile, half-frown that is sexy beyond belief. "What are you talking about?"

She doesn't remember. Xander stammers, feeling like a complete ass. "You dislocated your shoulder that night we -- I helped you pop it back in."

"I'd forgotten that part. That shoulder's popped out so many times." She smoothes her hand over his shoulder. "Don't worry. I still remember the important part."

She favors him with a lingering kiss whose aphrodisiac qualities are not totally lost on him. "Why don't we get inside and meet your new Slayer?"

With his good arm, Xander helps Faith gather her bags. Turning to the house, he sees Willa standing behind the screen, taking it all in. He gets the Samwise vibe again, an air of bewilderment and maybe a touch of hurt -- and he is so stepping off the Frodo-Sam image train right now, because that would make Faith Gollum, which just disturbs him deeply.

"You're just in time for breakfast," he tells Faith. "Willa's showing off her culinary skills, and there's enough to feed an army."

At the sound of her name, Willa pushes the screen open for them to enter. "You must be Faith. I've heard a lot about you."

"Same here." Faith drops her bags onto an overstuffed chair. "Well, let's get to it before it gets cold." She leads the way into the kitchen.

Xander cuts his omelet in two and slides half on a clean plate, then gets her a couple of the pancakes warming in the oven. She settles in with her coffee at the place he sets for her, across from him, with Willa at the end, next to them both.

"What happened to your shoulder?"

"Patrol," he says, at the same moment Willa says, "It was my fault."

"You did not take her on patrol with no training," Faith says. "I know you."

"Well no, but --"

"I hit him."

"Shoved, really."

"I didn't know my own strength." Tears shimmer in Willa's eyes.

"It's been five years," Faith says quietly. "It's time you learned. Nothing like this ever happened to you before?"

"Well, yeah, it did. It's been a long time. My parents had me ... got me some help."

"Anger management?"

Willa nods.

Faith reaches for the syrup, douses her pancakes with it like they're on fire. "Anger's so much more manageable for people when you turn it on yourself. Look, you've had a bad time. You had shit laid on you that you weren't remotely prepared for. I can tell you -- even Buffy can tell you -- that being a Slayer is hard enough when you have been prepared. So okay, you've been fucked up. So okay, your parents put you away in some genteel nuthatch -- that's what you almost said a minute ago, right? You got help -- they taught you how to take your anger and transform it into shame. Well, later for that shit. Shame won't help you do what you need to do. Anger might. You just have to learn to use it the right way." She gestures with her fork. "This is really good."

Willa blinks, thoroughly steamrollered. "Um, thanks."

"I got history, too. That's why Xander chose me to work with you. Well, that and the fact that I kick the ass of pretty much any demon dead or alive. Xander, are you gonna finish that?"

He surrenders his plate so she can polish off his omelet.

"Fucked up? You betcha -- been there, done that. Psychotic for a little while. Hurt people?" Faith flicks a look at Xander. "That too, except I didn't have the excuse that it was an accident. Not only that, I killed some people. The first? That was an accident. But the rest -- I just went off the rails, that's all. I spent some years in prison."

Willa lets her fork clatter against her plate and leans back against her chair. "What's this, some kind of Scared Straight bullshit? You really believe I need that?"

Faith drops her napkin beside her plate. "I don't care what you think, Princess. Finish your breakfast. In fifteen minutes, we'll start our first workout." She gets to her feet. "Xander, a minute?"

He follows her into the living room, where she gathers up the shopping bags. She jerks her head toward the hallway, and he trails her back to his bedroom. "Look," he says once they're inside, "I know she can be a little --"

"Ah, she'll be alright." She reaches behind him to close the door, then leans in to kiss him. "We've got to develop some projects for her. Homework."

"That's a good idea. I'll talk to -- listen, Faith. I decided to get Giles's input on this."

She strokes his chest, close enough when she speaks that he can feel her breath fluttering on his lips. "That's great, that's fabulous, but that's not the -- we need some fuckin' time alone, babe. I didn't sign on to babysit, just to train her." Then it's not just her breath he feels on his mouth, but lips and tongue and teeth, alternating gentle with light little nips. Abruptly she pulls back. "You didn't ask how the casino was."

As soon as he drags his brain back out of his pants, he forms a question.

"Boring and fun all at the same time," she answers. "The fun part was only because I won a shitload of money. So I bought you a present." She reaches into one of the shopping bags and holds up her prize: a blue wool jacket with black leather sleeves, with a wolf rendered in elaborate embroidery across the back. "I saw it and knew it was you. I mean, it would be you if you had one. So now you do."

It's something he'd never in a million years think of wearing. Or wouldn't if he hadn't seen Faith's shining face above it, so pleased with herself. "Faith, this is wonderful."

"Try it -- I'm pretty sure it's the right size." She holds it for him to slip into. "Careful of your shoulder."

It's worth the twinges in the shoulder to see the light in her eyes when Xander shows her the back and then turns again to face her.

"You look just how I pictured. Sexy as hell." She slides a hand behind his neck and pulls him to her for a long, slow kiss.

He looks, he suspects, like a dork. But he'll wear the jacket until the weather makes it a heatstroke hazard. As long as it makes her happy.

While Faith and Willa work out in the basement, Xander spends the morning not calling Giles. This requires a lot of effort, and yet none at all. He takes the phone into his workshop and sits it on the bench where the braced back waits to be glued to properly bent sides. He runs a thousand versions of the conversation through his head as he paces, rearranges pieces of abalone and wood, doodles more designs for the headstock inlay, re-reads a couple chapters of the Cumpiano, stands in the door to the backyard and smokes.

Next thing he knows, it's noon, which means it's 10 p.m. in London, and too late to call. Relief and irritation with himself sweep through him in one huge wave. He'll call sometime in the middle of the night. That's when he's most alert anyway.

When Faith and Willa take their break, Willa assumes lunch duty while Faith and Xander drive both cars to the rental place. Driving makes his shoulder ache, so once they've returned the rental, Faith takes the wheel. He directs her to Evan's shop to pick up the new sides.

"How was the conversation with Giles?"

"It wasn't. How was training?"

"She doesn't want me to know it, but she's into it. She's been needing someplace for all that energy to go. I don't get it -- what's the deal with you two, anyway?"

"Nothing. No deal. We saw each other at meetings, and she asked me to sponsor her. I said no, because the male-female thing isn't really done, which was good, considering that we --"

"Not with Willa. The deal between you and Rupert. I heard you two aren't speaking."

"Oh. Well, no." He points. "Park here. This is probably as close as we'll get."

Xander gets out and scrounges in his pockets for meter money.

"You and Giles," she prompts.

"You were going to let me just babble on about Willa till you found out whether I'd mention sleeping with her, weren't you?"

"You're still evading." Her hand brushes his, then hovers inches away as they walk. His fingers find it again and curl tentatively around it, ready to release her at the slightest signal, but he finds his hand clasped in hers. Just like that, they're holding hands.

"I'm evading because I'm not sure I know the answer. I was out of my mind, all that time in Italy."

"Well, yeah, but you've been back in your right mind for years."

"I'm not so sure."

"What do you mean? Buffy said you've been sober for what, four years?"

"Sober, sure." He waits as a city bus roars by. "But I thought I had to stay that way by keeping everything at arm's length. And maybe I've been right. I built these walls, and now they're cracking. I don't know that everything that comes through is gonna be good." He's not quite sure why he's able to tell her this. Maybe because it's half a block to Evan's store, then he'll be off the hook.

"You're forgetting something. You've got people on your side of the wall now. I'm here. Kevin. Even Willa, I'm bettin', would stand up for you if some shit came down." She stops walking and tugs on his hand, pulling him back toward her for a tender kiss just two doors shy of Evan's. "Things are different now," she murmurs.

It's hard to tell with a guy like Evan, but Xander's fairly certain he likes Faith from the start. She doesn't try to chat him up, just greets him in response to Xander's introduction, then amuses herself by looking at the guitars while they talk.

"We can't stay long," Xander says. "We're expected for lunch." He gets caught up anyway, telling Evan he was managing to make some fair curves on the scrap sides by the end of yesterday's session.

Evan brings two sets of curly maple sides he'd had the supplier send, and some koa he's just bought for himself. When Faith comes over to look at the differences in grain between the two, Evan goes into teaching mode for a short while.

"I spent the whole morning fooling around with headstock inlay designs," Xander says, "but nothing's really stuck. I'm already thinking about the next guitar I want to make, so I want a trademark of some kind."

"X," Faith says. "Brand X. Mr. X. X marks the spot. X-ray -- which is one of the coolest words in the English language, if you ask me. You could do an X in that real fancy printing like you see on diplomas and that. Or all jaggedy, like a bolt of lightning, if you go for X-ray."

Xander grins. "I've been trying to get this nailed for a week or two. She needs two seconds."

"I need lunch. It makes me quick."

He likes it. Pearl inlay on ebony veneer -- kind of a spooky X-ray effect. He writes Evan a check for the sides, which Faith insists on carrying when they head back to the car. He's still chewing over the suggestions she rattled off, so he's blindsided when she comes back to Giles.

"There was some big blowup with you two, just before you left Italy, that's what I heard. What over?"

"Like I said, Faith, I was a fulltime drunk. I was furious about everything."

"Namely ...."

"Anya, Sunnydale, being half-blind, being somewhere where I could barely communicate ...."

"Why Giles? There's a reason it was him."

"Christ. Could you just lay the fuck off?"

She's unflustered. "How you going to talk to him if you can't even look at what happened?"

"Maybe I won't. Maybe I should stick with my first impulse. You and I can handle this."

She says nothing as he unlocks the car, just sets the stack of sides on the back seat, where he rearranges them to his liking. His shoulder aches as he leans into the car, and throbs once he settles in with the shoulder harness fastened.

Neither of them speaks on the way home.

Lunch is ready when they return to the house. As Faith delivers the new sides to a cleared off spot on the workbench, Willa hangs up the phone and starts ladling soup into bowls. She looks unsettled, trying to avoid meeting Xander's gaze without seeming too obvious about it.

"How was training this morning?"

"It was good, I guess. I'm going to be sore."

"That'll pass in no time. You've got the quick healing, the whole Slayer package."

Faith comes in, washes her hands at the kitchen sink. "Those'll be good on that table out there?"

"The bench is fine for now. The extra pair I'll get stickered so they don't warp, but that can wait till I wake up tonight."

Willa's expression lightens as the corner of her mouth quirks up. "There's one of your signs of a creative person, Xander. Specialized language."

They all sit in the places they occupied at breakfast, working on Faith's soup and Willa's smoked turkey sandwiches, which she's fancied up with some kind of spread Xander's sure he never bought. When he comments on it, she tells him she made it.

"While you two were out, I called my parents to let them know I'm okay. They want me to go out to dinner with them tonight. The writer they had the party for is still in town, and they want me to meet him. I said I'd have to let them know."

Xander says, "You don't have to ask anyone's permission."

"Oh. I know, but ... well, I didn't know if you guys had plans for me tonight."

"I thought I should take you out on your first patrol," Faith says, "but that won't be till after dark. No reason you couldn't go and meet up with me later. It's up to you."

Xander studies her expression, which is none too happy. "What were you hoping we'd say?"

"This writer -- he's got a reputation for drinking and womanizing. I'd likely be the only sober person there. Or else I wouldn't."

"You have to take care of yourself, Willa. No one can do it for you. You can't tell them the two random people you're staying with said you can't go."

"I can't just tell them I don't want to."

"What if you said you're one day out of rehab and you don't feel ready?"

Willa shakes her head. "I couldn't say that."

"Fuck 'em, then." Faith finishes her sandwich, puts her plate and bowl in the dishwasher. "I'm going out for a smoke. Let me know when you're ready to train."

"She's not overly delicate, but she's got a point." Xander puts his own dishes in the washer. "You're the main person who gets hurt if you have a setback. So you're the person who decides. Listen, I'm dead on my feet. See you tonight."

He shambles back to bed, knowing he hasn't given Willa anything that feels to her like an answer. As much as she wishes for an edict telling her she can't have dinner with her folks, he wishes he had some remote clue whether he's doing this right.

As soon as Xander undresses and slides between the sheets, exhaustion deserts him completely. Instead he's got thoughts. An infestation of them, scurrying around in the dark like cockroaches. He no sooner squashes one than another dozen scramble in to take its place.

The first, though it's the least of his worries, is the one that jolts him wide awake. Xander realizes he's completely miscalculated the time difference between Spokane and London, which is only eight hours. Christ, he's an idiot.

So easy to grasp at a stupid mistake when it makes life a little easier, sidesteps something unpleasant. There's a whole world of unpleasantness he'd love to avoid when it comes to Giles. That party. Giles and Catarina smiling and laughing and touching each other. Glasses and glasses of wine. The smell made him want to puke, made his eye throb, but that didn't stop him from drinking it. He has an almost physical memory of standing, swaying on his feet, glass raised in a toast --

Xander pushes the memory away, but hot on its heels comes the Ghost of Fuckups Present. He's screwed up with Faith. One day it's "We'll take our time," the next they're working on the night moves in the early morning in his car. The same classic Harris-style mistake: grab for the quick, wrong action, the one that bypasses the obvious difficulties. Skip the tension and uncertainty of figuring things out between them. Avoid the weirdness of having Faith and Willa in the house at the same time by letting Faith stake a claim on him. Why does he fall into these same passive patterns with women? He just lets things happen -- with Anya, Cordy, Willow, Faith 1.0, and again with the upgraded Faith 2.0. He's Mr. Easy Way -- not Out. More like Mr. Easy Way Into Worse Trouble Than He Was Trying To Avoid.

He's going to fuck things up with Willa, too. This much he knows. He's already let her down. The painful thing is, he knows what this is like from the other end. Xander had stopped expecting much from his own parents by the time he was ten, but he'd always hoped for something from Giles. It wasn't something he knew how to describe, much less ask for. Xander didn't know how to catch his attention the way Willow could, with her brains and her eagerness to please. The only attention he inspired was an exasperated remark. He never found a way to be more than the guy who came in a package deal with Buffy and Will. All along he'd been aware of this, but he never stopped wanting more from Giles. The fact that disappointment was familiar as breathing to him didn't make it any less bitter.

Just as bitter as the certainty that he'll be the same kind of disappointment to Willa. What else can he possibly be?

His shoulder throbs, and he throws back the blanket and rummages in the bathroom cabinet for the hydrocodone. He's not sure it's the wisest move, but it's the standard Harris move.

Go for the end-run around the pain, no matter what it buys you later.

Xander does manage to sleep for a while, but he's awakened by muffled shouting. Hurriedly he pulls on his sweats and runs for the basement, snatching up a couple of stakes on his way out of the bedroom. Halfway through the kitchen he hears Willa bellow, "No!" A pounding starts up at the front door, but Xander keeps barreling for the basement stairs. He's two-thirds down before he realizes Faith's waving him off, saying, "It's all right, it's all right. Just training."

"Tell that to my heart, will you? But get the electro paddle things first."

"Xander, I'm sorry," Willa pants. "We thought it was soundproof enough down here."

"Not quite. I've gotta get the door before someone calls 911." He turns and climbs back up, slipping a stake in his pocket, setting the other on the kitchen table.

When he opens the door, his neighbor Dustin is standing there, clutching a baseball bat. Quiet guy, officer. Kept to himself until, well, you know.... "I heard screams."

"I know, yeah. Everything's fine." It goes against his keeps-to-himself grain, but he steps back from the door. "Come on in. Woke me up, scared the hell out of me too." He calls for Faith and Willa, just to show Dustin everything's all right, scrambling to think of a reason why he's got two women living with him. "Faith teaches self-defense, she was just giving a lesson downstairs." Faith comes into the living room, struggling to keep a straight face, with Willa trailing behind. "This is my, uh, sister, Faith. She's visiting for a while from Boston."

The look on Dustin's face suggests this wasn't the best cover story, that there was at least one witness to the wild, semi-public driveway sex the other morning.

"Step-sister," he amends. "Actually, really more of an old friend." He considers snatching the bat and whacking his own head with it, just to shut himself up. "And, uh, this is Willa. Dustin, from next door."

"Sorry about the yelling," Faith says. "We've been doing some martial arts, but I thought I'd show her the kind of self-defense stuff I teach. We didn't think that would carry."

"Not a problem," Dustin says. "We just keep an eye out for trouble here on the block. Keeps everyone safe." He gestures in the direction of his house. "Well, I should get back home. Jett'll call the cops if I'm not back in a reasonable amount of time."

"Sure. Well, thanks." He shuts the door behind Dustin and lets out a huge sigh.

Faith explodes with suppressed laughter. "Your sister?"

"What do you want? It's the middle of the night for me. Speaking of which, what's with the yelling?"

"Sorry," Faith says, but her dimples are still pronounced enough that he knows she's not that sorry. "It's a part of the work I do. It gets the adrenaline pumping. Plus the women I teach says it does wonders helping them say no in their daily lives too. If she's going to that dinner, it's a good skill to have."

"What time is it?" Willa asks. "I'd better get ready." She hustles off to her room.

Xander eases the stake from his pocket. "That sounds like a good drill."

"Yeah, I think she'll be okay." She steps in close to him, puts her hand on his bare chest. "I am sorry we woke you. You look like shit."

"I'm having a little trouble sleeping."

"Your schedule's way the hell off, isn't it?"

He nods. "Not to mention too much to think about."

Faith touches his face. "Go on back to bed."

"I don't think I'll sleep."

"Give it a try. I'll heat up some milk while she's getting ready, and bring it in."

Xander loathes hot milk, but he says okay and goes back to his room. He falls asleep almost as soon as he pulls the sheet up, and when he awakens next, there's a glass of room-temperature milk next to his cigarettes.

He fumbles for the pack, noticing there's no light leaking around the blackout shades, not even weak, violet-tinged twilight. He's slept late.

Xander has a cigarette halfway to his mouth before he pauses. It's not even eagerness for the first one of the day anymore, it's just a mindless habit. He wakes up, he breathes, he breathes smoke. Maybe he will quit. Maybe he'll just postpone the first drag by five minutes. That'll feel like enough of a victory his first night.

He spends a long while in the shower, working his stiff shoulder under the hot spray. It's Willa's first patrol tonight, and he hates not being there. He's fallen back into his old persona, the guy who's better off fray-adjacent so he doesn't get broken. The Zeppo. What's a breakable guy like him doing thinking he can be Willa's not-quite-a-Watcher? It's not quite the contact sport being a Slayer is, but it's no occupation for pussies. Just look at Giles's medical history.

Keeping an eye on the clock, he dries and dresses, gets his first nicotine and caffeine fixes. It's 6:40 there. Too early to call. He makes a breakfast he can hardly eat, gets online to order some ebony and pearl, drinks more coffee, smokes more cigarettes. Eight o'clock. It's probably a bad time now. Giles will be leaving for his commute to Council headquarters. Xander should probably wait until it's evening there. Everything will be less rushed.

He drifts into his workshop and looks at the maple he's planning to bend tonight, jostling his gooseneck work light to flare on the chatoyance of the grain. Funny how the thing that makes the figured wood so beautiful is what makes it so damn fragile and hard to work with. Funny how the same thing can be said for Willa. For Faith.

He spent plenty of time hounding Evan for advice before he tried bending his first side. With so much more at stake with Willa, shouldn't he be willing to do the same for her?

Digging in his pocket for the scrap of paper he copied Giles's number onto, Xander retrieves the phone from the living room. Quickly he punches in the digits before he loses his nerve. Waiting for the circuits and relays, he feels as though there's a beehive buzzing inside his head. The hum gets louder, higher pitched as he hears the ring on the other end of the line. The double chirp sounds like it's coming from underwater.

It's Catarina who answers, and even though it's London he's calling, memory slams him back to Florence, and it's his clumsy Italian that comes out. "Catarina, come estai -- esta? Sono Xander."

"Accidenti," she says. Wow. This mild exclamation -- from a woman who shouts "suck my dick!" in her ex-husband's northern dialect at errant Vespa riders -- gets to him. She says it in this soft tone of surprise, as if someone's just given her an unexpected gift. "Ksander, che bello sentirti!"

The informal you, the one he'd stumbled over. That's what pierces him, makes it almost impossible to speak. After all he's done --

"It's good to talk to you, too. I was hoping -- Am I in time to catch Giles?"

"Wait." The phone clatters on some hard surface, and then there's the sound of a door and an indistinct shout. In a moment Catarina comes back, breathless. "You almost missed him." More muffled voices, lower this time, and she says, "Here he is."

He hears the phone pass from her hand to his, then the voice he hasn't heard in nearly five years. "Xander? My god, how are you? Is everything all right?"

The question everyone seems to ask when he picks up the phone. And the one he has no idea how to answer. "Hey, Giles." That's as much as he can squeeze out past the tightness in his throat.

