DARK PROMISE

CHAPTER 22

by Sharon Bowers

The following is a bit of alternative fiction based on certaincharacters from the Xenaverse It is not meant to infringe onanyone else's rights. If you don't agree or disapprove, pleasego read something else.

This story is part of an Altaverse based on Bite Me and theFonder 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 purposesof this story. All of this is written with the utmost affection and the no desire forrenumeration (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.

Remember, this is all meant in fun!

When Buffy had said, "I want to sweat..." she really hadn't known what she was getting into.

"That's right. Thrust," Xena panted in time to the rhythm of of their bodies. "Harder!" she exclaimed.
 
"I'm gonna hurt you if I do this any harder," Buffy replied grimly.

"I'll be the judge of that. Come on..." Xena retorted.

"Okay..." Buffy shook her head. "But you asked for it..."

A flurry of moves too fast for human eyes passed between the two women. Although she had only been wielding the sword for a couple of hours, the metal weight felt like an old friend to Buffy. She twirled it expertly around her wrist and then went on a serious offensive. Thrusting, parrying, she was a blond blur of action as she attacked the tall, dark warrior.

Unfortunately, all of her attacks landed far short of their marks.

With a joyous cry, Xena somersaulted over the smaller blond, landing behind her and separating Buffy's feet out from their firm hold on the hardwood beneath her.

The slayer landed hard on her tail with an unceremonious, "Oh shit..." Glaring at the grinning warrior from between hanks of mussed blond hair, she muttered, "That hurt."

Xena flashed an unrepentant smirk at the slayer. "It was supposed to. If I had been a bacchae, you'd be missing chunks of your neck right now." She offered Buffy a sweaty hand up. "Be thankful I'm not."

Buffy hesitated before taking the hand. There was something beautifully menacing in that voice as it teased her. Xena had tested her abilities far beyond anything that Giles-- or even Angel-- ever had. The dark woman smirking down on her was something the likes of which Buffy had never seen.

Daughter of a god...
 
It was becoming a common refrain in the slayer's thoughts, and Buffy shook her head to clear it. "So what's got your Victoria's Secrets in a wad?" The question was out of her mouth before she could think. Well, Willow always said she lacked diplomacy. The least she could do was prove her friend right.

Xena merely regarded her archly. "I could ask you the same thing."

"Willow lied." The Slayer glared at the immortal. "I hate being lied to."

"She didn't tell you about Angelus' unscheduled pit stop." Xena regarded her young comrade skeptically. "You've got... odd... tastes in lovers, Slayer."

A harsh retort rose in Buffy's throat, but she caught the bemused glint in the other woman's eyes. To the gang, Angel and their tormented relationship had been such a source of oh-so-serious-angst that no one had ever had the nerve to tease her about it. She admired the warrior's gall. Of course, considering Xena had just soundly kicked her ass up one side of the hall and down the other, she had sort of earned the right. With a mental shrug, she decided to see if two could play the game. "This from a woman who's doing the nasty with the two thousand year old undead?"

Xena didn't miss a beat. "Gabrielle prefers the term, immortal, thank you very much."

Buffy waved a hand. "Whatever... undead is still undead." She studied the sheen of perspiration coating the warrior's bare arms and heard the slightly ragged breathing that might go undetected by less-attuned ears. "But you're a part of that now." The blonde cocked her head. "Aren't you?"

Xena's eyes narrowed, and Buffy felt a sudden chill descend upon the room.

Whoops....

"You wanna know, Slayer, what I am?"" She stalked over to the teenager, so that only a hint of breath separated her lips from Buffy's ear. "Look in the mirror."

Her shoes made anxious, squeaking sounds as she paced the length of the polished hardwood floor in the library. "I mean, Aunt Gabrielle, I've never seen her so angry. And that's saying something, I've seen Buffy get pretty twisted up. But honestly, I thought she was going to go large upside my head."

It took a moment for Gabrielle to translate Willow's teenspeak into something intelligible to her slightly more mature understanding, but she eventually nodded in understanding. "You lied to Buffy about what happened at the house last night with Angelus."

"I didn't lie!"

The immortal looked sternly at her niece.

"I didn't!"

Gabrielle crossed her arms.

"Okay, so I didn't exactly tell her the truth. Actually, I didn't tell her anything. I omitted. There's a difference. You can't get mad at someone for omitting."

"Wanna bet?" Gabrielle asked darkly, thinking about her own sins of omission when she and Xena first returned from Chin-- how it had almost torn the two lovers apart and condemned them both to an immortality alone. Of course, the relationship between the bard and the warrior was far different from that of her niece and the Slayer. She studied the obviously distressed teenager squeaking across the floor.

