Work Text:
June 2005
The first thing Xander learned about puppies was that they had to pee every two hours, day or night, and if they couldn’t hose down the grass, they had no problem going wherever they were when nature called. Xander had this running phone conversation in his head to Jack where he complained about that and the chewing and the utter inability of the little runt to learn how to heel. In the last week alone, he’d walked probably a mile in circles around the back yard until Buffy had yelled at him about distracting the girls. Xander had read more dog training books in the last two weeks than demonologies, which, considering he led three sessions a day on How To Figure Out What You’re Dealing With, was pretty remarkable. He’d tried the choke collar, he’d tried the dog treats, he’d tried everything short of yelling which is what he wanted to do but that all the dog books said it was a bad idea, and he still couldn’t get the dog to heel.
“He’s just a baby, Xander,” Christa, fourteen and a self-described dog trainer, said. “He sits and stays, and he’s handling the Long Down okay, aren’t you, Ace? Aren’t you just so cute and wonderful?” At the center of attention, Ace’s tail thwapped excitedly on the floor as Christa ruffled his ears.
“Ace, down,” Xander said before he got any ideas. They were twenty minutes into the half hour of enforced stillness at the end of another long day of Slayer Camp. “Good boy.” For all the frustration an excited puppy was in a full house, he was pretty cute and wonderful.
“They like it when you say it excited like a question,” said Christa.
“Good boy?” asked Hillary from the couch behind them. They were in the den in front of the new dancing American Idol show, girls packed like sardines on the couch, the armchairs, whatever was stolen from the dining room, and most of the floor space. Christa had snagged the best spot in the house on Ace’s other side, chatting training techniques during the ads to a rapt audience.
That was the second thing Xander had learned about puppies: with a couple of exceptions, girls loved puppies and would do just about anything to keep puppy playing privileges. With things this summer in more upheaval than normal, it was one extra weapon Xander had for his side.
“What a good boy you are!?” Christa demonstrated, making everyone laugh and Ace thump his tail wildly. There followed a chorus of praise disguised as questions until Ace couldn’t stand it any more and jumped up to lick the nearest face, Christa’s of course. Xander checked his watch. Twenty three minutes. Not bad for a roomful of eager distractions.
“Ace, down,” Xander grabbed the puppy and put him back into place, ignoring the giggles around the room. “You should all be ashamed of yourselves, corrupting the young,” Xander told the girls in his best mock severe voice, getting even more giggles in reply. It was mostly the younger set up here, the thirteen and fourteen year olds who sometimes got driven off by the high schoolers from the basement and the absolute privacy of the tv down there. Xander didn’t want to know and made a point of only going downstairs if he was specifically invited to fix a problem.
Once Ace had settled somewhat, Xander released him and let him bound off. The books were always very adamant about that, making sure that your puppy knew he still had to listen to you.
“Are you going to teach him to be an attack dog?” asked Becky. Ace bounced from girl to girl, licking and nosing and wiggling happily. He was so innocent and didn’t have a mean bone in his body. Thinking of him putting himself in danger, a weapon, scared Xander in the same way that sending these kids out into battle did. More so, because Ace was tiny and helpless and not built to take a beating. That was the part of the phone conversation to Jack that Xander left out. He had a feeling his dad knew how much he loved Ace without it being said anyway.
“I gotta teach him to heel first,” Xander answered. Jerry Cho said he had a friend who worked with police dogs if Xander was interested, and had brought up the point that given his proximity to a life high in violence, Ace, like the girls, was probably better off trained.
Jerry was a good guy, and Xander had certainly thought about his offer. Dawn had found his karate studio last year when she’d wanted more training that wasn’t designed for slayers. Jerry was sharp and by the end of the year he’d pieced together enough to be dangerous so Dawn had made an executive decision to see if he would help them instead of turn them over to social services. It was the best decision she had made. Once the Council money came through, Xander offered him a summer contract to put the technique behind the brute strength of the slayers. The results had been impressive after he knocked the older girls down a peg or two, even Buffy who for once had the grace to be a good example and not complain about it where anyone but Xander could hear. It was not long after that that Jerry was teaching Buffy how to teach better and taking in Xander and Andrew for human sized lessons.
The last five minutes of the show was back on and the girls settled down to watch the final words from the judges. Ace had made it to Kelly’s lap and was contentedly getting his belly rubbed, tired at last from a busy day. On his left, Courtney leaned a little bit more against Xander’s shoulder, resting her head. That was the third thing Xander had learned about puppies: that they had enough energy to keep up with slayers but, like slayers, when they crashed, they crashed hard.
The show wound down, the voting lines opened, and while the girls fished for cell phones, Xander went and retrieved Ace who licked his face in greeting when Xander picked him up. “Lights out in an hour,” he said, getting only a few absent hand waves in acknowledgement. He wasn’t worried. They would whine and complain and pretend to ignore him for however long it took for them to cycle through the bathrooms, but they’d more or less be in bed in an hour. Good kids, every one.
“Come on you,” Xander rubbed his cheek against Ace’s soft puppy fur and took him outside.
July 2005
The first day was the hardest. It was Jack and eight little girls set up in the sitting room paying attention as Jack talked about how many people died every year from accidental gunshot wounds.
It had been a hell of a phone call. Jack had picked up, glad to hear Xander on the other end, catching up about life and slayer camp and then bam, “Hey I have a topic that I need your help with.”
“Sure, what is it?”
Xander paused, long enough for a truck to drive through the hole in the conversation. “So Mae’s dad thought she should learn how to shoot a gun, to protect herself now that she has super strength. Just in case. Anyway, I was thinking that it might not be a bad idea for everyone to at least know what to do if they find a gun.” He had trailed off and Jack had stayed quiet. He could hear the blood rushing in his ears as he struggled to find something to say.
Jack’s knee-jerk reaction had been, “Are you nuts?”
“Look, I know you lost Charlie. I know what it’s like to lose someone to a stray bullet by some dumbass,” said Xander grimly. “I’m just worried that some vampire will be smart enough to take a shot or something, or one of the girls goes after a mugger thinking she’s invincible and suddenly there’s a gun on the ground and too many people grabbing for it.”
The silence had been long and heavy but Jack had said, “Okay.” God help him, he understood that terrible what if of a kid not knowing what to do with a gun.
Cleveland was chaos. When he saw the weekly schedule, it reminded Jack of boot camp: conditioning, training, classes on hand to hand fighting and weapons, tactics, field medicine. The weapons just happened to be medieval, the tactics for taking on different monsters, and the field medicine skewed toward girls with abnormal healing ability. And there were arts and crafts and tv time and cookie making duty and team names that resembled bands.
“Are you sure I can’t send you some of my Marines?” he’d asked after watching Xander break up a fight that started because “She looked at me!” and which led to tears and two patrol teams with their backs up that clearly were in the running of some competition that no one else knew about.
“Eighth graders!” Dawn had rolled her eyes expressively to Jack when she passed, corralling the rest of the girls into their nightly duties of KP, monster research, or patrol while Xander handled World War Three. Jack sat back and played with Ace and thought about how he was going to peel back another layer of innocence from these kids in the coming week.
That’s what made the first day the hardest, knowing that he was taking the fantastic world of slayers and magic and firmly entrenching it in the gritty, human side of life and death.
“This week’s safety class is to make sure that if you encounter a gun you know how to handle it safely and that you don’t accidentally shoot someone.” Jack paused to look each girl in the eye. They each looked back, just as seriously. It was a striking contrast to the usual giggles and laughter, reinforced by the smattering of half faded bruises from the morning’s martial arts. Jack didn’t insult them by reminding them that guns were not toys, though he dearly wanted to.
“Any of you held a gun before?” he asked instead. Two of the girls raised their hands.
“Just a rifle,” said Maggie, her accent putting her from somewhere with lots of corn. “My dad and my brother hunt and I almost killed a rabbit once.”
“My friend’s brother has one,” said Abi when Jack turned to her next. “Don’t look at me like that,” she said defensively. “I’m from New York. My school has metal detectors.”
Jack nodded once and let it go. There was more than one way to lose innocence after all, and for all its smallness, it was still a big world out there.
He started the lesson in earnest after that, starting with a brief discussion of the guns they might encounter and their capabilities. He didn’t have a full blown PowerPoint presentation, but he did show them pictures of both the guns and the damage they did to a dummy. Jack didn’t falter when he talked about the 9mm handgun, but he thought about Charlie and wondered why his boy had thought it would be okay to look at it that day. He’d known better. Jack had talked to him like he was talking to these girls now. He’d known better.
Christ, what was he doing here?
He was here because Xander asked him to come and help keep his girls safe. And as much as he hated it, knowing was better than being unprepared.
Jack had four more sessions today, and tomorrow he’d bring out the weapons he’d brought and teach the girls how to dismantle and clean them. By the end of the week they’d learn how to shoot.
When the hour was over and the girls had filed out, Jack stayed behind for just a moment. The door to the sitting room creaked open a few minutes later, and Jack didn’t need to look up to know it was Xander settling in beside him.
“Thanks for this,” his son said quietly.
Jack sighed and lifted his head from his hands. “I just hope they’re wise enough to handle it,” he said.
“They are.” The assurance was confident and unhesitant. That had to be enough for Jack. “They know it’s not a game.”
Jack nodded again and scrubbed a hand over his head briefly. He wasn’t letting it go, he couldn’t, but he had made a choice and he was going to see through.
“Hey,” Xander backhanded his shoulder. “What do you say we skip dinner here and go out to eat? I could use a break from all this madness.”
Jack wondered who Xander thought he was fooling and almost laughed when he turned up an innocent smile. “Yeah,” Jack said. Fooled or not, a quiet place where they could chat in peace would be nice. “Let’s do that.”
August 2005
There was something soothing about doing the budget when there was money to spend. Household food – check. Gas and water – check and check. Salaries for him, Andrew, and Diana – check, check, and check. Xander couldn’t help but grin at the nice chunk of change and the bonus Giles was giving them for getting through last year on a Home Depot salary.
The Council money had been well managed over the centuries and had been left untouched by the First. New income was generated from both interest and the various consulting firms that were fronts for the Council and did actually do business with the rest of the world who thought simply that they were a historical society preserving the world’s myths and legends in excruciating detail. There were art galleries and museums and various other things in there that even Giles hadn’t gotten to the bottom of yet. The poor man was understaffed and overworked which explained why he’d given Xander a ton of money and carte blanche to managing it for the North American Slayers. It was a daunting task.