"Xander, how good to hear your voice. I hardly know what to say." There's a long pause on his end, and his voice is a little husky when he finally speaks. "There's not an apocalypse, is there? I've been afraid that's what it would take --"

Good. Down to business. "No. No apocalypse."

"Thank god for that. They do become tiresome after a while."

This is new. Giles making with the jokes to lighten the mood. Xander doesn't know what to make of it. He wanders back to his workbench and strokes the surface of the maple. "Developments, though."

"If -- if they're not terribly urgent, I'd much rather hear them after you tell me how you are. You've been -- we've missed you."

"I wouldn't have thought -- after the way I --" This is much too hard.

"Dawn never told you?"

"Of course she did. I just --" He's never believed her. After her heartwrenching rift with Buffy during the last days of Sunnydale, she's grown into a peacemaker, always trying to bring people together. Sometimes she ... oversells a more optimistic view of the truth to accomplish her ends.

"She says she's planning another trip to see you this summer."

"Yeah. We're thinking about doing a few days of the music festival over in North Idaho. Maybe camp out for the duration."

"She always says what a wonderful time she's had after a visit."

"Same for me, too. I wish she lived closer."

There's another pause, though not as long. "Willow said she was out for a visit, too."

"Just last month, yeah. Jesus god, that was painful." He's startled by the burst of honesty -- to Giles, of all people.

"I know," he says. "It was difficult for her, too."

"There's degrees of difficult, Giles. She didn't have to hear her best friend say it feels like she died."

"I know," he says again, ruefully. "She does lack subtlety sometimes when she's upset. You know how she gets."

"I don't need a seminar. I grew up with her. Is that what everyone else thinks too but doesn't have the nerve to say?"

"Not at all. I believe you've needed to retreat from us for a time. To come to terms with what you've lost without all of us reminding you constantly by our mere presence. To grow strong again. Though I was beginning to fear you wouldn't come back to us after all."

This is so not what he's expected, he barely knows what to say. "Why? What could you all possibly need from me?"

"Xander, don't you know?" There's such warmth in his voice, the kind that used to be reserved for Buffy or Willow. Xander presses the heel of his hand against his good eye, willing himself not to cry. "You've always been our heart."

Xander struggles to keep his breath even. "Even when I was a drunken fuckwit? Maleducato?"

"A heart is no less necessary when it's broken."

That's what undoes him. Letting the hand with the phone fall away from his face, he sits on the garage floor and gives into wracking sobs. Only for a moment or two, then he pulls himself together. "Sorry, Giles."

"There's no need." Xander hears genteel nose-blowing on the other end of the line. "The rest of us were so caught up in rushing into our new lives. I've wished so many times that I'd noticed your struggles before things went as they did."

"I don't think you could have changed anything. I might've gotten sneakier about drinking, is all. Did Will tell you? She just found out I was drinking even in high school, and it freaked her the hell out that she hadn't known."

"She didn't tell me that, no. I wish -- I didn't make it easy for you to come to me with your problems, and I wish I could change that."

"Better watch out who you say that to."

"I suppose you're right." He can hear the smile in Giles's voice.

"I'm all right now. Sober four years now, kinda rejoining the land of the living a lot more recently than that. I've got a decent job working with people I like; I've taken up woodworking again."

"I always thought you had a gift for it. I'm glad you found it again."

Xander smiles. "It sort of found me. Kind of like the slayer I ran across here."

All these thousands of miles, and he can still hear Giles's sharp intake of breath. "A slayer? You're certain?"

"Yeah. One of your lost girls. She's twenty-one. I met her in AA. She's been drinking pretty much since she got the power. I just started working with her, but I'm afraid I might be out of my league. I was hoping maybe you could advise me."

"I could come and work with her there, if you'd like. Or if she can manage to get to London --"

"-- I really -- I, um, hoped I could work with her myself. Along with Faith. Willa -- that's her name, could things get any more confusing? She just got out of rehab yesterday. She's really fragile, Giles. I thought maybe Faith and I -- we've been there. She might respond to that. But I was hoping I could call on you for advice."

"Faith is coming there?"

"Already here," Xander says. "They're out on patrol right now."

"So you're setting yourselves up as watcher and trainer." Here it comes. Now he finds out how much Giles likes Xander horning in on his territory.

"Yes."

"I think it makes sense. You both are likely to catch signs of instability that I might miss. I'd like to talk once a week to see how things are going, if that's agreeable."

"You might have a hard time holding me down to once a week," Xander says.

"Whatever you need, Xander. We have some catching up to do. Tell me all about your slayer, this Willa."

And just like that, it's almost as if he never left.

It's after he gets off the phone that the tears overtake him, the shuddering sobs that he'd managed to suppress before. The storm is long and intense, just beginning to subside when he hears the front door and Faith's voice a moment later. "Surprise, he's in the workshop." The door swings farther open and she says, "Xander, you should have --" She takes him in, still sitting with his back against the workbench, flinging up a hand and turning his face aside. She murmurs something to Willa and steps into the garage, pulling the door shut behind her. "Xander, what's happened?"

"Nothing's wrong. Go inside."

Instead she approaches, kneeling beside him. "Tell me."

He turns his left side from her, groping on the floor for the eyepatch he'd pulled off. "I'm fine. Just fuck off."

She touches his face, and he bats her hand away. "Do you think I care if I see you without it?"

"I care."

"It's not important." She touches his face again. "It's not who you are."

Irrational anger seizes him, scraping across all the nerve endings exposed by the phone call. "Then look." He turns to her, trying to stare her down, make her uncomfortable enough to leave him alone. "How do you like me now?"

Faith doesn't flinch; no look of horror or disgust alters her gaze. "It's a scar, it's not you." Her fingers stroke his skin, feathering upward, toward the place --

It's Xander who flinches, pulling back from her touch. "Sorry. Like I told you, fingers near the eyes --"

She reaches back toward him, stroking the skin near his mouth. "I used to think you were a lightweight. Before this happened. I never was very good at judging people."

"I'm still a lightweight."

Those frown lines at her brows, so pronounced even when she was sixteen, make an appearance. "Don't hand me that bullshit."

"How'd Willa do tonight?"

"Fine, great. Tell me what happened."

He shifts to begin getting to his feet. "I really should --"

Faith puts a hand on his good shoulder, her grip like iron. "You're not a guy who flashes his feelings all over the place. So when I find you on the floor in tears --"

"I called Giles."

She sucks in a breath. Her hand lights on his face again, so gentle. "How was he?"

"Nothing like I expected." He smears the tears that well up with the heel of his hand. "He called me 'son.'"

She makes a low sound in her throat and takes Xander in her arms. He lets go in a way that he hasn't since -- well, since ever. He's always been the set of comforting arms. The last time he cried in front of anyone -- really cried -- was when Joyce died. It scared Anya, so he stopped. Her death he'd kept inside. Stuffed in a bottle -- literally.

When this second storm passes, Faith still holds him, murmuring. "Some people are like the shoreline. You batter yourself and batter yourself against them, but in the end, they're still there for you, still unchanged. That's how Angel was for me."

"He has changed. Giles. He even said so." He pulls back from Faith's embrace, mops his face with his shirt tail. "He said he's much quicker to tell people now how he feels. He said that Catarina taught him that. He said I taught him that." Xander looks away from her. "The things I said to him at their engagement party. Actually, I said them to her, but they were meant to hurt Giles."

Faith pushes her fingers through his hair. "That was years ago."

"I hit him, Faith."

"It's the past. I know he wanted you back in his life, Xander." She leans in and presses her lips to his. "You have a slayer in there who wants to tell you about her night. What do you say?"

With a little help from Faith, when Xander emerges from his workshop, he's less of a wreck, if only slightly. He finds Willa in the kitchen with a mug of tea cradled in her hands. She's set out two more mugs and the sampler box of teas.

"Hey, Willa. I'm sorry to keep you waiting."

She looks up and he sees her register his disheveled state. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." He fires up the tea kettle again. "Dealing with some past stuff, is all. Everything's okay. How about you? Faith says you did good."

Willa grins. "I survived dinner with my parents. I can't really decide if it was horrible or funny. I think the fact that I knew I was going out later to hunt and kill vampires tipped it into funny."

"Yeah, this life does make for the surreal juxtapositions. Faith, you want some tea?"

"Mint, if you've got some." She's jittering around the kitchen, poking in the cupboards.

"Something I can help you find?"

"Nah. I'm just -- you know how I get after a patrol. I'm gonna make some cinnamon rolls."

"No fight, then. You didn't find anything?"

"No, we did. But it was Willa's. You tell it, it's your kill." She gets out the baking sheet and slams a tube of rolls against the counter to pop the seam.

"We did some driving around town first, around the place where I got attacked. We checked out Dick's -- I have a whole new take on that place now, I can tell you. Hung around the Big Easy for a while after the concert let out. Everyone there looked like the vamps --" she casts a look at Faith, for confirmation, Xander thinks, that she's entitled to free use of Slayer slang -- "the vamps that went after me. We didn't find any on the prowl, so then we went to Fairmont cemetery, and found one that was --" She looks to Faith again.

"Rising."

"Right. Rising. First thing I saw was this hand, shooting right up from the ground. I kind of froze for a moment while he clawed his way out of the grave, but when he came after me, it all came to me, instinct and today's training. Faith sat there on a headstone coaching me through the whole thing, calm as if it's a day at the office."

It is a day at the office for Faith, Xander thinks, and a boring one. Cemetery patrols she's always scorned as shooting fish in a barrel.

Willa gives him a blow-by-blow account of the fight, which he's pretty sure would've been over in fifteen seconds if Faith had taken the kill. "Then I stumbled over one of those little markers and fell, but when he rushed me, I came around with the stake, and I got him."

"You did great," Xander says. "It's official. Your first kill as a Slayer. I just wish I'd been there."

"Me too, but god, you're hurt, and you can't give them so much as an inch, I can see that." She's revved back up, that Slayer's high he's even had a little taste of himself.

He smiles. "Still, you mentioned making it through the dinner first."

"Oh, god. I didn't mean --"

"Hey, I'm not complaining. You're right, it's major. It's hard to change when the people around you are invested in you staying the same. If they're sending you to rehab, then wanting you to come out wining and dining the day after you're out, you're getting more mixed signals than support."

"That drill Faith had me do helped a lot. I think every woman could benefit from learning to yell No! at the top of her lungs."

The timer goes off and Faith retrieves the hot rolls, slathering them with icing.

"I have never seen such a huge stash of those things in my life," Willa says. "What's the story?"

Faith keeps her attention on what she's doing. "Like I said, I spent some time in prison. Sunday was a big treat. We got bacon, we got cinnamon rolls. Well, unless a few hundred of them mysteriously walked off so some guard could reward some of his cronies. After I got out, I saw one of those Cinnabon places. It occurred to me then that I could have a cinnamon roll any fucking day of the week." She finishes icing them, licks her fingers. "I like knowing all I have to do is walk into the kitchen. Dig in while they're hot, kids."

Xander follows her lead and pulls a sticky roll off the pan. "Who knew freedom smelled like cinnamon?"

"I'm more in the mood for chocolate," Willa says. "I've got an M & M stash in my room. I think I'll have a few and take a hot bath, then try to sleep."

"Goodnight, then," Xander says.

"You made a real good start tonight," Faith tells her.

"Thanks." She pads toward the guest room in her stocking feet.

Xander turns to speak to Faith, who's lost in her own thoughts. "What is it?" he asks.

"Just remembering that day with the Cinnabon."

He cocks his head, studying her. "It wasn't a happy one?"

"Mixed, at best." She hesitates, picking at her roll the way Willa had. "It was the morning after Caleb kicked our asses. I was finally leaving the hospital, but some of the girls were still there. You were still there. I felt so shitty, then I saw the Cinnabon store and had this realization. In the midst of all that pain I had the first real sense that I was free. Now it's the other way around -- when I'm eating one of these things and reminding myself of my freedom, there's always this kernel of sadness. About that night. The girls. Your eye." She looks down at her hands, which have shredded the roll. "Is everything like that? Don't we ever get to experience pure joy without these ... threads of something darker?"

"I don't know. My own personal opinion -- I don't think so."

She traces her fingertips over his lips, leaving just the faintest sticky-sweet trace of icing behind. "How's your shoulder?"

"Aching."

"Mine still pops out from time to time. A massage therapist showed me how to release all that tightness in there. I can try it on you, if you want."

"Sure, let's give it a shot."

"You have to lie down."

"Is this a ploy?"

Faith lifts a shred of pastry, feeds it to him. "Only if you want it to be."

He gets to his feet, reaching his good hand out for her to take. "I'll let you know."

She unbuttons Xander's shirt, so close to him that he catches the scent of her shampoo beneath the sensory overload of the cinnamon. Slipping the shirt off his shoulders and to the floor, she kneads the muscles on both sides, easing off when he flinches.

"Yeah," she murmurs. "That's really tightened up." She has Xander stretch out on the edge of the bed, face down. "Let your arm hang down over the side." She gently turns his palm out toward her, then holds his wrist as she presses her thumb into his armpit.

He sucks in his breath.

"Relax. Relax into it. There. You feel that?"

"Yeah." That's putting it mildly; she's found an incredibly tender spot.

She maintains the pressure until he feels something shift in there and releases the breath he's been holding. "Better?"

"Yeah," he says again, his tone colored with amazement this time.

"I do that to myself when everything tenses up like that. I'll show you sometime how to find that spot for yourself. Scoot back from the edge."

Xander moves in and Faith settles onto the bed to massage his shoulders and back. "I've been wondering if we took things too fast," he tells her.

"With Willa? I thought she did pretty well tonight."

"No, that went fine. With us."

Faith's hands stop. "We're not fine?"

"No, no. I don't mean it that way. I just wonder if moved before we really knew each other well enough. Skipped a few steps."

She sits back. "Compared to most guys I've screwed, you're a glacier. If you're sorry that we --"

"-- I'm not." Xander turns onto his side, reaching for her hand as she gets to her feet. "Faith, it came out wrong." She tugs her hand out of his, and he gasps from the jolt to his shoulder. "I'm not sorry we had sex. I just want to be sure it's built on something solid, you know? I want it to be real." He reaches for her again, this time with his good arm. "Stay, please."

She sits on the bed again, her weight shifted, ready to bolt at any second. "I never met a guy like you. Even the ones I got far enough with to tell them I'm a Slayer, they had no problems with letting it be about sex first."

"I don't always get it myself. Back when you and I first slept together, I was pretty much your typical seventeen-year-old guy. I thought about sex all the time. But I still -- I don't know, I needed it to mean something. What I started to say -- I was afraid we'd rushed things. But tonight it felt like we made up a lot of ground. Thanks for staying with me out there. Thanks for making me let you stay."

Faith puts her hand on his chest. "Well. I've been in that place. Done things so fuckin' out there that it doesn't even feel like I have the right to ask to be forgiven. I've been on the receiving end of grace so unexpected that it made me break down." She looks away, rolling her eyes. "Aw, listen to me. Set it to a fiddle and it could be a goddamn country song."

He reaches up to touch her face. "It's just what I needed to hear."

She shifts to stretch out beside him on the bed. "You okay?"

He adjusts his pillow a little to ease the shoulder. "I'm good, yeah."

Her first kiss tastes of spice and icing, just the faintest bit sticky.

This time with Faith is like none of the others. There's nothing rushed about it, nothing wild, the two of them taking care with his injured shoulder.

Which is not to say it's not amazingly sexy, Faith straddling him, her hair a silky curtain as she leans over him, blocking his view of anything but her. They stifle their cries so Willa won't hear, which makes it even hotter.

After, they lie with their limbs tangled together, her hair fanned out across his chest. He strokes the floral tattoo curving across her lower back. "You mind if I ask you something?"

"Won't know till you ask me, but I'll let you know if I do."

Xander grins. "I never doubted you would." He gives her a kiss. "What was he like, the guy you were with for six months?"

She's quiet for a moment. "Gerard. He's a guy I teach self-defense with. He gets in one of those big padded suits with the huge helmet so women can kick his head in -- have you seen those in news stories and that?"

He nods.

"Gerard's a nice guy. A real true believer about the self-defense stuff, because his sister was murdered ten years ago. He's way more sensitive than my usual, but you've got to be, in that program. It's all very touchy-feely, because you're making these women act out the scariest shit they can imagine. Some of them have been raped or attacked in the past, some haven't. But it's really emotional, you can't get a drill sergeant in there. I mean, while the helmet's on, he's the nastiest fuck alive -- he not only goes through the attack, but he says stuff, that's part of the training too. But when the helmet and the suit come off, he joins the circle and talks along with the women about what they're all feeling." She pauses, presses a few kisses to his chest, and Xander snugs his arm tighter around her. "It's weird. Women are supposed to be the sensitive ones, but me and Buffy, we'd charge into battle, and we hardly ever talked about what we were feeling after it was all over. A little bit when we first knew each other, but it turned out we were so little alike that we kinda stopped discussing it. So Gerard was really different, and I was attracted to that. He had kind of a spiritual thing going, too. I really liked that -- for a while, anyway, then more and more it seemed to me like he was big on talking about how spiritual he was. After a few months, I was all, 'Just shut the fuck up and be spiritual, already.' I think I told him I'm a Slayer because it worked so well screwing things up with the last one. So it was a little awkward after that, which was partly why I was so eager to come to exciting Spokane."

Xander laughs. "We're a pair. You making your living with the touchy-feely self-defense thing, and me spending my time in the rooms."

"Rooms?"

"Oh. AA. Meeting rooms. That's got a whole spiritual bent I'm not quite comfortable with, but I've managed to stay sober, so I go."

"So what about you, have you met anybody since you moved here?"

"Not so much. A few dates, but nothing that went past two."

"One of those nice guys women always say they want and pass up for the shitheels?"

He tucks a lock of her hair behind her ear. "I don't think I come off as especially nice. More a cipher, I think. A mystery, but not in any interesting way."

"Armor. I know what that's about." She kisses him, then yawns extravagantly.

"I rest my case."

"It's been a long day." She kisses him again. "I'm gonna take a long shower, then head for the monk's cell."

He watches her dress and slip out of his room, then he pulls on his own clothes and spends the rest of the night in his shop, where he bends two nearly perfect sides.

The next night he's back on the job. He notices Peg watching him several times during the night. After Faith and Willa drop him off at the end of a lunch-hour patrol, he catches her studying him and wanders over to the checkout stands to straighten the magazines. As he reaches her lane, she asks, "Did you hurt yourself? You're moving kind of funny."

"Dislocated my shoulder a couple of days ago. Fooling around getting ready for Hoopfest. It's better, but I'm still favoring it a little."

She nods. Seems about to speak, then doesn't. She fingers her flip chart with all the produce codes, then says in a quick burst, "How about a smoke break?"

"I've been cutting back."

"Okay. How about a non smoking break?"

No one's been in for the past ten minutes or so. Xander nods and follows her out to the front of the store. A car in one of the darker areas of the lot starts up, drives off. A primer-gray beater with one busted tail light.

"Recognize that car?" Peggy asks.

"No, you?"

"It was here last night. Just cruising by, real slow, a couple of different times."

"Try and get a license number, if you see it again. I've got a friend who might be able to find out something. Good catch."

A freight train lumbers by, sending vibrations through the soles of his feet.

"Listen, Xander --" She lights a cigarette, leans against a pillar. "You're a very private guy. Even if you weren't my supervisor, I'd feel like I was overstepping. But you're my friend too, I get to call you Xander now. So I'm going to bring this up."

He doesn't love the sound of this. "Sure, what's up?"

"There are things about you that I pretend I don't notice. Because you're so private. But I know you're in AA. And lately you've been spending time with different people, you take off at lunch when you never did before. That girl came in looking for you, and she was all bruised up. Then a few days later, you're all beat up."

"Peg, I don't know what you're thinking, but I am not hitting women."

"Xander, I don't know what I'm thinking, either. Not that. But maybe that she's in some kind of trouble that she's dragging you into. This is the second time you've come in hurt in just a few weeks. So I'm worried that maybe you're not taking good care of yourself."

He reaches out and catches her hand. "I promise you, Peggy. I'm not drinking. It's been four years since the last time I did. Yeah, my friend has had some problems, but she's getting things straightened out."

"I'm not worried about her. I'm sorry if I sound harsh, but it's you I care about. When I came out to your house, you were beaten half to death."

She was right, he decides. It is time for a smoke break. He slips a cigarette from the pack and lights it before he speaks. "Okay. I am doing something right now that involves some risk. I can't really talk about it."

"The first rule of Fight Club," she says. They'd just talked about that movie last week, about how you could see the skid marks where the plot went awry.

He laughs. "No, nothing like that. Risky, maybe, but I swear it's not self-destructive."

"I don't normally butt into people's business, you know that. But you're a good boss. A good guy."

