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myficsTitle: Twin Scars, Part One
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Pairing: Xander Harris/Andrew Wells, mentions of past Xander Harris/Anya Jenkins & Warren Mears/Andrew Wells
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 23,069
Disclaimer: Joss is Boss, and I but a humble slave.
Spoilers for: All of Buffy, all of Angel, and 8x01 of the Buffy season 8 comics. (Though I don't think you have to have read the latter to understand the fic, it's just that I used something from that in this to make it better fit in with canon.)
Summary: After the "cultural misunderstanding" that led Andrew to be living in Italy during "The Girl in Question," Giles and Buffy are no longer sure just whose side Andrew is on, so they send Xander to Italy to figure it out. Distrust and geekiness ensues.
CHAPTER ONE
Xander was glad to be leaving Africa. Not only because he’d been cooped up with a bunch of teenage girls for the past five months, and not only because sub-Saharan Africa didn’t seem to understand the concept of rain, but truth be told, he’d missed being able to speak to his friends.
He’d been isolated in Africa. No phones, (no lights, no motorcars, not a single luxury) no internet, and sketchy postal service that only ran on days that didn’t end in ‘y’ meant that he hadn’t had much contact with his friends since he’d gotten on that flight from London and said goodbye to everything he’d ever known six months after the fall of Sunnydale.
He’d gotten a couple of letters, of course. It wasn’t like they had forgotten about him. And he’d even sent a few back, along with a few gifts. But one letter every four weeks wasn’t exactly what he’d call good communication.
It was probably good for him, though, to get away. Clear his head. Being in a group of nothing but teenage girls meant he spent a lot of time by himself, which suited him just fine, because for a long time after Sunnydale, he wasn’t exactly Mr. Conversation.
He’d needed the alone time to deal with Anya’s death, and that’s exactly what he’d gotten. And he was okay with it now. Really. Maybe he hadn’t ‘moved on,’ but that was sort of hard to do when the oldest female around you was only seventeen and didn’t speak English.
Then he’d gotten a letter a few weeks ago saying that sometime soon, Giles would be sending someone to Africa to replace him and that he was needed in Italy. Judging by the date on the plane ticket to England he’d been sent, he was expecting it when he saw a familiar figure approaching their camp. It was Kennedy.
“Hey,” he said, awkwardly embracing her. He’d always felt inexplicably embarrassed around Willow’s girlfriends, even though he’d cared about Tara and liked Kennedy.
It took him a few moments to realize that she wasn’t hugging back, so he released her, glancing down. She looked…rather defeated, actually. Which wasn’t a look he was used to seeing on Kennedy’s face at all.
“Is something wrong?” he asked. “Is Willow okay?”
Kennedy took a deep breath, as though she were trying to control herself. “Yes. And…no.”
“Kennedy, I need a straight answer, here. How is Willow?” When Kennedy still didn’t answer, Xander gulped. “Are there veins?” he asked in a hushed voice.
Kennedy laughed. Laughed! She had never really gotten just how close “sweet, innocent Willow” had come to destroying the entire world. But Xander knew.
“No. There aren’t veins. And she’s alive and healthy if that’s what you mean.”
Xander breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s good. You had me scared for a minute—“
He was cut off when Kennedy said, “She broke up with me. Or I broke up with her. It was sort of a mutual thing.”
“Oh.” Xander looked down at the ground. “Sorry. That…that sucks.”
“Yeah. We’ve been fighting for a long time now. It just sort of…exploded. So I asked Buffy if I could be transferred somewhere else, and she talked to Giles and they decided to leave Willow in Brazil, send me here, and send you to Italy. It’s a big thing. I’m just glad that they needed you there because I don’t think I could’ve taken another day of the ‘Let’s Ignore Each Other Because It’s Totally The Mature Thing To Do’ game.”
Xander nodded sagely. “Willow’s good at that game.”
“There are a lot of things she’s good at,” Kennedy replied. “Some of them I could live without, though.”
Xander shrugged. “Well, the good news is, you have an entire fleet of Slayers all under your command now. That should make you happy.”
Kennedy smiled. “A little,” she agreed.
“I’d introduce you to them, but honestly, I don’t know half of their names. Mostly I just give orders and the few who understand English translate it for the rest of them. It seems to work, though.”
“How many are there?” she asked.
“I lost count. There are a few of them that I trust more than the others, so now whenever we hear about a new Slayer, I just send them out to get her. Much safer than me going, really, since it’s hard to fight with a lack of depth perception. I do sometimes, though. Usually only when the camp gets attacked.”
“Does that happen often?” Kennedy asked, raising an eyebrow.
Xander shrugged. “It’s not like a nightly thing, if that’s what you’re asking. But yeah, it happens occasionally.”
Kennedy nodded, suddenly all business. “Right. First thing I’m going to do is set up a patrol on the perimeters. Over there looks like a troublesome area, so I’ll have to double the patrol over there, and…”
She continued talking out her plan, and Xander quietly excused himself and slipped inside his tent to pack. His plane was leaving in fifteen hours and the airport was at least an eight-hour drive away.
He didn’t have much to pack, truth be told. Africa had sort of forced him to live the minimalist lifestyle. He’d tried to look at it as a spiritual thing, getting back in touch with nature and stuff, but Willow had been the spiritual one in their friendship. Gods and souls and stuff was more on her level than his, so mostly he just hoped that Andrew was saving the new League of Extraordinary Gentlemen issues for him.
He picked up the dress he’d gotten from a local village for Dawn and folded it carefully, packing it into his duffle bag along with the crystal he’d gotten for Willow, the book he’d gotten for Giles, the flute (of the non-demon summoning variety) he’d gotten for Andrew, and the sword he planned to mail to Buffy from the post office near the airport, since he knew he wouldn’t be allowed to carry it onto the plane.
Finished, he stepped outside and found his Slayers talking animatedly with Kennedy, who seemed happier now that she was in her element than she had been when she’d arrived. Xander smiled slightly. He knew from personal experience how being in Africa could help heal heartbreak.
“Kennedy,” he said as he approached the group, “I’m going to go ahead and leave, if you don’t mind. I figure if I drive all night, I’ll be able to get a little sleep in the car before I have to check-in. I need to borrow one of the girls to drive the car back in the morning.”
“Oh, sure.” Kennedy nodded. “Go ahead.”
“Great.” Xander motioned to one of the Slayers who he knew spoke English and could drive. She nodded and headed silently to the car.
“So…I guess this is goodbye,” he said to the remaining girls. “I hope you guys have a good time with Kennedy. She’s in charge now.” As he spoke, one of the English-speakers translated for the rest of them, who all nodded. Xander noted with a feeling of happiness that quite a few of them looked as though they would miss him.
“Bye, Kennedy,” he told her, before hugging her awkwardly again. This time she hugged back.
“Bye, Xander. Take care of yourself.” She bit her lip as though trying to stop herself from speaking, but then suddenly said, “And…check in with Willow occasionally, okay? I don’t like the idea of her being down there all alone.”
Xander smiled. “Sure.” He patted her on the shoulder and then joined Lucy, the English-speaking, car-driving Slayer (which wasn’t really her name, but when she’d introduced herself, he hadn’t been able to pronounce or remember her name, so he called her Lucy in his head and avoided addressing her directly) in the car and drove off.
***
“And you’re sure you’ve shipped my stuff to the right place?” Xander asked Giles as he stood in the doorway, ready to leave. He may not have had much with him in Africa, but in the six months after Sunnydale had become a giant crater, he’d acquired quite a few possessions in England, which had spent the last five months in boxes in his former room at the makeshift Watcher Training House Giles had set up to accommodate all the new Watchers he’d had to teach.
“Yes, Xander,” Giles assured him.
“What am I doing there, anyway? You still haven’t told me.”
There was a pause, then Giles said, “Do you remember when we decided to let Andrew become a Watcher? And we all talked about the fact that it could be a big mistake?”
“Yeah,” Xander replied. “But from what I heard, he’s been doing a good job.”
“He was,” Giles agreed. “Until about a month ago.”
Xander tried to stop himself from gasping out loud as Giles described to him what Andrew had done, but he couldn’t believe that he’d messed up that badly.
“Burned an entire apartment building?” he asked in complete horror.
“Yes, and unfortunately, worse” Giles replied. “Needless to say, Buffy and myself…we’ve become…worried. We’re not accusing him of anything exactly, but according to my sources, it was the result of him confusing two words in Italian during a peace negotiation. And I don’t need to remind you that Andrew has an affinity for languages, so the fact that he would make such a mistake is highly…suspicious. We don’t know if he’s turned on us or…Well, we just don’t know. And you’re really the only one of us that he trusts, so you being there won’t be as intimidating to him as say, if it were Buffy or Willow. You can see why we pulled you out of Africa.”
“Yeah,” Xander said, nodding. “I’m just not sure…I mean…maybe it was a mistake. He’s a Watcher, Giles. A fully-qualified Watcher. He’s got more book knowledge than any of us, except for you. Maybe he was just nervous. He’s not exactly field-tested, you know. Are you sure he needs to be watched?”
“We’re not sure of anything right now. None of us really think he would turn on us, especially after Anya died saving his life. I think it affected him deeper than anyone, save for you. But we can’t forget that he is capable of it. He’s killed, Xander. We can never forget that.”
Xander nodded again. The thing he’d learned about Andrew in the six months that they’d spent at Giles’ training together before being sent off in different directions was that it was very easy to forget that Andrew was capable of murder. It was hard to think about Andrew stabbing Jonathan when he was laughing at his jokes or watching Doctor Who reruns with him.
But the fact still remained that Andrew was a murderer. And that meant he was certainly capable of sabotaging that peace negotiation. As much as Xander hated to think about it, it was highly possible.
“Right.” He sighed and stepped outside, holding a hand up to signal to the yellow cab that was waiting for him that he was coming. “I should get going. Don’t want to miss my flight. Bye, Giles. I’ll do my best.”
Giles nodded and patted him on the shoulder in the fatherly way that Xander had missed while he was in Africa. “I know you will.”
Xander gave him his best smile, then got in the cab.
CHAPTER TWO
Andrew was happy to have Xander back from Africa. Really, he was. It had been a long time since he’d been around someone who got his comic book references or who knew the difference between the real Godzilla and that pathetic excuse of a fake lizard that Matthew Broderick had killed. Besides, he wanted to show Xander how big the mbuna fish he’d sent him had grown.
Buffy and the rest of them, they had all learned to tolerate Andrew; while they didn’t tie him up or threaten him with knives while holding him over demonic seals anymore, they weren’t really his friends. Not like Xander had finally become after Sunnydale.
So yeah, he was happy to have Xander back.
But having him back from Africa, and having him being sent to watch Andrew (honestly, a Watcher being watched?) were two entirely different things, and Andrew definitely didn’t like the latter.
