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[Disclaimers: I was *not* gonna write this, and it very much isn’t what was advertised (Xander / First Slayer pairing), and it’s the exact sort of fic that can so horribly suck if done wrong (Xander gets powaz). But here it is, warts and all.]

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Chosen +28 days

“Please, just back off, okay? I get that you guys are just trying to be good friends and all supportive and stuff, but it’s not like you have any idea where to start…”

“Xander!” Willow and Buffy exclaim simultaneously, while Dawn just throws a hand up and walks out of the room.

“Sorry, it’s just, sometimes you guys can be, I don’t know, smothering. I know you’re all with the concern and the judgey stares, but I miss the days you’d just ignore me.”

Buffy raises her hands, “Look, I’m right there with you. I lost someone too, but he reminded me that the secret to life, is just living. Maybe you should…”

Xander’s face is turning red as he interrupts with a strangled shout, “You *honestly* are going to stand there and compare *Spike* to Anya?” as Willow quickly moves between them trying to keep them out of each others faces, but mainly succeeding in getting herself squished between them, her attempts at reason unnoticed.

Buffy isn’t ready to back down, “And why not? Both of them were demons. Both of them killers.” She pauses, before saying in a softer tone, “And both of them changed who they were, for love.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about. You don’t know the first thing about Anya, you never *wanted* to get to know Anya.” He turns away, much to Willow’s relief and walks out, “And frankly, I don’t think you know the first thing about love, either.”

“Well, that went better.” Buffy says to a disbelieving Willow. “Don’t you think?”

*********************************************

Chosen +31

“Hey.” Willow says, pushing her way into Xander’s room, hampered by the pile of laundry in front of the door.

“Hey,” Xander replies, face down on his bed, reading something.

“Andrew’s finished with dinner, and I was wondering…”

“Not hungry, I’ll come get some later.” Xander interrupts, with a note of finality.

“I was hoping you might eat with us. It’s been awhile, and we miss you.”

Willow knows better than to push. She walks out.

*********************************************

Later that night

“Thanks for coming down. I know people kinda stare, since we don’t see as much of you, but they don’t mean anything, it just means that we care, and we’re worried and…”

“Breathe Will.” Xander says, gently putting his hand over Willow’s mouth. Something like a familiar grin seems to flutter across his face for a moment, but doesn’t find a place to land and moves on.

“Thanks. I forget sometimes.” Willow says, quietly as they reach his door, and she senses him already pulling away, already shutting her out in his mind. She grabs his arm, hastily, and then pulls back when he flinches.

“Wait. I wanted to ask you something.” At his wary look, “No, not about, stuff. Just a favor.” He looks a different kind of tired, at this, “Sure, Will, whatcha need done?”

“It’s not like fixing stuff, well, maybe helping to fix me, but you just have to sit there.” She begins, not making an ounce of sense, all the words jumbling together.

Tilting his head, as if looking at some exotic bird, “Slow down, and explain in small words.” He pushes open the door to his room and with a gesture invites her in.

She sits on the edge of his bed, perched precariously on the tiniest corner, “It’s the magicks. I need to practice to sort of get it back under control. Last month,” she pauses to see if he reacts and then continues, “a lot of it got, out of control. I’d sort of throw power around, but I never felt really in control of what I was doing, and that scares me. I remember the last time I wasn’t really in control…” she shudders at this point, and Xander puts an arm around her hesitantly, as if unsure of what to do.

After an awkward silence, she smoothes her hair and pulls back.

“Anyway, I wanted to go over some of the basics. Meditation, trances, aura-reading, stuff like that, and I was hoping you could help me with the, y’know, focusing stuff.”

Xander raises a hand, “Uh, how? I’m not your magic-guy here. Shouldn’t you be talking to Giles? Or, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, Andrew?”

Willow smiles, “No, and *no.* I just need to do some aura-reading, and all I need for that is someone who can sit still while I, y’know, stare at them really hard…”

Xander closes his eye for a second, sighs and says, “Sure Will, not a problem. Stare away.” She doesn’t miss that he doesn’t seem fooled in the slightest.