"I appreciate it, Peg, I really do." He really doesn't, but he is grateful for the sentiment behind it. When she moves toward him he gives her a quick hug, his hand tightening on her shoulder as he sees the primer-gray car swing back into the parking lot. "Quick, get inside. Call 911."

Four metalheads with mullets pile out of the car, and he'd swear they're vamps.

Waiting for them to swarm him doesn't offer such great odds, so he reaches for the stake he keeps hidden beneath his shirt and rushes the smallest one, yelling like a banshee. His instincts are good; the game face comes out before their bodies collide. Xander tackles him, throwing his arms around the vamp, and stakes him through the back.

"Sonofabitch!" yells the biggest one, lashing out with a kick to Xander's gut that sends him to his knees, gasping for air. Another comes up behind and yanks his left arm up behind his back, popping the shoulder out of joint again. Red haze is all he can see for a few seconds, as the vamp holding him turns his head to bare his neck.

"Want to do the honors?"

"Not yet," says the alpha vamp. "Get him inside."

There are more of them inside the store. One of them has Peg, others are searching the aisles. Xander doesn't see Damon. He hopes he stays wherever the hell he is.

The vamp who's got him brings him up to where Peg is. Xander's arm feels like it's on fire.

"They said that one-eyed kid from the Hellmouth was living in Spokane," says the leader. "I didn't believe 'em, but you proved me wrong. So the Slayer's boy is working at a supermarket now. How'd that come about?"

"Fuck you." The vamp twists his arm behind him, and he'd drop to his knees but for the strong grip that holds him upright.

"You brought those bitches here, didn't you? The Boston whore and the other one?"

"Go fuck your--" He cries out as his arm is jerked upward again.

"Let him go!" Peggy shouts. "The police are coming; let us both go."

"Nice try," says Alpha. "But we had you before you had time to call the cops."

"There's a panic button," Peg says.

"Then we'd better get moving." He calls out, "Stephen. Bring him."

Xander can only hope that doesn't mean -- Shit. Another vampire comes out of the back, half-dragging, half-carrying Damon, who's glassy-eyed, bleeding from the neck.

"Whatever you want from me," Xander says, "leave my people out of this."

"Alex, this guy hurt me."

"What I want," says the leader, "is for you to watch your people die." At his signal, Stephen sinks his fangs back into Damon's neck. "Tell me. Should I turn him, or do you want me to just let him die?"

Peggy shouts and struggles against her captor, and Xander uses the diversion to reach into his slacks for his lighter, which he brings around behind the vamp who's restraining him. He feels the rush of heat beside his hand and he jerks forward as the vamp screams and bursts into flame and then falls to dust. He lunges toward Peggy's captor, only to be brought up short as the leader grabs him by the bad wrist. Alpha jerks him back into an iron embrace with a muscular forearm snugged against his throat.

"Open a vein, Stephen."

"No!"

Damon's failing, his eyes fluttering. "Peg," he says.

"Let him live," Xander rasps. "He's never hurt a fucking soul."

Stephen releases Damon, lets him fall to the floor.

"Take your bitches and leave my town," the leader says. "Or he won't be the last." He gives one last vicious twist to Xander's arm and shoves him to the floor.

The last thing he sees before he passes out is Peggy sprawling beside Damon, pressing her hand to the wound in his throat as she babbles into the phone.

I need an ambulance, now. Damon, baby, don'tdiedon'tdiedon'tdie.

"I'm so sorry," he whispers. A paramedic's tending to him, but Xander's gaze is fastened on the ones working on Damon as they pull the stretcher up to full height and roll it through the automatic doors. Since Peg's the emergency contact on his I.D. card, they let her ride along, and she follows them out to the ambulance without even a backward glance.

Deaconess isn't even ten blocks away, but Xander's not sure he'll make it that far. "God, I'm so sorry."

"We need to get you in for X-rays," says the EMT.

"No. I already popped it back in." Distantly he's aware of more cops entering the store.

"Why don't you let me take care of the emergency medicine?"

"Did those other guys call in and tell them he's O-positive?"

"They found the card." Of course they did. Damon would leave the house without his pants before he'd go without the donor card. He's showed it to Xander a million times. "Let's get you in to the ER."

"I'm going after him."

"You're not going to be any good to anybody right now, pal."

He hears one of the cops tell one of the new ones, "We haven't got much from him yet. They worked him over pretty good. But his coworker says it was some guys he knew."

The new cop crouches beside him. "Xander. Xander." It's Straley, who's been rotated to third shift.

"Kevin. It's all fucked up."

"I know. Was it those guys you were telling me about?"

"He's getting shocky, we've gotta move."

Xander starts to shiver, which hurts like hell. "Yeah."

"Just relax, buddy. Let this guy do his job. These were the meth heads you turned away last week, the ones you mentioned to me?"

Xander tries to focus as the med tech gets him situated on the stretcher. Kevin's handing him a story here, one which will play better than Peggy's. "Yeah. It was them."

Straley rises to talk to another of the cops, and Xander lets himself drift back into the gray.

He's been waiting for maybe half an hour for someone to come with the release paperwork. At the beginning he could hear the ER doctors working on Damon. There was a code blue, leading to general pandemonium, and while Xander's down in X-ray he disappears. He begs several staffers for news before a nurse tells him Damon's been stabilized enough to take up to ICU.

Xander's had his shoulder immobilized and been given prescriptions for pain meds and physical therapy. About the time he's considering climbing off the examination table and walking out, the curtain's drawn back and Straley appears.

"How are you holding up?"

"Fine. Just waiting on paperwork, then I'll go up and check on Damon, see how Peg's doing."

"She's taking this hard."

"I'm fuckin' taking this hard."

"What I mean is, she's blaming you for this."

"That's what I meant, too." It hurts, though. Of all the people he's known in his solitary life here, it's Peggy he's felt closest to. For her to think he's brought this down on them --

He has.

"She said you knew them."

Xander shakes his head. "No. They knew me, though. Knew of me. From Sunnydale."

"What were they after?"

"To tell me to leave and take my Slayers with me."

"How many were there?"

"Seven, I think. I killed two --" The curtain pulls back again and Xander adds "-- birds with one stone."

The nurse hands him his release papers and his insurance card and directs him to the hospital pharmacy. As Straley helps him down from the table, Xander asks, "Have you reached Faith yet?"

"No answer at your place. It's not long till dawn, though. She should be there soon."

"Would you try again? I'm going to head up to ICU, see what I can find out."

"Sure. I'll have to go after that. Still have a couple of hours on my shift."

So does Xander. "Thanks, man."

"No problem. I'll give you a call when I'm off."

He wanders the corridors until he finds a sign pointing the way to ICU. He asks the woman on duty at the nurse's station how Damon is, but doesn't get much by way of a conclusive answer. Peg's sitting in the little waiting area with a wadded Kleenex in her hand. Xander sits next to her, putting his good hand on her arm. "I came as soon as they let me go."

She pulls away from his touch, staring at him as if he's a stranger feeling her up on a city bus.

"Peggy, I'm so sorry this happened. I swear to you --"

Peg stands up and walks away without a word to him.

He begs about as shamelessly as he can, and the nurse lets him have five minutes in the ICU with Damon. There are tubes and wires everywhere, and the sounds of ventilators and monitors are practically deafening.

God, he's pale. Xander touches Damon's bare arm, spattered with freckles. "Hey, buddy. It's Xa-- It's Alex. You hang in, you hear me? We've got inventory coming up, I'm going to need you." It takes a few moments before he can force more words past the knot in his throat. "Everyone here's real excited to meet their star blood donor. They've got you hooked up to some of that good O-positive, so get better soon, all right? Peg's been here. She'll probably be back soon." He gently squeezes Damon's arm, then turns and flees the ICU.

Faith's at the nurses' station when he stumbles out into the hallway. She rushes to him, enfolds him in her arms. "Babe, I came as soon as I heard. Are you all right?"

"No." He buries his face in her hair. "Jesus, Faith. I want to go home." The elevator pings as the doors slide open, and he looks up to see Peg stepping off. Disengaging from the hug, he says, "Peg. I'd like you to meet Faith. She's a longtime friend of mine. Faith, this is Peg, my friend from work."

Peg eyes Faith. "Is she the Boston whore, or the other one?"

Faith draws in a sharp breath, and Xander takes her hand and pulls her toward the stairs, unwilling even to wait for an elevator. "What the fuck?" she says in the stairwell. "This is the one you like so much?"

"I'm sorry." He stops halfway down the stairs, reaches out to touch her hair. "She blames me for all of this. She thinks these vamps knew me, that things I've done in my past brought them after me. One of them said that thing about you."

"About me?"

"That's what this whole thing was about. They told me to take you and Willa and get out of Spokane."

"Well, fuck that shit." Faith pushes the door open and finds herself face to face with a white-coat. "I say we find these cocksuckers and stake 'em." She flashes her dimples at the startled doctor. "What's up, doc?"

They find the car, and Faith buckles him in, then walks around to the driver's side. Xander leans his head against the cool glass, filled with an aching weariness.

"Is there anything you want me to stop and get on the way home?"

A case of wine, he wants to say. He feels like getting good and shitfaced, but he wants to suffer through every second of it.

"No. Thanks. I just want to be home."

Willa runs outside to meet them the moment the car pulls into the drive. Xander's nearly quivering with exhaustion and emotion and the desire for a drink; the last thing he wants is company.

She opens the door and helps him out of the car. "I wanted to come too, but we thought it might be too much."

"Yeah," he says. "It's all right."

"I'm sorry about your friend. Is he going to be okay?"

"Nobody knows yet."

He heads back to his bathroom, where he struggles one-handed with the hydrocodone bottle. The temptation to take more than the one flutters at the edge of his awareness -- just a little blurring of reality, if he can't go for a full-out binge --

Xander stares at the face in the mirror, etched with pain and grief and guilt. He remembers this haunted look from the first days after Sunnydale. The guilt had been sharp then, but it hadn't bitten as deep into his soul as this does. All he'd done back then was survive when Anya hadn't. He hadn't deserved blame for that disaster. Not like now.

Faith's reflection appears in the mirror. She gently rubs his shoulder blade, the right side, over the Viking compass. "We need you out there, babe. We have to know everything you can remember, so we can work out a strategy. Willa's got coffee on."

"Yeah, okay." Xander puts the pill bottle back in the cabinet and follows her to the kitchen.

It takes a while to tell, chopped up into bite-sized sentences. He feels too depleted to string together paragraphs, descriptions, digressions. The phone rings often enough that Faith brings the cordless to the kitchen table, where she screens the callers.

The first is from Straley, which she handles herself. "Yeah, he's home. Uncomfortable, but sitting here briefing us. Listen, we're going to go looking for their nest. We need maps, and need to know where the empty buildings are in town. Good. Bring donuts -- plenty of double chocolate." She thumbs off the talk button. "Kevin's on his way."

Xander says nothing. He understands the need, but the last thing he wants is another body in the house.

"Who's Kevin?" Willa asks. Xander hadn't gotten that far with his story yet.

"City cop. He's a friend of Xander's. He knows what's what; he's already made his first vampire kill." She guides Xander back to the point where he'd left off in telling the evening's events, but he's not far along before the phone rings again.

Faith listens briefly. "It's a reporter. I'll tell her --" She stops, surprised, as Xander reaches for the phone.

"Damon's one of our most valued employees," he says without giving the reporter a chance to introduce herself. "We're hoping for the best. If people want to do something he'd appreciate, go give blood in his name." She starts to fire a follow-up question at him, but he cuts off the connection.

Willa's been working on her outrage over the Boston whore, and she's even more pissed off to be "the other one." "I was born in this town. Where do these lame fucks get off calling it theirs?"

The phone rings again, and it's Xander's supervisor. Inquiring into how he's feeling, telling him to take a couple of days. He says he'll give a call tomorrow, when Xander's had a chance to relax a little, and of course there'll be a psychologist available if he has trouble sleeping, any stress symptoms at all. There's nothing in his boss's voice but friendly concern, but Xander wonders if this is the first hint of an investigation. He suspects his days -- or nights -- at the store might be numbered.

Finally he manages to finish telling his story, and a wave of exhaustion rolls over him. "Listen, when Kevin gets here, you sit down with him, Faith. I'm no good to anyone right now, and you've got the general thing down."

"We don't need a general," she says. "I could be the sergeant, like in the old movies, the one that smacks the shit out of the hysterical lieutenant until he's good to fight again."

"Wait, I'm the lieutenant? Doesn't that mean I get killed in the big battle scene?"

"Well, yes, but you die in a really heroic way."

"Jesus!" Willa yelps. "You guys are freaking me out. Knock off the death talk."

Xander takes Faith's hand, kisses it. "Thanks, Sarge."

The front bell rings, and Faith gets to her feet, squeezing his good shoulder. "I got it."

She lets Straley in, taking control of the donut box.

"Dibs on the maple bars," Xander says. "The dying lieutenant's last request," which prompts another noise of disgust from Willa.

They get settled in with coffee and pastries and Straley's maps, marking empty buildings in cruddier neighborhoods and setting up a route for their raids.

"So we head for these places tonight?" Straley asks.

"Today," Faith says. "We hit 'em in broad daylight, when they're weaker."

"Well, isn't that --"

"If you've got rats in your house, you don't worry about giving them a sporting chance," Xander says. "Your city's infested, Kevin. We've got to stake 'em, burn 'em out, drive 'em into the sunlight, cut their heads off. Whatever it takes. We do it or something else happens like last night. Or worse."

Straley nods, and the four of them start talking strategy.

Once the talk is over, he's left behind, of course. Not even fray-adjacent, but fray-removed. He can't even drive the getaway car. Faith tries casting it in a positive light -- this time the lieutenant's anchoring the base of operations -- but the upshot is, he's too injured to be anything but a liability. All he can do is wait for a call from Straley's cellphone, or from the hospital.

It takes some doing on his own, but Xander frees his arm from the lower part of the immobilizer and heads into his workshop. He sets the phone on one of the shelves, then moves a cinderblock to an out-of-the-way spot to hold the candle he lights for Damon. It's just a plain white emergency candle on a saucer, but he hopes it accomplishes something. Even after all those AA meetings, he's not sure how to pray -- "Don't let him die" feels more like a wish than a prayer -- but the addition of a little more light to this fucked-up world can't be a bad thing.

The only thing he knows to do is make something. He unclamps the sides from the mold to sand the inner surface and trim the scribed ends. The phone rings as he's fashioning the neck and tail blocks of Honduras mahogany.

"Yeah."

"We've hit the first two targets." Straley. "Nothing so far."

"Keep me posted."

He calls the hospital, claims to be Damon's brother in Alabama. No change.

He glues and clamps the sides and blocks, inserting a spreader clamp at the waist. He steps outside to smoke and wish (pray) and think about Peggy. He heads back into the garage, slips a cd into the boombox on the shelf and starts making regularly spaced cuts in the basswood lining. It's methodical yet requires no real thought, almost a form of meditation. His shoulder throbs with use, but he ignores it long enough to cut some side reinforcements from scraps of the spruce.

The phone rings again. "Yeah."

It's Faith this time. "We found a nest. We got the three who were there, but that means there's two still on the loose."

"You're sure they're from last night?"

"Yeah. Kevin gave us a seminar in all sorts of unsanctioned interrogation techniques. They wouldn't say where the others were, though."

"So what's the plan? Wait a sec -- I've got another call, it could be the hospital." He hits the flash button to pick up the other line.

It's Peg. "Xander, you'd better get here if you want to see Damon. He's slipping."

"I'll be there. Thanks." He switches back to the other line. "Faith, I need you guys back here now. Peggy just called. I've got to get to the hospital. It's Damon."

Xander has just enough time to head for his closet, reaching for a sports jacket and tie without quite knowing why. It's past time for another pain pill and his shoulder is screaming, but he doesn't want the fuzzy-headedness the hydrocodone gives him.

When the car pulls in the drive, he can't bring himself to blow out Damon's candle. He sets it in the kitchen sink where there's nothing to burn if it topples, then heads out to the car, cradling his bad arm against his body.

"What the hell did you do with your sling?" Faith demands.

"I just unfastened the lower part. We'll fix it when we get there. Let's go." He piles into the back seat next to Willa, awkwardly reaching around with his right hand to pull his door closed. "I need some help getting this tied."

"Here." Willa takes the tie from him and slips it under his collar, her small hands working swiftly and confidently. It's a weirdly intimate thing to be doing in the backseat of a car, with Faith and Straley in the front. He thinks instead about how a 21-year-old who works in an indie record store gets to be an expert with men's ties.

Straley lets them off at an entrance, says he'll meet them after he's parked. Faith rubs her hand over the Viking rune as they wait for the elevator, rearranges the jacket where it's draped over his bad shoulder. "Feeling pretty rough, aren't you?"

Xander's not sure if she means the shoulder or what's happening with Damon. It doesn't matter. "Yeah."

"You unstrapped your arm to go work on your guitar." He nods, and she asks, "Worth it?"

The question teases a smile from him. "Yeah."

In the elevator she's fussing with the clasp of a silver chain around her neck. Willa takes one last little tug at his necktie. As they reach their floor, Faith and Willa surge out of the car ahead of him, leading the way to the ICU waiting area.

Faith drops into the chair beside Peggy, who's looking at her own clasped hands and doesn't see their approach. "Peggy. There's something I want you to have." She presses something glittering into Peg's hand, watching her reaction carefully.

Peggy looks at the little silver cross in her palm, then up at Faith, bewildered.

Beside him, Willa lets out a breath.

"Wear it all the time," Faith says. "It brings God's protection."

Xander wonders if this sounds as bogus to Peg as it does to him. "Hey, Peg," he says quietly. "I appreciate your calling."

Faith's unexpected gift may have softened her, but not by much. Peggy's expression still carries plenty of blame. "I thought you'd want --" She chokes up. This is where normally he'd touch her arm or even hug her, but nothing's normal now.

"Any change?"

"More systems shutting down."

Xander nods and turns toward the nurses's station to beg a few more minutes with Damon. They don't even make him jump through any hoops, that's how he knows how little time Damon has left.

This time Xander takes his hand. It feels so cold. "Buddy, it's Alex. I just wanted to say, I'm sorry you got caught up in what happened at the store. I've been trying to do what's right, and it seems like the harder I try, the more innocent people get hurt. My friends ki-- caught three of the guys who held up the store, and they'll get the other two." The ventilator hisses and clicks, working Damon's lungs. "You just hang in, all right?" He stands there a while longer, saying nothing, until the nurse makes him leave.

Straley's arrived, and as Xander joins them in the waiting area, he's saying to Peg, "-- wrong about him. He's one of the good guys."

"Kevin." As he turns away from Peg, Xander gently says, "Don't. Let her deal with this however she needs to."

He drops into a chair at some distance from Peggy, and his friends settle in around him, all waiting in silence for Damon to die.

He's never done this before, waiting for someone to die. In his experience it's always come swiftly, unexpectedly. Jenny Calendar, Tara, Anya, his parents. Jesus, even Joyce with her brain cancer went in a flash. Might as well have been a bullet in her brain as an aneurism. He's never had to sit in a room with friends and strangers, listening to the hospital noises, laboring to breathe from stale hospital air, waiting for someone he cares about to stop existing.

His muscles have all tightened from the effort of sitting in this molded plastic chair, trying to keep his injured shoulder immobile. Everything from his midback up feels like it's on fire. He feels shitty for having his coterie of friends by his side while Peggy sits alone, but he knows it's not his place to approach her.

After a while, Willa goes downstairs for coffee and brings up a cardboard carrier tray. She takes the last two cups and sits next to Peg, which makes him grateful. The coffee is beyond terrible, but it gives him something to focus on.

"Babe," Faith whispers. "Why don't you walk around a little? Have a smoke or --"

"No."

"There's no way of telling when --"

"I said no."

"All right. It's all right." She rubs a circle over his good shoulder.

It's never going to be all right again, but he refrains from saying so.

Peg takes her turn for five minutes by Damon's bed. Xander hisses, "I can't believe that stunt with the cross."

"Just making sure it wasn't a trap," Faith murmurs. "That turnaround was awful damn sudden."

"But to think she was turned --"

"You've seen it. We've all seen it."

The elevator doors slide open and the hospital chaplain steps out. She exchanges a few words with the nurse at the desk, then heads into ICU. It's this that makes his eye, itching and burning all morning and afternoon, spill over with tears.

Faith grabs his hand and he clutches hers like she can save him from quicksand. If she weren't a Slayer he'd be afraid of breaking her hand. She murmurs to him, words he can't make out over the sound of his own rough breathing, but it doesn't matter.

After a few minutes, Peg and the chaplain walk out of the ICU, and he knows it's over.

Xander says some words to Peggy, and she says some words to him. The chaplain says words to both of them.

They all just slide off without penetrating.