He’d complained at first, but Rupert had told him it was just a precaution and ‘not to worry,’ in That Tone, the one that struck fear into the hearts of Slayers, caused fierce demons to run home crying to their mothers, and did nothing to soothe Andrew’s wounded pride. What little he had after Sunnydale, anyway.
But Andrew knew the truth. He’d been in Italy for two months now, and he’d been just fine. Really, he had. Aside from that teensy little cultural misunderstanding that resulted in his apartment being burnt down, he’d been doing a good job with his Slayers.
It was probably the “teensy little cultural misunderstanding” that had caused Rupert to send Xander to watch him in the first place.
Watch him! As if he hadn’t been doing a good job or something. He had. He’d trained his Slayers and kept them safe and been a good Watcher, just like Rupert had trained him to be.
And it seemed like all of that had been forgotten because of one tiny mistake involving a group of normally peaceful Italian demons that had wanted to negotiate a truce between their clan and the Slayers, and Andrew’s less than stellar Italian skills. He’d messed up one tiny word and angered the entire clan, and the next thing he knew, he had to move in with one of the Buffy doubles (which had been his plan to begin with, and where was his thanks for that, exactly?) named Rashelle because his apartment was in cinders.
Apparently one mistake was all it took to remind the rest of them of who he used to be, and they stopped trusting him again.
It didn’t matter. He knew he wasn’t that guy anymore, even if they didn’t.
It had taken him the better part of six months to fully process what had happened in Sunnydale, both before the final battle and what happened after, but with a lot of help from his therapist, he had dealt with the reality that he was a murderer and the fact that he had a lot of karmic debt to pay.
That was why when Rupert asked him if he wanted to train to be a Watcher (and Andrew knew that he only asked because they were so short-handed, not out of any particular desire to be nice to Andrew, or because he thought he’d be good at it), he’d agreed. He figured the best way to pay off all that debt was to start working for the side of good.
And he had. For almost a year and a half now, he had been working tirelessly learning how to be a Watcher, training his Slayers, and even picking up a few new demon languages for his repertoire. Apparently, though, Italian was a little harder to memorize than Kreflan, because he didn’t have nearly as many issues with transitive verbs in Kreflan as he did in Italian.
And one failed negotiation later, Xander was being sent to watch him, as if he hadn’t been doing just fine on his own for two whole months now.
He was just fine. Really. He didn’t need to be watched like a baby. Or a guestage. Or an ex-murderer.
He was completely, one hundred percent fine on his own, and he didn’t need Xander moving into the apartment next door to his and Rashelle’s to keep an eye on him.
What were they afraid he was going to do, kill one of the Slayers? As if he could.
He was just fine, and the Slayers were just fine, and everything would be supremely peachy if it hadn’t been for those damn Italian transitive verbs. He blamed the Italians. It was their fault for having a language that was so hard to memorize.
The point was, he didn’t need Xander there babysitting him. But all his complaining had done no good, so his Slayers were currently helping Xander move his things into the apartment next door while Andrew stayed in his study pretending to be doing research on a big case.
Truth was, Andrew just didn’t want to see Xander. He knew he’d have to eventually, but the fact that he’d been judged incompetent, that Xander knew it, made him want to hide in shame.
The last thing he needed was for Xander to see him trying to hide his embarrassment over the fact that, apparently, a twenty-two year old man who had been a solo Watcher for two whole months now needed to be baby-sat.
It took him straight back to his days of being tied to a chair in Buffy’s house in Sunnydale and having Xander interrogate him for information about the Seal. He’d felt pathetic then, and he felt pathetic now.
There was a knock at his door, jolting him out of his thoughts. He grabbed the nearest book, pulled it open to a random page, and said, “Come in.”
It was Xander.
“Oh, hello,” Andrew said, fighting back the blush that was creeping up his neck. “Welcome back. I’d ask you how Africa was, but I’m a little busy.” He motioned to his book. “So I’m afraid that will have to wait for later,” he said in his best professional Watcher voice.
Xander leaned on the doorjamb and pointed at his book. “Busy with…” he leaned to the side and squinted before straightening back up, “Italian for Dummies?”
Andrew blushed, all pretence of fighting it forgotten. Of course, it just had to be that particular book he’d grabbed, the very book that had gotten him into this mess to begin with. He thought about making a comment about wanting to learn from his mistakes, hoping it would make him sound more mature, but opted instead on just closing the book and turning his desk chair around to face Xander.
“Maybe…maybe I could take a small break,” he said.
Xander grinned, stepping into the room and sitting down on the empty armchair in the corner.
“So. Africa,” he said.
“How was it?”
“Hot,” Xander said with a laugh. “Lots of demons. Nearly lost my good eye a couple of times.”
Andrew nodded. “I don’t…I don’t really join my Slayers in their fights.”
Truth was, he was scared to, but he wasn’t going to tell Xander that. Xander had always been the brave geek. Andrew was just the one who summoned demons. (Which wasn’t as productive of a skill as he thought it’d be when he’d decided to become a Watcher. It was rather counter-intuitive, actually.)
Xander just shrugged. “How’s the fish?”
Andrew seized on the topic and pointed to the fishbowl he’d placed on his desk. “He’s gotten really big, see?”
“Wow, yeah. What have you been feeding it?”
“Just the usual,” Andrew said with a shrug. “But I talk to it a lot, when I’m in here alone doing research. I’ve got this theory about how fish are like plants and they grow more if you talk to them, but the tests so far have proved inconclusive. I named him Hulk Xavier, by the way. Hulk because he’s so big, and Xavier because Xavier was kind of a Watcher…in his way.”
Xander smiled, and Andrew felt a rush of relief to finally have someone around who got that.
“That’s a good name,” Xander told him.
“So how was Africa really? And don’t say hot and don’t make jokes about losing your eye.”
Xander shrugged. “It was…boring. There wasn’t any TV, comics, movies, or phones, so it was pretty much just me and the girls. Which sounds like a dream come true, but most of them could break me in half, and that’s not exactly a turn on. Anyway, I’ve been melting away in sub-Sahara for longer than I care to talk about, so let’s go out tonight, okay? Clubs or something? Isn’t that Rashelle’s job anyway? Make everyone think that Buffy is partying it up in Italy?”
Andrew shrugged. “I guess we could, but my Slayers…”
“Can take care of themselves for one night, can’t they?”
Andrew paused. Xander had been sent here to make sure he was doing a good job, and now he wanted to drag him away from his responsibility.
“I should really be out there with them. Or at least at home with my phone turned on so they can call me.”
There was a long pause, during which Andrew shifted uncomfortably in his desk chair, and then Xander slowly smiled. “Good. That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.”
Andrew cocked his head to the side in confusion. “What?”
“Testing you,” Xander said. “Giles thinks…”
Andrew hung his head miserably. They’d finally arrived at the point of the conversation that he’d been dreading. “I know what Rupert thinks. I know why you’re here.”
“I just go where the graying British man sends me,” Xander said.
“I know. Not your fault nobody trusts me.”
Xander stared at him. “Can you blame them? You caused a major incident, Andrew. It went a hell of a lot further than just your apartment.”
“I know that,” Andrew snapped. This was going in the wrong direction. “I know I messed up,” he clarified calmly. “I just thought…I mean, I’ve been on my own for two months now and…never mind.” Andrew sighed heavily and rubbed at his temples, idly wondering if he’d picked up that habit from Rupert. “What I mean is that I know why you’re here, and I just wanted you to know that I don’t like…hate you or anything. I know you’re just following orders.” He sighed again. “We all are.”
Xander nodded slowly. “If it helps…I told Giles that you didn’t need to be watched. Once. And then I ducked, in case he got mad. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen him fight, but he can do things with a broadsword that even Buffy can’t quite manage. Not for lack of trying, either.”
Andrew smiled slightly. “It does help. A little.”
Xander returned his smile and stood up. “Good. I should get back to unpacking. God only knows what those girls would do if they opened the ‘Xander’s Private Stuff’ box. You could come help. If you wanted to, I mean. Unless you’re too busy with Italian For Dummies.”
“Maybe in a few minutes. I need to feed Hulk Xavier and start dinner. You can eat here tonight, if you want. I promise, I can cook more than funnel cakes and hot pockets. Tonight I’m making fettuccini.”
Xander nodded. “Sure. Sounds good.” He stopped in the doorway and, without turning around to face Andrew again, he said, “And for the record, I’m sorry about all this.” Then he was gone.
Andrew sighed heavily and stood, leaning across the desk to feed his fish.
“Here you go, Hulky,” he whispered. “That was Xander. Do you remember him? He’s the one who sent you to me. He’s nice, isn’t he? And he understands your name. He’s the perfect man. He used to be engaged to Anya, who was like, the perfect woman. But then she died. Because of me. I don’t know how he can even stand to look at me. I’d hate me if I were him.”
He sighed and sat down, pulling the fishbowl closer and leaning down to see eye-to-eye with the fish. “I’m glad he doesn’t, though. I don’t know how I would stand it if he hated me. I really like him.”
Hulk Xavier just stared back at him with cold, unblinking fish eyes.
Andrew was comforted.
CHAPTER THREE
“Are you crazy?” Xander asked.
“No, you are!” Andrew said forcefully. “Three sharp claws on both hands! How do you expect to compete with adamantium?”
“Spider powers!” Xander replied. “The man can crawl up walls! He could just climb away out of reach!”
“But he can’t out-run him forever,” Andrew reasoned. “And when Wolverine catches up to him, Spider-Man is going down!”
“No way, dude! Spidey’s got the smarts and that means he would totally win!”
“Are you kidding me?” Andrew scoffed. “Wolverine could kick Spider-Man’s ass with Spider-Man’s ass. He’d just rip it off and beat him over the head with it!”
Andrew was infuriating sometimes. He always seemed to win their comic book debates, no matter what the topic was. The only explanation for it that Xander could come up with was that Andrew had had more practice arguing about it than he had, since Andrew had had Jonathan and Warren to talk about that stuff with, and Xander…well, the only guy he’d ever really had to talk to after Jesse died was Oz, who, even when he was around, wasn’t exactly the type to get into a rousing debate over who was the sexiest comic book female. And then he’d left five years ago and Xander had had no one.
So truth be told, even if Andrew was infuriating, Xander liked having someone around to talk about this sort of thing with.
Even if that someone was clearly blind to the fact that Peter’s brains would kick Logan’s brawn any day. Andrew was just too interested in the shiny, flashy claws to see it.
***
Xander silently passed the comic he’d just finished reading to Andrew, who was currently engrossed in the newest edition of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. He took the new Superman from the pile of comics in the middle of the coffee table that Andrew had brought home and turned to the first page.
He was just getting lost in the latest adventures of Clark Kent when Andrew suddenly made an angry gasping noise and put down the comic book he was holding.