***************************************

“So just, uh, be yourself, and I’ll do all the work here, just try to clear your mind and I’ve really got to quit talking and concentrate now…” Willow trails off as she sits cross-legged in front of Xander, who is lying back propped against the wall, arms crossed in an unwelcoming posture.

At first she just sees Xander, face scowling around that awful eyepatch, body tense, and then the colors start to come through. A sullen red, pulsing, mixed with blues and greens, all dark and moving ever-so-faintly, like a heartbeat. She can see it all twisted up inside of him, all of the things he hasn’t let go, all of the things he won’t let himself forget. Deeper she peers, looking for the bright yellows that once marked a child full of laughter, but she can’t find any sign of him. Strange traces lie long-buried. A worn colorless patch, as if part of him was worn thin, where she can feel the long-dispersed ‘soldier-memories’ from Ethan Rayne’s transformation. A wisp of golden-green, crushed and buried so deep within him, the ‘hyena-memories’ that he’s repressed, still not entirely gone from him. So much blocked and lingering, unable to flow in a healthy manner. She remembers Tara telling her how things had to be allowed to move and dance, to enter and leave, the memories and feelings like guests in the temple of a persons soul, coming in for a time, but needing to be allowed to depart freely, when the time has come to move on. So much stubbornness here, so much refusal to give up, which is probably the only reason he’s lived this long, but in it’s own way, it too is killing him.

She gasps when she sees it, a ragged stitch straight through the center of him, a place where pride and contempt stare at each other across a chasm. She sees the place where some rank amateur to the black arts bound together a soul that had been ripped in half by demonic technology. Here is the source of some of the blockage, some of the constriction within him, these clumsy workings. She can feel the magicks here, the places where the soul has stubbornly refused to heal and become one again, and she wonders what exactly she should do, if anything. She knows that Xander can heal himself, can integrate, but can she trust him to actually do so, knowing what she knows now, how much contempt he has for himself, having been torn in half and forced to see himself at his absolute worst?

She reaches out with the magic, to the unhealing stitch and praying that she is making the right choice, pulls it free, thinking that if nothing else, at least he won’t be alone...

**********************************************

“Okay, explain this very slowly Willow.” Buffy hisses, holding a sword to the figure she’s got pressed against the wall, while Xander futilely tugs at her arm. Kennedy, Andrew and a pair of former Potentials are also crowded into the room, but hanging back.

Willow looks surprisingly centered as she responds, “I was reading Xander’s aura, and found the place where we used magic to shove him back together when the Toth-demon’s staff split him in half. It was an accident, I was just trying to fix it up a bit, ‘cause it wasn’t my best work…”

Buffy looks at Willow, eyes wide, “So it’s not a demon?”

“No, it’s another Xander. There’s two of them. Again.”

“Oh,” she says, still processing this information as two pairs of Xander-arms still tug at her arm, effortlessly holding the new arrival against the wall. “Oh!” she says, finally letting him down, where he slumps to the floor, rubbing his neck and glaring up at her. “I just, with the two eyes and the… I just thought…”

Xander is kneeling now helping his ‘twin’ to his feet, only his twin is very much not a twin. They are dressed the same, but the new arrival is visibly younger, and, most obviously, has two eyes.

Still rubbing his neck, “Uh, hi. Nice to see you again, too Buff.”

Buffy cringes, “Sorry! I thought you were a demon or the First or something...”

Xander pokes the new arrival in the shoulder, “Doesn’t seem very First-y, what with the being able to be stabbed. And I don’t think we look very demon-like.” he counters with an ascerbic tone. He’s busy glaring at Buffy and doesn’t notice that his ‘twin’ is staring at his eyepatch with a look of poorly-concealed horror.