Faith drives back to his house, dropping Straley and Willa off at the store to spread the word and pick up a deli tray.

Xander wanders into his kitchen, thinking how, when he first moved here, the cupboard and fridge were always well supplied with alcohol. When he was feeling hollowed out like now, he could always get a fire going inside with any number of amber liquids.

He spots the candle in the sink, forgotten, guttering. His lame attempt at a prayer.

Xander pinches the flame out between his finger and thumb.

This is what people do when someone dies. They call, send flowers, gather around those who are left, bringing food and telling stories. Even his family, fucked up as they were, got this right. Xander still remembers when his father's mother died and relatives came from all over. Even once the drinking started, almost everyone had managed to hang onto some idea of decorum. His father, for maybe the first time in Xander's life, cried and seemed human.

For some reason it's Xander's house that becomes the focus of this kind of attention. Damon's got no family, but customers and people from the store seem to need someplace to focus their grief. Xander's name has been in the paper; his number and address are listed in the phone book. By the time the third casserole has come to his door, he calls Peggy.

"I don't know why, Peg, but people are congregating at my place. Why don't you come?"

She's hesitant, and he doesn't know whether to encourage her, or let her be. She's volunteered to make funeral arrangements, which has to be wearing.

"Already I've got more food than we can eat," he tells her. "At least come by and get some so you don't have to cook for yourself."

"I'll see," she says grudgingly. "I've got to run some clothes over to the funeral home. Maybe I can come by after."

Faith is opening the front door to another caller, pushing it far back to make room for Mrs. Priestly and her daughter. She reaches to take the old woman's free arm and help her over the threshold.

"Oh god," Xander says softly. "It's Mrs. P." He feels as though the wind has been knocked out of him, along with any self-consciousness. "Please, Peg, just come. I have to go."

"I hope we're not intruding," Pam says. "He was just so sweet to Mom --"

"No, I'm so glad you came." He accepts a careful hug from Pam, then bends to press a kiss on Mrs. Priestley's cheek. "How's my best girl?"

"Allie, honey, I'm sorry about your boy."

His "boy" was a good ten years older than Xander, but he nods. "Thank you. He was very fond of you, you know." He helps her to a chair and sits beside her as Pam runs to her car for the food she brought. She launches into a story about Damon that never could have happened, and Xander listens, stroking her knotty hand.

Straley brings Xander an ice pack for his shoulder and Mrs. P. an iced tea, crouching beside her chair. "Hello, Mrs. Priestley. Do you remember me? Last time you saw me I was in my police uniform."

"Maybe," she says slyly.

"You were out for a neighborhood stroll, so I came with you."

"Allie walks with me too, sometimes."

"You have a lot of gentleman admirers."

Eyes hooded, she looks away and smiles coquettishly, and for the first time Xander gets a glimpse of ruined beauty. She must have been a stunner in her day, and that's right where she's living now. Maybe the place she's in right now is only cruel to those on the outside, but there's no way to know for sure.

The front bell rings and the door opens without invitation. Xander gently rubs Mrs. Priestley's hand. "Hey, look, it's Peggy." The little silver cross glimmers at her throat. Xander gets to his feet, a process encumbered by his immobilized arm, and touches her shoulder as she disengages from a hug with Pam. "I'm glad you came. Take my seat; I'll bring you something from the kitchen."

Faith finishes up a phone conversation as he enters, wrestling with the ice pack. "Here, let me." She gets it adjusted below a couple of layers of the elastic strapping on his shoulder. "Better? You must be dead on your feet."

"I don't think I could sleep. Help me get a plate together for Peggy, would you?"

"She's here?"

He nods. "I don't know if she'd have come if she hadn't known Mrs. P. is here, but I'm just glad she did." Xander points out some of her favorite foods, and Faith loads them onto one of the Chinets plates Willa and Straley brought back from their store run.

By the time he takes Peg the plate, Pam is telling a story about a kindness Damon performed for her mother, followed by the first-shift manager's tale about the time Damon got to throw out the first pitch for the Indians' game on Rosauers sports mug night.

"He's just baseball nuts anyway," Peg says. "Was. He got a glimpse of Xan -- Alex here with his friend Faith, and thought he was dating J.J. Grimaldi."

"Who?" Faith asks.

"C'mon," Straley says. "First woman player in the major leagues. Centerfield for the Mariners?"

Faith shakes her head.

"Well, he decided since I talk about her I must be sweet on her," Xander says, "and then he saw me with a woman with dark hair, and ..."

They talk about the things he got cranked up about: Hoopfest and the M's; running the floor polisher, aka the Zamboni; riding his bike along the Centennial trail; his favorite songs (pretty much anything that was ever driven into the ground, from "Who Let the Dogs Out?" to "The Macarena," whose lyrics he improvised as "lacca lacca lacca, lacca lacca lacca, hey, Macarena!"); his certificate from the 30-Gallon Club for blood donation.

The subject of blood quiets everything down. "So Officer," says Sean, the day manager, "have they got any leads on this icepick killer? Did you guys know he was with a gang before they got Damon?"

"It's an active investigation," Straley says, "so I really can't comment on it. I've got hopes we'll get these guys."

The awkward lull in conversation lasts only until the doorbell rings again, and Pam takes the interruption as a signal to get her mother home before she tires too much. Peggy relinquishes her plate to Willa, who's busing the abandoned plates and glasses littering the room. "I have to go too," she says. "I have to take his clothes to the undertaker."

"Did you find a suit?" Xander asks. He can't imagine Damon owning one.

"No. I thought that red patterned sweater that he liked so much. The one he wore to see Cats at the Opera House. And a pair of charcoal pants."

"That's perfect. His special occasion outfit. Did you get his lucky socks?"

"Oh, god. I forgot." Finally Peg bursts into tears.

"Hey," he says softly. "It's not a problem. I'll drive you over."

"I'll drive," Faith amends, and it's Xander who searches Damon's rented room for the red socks, and Xander and Peg who sit together in the undertaker's office, going over the arrangements. He reaches over and puts his hand on her arm, and she lets it rest there.

This is what people do when someone dies.

Peg still refuses his offer of the front seat, apparently preferring to be chauffeured than feel like she's riding with friends.

"Xander, those men. You didn't turn them away for trying to buy meth precursors like your friend said, am I right?"

Faith squeezes his leg. "No, that's what happened. I remember Xander telling me about it that morning after work." Her instincts are good, he suspects. He shouldn't give Peggy any signal that Straley's covering for him until he's sure of her.

But his own instincts --

"Peg, what do you remember about the guy with the icepick?"

She makes a dismissive noise. "There wasn't any icepick. He bit that boy."

"Anything else?"

"The leader knew you. From someplace he called Hellmouth."

Xander's quiet for a long moment. "Not personally. He knew of me."

"Xander," Faith says, her tone a warning.

"Back in California, I spent seven years working to keep ... people ... like them off the streets. I didn't realize I was known -- I probably wasn't, or nobody made the connection until recently. Things were pretty quiet here for a long time, then Willa got hurt, and I did some checking around. That's when bad guys realized who I was."

"The mugging," Peggy says.

"Yep. So what happened at the store was about my past, just not in the way you thought. I'm wearing a white hat here."

"Why do I get the feeling you're not telling me everything?"

"I'm waiting for a signal that you really want to hear everything. Once I've told you, you can't unhear it."

Peg looks out the window for a moment. "There's something about you that I really don't want to know?"

"Something about the world," Faith says. "You got nothin' to fear from this man."

"You want to go home, Peg, or back to my place?"

"I need to sleep," she says.

Xander nods, points out Peggy's turn for Faith, who pulls the car into her drive. After Xander gives her the speech about not explicitly inviting anyone inside, especially after dark, Faith idles until Peg makes it into her house.

"I don't know, Xander. I'm not sure I trust her."

"I know. But I didn't really give her any ammunition. At least she's not falling into Sunnydale Denial Syndrome."

It takes Faith only a couple of minutes to reach Xander's house. "You think living on the Hellmouth makes people stupider?"

He laughs. "That would explain a lot. Including my high school grades."

"Not to mention some of the shirts you wore. My whole thing with the Mayor."

There are still cars at his place; they have to park outside Dustin's house. Xander makes no move to get out of the car. "That was youth, not stupidity. You were underage, and Wilkins took advantage of you. If we hadn't killed him, he would have paid for that."

"You think that was about sex?"

"It wasn't?"

"Here's the weird thing. Richard Wilkins loved me. He thought I hung the fuckin' moon. There was nothing creepy and sexual about it -- believe me, I had enough experience even by then to pick up the creepy sexual vibe." She shakes out a cigarette, lights it. "I was so screwed up in those days that I couldn't even separate the two -- I made a move on him. He set me straight, pronto. That's not what it was about." She shoots a stream of smoke out her window, lost in thought for a moment. "I fell so far that year. But at the same time, I had the first person in my life who thought I was something special -- who kept on thinking that, even after he got to know who I was."

"Wow. Wow. I never knew."

"I wasn't exactly makin' it known. He meant a lot to me, though. Still does. I don't know that I'd have made it through prison and the first year or so after without remembering that I was important to him." She slides open the ashtray, stubs out her cigarette. "I guess you should get inside to your guests."

By the time Xander fumbles with his seatbelt, she's at his door offering a hand. Funny how, after all these years, his memories of Sunnydale can still be turned upside down. He takes her hand and walks with her into the house.

Dustin and Jett have come from next door, bringing a German chocolate cake, and Trina Paciorek has turned up with macaroni and cheese and a tearful embrace. His sponsor Patrick has come bearing a bucket of extra crispy chicken. Straley's taken off to catch some sleep, and Willa turns in once she's been relieved as hostess.

"When's the last time you ate?" Faith asks.

"I don't remember."

"Sit. I'll bring you a plate."

Conversation flows around him, and he tunes in and out, too exhausted to follow closely or even do more than pick at his food. Xander feels the benign tolerance of his friends, their understanding of his physical and mental state. Just weeks ago, he'd never have seen this coming. He was the quiet guy nobody really knew, seemed like a nice enough guy, but nobody'd had more than a five-minute conversation with him. Now look: neighbors and customers and AA friends, all here for him, to give something of themselves to him. His eye stings with unshed tears, sending him clumsily to his feet. "I suddenly -- I'm so tired. Stay as long as you like, but I think I need to --" He waves a hand and staggers off down the hall.

Xander manages to hang on until he's sitting on the edge of his bed. Even as he lets go, he maintains enough control over his emotions so his guests don't hear as they murmur their goodbyes to Faith, so he doesn't jostle his shoulder. Crying silently is one of the earliest survival skills he acquired. (Stop that pansy shit, or I'll give you something to cry about!) The old man would be proud on one score, anyway -- Xander has never cried over Tony's death.

There's a pause between the first flurry of goodbyes and the last; he hears some clatter from the kitchen for a while in between. After the last guests finally go, Faith taps at his door.

"I'm all right," he calls out. Translation: Go away.

"I've got your ice pack. Water for your pills."

He mops at his face with his shirt tail. "Yeah, all right."

She enters, setting down the glass and approaching him with the ice pack. "Did you take your pain pill last time it was due?"

"No. I was in the middle of something."

Faith turns on the light, opens his shirt and gets the ice situated.

"I'm sorry to leave you with everything," he says.

She touches his face. Her fingers are cold. "It was just talking to people, cleaning up a little. Jett and Dustin helped with that. They're nice people."

Xander laughs, but it turns into a hitch in his breath. "Only took me four years to find that out."

"Baby, we all take our own sweet time gettin' wise. It's what humans do."

He turns his face away as tears start sliding down his face once more.

Cool fingers on bare skin draw him back toward her. "It's all right," she murmurs. "Baby, it's all right." For the second time in a few days, he sobs in her arms, and when he's finished and hollowed out, that's where he falls asleep.

He wakes in the dark as a weight lifts off his injured shoulder. The gel ice pack, thoroughly warmed now, which Faith has taken as she rose.

"Hey," he says sleepily. "Time is it?"

"Almost three. I didn't mean to wake you."

"It's the middle of the day for me." He rolls onto his back, his breath catching as stiff muscles protest. "I'm surprised I slept this long. You're not leaving, are you?"

"Just a quick run to the kitchen so this'll be cold when you need it again."

Xander props himself up as she goes, turning on the bedside lamp. He feels oddly calm, and decides to just be grateful and not analyze it too much.

When Faith comes back, she's carrying a tray with two huge pieces of German chocolate cake and two glasses of milk. As soon as he sees it, he realizes he's ravenous. He crosses his legs and she sits facing him, the tray between them. "I don't know how you knew, but this is just what I needed." He takes a huge bite of cake, closing his eyes at the tastes and textures of cake and coconut pecan icing.

"How is it?" she asks.

"Better than German measles."

Laughing, she rubs her hand over his knee. "I'll tell Jett."

"Or maybe not." He takes another couple of bites and says, "This has been really weird for me."

"What?"

"The fact that it's taken death for me to come back to life -- not just Damon's, but the discovery that there are vampires in Spokane. I don't know how long I'd have been content to live the life I had, working at the store, coming home, having as little contact with people as possible."

"It's been hard for me to imagine you living so solitary," Faith says. "Since I met you, you've been a people guy. The one who came to me trying so hard to make a connection."

"A lot of times I haven't gotten to connect the way I want. Somewhere along the line it got less painful to stop trying."

"Why, who didn't you connect with? Besides me, I mean -- I know how that one worked out."

He chases a crumbled bit of cake around the plate with his fork. Not so easy with just one hand. "God, Faith. Everyone. For something like two years I was hoping Buffy would see me in a different way, fall for me as completely as she did Angel. I hoped Giles would treat me like a son instead of a mosquito bite. Hell, I wished my parents would treat me like a son. About half the time we were together, Cordelia saw me as a project." He lets the fork clatter on his plate, stares down at this hand. "Then after I started drinking a lot, I didn't really want to be around my friends, didn't want to see myself reflected in them, you know?"

Faith laces her fingers through his. "But after that?"

"I guess I told myself that was the only way I could stay sober. I went to the meetings, but I didn't really talk to anyone but my sponsor. At least until Willa, who wouldn't exactly take no for an answer."

"She changed everything."

Startled, Xander looks up. "She did. The first I knew of vampires here in Spokane was from her. Though she'd already started yanking me out of my cave by that time."

"That's your mojo."

"What?"

Faith polishes off her cake and downs half her milk. "You always liked to say you're the one Scooby who's got no special abilities. I think you've been wrong all this time."

"What, my special ability to get broken in half every time I'm in a fight? That one's as razor-sharp as ever. Or my superpower that guarantees if there's a female demon within a hundred-mile radius, I'll find her and date her? That one's gotten a little rusty."

"You're not far wrong." She rubs her thumb over the back of his hand. "Only it's Slayers you're drawn to. Or we're drawn to you. You think it's an accident that you happened to learn the deal with Buffy and got involved with slaying? Or that out of all the people in Spokane, Willa found you to tell her story to?"

"Not all the people in Spokane. Just all the people in AA."

"That's your other superpower," she says around a bite of cake.

"What?"

"Selling yourself short. Hell, Xander, I don't know if it's a mystical thing, or if you just aren't scared shitless of strong women. But here you are for the second time in your life, at the center of the Slayer thing. This time after you ran as far from it as you could."

A half dozen disclaimers spring to his lips -- "It's just that --" "But that doesn't mean -- " but he bites them back. "I don't know," he says slowly. "I never really thought of it that way."

"Maybe you and Giles should talk about it."

"Maybe." He wonders what time it is in London. Decides he doesn't really care right now.

Because, mystical or not, there's a Slayer that he's drawn to this very minute.

He leans toward her over the tray, touches his lips to hers.

She tastes like coconut pecan icing.

Xander feels off balance all through the next day. The funeral's scheduled for the afternoon, at an hour when he's usually asleep. Peg has been on the phone to him about this more than once, upset that she hadn't been sharp enough when the funeral home people set the time to insist on something friendlier to third-shifters. "Not just for us at the store, but what about customers who knew him who came in on their work breaks?"

"Peg, it'll be all right." He wishes these calls were proof that things are okay between them, but he's not so sure. There's just no one else who'll understand exactly what's making her upset.

"But I should have said something, now it's too late."

"It was perfectly natural that you didn't. Death is so shocking that we can't imagine we have a say in any of it. Things'll turn out fine." As fine as a funeral could.

"You've been through this before," she says.

"I've known quite a few people who died. I wasn't in on the funeral arrangements of that many."

After he gets off the phone, he thinks about all the people he loved who didn't even get funerals. Anya. His parents. Jesse, whose parents thought he'd run away. Every time Xander had run into them in town, they'd ask if he'd heard anything, if Jesse had called or emailed him. It had gotten so he'd dart in some other direction if he saw them coming soon enough. They're dead too; they had been among the holdouts in the last days of Sunnydale, insisting they'd stay where Jesse could reach them if he decided to call or come home.

Faith's off with Willa doing errands. Picking up his suit from the cleaners and getting Willa some funeral clothes from home, finding something suitable for Faith to wear. Xander ghosts around the house, restless, finding himself at last in his workshop. He fumbles with the clamps on the sides of the guitar, considering unstrapping his forearm so he can get to the next step when the phone rings. He sighs, wondering if it's Peg again, or the funeral home, or if Faith and Willa have run into a snag.

It's Giles. "Xander, I heard the news about your friend. I'm so very sorry."

"He wasn't just my friend, Giles. He worked for me. I was responsible for him."

There's a brief silence on the other end, then: "That's a terrible feeling. I wouldn't wish it on anyone."

"Well, it's even worse, because it wasn't just a random attack. They were after me. They came to tell me to take my Slayers and get out of Spokane."

"You're a success, then, if they've come to see you as a threat in such a short time. What have you decided to do?"

"Decided and done. Faith and Willa and our associate Kevin Straley raided a nest, killed three of the five who were left after their attack. I would have gone myself, but --"

"I heard you were badly injured."

Xander twitches a smile. "I have a new set of standards for injury. If I've got all my parts at the end of the day, I'm not that badly hurt. But yeah, I'm out of commission for a little while. Dislocated shoulder."

"Yet you managed to make a kill at the scene of the attack?"

"Two. Staked one, lit one on fire. Too late for Damon, though. Fuck, Giles, he was -- he was an innocent. There aren't many people in this world who can say they've never hurt a soul. God knows, I'm not one of them. But Damon was. He was a sweet guy who cheerfully worked his ass off. I couldn't protect him, so instead I got to watch him die."

"I know there's nothing I can say that will make that any less bitter, Xander. But I am sorry."

Of course he knows. He saw Buffy die, after all. Xander remembers now how Giles patrolled with them all summer, but seemed to drift farther and farther away as time passed, and finally he left. Xander understands that now, the need to get away from all the walking, talking reminders of the one person who matters who's not there anymore. He'd understood it after Anya, but this -- this is so much sharper. Damon was his charge, in a sense, if not in the same way Buffy was Giles's.

"You said you have an associate. A civilian?"

"Not quite. Kevin's a city cop. He helped me out the last time I got my ass kicked, and I told him what was what. He ended up killing a vamp out on his own during his shift, and after the attack he went on the daylight raid with Faith and Willa. So I guess he's in the Northwest branch of the Scoobies now."

As Xander fills in the details on what's been happening, he starts getting a little antsy, checking his watch. They should be back by now.

"Is there anything else on your mind?" Giles asks when he finally winds down.

"Well, if you were concerned about the quality of crack to be found in a small city, worry not. Faith's tapped into the good stuff. She said last night she thought I have some kind of mojo that draws me to Slayers."

Xander's almost certain he hears glasses-polishing over the phone. "Since our last conversation, I've been wondering myself if you might have developed some skills that would be useful to a Watcher."

He nearly drops the cordless. "A Watcher?"

"Possibly."

"Me?"

"It's worth exploring."

He shoves up the eyepatch, rubs at his ruined eye. "Giles, can I ask you something?"

"Of course."

"How much would I weigh on your home planet?"

"We'll talk this out later. I think you have enough on your mind at the moment."

Xander hears the throb of an engine -- his own car's -- pulling into the drive, and he feels the tension ease in his shoulder. Though he expects to hear the door opening, the doorbell chimes instead. "Hang on a sec. Someone's at the door."

He awkwardly transfers the phone to his bad hand and opens the front door. "Oh my god. Holy --" Xander remembers the phone, takes it in his other hand and speaks into it. "Holy shit. It's Dawn."

Then the phone bounces on the carpet and Dawn is inside the house and carefully taking him in her arms.

"Oh, Xander. I had to come."

Somehow he makes it through the service. It's better than he expected, in some ways. Worse, in others. Xander can't believe how many people showed up for this one supermarket stockboy with no family. Some he knows, some he vaguely recognizes; other faces are completely new to him.