“What?” Xander asked, bemused. Every time they got new comics, Andrew would sit on the other side of the couch, making noises as he read. Sometimes they were angry noises and other times they were noises that could only be called squeals of delight. It had annoyed Xander at first, but by the third week, he’d learned to deal with it.
Andrew pointed at page fourteen of the comic, and Xander leaned over to see what he was pointing at. He didn’t understand what was wrong at first, until Andrew made an annoyed sound and pointed to a specific panel in which someone said that the Bond movies had never been the same since Roger Moore had left.
“Uh, Andrew…other than their appalling taste in Bonds, I don’t see what the problem is.”
Andrew put his hands on his hips, though he remained seated. “Saying Roger Moore is a good Bond is like saying that Michael Gambon is a good Dumbledore!” he whined.
Xander nodded, still not understanding why this was upsetting Andrew so much. “Yeah, everyone knows that Connery was the best,” he said soothingly, not adding that he had a soft spot for Brosnan as well. He knew that if he did, Andrew would laugh him right out of the apartment.
But if anything, Andrew looked more upset than ever, though he didn’t seem angry anymore. He took a few deep breaths, then picked up his comic as though he were going to start reading again. But Xander noticed that his eyes didn’t move at all.
Finally, Andrew said quietly, “Warren liked Connery.”
Xander looked up, a little surprised. Since he’d arrived three weeks ago, Andrew hadn’t mentioned Warren or Jonathan at all. He didn’t know what Warren liking Connery had to do with anything, but he replied, “Did he?”
“Yeah,” Andrew said, even quieter.
“Oh,” Xander replied.
He wasn’t sure what to do with that knowledge. A lot of people liked Connery. It wasn’t like he’d just said he liked Dalton or anything. He opened his mouth to say something else, but he didn’t know what else to say so he just shrugged and went back to reading his comic.
***
“Incoming,” Andrew said as he tossed a pancake over his shoulder.
Xander dove to his right, plate thrust out, to try and catch his breakfast. But the disadvantage of eating breakfast in the home of a Slayer was those damn Slayer reflexes, which usually meant that Xander was the last to get his breakfast each morning.
“You have got to talk to her about that,” Xander said as he approached the stove to make sure he got the next flapjack. “She needs to learn to respect her elders. Or at least her Watchers.”
Andrew scoffed. “Yeah, you got the midichlorians to tell her that? Because I sure don’t. She could go agro on my ass faster than I could say, ‘Luke, I am your father.’ Besides, it’s her house. If she wants to have the first pancake, she can have it. Here.” He slid the second pancake onto Xander’s empty plate.
“It’s your apartment, too,” Xander said, poking a hole in the middle of his pancake with a fork.
Andrew shrugged as he flipped over a third pancake in the pan. “Not really. I just live here.”
“Which means it’s your house,” Xander said as he poured some syrup into the hole he had created.
“I lived at Buffy’s in Sunnydale. Well, I was held hostage there, anyway. Was that my house?” Andrew asked as he placed the last pancake on his own plate and turned the stove off.
Xander shrugged and sat down next to Rashelle. “So, what’s the news today? Any vamp action last night?”
Rashelle smirked slightly. “Oh, there was vamp action. Staked three of them myself.” She gave a small delighted shudder then added, “God, the rush was incredible.”
Xander stared down at his plate, thinking of another Slayer he’d known five years ago who had talked about that same rush. He idly wondered how Faith was doing in England, and if she was still with Robin, but brushed it off.
“Anything suspicious?” Andrew asked, pulling a notebook from the pocket of his jeans.
Rashelle shrugged. “Nothing serious. Oh, no, wait. There was something. The last two vamps I staked…I snuck up on them, and they were talking about ‘The House.’ You know, where you can literally hear the capital letters being spoken? Might be something to look into.”
Andrew began writing something down in his notebook, nodding slowly to himself. “Finish your milk,” he said idly as Rashelle stood up. “A Slayer needs healthy bones.”
“I think the destiny thing took care of that,” Rashelle replied. “Super strength and all that.”
But Xander noted that she drank the milk anyway before putting her dishes in the dishwasher and heading out.
“So, are we going into research mode?” Xander asked, pushing his empty plate away from himself.
Andrew cocked his head to the side, reading over the words he’d written on the notebook.
“No. No, I don’t think so. A phone call, actually.”
Xander watched as Andrew stood and made his way into his study, shutting the door behind him. Xander shrugged, figuring his assistance wasn’t required here, and headed back to his own apartment.
***
Xander dialed Giles’s phone number in England and waited patiently.
“Rupert Giles,” Giles said as he answered the phone.
“Hey,” Xander replied. “It’s Xander. Listen, Giles. I don’t think what Andrew did was intentional. I’ve been here for over three weeks and he hasn’t done a single thing off-procedure.”
“Yes, well, be that as it may, whatever Andrew is up to, he’s not going to flaunt it. I’m starting to regret training him. Whatever he may have lacked for finesse in Sunnydale, my teaching has given him the skills he needs to be discreet.”
“Yeah, but Giles, I really don’t think he’s doing anything bad. We spend pretty much all day together. I don’t know when he would have time to plot anything.”
“You underestimate him, Xander.”
“Or maybe you’re just seeing problems where they don’t exist,” Xander replied.
There was a long pause during which, neither man spoke. Xander wished he hadn’t spoken to Giles like that.
“I think…” Giles said slowly, as though he were choosing his words carefully, “that perhaps you are letting your friendship with Andrew cloud your judgment.”
Xander stayed silent.
“Xander, do I need to remind you of what he’s done? He killed a man.”
“So did Willow,” Xander said. “Two of them. And not that they didn’t deserve it, but we’re all so quick to forgive her. And, might I point out, now that Kennedy is in Africa, there isn’t anyone watching Willow anymore to make sure she doesn’t go all veiny again. So what, she gets the honor system, but Andrew doesn’t?”
“Willow has proven herself able to control her powers, might I remind you,” Giles said in a long-suffering voice. “Andrew has proven nothing.”
Xander sighed. “You want a full status report, don’t you?”
“It would be helpful, yes.”
Xander sat down on the couch, holding the phone between his head and his shoulder. “Fine. But for the record, I don’t like doing this.”
“Duly noted.”
“He spends most of his time with me. I think it’s been so long since he’s had a friend that he’s just sort of soaking it in or something. He’s got a good relationship with most of his Slayers. Rashelle told me she thought he was doing a good job. Not in so many words, of course. It was actually closer to, ‘Well, he hasn’t let any of us get killed yet, has he?’ and then she said something about you and Buffy that I’m not repeating.”
“I’m well aware of my failures when it comes to Buffy,” Giles said quietly.
For a moment, Xander debated whether or not he should continue his report, or say something about Buffy, but in the end, he opted to pretend he hadn’t heard what Giles had said.
“One of them, Leslie, I think she might actually have a crush on him,” Xander laughed. “They watch anime together. She always calls him ‘Mr. Wells,’ even though I’ve lost count of the times he’s asked her not to. Most of them seem to really like him. I’ve noticed that he…I don’t know. He sort of forms personal bonds with them. Like, Leslie and Rashelle the most, but he knows all of their names and where they come from. And he always gives them a gift on their birthday. He really cares about them, Giles. And he hasn’t lost a single Slayer yet. He’s doing a good job. Really, he is. And whenever something’s going on, he’s always the first one to hit the books or make a plan. Like this morning, Rashelle mentioned these vamps she staked were talking about ‘The House,’ or something—“
“Yes,” Giles said. “I’m aware of that. Andrew called me half an hour ago to ask me what I knew about The House. Apparently it isn’t in any of his books. Which isn’t that surprising, considering that it’s a chain of brothels ran by a demon known as Grapthar. Human slaves being forced into prostitution. Nasty business. Usually men, who are then purchased by…well, by both demons and humans, actually. Grapthar isn’t entirely choosy about who his clients are, as long as they’ll pay the right price.”
“That’s horrible,” Xander said.
“Yes, well, seems Grapthar has just built an Italian branch and he’s hired himself a gang of vampires to be his muscle. That’s probably why there has been a surge in the vampire population in your area. They’re coming in looking for work.”
Xander sighed. “So this Grapthar guy, I’m thinking...decapitation?”
“That should work, yes.”
“Okay, then. Sounds like a plan.”
“Xander?”
“Yeah?”
Xander waited while Giles took an uncomfortable pause. “Try…try not to let your feelings cloud your judgment. I know Andrew is your friend, but you seem quick to forget—“
“I haven’t forgotten, Giles. Believe me.”
He hadn’t. He could never forget what the trio had done to them back in Sunnydale. Whenever he least expected it, he’d remember spending an entire day with Buffy’s blood on his hands, or finding Tara’s body up in her bedroom, or watching his best friend disappear into Warren.
Those were things that he didn’t know if he’d ever really forget, not now, not ever. So Giles telling him he was quick to forget, when every second of those last two horrible years in Sunnydale was burned into his brain, was actually bordering on ridiculous.
And when it happened, when Xander would think about those things, he would almost always automatically recoil and Andrew would stare at him confusedly. Then his face would fall and he would look overwhelmingly hurt, and as much as Xander didn’t want to hurt Andrew, the fact was, he hadn’t let himself forget what Andrew really was, and deep down, he thought that Andrew deserved that hurt that showed clearly on his face.
“Very well, Xander. Take care.”
“You, too.”
Xander hung up the phone and slouched back on the couch, sighing heavily.
He didn’t know what to think anymore. Every time he almost forgot, he would be forcefully reminded, whether by his own brain or by Giles, that he was living next door to a known murderer. A known murderer who controlled an army of at least twenty Slayers, all of whom spoke highly of and seemed devoted to him.
Buffy and Giles had a case, all right.
But deep down, Xander couldn’t help but think that maybe it wasn’t Andrew’s fault. Maybe none of it was.
He didn’t know exactly, but he’d always gotten the distinct impression that there was definitely something weird about The First showing itself to Andrew as Warren. For everyone else, it had shown them someone they loved, and Xander didn’t want to think too much about it, because if he came to the conclusion that road led to, he might end up vomiting.
But maybe Andrew was just swept up by dark forces pretending to be his friend, and maybe he deserved a little forgiveness. Maybe he deserved a little trust.
After all, Andrew was much weaker than Spike, and The First had completely taken him over just by humming an old English folk song.
But there was always that nagging voice in the back of his head that reminded him of how much misery the trio had caused after Buffy came back, how much hurt Andrew’s “friend” had caused Willow, and how quickly Andrew had turned on his own best friend.
And suddenly Xander wasn’t very sure of anything, least of all Andrew’s loyalties.
***
Xander poked his head into Andrew’s study. “You feel like some decapitation?” he asked, nodding towards the axe he held in his right hand.
Andrew turned around to face him. “What?”
“Decapitation. Giles said it’d take care of this Grapthar guy. I say we get a couple of Slayers, we head down to the whorehouse, and we free us some male prostitutes.” Xander paused, thinking over what he’d just said. “I mean…we free the humans. And then…” he drew his finger across his neck for emphasis, “we take care of this Grapthar guy.”