When the phone rang, Andrew went to answer it. “It’s your dad,” he said upon returning and passing the handset to Xander.
“Jack!” Xander was happy to hear from him. Jack had missed last week’s phone call and he’d been a little worried.
“Hey, kiddo,” said Jack. “How you doing?”
“Great. How are you? I didn’t hear from you last week.”
“Oh, you know, it’s been busy. A few snakes, a reenactment of The Little Shop of Horrors, a presidential visit. I almost quit my job.”
Xander laughed. Jack had said that every time they’d talked since his promotion. If Xander thought that having an Air Force colonel for a dad was weird, it was doubly weird him being a general. “I’m assuming you didn’t?”
“Someone has to pick out the bunting,” was Jack’s flip reply. “How are things in Girl Land?”
“Girls are all home now. Left yesterday,” said Xander. “The house is all eerie and quiet. Dawn left two weeks ago with Buffy on their training tour of Europe.”
“Training tour? That’s not some weird bicycle thing is it?”
“No,” Xander chuckled. “Buffy hasn’t set up a home base yet – there wasn’t any money last year – so she’s been going slayer to slayer to give them the rundown and basic training. Dawn’s gonna help with the language barrier thing and get in some sisterly bonding.”
“I though Dawn was going to Oxford,” said Jack.
“She is but she’s putting it off a year so she can spend time with Buffy doing this first. Vi’s going too but she’s not leaving till next week. Then it’s really going to be quiet around here.”
“Just the three of you left?”
“Us and Ace,” Xander grinned at Jack’s annoyed huff. He hated the name Xander had picked for his puppy, though Xander had a feeling it was mostly for show.
“I got the last pictures you sent. Looks like he’s happily chewing his way through everything in sight.”
“You could have warned me,” Xander retorted. He’d lost two shoes of different pairs and the handle of his favorite ax to Ace’s teeth, and had the photographic evidence to prove it wasn’t the Garg-whatsits Andrew was convinced had invaded.
“You know, I think I did,” said Jack smugly. “I seem to recall telling you Ace would eat your room if you didn’t clean it up.”
“Okay, first of all, that hardly counts because how was I supposed to know you meant that literally? I’ve never had a dog before. Second of all, will you quit bitching about my room? It has a very easy organization system and cleaning it would jut mess that up.”
“Your organizational system nearly killed me on the way to the bathroom.”
“Just because you can’t control your bladder in the middle of the night . . .”
“Oh shut up,” said Jack but without much heat. Xander laughed. They’d been having this argument since Jack had visited. He’d stayed in Xander’s new room – the old office – while Xander had temporarily moved back in with Andrew. “So what are you up to now that the girls are all leaving the nest?”
“Trying to figure out what to do with all the money Giles gave us,” said Xander, glancing back at the table where the computer and official papers were spread out. “We have all these funds that used to go toward Watcher salaries that we want to put toward the slayers, but we don’t want to just give them the money, especially if they’re not active.”
“What did Giles say?”
“To figure something out.”
“What about some sort of trust fund? That way it would go to them, but they couldn’t spend it for a while,” Jack suggested.
“Willow was thinking of something like that,” Xander nodded. “She was thinking an education allowance. They’re dealing with a lot of poor kids in South and Central America who aren’t even in school.”
“Maybe for the girls here you could gear it more toward college? Or even the option of private schools for some of them. Get them out of the public system where it’s bad.”
Xander grabbed a pen and scribbled a note to himself. It was a good idea. Public education wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, even in suburbia. “Jerry wants everyone to find a dojo and keep training too. I was thinking of allocating a bit for that.”
“Keeping up with those skills is important,” sighed Jack, and Xander knew just from that that he was thinking, they’re kids. They shouldn’t have to keep up with skills like those. It was another old argument, one of the first in fact, one that Xander had won. They didn’t talk about it directly anymore.
Hearing Jack’s weariness, Xander asked softly, “How’s the team?” Jack never let on, but Xander knew taking over the base command had meant giving up something special.
“Oh, they’re fine,” said Jack with fondness and forced cheer.
“Well, say hi for me when you see them.”
“I will.”
“And Dad?”
“Yeah?
“They’re still your friends, you know. You can still have them over for dinner.” Xander could hear Jack rolling his eyes over the phone.
“Yes, mom. We’ll have milk and cookies too, just as soon as we finish our homework.”
Laughing, Xander fell into more easy banter, amazed again that he had this.
September 2005
“Seriously though, this looks like congealed barf.” Diana ignored Xander’s glare along with his previous warning. “Where do you come up with this stuff, Andrew? CSI?”
“That’s enough, Diana!” Xander snapped, not risking a glance at Andrew, devastated, in favor of glaring his remaining slayer into submission. Diana looked him in the eye and glared back. Arms crossed across her chest. Jaw set.
“What? I just telling him what I thought,” she said, injured innocence dripping off her like oil. Xander wanted to slap her but he knew just how effective that would be.
“Grab your coat,” he said instead, standing. “Andrew, I’m sorry. Save me some for later, okay. Diana and I are going out.” He turned abruptly and barked, “Now!” when she didn’t move. Diana stared back a moment longer just to make sure he knew that he wasn’t telling her to do anything, then slowly got to her feet and got her coat. Andrew wouldn’t look at him, and Xander did him the courtesy of ignoring the moisture on his cheek as he followed Diana out the front door.
She didn’t say anything and neither did Xander, but she did follow when he started walking. It was unusual since they normally drove to the evening’s patrol spot, but since Xander wasn’t looking to exorcise anything other than whatever crawled up Diana’s ass and died, he didn’t really care. Diana was sullen and quiet as they walked. And walked. And walked. Down to the main road, round the block back into the neighborhood, past the park, left at the Methodist church, and another left at the shopping center back into the neighborhood. They’d been going for maybe an hour before Diana finally let out a small annoyed sigh. Xander circled back to the park and by the time they got there, Diana had relaxed another half an inch. When he led them to the swings, she sat without prompting and Xander let the silence stretch out a bit longer.
Finally he said, “You want to tell me what that was back there?”
“What? I didn’t do anything other than answer his question,” Diana replied. “Not my fault he cooks weird things.”
“Right, and insulting the dinner he cooked for you was just an accident,” said Xander.
“God, I’m sorry, okay?” Diana huffed, and even if couldn’t see it in the dark, the eyeroll was most definitely implied. “What do you want from me? It’s just dinner.”
“No, it’s Andrew and he didn’t deserve that,” Xander said evenly. “He has enough self esteem issues without you skewering something he takes real pride in.”
“Well boohoo for Andrew. It’s not like he can’t take an insult. You insult him.”
“Yet I’m not the one who made him cry.”
Diana looked over and quickly away and didn’t say anything. Xander just watched her as she toed the swing back and forth a bit. One hand on each chain, gripping tight. “Look, I’m sorry,” she said again, but this time she meant it. “I . . .” She didn’t finish.
Xander waited, not sure what to say either. He thought he knew what was going on but he didn’t know what would make it better. Vi and Dawn were off doing their thing with Buffy, happy as a pair of girls touring Europe could be. “Look,” he said, “it’s going to be a little different with Dawn and Vi gone.”
“I’m not jealous,” said Diana.
“You’re not?”
“Why would I be jealous?” she asked in a close approximation of casual. “They’re stuck with Buffy training slayers. And we both know how much that sucks.” Her smile was less close to genuine. “And I’m here. With you guys.”
“Still in high school and in charge of the active hellmouth,” Xander finished.
“Yeah,” Diana sighed the word, the rest of the fight leaving her. Crickets chirped and leaves rustled, or whatever the hell they did when sitting outside in silence. “Xander, I don’t think I can do this.”
“What?”
“Be Chief Slayer.”
“What?” Xander said, surprised. “Why?” Diana had been with them on the Cleveland Hellmouth since they set up shop after the battle with the First. She’d helped pick out the house.
“I can’t keep half the demons I learn about straight,” she stuck out her thumb, “I hate research and I’m bad at it,” her forefinger, “I always overcompensate with a sword, I telegraph my left side, I can’t trick the baddies, I’m not creative, I can’t think on my feet, I always go the wrong way in strategy exercises, I can barely count, and I look like a frumpy loser.” All her fingers used up, she threw up her hands. “Hell, I scream when there’s a spider in the shower. Some big badass I make.”
Xander blinked. Blinked again. She’d obviously been thinking about this for a while. “As a former frumpy loser, can I just say that all that’s a load of crap?”
“Xander!”
“Diana!” he threw back. “Don’t tell me you believe all that. It’s like you’re describing some pod person.”
“Xander, you don’t have to say that to make me feel better.”
“I’m not saying anything to make you feel better. It’s true.”
“You know I think I know myself pretty well,” Diana gave him a scathing look full of teenage derision.
“And I think you’re just scared and grabbing at any excuse you can find to get out of being in charge.”
“All right, fine. I’m terrified,” she yelled, twisting in her swing so she was fully facing him. “I’m gonna screw this up. I’m gonna go out one night and I won’t be fast enough or strong enough or smart enough. I’ll do something stupid and get you or Andrew killed. Then – ” Lost and definitely overwhelmed, Diana looked close to tears. She jerked back when Xander reached out, so he let his hand drop.
Xander sighed quietly. “It’s okay to be scared, Diana,” he said. “Everyone gets scared.”
“But they can handle it.” Diana shook a strand of hair out of her eyes impatiently.
“So can you.”
“Xander . . .”
“Diana, you were born to fight vampires. And you’re telling me you shouldn’t be scared?”
“Not when you put it like that. Now it just sounds stupid,” she answered thickly.
Xander shook his head, eyes drifting over the grass as he tried to come up with what she needed to hear. Nothing came to him except memories of a lot of bad decisions. “Everyone gets scared,” he repeated. “It doesn’t mean you’ll screw up. I’m not saying you won’t, because you probably will, but that’s where me and Andrew come in, like a mushy love song.”
“Great. I’ll drown in syrup,” Diana said to her feet.
“No.” Xander did reach out this time and caught her swing, holding on until she looked at him. “You won’t.”
Diana gave a tiny nod, both too old and too young for the responsibility that came with choosing to fight. Xander had no idea if she believed him. No idea what else to say that could maybe get through to her that she wasn’t alone and that she could handle this.
“I miss my mom,” she said quietly.