He sits up front with Peggy, Faith at his blind side. If he had his way, he'd be far in the back. Peg asked one of the customers to give the eulogy, a Catholic priest in his thirties everyone calls Father Bill. There's nothing wrong with the guy -- he's well-loved in the neighborhood, as far as Xander can tell -- except he's a young man wearing a Roman collar. Xander has always done a fade whenever Father Bill comes in for his Monday morning bagel, or in the middle of the night after attending to some emergency. Damon loved him; he seems to have an infinite patience for having the same conversations over and over again, generally about the Mariners.

It's a beautiful eulogy, full of personal knowledge and affection, yet all the while every cell of Xander's body rebels at sitting so close to the priest. If it weren't for Peg, he'd bolt. But her kid's a typical broke college student, and he's got exams, so Xander's the only family she's got today. He gets through this by concentrating on the warmth of Faith's hand resting on his good shoulder, the little squeezes she occasionally gives it. He gets through this by knowing Dawn, who understands, is right behind him, sitting with Straley and Willa. He gets through this by looking anywhere but at Father Bill.

At the end of the service, he wants to shove his way to the exit, but he stays by Peg. The priest sticks to her too, and the three of them form kind of a reception line. Xander fights his rising nausea and makes it through, then six men with working shoulders -- including Straley and Father Bill -- carry Damon's coffin to the waiting hearse. After the graveside service he does what he has to: shakes Father Bill's hand and tells him there's a gathering back at his house. Xander thinks he's managed to sound halfway sincere.

"Thanks, I'd like that."

During the limo ride back to his house, Xander's physical relief at being away from the priest is so intense it's almost as painful as the tension. He begins to tremble, trying but unable to catch a deep breath. Peg sits facing him, so he can't say anything. Dawn sits next to Peg, tears shimmering in her lashes, clutching Xander's hand. "It's okay," she whispers. He knows what she means but can't say here: Caleb's dead, there's nothing to fear. "You did fine, Xander. You did so well."

Faith's hand rests near his knee. "That was a nice service," she says to Peg. "Not one of those terrible one-size-fits-all things."

"It was the least he deserved," Peg says. "He wasn't like anyone else."

"Remember Mom's funeral?" Dawn asks Xander. "Totally canned. That made me feel almost worse than her dying that way. I said something to Buffy about it in the chapel, and this horrible old lady who came to all the funerals pulled me aside and told me it was Mom's fault, that if a preacher didn't know her, then God wouldn't either, and she'd go to Hell."

His head jerks up. "I never knew that."

"Well, it felt too awful to tell. I was, I don't know, embarrassed or ashamed or something."

"How come the people who should feel ashamed are rarely the ones who do?" Faith says.

"There's a question for the ages, for sure," Dawn says.

Peg studies the three of them, connected by touch. "You've known each other for a long time, haven't you?"

"A dozen years with Dawn," Xander says. "I've known Faith ten."

"I don't really think I've ever seen you with people you have more history with than me."

"I sort of flunked history for a while," he says. Borrowing a line of Faith's.

Dawn gently raps the side of her fist on his knee. "Well, your tutors are here. We'll get you up to speed in no time."

The limo pulls in front of his house, and he steels himself for another long afternoon with people who care about him. For more glimpses of that clerical collar in his own house.

"Too bad," Faith murmurs as Peg follows Dawn out of the limo.

"What?"

Faith leans in and whispers a suggestion about what they could do with the last of their limo time, teasing a grin and a kiss from him.

"Too bad," he echoes, and accepts Dawn's help to climb out of the car.

He barely remembers most of the conversations he has after the funeral, feels them slipping from memory even as he breaks away from each interaction. He eats little because he's too restless to sit still, and with his arm strapped he can't carry around a plate.

Father Bill doesn't stay very long, but before he goes, he finds Xander staring out the kitchen window. "Is it Alex, or Xander?"

Xander turns toward him, tensing. "Depends which set of people you ask. Alex is fine. It's how Damon knew me." It's not a lie, but it feels like one. He doesn't want this guy using the name Xander.

Father Bill nods. "I was wondering if we could have a word. Somewhere private, if possible."

"Sure. I could use a smoke." He leads the way out back and lights a cigarette, offers one to the priest, who shakes his head.

"Alex, I can tell my presence here is a problem for you."

"But it's not for Peg. Stay as long as you normally would." He waves off a bee. "It's nothing against you personally. Just ... associations."

"I'm aware of that. If you've ... been injured or preyed upon by a priest of this church --"

"Oh, he wasn't a Catholic, Father. Just an evil fuck, pardon the language, who liked hiding behind a collar. And what he did -- it's not what you're thinking."

Father Bill waits for a revelation. Xander guesses he's used to having confessions drop into his lap. Finally he says, "If there's anything I can do -- counseling, or a referral, I hope you won't hesitate to call on me."

Xander forces himself to look at him. "Thanks. Actually, I appreciate what you did for Damon. Today and before. He thought you were pretty great."

"He talked about you, too, Alex. He didn't exactly put it into these words, but he loved you."

Xander turns on his heel and walks away, going over to fuss with the garbage cans. By the time he finishes, Father Bill has headed back into the house, and in a few more minutes he's left for the parish house.

By the time afternoon fades into evening, Peg has left, along with neighbors and friends and coworkers. Even Jett and Dustin, who've again stayed to clean things up and drag his garbage cans to the curb, have gone on home. Xander's lying on the sofa, a just-finished plate on the floor beside him. Straley and Faith are sprawled in chairs, Willa's seated on the floor, where Dawn is stretched out in jeans and button down shirt.

"This is my dad and his brother-in-law on Thanksgiving when I was a kid." Dawn unbuttons the top button of her fly and gives out with a huge groan. She caresses her belly like a pregnant woman and adds, "Braaaaaaaaaack! Of course, to get the true effect, there should be football."

He laughs, though mere belching would have been a refreshing change for most of his childhood holidays. "How is your dad?"

"Absent." Her tone is laced with a false lightness. "Working on getting it right with the next batch."

Willa, who's been studying her without being too blatant about it, blurts, "Are you a Slayer?"

Dawn sits up, startled. "No. Slaying's a piece of cake compared to the destiny I was handed. I'm the little sister of the Slayer." She smiles. "My Old School is showing -- I still say the Slayer."

Willa glances at Faith and back to Dawn. "You guys are sisters?"

"No, my sister is Buffy."

"You saw her picture," Xander says.

"The redhead?"

"The blonde."

Willa nods. "So what was that like? Being her sister?"

"Oh, exciting, intense, totally infuriating most of the time."

As she launches into a story, Xander hears a noise out front. As he rises and heads for the door, Faith catches his eye, raising her brows. He shakes his head, gesturing with two fingers that he's stepping out for a smoke.

He stands on the porch, lighting a cigarette, scanning the street. Nothing to see, except a car he doesn't recognize parked at the curb, whose interior light goes on as the door opens. It's Evan, with a brown paper sack. "Evan. Hey. How's it going?"

"Sorry I couldn't make it earlier. I saw on the news what happened. I'm sorry to hear it." He offers the bag. "Brought something for the wake."

Xander peers inside, though he already knows what's there. For a moment he just breathes in the idea, how good it would be to smooth out his jangled feelings, erase just a small amount of the tension of the funeral, of his proximity to Father Bill. "Ahh, thanks. But, uh, well ... There are a couple of friends of Bill W. living here right now. I can't really have this in the house. One's pretty shaky yet, and I have my moments."

"Oh, hell. Sorry."

"You didn't know." He hands the bag back. "Well, hey. Come inside, meet people. Faith's here."

"Sure, yeah." Evan looks around for someplace to set the bag.

"Just stash it behind the bush there. Just don't forget to take it."

The liquor stashed, Evan follows him inside. Xander makes the introductions, catching Dawn in the midst of a raucous story.

"You go on with your story," Evan says, once greetings are exchanged. "I came in to see Xander's project." He declines Xander's offer of a soft drink or some food, accompanying him into the garage and closing the door behind them.

"I was in the middle of unclamping this, then stuff happened." He takes off more of the clamps as Evan leans in to look.

"Look at this." Evan examines the glued and blocked sides, closely checking the joints. "This is solid work. Which set of sides?"

"The second."

"Good job. I was pretty sure you'd break those, too. You've got a real feel for this."

"I had to glue down a small fracture at the waist, right here, but I caught it before it went really wrong." He runs his finger along the inside surface of the side.

"Oh, yeah. Never see it, though. Nice repair."

Xander rests his good hand on the metal shelving beside the workbench, then notices the box of stakes is sitting unevenly, cocked up on something. Probably happened when Faith and Willa outfitted themselves for the raid on the vampire nest. As he reaches to adjust it, the box rolls on top of whatever's underneath and tumbles onto the floor, sending stakes scattering everywhere like pickup sticks.

Before he can even utter a curse, Xander hears a hiss behind him, and by the time he turns, Evan has backed completely across the garage, and he's all fangs and yellow eyes.

"Jesus!" Xander says, in perfect unison with Evan.

Xander snatches one of the stakes from the floor and goes for Evan, who throws his hands up.

"Wait." He shakes off the game face.

Xander's foot lands on another stake, which rolls beneath it. He goes to one knee, skinning his knuckles on the cement floor as he flings out his good hand, still clutching the stake.

"Xander, wait," Evan says again. "I'm not a threat."

Xander draws in a breath to call for the others, but checks himself. It is true that Evan hasn't moved from his position of retreat. He slowly gets to his feet, balance thrown off by the arm strapped to his body. The bench is within reach, but he's not about to let go of the stake to pull himself up. "Shit, Evan. When did this happen?"

A ghost of a smile. "Long before you knew me. Long before you were born. I'm not a threat. Not to you or those people in there."

"Don't bullshit me. Vamps don't have arthritis. If you had it when you were turned, it would have cleared up long ago."

The smile broadens just enough to show a seam in the weathered skin of his lean face. "You know your stuff." He flicks a glance at the stakes scattered on the floor. "Obviously. Do you know about the ancient ones?"

"Are those the ones that talk you to death? Because I'm not too comfortable with the chitchat here."

Evan ignores the interruption. "The very old vampires eventually develop cloven hands and feet." He holds up his knotty hands. "It's an extremely long process."

"You're telling me you're, what, hundreds of years old?"

"Close enough."

Xander's clutching his stake so tightly that his hand begins to cramp. "Thousands, then. Ooh, I'm impressed. Tell me again why I shouldn't stake you?"

"I'm not going to hurt you. I've had plenty of chances, if that's what I was after. I'm not."

"And that would be why?"

"I don't kill."

The garage door opens then, and Evan tenses, same as Xander. Faith begins, "You guys have been --" She takes in the stakes on the floor, in Xander's hand. "What the fuck?"

Xander keeps his voice carefully neutral. "Evan here is just telling me how he's an ancient vampire who doesn't kill people."

"The fuck?" she says again.

"Beats me. We were getting to that. All I've got so far is he's maybe thousands of years old, he's working on cloven hands and feet, and the not-killing-people part. I'm guessing if Penn and Teller were here, they'd tell me this is bullshit."

"It's not," Faith says, her eyes fastened on Evan. "At least the cloven hands thing. That fucker Kakistos had 'em. I saw him tear my Watcher apart with 'em."

Evan begins to laugh softly. Next thing Xander knows, she's got a fist full of pearl snap shirt and Evan's backed up against the unfinished garage wall. Her with her hair up, still in her funeral dress and heels.

"What the hell is so funny about that?"

"My luck. First human I let myself get a little close to in decades, and his girlfriend is the Slayer. You wouldn't think I'd have lasted this long."

"You maybe don't have so much longer," she says.

"Kakistos, he was a savage. I didn't have much of a problem with him being killed. You're the one who did that?"

"Hell, yeah."

He smiles. "I knew there was something about you."

"So tell us about this non-killing business," Xander says.

Evan shrugs. "I lost the heart for it."

Xander snorts. "Oh, god. Not another vampire with a soul."

"Please. That's an old wives' tale."

Faith shoots Xander a look. The door opens again and Evan takes a step forward, and Faith shoves him back into the wall.

It's Straley. "Hey, what's --" His tone changes as he takes in the scene. "What's wrong?"

"Vamp in the house," Xander says.

"He's got a story," Faith says.

Xander snorts again. "They've all got a story. Tell you what, I'm not loving the threat of violence in the same room with my guitar. Let's move this inside."

Straley steps in with the transporting-the-prisoner moves, and gets Evan into the kitchen. "Got any ropes or anything?"

"Sit him down." Xander reaches into the freezer for a bottle of CA, snips off the cap. "Give me your hand."

Evan laughs again, barely distinguishable from a dry smoker's hack, as Xander squirts a little superglue in his palm and plants his hand against the underside of the heavy oak table.

"The woodworker in me hates doing this, but ..."

Evan doesn't struggle; he knows as well as Xander that he's already bonded and won't come free unless he loses a lot of skin.

"You're kidding, right?" Faith asks.

Capping the CA, Xander sets it on the counter. "He's not going anywhere for a while."

"This is why this kid's my best student." The weird thing is he's more or less handcuffed to the table, surrounded by three pissed-off humans who've snatched up stakes, and Xander gets the sense that he doesn't really give a shit.

Willa and Dawn wander into the kitchen, still laughing. "Where'd everybody -- whoa," Dawn says. "We've missed something."

"Vamp," Xander says.

"Uh huh. And he's not a pile of dust why?"

"Well, he's as good as tied up, for one thing," Xander tells her. "And I know him. Evan -- Dawn, Willa, Kevin."

"This is the guitar guy you've emailed about? And he's a vamp?"

"Ease off, okay?" Xander scratches under the shoulder immobilizer with the point of his stake. "Could happen to anyone."

"I've been passing for hundreds of years."

"But still," Dawn says.

"As unofficial little sister, it's her job to make me feel like a dumbass."

This strange, sad expression crosses Evan's face. "So I remember."

Xander squelches the surge of sympathy that rises up. "You were starting to tell us your story. That you've given up the hard stuff."

"I don't kill humans. I haven't for maybe three hundred years."

"Do they give out chips for that?"

Faith touches his arm. "Let him tell it," she says softly. "What happened?"

Evan smiles. "Was I struck blind on the road to Damascus? Whacked with some mythical soul stick? Nah. I killed a guy I sold a guitar to. Last time I worked on credit. He went down great and all, but there was all this music that I knew wouldn't be made anymore. Humans make music, and they make paintings and poems. They make bourbon, and trouble. They used to make Cadillacs with fins. I'm fascinated by all of it. I want to be in the middle of that. Immortality's boring enough without making the world a duller place. I'm not the only one. Just the only one you've found out." Compared to Evan's usual mode, this is a filibuster.

"So there are vampires all over the place, living quietly among humans, not causing any trouble? How many?"

"Who's to say? We don't show ourselves. We don't go near the vampires who prey on people, and we don't go near each other."

"So what are we gonna do?" Dawn asks.

"Vampires do what they do, Dawn. You'll never get me to believe that's not true."

"What about Angel?" Faith asks.

He shakes his head. "I've never been sold on him. He works that soul angle, but there is nothing you can say that'll make me trust that."

"He saved me," she says simply. "I was out on the edge of the world, and he reeled me back in. I tried killing him, and he still did that for me."

"And don't forget Spike," Dawn adds. "Even before the soul."

Xander's temper flares. "Aw, he was chipped."

"That only meant he couldn't hurt people. It didn't make him fight on our side, or look after me the summer Buffy was dead --"

"All of us looked after you that summer!" He's shouting, and he doesn't give a shit. "All of us fought with Buffy. But fuckin' Spike is the one who matters, because he went all Pinocchio. The rest of us -- of course we were on her side. It was our place, wasn't it?" He waves a hand in disgust and stalks out the back door for a cigarette.

It's silent in there -- he's close enough to the kitchen window that he'd hear if anyone spoke. He wonders what Willa and Straley -- hell, Evan too -- are making of this discussion. He tamps out his smoke and steps back inside. "We're not talking about chips. We're not talking about souls. What we've got here is a vampire who's a thousand years old, maybe more, and he's telling us he went on the wagon, just like that. Because we provide entertainment."

"That music store's been on Howard for as long as I can remember," Straley says. "How long have you lived here?"

"Thirty-seven years."

"Xander, the so-called icepick killings only started a few months ago."

"So he's clever. Stands to reason; he wouldn't be a card-carrying member of the American Association of Retired Vampires if he was stupid."

"I have an account with a butcher," Evan says. "You can check it out; check several, if their accounts go back far enough. I switch every few years. The latest thinks it's an alternative therapy for the arthritis."

"Any more arguments?" Dawn asks.

"Only one -- he's a fucking vampire." Xander rubs his forehead, which is thundering. "Listen, there's shit all over the floor of my shop. I'm going to go take care of that."

Faith shifts from the counter she's been leaning on. "I'll help--"

"No. I need a while." He steps into the garage, closing the door behind him.

Xander's halfway through his solo game of pickup sticks when he hears the door open behind him. "Faith, if you don't mind --"

"It's me," a small voice says. Dawn.

He straightens and turns toward her, just as she starts to cry. "I never wanted --"

He moves to her. "Sweetie, what?"

"I don't want you thinking I don't appreciate -- what you did." She wraps her arms around him, so careful not to hurt his left side.

He strokes her hair, still so long and silky. She's never felt the need to change it every fifteen minutes like Buffy or Willow. Or Anya. "Honey, it's okay. It's all right."

"No it's not. You've always been there, and I've treated you like that was nothing."

Releasing her, he steps back to look at her. "You've hung onto me all this time. That's worth something."

Her glance slides away. "That's just selfishness."

"What are you talking about?"

"Buffy and Giles, they knew you needed time apart from us. That you couldn't be pushed into healing. I couldn't -- I needed you too much to let you go. I was afraid."

"Afraid? Dawnie, of what?"

She bends to pick up a few stakes, tosses them back into the box. "Afraid that I'd ... disappear or something. If you stopped thinking about me."

"What? Dawn, that's nuts."

"Is it?" She picks up another stake, toys with it as she speaks. "My whole history, up to the point where I really came to Sunnydale, is made up. I had a childhood because Mom and Dad and Buffy remember that I do. Mom's dead, and Dad doesn't care, so that leaves Buffy carrying the whole weight of my existence, up till I met the rest of you guys. Xander, you were always the one who'd never let go. I knew I'd always be safe, as long as I had you. You hang on tight to your friends, and even tighter to your enemies. So when you cut off your friends, it really scared me. I went after you and made you relate to me because I love you, but also because I was scared of ending."

Stunned, he can think of nothing to say to make this better. He just reaches his good arm toward her and enfolds her in an imperfect hug. "I'm not going anywhere," he finally says. "And neither are you." Xander lets her go, brushing her tears away. "Got that?"

She nods.

"Good." He gently tweaks her nose, the way he used to (except he didn't) when she was small. "Think I should go back in and deal with my captive vampire?"

"Could I see your guitar first? Just a quick first look? Because I want you to tell me all about it when there's not a vampire glued to the kitchen table."

He leads her to the workbench, where the sound of her gasp makes him grin.

"Oh. Oh, wow. Xander. How did you get it to look this way?"

"I didn't. That's the way the wood grain is."

"It's so beautiful."

"I'm glad you like it." His fingers practically itch with the desire to pick up the lining, start gluing it in place. Tomorrow maybe he'll try unstrapping the arm, see how it feels. "Tell you what. I'm going to try and work a little tomorrow. If you want to hang out with me and watch, I'll tell you anything you want to know about it."

They toss the last of the stakes into their box, and head back into the kitchen. And Xander still doesn't know what exactly he plans to do with the vamp he's got glued there.

Evan sits there like a vaguely interested observer while they discuss the fate of his unlife. Until Faith says, "I know how you feel about Angel, but remember how valuable he was back in Sunnydale. He knew the prophecies almost as well as Giles, had an encyclopedic knowledge of demons. Evan's got a thousand years of knowledge beyond that. This guy's an unbelievable resource --"

"No I'm not," Evan says quietly. That gets everyone's attention. "I understand your war. But I'm not in it. Not on either side."

"Well, that simplifies things," Xander says. "We kill him."

"How can we do that?" Willa asks.

He ticks off on his fingers: "Stake, fire, beheading --"

"You know that's not what I mean. He's committed himself to nonviolence. What does that make us if we kill him just because of what he is?"

"It makes us not a bunch of suckers. What he is is a killer. It's what all vampires are. Some of them can charm the ass right off of you. They can mimic humanity, sure -- it's how they attract their victims." Xander waves his good arm toward Evan. "Take a look. Doesn't have a care in the world, does he? That's because he knows he's sucking you in."

Willa puts her stake down on the counter. "I don't think I can stay here if you do this."