Or was it?

The question gave Gabrielle pause-- she had sensed the connection between Buffy and Willow almost absently, felt its similarity to her own connection with Xena so many centuries ago. Willow was of her lineage, and Buffy... well, Buffy was one of the Chosen Ones. She was a Slayer with all the responsibilities that entailed, and for the first time, the Sunwalker wondered if her decision to reveal herself to her niece had been the right one. There was so much that Willow didn't-- couldn't know-- and she had left so much in the hands of the Council for so long that she couldn't just waltz back in and jerk their authority away from them. If she and Xena had just stayed away from Sunnydale...

It wouldn't change a damned thing. Willow would still be hurting; Buffy would still be broken-hearted; Angelus would still be evil.

And the world would still be about to end...

"Been here, done this," she muttered lightly to herself before returning her full attention to the distraught teen in front of her. "Willow..." She brushed a hand lightly over her niece's shimmering red-gold hair. "Buffy counts on you-- more than anyone else. Even more than Giles, I think."

"I don't think so." Willow looked doubtful. "I know she complains and stuff, but he's her Watcher. He knows all those Watcher-like things. You know?"

"But you're her friend. Her best friend. She counts on you to tell her even the bad stuff. Even the stuff that's so bad she doesn't want to hear it."

"Like her vamp boyfriend tried to off all her friends?"

Gabrielle smiled ruefully. "Yeah, like her vamp boyfriend tried to off all her friends."

"Think she'll forgive me?"

The answer came not from Gabrielle's lips but from behind the two women, in a low-pitched alto that the teenager could-- and did-- hear in her sleep. "I know she will."

The smile that spread over the Willow's face could have lit the entire city with its brilliance. "Hey there," she said quietly, her eyes dropping to the floor.

"Hey there, Wills." Buffy stuffed her hands in her pockets, scuffling her feet with an unusual awkwardness. Her body felt like one big bruise thanks to the workout with Xena, but her head was clearer than it had been in a long time. "Hey Gabrielle."

"Buffy." The Sunwalker nodded a greeting.

The Slayer jerked a thumb at the door. "Ms. Thing is out there on her Harley, scaring small children and doing naughty things to boys' hormones. You should probably go talk to her."

Gabrielle eyed the Slayer knowingly.  On Buffy's skin, she could smell the light scent of sweat along with a faint trace of musk from the teenager's unconscious arousal, despite the shower the other girl had taken. It must have driven Xena to distraction... she mused, wondering what sort of state she'd find the warrior in. "I doubt if talking is what she's interested in at the moment," she murmured more to herself than anything, forgetting about the Slayer's keen sense of hearing.

Buffy looked at her oddly but let the comment slide. She waited until the Sunwalker had excused herself before turning to her best friend. "You lied to me," she said without preamble.

"I know," Willow replied. "And I'm sorry. But I'm not sorry about why I lied."

"What do you mean?"

The hacker hesitated a moment, before sliding closer to her friend. She wanted to reach out and touch the energy that she could almost see shimmering off Buffy's skin, but the wary alertness in the Slayer's gray-blue eyes held her back. "You were hurting this morning, Buffy. I didn't want to hurt you any more-- you didn't need to hear about... him just then."

"But I did, Willow. He's my responsibility." Shadowed pain loomed large in Buffy's expression, knowing that were it not for her, Angelus would never have targeted them.

"NO!" Buffy's stubborn insistence on taking on an impossibly large burdens snapped the last of Willow's restraint. She grabbed the Slayer's arms and shook her roughly, half-expecting all the while to be tossed across the room. "When are you going to realize that you did not bring the Hellmouth to Sunnydale? It was here way before you were, and so was I! Do you think I just didn't notice that a large percentage of my friends disappeared or died under mysterious circumstances? Do you think that nobody went out after dark just because we didn't like the night air? Be real, Buffy. Vamps had claimed this place before you got here, and it was only a matter of time before I got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. You've saved my life so many times-- and not because you were the one who put me in danger-- but because that's who you are. That's what you do. You protect people. That's what you'll do for the rest of your life. So forgive me if I wanted to protect you for a change. Even if it was just to spare you one more piece of bad news." Winded by the rush of words, Willow released her friend and shook her head sorrowfully. "Why can't I do that?"

The answer she received wasn't in the form of words, but instead in a fierce hug that threatened to squeeze all the air out of her lungs. Instinctively she wrapped her arms around the deceptively solid length of Buffy's body, breathing in all the scents that so intangibly defined the Slayer. There was something eternal in this embrace, something that cemented a bond of friendship that both knew they would never have to question again. Good and bad, their arms seemed to say although their voices seemed to have failed them.

The darkness and the light.