“Well then!” Willow interrupts, hoping to stave off anymore drama, “It’s my bad. Oops. I’ll just start doing some research on where it all went ker-flooey.” She doesn’t fail to notice that both Xander’s look at her when she says this, with the ‘new’ Xander looking even more horrified, while her friend’s expression is unreadable, with only the stiffening of his shoulders giving away his true feelings. She resolves not to rush to ‘fix’ this ‘mistake’…

Willow manages to make it past the crowd at the door, and Kennedy leaves with her.

“Think it’ll help?” Kennedy says softly as they walk to Willow’s room, and Willow looks startled that Kennedy has figured her out so quickly.

“I hope so. I’m so out of ideas…”

Back in Xander’s room, Buffy has finished her third conditional not-apology, and finally is leaving the room, pushing past Andrew, Caridad and Chao-An, only to stop and wave them out of the room as well.

“Wow, he looked, um, different.” Andrew says.

“Yeah, he’s kinda hot,” Caridad muses, and as Andrew smiles and looks about to say something, “And? Shut up.” Caridad turns on her heel and walks off, leaving a befuddled Andrew and Chao-An shrugging at each other in the hallway as the door to Xander’s room closes behind them.

The new Xander is steadfastly avoiding looking at the older Xander’s face, while fishing about for something to talk about. “Well, we already don’t have enough beds around here. So do we sleep in shifts or what?”

Xander isn’t fooled by the sudden change in topic. “It’s the eye. It’s freaking you out, isn’t it?”

The response is comically not-convincing, as he turns to find Xander’s eyepatched-face right in his own face and jumps back, “Aaahh! No! Definitely not!” “Okay, maybe a little. Or a lot.” He’s still looking down, but peering up, morbidly curious. “It’s just weird, ‘cause I remember it, but I’ve never seen it from the outside…”

Xander reaches out and takes a hand, so much like his own, and lifts it to his face, pulling aside the eyepatch and studying the reaction on his ‘twins’ face as he surveys the damage. “Is it as gross as it looks in the mirror?”

He can feel fingers, strangely not his own, slowly brushing across his cheek and temple, and see a tear dropping down his twin’s face as he replies, “Worse.”

***************************************

The door slams against the wall as Dawn staggers in swaying under a pile of shopping bags, only to have a Xander on each side taking most of the bags, leaving her with only a single sack.

She blinks twice, tilts her head at the pair of Xanders walking towards the kitchen to put away the groceries and turns to her sister, who’s standing arms crossed with a gloating look. “Toth demon again?” she says coolly before following into the kitchen to help.

“Oooh!” Buffy exclaims in exasperation before storming out.

*******************************************

Weeks progress, with both Xanders teaming up to do projects around the house, seeming to spend much of their free time in each other’s company. The one argument they have that wasn’t about trivia was about their name. Xander suggested that his younger twin go by the name of Alex or something, to make it less confusing, but it turned out that neither Xander was willing to go by any other name, and the sight of them trying to stare each other down on the matter had most of the house in stitches.

All agreed it was for the best if both were called Xander, and that they just tried to be careful when both were in the room to clarify which one they were speaking to…

********************************************

The curtains are drawn and Willow is sitting listlessly on her bed, surrounded by books and ritual paraphenalia, which she’s idly shifting around.

“Okay, I don’t get it. Xander’s a mess, you split him in two and the two of him seem to be getting along fine and smiling and joking and whatever, and you’re miserable. What’s up with that?”

“I’m an awful friend. I should be happy for him, or them, or whatever. But I’m supposed to be locked away researching how to ‘fix’ this, and I can’t. It’s the only thing that’s made him happy. I can’t take that away, and he’s out there and I have to be ‘researching’ so I can’t be out there having fun with him. It’s just not fair.”

“Right then,” Kennedy grabs her girlfriends arm and drags her to the door, pushing her outside. “Let’s go spend time with Xander. *I’ve* spent more time with *your* best friend this last week, and that’s just wrong. Sitting in here moping isn’t doing anyone any good.”

*********************************************

Three weeks pass, with no ‘cure’ in sight, Willow having thrown out some Wicca-babble about astrological conjunctions and the stars not being right as long as Gemini is ascendant, or something. Nobody really paid attention, except Andrew, who pointed out that Gemini wasn’t in ascension this month, only to be soundly ignored.