"What's this, a declaration of policy, or just a kneejerk reaction? I certainly get the appeal, you've got a patron of the arts here. Or at least a guy who abstains from eating artists. He says. So okay, you oppose discrimination against undead-Americans, if they don't actually follow their nature. Except what about that vamp you staked your first night out? You got him fresh out of the grave, so what was his body count?"

"That's different."

"Different why?"

"He rushed me, and his face was all fangy."

"I see. So a vamp who's never killed but looks threatening is more stakable than one who's sitting here calmly with, what, Evan? Tens of thousands of bodies behind you?"

"That's just it," Willa says. "They're behind him. He doesn't kill anymore."

"So it's just a bunch of people who talked funny, dressed funny. They don't really matter." Xander flicks a glance at the bystanders to this argument. He's making his friends uncomfortable, but he doesn't care. "What about any future people he kills? Say he sees who wins American Idol and he thinks, 'Ahhhhh, fuck it. Music and art aren't worth the pig blood after all.' That would be a bad thing, wouldn't it? Unless, of course, Fox makes a really cool reality show out of it. Are you ready to take on the weight of the lives he takes before you track him down again? What if it's a hundred years from now? What about those people? They'd have lived, if not for you."

"You don't believe in anything, do you? The idea of redemption doesn't mean a thing."

"Oh, for fuck's sake. No one here has mentioned the R-word. I don't think Evan is even making a claim to that. It's one thing in his favor, as far as I'm concerned. Some days maybe I believe in it. Not when I've buried the latest in a long, sad parade of people I cared about. Tell me again, Willa, how many friends and lovers and family members have you lost?"

Her face crumples, breaking the trainwreck-watching spell the others have been under. Straley steps forward. "Let's all simmer down a little. Maybe take a break. Xander, why don't you come out with me, have a cigarette?"

Straley starts to urge him toward the back yard, but Xander gestures toward the front of the house. "This how you usually keep the domestic peace?"

"It goes a long way. I'm usually a little quicker, though."

Once they're outside, Xander says, "Another thing you should know about vampires. They have really finely tuned senses. Hearing, for example. You don't smoke, do you?"

"Not generally, but I'll take one." He takes a cigarette, leans in to accept the light Xander offers. "Listen, Xander. Before I knew you very well I thought any number of times that you must've been on the job sometime. And you have -- you just never got recognized for it. I remember talking to you that day at the airport about this disconnect that happens when you've been a police for a while. How you start seeing people as either citizens or scumbags. And it's hard to tell who's a citizen -- might be dangerous to make the wrong call, so you find yourself assuming it's all scumbags, except the guys you work with."

Xander remembers their conversation. Straley saying it was hard to resist this mentality, but he tried. "I see where you're taking this," he says quietly. "But Evan's not 'people.'"

Straley sighs. "I know. But he tells a story that we can try to verify, at least in part. I'd feel better if we did."

"What do you suggest?"

"We call the butcher shops he says keep him supplied. We look into unsolved deaths and disappearances over the last four decades, especially centered around his neighborhood. What else could we do? Didn't you say there's some kind of organization that keeps historical records or something?"

"The Council."

"Maybe they know something about this vampire. Maybe they can tell us if he did drop out of sight 300 years ago or not."

"Yeah, maybe."

Straley's quiet for a moment. "I just don't know that I'm comfortable being the kind of cowboy who sets himself up as judge and jury too."

Xander turns and regards him for a moment. "There is no official law for this sort of thing. That's what you have to remember."

"I get that, yeah." Straley crushes his cigarette, half-finished, in the espresso can full of sand by the front door. "What happened in there, anyway? How'd you make him?"

"I've got a box of stakes in there. I knocked it over, they went flying, and he vamped out."

"Which means what?"

"The teeth, the face."

"Okay. Then what? Did he attack?"

"Well, no. He kind of flew back from me, and shook off the game face. Said he wouldn't hurt me."

Straley scratches his jaw. "You know, if this was a bar fight or something, this is a story that wouldn't hand you a whole lot of justification."

"Yeah, well, it's not a bar fight."

"I know. There's a lot -- well, at stake. And I've got to respect your experience. But it sounds like this is something you've never encountered before. Couldn't hurt to find out as much as you can."

Xander nods. "Mind letting me have a few minutes?"

"Sure." Straley goes back into the house, and Xander drops his first cigarette into the can, lights another, taking a seat on the porch railing. Straley makes sense, he knows that, but there's the irrational feeling that everyone in the house is against him. He wonders if this is the sort of loneliness Buffy felt, especially toward the end of the fight with the First.

Suddenly he remembers the bottles he had Evan stash just a few feet away. Even before this thing with Evan, he'd felt the seductiveness of just one drink, just enough to make him feel a little less ragged. He rises and steps off the porch, crouching behind the bushes to retrieve one of the bottles from the brown paper sack. The heft of the bottle in his hand is in itself a comfort. He fingers the paper seal, letting himself imagine the smell, the fire.

Xander pictures himself back inside with the others, swaying on his feet as he lets fly with the kind of speech he'd uncorked in Florence. Hell, he's already brought one person to tears tonight -- why stop until he's lacerated Dawn and Faith, too? Dawn's already seen this act. She was there at Giles's engagement party. She'd cried then, tried to get him to shut up. Nothing stops him, though, once he gets going. He's like his old man that way.

For the first time in a long while, he thinks about his father, the drinking, the rants, pounding away at his point until everyone in earshot felt about three inches high. He's a fucking chip off the old block, isn't he? Not with the people who work for him at the store -- just with the people who matter, the work he cares most about.

For the first time ever, he wonders about Tony. Whether the outbursts came out of the same sense of loneliness Xander feels right now. He hasn't felt sad about the old man's death, but this fills him with sorrow. On some deep level he knows he's right, and he knows to a great degree it's a self-made loneliness. Xander would have leapt at any connection Tony would've tried to make, from the time he was a small kid all the way up to -- well, who's he kidding? Up to now. If Tony Harris surfaced on his next internet hunt, sober and genuinely interested in knowing his son, Xander would take him back in his life in a heartbeat.

Another moment, and he becomes aware again of what he's holding in his hand. He pitches the bottle back behind the bushes to thud heavily against the dry ground. Xander climbs the porch steps and goes back into the house.

Xander walks into the kitchen, where Straley and Faith watch over Evan, who sits with eyes closed. Faith reaches for Xander's hand, gives it a squeeze.

"Where's Willa?"

"Down the hall, with Dawn."

Xander nods. He should go in to her, try to start making things right. "Why did you come here, Evan?"

A trace of a smile. "Been asking myself that." His eyes open, a washed-out blue Xander's never really noticed before. Studying Evan, he sees why no one seems to have noticed a guy working out of the same shop for 37 years and never getting any older. He's got the lean, weatherbeaten look of some of the rare cowboys you can still find just east of here, prematurely aged and perpetually ageless. All he lacks is the browned skin. A casual observer could take him for 33 or 57. "I came because I like you. I respect your craftsmanship and your feel for working with wood. And I know what it feels like to lose people like that. Half my family was dead before I was turned. Three of my sisters." Evan shakes his head. "I think this is a sign I've been living among humans for too long."

Xander sits at the kitchen table, as if sharing a cup of coffee with a neighbor (something he has never done, until the last few days.) "Damon's not my first, by a long shot." The anger has seeped out of his voice. "Understand this: People have died or disappeared around me my whole life. When I was sixteen, I finally learned why. When I was seventeen, the Slayer couldn't bring herself to dust one particular vamp because he had the face of her lover. Angel killed one of my friends and god knows how many others because of that moment when she couldn't do what she needed to. This is why I have a hard time with the 'but he's reformed' argument. I let you walk, and anyone you kill is my responsibility."

"This Angel you keep talking about --"

"Yeah?"

"There were rumors a hundred years ago about a vampire named Angel. The story about a soul."

Xander nods. "That's been the rumor for a good century after, too. Except of course for the few months when his soul got lost, and he went on his little killing spree."

"You're telling me this was true? I'll be damned."

"That kind of goes without saying. But yeah, even though I can't say I'm a big fan of Angel's, I do believe in the soul, because I've seen him with and without, and one of my best friends is the witch who put it back in him."

"Twice," adds Faith.

Evan shakes his head. "You've had an extraordinary life for a mortal kid."

"Can't say I feel like a kid anymore."

"Believe me, you are. But you've seen things I never have."

"Well, you get out there and fight the fight, and things come to you." Xander gets to his feet and steps out into the garage, rummaging on the shelf for a moment before he returns to the kitchen. "The thing I can't figure about you is the sense I keep getting that you don't give a shit whether I dust you or not. Is that real, or is it some mystical smokescreen you're throwing up?"

Evan shrugs. "I've been in the world for centuries now. I lost my pleasure in doing what vampires do a long time ago, and watching what humans do is a little too full of loss." He holds up his free hand, turns it over. "These are the last thing I had left to lose. Things got a little interesting when I picked up an apprentice, but at this stage, I could go sunbathing or not. Don't much care one way or the other."

Xander tosses him a shop rag he brought in from the garage, and steps up to the table. "I can't keep you glued to my kitchen table forever. I've got no way of locking you up, and Kevin can't exactly haul you in on suspicion of murders three hundred years ago." He leans down and squirts a stream of solvent where Evan's hand joins the table, filling the kitchen with the stink of acetone. "This hurt, what's happening to your hands?"

"Like a bitch," Evan says. He rubs at his hand with the rag, then returns it to Xander.

"There's soap on the sink that'll kill some of that smell." He hears a sound and turns to see Dawn and Willa have reappeared, faces scrunched at the chemical odor.

"What is that?" Dawn asks.

"Nail polish remover," Willa whispers.

"I'm letting you walk," Xander says. "Like I said, we can't exactly keep you here while we're checking out your story. You kill anyone, and I won't stake you. I will come and set you on fire, and I will burn every guitar you've made. I'll get on the internet and track the rest down, and I'll buy them and burn them. It won't begin to make up for one life, but I think it's possible you'd care."

"It won't be necessary." Evan dries his hands and passes the towel to Xander. He nods to the others and makes his way to the front door.

Xander hopes he's not making the worst mistake of his entire life.

Evan turns at the door and says, "The name you want the Watchers to look for is Ieuan Goch."

For a moment Xander stands staring after him, blinking. Then he turns to the others. "Faith, I want you to tail him until sunrise. Do you have a cellphone?"

When Faith shakes her head, Willa says, "I do. You can take it." She peels off to retrieve it for Faith.

"Dawn, you have a cell too, right? I need you to call Willow, get the spell to disinvite him. Kevin, do that search on unsolved murders and disappearances since, what, 1970? I'll have to call Evan, get those butcher shop names, and we'll run that down, but the other's got priority anyway. I'm going to get on the phone to Giles at the Council."

Willa comes back with her phone, which she demonstrates to Faith, who heads out, along with Straley. "So what about me?"

"Right now, stand by, if you would. Any one of these searches might generate something that needs some kind of follow-up." Xander sees a shadow cross Willa's face at that, but then she nods. He adds, "There's something I'd like you to do first."

"What can I do?"

"Accept my apology for pounding away at my point like that, with you between the hammer and the point. It's one of my less charming habits. That's not how I act with the people I work with, so I thought I'd just gotten all new and improved over the last few years." He smiles, though he knows it looks pained. "Guess it takes certain subjects to bring that out. I've got a lot of experience in this -- even more than Faith, though I'm not a Slayer. I want that acknowledged and listened to, yeah, but not at the cost of rolling over my friends."

"So why'd you let him go?"

"Instinct, I guess. Mine, yours, Faith's. Maybe there's a reason we he didn't set off alarms with any of us." Xander unstraps his lower arm from the immobilizer, carefully tests it. "Instinct isn't just pulling some notion out of your ass, it involves a lot of observation and analysis you don't even know you're making. I want you to read The Gift of Fear, by the way. Learn to rely on your intuition when it's warning you of danger." The arm starts to ache after just a few movements, so he settles it back in its cradle. "I've got that side pretty highly developed. It's the opposite I don't trust -- when instinct tells me nothing's wrong, I tend to figure it's broken. So I finally listened past that. I don't think he's a danger tonight. In the meantime, we're learning all we can. Speaking of which, I'd better call Giles."

The last time he remembers using the phone was in his workshop. He steps into the garage, flipping on the top light instead of the full-spectrum bulbs he usually uses for his work. The place depresses him in the yellowed glare. He spots a stake on the floor that he and Dawn missed, bends to pick it up and toss it into the box.

His guitar still waits for the next step, gluing in the linings and fitting the top and bottom to the sides. A fresh wave of sadness washes over him. In a way Xander feels as though he's lost two fathers tonight -- Tony, whom he's understood for maybe the first time ever -- and Evan, who'd taken him on as the next generation guitar-builder. It was an adult-to-adult kind of fathering, mentoring with a strong thread of respect for what Xander already knew, for his feel for the work. It wasn't a relationship he'd ever even dreamed of having -- he hadn't known this existed, not until it exploded into dust like a vampire run through with a pale dagger of ash. Ash to ash. Dust to dust. He's had more than enough loss for one day.

He finds the cordless phone. Begins punching in Giles's number.

It's Catarina who answers, which makes him glance at the clock and realize Giles is probably at the Council. He identifies himself, and her voice warms.

"Ksander, Rupert told me about your friend. I'm so very sorry."

"Ah, thanks. It's been hard. He was a sweet guy. Didn't know what was happening to him, or why." He has to stop speaking, before he loses control of himself.

"Succhiatori," she mutters. This is one he still remembers: cocksuckers. It makes him feel a tiny bit better.

"Giles must be at work by now. I was wondering if you could give me his office number."

"No, he's home today."

Xander shakes his head. He's lost all track of the days.

Muffled sounds of the phone passing from hand to hand, then Giles's voice. "Xander, what a surprise to hear from you again so soon. Is everything all right?"

"That's just it. I'm not sure. More developments. I need information. Can you find me anything on a vampire named, ah, Ieuan Goch?" Of course not, Xander decides. Evan was most likely saying anything that improved his chances of leaving on his feet rather than in a dustpan.

"Red Evan." Holy shit. Giles goes on: " I didn't realize you'd taken an interest in history. I'd have to do some research, but off the top of my head, I can tell you he was a very old vampire when he met his fate."

Xander lets out a breath. "So he's dead."

"Well, there's no record. He'd had encounters with Slayers before -- it's uncertain whether there were two or three -- but he survived them all, in one case killing the Slayer. But then he dropped out of sight some centuries ago. I can't tell you how many evenings that would come up over a bottle of port. Almost any time Watchers or students came together. We'd speculate over what might have happened and where."

"Well, Giles, whoever guessed 'retires to Spokane' wins the set of dishes."

The pause on the other end of the line stretches so long that Xander finally grins. There's a bit of stammering, then: "You've seen him?"

"Let me ask you something else. Have you ever heard of vampires going off the human blood and passing?"

"As human, you mean?"

"Yeah."

"Rumor and speculation, nothing more."

"You think that could be because they're really good at passing?"

The garage door opens and Dawn pokes her head inside. "Holy water?"

"Faith's got her supplies in the basement."

She nods and goes.

Giles is still attempting to wrap his mind around all this. "You believe that you've seen Red Evan, and that he's passing himself off as a human."

"Well, that's what he says. As for passing, yeah. I've been in his place of business, he's been in my house. Let me repeat that, Giles: He's been in my house. Faith was around him for a while once too, and neither of us figured him out."

"Good lord," Giles says. "You must do a spell to rescind the invitation."

"Dawn's on it, as we speak." He sighs. "Tell me I haven't made a huge fucking mistake, Giles."

"What have you done?"

"I let him live -- I mean ... you get what I mean. Hell, you know me, Mr. The-only-good-vamp-is-a-dead-vamp. I let him walk."

There's a pause, during which Xander imagines Giles calculating all the millions of ways in which Xander is the world's biggest fuck-up. While polishing his glasses. "How did his true nature come to light?"

"Totally by accident. Evan -- he goes by Evan Davies now, spelled like the Kinks, but pronounced like Davis --"

"Yes, that's how the Welsh pronounce it."

"So he came over tonight, you know, the condolence visit. My judgment is for shit after all that's happened; I invited him in. We were looking at some work I've got going in the workshop, and I knocked over a box of stakes. He vamped out. But he backed off from me, instead of coming on, and he defanged almost immediately. Evan says he's been clean for three hundred years."

"This is extraordinary. Did he offer any explanation?"

"No soul, if that's what you're wondering. He thought Angel was up there with Santa and the Fang Fairy, until I told him otherwise. He just, as he put it, lost the heart for it. Apparently to some we're better as entertainment than as food. He's an art lover. We're checking out his story in as many ways as possible, including anything we can find on his history."

"I'll need to consult the library. And perhaps some of my colleagues can --"

"Giles." Xander takes a breath. "Jesus, I can't believe I'm saying this, but don't expose him. Not yet. If he's telling the truth, he's been living among us for centuries without hurting anyone. If not, he'll be dead soon enough."

"Perhaps you should capture him. The things he could tell the Council --"

"I'd kill him before I'd put him in prison," Xander says. He longs for a cigarette, but the garage is full of chemicals: solvents, finishes. "Look. I know I'm confused as shit about all this. Crazy as it makes me to admit it, he was my friend. I'll dust him if I have to, but -- just get me some information."

"I'll ring you as soon as I have anything concrete. And Xander -- trust your instincts. And listen to your friends."

Yeah, the only problem is which set of instincts? The stake-em-all-let-God-sort-em-out, or the live-and-let-live? He hopes the cost of figuring that out isn't too high.

"Just in time," Dawn pronounces as he emerges from the garage. "Where do you want your cross hammered up?"

Great question for a doubter like him. Xander thinks of the joke Patrick told him during one of their many conversations about this higher power business. "How do you run a Unitarian out of town? Burn a question mark on his lawn." That's him. Question mark guy.

"You can do what Willow did, put it behind the drapes." Dawn grins. "You don't even have to worry about your mother finding it during spring housecleaning and threatening to send you to the deprogrammers."

Xander winces. "Not as funny then as it sounds now." He catches sight of Willa, with the forlorn, half-expectant smile of someone who's totally left out of a conversation. "The perils of being a teenaged Jewish vampire fighter. Our friend Willow. The redhead in the pictures."

Nailing it in plain sight feels like pretending to be something he's not; hiding it somewhere just seems chickenshit. "How about over the door?"

He gets it put up -- not too obvious but not hidden -- and Willa makes with the Latin incantation. Done. Evan's de-invited. Simple, really. He wishes it were this easy to get rid of obnoxious customers.

Xander rummages in the fridge for the bucket of chicken. Again he's lost track of the last time he ate. Now that he's shut Evan out of his house, he feels oddly trapped.

"So what did Giles say?" Dawn wants to know.

"Well, he had to jump into a phone booth to change into his Librarian Man suit. Which, god, probably will lead to an indecent exposure arrest. No wonder there's a shortage of superheroes these days."

Dawn picks through the bucket in search of dark meat. She's weird that way. "No, London phone booths are still all right." She glances at Willa, who's looking lost again. "Oh, this is just classic Xander. He's been gone for a while, but he's on his way back."

"Stop that." He uses two fingers to stripe war paint bands of chicken grease on her cheeks.

"Ew." She scrubs her face with a napkin. "You'll pay for that, Harris. But not till after you're asleep."

"So did he tell you anything yet?" Willa asks.

"Evan's very old, and the Council lost track of him. And Ieuan Goch apparently means Red Evan. Giles says it's kind of a Council parlor game, to try and figure out what happened to him. Everyone assumed it was some kind of dusty death, though."

"Wow," Dawn says. "Maybe this'll make you famous."

"Watcher-famous? Hold me back. That's even better than babe-famous. Anyhow, he'll call when he's read up. One thing he remembered. Before he disappeared, he tangled with Slayers more than once. According to the record, he killed one."

That's all it takes for the room to go a little more solemn.

Late as it is, nobody's ready to go to sleep. It's strange having company in the wee hours of the night. They forage through the funeral food, eating whatever tastes good cold. They play a few hands of cards, but lose interest early on. They speculate a little about Evan. "He's up there with the Master and Kakistos in the age department," Dawn says. "I mean, he hasn't gone pure demon-ugly, but he says he's headed that way. So why doesn't he have minions? Those two were all about the hierarchy."

"Maybe he does," Willa suggests. "You think the guys who attacked at the store could be his?"

"He doesn't seem like a minion sort of guy," Xander says. "Hell, I'm as close as he got to having a minion, and he didn't exactly jump to take me on as an apprentice. Plus those vamps at the store -- I hate to say this, given what happened, but those guys weren't that bright. I doubt Evan would waste his time with them."

"Well, isn't that the definition of minion?" Dawn asks. "If they were Einsteins, they'd have 'em, not be 'em."

"Why would he send his crew to kill one of my employees and rough me up, then show up at my house with booze for the wake?"

"He brought booze?" Willa asks.

