Blood and Roses Realm | Fan Fiction Site | Home Page
This page was last updated: 021599
(c)February 1999
URL: ../../../STO/brose/buffy/willow19.html(Also housed at Sharon Bower's Site!)
The following is a bit of alternative fiction based on certain characters from the Xenaverse It is not meant to infringe on anyone else's rights. If you don't agree or disapprove, please go read something else.
This story is part of an Altaverse based on Bite Me and the Fonder Heart. It can be found, along with other such stories, at The Realms of the Xenaverse, under Blood and Roses. Xena is Ares' Daughter and Gabrielle is Bacchus' Daughter
Characters from Buffy: Vampire Slayer have also been borrowed for the purposes of this story. All of this is written with the utmost affection and the no desire for renumeration (except for possible emails). The same above disclaimer is in effect. There are certain changes that have been made to accomadate this particular Xenaverse. Buffy's Vampires are really part of the Kin, renamed for purposes of this story
Xex Alert: Yes, there definitely will be, between two consenting immortal women even. Maybe even more
Violence Alert: Yes, probably, given that this is a story involving slayage and Xena.
Needless to say... nobody in Sunnydale slept well that night.
People would talk about it later, swear that it must have been something they ate-- but normally contented partners found themselves snapping irritably at one another; sound sleepers found themselves tossing and turning; and those precious few who did find sleep were visited with horrible visions they couldn't quite remember the next morning.
Buffy had never been so happy to see the sunrise.
She didn't even mind-- or even think to find it unusual, really-- when she opened the door to an equally awake, and exhausted looking, Willow. "Hey, Wills," she greeted her best friend. "I hope you brought the Captain Crunch."
Willow held up a heretofore unseen white bag. "Doughnuts from the Quick Pick. It was on the way."
"Good enough." She turned from the door, knowing that Willow would trail her into the kitchen. Once there, the red-headed teen busied herself pulling out a plate and arranging the doughnuts in a precise semicircle.
"Do you have any.... oh, thanks." Her question was answered as Buffy thrust two diet colas into her hands. "Over ice?"
"I'll take mine straight," Buffy replied, handing her a single glass. "You know where everything is."
Willow pressed her lips into a meager grin and filled the glass with from the automatic dispenser before returning to the butcher-block table in the center of the kitchen. She perched uneasily on one of the stools there and rubbed her fingers lightly over the newly-forming condensation on her glass. There was a tense silence from the two friends that was radically different from their usual companionable ease-- and it made each of them achingly aware that the events of the previous night were anything but routine. "So..." her green eyes glanced everywhere but at Buffy's shadowed eyes. "How 'bout those Cubs?" she asked.
Seeing Buffy's pale brows knit together in confusion, Willow elaborated. "It's what my dad always says whenever he can't think of anything else do say." Not stopping about to consider why she couldn't think of anything else to say to her best friend. "Since he's from Chicago, he always says 'How 'bout those Cubs?'" Willow's voiced deepened in imitation of her father and then returned to it's normal range. "But I guess since we're in Sunnydale, I should ask about the Sunnydale team-- but Sunnydale doesn't have a team. I guess the closest one would be the Dodgers or maybe the Giants-- but you don't follow baseball. I don't really follow baseball either, but my dad does... and I've sort of absorbed it through the genes or something. Maybe it's just in the air..." She was floundering now, but unable to stop the tumble of increasingly incoherent words as they fell from her lips. If she stopped talking now, Buffy might start... and then she would have to tell her friend about Angelus' attack. Willow didn't even want to think about how the Slayer would react to the news. The merest mention of her former lover's name could evoke any one of a plethora of reactions from Buffy-- and sometimes all of them at once.
"Willow--" Buffy held out her hands to stop the onslaught.
"Sorry." Willow scrunched her face in apology. "I'm doing it again."
The Slayer ran a weary hand through blond hair that already had a serious case of bed head. "It's okay. I'm just wiped from last night."
The teen nodded in understanding. "Xena said the slayage was pretty intense."
"It was that," Buffy agreed. "I don't know how many vamps we staked, but it was more than I've ever seen together at one time. They just kept coming, Wills." She shook her head. "Without Xena there, I would have been one toasted Slayer. That's for sure." An admission that she'd never make to the warrior's face, but one that she couldn't really deny.
Willow beamed at the tacit endorsement of her aunt's lover. "Having the daughter of a god on your side's a good thing, huh?"
Buffy's gray eyes drifted in memory of the dark and bloody warrior from the night before. "Daughter of a god..."
"You do believe her now. Don't you?"
"After what I saw last night, Wills, I'd be an idiot not to." She shook her head. "But it's wierd though. I mean, you'd think an immortal..."
"I know what you mean," Willow jumped easily into her friend's train of thought. "Maybe that's why this is so strange for us all. Think about it. All the immortals we've seen before now have had three heads or fangs or an extra arm or two. Or they've just been really gross. Xena and Gabrielle seem..."
"Don't you dare say ordinary," Buffy cautioned. "Even I'm not that jaded."
The teen laughed ruefully. "I don't think anyone's ever called them that. Even before they were immortal."
As Buffy and Willow dug into their sugar-rich, protein-poor breakfast, the two ordinary immortals in question were finishing up a leisurely jog through the quiet Sunnydale suburb the Rosenburgs called home. Of all the creatures in the town, they alone had slept well-- the blood and fire in their veins sated into quietude by their activities of the night before. In silent accord they moved into the backyard where they began a long and intense round of drills... their weapons of long use, sword and staff, cracking against one another sharply in the morning stillness.