Xander looked away and gave her a little space, utterly devoid of words. There was nothing he could ever say to make that better. Instead, when Diana slid her hand up to meet his on the chain of the swing, he interlaced his fingers with hers and held on.
October 2005
Jack had just settled in front of the tv with a beer and his DVR when the doorbell rang. It took him by surprise and he stared at the door for a minute, enough time for the doorbell to ring again, before getting up to answer it.
“Hi, General Jack!”
Of course. Two teenagers, girls who could have been twins – same height (what there was of it), similar round features, long straight hair somewhere between dark brown and black, and coats only distinguished by color. Jack recognized them, but the cognitive dissonance of seeing them on his doorstep had his mind going completely blank.
He did have the presence of mind to raise an eyebrow, however. “Hello,” he said a little uncertainly, looking over the shoulders at the little red Honda in front of his house and then back at the girls. They grinned, a little nervously, but they didn’t look like they were in trouble and there were no cops on their tails.
“So we were in the area and thought we’d stop by for a visit,” said the one in the green coat. Jack remembered she had a nickname. Something treelike but not.
“Verne?” he guessed and was rewarded with a grin. “And . . .” Jack had no clue.
“Ana,” Ana helped him out. “We’re real sorry to just show up like this. My mother would die if she found out.”
“So,” Jack didn’t like the sound of that. “She doesn’t know you’re here?” His hand flipped back and forth to encompass more than just his house.
“Oh, our parents know were on a road trip,” Verne hastened to reassure him. “It’s all good. Really.”
“Except . . .” Ana looked back at Verne, obviously wanting her to take over.
“We were, uh. . . We’re kinda short on cash,” said Verne in a rush. “And we really don’t want to call home.”
“So . . .”
Right. Jack looked from one nervously twitching girl to the other, resisting the urge to sigh. This was one side affect of being Xander’s dad that he had not anticipated. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “Come on in,” Jack stepped back to let them pass. Something was up and they might as well do this inside where it was warm. He took their coats and asked, “Want something to drink?”
They followed him into the kitchen where he handed out glasses and offered them the tap since the only thing in the fridge was beer. They hadn’t eaten yet, so Jack pulled out noodles and dug up some lettuce and tomatoes for salad. One benefit of being a stay-at-home general was eating fresh food when he got home. The girls helped and even found some canned peaches in the cupboard.
“So road trip,” Jack opened as he put on the ground beef. He decided that prying could wait till they’d all eaten something.
“Yeah,” said Verne. “It’s been great. It took forever to convince my dad but it has been so worth it.”
“Where’ve you been?”
All over the South and Southwest, it turned out. Verne did most of the talking. Ana was from Texas and met up with Verne in South Florida when her dad finally gave in and let her have a few months to finish being a kid. “I mean, everyone has to go on a road trip sometime before they’re trapped in the family business for eternity.” The family business was a restaurant – “Mexican,” she said with a look of duh, and all right, Jack should have guessed, but he never liked to assume. “My dad is so controlling,” she told him. “Everything has to be done his way, and ever since Sunnydale, he doesn’t want to let me out of his sight.”
From what he’d heard of what happened in Sunnydale, Jack didn’t blame him. He said as much but only got a sad and condescending look in return.
“What am I supposed to do? Live in a shoebox?”
“Besides,” Ana spoke up, “magic stuff kinda gets drawn to us because we’re slayers. We get drawn to magic stuff. Trying to avoid it is pointless.”
“You’re mom had no objections to the trip?”
Ana shrugged. “She’s hoping it will inspire me to go to college.”
“You’re not going?”
“Four more years of school?” She arched a sculpted eyebrow at that idea. “You couldn’t pay me.”
“College is very different from high school,” said Jack. Verne and Ana shrugged in unison. They’d undoubtedly heard it before, and it didn’t look like Jack was going to change their minds. Not with this whole road trip thing going on.
The girls set the table and there were a few minutes of quiet while they ate enough to put Teal’c to shame. They were heaping on seconds by time Jack sat back with his beer, and waved them on when Ana shifted self-consciously, suddenly aware that she was pigging out. Jack had hung around enough to know that the girls ate as much as Marines, he just couldn’t figure out where they put it all.
“So, you run into many vampires on your trip?” he asked casually. He caught them both mid-chew, long enough to confirm what they would rather do than go to college or work at home. Verne shrugged deliberately and didn’t back down.
“A few,” she said. “There’s not many out of the major cities.”
“Plenty of other things though,” Ana gave him a toothy grin that faltered when she registered his disapproval. They were eighteen, for crying out loud. His thoughts flickered back to watching Vi take on a monster with too many legs too count, amazed, horrified. He got it. He did, but he would never like it.
“Does Xander know?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Verne too quickly and it only took the look that made wayward soldiers sweat for her to backtrack to the truth. “No. We’re not supposed to go out hunting when we aren’t in Cleveland,” she added in a rush, “which makes zero sense because that’s the most dangerous place in the country because of the hellmouth.
Jesus, didn’t they understand how stupid they were being? “It’s also the only place you have backup,” he said, eyeing them both and reading their uncertainty. They were eighteen and they had practically run away from home to go play heroes out in a world that wouldn’t hesitate to kill them. No backup, no one to know they hadn’t come home on time. How could they do that to Xander? How could they do that to their parents?
“You’re calling him and telling him.”
“We don’t need a baby-sitter,” snapped Verne. “We’ve been slayers for years. We know what we’re doing.”
“Really,” said Jack. “So when you’re bleeding out from the neck in some backwater town that no one knows you’re in, you’re going to get out alive.”
“We’re not gonna bleed out like that,” said Ana, but quietly, a token protest that she didn’t believe herself. When she looked at Verne and Verne looked at her plate, Jack started looking for the bruises he knew would have long since healed.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Nothing,” “It was stupid,” they both answered at once, stopping on top of their words. “Just . . .” Verne finally looked up. “It was close, you know?” Jack nodded and waited for her to go on.
“It was a mud creature, down in New Mexico, and we didn’t know how to kill it,” said Ana. “A local hunter came with dirt and a flame thrower while we were getting sucked under. Saved us.”
“He tried to convince us it was some sewer back-up or something,” Verne smiled wryly. Demon hunters, Xander had told him when he’d asked why most of the country was monster free, were regular people who fought evil with a little ingenuity and a lot of luck. Some were no better than the creatures they hunted, and too many saw the world in black and white, according to Xander, but they kept the malevolent demon population more or less under control outside of hotspots.
“Let me guess, you lost your wallets there,” said Jack.
The girls nodded. “Phones too.”
“Our Council ones.”
“And Xander’s going to be pissed.”
Jack looked from one to the other, two pair of beguiling brown eyes pleading with him, and the other reason for this visit became clear. “You want me to call him for you.” He couldn’t believe it. They were more scared of Xander than him. On the other hand, if he were their CO, he wouldn’t be very happy with them either. Hell, he wasn’t their CO and he was unhappy with what they’d done.
“Or at least convince him not to kill us,” said Verne, only half-joking.
“Oh, I don’t know. Sounds like you deserve it.”
“Please, Jack?”
Of course he would. There was no question of that, and they probably knew it which was why they’d driven all the way from New Mexico to his house. “Finish eating,” he told them. Taking it for the agreement it was, the girls smiled in relief and got back to their interrupted dinner. As they finished up a thought occurred to Jack. “How did you know where I lived anyway?” he asked.
“You were pretty easy to look up once we got in town,” Ana answered.
“And you just happened to know my first name?”
“Well, you’re kinda the worst kept secret at camp,” Verne said.
“Aahh!” Jack cut her off before she said something he really didn’t want to know.
“Don’t want to hear all about how hot Kat thinks you are?”
“No!” Jack said emphatically, standing and getting out of there while the two of them snickered behind him. “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” he said over his shoulder. The girls followed soon after and rinsed their plates but thankfully didn’t push it. Jack grabbed the phone. Verne fidgeted when she saw it in his hand, trying to look casual. Ana just nodded that they were ready.
It took two rings for Xander to pick up. “Jack! You’re calling twice this week.”
“Hey, Xander. My day was great. Thanks for asking,” said Jack.
“How was your day? Blah blah blah. Now what’s going on?” said Xander making Jack smile. His son was too perceptive.
“Nothing bad,” Jack reassured him. “And I promised them you wouldn’t kill them,” he said. Before Xander could splutter through asking what the hell, Jack passed Verne the phone and retreated to the living room where he could be a little more subtle about eavesdropping. Verne greeted Xander cheerfully to cover up the nerves that were currently twisting the hem of her shirt out of shape.
“. . . Me and Ana were passing through. You know, road trip after graduation . . .”
“ . . . There might be vampire slaying involved.”
Jack almost wished he had picked up the other line when Verne held her breath and didn’t let it go for a full thirty seconds.
“. . . We’re not apologizing,” she finally said. “This is who we are.”
“. . . Then it’s what we want to do.”
“. . . Look, nothing’s happened to us. We’re fine. We’ll be fine. We’re looking after each other and being careful.”
“. . . It was no big deal. It was a little close, but we got out okay. And we’re fine.”
“. . . Yes!” Jack could hear the exasperated eye-roll from the couch. “All right, just a sec.”
Verne came in a moment later and held the phone out to Jack. “He wants tot talk to you,” she said before retreating to Ana in the kitchen.
“Xander,” said Jack.
“Jesus!” said Xander. “I can’t believe they just took off like that. You have a fire poker, right? You can beat them ‘round the head for me?”
Jack chuckled, his eyes darting to the poker he did indeed have. “They’re okay,” he said. “They had a close call and it scared them. Nothing else would have done it.”
Xander sighed, frustrated, “I know. Now I just gotta figure out what to do about it. I can’t just let them wander around the country like stray puppies looking for the next ball to chase. They’ll get themselves killed.”
“What about all that crap about destiny and attracting trouble no matter what?” asked Jack because hadn’t he been saying this all along?
“Goes hand in hand with a Slayer lifetime of less than two years,” Xander replied. “There’s inevitability and then there’s practical precautions like having backup.”
“So you’re going to . . .”
“Offer them jobs and drag their asses here where I can keep my on them. Make them live to regret it. Just when I thought we finally had a male majority.” Xander sighed again.
“With the dog you’ll be even,” said Jack. He had a feeling Xander would be happier with a fuller house anyway. “They’re good kids.”
“Yeah, charming. Don’t forget about the fire poker,” was Xander’s answer to that. “Put Ana on, would you?”
“Sure. Good luck.”