Both Xander’s have taken up some training, and often accompany the Slayers on patrol, with the younger Xander having spent enough time with one of the Slayers in particular that it surprises only the deeply clueless when Chao-An snaps a photo of him walking out of Caridad’s room in a towel one morning and leaves it on the kitchen table, which makes for some lively breakfast conversation. Xander sits back with a soft smile and lets his younger self argue with the others over whether or not this is a good idea.

Andrew brings up the point that when Willow ‘fixes’ this and makes the extra Xander go away, it’s going be very confusing, which ends the conversation on a down-note, with Caridad and Willow fleeing in different directions, and young Xander and Kennedy in hot pursuit, followed by Buffy and ‘old’ Xander. Andrew is left at the table with Chao-An and Dawn, both of whom turn to Andrew and say, ‘Dumbass.’

****************************************************

“So, Willow, I’ve noticed that you aren’t exactly burning the house down trying to find a ‘cure’ for our Xander-shaped surplus here.”

“What? No, really, it’s complicated…”

“No, it really isn’t. You wave your hands, say, ‘I suck at Latin’ and stuff happens. It sure didn’t seem that complicated the first time, and you know way more than you did then, so spill.”

“He was miserable. You saw. Nothing we were doing got through to him and I was afraid to lose him. Since we were kids, the only thing that can change Xander’s mind is Xander. And I saw a chance…”

“But isn’t it insanely dangerous? I mean, isn’t one of them supposed to turn evil or they both get sick and die or something?”

“Not with Xander. He’s always been more balanced than,” she hesitates, “than the rest of us.”

“Oh.” Buffy sits back as that realization comes home, “No psycho First Slayer or rampaging magical forces lurking inside of him. Just, Xandery goodness, and yet more Xandery goodness.” She wraps her arms around herself, “Must be nice.”

***************************************************

The next morning is tense, with Caridad and ‘her’ Xander having fought the night before about what sort of future they could have. But their drama is pushed aside by the arrival of Giles from England, who, naturally, has been told nothing of this whole affair…

Much glasses-polishing ensures, and after a long private chat with Willow, with everyone else huddled around outside trying to listen in, Giles seems to hold his own counsel on the matter. Unfortunately, by the time the conversation has concluded, and Giles is ready to meet the new Xander, they discover that he has left. Caridad is crying and doesn’t respond to questions about where he is, but Dawn suddenly ‘gets it.’ “What? You expected him to stick around so that you could just make him go away?”

“That’s not what we were…” Willow starts, but Dawn interrupts, “Yeah? And how the hell would he know? Did either of you bother to tell him that Giles wasn’t here to help you get rid of him?” Buffy comes up behind a clearly flustered Dawn and puts her hand on her shoulder, trying to be supportive, since she’s realized how personally Dawn is taking this.

Willow finally realizes why Dawn is so upset, and she starts to speak again, but Buffy just shakes her head and whispers, ‘Find him.’

Grabbing Xander’s hand, Willow leads him to her room and starts up a locator spell, using a strand of Xander’s hair to track his twin. She gets two readings, but obviously can rule out the one sitting on her bed, and the group mobilizes to find their missing Xander. Caridad shows up as they gather in the foyer, red-eyed, sword in hand, and insists that she’s coming with.

In a contrivance of Sunnydale-like proportions, the distracted Xander has fled right into the arms of a robed demon cultist in a desperate last-minute search for a sacrificial victim, since his designated sacrifice got away ten minutes before midnight… A healthy adult human barreling into him on the sidewalk is the literal answer to his prayers, and he clocks Xander on the head and drags him into the hastily prepared ritual space in the bottom floor of a parking garage, tossing him into a chalk-circle where his two associates are already beginning the chanting and settling down to join the chant.