No words accompanied their silent dance. They circled around each other warily, watching for the best opening and finding them few and far between. Except for their clothing, it could have been any one of a thousand different mornings that they had spent together during their millennia together... with one small difference.
Two thousand years ago, Gabrielle was Xena's pupil in every sense of the word. Xena was her first-- her first friend, lover, partner... betrayer. Now the situation was reversed, and the Sunwalker watched approvingly as the memories continued to return to Xena's body.
The sword sang almost effortlessly in the warrior's hand this morning, but the Sunwalker was privy to the other mornings not too long ago when her mate growled with frustration as her body refused to bend to her will. In one sense fighting was still like breathing to the newly awakened immortal-- she knew without thinking what her body should do. However, the young twenty-eight year old body that she had reclaimed often rebelled against the nearly inhuman things she demanded of it. For those first twenty-eight years, Xena had lived as an ordinary mortal-- oblivious to her heritage and trapped by circumstances into a life that the daughter of Ares never would have chosen.
The scars from the needle tracks had vanished once she reclaimed her immortality-- as had the hunger for something other than her sire's Fire-- and the damage inflicted to her mortal's body long since repaired... but still in some dark, subconscious place too deep for either the warrior or the Sunwalker to reach... it remembered.
Xena would never admit how much her body ached this morning, both from her hunt with Buffy and her other... activities... with her mate. She hadn't lied to Willow when she said she welcomed everything that being the Sunwalker's lover demanded of her, but that wasn't to say that sometimes it didn't hurt.
Just a little bit.
And in a good way.
Her mind distracted just the tiniest bit by the consideration of just what she and Gabrielle had done once they finally sent Willow off to bed allowed the Sunwalker the opening she was looking for. A swift kick to her right wrist sent the sword flying out of Xena's hand. In another heartbeat-- so fast that had anyone been there to witness it, they wouldn't have seen a thing-- Gabrielle's staff had landed squarely in the warrior's stomach. Xena doubled over as the breath whooshed out of her, only to be caught squarely in the chin by a flying roundhouse kick.
Slammed on to the ground by the impact, the warrior decided it would be a good time to stay down.
"Ouch."
Misty green eyes peered concernedly over at her as Xena finally opened her eyes. "You weren't concentrating," the Sunwalker reproved mildly.
"You were distracting me," Xena retorted good-naturedly, allowing her lover to haul her up off the neatly trimmed back lawn.
"How do you figure that? I wasn't saying a word." The blond immortal frowned.
"You shouldn't wear that body when you spar."
The bard's mouth hung open for a priceless moment-- allowing Xena, though physically defeated-- to walk away with the last laugh.
"Race you to the shower."
"How rabid was Xander when Xena and I left him?" Buffy asked between large bites of breakfast. The powdered doughnet left a delicate white ring around the Slayer's mouth that Willow was having a really hard time not staring at. Visions of what she had seen between the warrior and her aunt the previous night kept flashing behind her eyes at the worst moments. Usually right when Buffy was asking her a question.
Like now.
"Huh?" she asked gracelessly.
The Slayer's eyes widened a bit at her friend's unusual lapse. Willow could be counted on to make sense of even the most arcane conversations. "Xander. The Bronze. Abandonment. Last night. Status check?"
"Oh... yeah," Willow's pale green eyes refocused as she finally processed the question, banishing at last the searing memory of Xena's half-naked form sprawled across her aunt. "He was pretty ripped about it."
Buffy glanced down at the table and idly drew her finger up the length of the wooden grain. "I'm glad he wasn't there last night. If he had been..." Her voice trailed off.
The silence thickened between them.
"It's not a game anymore, Wills," the Slayer said softly. "I can't believe I hadn't realized it before now." She snorted angrily. "How many times have I 'saved the world' now? And I just didn't get it. I staked. I slayed. I went home and thought about what to wear to the Bronze on Friday night." She paused before continuing, "Those demons bled last night, Willow." She grasped her friend's wrist tightly, gray eyes locking with green ones. "And I liked it."
The last admission. The shameful, painful one. The one that would send her best friend, her Willow, walking out the door, fed up with her Slayer baggage-- baggage Buffy knew would be her burden alone until some vamp got the better of her one night in an abandoned alley.
That's what it's really about, isn't it? her mind wandered. Slaying... hunting until I become prey for some bigger, better, stronger ghoul. They know I live, I breathe... they'll know when I die... and another Slayer is born. Only then will my friends be safe.
Her hand loosened its grip on Willow's wrist. Slid down the tender flesh and delicate bones until their fingers were intertwined. "I... I..." The Slayer shrugged slightly, eyes now avoiding Willow's assiduously. "That's why I'm glad he wasn't there," she finished lamely.
Willow stared at her friend in helpless bewilderment, knowing that she didn't have the words-- that even Giles' considerable vocabulary would fall far short-- to end Buffy's pain. Instead, she slipped loose from her friend's grasp and walked around the tiny island separating them, until she could wrap the now shuddering Slayer in a warm embrace. "It's okay, Buffy," she whispered into fine, blond hair. "It's okay," she repeated firmly. "It has to be, I promise."
Blood and Roses Realm | Fan Fiction Site | Home Page
This page was last updated: 021599
(c)February 1999
URL: ../../../STO/brose/buffy/willow19.html(Also housed at Sharon Bower's Site!)