“Thanks but I’m not the one who’ll need it. Hey,” he said quickly as Jack got himself off the couch. “Thanks for helping them out.”
“You can pay me back by keeping them safe,” said Jack. “Here’s your girl.” He passed off the phone, smiled winsomely at Verne and said, “Xander wants me to beat you over the head with the fire poker.” Verne played it cool but couldn’t hide the bob of her throat as she swallowed hard. Jack grinned mirthlessly, glad because the fear of what Xander would do to her when she screwed around would keep her both in line and alive. Hopefully for a long time.
November 2005
Xander peered at the napkins covered in his chicken scratch trying to figure out which one had the guy with the gambling problem and if he’d even written that detail down.
“Oh, Don Liter,” said Daniel. “He specializes in East Asian Studies. He’s a bit of a hippy.”
“Daniel!” Jack clattered behind them in the fridge grabbing beers. “Are you giving him everyone who didn’t join the SGC?”
“Jack, you’ve said it yourself, they need all the help they can get.” Daniel lifted his eyebrow meaningfully at Jack and the two of them did their significant look thing back and forth until Daniel finally rolled his eyes and grabbed the beer out of Jack’s hand. “You know I’m right.”
Jack rolled his own eyes, but the wink he gave Xander over Daniel’s head as he passed gave away that he was just giving his friend a hard time. “What?” asked Daniel at Xander’s grin.
“Nothing.”
“Jack go sit down and watch the game,” said Daniel without turning.
“Have fun kids.” Jack went. A moment later, “Andrew! What the hell is this?” filtered back through the open doorway.
“Oh, this is going to be good,” said Xander, craning his head to see around Daniel into the living room where Jack was staring at the tv in horror while Andrew tried to explain three seasons of Enterprise and the cultural value of not being interrupted in the middle of a Star Trek Marathon.
“Andrew?” Jack gave him a pointed look. “My house, my tv, my rules. My game.”
“Oh, right, bully the sci-fi geek. I see how it is.”
“I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with you.”
“Jack!”
“Daniel.”
“Be nice.”
“Xander, hit him for me.”
But Xander chuckled and shook his head. Jack didn’t really mean it, of course, even though he would have punched Daniel’s arm if he’d been in the kitchen instead. The two of them were a quiet riot, a whole silent language born from years of close friendship. Couple that with Jack’s habit of pretending to be stupid just to wind Daniel up and the holiday had been one long, extended floor show.
“You could also try Jing Hwang. She’s also at the University of California, San Diego I think, but that was a few years ago. You should double check.” Daniel flipped the page he was looking at, searching for confirmation. Shaking his head when he didn’t find it, he handed the sheet to Xander so he could get her phone number and the proper spelling of her name.
“What’s her specialty?” asked Xander as he added her to his list. He had about fifteen names of people Daniel thought would be approachable by the Watcher’s Council – i.e. Xander in his best suit looking to get some help before he drove himself crazy with worry over wandering slayers who thought they were ready to go after monsters alone. Verne and Ana’s little road trip had scared him as much as their close call had scared them into coming here to Jack’s house. After the scaring and the yelling and the promising and about a zillion phone calls to Florida and Texas, things had worked out and nobody was dead. Verne and Ana were full time slayers on the Hellmouth, and Xander had a pressing need for there to be more Watchers. As soon as humanly possible. Superhumanly, would be better. Xander didn’t want to think about how many girls were currently lying through their teeth during their monthly check-ins.
“Biological oceanography.” Daniel grinned when Xander frowned at him. “You did say anybody.”
Xander had. He was that desperate. Still, “Why the hell would the SGC need a biological oceanographist.”
“Oceanographer,” said Daniel. “There’s a lot of planets out there and they deal with aquatic microbes. You should ask Sam. It’s more her end of the science spectrum.”
Honestly, Xander didn’t really care that much and just noted that Jing Hwang was unlikely to give him the time of day. What the hell would a biology ocean person want to do with slaying vampires and demons? He would probably get laughed out of her office. He would probably get laughed out of all their offices, he thought, looking back over the names of mostly academics. And if they did listen and accept the job, Xander had no doubt that he was going to have to train the Wesley out of them before they were fit to back anyone up. “This is gonna be a disaster,” he said. No way was he going to be able to do this by himself.
“What’s gonna be a disaster?” asked Jack, wandering back in and over to the leftovers from yesterday’s feast.
“This. Okay, even assuming these people listen to me, let alone believe me for long enough to get them to come to Cleveland, I’ve still got to train them all somehow. So they don’t get anyone killed.” Xander sighed and decided that food was a good idea right now. He joined Jack in grabbing more stuffing and roast vegetables and a couple slices of turkey.
“Hey!” Jack turned suddenly over his shoulder. “Don’t you dare touch the remote!” he told Andrew who slunk back into the couch muttering. “Why did you bring him again?” grumbled Jack.
“He’s family,” said Xander around the turkey. “Sort of. And the girls wouldn’t take him to Florida.”
Jack sighed. “As long as he leaves the remote alone.” Xander understood his frustration. Andrew wasn’t easy to handle even when you were used to him, even now when he was much more settled and mellowed than he used to be.
“He’s making an effort,” Xander offered.
Jack nodded and picked at his slice of turkey with his fingers. “I know. I’m not really complaining,” he said. “You want any help with a training program?”
“What?”
“For your Watchers – and for the record, that’s a stupid name. You hardly watch. At least I hope you don’t. Or I wish you did. Or, you know.”
“Yeah,” Xander chuckled. Jack wasn’t ever going to change.
“So you want help with a training program? We’ve pretty much gotten adjusting people to aliens down to a science. Ask Daniel. I bet he could write a real good spiel for you.”
“How did your helping turn into me helping?” asked Daniel, looking up at them over his glasses.
“Because me helping is asking you for help. Besides, you weren’t going to say no.”
“I wasn’t?”
Jack just gestured to the address book and the paper spread out on the table and raised an eyebrow until Daniel hmmed and grimaced and acknowledged the point by going back to checking for any names he may have missed.
“See?” said Jack, bumping Xander’s shoulder. “It won’t be so bad.”
“You say that now.”
“And I’ll still be right once you get things up and running.” He grinned in that way he had of discouraging all arguments to the contrary, and even though he had his doubts, Xander believed him anyway.
December 2005
“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” said Xander. Bundled up against the cold, only his eye and ears were visible and no doubt directing hostile thoughts at Jack for putting them in this situation.
Jack grinned. “Like I could tell you to do anything,” he replied. “Besides, what’s not to love?”
“The snow, the outdoors, the lack of central heat?” said Xander.
“It’s not Christmas without snow,” Jack told him. He nodded out to the crusty pond and the evergreens sprinkled with white. The woods wrapped around them as if nothing else existed but them and the trees, a view Jack never tired of and that he was doubly glad he got to share it with his son this year. It was just the two of them up at the cabin for a few days before Xander had to get back to Cleveland. He had almost said no – they’d had Thanksgiving together and he had no one to cover him on the Hellmouth until Diana unexpectedly said she could handle everything for a few days with a promise to call at the first sign of trouble. Jack figured he owed her a pretty awesome Christmas present for that, even if Xander kept complaining about the cold. He cast another fond glance at Xander in his layers of coats and scarf and hat. “I don’t know how you survived in Southern California.”
“Hey! It snowed once!”
Jack raised an eyebrow, not believing it because where Xander grew up was practically a desert. They didn’t even have seasons, for crying out loud.
“It did,” Xander insisted. “A little bit. And was probably mystical in origin, but it still counts.” The eye shifted and Jack could imagine Xander’s expression of disgruntled insistence.
“You had mystical snow?” said Jack.
The lumps that were Xander’s shoulders rose and fell. “Yeah. Hellmouth. You know how it goes.”
Jack raised an eyebrow at him, but Xander didn’t elaborate. Jack debated asking for a moment, wondering if this was one of those things that he didn’t want to know about or one that Xander didn’t want to talk about. Better not to know, he decided, as Xander paused to stare across the pond.
“I was camping that night, too,” he said, voice soft.
“Out slaying something?” asked Jack since Xander had brought it up after all.
“No.” He was quiet for a long drawn out breath, then two. The sky darkened as the sun slipped over the tree line, not quite set, but leaving them shrouded in dusk nevertheless. “My dad used to drink, you know. Tony.” Xander didn’t look at him but kept staring at the far shore, still as the frozen water. “It started after he got laid off when I was in seventh grade. He just . . . changed. He resented my mom cause she was still working, started yelling at her all the time, expected all the house work to be done, didn’t help her. It didn’t stop when he got another job. Mom just started drinking, too. It was worst around Christmas, so I would take a sleeping bag to the back yard to get out of the cross fire.”
When he turned, Xander’s face was completely in shadow. The lip of his jacket had slid down, no longer covering his chin and nose. “It was kind of a shock when it started snowing on me,” he smiled, hiding behind the humor.
“I’m sorry,” said Jack softly.
Xander shrugged again. “Wasn’t you’re fault. And it wasn’t that bad.” He started walking again and Jack joined him a half pace behind. Bad or not, it should never have happened. No kid should ever feel like the only escape from his parents was to sleep in the backyard on Christmas. Even if it wasn’t Jack’s fault he couldn’t help but feel responsible for it anyway.
“Still. I should –”
“Jack,” Xander interrupted, stopping him with a hand on his arm. “Dad.” He smiled again and this time it reached his eyes. “Don’t feel sorry for me. You’ll screw up the tapestry of my life or something. I’ve seen it happen. It’s not pretty.”
“Yeah, okay,” Jack nodded. He’d seen it happen too, and truth be told, things had worked out pretty damn well considering. Xander had turned into a hell of a man, and Jack couldn’t have been prouder if he tried, his influence there or not.
“So! What are you getting me for Christmas?” Xander said so brightly that Jack rolled his eyes at the unsubtle change of subject. He couldn’t help but return Xander’s smile though.
“Who said I got you anything?”
Xander bumped his arm. “You love spoiling me,” he said.
Jack chuckled because it was true even although Xander didn’t give him much opportunity to do so.
“So?”
“What? Christmas isn’t for another few days.”
“Not even a hint?”
“No,” said Jack. He was actually a little nervous about this year’s present, nervous that Xander wouldn’t accept it
“It’s not a cat is it?” Xander gave him a suddenly wary glance. “Because whatever the girls said, they’re lying.”