Andrew shook his head. “No.”
“Oh, right. Your whole, ‘I don’t fight with my Slayers’ thing. Sorry. I forgot. Don’t worry about it.”
“No, it’s not that,” Andrew said, squirming in his chair. “I just…I think it’s better to wait until I’ve done more research.”
“Giles said you couldn’t find anything in your books.”
“That’s when I was looking for The House,” Andrew replied. “I’m finding stuff about Grapthar. Just give me a day or two to find out more.”
“Andrew, there are people who need our help right this second—“
“I know they do,” Andrew said, standing up and crossing his arms. “And we’ll help them. We will. But keeping my Slayers alive is priority number one, and I’m not sending them on a suicide mission.”
Xander bit his lip. It seemed pretty open and shut to him. Find bad guy, cut off bad guy’s head, and free human slaves from forced prostitution. These were all good goals.
“Andrew, it’s open and shut. We go in, we kick some demon ass, and we save the day. I’m missing the part where there’s a problem.”
“How many times did that work back in Sunnydale?” Andrew asked. “Even when you planned things, you were losing people left and right. And I’m not letting it happen to my girls. We wait until I’ve done some research, okay? Just trust me, Xander. I know what I’m doing.”
Xander leaned against the doorjamb as he considered this. Andrew had a point. Even at the best of times, their lives had been filled with loss. Hell, even Buffy, the Slayer, had died twice. Maybe Andrew had a point.
Xander sighed, then nodded. “Okay. You’re right. We’ll wait.”
Andrew visibly relaxed. “Thank you,” he said, and Xander could tell that he was grateful by the tone of his voice.
“Who Marathon later?” Xander asked.
Andrew grinned. “Of course. Today’s topic: the Doctor’s scarf as worn by Tom Baker: fashion or function.”
Xander smiled and nodded. “You’re going down, Function Boy.” He turned, then paused in the doorway. “You need help with research?”
Andrew shook his head. “I really only have one book to work off of, so it’d be kind of hard for you to help. But uh, if you wanted to be doing something, I heard there’s a vamp nest downtown. Two or three Slayers should cover it.”
Xander nodded. “Sure, I’ll give the orders.”
“Thanks.”
Xander nodded and headed to Ashley, Penny, and Brandy’s apartment down the hall from his own.
***
Xander arrived a little early for his Doctor Who marathon with Andrew and went to knock on Andrew’s study door. But he stopped when he heard Andrew speaking.
“I don’t know what to do,” Andrew whined. “I think he knows. Do you think he knows? Xander can’t find out. If he found out, it would ruin everything.”
Xander wracked his brain for what Andrew could be talking about. Maybe there was a new comic out and Andrew knew its contents would upset Xander. He sometimes picked them up at the local store and read them before he even got home in his eagerness. Xander found it in turns both extremely amusing and extremely annoying, depending on whether Andrew felt the need to burst out the ending before Xander had even had a chance to finish the first page on that particular day. But today was a Tuesday and new comics came out on Wednesdays, so that didn’t seem likely.
His second thought was that maybe they were out of the special syrup he liked on his morning pancakes and Andrew was trying to hide it from him. Andrew always seemed to go out of his way to avoid disappointing Xander, but the more Xander thought about that, the more he realized that “ruin everything” was a bit of an over reaction to a lack of pancake syrup, even coming from Andrew. Besides, if they were out, Andrew would just run out and buy more in the morning before everyone else got up.
And that left Xander with only one option, the one he didn’t want to think about at all. What if Buffy and Giles were right? What if Andrew had gone bad again? Buffy had once said that Andrew tended to pick up evil’s flavor like a mushroom, so what if evil had been cooking Andrew to pizza-topping goodnessy perfection while Xander had his back turned? He hadn’t been lying to Giles about them spending most of their time together, but then again, Willow had gone evil when he was only a few feet away. Although, admittedly, that was a special circumstance.
Andrew did seem to have a knack for falling under the thrall of evil bad guys with shocking ease, and as much as Xander didn’t want to think it, it wouldn’t be all that surprising if he had done it again. After all, Andrew wasn’t the type for random bouts of megalomania, so Xander certainly didn’t think he was trying to steal power for himself. But the idea that Andrew was planning on using his Slayers as an army against Buffy and Giles, all in service to some Dark and Sexy Evil Force, was suddenly looking a lot more plausible than it had half an hour ago.
Xander felt his stomach sink to his knees as he came to the realization that, though he wanted to deny it with every fiber of his being, Buffy and Giles had probably been right about Andrew.
He fled back to his own apartment, feeling as if he were frozen. Sighing, he sunk back down onto the couch.
He weighed his options. He could either call Buffy and Giles and leave Andrew at their mercy, he could do nothing and let it all play out and see if Andrew turned on them all, or he could try and head Andrew off, send some Slayers to do a little reconnaissance, and see what was what. After all, he still didn’t have any solid proof.
He knew which course of action was the best.
But that wasn’t what he wanted to do. He didn’t want to see Andrew tied to a chair being held guestage again simply because they were all too nice to kill him but he knew too much to be let go. Xander didn’t want that. Even if he was a murderer, Andrew was still his friend. (And that thought didn’t bother Xander as much as it used to. After all, his best friend had murdered two men and then tried to destroy the world. So Xander was better adept at handling the whole, “my friend killed people,” thing than he used to be.)
So Xander did what he always did. He followed his heart. And his heart said fix the current situation now, and then talk to Andrew and see what was really going on later, once he knew more.
***
“Mr. Wells wants us to go where?” Leslie asked, perched on the edge of her chair. She was a tiny waif of a girl, and if Xander hadn’t been on the accidental receiving end of one of her punches that one time and ended up screaming like a little girl (which was thenceforth referred to as That of Which We Do Not Speak), he wouldn’t believe that she was capable of driving a wooden stake through a pat of butter, much less through a vampire’s sternum.
“Rashelle knows,” Xander replied, turning to Rashelle. “Around the place you staked those two vamps. Strictly reconnaissance. Just scope the place out. Find out what kind of protection they have. He doesn’t want to make a move until we have a better idea of what they’re capable of.”
“And this place,” Rashelle asked, “it’s some kind of demon…whorehouse?”
“Human slave prostitutes. Human and demon clients.”
“Sounds kinda kinky,” Rashelle replied.
“Sounds kinda evil,” Xander countered. “And Andrew wants you two to scope it out. Don’t engage.”
Rashelle heaved a long-suffering sigh, but nodded. “All right. We’ll head out as soon as it gets dark.”
“Great,” Xander said with a forced smile.
But he couldn’t help but wonder if maybe it wasn’t great at all.
***
“So I told him,” Andrew was saying, “‘We don’t trust you anymore, you…undead law firm guy.’ And he was like, ‘Well, I’ll call Buffy and clear it,’ and I said, ‘Buffy doesn’t trust you, bitch.’”
Xander was torn between laughing at the joke and punching Andrew in the face. He had been trying to keep his cool all evening, watching as Andrew laughed and enjoyed Doctor Who and told stories about what he’d been up to in Italy, trying to figure out how someone who was probably plotting to turn against the very people who had taken him in and possibly saved his life—
No, Xander reminded himself. The person who had saved Andrew’s life was long gone. Dead for her troubles.
And that only served to infuriate him more, and he couldn’t understand how Andrew could sit there so happy and carefree, when he was really lying to them all, ready to turn his back on them at a moment’s notice.
Xander wondered who it was this time that had convinced Andrew to “visit the dark side to pick up a few things,” what All-Consuming Evil had decided to make Andrew its bitch. He doubted that it was The First again, because he was pretty sure that that non-corporeal ass had been successfully kicked back in Sunnydale, but there was a whole myriad of Bad Guys that could be controlling Andrew this time. Who knew, it might even be Dracula. If he’d made Xander his manslave, he sure as hell could do it to Andrew. Whoever it was, he decided, he didn’t want to know. The what didn’t matter. The why didn’t even matter. At this point, the only thing that mattered was stopping it. Anya had died to save Andrew’s life, and Xander would be damned if he was going to sit by and watch him throw it away because some Evil Thing happened to be both Sexy and Seductive and decided to play with Andrew’s head.
“You called Angel a ‘bitch?’” Xander asked, forcing a slight smile.
“Well…maybe not in so many words. But I did do the cool, subtle-yet-obvious threat to have my Slayers kick his ass thing. And I think I even managed to hurt his feelings a little bit by reminding him that none of my Slayers have ever had sex with him or Spike.”
“I’m not sure it’s possible to hurt Angel’s feelings unless you’re short, blonde, and,” he surveyed Andrew, “have much bigger breasts.”
Andrew didn’t answer, just held up a shushing finger and pushed a button on the TV remote. “It’s back on,” he hissed.
Xander nodded and settled back into the couch cushions, trying (and failing) to lose himself in stories about the Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith.
***
“They were here about a month ago, you know. Like a week before you got here. They were looking for Buffy. I called Rupert to let him know that my plan was working just like I said it would. Thought that might gain a little bit of his trust back, but…” he trailed off.
“Anyway, I was going undercover that night with Christina and Miranda to the opera. There’s this vampire who’s…well, he’s sort of like Angelus in a way. You know, the whole…death is art stuff. And he likes to pick off opera-goers. So, we were going undercover that night, and I had to try and hurry them out of the apartment, and they kept whining about Buffy. They really believed that Rashelle was her!” Andrew added excitedly. “And if anyone was going to figure it out, it was those two, right? I kept worrying that they were going to smell that it wasn’t her and get angry and then I’d have to go all Jackie Chan on them.” He demonstrated his last sentence by kicking one leg up at an angle, knocking over the bowl of popcorn he’d placed on the coffee table earlier. Xander choked down the laugh that automatically bubbled up in his throat and started picking up the scattered corn, but Andrew put a hand on his arm and stayed him.
“Leave it. It’s back on.” He pressed the un-mute button and stared at the TV, entranced. “Oh, and Xander?” he asked a few moments later, still not taking his eyes off of the screen.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t tell Rupert about that, okay?”
“Okay, Andrew.” If he wasn’t going to tell about Andrew’s plan to sabotage them, then he sure as hell wasn’t going to bother reporting that Andrew, in a moment of geekery, had knocked over a bowl of popcorny goodness.
“Thanks.”
***
Xander could feel himself falling asleep when suddenly a beat-up looking Rashelle limped into the apartment.
“Oh, my God,” Andrew said, jumping up and running over to her, Doctor Who forgotten. “The vamp nest shouldn’t have been that bad.”
But Xander noticed the tears in Rashelle’s eyes before he noticed the gashes on her arms or the blood on her face.
“What happened?” he asked, knowing that whatever she answered, he wasn’t going to like it.