"I didn't let him bring it in. Come on, though, is that something your criminal mastermind usually does?"

"Why did he come here at all?" Dawn asks.

"You're assuming he knew who I am."

"The other vamps did. That's what you said."

"I don't think Evan's exactly in the loop. He didn't even seem to know Angel is still around."

"If he's telling the truth," Willa says.

"Faith and I were in his shop. Neither of us got any kind of vibe off him. And I don't think he guessed she was a Slayer -- hell, I remember thinking he liked her. You didn't see his reaction when all those stakes hit the floor."

"There had to be more than a hundred of those things," Dawn says. "He'd have been freaked out even if he knew who you were."

"I'm still not convinced he did." Xander glances out the kitchen window, sees the first pink streaks of the oncoming day. "If he was responsible for that attack, why did he come here alone? If I was the local vampire boss and my intimidation tactics bought my people a daylight raid, that would be the end of the chitchat. Evan had plenty of time and opportunity in the garage. Hell, he could've snapped my neck while we were talking on the front porch. Whatever he is, whatever he wants, I think he's in this on his own."

They sit in silence for a while, the girls riding that wave of stupefied exhaustion that hits after an all-nighter.

"Are we making coffee," Dawn finally says, "or are we going to bed?"

"This is strictly decaf hour for me," Xander says. "I think you two should get some sleep. I'll be joining you in a couple of hours."

"Ooooooh," says Dawn.

"You are so twelve."

"I learned from a master of twelve, if you'll remember. So where do I sleep?"

Damn. They'd never gotten that sorted out. "Faith made a little room with a cot downstairs, but she could stay with me --"

"If you want a real bed, you could share with me tonig -- um, today," Willa tells Dawn. "Since that's where we stashed your bags. The bed's big enough."

"You sleep in a little ball smack in the middle of the --" Ah, shit. Both Dawn and Willa are staring at him. "I, uh, know, um, because of that one time. You were in the guest room. I, uh, looked in on -- let me get you some towels." He peels off down the hallway to the linen closet.

Dawn goes to collect her things from Willa's room, but collapses on one side of the bed. "I'm going to lie here for just a minute." The next second, she's unconscious.

"I know how that kid sleeps," Xander tells Willa. "You just got yourself a roommate."

"I don't mind. I offered. Oh. I brought you something." She darts into the room for a moment, takes a book off the bed. "I got this at the apartment to give to you. Some poems by Federico Garcia Lorca. He wrote some really gorgeous poems about gypsy music and guitars. I marked one for you."

She flashes around him into the bathroom, and he stands in the middle of the hallway, opening the book in the dim light.

Riddle of the Guitar

In the round
crossroads,
six maidens
are dancing.
Three of flesh
and three of silver.
Yesterday's dreams search for them,
but a golden Polyphemus
is embracing them.
The guitar!

He is still standing there when he hears his car pull into the drive and the soft thunk of its door. Faith's back.

She comes in with a bakery sack, wafting the scent of hot cinnamon. "I know I have hundreds of the bastards here in the fridge, but they taste extra special when they're as big as your head." She kisses him, already flavored with spice and icing. "I brought you one. Figured the girls would be conked out by now."

"They are." Xander starts a small pot of decaf. "How'd it go?"

"It didn't. He didn't. I followed him home, and that's where he stayed."

"Where's he live?"

"Looks like he lives above the store." She sets out dessert plates, puts a Cinnabon on each. She's not far wrong about the size. "I'm not sure if it's a legal set-up -- nothing else in the area looked like it had living space above. What I could see of the room facing the street looked like an office. There's a room -- maybe more -- back behind that. I could see movement in the light back there, not much else. Before dawn, something sealed that light off, no cracks or chinks shining through."

"Makes sense. I wondered how he got to the store. His hours start in the mid to late afternoon, and sometimes he's there earlier than that."

"I wonder what brought him to Spokane." She swipes a finger across the icing and licks it off. "What brought you here?"

"Nothing," Xander says. "That's pretty hard to find, you know."

"You mean you were looking for nothing?"

"Different kinds of nothing. Nothing supernatural, nothing that reminded me of Anya, nothing that made me feel like getting hammered every night. Someplace where I could just fade into the background."

"You think that's what brought Evan here?"

"Could be."

"It makes sense to me, if his story's true." She cocks her bare heel up on the seat of her chair and hooks an arm around her lower leg, which makes Xander nearly dizzy with desire for her. "Did you get anything from Giles?"

He fills her in on what little he knows. "He's hitting the books, and will be in touch. What do you think? About Evan's story?"

"It's been nagging at me all night. Because -- it's not the shape of story I'd expect it to be. I'm not saying it's not true, not yet. Just that -- well, I'm used to the redemption story. Or the attempted-redemption story, actually. Angel says we'll never really find it, neither one of us, but we can't ever stop working toward it."

"Angel said that?"

Faith nods. "I know there's a lot of bad blood between you two. But he's important to me. The idea of redemption is important to me -- whether or not I think I'll ever get any for myself." She tears off a piece of pastry, pops it into her mouth. "Can you ever believe in it?"

This is a crucial question, Xander knows. It's important to give the right answer. Even more important to give the true one. "I wish I had an easy answer for that."

"Maybe I'm glad you don't. Go on and give me the complicated answer."

The coffeemaker wheezes, and Xander rises to pour two cups of decaf. "Sometimes I feel like this is what my life's about -- that itchy, uncomfortable suspension between doubt and belief, which I think just mixed some really unmixy metaphors." He sets one of the mugs in front of her and sits down with his own. "I spend all this time in the rooms -- not enough lately, Willa and I both need to be hitting more meetings -- yet the whole higher power thing is something I'm still on the fence about. It's really uncomfortable, but I go, because it's that or drink and maybe never stop."

"Which is maybe like working toward redemption even if you don't think you can attain it," Faith says. "Because what happens when you don't is so much worse than uncomfortable."

"You went to the cops on your own, I heard."

"Yes and no. I mean, yeah, I walked into the precinct house alone, and I knew why I was there. But I couldn't have done it without Angel showing me why that was worth doing. Why I was worth trying to save."

Xander fusses with his mug for a moment, gaze fixed on the pattern of brown rings he's making on the tabletop. "Do you feel saved?"

She laughs. "I don't know. I do feel safe. As in 'not a danger.'"

"Would you do it again? Turn yourself in, I mean."

There's another long pause while she busies herself with her pastry. "I would. In a way, when I went to prison I was the least scared I had been in a long time. Don't ask me to explain that, cause I know I can't."

"So what you've been through, that's why there's something that feels off about Evan's story."

She shifts in her chair, lowering her foot to the floor and tucking the other beneath her. "Not 'off' in the sense that I think he's lying, necessarily. Like I said, the shape of it doesn't fit the kind of stories that hit us as humans." Faith waves her hand dismissively. "I know I'm making no sense at all. We tell certain stories, over and over. Redemption's a big favorite. But that's not what he's telling. He hasn't seen the light. He said himself, he wasn't struck blind on the road -- I know some Bible guy is who he's talking about, but I don't know which. Evan just decided he didn't feel like killing anymore. Is that something we trust? If we don't, is it because it doesn't follow the kind of myth that means something to us, or because it's actually invalid? If we decided to kill him just based on what he's done in the past and the idea that he can't change, is that just because we aren't speaking the same language, or because he's got a nature that won't ever change? How the fuck do we figure that out? That's what I was trying to work out while I was sitting out there watching his place."

Xander shakes his head. "You're making my brain hurt."

She looks away, coloring. "Faith's gone all deep an' shit."

"Hey." Reaching out with two fingers to touch her chin, he gently turns her face back toward him. "They're serious questions. They need to be asked. We're maybe seeing something that's never been encountered."

"Or maybe it has been, but the Council's kept a lid on it. You never know with those bastards."

"I'd never thought of that. You, on the other hand, have been doing a lot of thinking."

"Picked up that nasty habit in prison." She flashes her dimples. "Can't masturbate all the time."

Now it's Xander who reddens. "Jesus!"

She takes another swipe of icing and licks it off, then offers it to him in a kiss as she deposits herself on his lap. "We can philosophize when the kids are up. I got other thoughts about right now."

So does Xander, and they tie in with the lap and the leg thing she'd been doing and the friction of her sugary tongue against his teeth and the sticky fingers she's threading through his hair. Maybe also with the aphrodisiac qualities of cinnamon, which he's read something about. Definitely with the word "masturbate." He makes a low, helpless noise in his throat.

"I guess you'll be needing some help with this immobilizer thing," Faith murmurs. "And your shirt buttons."

"I think so," he whispers. "All kinds of help."

She slides off his lap, still hovering over him. "We'd better get right on that," she says, offering a hand to help him up and draw him down the hall to the bedroom.

It's hard to top the rush he gets from just having the immobilizer off, but Faith manages. She helps him undress and urges him onto his back, where she teases him with feathery strokes, so light that it feels more like the warmth of the molecules between his skin and hers than her actual touch. His brain is adamant that he inform Faith he's capable of -- talented at, even -- other positions too, which he'll gladly demonstrate once he's healed. But his body is so happy with conditions as they are that he's speechless, or at least sentenceless.

Afterward, they lie tangled together, sweat cooling on their skin.

"How's your shoulder?"

"Sore, but better. I'm going to leave off the immobilizer for a while once I get up, see how it goes."

"You need to get back to your guitar."

Xander smiles. "Yeah."

"You did some thinking too, while I was out."

"You mean the switch from 'stake now' to let's investigate'?"

Faith nods. "Was it Willa?"

"Not so much. Some, maybe. I don't actually think there's a line of reasoning that would make sense to anyone, even me. I just started thinking about my father."

"Was he like Evan?"

"God, no. I think -- I think he was like me. Which I've never actually thought about before. I used to think maybe I was like him; I was afraid of becoming like him."

She puts her hand over his heart, one of the gestures he loves most from her. It pulls him out of himself, and at the same time connects him to the best part of himself. "What was he like?"

"Scared. Lonely. If you'd asked me this just a few days ago, I'd have said 'scary.' But suddenly I saw him in the way I attacked Willa, in how I went after Evan. I saw myself in the way he used to be. All I could ever think of before was how scared I was -- it never occurred to me he probably was just as terrified in his own way."

"What was scary about him? Did he hit you?"

"More of a yeller. A ranter, a hurler of crockery. With a minor in sarcasm. Which is not to say I didn't come in for the occasional smacking. You know, palm-of-hand-meets-back-of-head." He demonstrates with an air smack. "The international sign language for hey, dumbass."

"Big drinker?"

"It's family tradition."

"I can't get too worked up with compassion for him. Sorry."

"I've gotta admit, it's a weird feeling. And a few years too late to do me much good."

"Except somehow this translates into you not killing Evan."

Xander flips a hand in a not-excruciating approximation of a shrug. "Plus he says 'cat'."

"Cat?" she repeats, riding on a laugh.

"Yeah, you know, as in 'I was talking with this cat at the gig....' Years ago I was watching some show on VH1 or something with Carl Perkins, and it was this cat and that cat, and I thought it was about time that made a comeback. Except if you're not Carl Perkins, you can't really say it without sounding like an asshole. Unless you're Evan. So one day we get into this conversation about making things, what's practicality and what's art, and he starts off a sentence with 'Cats like Michaelangelo....' It sounds kind of stupid when I say it, but he pulls it off, and holy fuck."

"What?"

"For all we know, he knew Michaelangelo."

She's quiet for a moment. "No kidding, holy fuck. If it's true, that makes the whole abstinence thing make a little more sense, doesn't it?"

"If it's true. We need to talk to Giles before we get too carried away."

"That Giles cat," Faith says, going all dimpled.

"Some people are never cats," Xander says.

"I don't know about that."

"Not a cat."

"He married an Italian chick. Anything could happen." Her hands start roaming again, accompanied by little flicks of her tongue.

"Anything but that. Giles is not a -- hey, quit that."

"What?"

"You can't win an argument by playing the nipple card. It's un--" He sucks in a breath.

"We're arguing?"

"Not, um ... Not anymore." He reaches for her, drawing her closer for a kiss.

He'll worry about that cat Giles later.

He sleeps hard and dreamless after going so long without rest. It's like a tar pit, and he drags himself out slowly and with difficulty. He's alone in his bed, curled in on himself with a pile of pillows supporting his bad arm.

Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he reaches for the cigarettes before he stops himself and picks up the phone instead. When Peg answers after four rings, Xander stumbles over his name, making a false start with "Alex." "I wanted to see how you're doing."

"I don't know. I thought I'd go in to work tonight. It's too hard to sit around at home. But then thinking about being at the store without Damon being there --" She starts to cry.

He's good with the holding and murmuring meaningless encouragement, but his phone comforting skills are for shit. He rides out her tears, then says, "Peg. Honey. If you don't want to be alone, you're welcome to come here. I don't know if this is encouragement or warning, but if you come, you'll be a full member of the club."

"The things Faith said I might not want to know?"

"Yeah. You'd have to be prepared for them. We've got things we'll be discussing. Nothing we can put off."

"I don't know. I'm not sure I'm ready." Is it that, Xander wonders, or does she still blame him for what happened?

"It's all right. Come if you want. Before dark would be better." He gets off the phone and reaches for his cigarettes. The smoke makes his eye burn and his vision blur. Xander sits on the edge of the bed thinking about how things were with Anya way back between the wedding disaster and the honest-to-god disaster disaster. How it felt to have lost someone while still having to see her and talk to her every day. That's about where things with Peggy feel, except for the sex part and the almost-marrying part. The love part is there -- a radically different sort of love, but it's there. He should give up this love shit. It never does anything but burn.

Xander stubs out the cigarette and heads for the shower.

When he emerges, there's coffee (hi-test) and a note saying there's a fritatta in the fridge he can heat up. He heads for the basement instead. Faith and Willa are training, while Dawn sits down there with a couple of open texts, scrawling in a notebook.

It's been a while since he's watched two Slayers training together. It's nothing like Buffy whaling on poor, padded Giles. The rough-and-tumble would make him cringe (especially now, battered as he is), except for the obvious joy in their bodies and strength that he senses from both Faith and her student. He wonders if Willa's ever had a chance to revel in this, to feel her power without being afraid or embarrassed by it. He watches them for a moment, paused halfway down the stairs, until Faith notices him and calls a break.

"Any of the cats heard from?" he asks her.

Faith grins. "Just Kevin. He'll be here in about an hour."

He nods. "All right. I'll be in my workshop till he gets here." Xander takes his insulated mug into the garage, laces his feet into his workboots, and contemplates his guitar. Impatience surges through him. He'd thought he'd be so much further along. Evan, he knows, would tell him to take a step back, that guitars take time and rushing guarantees nothing but a flawed result. Yeah, well, Evan's got time for guitars -- being immortal will do that for you. Xander takes a couple of boxes of binder clips off the shelf, and begins to glue the linings in place, clamping each section with a big black clip. All he'll manage this evening is lining the back, but there's time to do a decent job of it before Straley appears.

Time to fall back into the rhythm of the work, to a place where time ceases to matter at all.

Xander's just finishing scraping the excess hide glue from around the lining when Straley arrives, the bearer of a Krispy Kreme box.

"Sorry," he tells Faith when she fixes him with a look. "This isn't an hour for fresh donuts anywhere but there. My local place closes at three."

"At least you brought enough for everyone," Dawn comments. "Unlike the Cinnabon people, who think only of themselves."

"You were asleep," Xander says.

"I do wake up, you know."

Faith ruffles Dawn's hair. "Deal."

"See that, Kevin?" Dawn says. "See the compassion?"

Once everyone is sitting at the table, Kevin launches into his report. "Evan's either telling the truth, or he's unbelievably good at flying under the radar. I checked out a lot of possibilities, couldn't find any patterns. First, I looked up murders involving icepicks or neck trauma of some kind. Both solved and unsolved, since there's always the chance of someone getting dragged in as a suspect when things don't otherwise make sense. Other than the ones that just started happening here, I only came up with a couple. Both seemed pretty straightforward -- bar fight type of thing, where the killer's found standing over the victim with a bloody knife in his hand. I looked at the coroner's reports on those, just in case, and there's nothing approximating a puncture wound, just slashes. The kind of thing where it's just an unfortunate accident that it's a murder instead of assault and battery. I hung around until I could talk to the detective in charge of the current investigations, and he didn't remember ever seeing anything like this either. So it looks like our guy's not littering the city with bodies."

"What about other unsolved cases?" Xander asks. "Any chance of neck trauma being overlooked when there's some other clear cause of death?"

"I took a look at those, too. Found nothing noted in the autopsy reports. With the exception of two cases where bodies were found in remote locations and were too badly decomposed for a clear determination." Straley flips a page in the small memo book where he's scrawled his notes. "Those look consistent with our Portland serial killer, though. I made sure they got flagged for the task force to take a look at."

Xander asks, "Do you have an ID on the victims in those cases?"

"Yeah." Straley squints to read his handwriting. "Both methamphetamine users, sometime-prostitutes. Pretty much the typical victim of this guy."

"I doubt it would be Evan," Xander says. "True, that's the sort of victim who's not missed the way someone who's more rooted in the community would be, but the blood is adulterated. There was a doping scandal on my high school swim team, and the first the Scoobies knew of it was when a vamp caught one of these guys and wouldn't even drain him."

"There are drugs vamps will absorb," Faith adds. "But the strongest ones are magical in origin. Kind of a symbiotic thing, where a human doses up with the stuff, then the vampire feeds. Not, of course, to the point of death. It's a pretty powerful high for both." She picks a donut out of the box. "That's the word, anyway."

"That ring a bell, Kevin? Anything in the toxicology reports that didn't add up?"

"Not that I saw. Just meth. There's a lot of it around; our guys know what to look for."

Xander nods. "I'd go with your intuition on that. Probably the Portland guy. I don't think Evan got to be a thousand plus by eating junkies. So what'd you find on disappearances?"

"Not enough to account for an active vampire. Just a handful that weren't solved, and most of those had a real smell of something that explained everything, but there wasn't enough evidence to go on. Like a husband that looked pretty suspicious, or a teenager disappearing who'd always talked about running away to Hollywood. We investigate those until there's nothing left to go on, but can't always get them closed."

"Okay," Xander says. "So everything you've found seems to support Evan's story."

"Seems to."

"The next question's going to be, how much do we weight that against whatever Giles tells us."

"So your history guy hasn't called yet," Straley says.

"No. Which either means there's nothing, or there's a lot."

"If the Council made a parlor game out of what speculating about happened to him," Dawn says, "there must be a lot on him somewhere."

"Could be. But there's no guarantee it wasn't all lost when the Council headquarters blew up five years ago."

Willa, who's been silent up till now, asks, "What's it matter what his history turns out to be? Now is what's important, and Kevin's got proof that he's harmless."

"Not exactly," Straley says. "I've got no proof that he's harmed anyone. It's not the same."

Willa thumps her coffee mug onto the table. "Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?"

"Oh yeah," Faith says. "That's the tagline to some tv show, isn't it? Cops, I think."

"He's got no rights because he's a vampire?"

Xander meets her challenging gaze. "Believe me, Willa, he's gotten way more consideration these last 24 hours than I would have given him a few years ago. One thing you have to understand is, we'll never know that he's harmless. Even Angel, who appointed himself some kind of fanged avenger for the forces of good -- when he lost his soul, he left a trail of bodies behind him. Including one of my friends. You can't ever assume a vampire's been neutered."

"We're waiting till we know more, Willa," Faith says. "It only makes sense."

"Fine," Willa says. "I'll shut up now."

"No one's trying to shut you up," Xander says. As appealing as that sounds. "We're not sitting here planning a commando raid, are we?"

"No. Just biding your time until you hear from your Watcher friend and then you can plan it. Go ahead and pretend that's not what's happening, but don't expect me to play along." She stands up and peels off for her bedroom.

Xander sighs and looks at Faith. "Did I at some point during this Boy Watcher thing give off the impression that I think I know what I'm doing? Because I have no fucking idea what I'm doing." Rising, he goes to the back door, lights a cigarette and blows the smoke out the back.

"She's learning," Dawn says. "You've seen hundreds of vampires; she's seen a handful."

"Tell that to her," he snaps. "Far as I can tell, it doesn't mean shit to her."

A hurt expression flickers across her face, but she says nothing.

He sighs again. "I'm sorry, Dawn. I'm just unbelievably frustrated here. I think I'm getting the payback for all the gray hairs your sister and I caused Giles."

"I get what you mean," Dawn says. "Though I've personally never had any experience with someone I care about being a complete rockhead." She flashes big, innocent eyes at him.

Pitching his cigarette into the sand-filled can by the door, he turns back to the others. "We have two vamps left from the store attack. What do you say we plan how we're going to find them and kill them?