“It’s not a cat,” Jack reassured him, thinking instead of the brochure and the appointment he’d made at the reputedly best optician in Cleveland. He’d been thinking about it for a while although he’d never gotten up the gumption to ask Xander about it. His eye was a touchy subject both for its obvious lack and for the time it represented. Jack understood about scars. He understood living with them everyday no matter how much you wanted to just get over it. He also understood the need to move forward.
He had a backup present for Xander. He’d waffled so much on this he’d gone ahead and bought the subscription to Woodworking Magazine and the gift certificate to lumber yard. But Xander had just told him to not feel sorry for him because of his crappy childhood. He understood about moving forward too, had for a long time, Jack suspected. Here they were, weren’t they? The two of them learning how to be a family despite national secrets and a regular need to save the world.
“You finally got me a car!” Xander guessed again, into the game now and managing to look ten years younger and be just as annoying.
“Nope!” Jack replied, enjoying Xander’s unguarded delight of not being responsible for anything but giving his old man a hard time. Jack loved seeing him like this. Loved him, this kid of his, grateful at the twists of life that had led him here. “Better than a car,” he said.
“Better than a car?” Xander repeated. “Not much is better than a car.”
“This is,” said Jack confidently. Xander cocked his head, his teasing grin sliding into a genuine smile.
“This is,” he nodded slightly toward the pond and the trees, and Jack had to swallow hard against the sudden lump in his throat. “Even if it is colder than vampire’s tits out here.”
Jack couldn’t help it, he laughed, sudden and loud which made Xander laugh, echoing off the water and tapering off into the trees.
“I’m glad we came up here, Dad,” said Xander after a minute when their chuckles had subsided. “It’s beautiful.”
“I’m glad you came,” said Jack. He reached out and brushed back a strand of hair that had twisted into Xander blindside, sliding his hand to rest his son’s shoulder. Xander’s eye held his, intense and looking straight through Jack to where all the things that were raw and grateful peaked out. I wish I could have been there for you growing up, but I’m proud of the way you turned out. It was all he could do to not flinch away, to stand still and hope Xander saw what Jack wanted him to find. It lasted a split second that felt like a conversation before Xander shifted away and smiled. Jack gave Xander’s shoulder a squeeze and let go, the silence between them warm and comfortable as they resumed their walk.
“You’re still not going to tell me what you got me are you?” said Xander a few paces later.
Jack smiled, feeling absolutely at one with the world and the young man beside him. “No,” he said. “You’re just going to have to wait and see.”
January 2006
Xander hovered by the door a good fifteen minutes before Laurie was supposed to come pick him up for the first date he’d had since Anya died. To say he was a little nervous was the understatement of the century. Okay, maybe not the century, but the week at least.
Xander hadn’t seen Lauire in a few months, since before Thanksgiving when they’d gone to the clinic where she worked after Andrew had landed in a scrap heap at a construction site and cut himself up on shards of wood and nails. So the other day when he ran into her at the specialty grocery store searching for stuff for Verne’s birthday, it took Xander a minute to connect catching up sometime over dinner with a date until Laurie was double checking his address and telling him she’d pick him up at seven.
After that Xander panicked.
“I can’t go on a date!” he’d told Willow on the phone later that night.
“Xander, this is a good thing!”
“No, no it’s really not. What if she’s –”
“Xander!” Willow had cut him off before he could start with the worst case scenarios. “I distinctly remember checking her out – not that way! – after she found out everything last summer. She’s not going to try and kill you. Now stop being afraid, mister. And go get some! And I didn’t just say that and I’m shutting up now.”
It hadn’t helped that Willow had then called Diana and given her strict orders to make sure he didn’t wear something atrocious, which just got all the girls and Andrew involved. Then Buffy called with Dawn and Vi, hell, even Giles called, although to be fair, he hadn’t found out about the date until Xander snapped at him upon answering. All of which led to Xander in possession of too much advice and finally banishing his household to where he couldn’t hear them talking about him as he paced in front of the door with only Ace for company, tracking him back and forth, back and forth from the sitting room doorway.
He was so tense that when Ace finally lifted his head, Xander sighed in relief, ready to be eaten by just about anything just so the waiting would be over.
“Oh wow!” Laurie laughed lightly a startled second after Xander opened the door. The sound made Xander relax another inch or two, and he couldn’t help but smile in return. This was Laurie, whom he’d known for over a year, who’d patched up his girls and kept her head on straight under fire.
“Never thought you’d see the rest of my face, huh?” he said, his fingers twitching to touch the other reason he was so nervous tonight: his new eye. It had been three days and it still felt weird not wearing the eye patch, open and exposed even though the gaping hole in his head was now occupied by a shiny new glass eye that matched his existing one. The girls told him it didn’t track right, his eye muscles had atrophied in the last two and a half years, but the doc told him they would adjust again and soon no one would be able to tell the difference.
“It looks good,” said Laurie. “You look good.” She smiled as she gave him a quick once over, that made Xander feel like blushing and preening simultaneously. “Shall we?”
Xander nodded and grabbed the door behind him as he followed Laurie to her car.
“So when did this happen?” asked Laurie, starting the engine and pulling out.
“The eye came in a couple days ago,” said Xander, settling into the conversation. “My first appointment about getting a prosthetic was just after Christmas.”
“That’s quite recent, then,” said Laurie. “You lost it before you came to Cleveland, right?”
“It’s been about two and a half years,” said Xander. Long enough to mourn. When Jack had given him the brochure and phone numbers and appointment date, Xander had been stunned. He honestly hadn’t though about his lost eye as a lost eye in a long time. His missing eye was a part of him, his worst scar from what felt like a lifetime of fighting. After Sunnydale, there had been too much going on, too much grief, no money, no time, and Xander couldn’t fathom trying to fix something that wasn’t fixable. It still wasn’t fixable, but that piece of Xander that had cracked open in the wine cellar and shattered at the high school had healed without him quite noticing it.
“It’s okay if you say no,” Jack had told him. “But I want you to at least think about it.” Somehow his dad had known it was time.
“Well, it looks great,” Laurie repeated.
Xander grinned, the last of his nervousness fading. “Thanks.” It felt pretty great, too.
Laurie took him out to Antonio’s, a little Italian place that was in that range between Olive Garden and an upscale local place. The lingering looks the eye patch got absent as they were seated and the waiter came to take their drink orders. It was funny how disconcerting it was; Xander was a little amazed that he had gotten used to the looks when he’d thought he never would.
They chatted over breadsticks. Xander told her about thinking of getting a bigger and more out of the way place for slayer summer camp, and Laurie told him the latest from the clinic. She was working a new shift, days instead of nights. “Cathy is on the night shift now and Brenda is wonderful,” she hastened to reassure him. “They’re good people, and you can of course call me anytime.”
“Even if I don’t have a medical emergency?” Xander fiddled with his breadstick.
Laurie sat back in her chair, a playful smile darting around her lips as she regarded him brightly. “I’ll let you know after coffee,” she said.
The warmth and Laurie’s sudden laughter after a moment of faux solemnity made Xander smile in return. He hadn’t really thought about this in two years either, and it felt good, finally felt okay to flirt and chat with a beautiful woman over pasta and too many tomatoes.
“So two new girls are with you,” said Laurie as their laughter died down and their meals arrived. “You still haven’t told me how that happened.”
“Not really new, just relocated. They showed up at my dad’s place in Colorado,” said Xander. “They’d been slaying on their own after they graduated from high school and they ran into some trouble that scared them enough to decide they should probably check in with me. Took them a little encouragement to actually go through with it. Jack doubts that they would have if he hadn’t called them on it.”
“So you took them in.”
“Hired them full time,” said Xander.
“And you’re dad was cool with all this?”
Xander shrugged. “Yeah. He doesn’t like it but he understands the way it has to be. He knows they’re better off with me than wandering around on their own.”
“How did he take the whole slayer thing?” asked Laurie, probably thinking of her own induction when, in the middle of calmly patching up a pair of girls that first summer, the thing that had torn into them had crashed through the clinic window and her two patients launched into battle again. It wasn’t until Xander had shown up to direct body disposal and board over the window that she’d lost it. He thought for sure she would quit or report them, but the next time he showed up with a girl and a cover story, she and Cathy had taken it in stride and quietly asked what had really happened.
“About as well as you’d expect,” said Xander. “Worse maybe. He’s an Air Force general so when he imagines the worst, he imagines the worst, you know?” He smiled wanly, thinking back to Christmas the year before and the nightmare that had been. “He stuck around though,” he added quietly. It still surprised him even knowing what he did about Jack’s work. His own parents had always turned a blind eye, even when the world Xander lived in was staring at them in the face as circus folk. The sheer amount that Jack cared about him was still unfathomable, and Xander would probably spend the rest of his life trying to wrap his head around it.
“I’m glad,” said Laurie. “It’s still amazing that he found you. I can’t imagine what it would be like to just all of a sudden have a different father.”
“Lucky.” The word escaped before Xander even thought about it, and he chuckled a little self consciously. “Or cursed, depending on how you look at it. At least now I’m too old to be grounded.”
Laurie grinned. “I don’t imagine that ever stopped you,” she said. “I had four parents, counting the steps, and it never did much good when they were trying to keep me in.”
“Oh?”
Laurie told him about the curfew wars, the back and forth between two households that didn’t like each other, and the crap Laurie and her brothers pulled that was straight out of a sitcom. Xander hadn’t laughed so hard in his life. By the time desert and coffee rolled around they’d moved on to pranks and love spells and all the humorous ways that magic had a way of backfiring. Xander managed to snag the bill before Laurie could, even though it had been her taking him out.
“You don’t have to,” she protested.
“I want to,” Xander told her. He caught her eye and the buzz between them was palpable. The rusty feeling of warmth that washed through Xander felt right, with only the ghost of guilt lingering.
Laurie drove him home and dropped him off with a kiss on the cheek and her phone number. Xander fingered the paper, thinking of everything and nothing in particular, before finally nodding to himself. In Sunnydale, if anyone had asked him where he thought he’d be now, this wouldn’t have been it. Not on a street in suburban Cleveland with the Spanish Inquisition waiting for him on the other side of the door, a half grown dog that probably needed to go out, and patrol reports that needed to be compiled and set to London. But here he was, out in the world, doing his part in the fight against darkness, work tempered by teenagers and long lost parents and a date that didn’t end with a rescue. It wasn’t anything he could have, or would have, predicted but it wasn’t bad. Despite everything, it wasn’t bad at all.