Rashelle looked up at them with a tear-streaked face and whispered, “They killed Leslie.”
Ready for part two? Click here to continue on.
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Pairing: Xander Harris/Andrew Wells, mentions of past Xander Harris/Anya Jenkins & Warren Mears/Andrew Wells
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 23,069
Disclaimer: Joss is Boss, and I but a humble slave.
Spoilers for: All of Buffy, all of Angel, and 8x01 of the Buffy season 8 comics. (Though I don't think you have to have read the latter to understand the fic, it's just that I used something from that in this to make it better fit in with canon.)
Summary: After the "cultural misunderstanding" that led Andrew to be living in Italy during "The Girl in Question," Giles and Buffy are no longer sure just whose side Andrew is on, so they send Xander to Italy to figure it out. Distrust and geekiness ensues.
Xander was glad to be leaving Africa. Not only because he’d been cooped up with a bunch of teenage girls for the past five months, and not only because sub-Saharan Africa didn’t seem to understand the concept of rain, but truth be told, he’d missed being able to speak to his friends.
He’d been isolated in Africa. No phones, (no lights, no motorcars, not a single luxury) no internet, and sketchy postal service that only ran on days that didn’t end in ‘y’ meant that he hadn’t had much contact with his friends since he’d gotten on that flight from London and said goodbye to everything he’d ever known six months after the fall of Sunnydale.
He’d gotten a couple of letters, of course. It wasn’t like they had forgotten about him. And he’d even sent a few back, along with a few gifts. But one letter every four weeks wasn’t exactly what he’d call good communication.
It was probably good for him, though, to get away. Clear his head. Being in a group of nothing but teenage girls meant he spent a lot of time by himself, which suited him just fine, because for a long time after Sunnydale, he wasn’t exactly Mr. Conversation.
He’d needed the alone time to deal with Anya’s death, and that’s exactly what he’d gotten. And he was okay with it now. Really. Maybe he hadn’t ‘moved on,’ but that was sort of hard to do when the oldest female around you was only seventeen and didn’t speak English.
Then he’d gotten a letter a few weeks ago saying that sometime soon, Giles would be sending someone to Africa to replace him and that he was needed in Italy. Judging by the date on the plane ticket to England he’d been sent, he was expecting it when he saw a familiar figure approaching their camp. It was Kennedy.
“Hey,” he said, awkwardly embracing her. He’d always felt inexplicably embarrassed around Willow’s girlfriends, even though he’d cared about Tara and liked Kennedy.
It took him a few moments to realize that she wasn’t hugging back, so he released her, glancing down. She looked…rather defeated, actually. Which wasn’t a look he was used to seeing on Kennedy’s face at all.
“Is something wrong?” he asked. “Is Willow okay?”
Kennedy took a deep breath, as though she were trying to control herself. “Yes. And…no.”
“Kennedy, I need a straight answer, here. How is Willow?” When Kennedy still didn’t answer, Xander gulped. “Are there veins?” he asked in a hushed voice.
Kennedy laughed. Laughed! She had never really gotten just how close “sweet, innocent Willow” had come to destroying the entire world. But Xander knew.
“No. There aren’t veins. And she’s alive and healthy if that’s what you mean.”
Xander breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s good. You had me scared for a minute—“
He was cut off when Kennedy said, “She broke up with me. Or I broke up with her. It was sort of a mutual thing.”
“Oh.” Xander looked down at the ground. “Sorry. That…that sucks.”
“Yeah. We’ve been fighting for a long time now. It just sort of…exploded. So I asked Buffy if I could be transferred somewhere else, and she talked to Giles and they decided to leave Willow in Brazil, send me here, and send you to Italy. It’s a big thing. I’m just glad that they needed you there because I don’t think I could’ve taken another day of the ‘Let’s Ignore Each Other Because It’s Totally The Mature Thing To Do’ game.”
Xander nodded sagely. “Willow’s good at that game.”
“There are a lot of things she’s good at,” Kennedy replied. “Some of them I could live without, though.”
Xander shrugged. “Well, the good news is, you have an entire fleet of Slayers all under your command now. That should make you happy.”
Kennedy smiled. “A little,” she agreed.
“I’d introduce you to them, but honestly, I don’t know half of their names. Mostly I just give orders and the few who understand English translate it for the rest of them. It seems to work, though.”
“How many are there?” she asked.
“I lost count. There are a few of them that I trust more than the others, so now whenever we hear about a new Slayer, I just send them out to get her. Much safer than me going, really, since it’s hard to fight with a lack of depth perception. I do sometimes, though. Usually only when the camp gets attacked.”
“Does that happen often?” Kennedy asked, raising an eyebrow.
Xander shrugged. “It’s not like a nightly thing, if that’s what you’re asking. But yeah, it happens occasionally.”
Kennedy nodded, suddenly all business. “Right. First thing I’m going to do is set up a patrol on the perimeters. Over there looks like a troublesome area, so I’ll have to double the patrol over there, and…”
She continued talking out her plan, and Xander quietly excused himself and slipped inside his tent to pack. His plane was leaving in fifteen hours and the airport was at least an eight-hour drive away.
He didn’t have much to pack, truth be told. Africa had sort of forced him to live the minimalist lifestyle. He’d tried to look at it as a spiritual thing, getting back in touch with nature and stuff, but Willow had been the spiritual one in their friendship. Gods and souls and stuff was more on her level than his, so mostly he just hoped that Andrew was saving the new League of Extraordinary Gentlemen issues for him.
He picked up the dress he’d gotten from a local village for Dawn and folded it carefully, packing it into his duffle bag along with the crystal he’d gotten for Willow, the book he’d gotten for Giles, the flute (of the non-demon summoning variety) he’d gotten for Andrew, and the sword he planned to mail to Buffy from the post office near the airport, since he knew he wouldn’t be allowed to carry it onto the plane.
Finished, he stepped outside and found his Slayers talking animatedly with Kennedy, who seemed happier now that she was in her element than she had been when she’d arrived. Xander smiled slightly. He knew from personal experience how being in Africa could help heal heartbreak.
“Kennedy,” he said as he approached the group, “I’m going to go ahead and leave, if you don’t mind. I figure if I drive all night, I’ll be able to get a little sleep in the car before I have to check-in. I need to borrow one of the girls to drive the car back in the morning.”
“Oh, sure.” Kennedy nodded. “Go ahead.”
“Great.” Xander motioned to one of the Slayers who he knew spoke English and could drive. She nodded and headed silently to the car.
“So…I guess this is goodbye,” he said to the remaining girls. “I hope you guys have a good time with Kennedy. She’s in charge now.” As he spoke, one of the English-speakers translated for the rest of them, who all nodded. Xander noted with a feeling of happiness that quite a few of them looked as though they would miss him.
“Bye, Kennedy,” he told her, before hugging her awkwardly again. This time she hugged back.
“Bye, Xander. Take care of yourself.” She bit her lip as though trying to stop herself from speaking, but then suddenly said, “And…check in with Willow occasionally, okay? I don’t like the idea of her being down there all alone.”
Xander smiled. “Sure.” He patted her on the shoulder and then joined Lucy, the English-speaking, car-driving Slayer (which wasn’t really her name, but when she’d introduced herself, he hadn’t been able to pronounce or remember her name, so he called her Lucy in his head and avoided addressing her directly) in the car and drove off.
“And you’re sure you’ve shipped my stuff to the right place?” Xander asked Giles as he stood in the doorway, ready to leave. He may not have had much with him in Africa, but in the six months after Sunnydale had become a giant crater, he’d acquired quite a few possessions in England, which had spent the last five months in boxes in his former room at the makeshift Watcher Training House Giles had set up to accommodate all the new Watchers he’d had to teach.
“Yes, Xander,” Giles assured him.
“What am I doing there, anyway? You still haven’t told me.”
There was a pause, then Giles said, “Do you remember when we decided to let Andrew become a Watcher? And we all talked about the fact that it could be a big mistake?”
“Yeah,” Xander replied. “But from what I heard, he’s been doing a good job.”
“He was,” Giles agreed. “Until about a month ago.”
Xander tried to stop himself from gasping out loud as Giles described to him what Andrew had done, but he couldn’t believe that he’d messed up that badly.
“Burned an entire apartment building?” he asked in complete horror.
“Yes, and unfortunately, worse” Giles replied. “Needless to say, Buffy and myself…we’ve become…worried. We’re not accusing him of anything exactly, but according to my sources, it was the result of him confusing two words in Italian during a peace negotiation. And I don’t need to remind you that Andrew has an affinity for languages, so the fact that he would make such a mistake is highly…suspicious. We don’t know if he’s turned on us or…Well, we just don’t know. And you’re really the only one of us that he trusts, so you being there won’t be as intimidating to him as say, if it were Buffy or Willow. You can see why we pulled you out of Africa.”
“Yeah,” Xander said, nodding. “I’m just not sure…I mean…maybe it was a mistake. He’s a Watcher, Giles. A fully-qualified Watcher. He’s got more book knowledge than any of us, except for you. Maybe he was just nervous. He’s not exactly field-tested, you know. Are you sure he needs to be watched?”
“We’re not sure of anything right now. None of us really think he would turn on us, especially after Anya died saving his life. I think it affected him deeper than anyone, save for you. But we can’t forget that he is capable of it. He’s killed, Xander. We can never forget that.”
Xander nodded again. The thing he’d learned about Andrew in the six months that they’d spent at Giles’ training together before being sent off in different directions was that it was very easy to forget that Andrew was capable of murder. It was hard to think about Andrew stabbing Jonathan when he was laughing at his jokes or watching Doctor Who reruns with him.
But the fact still remained that Andrew was a murderer. And that meant he was certainly capable of sabotaging that peace negotiation. As much as Xander hated to think about it, it was highly possible.
“Right.” He sighed and stepped outside, holding a hand up to signal to the yellow cab that was waiting for him that he was coming. “I should get going. Don’t want to miss my flight. Bye, Giles. I’ll do my best.”
Giles nodded and patted him on the shoulder in the fatherly way that Xander had missed while he was in Africa. “I know you will.”
Xander gave him his best smile, then got in the cab.
Andrew was happy to have Xander back from Africa. Really, he was. It had been a long time since he’d been around someone who got his comic book references or who knew the difference between the real Godzilla and that pathetic excuse of a fake lizard that Matthew Broderick had killed. Besides, he wanted to show Xander how big the mbuna fish he’d sent him had grown.
Buffy and the rest of them, they had all learned to tolerate Andrew; while they didn’t tie him up or threaten him with knives while holding him over demonic seals anymore, they weren’t really his friends. Not like Xander had finally become after Sunnydale.
So yeah, he was happy to have Xander back.
But having him back from Africa, and having him being sent to watch Andrew (honestly, a Watcher being watched?) were two entirely different things, and Andrew definitely didn’t like the latter.