The Scoobs arrive in the nick of too late, with Xander clutching his chest and crying out, and then tumbling down the rest of the stairs to land in a slowly spreading pool of blood, with Buffy literally leaping down the entire flight of stairs to land next to him with a cry. Just outside the doorway, the three robed figures can be seen wrenching a dripping blade from the chest of Xander’s twin, and Kennedy shouts and throws an axe that connects with the robed demon facing the doorway only seconds before a screaming Caridad reaches the circle and beheads the other two seated demons with a single swing, abandoning her sword in mid-swing and swooping down on her bleeding boyfriend, desperately trying to stem the flow of blood from his wound.

Buffy looks up from the Xander she’s cradling, the beginnings of tears in her eyes and takes this in, then suddenly looks to Willow with a wild expression of hope. She reaches up with a bloody hand twisted like a claw and makes a grabbing motion at the air, saying ‘Fwoosh’ and then plunging it down towards Xander’s chest ‘Schwoop.’ Willow’s head tilts and she goes, ‘Of course!’ and mimics the same motion, reaching towards Xander’s fallen twin with a claw-like motion while chanting quickly in an unknown language.

Giles is beyond exasperated, “What the bloody hell are you doing?”

Willow looks up, a golden globe of spinning energy now nestled in her hand, “He can’t live without both halves of his soul. I’ve grabbed the part that was escaping and we’re gonna put it back in him.” she says, pointing towards the Xander in Buffy’s arms.

“But he’s grievously wounded. Surely you can’t restore the damage at the same time…” Giles says, wasting no time removing his jacket and using it to try to staunch the flow of blood from Xander’s chest.

“Got that covered. We share our energies with him, to sustain him. Sort of like the ritual we did to beat Adam.” The golden orb is now floating above her, casting her face in an otherworldly light and blowing her hair back like streamers as she reaches out to Buffy’s hand on one side and Giles hand on the other.

Buffy doesn’t even look up, still holding Xander awkwardly in her lap, and clasps Willow’s hand with her own blood-soaked one. Giles hesitates for a moment, but relents and puts his hand in Willow’s, with his other hand meeting Buffy’s on Xander’s chest as Willow begins chanting. The world seems to tilt slightly and fall away behind them, and they seem to land abruptly in an endless desert stretching out before them, with Xander nowhere in sight, only a trail of disturbed sand and some shed blood indicating that he may be present. Giles staggers slightly at the disorienting arrival, but Buffy rises to her feet with a grim expression and turns to Willow, who looks alien, with face still lit by an unnatural source and hair still blowing back in unfelt winds. Her feet hang inches over the desert sand, and her expression is serene.

Buffy turns to steady Giles and takes in the bleak desertscape surrounding them.

“Right. Let’s find Xander and bring him home.”

****************************************************

He is running endlessly through the desert, towards the setting sun, trying to stay away from the creature that pursues him. He can feel his heart, as if it is already being torn from his chest, and he struggles to stay ahead of the thing he can see flitting across the periphery of his vision. He remembers this, it is familiar and it only spurs him to keep running. He just can see something ahead of him, and before he can process what it is,

he is tripping over the entangled limbs and bodies of a sea of dead Xanders, falling to land face to face to his own corpse, staring up at him with two empty bloodied eye-sockets and an otherwise peaceful expression of resignation. He tries to scramble back, but the bodies now seem to stretch on forever in all directions, great mounds of dead Xanders flung together indiscriminately. A claw-like hand closes on his ankle and he kicks and screams and struggles, pulling at his dead selves to try and jerk himself free of the vise-like hold on his leg, but he is inexorably pulled backwards into the sands, leaving the corpses behind. He is pulled into the embrace of the First Slayer, streaked in war-paints with a savage expression on her face. She crushes him to her, like a mother holding her child, and in a guttural voice, croaks out a single word,

“Mine.”

He passes out as Buffy, Giles and a powered-down Willow are seen standing over the First Slayer, cradling his unconscious form possessively and growling up at them. Buffy seems disoriented, and is leaning heavily on Giles, who looks at the First Slayer, seemingly protecting Xander and exclaims, 'Extraordinary.'