February 2006
“The third floor’s a mess. Pretty much an empty shell but I can work with that. I‘m thinking of putting the girls up there, with proper rooms instead of the damned cubicles, and they’ll have sunlight.”
“Mm hmm,” Jack murmured, his mind more on finding SG-4’s report than on the conversation. He was listening though. He was also supposed to be working right now which at the moment entailed cleaning and organizing his desk so he didn’t have to actually read the reports that had backed up on his desk while he’d been off flying space ships with his mind and putting up with Harry’s smarmy face.
Xander didn’t seem to mind, continuing as if Jack hadn’t spoken in his recital of all the attributes of the house he’d found. Xander had been muttering since last summer about needing more space away from neighbors for the slayer training camp. Suburbia was not the place for training armies, and apparently the woman across the street had called the cops one too many times for Xander’s comfort. The place he’d found was a half built mansion on five acres further out of town who’s owner had run out of money before it was finished. As Xander went on about support walls and plumbing and adding another two bathrooms, Jack’s limited knowledge of do-it-yourself home repair was exhausted.
SG-4’s report had somehow landed in Jack’s bottom drawer where he kept the printer paper and file folders. Fishing it out, he added it to the to-read-before-their-next-mission pile, then checked his calendar. SG-18 was the next team that should have had a report in by now.
“Andrew wants to redo the kitchen too, make it industrial and give him enough stoves and sinks to work with. The kitchen’s already mostly finished so we’ll have to tear out most of what’s there which I’m not looking forward to because kitchens are horrible to work with. I still need to find a contractor to do all this stuff.”
“You bought the house?” Jack looked over at the speaker phone in surprise.
“No, I’m still waiting on the board meeting which won’t happen till tomorrow night,” said Xander. “We would have already had it; it was supposed to be on Monday, but someone –” his voice rose, so he could be heard by Diana no doubt “– had a date that couldn’t be rescheduled.” There was arguing in the background that Jack couldn’t make out over the line, but he smiled anyway. “She blames me,” said Xander, and Jack could hear the eyeroll. “Apparently the axe I was sharpening when he came over last week freaked him out.”
“You were wearing your eye patch too, weren’t you?”
“That was totally accidental. Nothing to do with Brad at all,” said Xander innocently. “He’s just a skittish kid. None of that stuff even phased Nick or Tim.”
Nick was Verne’s boyfriend, a kid she’d met at the clothing store she worked at part time to get discounts. Jack remembered that conversation. Verne had picked up the phone when he called and he’d gotten to listen to her complain about Xander making her and Ana get jobs to keep them busy during the day. The fringe benefits seemed to have paid off though.
“Tim’s Ana’s boyfriend?” he asked, grinning. The week after Verne and Nick started dating, he’d gotten to listen to Ana complain about being the third wheel.
“Andrew’s,” said Xander. Jack glanced over at the phone again, taken aback. That was a surprise.
“Oh.”
“Yeah, surprised the hell out of me, too,” said Xander. “I mean, who would want to date Andrew?” That wasn’t the part that surprised Jack so much, but when he thought about it, maybe it shouldn’t have.
“Maybe he’s something weird looking for an in,” he said.
“No, Tim checks out. That’s SOP,” Xander replied. “He’s one of Andrew’s friends from D&D. I think Andrew asked him to come over and see his medieval weapon collection or something lame like that and Tim took it for what it sounds like.”
Jack did not even want to imagine what that conversation had been like. Shaking his head, he said, “Maybe it’ll be good for him.” Andrew, the poor kid, was awkward and geeky and didn’t make friends easily from all accounts. It had taken Xander some shoving to get Andrew to join the Dungeons & Dragons group at the comic store in the first place.
“I hope so. The hormones raging in this house right now . . .”
Jack laughed. “You still seeing that nurse?”
“Laurie? Yeah. We had our second date at the movies the other night. Took us four tries to get a date that wasn’t interrupted by monsters.”
If Xander had been in the room Jack would have flipped open the report in his hand as if he wasn’t suddenly tense. “Everything okay?” he asked. They didn’t talk about the nuts and bolts of the dangerous aspects of their respective jobs much. Jack hadn’t even told Xander he’d been off-world last week, and Xander had been too busy with some demon or other to notice he’d called a day late.
“Now it is,” said Xander. “Ana got a little scratched up, nothing her healing couldn’t handle. I’m fine,” he added after a beat, sensing the question that was on the tip of Jack’s tongue.
“Good.”
There was a long pause as they both regrouped from the departure from their normal conversational routine. Jack glanced at the report in his hand – SG-12’s on an archeology dig. Jack put it in the pile of give-to-Daniel-to-summarize.
“Anyway,” Xander cleared his throat. “Ana’s the only one unattached at the moment and Diana and Verne are doing the happy couple thing where they keep trying to set her up with guys they know. Ana’s not taking it too well.”
And this was where Jack was truly out of his depth. Both his parenting and commanding skills stopped short of teenage girl infighting. Sometimes he wondered how Xander stood it. His son somehow managed a delicate balance between big brother and boss that kept the peace, and was quite frankly, amazing. Jack still wanted to send some teams of his to Cleveland for a crash course in how to handle getting your ass handed to you by unlikely enemies. He never would, but it sure would be satisfying to see some of the new Marines get taken down a peg or two.
Jack’s second line rang, interrupting Xander’s description of the New Cold War that was brewing under his roof. “Hey kiddo, I got another call coming in.”
“All right. I’ll let you go back to your General-like things.”
“Thanks ever so much,” said Jack, dry as paper. “Take care.”
“You too,” said Xander. When he hung up, Jack sighed, he didn’t want to go back to work today. Nevertheless, after scrubbing a hand over his head, he switched to line two.
March 2006
Jack waited a good two minutes after the gate closed behind SG-5 before telling Walter to let him know when SG-14 checked in. He had two teams overdue and three more he’d sent out earlier that morning that were still in the green for then next few hours. Jack didn’t like it one bit. While one team missing two consecutive check-ins could be construed as normal enough, two on the same day was edging into security breach territory. This was the part that Jack hated about being the general in charge, the waiting. He trusted SGs 5 and 10 to do their jobs – he’d been rescued enough by them himself over the years – but with nothing proactive to do himself, Jack was going to go stir crazy.
Carter’s lab was a mess as usual, gadgets and gizmos everywhere. The Colonel herself was glued to the computer going through the security files and the access logs. “I’ll let you know as soon as I find anything, sir,” she said without looking up.
“So no luck?” he asked.
She looked over at him with a twist of her lips that was more grimace than smile. “Not yet. Nothing’s out of place. There may not have even been a breach.”
“Humor me,” Jack told her. He couldn’t shake his gut feeling about this.
Carter nodded, simply trusting him. “You’ll need to leave me alone then, sir,” she said.
Jack couldn’t help the smirk as he left. General in charge indeed.
When he got back to the control room, Walter stopped him. “SG-14 checked in, sir. Thirty minutes until SG-18’s due. And you have a Deputy Director Wells on line two from the IWC. I tried to get rid of him but he insisted.
The breath Jack let out at the news that SG-14 was fine for the moment caught again. What the hell was Andrew doing calling him in the middle of the morning? “I’ll take care of it,” he told Walter then hurried to his office.
“Andrew?”
“Jack! Thank Zeus! I thought the sergeant was going to ax the call for sure and then I’d have to try again and probably be cut off at the switchboard and –”
“Andrew,” Jack cut through his nervous chatter. “What’s going on? Why are you calling?” Why wasn’t Xander? he thought but didn’t say.
“Okay. The first thing you should remember is that I’m the messenger. Don’t panic,” said Andrew, his voice high and desperate, as all the blood drained from Jack’s face. “Xander’s in the hospital.”
“What?!”
“Don’t panic!” Andrew practically shouted. “No one’s allowed to panic. It’s a rule.”
“Andrew, what happened?” Jack tried not to read too much into the kid’s tone that was inviting him to freak out because his child was in the hospital. “Is he all right?”
“Yes. Maybe. Diana just said he was going to be all right and then locked herself in her room. She won’t come out. She won’t even talk to me, and the hospital won’t talk to me, so you have to call them and talk to them, and then tell me. . .”
“Jesus,” Jack breathed, still trying to process it all. Andrew sounded on the verge of tears, terrified. “What happened?” he asked again.
“It was just patrol,” said Andrew. “But Xander got hurt and Diana won’t come out of her room. Verne and Ana threw protocol out the window and left with Verne’s boyfriend to try and find the Gargoyles and they’re gonna get hurt and I don’t know what to do!”
“All right. Stop. Back up.” Jack ordered, hearing Andrew’s frustration and worry and shelving his own feelings for later when he could afford them. Right now Andrew sounded on the verge of hyperventilating and Jack needed him to calm the fuck down. “I want you to take a deep breath. You hear me?” He listened as the kid breathed in and out, in and out. “Start from the beginning.”
“It . . . I think it started Monday.” Andrew hesitated, the sound of shuffling papers crinkled over the line then he continued in a stronger voice, reading, “Monday. Diana and Verne patrol the riverfront and Erie cemetery. Hellmouth spot check was calm. Two bodies found in Fairview Park: teenage boys, 15-16 years old. Skinny and dirty. Runes on left forearm – I’ve identified those,” he broke off. “They’re Roman death sigils, adapted in the Dark ages when they were used to mark Gargoyles over the entrances to buildings. The rune would show up on the bodies of trespassers who’d been ripped to pieces.”
“But you didn’t know that Monday night,” Jack clarified, trying to keep the facts straight, his mind skittering over the news of two dead boys because, Jesus. “What happened Monday?”
“That was it. Patrol. Then everyone went to work or school Tuesday. I started looking up the runes. Xander got back from his trip to the University of Florida. I still hadn’t found what the runes were last night, but everyone went out anyway ‘cause we needed to cover the city. I stayed home to keep looking.”
“That’s when Xander got hurt?”
“Him and Diana were ambushed. Diana called from the hospital, Saint Vincent’s. She was fine by then, but she went straight to her room and hasn’t come out since we got home. She and Verne got into a fight and then Verne and Ana took off to find whatever jumped them and I told them it was a bad idea because they’re going in blind and it’s against protocol. They didn’t even tell me where they were going, and now Xander’s going to come back and I won’t know where they are.”
“Did you call Giles?”
“No. No, not yet,” said Andrew slowly like it was something he really didn’t want to do. “He’s busy in Moscow and it’s hard to get a hold of him,” he rushed on. “And I could be wrong. It could be nothing. I’m probably just worried over nothing. And I don’t really have anything to tell him.”