He’d complained at first, but Rupert had told him it was just a precaution and ‘not to worry,’ in That Tone, the one that struck fear into the hearts of Slayers, caused fierce demons to run home crying to their mothers, and did nothing to soothe Andrew’s wounded pride. What little he had after Sunnydale, anyway.
But Andrew knew the truth. He’d been in Italy for two months now, and he’d been just fine. Really, he had. Aside from that teensy little cultural misunderstanding that resulted in his apartment being burnt down, he’d been doing a good job with his Slayers.
It was probably the “teensy little cultural misunderstanding” that had caused Rupert to send Xander to watch him in the first place.
Watch him! As if he hadn’t been doing a good job or something. He had. He’d trained his Slayers and kept them safe and been a good Watcher, just like Rupert had trained him to be.
And it seemed like all of that had been forgotten because of one tiny mistake involving a group of normally peaceful Italian demons that had wanted to negotiate a truce between their clan and the Slayers, and Andrew’s less than stellar Italian skills. He’d messed up one tiny word and angered the entire clan, and the next thing he knew, he had to move in with one of the Buffy doubles (which had been his plan to begin with, and where was his thanks for that, exactly?) named Rashelle because his apartment was in cinders.
Apparently one mistake was all it took to remind the rest of them of who he used to be, and they stopped trusting him again.
It didn’t matter. He knew he wasn’t that guy anymore, even if they didn’t.
It had taken him the better part of six months to fully process what had happened in Sunnydale, both before the final battle and what happened after, but with a lot of help from his therapist, he had dealt with the reality that he was a murderer and the fact that he had a lot of karmic debt to pay.
That was why when Rupert asked him if he wanted to train to be a Watcher (and Andrew knew that he only asked because they were so short-handed, not out of any particular desire to be nice to Andrew, or because he thought he’d be good at it), he’d agreed. He figured the best way to pay off all that debt was to start working for the side of good.
And he had. For almost a year and a half now, he had been working tirelessly learning how to be a Watcher, training his Slayers, and even picking up a few new demon languages for his repertoire. Apparently, though, Italian was a little harder to memorize than Kreflan, because he didn’t have nearly as many issues with transitive verbs in Kreflan as he did in Italian.
And one failed negotiation later, Xander was being sent to watch him, as if he hadn’t been doing just fine on his own for two whole months now.
He was just fine. Really. He didn’t need to be watched like a baby. Or a guestage. Or an ex-murderer.
He was completely, one hundred percent fine on his own, and he didn’t need Xander moving into the apartment next door to his and Rashelle’s to keep an eye on him.
What were they afraid he was going to do, kill one of the Slayers? As if he could.
He was just fine, and the Slayers were just fine, and everything would be supremely peachy if it hadn’t been for those damn Italian transitive verbs. He blamed the Italians. It was their fault for having a language that was so hard to memorize.
The point was, he didn’t need Xander there babysitting him. But all his complaining had done no good, so his Slayers were currently helping Xander move his things into the apartment next door while Andrew stayed in his study pretending to be doing research on a big case.
Truth was, Andrew just didn’t want to see Xander. He knew he’d have to eventually, but the fact that he’d been judged incompetent, that Xander knew it, made him want to hide in shame.
The last thing he needed was for Xander to see him trying to hide his embarrassment over the fact that, apparently, a twenty-two year old man who had been a solo Watcher for two whole months now needed to be baby-sat.
It took him straight back to his days of being tied to a chair in Buffy’s house in Sunnydale and having Xander interrogate him for information about the Seal. He’d felt pathetic then, and he felt pathetic now.
There was a knock at his door, jolting him out of his thoughts. He grabbed the nearest book, pulled it open to a random page, and said, “Come in.”
It was Xander.
“Oh, hello,” Andrew said, fighting back the blush that was creeping up his neck. “Welcome back. I’d ask you how Africa was, but I’m a little busy.” He motioned to his book. “So I’m afraid that will have to wait for later,” he said in his best professional Watcher voice.
Xander leaned on the doorjamb and pointed at his book. “Busy with…” he leaned to the side and squinted before straightening back up, “Italian for Dummies?”
Andrew blushed, all pretence of fighting it forgotten. Of course, it just had to be that particular book he’d grabbed, the very book that had gotten him into this mess to begin with. He thought about making a comment about wanting to learn from his mistakes, hoping it would make him sound more mature, but opted instead on just closing the book and turning his desk chair around to face Xander.
“Maybe…maybe I could take a small break,” he said.
Xander grinned, stepping into the room and sitting down on the empty armchair in the corner.
“So. Africa,” he said.
“How was it?”
“Hot,” Xander said with a laugh. “Lots of demons. Nearly lost my good eye a couple of times.”
Andrew nodded. “I don’t…I don’t really join my Slayers in their fights.”
Truth was, he was scared to, but he wasn’t going to tell Xander that. Xander had always been the brave geek. Andrew was just the one who summoned demons. (Which wasn’t as productive of a skill as he thought it’d be when he’d decided to become a Watcher. It was rather counter-intuitive, actually.)
Xander just shrugged. “How’s the fish?”
Andrew seized on the topic and pointed to the fishbowl he’d placed on his desk. “He’s gotten really big, see?”
“Wow, yeah. What have you been feeding it?”
“Just the usual,” Andrew said with a shrug. “But I talk to it a lot, when I’m in here alone doing research. I’ve got this theory about how fish are like plants and they grow more if you talk to them, but the tests so far have proved inconclusive. I named him Hulk Xavier, by the way. Hulk because he’s so big, and Xavier because Xavier was kind of a Watcher…in his way.”
Xander smiled, and Andrew felt a rush of relief to finally have someone around who got that.
“That’s a good name,” Xander told him.
“So how was Africa really? And don’t say hot and don’t make jokes about losing your eye.”
Xander shrugged. “It was…boring. There wasn’t any TV, comics, movies, or phones, so it was pretty much just me and the girls. Which sounds like a dream come true, but most of them could break me in half, and that’s not exactly a turn on. Anyway, I’ve been melting away in sub-Sahara for longer than I care to talk about, so let’s go out tonight, okay? Clubs or something? Isn’t that Rashelle’s job anyway? Make everyone think that Buffy is partying it up in Italy?”
Andrew shrugged. “I guess we could, but my Slayers…”
“Can take care of themselves for one night, can’t they?”
Andrew paused. Xander had been sent here to make sure he was doing a good job, and now he wanted to drag him away from his responsibility.
“I should really be out there with them. Or at least at home with my phone turned on so they can call me.”
There was a long pause, during which Andrew shifted uncomfortably in his desk chair, and then Xander slowly smiled. “Good. That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.”
Andrew cocked his head to the side in confusion. “What?”
“Testing you,” Xander said. “Giles thinks…”
Andrew hung his head miserably. They’d finally arrived at the point of the conversation that he’d been dreading. “I know what Rupert thinks. I know why you’re here.”
“I just go where the graying British man sends me,” Xander said.
“I know. Not your fault nobody trusts me.”
Xander stared at him. “Can you blame them? You caused a major incident, Andrew. It went a hell of a lot further than just your apartment.”
“I know that,” Andrew snapped. This was going in the wrong direction. “I know I messed up,” he clarified calmly. “I just thought…I mean, I’ve been on my own for two months now and…never mind.” Andrew sighed heavily and rubbed at his temples, idly wondering if he’d picked up that habit from Rupert. “What I mean is that I know why you’re here, and I just wanted you to know that I don’t like…hate you or anything. I know you’re just following orders.” He sighed again. “We all are.”
Xander nodded slowly. “If it helps…I told Giles that you didn’t need to be watched. Once. And then I ducked, in case he got mad. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen him fight, but he can do things with a broadsword that even Buffy can’t quite manage. Not for lack of trying, either.”
Andrew smiled slightly. “It does help. A little.”
Xander returned his smile and stood up. “Good. I should get back to unpacking. God only knows what those girls would do if they opened the ‘Xander’s Private Stuff’ box. You could come help. If you wanted to, I mean. Unless you’re too busy with Italian For Dummies.”
“Maybe in a few minutes. I need to feed Hulk Xavier and start dinner. You can eat here tonight, if you want. I promise, I can cook more than funnel cakes and hot pockets. Tonight I’m making fettuccini.”
Xander nodded. “Sure. Sounds good.” He stopped in the doorway and, without turning around to face Andrew again, he said, “And for the record, I’m sorry about all this.” Then he was gone.
Andrew sighed heavily and stood, leaning across the desk to feed his fish.
“Here you go, Hulky,” he whispered. “That was Xander. Do you remember him? He’s the one who sent you to me. He’s nice, isn’t he? And he understands your name. He’s the perfect man. He used to be engaged to Anya, who was like, the perfect woman. But then she died. Because of me. I don’t know how he can even stand to look at me. I’d hate me if I were him.”
He sighed and sat down, pulling the fishbowl closer and leaning down to see eye-to-eye with the fish. “I’m glad he doesn’t, though. I don’t know how I would stand it if he hated me. I really like him.”
Hulk Xavier just stared back at him with cold, unblinking fish eyes.
Andrew was comforted.
“Are you crazy?” Xander asked.
“No, you are!” Andrew said forcefully. “Three sharp claws on both hands! How do you expect to compete with adamantium?”
“Spider powers!” Xander replied. “The man can crawl up walls! He could just climb away out of reach!”
“But he can’t out-run him forever,” Andrew reasoned. “And when Wolverine catches up to him, Spider-Man is going down!”
“No way, dude! Spidey’s got the smarts and that means he would totally win!”
“Are you kidding me?” Andrew scoffed. “Wolverine could kick Spider-Man’s ass with Spider-Man’s ass. He’d just rip it off and beat him over the head with it!”
Andrew was infuriating sometimes. He always seemed to win their comic book debates, no matter what the topic was. The only explanation for it that Xander could come up with was that Andrew had had more practice arguing about it than he had, since Andrew had had Jonathan and Warren to talk about that stuff with, and Xander…well, the only guy he’d ever really had to talk to after Jesse died was Oz, who, even when he was around, wasn’t exactly the type to get into a rousing debate over who was the sexiest comic book female. And then he’d left five years ago and Xander had had no one.
So truth be told, even if Andrew was infuriating, Xander liked having someone around to talk about this sort of thing with.
Even if that someone was clearly blind to the fact that Peter’s brains would kick Logan’s brawn any day. Andrew was just too interested in the shiny, flashy claws to see it.
Xander silently passed the comic he’d just finished reading to Andrew, who was currently engrossed in the newest edition of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. He took the new Superman from the pile of comics in the middle of the coffee table that Andrew had brought home and turned to the first page.
He was just getting lost in the latest adventures of Clark Kent when Andrew suddenly made an angry gasping noise and put down the comic book he was holding.