Xander awakens (in the warehouse) to Buffy, Giles and Willow standing over him, looking concerned (and exhausted), but relieved. Willow’s hands are steaming slightly and she says, 'Toldja it'd work,' before passing out.

***************************************************

A day has passed, and Willow is again poking around in Xander's soul, making sure that no lasting harm was done, and admiring her own (much better this time) handiwork at stitching his soul together. She notes that the 'loose stitch' is no more, and Xander is and will always be an only child from now on. He seems a bit depressed at that, not for himself so much as for Caridad, who has lost the man that she loved forever. Willow notes that there is a new 'wrinkle' in his soul, and he groans. She says it looks kinda reddish and pulsing, and he jokes that that's normal for a boy's soul, it just means he needs to find himself a date. They laugh, but she clarifies that it is a sort of energy that she never expected to find there, and he is worried that she might not recognize it and it could be dangerous. She points out that there is no witch on the planet with more knowledge on the subject, that his soul has been marked by the power of the Slayer...

On patrol that night, he seems visibly uncomfortable, limping slightly, so much so that he doesn't notice that he off-handedly backhands a vampire through the air. After returning to the house, Giles notices that Xander is limping and asks if he is injured, and Xander sort of swings a hand out in dismissal as he says “Nah, just a cramp or something.” His hand intersects with the banister and snaps it in half effortlessly, which he doesn’t seem to notice as he moves towards the kitchen. Giles’ brows furrow as he reaches for the broken piece of wood and with visible effort wrenches it from it’s mooring, testing it’s strength in both hands and failing to snap it. Decision made he walks up behind Xander, “Xander, a moment please,” he begins and as Xander starts to turn swings the makeshift club full force at Xander’s head.

“Whoah!” Xander exclaims as his hand moves seemingly of its’ own volition to block the sudden attack, and just as quickly seizes it from Giles hand while his other hand lashes out to strike Giles mid-chest with a flat palm. Giles is lifted off of the ground and flung back several feet, to land with a crash against the wall.

“Giles!” Xander cries, his whole body jerking in surprise as he rushes over to help Giles back to his feet, “Oh God, I’m sorry, you surprised me! Are you okay? I’m sorry!”

At the sound of the crash, heads come popping out around various corners and girls pour into the room. Caridad is noticeably not among them, as the room dissolves into a hubbub of voices asking what’s happened.

Raising his hand to calm down the flow of questions, Giles finally manages to get a word out, “I’m fine. But I think Xander has something to tell us…”

“I hit Giles…” Xander starts, but is immediately drowned out by the reactions, and Giles has to actually step between him and Buffy and Willow and get them calmed down again.

“Not that Xander. Tell me. You were limping when you came in.” Xander looks sheepish and kind of ducks his head. “Did you encounter vampires tonight on patrol?”

Not knowing where this line of questioning is going, since it’s a complete non-sequitor to him, “Um, yeah, a few…” “And did this ‘cramp’ of yours start around the same time, and is it now fading, even as we speak?” Xander stands up a little straighter, tilting his head and looking like he wants to do something with his hands, but is stopping himself. “Uh, yeah. How’d you know?”

“This is quite impossible, you know.” Giles comments to no one in particular as he walks over to a chair and sits down.

“*What* is impossible! And why did Xander *hit you*! And how badly am I going to kick his ass!” Buffy finally says, unable to contain herself any longer. “Is it the spell? Is he like, mental? Should we tie him up?”

Xander looks increasingly cowed by this outburst, and is up against a wall, with Buffy advancing towards him with each statement.

“Buffy.” Giles says, “Enough.” At this quiet statement, she looks frustrated and puts her hands up in exasperation. “Fine. This is Buffy exhibiting the patience of a saint as she waits for you to explain this.” She then crosses her arms and waits, very much not patiently…

Pointing to Chao-An, Kennedy and Buffy, Giles begins, “A Slayer's reproductive system, an embodiment of life, reacts harshly to the presence of vampires, the embodiment of death. That this manifests as 'cramps,' and only Slayers are prone to this reaction.” Buffy rolls her eyes, “We know this, Giles.” Chao-An also nods, “It *is* in the handbook, sir.”