Jack thought about two missed check-ins that could be nothing. “Call him as soon as you’re off the phone with me,” he said. If he was wrong, he was wrong. If he was right . . . There was a long drawn out pause that Jack figured was Andrew trying to come up with a good reason not to. “Andrew. Call him.”
“Okay.”
“Good,” said Jack. He took a deep breath of his own before asking, “Do you know how badly Xander is hurt?”
Another pause for a different reason. “His blind side got torn up. That’s all Diana said,” Andrew said softly. “Laurie’s with him.”
Jack rested his forehead in his empty hand. He did not need this right now. “So Xander’s out, Diana’s taken herself out, Verne and Ana rushed into things with no intel, and you think it’s bad.”
“I tried getting Diana to come out. She won’t listen to me,” said Andrew helplessly.
“How bad is it? Can Verne and Ana handle it?” asked Jack, ignoring the kid who wanted nothing more than someone to fix this for him.
“Gargoyles are gate keepers,” said Andrew. “Powerful gate keepers. The kind you use to protect something pretty important.”
“So bad,” Jack summed up.
Andrew hesitated. “I could be wrong,” he repeated softly. “I’m not always the best at digging things up. For that you want Dawn, not me. I’m just the cook.”
“Xander trusts you,” said Jack, hating the doubt he was hearing. For all that Andrew was a dork and annoying, he was someone Jack couldn’t help but feel for, and not just sorry for but in the same way as when Xander insisted he was family in his own way. The only way that mattered. “That’s enough for me. If you say it’s bad, it’s probably bad. Call Giles, call Buffy, call Willow. Call someone. Don’t try to do this alone.”
“But they’ll –”
“Andrew!” Jack interrupted the whining. “Call them. I don’t care if you think you don’t have enough information. They need to know, and they can help you better than I can. Next,” he went on before Andrew could get going again. “Call Laurie and tell her to call me as soon as she knows anything about Xander. Have her say she’s from the IWC and the call will get through.”
“IWC. What do I do about the slayers?”
“Verne and Ana are out of contact?”
“They have their phones but since the fight they won’t answer from me or the house.”
“Why not?” Just what had gone down in that fight that had their normally functioning friendships split wide open?
“They think they’re right,” said Andrew as if it were obvious, and Jack supposed it should have been. Unlike the military, the Council taught their slayers to think, and now they’d gone off on their own without Xander there to rein them in.
“You need to get back in touch with them. Call from a different number, get Laurie to call them, get Buffy to call them. Keep trying to get into contact and don’t stop until you do, understand?”
“They’re just going to hang up on me.”
“Then talk fast. Just get them to keep you in the loop. You have to know what’s going on in order to help them.” Jack hoped they listened. “Diana’s supposed to be in charge, right?”
“Yeah, she’s Chief Slayer.”
“Then you have to get her to be Chief Slayer. If she won’t listen to you, go over her head. Buffy, Willow, someone. She can’t afford to hide in her room with people in the field.”
“But –”
“Tell her if she wants to cry she does it on her own time. With Xander out of commission that means you’re Chief Watcher. It’s your job to stand up to her and make her listen,” said Jack in the tone of voice that expected to be obeyed. “You can do this Andrew,” he added more gently. “You’re already channeling Xander enough to call me. Just pretend you have one eye, a wicked sense of humor, and backbone of steel.”
“Be Xander.” Andrew laughed nervously.
“General?” Walter knocked on the door. “SG-18 missed their check-in.”
Crap. “Andrew, I’ve got to go. Go be a Watcher. And don’t forget to tell Laurie to call me.”
“Right.”
“Good luck.”
“Bye. Thanks.”
Jack hung up, twisted up inside. The last time something like this had happened, he’d been on the first flight to Cleveland. He stared at Walter for a second to get his head back on the here and now of three missing SG teams. Teams that depended on him to get them back safely. As much as he wanted to be with Xander, he couldn’t do anything about Cleveland right now.
“Have SGs 5 and 10 reported in yet?”
“Yes, sir. Nothing yet from either one.”
“All right. Tell SG-13 we’re briefing in ten minutes.”
Xander, please be okay, he allowed himself while Walter rushed off. Then Jack pulled himself back together and got back to work.
April 2006
Xander was half asleep when he answered the door at six thirty in the morning. He’d barely been to bed and was already up and on the books when a loud pounding had interrupted the morning quiet. Ever since he’d gotten out of the hospital he’d been playing catch up. Catch up on the drama he’d missed, catch up on the research trying to figure out what was going on under Fairview Park where the Gargoyles were guarding the Threshold, which they still hadn’t identified despite the minions crawling out of the woodwork, gathering supplies and forces. It was getting ugly out there and their time was running out.
Everyone was feeling it. The tension in the house was worse than the hormones. Diana didn’t think she could lead, and worse, Verne didn’t think she could either. The Night of the Disastrous Patrols, as Andrew was calling it, had led to Cold War Slayer, where every move was fought and argued where they thought Xander couldn’t hear them. Ana was trying to be diplomatic, torn between her best friend and her gut instinct which told her, like Xander’s gut told him, that Diana was the better choice even when she doubted herself.
Andrew, on the other hand, had blossomed. Xander wasn’t sure what had happened that night, but Andrew had held it together for the day Xander had spent getting his left arm and side stitched back together and then kept it together. He broke up a fight between Diana and Verne, he took over the Council reports and had willingly called Giles last week for consultation. He’d suggested a new patrol rule that active slayers have the GPS in their phones unlocked so they could be tracked, and then he’d stood his ground until the Board approved it. Xander wondered if it was Tim’s influence – the kid was hanging around more, the next generation of Scooby in the making – or the fact that when Jack called and Andrew answered he didn’t immediately pass the phone along anymore.
Whatever it was, Xander was grateful for it. The mauling he’d taken had put him out of the action for a good week, hopped up on pain killers and antibiotics that Andrew religiously made sure he took, and his normal workload was almost too much. Adding an apocalypse to the mix had taken the rest out of him.
Nevertheless, he still had the presence of mind to grab his axe before opening the door. The wards hadn’t pinged, but it was close enough to dawn, when the wards were least discerning, that safe was infinitely better than sorry.
“Ace, shut up.” He shoved his barking dog aside, getting a hip between him and the door so he wouldn’t jump on whoever was out there.
It was Courtney with a duffle bag. Xander was sorely tempted to close the door and open it again to see if she’d disappear.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked. She was supposed to be safe in Missouri, and last week’s phone-in had suggested nothing to change that.
“I ran away from my aunt and uncle,” said Courtney brashly with a smile that was all teeth. “Can I come in?”
Xander took in the buttoned up coat and the hat jammed over her ears as he stepped back to let her pass, his bad hand clamping down on her shoulder as she did. “Kitchen,” he ordered. He needed coffee if he was going to deal with this. Badly.
Courtney huffed and dropped her bag and backpack by the stairs, pausing for a minute to ignore Xander and fuss over the ecstatic Ace, before eventually following. Yeah, this was going to be fun.
In the kitchen, Xander grabbed a mug and the phone, tossing the latter to Courtney before making a beeline for the coffee pot. “Call them.”
“I left a note,” she said.
“I don’t care. Call them,” Xander repeated. Being on the other side of a runaway sucked, and Xander knew Courtney’s relatives well enough to know that even if they didn’t like the slayer business, they did love their niece.
“I’m not calling them.” Courtney tossed the phone on the counter where it landed with a harsh clatter. She crossed her arms across her chest, pressed her lips together and glared as only a fourteen year-old could.
Xander stared her down but she didn’t budge, didn’t even blink, every line of her body communicating anger and stubbornness. “Fine.” Xander broke the stare and rummaged under the bulletin board for the slayer phone list. He didn’t need this crap. He’d call them himself. Courtney looked like she was about to protest, but this time Xander’s glance stopped her, eliciting another huff with the added bonus eyeroll.
“Hey, Dave?” said Xander when the phone was answered on the first ring. “Xander Harris.”
“Oh God, Courtney –”
“Yeah,” said Xander quickly. “Yeah, she’s here. She’s safe.”
“Oh thank God!” Xander practically felt Dave’s sigh of relief in his ear. “She was just gone. She left a note, but we didn’t know where she was . . .” He trailed off to breathe long deep breaths.
“You can relax now. She’s with us in Cleveland. Why don’t I call you back after I talk to her?” he suggested. It would give them time to unwind and hopefully get over any knee-jerk reactions. Give him a chance to see what crawled up Courtney’s ass to cross three states to Cleveland.
“So was he happy I’m gone?” Courtney demanded snottily when he hung up.
“No, actually he was hyperventilating from relief that you were safe,” said Xander just as dryly. “Funny how people do that when their kid runs away.”
“Whatever. I’m not their kid. And if you don’t want me here, I’ll leave.” She turned back toward the door, all ready to stomp out.
“Courtney!” Xander called out, keeping his own frustration in check, half worried that she would walk out and then he really wouldn’t see her again. But she stopped, and for a second when she looked over her shoulder, he saw the scared little girl who had nowhere else to run. Xander sighed and ran his good hand through his hair. “Have you had breakfast?”
She shook her head and turned the rest of the way around, the attitude sliding back into place even though she didn’t otherwise move. Xander crossed to the cupboard with the bowls and pushed her toward the cereal cabinet when he handed her one. It was all the shove she needed. Xander got his coffee and fed Ace, moving around Courtney easily as she found the milk and poured herself a glass of orange juice. It was the space they both needed before this conversation.
When they finally sat down at the uncovered part of the dining room table, Xander gave Courtney a few minutes to eat. She had really crappy timing. He didn’t need another girl to wrangle right now, not with this apocalypse breathing down their necks, not with Verne and Diana vying for alpha female.
“How’s school?” Xander opened the interrogation, as much to start out easy on himself as on her.
“School sucks,” said Courtney without looking at him. She’d taken her hat off, revealing greasy hair tied back in a messy ponytail. Xander didn’t even want to know how she got here.
“Are you passing or failing your classes?”
She shrugged, the picture of not caring when she finally looked at him. Trouble then, either at home or at school that had crossed over until it didn’t matter where it had started. “Were you fighting?” he asked.
“I got in a fight.” Courtney didn’t flinch on the surface, daring him to get mad about it, which Xander most certainly was going to do. Just not now.
“Any reason?”