“What?” Xander asked, bemused. Every time they got new comics, Andrew would sit on the other side of the couch, making noises as he read. Sometimes they were angry noises and other times they were noises that could only be called squeals of delight. It had annoyed Xander at first, but by the third week, he’d learned to deal with it.
Andrew pointed at page fourteen of the comic, and Xander leaned over to see what he was pointing at. He didn’t understand what was wrong at first, until Andrew made an annoyed sound and pointed to a specific panel in which someone said that the Bond movies had never been the same since Roger Moore had left.
“Uh, Andrew…other than their appalling taste in Bonds, I don’t see what the problem is.”
Andrew put his hands on his hips, though he remained seated. “Saying Roger Moore is a good Bond is like saying that Michael Gambon is a good Dumbledore!” he whined.
Xander nodded, still not understanding why this was upsetting Andrew so much. “Yeah, everyone knows that Connery was the best,” he said soothingly, not adding that he had a soft spot for Brosnan as well. He knew that if he did, Andrew would laugh him right out of the apartment.
But if anything, Andrew looked more upset than ever, though he didn’t seem angry anymore. He took a few deep breaths, then picked up his comic as though he were going to start reading again. But Xander noticed that his eyes didn’t move at all.
Finally, Andrew said quietly, “Warren liked Connery.”
Xander looked up, a little surprised. Since he’d arrived three weeks ago, Andrew hadn’t mentioned Warren or Jonathan at all. He didn’t know what Warren liking Connery had to do with anything, but he replied, “Did he?”
“Yeah,” Andrew said, even quieter.
“Oh,” Xander replied.
He wasn’t sure what to do with that knowledge. A lot of people liked Connery. It wasn’t like he’d just said he liked Dalton or anything. He opened his mouth to say something else, but he didn’t know what else to say so he just shrugged and went back to reading his comic.
“Incoming,” Andrew said as he tossed a pancake over his shoulder.
Xander dove to his right, plate thrust out, to try and catch his breakfast. But the disadvantage of eating breakfast in the home of a Slayer was those damn Slayer reflexes, which usually meant that Xander was the last to get his breakfast each morning.
“You have got to talk to her about that,” Xander said as he approached the stove to make sure he got the next flapjack. “She needs to learn to respect her elders. Or at least her Watchers.”
Andrew scoffed. “Yeah, you got the midichlorians to tell her that? Because I sure don’t. She could go agro on my ass faster than I could say, ‘Luke, I am your father.’ Besides, it’s her house. If she wants to have the first pancake, she can have it. Here.” He slid the second pancake onto Xander’s empty plate.
“It’s your apartment, too,” Xander said, poking a hole in the middle of his pancake with a fork.
Andrew shrugged as he flipped over a third pancake in the pan. “Not really. I just live here.”
“Which means it’s your house,” Xander said as he poured some syrup into the hole he had created.
“I lived at Buffy’s in Sunnydale. Well, I was held hostage there, anyway. Was that my house?” Andrew asked as he placed the last pancake on his own plate and turned the stove off.
Xander shrugged and sat down next to Rashelle. “So, what’s the news today? Any vamp action last night?”
Rashelle smirked slightly. “Oh, there was vamp action. Staked three of them myself.” She gave a small delighted shudder then added, “God, the rush was incredible.”
Xander stared down at his plate, thinking of another Slayer he’d known five years ago who had talked about that same rush. He idly wondered how Faith was doing in England, and if she was still with Robin, but brushed it off.
“Anything suspicious?” Andrew asked, pulling a notebook from the pocket of his jeans.
Rashelle shrugged. “Nothing serious. Oh, no, wait. There was something. The last two vamps I staked…I snuck up on them, and they were talking about ‘The House.’ You know, where you can literally hear the capital letters being spoken? Might be something to look into.”
Andrew began writing something down in his notebook, nodding slowly to himself. “Finish your milk,” he said idly as Rashelle stood up. “A Slayer needs healthy bones.”
“I think the destiny thing took care of that,” Rashelle replied. “Super strength and all that.”
But Xander noted that she drank the milk anyway before putting her dishes in the dishwasher and heading out.
“So, are we going into research mode?” Xander asked, pushing his empty plate away from himself.
Andrew cocked his head to the side, reading over the words he’d written on the notebook.
“No. No, I don’t think so. A phone call, actually.”
Xander watched as Andrew stood and made his way into his study, shutting the door behind him. Xander shrugged, figuring his assistance wasn’t required here, and headed back to his own apartment.
Xander dialed Giles’s phone number in England and waited patiently.
“Rupert Giles,” Giles said as he answered the phone.
“Hey,” Xander replied. “It’s Xander. Listen, Giles. I don’t think what Andrew did was intentional. I’ve been here for over three weeks and he hasn’t done a single thing off-procedure.”
“Yes, well, be that as it may, whatever Andrew is up to, he’s not going to flaunt it. I’m starting to regret training him. Whatever he may have lacked for finesse in Sunnydale, my teaching has given him the skills he needs to be discreet.”
“Yeah, but Giles, I really don’t think he’s doing anything bad. We spend pretty much all day together. I don’t know when he would have time to plot anything.”
“You underestimate him, Xander.”
“Or maybe you’re just seeing problems where they don’t exist,” Xander replied.
There was a long pause during which, neither man spoke. Xander wished he hadn’t spoken to Giles like that.
“I think…” Giles said slowly, as though he were choosing his words carefully, “that perhaps you are letting your friendship with Andrew cloud your judgment.”
Xander stayed silent.
“Xander, do I need to remind you of what he’s done? He killed a man.”
“So did Willow,” Xander said. “Two of them. And not that they didn’t deserve it, but we’re all so quick to forgive her. And, might I point out, now that Kennedy is in Africa, there isn’t anyone watching Willow anymore to make sure she doesn’t go all veiny again. So what, she gets the honor system, but Andrew doesn’t?”
“Willow has proven herself able to control her powers, might I remind you,” Giles said in a long-suffering voice. “Andrew has proven nothing.”
Xander sighed. “You want a full status report, don’t you?”
“It would be helpful, yes.”
Xander sat down on the couch, holding the phone between his head and his shoulder. “Fine. But for the record, I don’t like doing this.”
“Duly noted.”
“He spends most of his time with me. I think it’s been so long since he’s had a friend that he’s just sort of soaking it in or something. He’s got a good relationship with most of his Slayers. Rashelle told me she thought he was doing a good job. Not in so many words, of course. It was actually closer to, ‘Well, he hasn’t let any of us get killed yet, has he?’ and then she said something about you and Buffy that I’m not repeating.”
“I’m well aware of my failures when it comes to Buffy,” Giles said quietly.
For a moment, Xander debated whether or not he should continue his report, or say something about Buffy, but in the end, he opted to pretend he hadn’t heard what Giles had said.
“One of them, Leslie, I think she might actually have a crush on him,” Xander laughed. “They watch anime together. She always calls him ‘Mr. Wells,’ even though I’ve lost count of the times he’s asked her not to. Most of them seem to really like him. I’ve noticed that he…I don’t know. He sort of forms personal bonds with them. Like, Leslie and Rashelle the most, but he knows all of their names and where they come from. And he always gives them a gift on their birthday. He really cares about them, Giles. And he hasn’t lost a single Slayer yet. He’s doing a good job. Really, he is. And whenever something’s going on, he’s always the first one to hit the books or make a plan. Like this morning, Rashelle mentioned these vamps she staked were talking about ‘The House,’ or something—“
“Yes,” Giles said. “I’m aware of that. Andrew called me half an hour ago to ask me what I knew about The House. Apparently it isn’t in any of his books. Which isn’t that surprising, considering that it’s a chain of brothels ran by a demon known as Grapthar. Human slaves being forced into prostitution. Nasty business. Usually men, who are then purchased by…well, by both demons and humans, actually. Grapthar isn’t entirely choosy about who his clients are, as long as they’ll pay the right price.”
“That’s horrible,” Xander said.
“Yes, well, seems Grapthar has just built an Italian branch and he’s hired himself a gang of vampires to be his muscle. That’s probably why there has been a surge in the vampire population in your area. They’re coming in looking for work.”
Xander sighed. “So this Grapthar guy, I’m thinking...decapitation?”
“That should work, yes.”
“Okay, then. Sounds like a plan.”
“Xander?”
“Yeah?”
Xander waited while Giles took an uncomfortable pause. “Try…try not to let your feelings cloud your judgment. I know Andrew is your friend, but you seem quick to forget—“
“I haven’t forgotten, Giles. Believe me.”
He hadn’t. He could never forget what the trio had done to them back in Sunnydale. Whenever he least expected it, he’d remember spending an entire day with Buffy’s blood on his hands, or finding Tara’s body up in her bedroom, or watching his best friend disappear into Warren.
Those were things that he didn’t know if he’d ever really forget, not now, not ever. So Giles telling him he was quick to forget, when every second of those last two horrible years in Sunnydale was burned into his brain, was actually bordering on ridiculous.
And when it happened, when Xander would think about those things, he would almost always automatically recoil and Andrew would stare at him confusedly. Then his face would fall and he would look overwhelmingly hurt, and as much as Xander didn’t want to hurt Andrew, the fact was, he hadn’t let himself forget what Andrew really was, and deep down, he thought that Andrew deserved that hurt that showed clearly on his face.
“Very well, Xander. Take care.”
“You, too.”
Xander hung up the phone and slouched back on the couch, sighing heavily.
He didn’t know what to think anymore. Every time he almost forgot, he would be forcefully reminded, whether by his own brain or by Giles, that he was living next door to a known murderer. A known murderer who controlled an army of at least twenty Slayers, all of whom spoke highly of and seemed devoted to him.
Buffy and Giles had a case, all right.
But deep down, Xander couldn’t help but think that maybe it wasn’t Andrew’s fault. Maybe none of it was.
He didn’t know exactly, but he’d always gotten the distinct impression that there was definitely something weird about The First showing itself to Andrew as Warren. For everyone else, it had shown them someone they loved, and Xander didn’t want to think too much about it, because if he came to the conclusion that road led to, he might end up vomiting.
But maybe Andrew was just swept up by dark forces pretending to be his friend, and maybe he deserved a little forgiveness. Maybe he deserved a little trust.
After all, Andrew was much weaker than Spike, and The First had completely taken him over just by humming an old English folk song.
But there was always that nagging voice in the back of his head that reminded him of how much misery the trio had caused after Buffy came back, how much hurt Andrew’s “friend” had caused Willow, and how quickly Andrew had turned on his own best friend.
And suddenly Xander wasn’t very sure of anything, least of all Andrew’s loyalties.
Xander poked his head into Andrew’s study. “You feel like some decapitation?” he asked, nodding towards the axe he held in his right hand.
Andrew turned around to face him. “What?”
“Decapitation. Giles said it’d take care of this Grapthar guy. I say we get a couple of Slayers, we head down to the whorehouse, and we free us some male prostitutes.” Xander paused, thinking over what he’d just said. “I mean…we free the humans. And then…” he drew his finger across his neck for emphasis, “we take care of this Grapthar guy.”