Giles looks to them with a measured look, “Yes. But *he,*” and he points to a suddenly surprised looking Xander, “does not know this.”

Buffy looks non-plussed. “And… Why would he need to?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Giles says, before turning to the room at large, “Does anyone have a stake?” Four stakes are presented to him, blunt-edge first. He thanks Dawn and takes the one that she has handed him, while Buffy fixes her a look, as if to say, ‘where did you get that?’ Giles takes the stake between both hands and makes an attempt to break it, knuckles whitening as he is obviously exerting himself, but not succeeding. He then tosses it straight at Xander’s head, fast enough to be an attack, and Xander again says, “Hey!” and grabs it out of the air just in front of his face. “Stop doing that!”

“Xander, can you break that stake?”

“Uh, no offense Giles, but I’m way stronger than you…” Xander begins, as Giles holds up a hand and interrupts.

“With one hand. Using just your fingers.”

Xander looks dubious. “Yeah, that’ll happen.” He then holds the stake in his hand and pushes on the end with his thumb, only to jump in surprise and drop it when it snaps in two pieces with a loud crack.

Buffy’s face goes from ‘Bored and impatient’ to ‘huh?’

“Xander needs to know why he’s been having cramps during encounters with vampires, because he’s been called as a Slayer.”

“Oh.” mutters Willow. “That makes sense.” She then sits down hard and Kennedy begins fanning her face, saying, “Breathe, honey, you forgot to breathe again…”

Wheels can still be seen turning in Buffy’s mind, but she’s refusing to go along with them. “No. Only girls can be Slayers. It’s a rule, Giles!”

Chao-An interrupts before Giles can reply, “Yeah, it’s also a rule that there can be only one Slayer at a time, isn’t it?”

Buffy looks chagrined and then turns to Willow, “And you! What did you do now!”

Willow looks surprised and immediately goes into defensive-babble, “I didn’t do a thing, I just noticed a Slayer-y bit in his aura, but didn't fiddle with it, nosiree Bob, no more fiddling with Xander's soul for me…”

A wistful Dawn walks up to a now-pale and shaky looking Xander and kisses him on the cheek. “I always knew you were special. They broke all the rules to let you in the club!” His face softens and he folds her into a big hug and they sneak out as the sounds of yet more questions rise behind them.

************************************************

That night, Xander dreams, again in the desert, but smiling now as the same stalking occurs. He is outside himself, watching, as he spins around with the same grin, also mock-stalking whatever is stalking him, leaping behind a rock out-cropping to surprise his pursuer, only to be knocked to the ground when his stalker leaps from atop the rock onto his back. He and his stalker roll in the sand, and he can be heard laughing as he lands again on his back, with the First Slayer sitting astride him. He makes a few token struggles, as she growls, and then in a burst of strength, reverses their position, so that he is looming over her. Instead of growling, she smiles back and he leans down to kiss her...

He wakes screaming, 'Oh God!' and Willow enters the room concerned, since she seems to sleep nearby. He is panting and has a gaping socket where his glass eye normally sits, and she seems to ignore this, rushing over to find out what is the matter. He looks relieved that it was just a dream, and says 'nightmare.' She looks curious and asks if it was a Slayer dream and he replies without thinking, 'God, I hope not. I mean there was a Slayer in it, but,' seeing her perk up with interest, he back-pedals furiously, 'it wasn't any sort of prophecy of doom and gloom or anything, just uh, one of those Caleb dreams.' She winces at this, as does he, having desperately gone for a 'low blow' to derail her interest. At this she touches his face and points to his glass eye, sitting in a glass of saline next to his bed, 'Is that why?' He nods, 'Yeah, it's been itchy today, just made me think of him I guess.' Lie safely explained away, he returns to sleep.

******************************************************

[Basically, Slayer Healing is making his eye grow back. The First Slayer is visiting him in his dreams, as the 'boyfriend she never had.' Xander attracts the strangest women... The end. J]

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