She shrugged again. “Doesn’t matter.”
“It matters,” countered Xander sharply. “And I think you know that.” He knew she did, and the way she shifted away under his gaze confirmed it. “So I’ll be reading you the riot act later. But for now, you want to tell me why you ran away?”
Courtney didn’t. She stared at her cereal bowl and concentrated on getting every last bit of milk.
“I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me, kiddo,” said Xander softly, seeing again not the tough slayer she wanted the world to see but the girl who needed someone to listen.
“My aunt and uncle hate me,” she said finally. “I do everything wrong and they keep telling me to shape up, and they don’t understand.” She turned her glare on him. “It doesn’t even matter. School’s not gonna help me get anywhere. Who cares about grades? Twenty years from now I’ll either be dead or slaying stuff and all I need to be able to do for that is read up on how to kill things.”
“They don’t hate you,” said Xander because he really couldn’t argue with the rest of it on one cup of coffee. Fatalism was a thought trap that Xander couldn’t really begrudge her. She’d lost everything to the supernatural a year ago. She had already made the choice that most of the girls didn’t even face until they finished school since they still had families and lives to go home to after the summer. Courtney had already looked into the darkness. Fought it. And now thrust back into the ignorance of the real world she was a weapon without a target. Xander knew exactly how she felt.
“Look, you can stay here for a while,” Xander sighed. Courtney blinked, surprised maybe that he’d given in so easily. After a moment, she smiled, tentative and genuine, the edge bleeding out of her posture. “But when I call your uncle back, you’re talking to him and telling him you’re sorry.”
Courtney barely hesitated this time before nodding, and Xander felt like he’d dodged a bullet. He hadn’t been sure how deep her stubbornness ran, but now he figured she at least had the excuse that he was making her to cover how she really felt about her folks. “Thanks,” she said.
Xander nodded back, wondering what else she had expected him to do. “Go pick yourself out a room. And don’t wake up anyone else. They need to sleep.”
Courtney took her bowl to the sink, but instead of going on upstairs she came back to the dining room and threw her arms around Xander. “I’m sorry,” she whispered into his neck.
Xander twisted so he could hug her back. “Don’t be,” he told her, holding tight. “You always have a place here. Always.”
May 2006
When Jack told his team that their layover in Cleveland was actually three days instead of three hours he’d gotten three stares and five quirked eyebrows.
“We are visiting Xander Harris,” said Teal’c after a beat.
“Yep.” Jack grinned at them. Daniel was about three seconds from rolling his eyes and going back to his book, but Carter looked less certain.
“Sir, does he know we’re coming?” she asked.
“Yep.” Although Jack decided against telling her that while Xander knew he was coming, he didn’t know about the rest of them. But Xander wouldn’t care and the house was more than big enough.
Carter sighed and gave him a half-hearted smile, clearly not as enthused about the idea as Jack was.
“It will be good to see him again,” said Teal’c, nodding his approval with a tiny smile.
Jack actually surprised himself with both how much he was looking forward to it and how much he wanted his team to be there, too. The trip to the cabin had been wonderful, a badly needed vacation from a rough year for all of them. Nothing but hanging out and getting away from the Mountain for a week. Jack had even caught a couple fish and fried them up. It had been a lot like camping off-world back when they were still one team except without the stress, and it had given them all a chance to wind down and decompress.
While he had no doubt that Carter was ready to get back to her lab, and Daniel ready to get back to jockeying for a spot in Atlantis, and Teal’c probably had something he wanted to do too, Jack wasn’t ready to get back to business as usual. He wanted to see his son. Hell, he wanted to see all the kids. There’d nearly been an apocalypse for Christ’s sake, and while Jack had talked to Xander since its aversion – and Andrew, Verne, and Ana for that matter – he still needed to see them and make sure they were all right in person.
“Dad!” Xander greeted them at the airport, surprising the hell out of Jack by wrapping him into a hug. Xander was solid, warm, and whole, and like that, Jack felt the worry and tension that had filled the quiet spaces over the last few months bleed away as he hugged him back. Tangible proof that Xander was safe. He looked good, his shirt no doubt hiding his most recent scars but he moved easily and his glass eye was even better to see in person. Xander was grinning when he let go of Jack and said, “You brought friends!” Jack shrugged innocently at Carter’s pointed look, feeling a little smug because he had the most important people in his life right here.
The house, Xander informed them, was a wreck, “But not literally,” he hastened to add as he grabbed Jack’s bag from him. “Just the normal six people and a dog under one roof chaos. The stuff from the Threshold has mostly been cleared away and we can almost eat off the dining room table again.”
“Threshold?” asked Daniel. They stepped out into the warm spring afternoon, the bustle of airport traffic and travelers all around them as they crossed to the parking garage.
“Latest attempt at opening the hellmouth and bringing about the end of the world,” said Xander, launching into an abbreviated version of Gargoyles and minions and the three demons that had conspired to bring the Threshold of Dem Eil within ritual distance of the Cleveland hellmouth as they drove to the house. He skipped over his hospital visit and the subsequent meltdown between Diana, Verne, and Ana. He left out the near misses, the boyfriend that had nearly gotten everyone killed, and the boyfriend that had ended up saving their asses. He talked about the counter ritual but not about the woman who gave up her life to stop it. She had been kidnapped to be the final sacrifice to open the hellmouth and was the only one who could stop it by reversing the steps of the original ritual. Humans couldn’t pass through the Threshold twice and survive.
“She told me to tell her family that she loved them,” Xander had said hoarsely into the phone when he’d told Jack, exhausted but dry-eyed. It was the first time Jack had experienced the end of the world in weekly installments, piecing it together like a crossword from what each kid had been willing to tell him. Thankfully he’d had his own problems to keep him occupied. Little things like Replicators and stopping a nuclear strike and apparently time travel somewhere in there.
The house was indeed a wreck, but it was still standing. There was even a greeting party that swamped Jack with hugs while in between Xander introduced Ana and Verne to Daniel, Carter and Teal’c. Courtney hung back on the stairs at first until Carter smiled her megawatt smile, delighted to see her. Andrew showed up last out of the kitchen, a tall gangly kid at his side.
“You must be Tim,” said Jack offering his hand. Tim wore glasses and earrings and hadn’t yet filled out to match his height, but he had a strong handshake. Beside him, Andrew was visibly relieved that Jack liked him, and Jack couldn’t help but throw him a wink that made both boys blush.
But it wasn’t till after dinner that Jack finally, completely relaxed. The kitchen was a mess of noise where the girls were cleaning up with Carter making coffee and talking science with Diana, and Daniel speaking in Spanish with Verne and Ana who kept giggling madly. Andrew and Tim were already playing video games in the den, having cooked, and Courtney had shyly asked Teal’c if he had ever seen the damage a crossbow could do and then promptly dragged him outside. After that, Xander had come over and handed Jack his jacket.
“Come on,” he said quietly. “I want to show you the house.”
Xander’s house was still unfinished, all raw boards and plastic sheets dancing in the early evening breeze. They’d brought Ace with them and he shot out of the backseat like a rocket to run around the property like a wild thing. It was a good place, set back from the road with plenty of space on either side within a perimeter of trees that separated them from their neighbors. The house itself was huge, about three times the size of the current one in suburbia. Xander took him on the dime tour, pointing out where the offices would go and Andrew’s kitchen. A real library once the dividing wall was knocked out, rooms on the third floor for the girls, training space in the basement as well as the yard where they had real distance for the long range weapons.
“I’ve even have two people coming for Watcher training this summer,” said Xander when they had meandered onto the back porch. “No commitments yet, but two people willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. It’s better than nothing.”
Jack turned so he could get a better look at Xander, a small smile playing around the corners of his mouth.
“What?” Xander smiled back reflexively, and there it was, that look that was pure O’Neill around the edges.
“You talked two academics into considering vampires are real,” said Jack shaking his head at the audacity. He knew how hard that was; he talked people into believing in aliens and they had actual science and the United States Government to back that up. “I’m wondering how much I’d have to pay Giles to let you to come work for me.”
“No chance,” Xander said lightly. “But if you want a couple of slayers to join the Marines, you can have Diana and Verne,” he offered, making Jack laugh at the image that brought to mind.
“I do not envy you them,” he said. He’d had two months of long-distance bitching about the two from just about everybody.
“Hey, you’re just lucky you missed my awkward post-adolescence years,” said Xander. “Also known as the barely-graduating-high-school-and-then-going-through-a-job-a-week-while-I-lived-in-my-parents’-basement years. It wasn’t pretty.” He leaned down to scratch behind Ace’s ears, the happy dog’s tongue lolling in a grin that matched his master’s. “Although that was the year that Anya discovered orgasms.”
How he just threw that out there surprised a laugh out of Jack although he really didn’t need to know the details, or you know, anything about Xander’s sex life. Still, “That must have been a hell of a year,” he said.
“Yeah,” Xander smiled fondly in remembrance, and Jack wished again that he could have met Anya. “Hey, you still seeing that CIA woman type person?” Xander asked before either of them could dwell.
Jack shook his head, looking back over the dark yard. “We called it off,” he said, still unsure of how he felt about breaking up with Kerry and what she’d said about retiring. He thought Xander would have liked her.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Jack brushed off the sympathy. “It happens, and it was good while it lasted.”
Xander nodded but leaned close enough to bump his shoulder anyway. Jack couldn’t help but smile, warmth easing through him. “You don’t need me to give you the you’re-still-special-somebody-will-love-you-for-who-you-are speech do you?” asked Xander a second later.
The slap upside the head was met with laughter. “Smartass.” Ace barked in agreement, jumping up, and wagging his tail excitedly, happy that Xander was happy and ready to run around in celebration. Xander obliged and went to find him a stick to chase. Jack stood too, stretched his legs, knee popping, and looked back at the half-finished house. “It’s a hell of a thing you’re doing here,” he said when Xander wandered over to join him, Ace trailing with the stick in his mouth, ready to go again.
Jack watched him look over the house with his hands jammed into his pockets and his one eye no doubt seeing what it would look like when it was finished. It would be no small feat. Xander was building his Council from the ground up with practically no resources, nothing but determination and whatever spare time he had in between crises.
“Yeah,” Xander breathed, turning to smile at him. “It’s pretty cool, isn’t it?” Everything was in that smile: hope, strength, courage, and the simple joy of Jack being there to share it with.
“Yeah,” Jack smiled back, taking in his son, this house, and the future he was forging. “It’s pretty cool.”