Andrew shook his head. “No.”
“Oh, right. Your whole, ‘I don’t fight with my Slayers’ thing. Sorry. I forgot. Don’t worry about it.”
“No, it’s not that,” Andrew said, squirming in his chair. “I just…I think it’s better to wait until I’ve done more research.”
“Giles said you couldn’t find anything in your books.”
“That’s when I was looking for The House,” Andrew replied. “I’m finding stuff about Grapthar. Just give me a day or two to find out more.”
“Andrew, there are people who need our help right this second—“
“I know they do,” Andrew said, standing up and crossing his arms. “And we’ll help them. We will. But keeping my Slayers alive is priority number one, and I’m not sending them on a suicide mission.”
Xander bit his lip. It seemed pretty open and shut to him. Find bad guy, cut off bad guy’s head, and free human slaves from forced prostitution. These were all good goals.
“Andrew, it’s open and shut. We go in, we kick some demon ass, and we save the day. I’m missing the part where there’s a problem.”
“How many times did that work back in Sunnydale?” Andrew asked. “Even when you planned things, you were losing people left and right. And I’m not letting it happen to my girls. We wait until I’ve done some research, okay? Just trust me, Xander. I know what I’m doing.”
Xander leaned against the doorjamb as he considered this. Andrew had a point. Even at the best of times, their lives had been filled with loss. Hell, even Buffy, the Slayer, had died twice. Maybe Andrew had a point.
Xander sighed, then nodded. “Okay. You’re right. We’ll wait.”
Andrew visibly relaxed. “Thank you,” he said, and Xander could tell that he was grateful by the tone of his voice.
“Who Marathon later?” Xander asked.
Andrew grinned. “Of course. Today’s topic: the Doctor’s scarf as worn by Tom Baker: fashion or function.”
Xander smiled and nodded. “You’re going down, Function Boy.” He turned, then paused in the doorway. “You need help with research?”
Andrew shook his head. “I really only have one book to work off of, so it’d be kind of hard for you to help. But uh, if you wanted to be doing something, I heard there’s a vamp nest downtown. Two or three Slayers should cover it.”
Xander nodded. “Sure, I’ll give the orders.”
“Thanks.”
Xander nodded and headed to Ashley, Penny, and Brandy’s apartment down the hall from his own.
Xander arrived a little early for his Doctor Who marathon with Andrew and went to knock on Andrew’s study door. But he stopped when he heard Andrew speaking.
“I don’t know what to do,” Andrew whined. “I think he knows. Do you think he knows? Xander can’t find out. If he found out, it would ruin everything.”
Xander wracked his brain for what Andrew could be talking about. Maybe there was a new comic out and Andrew knew its contents would upset Xander. He sometimes picked them up at the local store and read them before he even got home in his eagerness. Xander found it in turns both extremely amusing and extremely annoying, depending on whether Andrew felt the need to burst out the ending before Xander had even had a chance to finish the first page on that particular day. But today was a Tuesday and new comics came out on Wednesdays, so that didn’t seem likely.
His second thought was that maybe they were out of the special syrup he liked on his morning pancakes and Andrew was trying to hide it from him. Andrew always seemed to go out of his way to avoid disappointing Xander, but the more Xander thought about that, the more he realized that “ruin everything” was a bit of an over reaction to a lack of pancake syrup, even coming from Andrew. Besides, if they were out, Andrew would just run out and buy more in the morning before everyone else got up.
And that left Xander with only one option, the one he didn’t want to think about at all. What if Buffy and Giles were right? What if Andrew had gone bad again? Buffy had once said that Andrew tended to pick up evil’s flavor like a mushroom, so what if evil had been cooking Andrew to pizza-topping goodnessy perfection while Xander had his back turned? He hadn’t been lying to Giles about them spending most of their time together, but then again, Willow had gone evil when he was only a few feet away. Although, admittedly, that was a special circumstance.
Andrew did seem to have a knack for falling under the thrall of evil bad guys with shocking ease, and as much as Xander didn’t want to think it, it wouldn’t be all that surprising if he had done it again. After all, Andrew wasn’t the type for random bouts of megalomania, so Xander certainly didn’t think he was trying to steal power for himself. But the idea that Andrew was planning on using his Slayers as an army against Buffy and Giles, all in service to some Dark and Sexy Evil Force, was suddenly looking a lot more plausible than it had half an hour ago.
Xander felt his stomach sink to his knees as he came to the realization that, though he wanted to deny it with every fiber of his being, Buffy and Giles had probably been right about Andrew.
He fled back to his own apartment, feeling as if he were frozen. Sighing, he sunk back down onto the couch.
He weighed his options. He could either call Buffy and Giles and leave Andrew at their mercy, he could do nothing and let it all play out and see if Andrew turned on them all, or he could try and head Andrew off, send some Slayers to do a little reconnaissance, and see what was what. After all, he still didn’t have any solid proof.
He knew which course of action was the best.
But that wasn’t what he wanted to do. He didn’t want to see Andrew tied to a chair being held guestage again simply because they were all too nice to kill him but he knew too much to be let go. Xander didn’t want that. Even if he was a murderer, Andrew was still his friend. (And that thought didn’t bother Xander as much as it used to. After all, his best friend had murdered two men and then tried to destroy the world. So Xander was better adept at handling the whole, “my friend killed people,” thing than he used to be.)
So Xander did what he always did. He followed his heart. And his heart said fix the current situation now, and then talk to Andrew and see what was really going on later, once he knew more.
“Mr. Wells wants us to go where?” Leslie asked, perched on the edge of her chair. She was a tiny waif of a girl, and if Xander hadn’t been on the accidental receiving end of one of her punches that one time and ended up screaming like a little girl (which was thenceforth referred to as That of Which We Do Not Speak), he wouldn’t believe that she was capable of driving a wooden stake through a pat of butter, much less through a vampire’s sternum.
“Rashelle knows,” Xander replied, turning to Rashelle. “Around the place you staked those two vamps. Strictly reconnaissance. Just scope the place out. Find out what kind of protection they have. He doesn’t want to make a move until we have a better idea of what they’re capable of.”
“And this place,” Rashelle asked, “it’s some kind of demon…whorehouse?”
“Human slave prostitutes. Human and demon clients.”
“Sounds kinda kinky,” Rashelle replied.
“Sounds kinda evil,” Xander countered. “And Andrew wants you two to scope it out. Don’t engage.”
Rashelle heaved a long-suffering sigh, but nodded. “All right. We’ll head out as soon as it gets dark.”
“Great,” Xander said with a forced smile.
But he couldn’t help but wonder if maybe it wasn’t great at all.
“So I told him,” Andrew was saying, “‘We don’t trust you anymore, you…undead law firm guy.’ And he was like, ‘Well, I’ll call Buffy and clear it,’ and I said, ‘Buffy doesn’t trust you, bitch.’”
Xander was torn between laughing at the joke and punching Andrew in the face. He had been trying to keep his cool all evening, watching as Andrew laughed and enjoyed Doctor Who and told stories about what he’d been up to in Italy, trying to figure out how someone who was probably plotting to turn against the very people who had taken him in and possibly saved his life—
No, Xander reminded himself. The person who had saved Andrew’s life was long gone. Dead for her troubles.
And that only served to infuriate him more, and he couldn’t understand how Andrew could sit there so happy and carefree, when he was really lying to them all, ready to turn his back on them at a moment’s notice.
Xander wondered who it was this time that had convinced Andrew to “visit the dark side to pick up a few things,” what All-Consuming Evil had decided to make Andrew its bitch. He doubted that it was The First again, because he was pretty sure that that non-corporeal ass had been successfully kicked back in Sunnydale, but there was a whole myriad of Bad Guys that could be controlling Andrew this time. Who knew, it might even be Dracula. If he’d made Xander his manslave, he sure as hell could do it to Andrew. Whoever it was, he decided, he didn’t want to know. The what didn’t matter. The why didn’t even matter. At this point, the only thing that mattered was stopping it. Anya had died to save Andrew’s life, and Xander would be damned if he was going to sit by and watch him throw it away because some Evil Thing happened to be both Sexy and Seductive and decided to play with Andrew’s head.
“You called Angel a ‘bitch?’” Xander asked, forcing a slight smile.
“Well…maybe not in so many words. But I did do the cool, subtle-yet-obvious threat to have my Slayers kick his ass thing. And I think I even managed to hurt his feelings a little bit by reminding him that none of my Slayers have ever had sex with him or Spike.”
“I’m not sure it’s possible to hurt Angel’s feelings unless you’re short, blonde, and,” he surveyed Andrew, “have much bigger breasts.”
Andrew didn’t answer, just held up a shushing finger and pushed a button on the TV remote. “It’s back on,” he hissed.
Xander nodded and settled back into the couch cushions, trying (and failing) to lose himself in stories about the Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith.
“They were here about a month ago, you know. Like a week before you got here. They were looking for Buffy. I called Rupert to let him know that my plan was working just like I said it would. Thought that might gain a little bit of his trust back, but…” he trailed off.
“Anyway, I was going undercover that night with Christina and Miranda to the opera. There’s this vampire who’s…well, he’s sort of like Angelus in a way. You know, the whole…death is art stuff. And he likes to pick off opera-goers. So, we were going undercover that night, and I had to try and hurry them out of the apartment, and they kept whining about Buffy. They really believed that Rashelle was her!” Andrew added excitedly. “And if anyone was going to figure it out, it was those two, right? I kept worrying that they were going to smell that it wasn’t her and get angry and then I’d have to go all Jackie Chan on them.” He demonstrated his last sentence by kicking one leg up at an angle, knocking over the bowl of popcorn he’d placed on the coffee table earlier. Xander choked down the laugh that automatically bubbled up in his throat and started picking up the scattered corn, but Andrew put a hand on his arm and stayed him.
“Leave it. It’s back on.” He pressed the un-mute button and stared at the TV, entranced. “Oh, and Xander?” he asked a few moments later, still not taking his eyes off of the screen.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t tell Rupert about that, okay?”
“Okay, Andrew.” If he wasn’t going to tell about Andrew’s plan to sabotage them, then he sure as hell wasn’t going to bother reporting that Andrew, in a moment of geekery, had knocked over a bowl of popcorny goodness.
“Thanks.”
Xander could feel himself falling asleep when suddenly a beat-up looking Rashelle limped into the apartment.
“Oh, my God,” Andrew said, jumping up and running over to her, Doctor Who forgotten. “The vamp nest shouldn’t have been that bad.”
But Xander noticed the tears in Rashelle’s eyes before he noticed the gashes on her arms or the blood on her face.
“What happened?” he asked, knowing that whatever she answered, he wasn’t going to like it.
Rashelle looked up at them with a tear-streaked face and whispered, “They killed Leslie.”
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