Toward the end of the strategy session, Xander notices the time and excuses himself. "If we go now, Willa and I can make the 6:30 meeting. With all that's been going on, we've missed too many. I know I can't really do a good job with her unless I'm taking care of myself."

Willa agrees without an argument to go, though the ride to the church is nearly silent. At the meeting itself, he finds himself at the center of attention before things get started. Everyone's read or heard about Damon's murder, has seen Xander's picture in the Spokesman, the Rosauers headshot from the Employee of the Month board, with his wary half-power smile. He gets more hugs than he'd have expected, more than the shoulder can take, but he manages not to yelp.

Coming back, the atmosphere is a little less heavy. "I finally get why you never say anything during the meetings," Willa says. "I had you figured as some kind of Gary Cooper figure. Silent but strong, you know? But now -- well, you can't really talk about anything, can you?"

He's surprised how much this stings. If she'd laid the Gary Cooper on him when she first asked him to sponsor her, he'd have been the first to tell her that wasn't him. But her realization of this now is just another sign that he's losing influence with her.

"I mean," she goes on, "you can't say, 'I nearly got myself killed by a vampire last night.' Not without looking like you had a major relapse."

"Well, no. But for the past four years, I haven't had anything remotely like that to say. Just boring life stuff. Work, bad dates, grief."

"But you couldn't really talk about what tipped you into drinking. Not without editing."

"Bad genes tipped me into drinking. Wanting to blunt the pain I felt. It's not all that different from everyone else's story."

Willa's silent for a moment, then abruptly asks, "Did you ever do any of those magical drugs Faith was talking about?"

He shakes his head. "There's not a high on earth that would make me get that close to a vampire." But then he remembers that girl he met on his summer road trip. Vaughnie the vengeance demon, with her magic-laced weed that stretched time to a slow crawl, that made him believe they were having phenomenal sex. "Wait. Now that I think of it, I did. Not the stuff Faith mentioned, but I smoked some weed I thought was plain old grass. It made me believe certain things happened that really didn't."

"Where'd you get it from?"

"A girl. Who turned out to be a demon." He remembers how hazy it had made everything, perpetually wrapped in a golden, late afternoon light. Beyond that and the vast quantities of earthbound shit he'd taken in Sturgis that summer, he hadn't been one for drugs so much as alcohol. But the memory of Vaughnie stirs up a fierce longing for that golden glow, the stretched taffy quality of time. The sense that everything was all right, that he was with someone who understood him perfectly.

"So you killed her, right?"

Xander laughs sharply. "No. She ... got away."

Shuddering, Willa makes a noise of disgust. "I wish you hadn't told me that. The idea that you can be talking with someone, or something more -- I mean, you knew her well enough to share drugs with her -- and then they could turn out to be a demon. Jesus, I'm going to have nightmares now."

What would she think if she knew about Anya?

Well, she won't. He'll see to that.

She pulls the car into his drive and he's halfway out the door before she gets it put into park. As he steps onto the porch a patch of faded brown on the ground catches his eye, and he realizes Evan left his bourbon stashed behind the bushes when he took off last night.

Willa's right on his heels, so he continues into the house without giving a sign. Better to have Faith or Dawn get rid of it, someone who can pour it out without the smell curling into her memory and fucking with her head.

When he enters the living room, Dawn's sprawled on the couch with the phone, in the middle of an animated conversation. It makes him smile. Apart from the occasional existential freakout, which she more than anyone is completely entitled to, she's grown into a happy young woman. The monks did something right, giving her the capacity for joy despite the things she's seen and endured. Sometimes he wishes they were still around so he could ask them to install that in him -- or screw with his memory, anyway. Maybe it wasn't them, though. Maybe it's the essence of what she really is. He'd like to think that cosmic energy is pure joy, though he's not quite come around to believing it.

"Oh! He's here." She scrambles up from the sofa. "I told you it wouldn't be long. Give Catarina a big hug for me, okay? And save one for yourself." She thrusts the phone toward Xander. "It's Giles," she says unnecessarily.

"Hey, G." It's impossible not to pick up her energy. "Have you been at this all night?" Must be four or five in the morning in London. "Just like old times, huh?"

"I must be losing my edge in my advanced age," Giles answers. "I did have to stop and sleep for two hours."

Xander drops into the nearest chair, massaging his shoulder. "Thanks for your time, Giles. What did you find?"

"There's a reason he's remembered and speculated about even today. Ieuan Goch cut quite a swath through Europe in his time, ultimately becoming as notorious as Angelus was in later years."

Xander sighs. "That's a comparison I really didn't want to hear."

"It's even suggested in some texts that Angelus' predilection for ... showmanship was an attempt to cut an even bolder figure than Red Evan."

"So you're saying Red Evan was a sadistic fuck, something on the order of puppy-nailing Angel?"

"Not at all. That's apparently where Angelus thought he could outshine his role model. As far as I can tell from the texts I've found, Red Evan was coldly efficient in his killing, not inclined toward excess as a perverse sort of art form."

"Gee, that's a relief." He looks up to find Dawn standing over him with the ice pack, and he realizes he's been rubbing the shoulder from the moment he entered the house, maybe even before. He lets her settle the gel pack over his shoulder. "So it's just body count we're talking here. He was a product of his day, then, all Bravehearty barbarianism and --"

"No. He was a product of his demon nature. Welsh society around 900 A.D. produced great works of literature and laws that were remarkably forward thinking. Perhaps the cultural respect for civilization and intellect had something to do with his eventual decision to stop preying on humans, if you believe that's in fact what he's done."

"Well, that's the thing, Giles. Kevin here's just been over the police records for the past 40 years in Spokane -- that's about the time Evan says he moved here. There's nothing that seems to support the idea of an active vampire until the last few months, which is when we started seeing typical Sunnydale-type vampire activity -- along with typical Sunnydale-type vamps. I've killed three, Kevin killed one, Willa killed one, and then there were three more dusted in the raid after the attack at my job. He's either reformed or he's way smarter than any of us. And if he's that smart, why aren't we dead?"

"This is very difficult for you, isn't it?" Giles asks gently.

"I've only known the guy a few weeks, and it's not like we got to know each other in any deep way, not like I know my AA sponsor. But yeah, he was my mentor in a very specific realm, and in a strange way it feels like I've lost a father." It feels weird to be admitting this connection to Giles after all the years Xander spent longing for a similar connection with him. "Every five minutes I flip back and forth between Evil Dead Must Be Destroyed and Hey, Who's He Hurting? Is it enough that he's not hurting anyone? He's not helping. Evan refuses point-blank to take sides. Is he participating in evil if he won't take the other side? I come up with a different answer every time I ask myself this. Does that mean I'm losing sight of everything I've learned?"

"It means you've learned new things since you thought you'd learned everything."

Xander is silent for a moment before he says, "I know that must be wise, because it makes my brain hurt."

"Back in Sunnydale, especially during the first few years, you saw things in black and white. You were young, it's only natural. I viewed things in a much more clear-cut way myself, and was encouraged to do so by the Council. We've both experienced a great deal since then. Faced enmity from those we thought were our allies and forged alliances with those we'd viewed as the enemy. It's maturity that makes this situation so painful for you."

"So pain is the free toy surprise that comes with being grown up. Thanks for warning us, all those years ago."

Giles laughs softly. "I do believe I did."

"Well, there's one bright spot. No matter where my feelings happen to lie on this matter at any given second, I know Willa's right there, certain that I'm 100 percent wrong. She's managed to make me feel like a war criminal and a bleeding heart sap, all in the space of a half-hour. I think you'd better get someone else to do this, Giles. I have no control over this girl at all."

"She disagrees with you?"

"Always."

"Heavens. That's completely unsuitable. Next she'll be making caustic remarks. Ignoring your advice. Lying to you or neglecting to tell you everything. Bashing you over the head to keep you out of danger."

"All right, all right, I get it."

"An adversarial relationship between Slayer and Watcher may be inevitable. Excepting Kendra, of course. The strength and force of will that makes a girl suited to being a Slayer is bound to cause friction. It's possible we had the most fractious relationship of any Watcher and Slayer, but I don't think it's a coincidence that Buffy has lived longer than any other Slayer in history. Don't be afraid to talk things out with Willa. Don't be afraid to trust your own instincts."

This isn't the first time he's said this to Xander. Faith's told him the same thing. You'd think it would be easy advice to follow -- why is it so damn difficult?

"I know you're tired," Xander says. "Tell me what else you found out about Red Evan, and I'll let you go."

He sits on the bed as Dawn packs, getting caught up on her classes, a couple of potential boyfriends, and Buffy. Her trip to Australia is coming up next week.

"Knowing me and my letter writing skills, I won't get a card out to her before she goes," Xander says. "Tell her I said thanks for the flowers." She wasn't the only one who sent them -- Giles and Catarina had also sent an arrangement, as well as Willow.

"They've got this crazy new invention now called the telephone," Dawn says. "You can actually use it to talk to people on the other side of the world. Instantaneously."

"Funny."

"She misses you."

Xander doubts that.

"Don't make that face. She does. If you could get on the phone to Giles, I don't see what's so hard about Buffy."

He's rescued from having to answer by a clatter from the kitchen as Willa and Faith come up from their training session in the basement. Dawn leaps to her feet. "I've gotta jump in the shower. Those two are such bathroom hogs, and I have to be in bed at a reasonable hour."

He rises too. "I'm sorry you have to leave so soon."

"Yeah, me too." She slips her arms around Xander and holds him close.

"I can't tell you how much it means that you came out here. I know school's really busy for you right now."

"Glory and all her scabby minions couldn't have kept me away, buddy."

His throat tightens. "That's all very touching, but please don't bring 'em with."

Dawn releases him, favors him with a smile. "God, you're so sappy. Make sure I'm up by 5:15, okay?" She flits into the bathroom. After a moment he trails behind her to the hallway, then follows the Slayers' noise into the kitchen.

"There's the man I want to see." Faith looks up from the fridge, hands him a store-brand soda. "How about a smoke?"

"Sure." They step onto the back porch, Faith moving past him to the pair of Adirondack chairs in the yard. They'd come with the house, those chairs. At the time he bought the place, he'd never have thought to buy more than one. "How's it going?"

"She's picking up the fighting real well. She's still working her way through the other stuff."

"At least that's going well. On the other hand, I don't have the faintest fucking clue what I'm doing."

"You're just working your way through some stuff, too. What did Giles say?"

"More or less the reserved British version of 'I always hoped your kids would turn out just like you, neener neener.'"

Faith laughs, and the weight seems to lift from his shoulders a little.

"What did you want to talk to me about?"

Faith shifts in her chair. "Did I say I wanted to talk to you about something?"

Xander thinks back. "You said, 'There's the man I want to see.'"

"That's because you're the man I want to see. Otherwise I would've said, 'There's the man I want to talk to about something.'"

Xander tips his head against the wooden back of the chair, content for a moment to sit here with Faith, sharing a smoke. After a companionable silence, he says, "Somehow I get the feeling there's a story."

"There's never not a story. Now what the hell are you talking about?"

"That drug you told us about. That vamps ingest filtered through people."

She grunts. "Orpheus. Yeah, there's a story." She's silent for a long while, her cigarette winking red in the gathering dark.

"Listen," Xander finally says. "I won't pry. We've all got shit we don't want to tell. Forget I asked."

"Nah, it's all right." She draws her legs up, Indian-fashion. "Yeah, I had an experience with Orpheus. Not exactly how you're thinking, though." There's another long pause. "It had to do with Angel. I know he's not your favorite topic."

He laughs. "You don't have to protect me."

"Maybe it's not you I'm protecting." Her voice is so quiet he knows she's deadly serious.

"I think he can handle anything I can --"

"I'm not talking about him either." The red dot glows. "Angel's important to me, Xander. I wouldn't be alive if it weren't for him. And either you deal, or eventually we have problems." It's just light enough that he can see her chin rise as she fixes him in her gaze, but he knows she can make out no more than his shape.

"All right," he finally says. "I can stop being a dick about him, for you. Maybe I can even give him a chance."

"Don't strain yourself," she replies, but he can hear humor in her voice, and he thinks it's okay. "So while you all were busy fighting the First, before I got there, they had their own end-of-the-world shit going on. You'd think the forces of evil would try and coordinate their efforts a little more or work their schedules out better, but I guess it's like the Russians and the U.S. trying to get to space first. It's not good enough that the world ends, it's got to be your bunch that does it." Faith's not much for running off on tangents, so the fact that she's on a Harris-sized digression is not lost on him. He reaches out, takes her hand. "To make a long story incomprehensible, Angelus came out to play."

Xander sucks in his breath. "Jesus."

"Yeah. Maybe it'll tell you how bad things were that it was the good guys who brought him out. They thought he'd have some inside track on how to kill this demon they were facing."

"Weren't they forgetting a little detail? Like Angelus, big fan of world-endage?" He's trying to walk a line here, not say anything against Angel, but this piece of information just begs for the description mind-boggling. "And, you know, evil?"

"I know. File it under Desperation, Complete, and maybe it makes a little sense. If you squint. Anyway, where I came into it was when they couldn't manage to get the genie back into the bottle. Got another coffin nail?"

He hands over the pack and his lighter.

"I do get it now, why it's hard for you to let your thing with Angel go. That fucker Angelus knows just where to stick in the knife, and of course all the knowledge he's using came from Angel's head." He hears her take in a mouthful of smoke, then slowly release it. "He played all sorts of psychological games with me, not to mention beating me down. In the end, he bit me." Another pause. "I spiked his drink. Shot myself up with this Orpheus stuff. It was like ... like we took the fight inside. I was in his head, it seemed like I was there physically walking through his history." Another wink of red. "Angelus sure loves living in other people's heads, but he hates having someone walking through his own. I nearly died doing it, but we brought Angel back."

"You ever had the desire to use that stuff again?" He understands the seduction of certain shit, even when you know it'll kill you.

"No way. It's different for Slayers. It gets amplified somehow. It dragged me down into a coma they didn't know if I'd ever pull out of. You know how appealing I find comas. They thought I'd die. I thought I'd die."

"Wow. You risked a lot for him."

"Wasn't anything I didn't owe him."

This is a bond he'll never be able to share, and it makes him feel petty and small that this inspires some jealousy, much as he tries to stifle it.

Faith's hand finds his in the dark. "Angel wasn't the first to believe in me. That just happened to be the first time it took."

He squeezes back. "Guess we should get inside. It's vampire weather all of a sudden." They rise and walk back to the house, still holding hands. "You think Angel would have some perspective on Evan? Maybe we should give him a call."

Xander lays out the reasons why it's best that Faith make the approach.

"Sure, I'll call him."

She heads to the basement to find her address book. Willa's sitting at the kitchen table with a poetry book and a diet soda. There's some indefinable something he's picking up from her, a mood he can't quite name.

"How's the training going?"

"I'm sure you just asked Faith the same thing." She doesn't even look up.

"I would have been asking Faith what she thought about how it's going. Now I'm asking you what you think."

She lets the book fall closed. "It's good. I think. Faith mostly tells me I'm doing well."

"But?"

"It's weird for me. I've spent my whole life excelling at academic stuff, not the physical. My parents sent me to schools where they didn't even play games that had winners and losers. This whole fighting and beating people up thing takes some getting used to. The idea that they aren't even people takes some adjustment, too."

"Maybe it doesn't sink in until you see someone you knew, see the difference between who they were and the thing they are now. They take on aspects of the people they were, but it's all kind of broken up and turned all weird, sorta like a kaleidoscope. It's just a dark and ugly one. I hope you'll never experience that."

"Then how does somebody like Evan seem so human?" The question seems less of a challenge this time than an attempt at understanding.

"That's what we're still trying to figure out. Faith's going to give a call to her friend Angel. I'm not altogether certain there is 'somebody like Evan.' He might be the only one of his kind. He might not even be what he says he is. The evidence is stacking up on his side, but we still don't know."

Faith thunders up the basement stairs, battered address book in hand. "Hope this is still good. Can't just dial 1-800-EVILLAWYER anymore if it's not." She rounds up the cordless from the living room and punches in numbers. Waits a moment, then breathes. "Angel. Hey, Angel, it's Faith.... Good, fine.... No, not anymore. I'm out in Washington state, working with Xander. We're training a new Slayer he found here.... Yeah, yeah, it's good. Listen, there's something Xander wants to talk to you about." She thrusts the phone at him and jerks her head toward the door. "Willa and I are goin' on patrol."

He mouths a silent hey! but she's already halfway out the door, Willa in tow. He sighs, then lifts the phone. "Hello, Angel. It's been a long time. How's life --" he winces -- "uh, been treating you?"

"Things are all right. You know, I'm not so much into inflicting pain anymore. You can skip the small talk."

Xander laughs. "I'm trying something new. It's called being pleasant."

"Not that new," Angel says. "I remember the flowers you sent for Cordy's memorial, and your note."

Hard to believe it's been four years. "I've always been sorry I missed that. I really wasn't in any shape for it, though." He hadn't been drinking then. He'd had a shiny thirty-day chip which he'd set on the kitchen table as he wrote, like some kind of talisman.

"I heard some bits and pieces. Things are better?"

How weird is this? Talking to Angel about things that really matter. Somehow it's possible over the phone. "Some better, some worse. My life's pretty much on track, but I just buried a friend. Someone who worked for me."

"Xander, I'm sorry. Was it ... related to your work with your Slayer?"

"It was vampires, yeah."

"How can I help you?"

"It's not about that, but it's vampire-related. I was wondering if you'd ever heard about vampires who go off human blood. Other than the souled and the chipped."

There's a brief silence. "Well, I suppose there's Harmony."

"What's that? Some kind of movement?"

"No, just the one, thank goodness. My secretary, when I was at Wolfram & Hart. Harmony Kendall. She kinda went on the patch now and again, nothing longterm--"

"I'm talking hundreds of-- Harmony Kendall? Harmony Kendall was your secretary?"

"Well, yeah. She wasn't without skills."

"That was the word in high school, but I wouldn't know. She stopped drinking blood?"

"Human blood, yeah. Intermittently. You said hundreds--?"

"Right. Sorry. Have you heard of any vamps renouncing it for good? As in centuries."

"There've been stories."

"Know anyone who's ever claimed it?"

"No. In vampire circles it's only likely to get you killed."

"Those the circles you're traveling in these days? Tell me, do they sit around trying to guess whatever happened to ol' Ieuan Goch? The Watchers do, you know."

"Well, that's not exactly the crowd I'm running with, no. But with a few exceptions, vampires are a pretty live-for-the-moment bunch. Not all that much reminiscing over the glory days."

How disappointing for you, the old Xander would have said to the old Angel. Doesn't seem necessary now. "You were always pretty up on your history. Know him?"

"Oh yeah. Red Evan. He was notorious in his day. Ranged throughout Europe, left a lot of bodies behind him. Sired a good many vampires, too. Far as I can tell, he outlived most of his known progeny. He was a very smart vampire."

"Smart enough to still be around?"

Angel laughs. "That's a quaint notion. Red Evan disappeared around three hundred -- Wait a minute. Are you suggesting what it sounds like you're suggesting?"

"I'm wondering. But this isn't a parlor game. I've met a vampire who says he's Red Evan, and I'm inclined to believe him. About that. He's old, Angel. He's working on the cloven hands thing, though they look pretty human still."

There's another pause, longer this time. "And he says he's given up the hunt."

"That's what he says. I've had a friend go over the police records for the city, and there's nothing that makes a liar out of him. And that's in the forty years he's lived in this city." He fills Angel in on the rest of it -- Evan's self-proclaimed history, how Xander learned he was a vampire, the ongoing debate about his fate. "If we do decide to believe him, is it enough that he's not a threat now? Are his reasons for not killing good enough? He's not claiming any high ground, just stating what's what."

He's still a master of the broody silence after all these years. Xander waits through another pause. "Xander, I made a lot of mistakes when I started out in LA." A dry chuckle crackles over the line. "Well, actually I never stopped, but I moved on to different sorts of mistakes. When I first started this ... mission, I saw things -- demons -- in a more black and white way. Once I killed a demon I thought was abducting a woman, and learned he was her protector."

"Evan's not protecting anyone. He's neutral, he's made that much clear, and he has no intention of changing it."

"And so the question you're posing is, can you execute someone for neutrality?"

Execute. The word rocks him back. It's a moment before Xander speaks. "I think I've just answered that. Which poses another question: If he becomes active again after I had a chance to stop him, how do I live with myself?"

"It's been three hundred years since he's fed."

"But his body's changing. How do we know that won't put stresses on him that he can't handle?"

"We don't. You're right. This is completely new territory."

This acknowledgment makes Xander feel both better and worse.

"The thing is," Angel says, "no matter which thing you do, I'm not sure you'll ever have the luxury of knowing you did the right thing."

Execute. Three syllables that reverberate in his head.

Xander knows now which potentially-wrong thing he's going to do.