i.

When Xander comes back from Africa, everything is different.

*Different* different. Not weird different, not Hellmouth different, not Spongebob different.

Just different.

It's not culture shock. Xander returns to his fast food hamburgers without provocation, enjoying the inevitable grease stains, relishing even the poor service provided by pimple-faced teenagers manning cash registers half-heartedly. He goes back to his old haunts, the watering hole around the corner and the bartender named Toby who's already forgotten his name. He watches cable at Dawn's, flipping the channels so fast she complains after a while that she can't watch daytime TV with him any more, accusing him of suffering from some sort of obsessive-compulsive remote clicking disorder.

cHe hangs out a lot with Dawn actually, in this new, different, post-Africa world. Dawn is ordinary, and not in a negative sense. Xander finds her presence comforting. Authentic in a way he can't quite place. Buffy's gone, doing her thing. Giles is in England. Willow is somewhere. Anya is . . . Xander doesn't want to thnk about Anya just now. Angel is in L.A., but that's old news. They're all scattered to the ends of the earth. Everyone except Xander and Dawn, who are still in Sunnydale, waiting on the Hellmouth, waiting for something in this new, sharper, Polaroid-capture sort of world. It's like an Etch-a-Sketch, Xander thinks. He had one as a kid, an Etch-a-Sketch; he thinks his mom gave it to him, as an afterthought, or maybe Willow for his birthday. He was never good at shaking the thing to get the squiggly lines to look realistic. They were always just squiggly lines, child's play. A way to pass the time. And then Xander kids himself. The world, an Etch-a-Sketch drawing? That's not quite right, either.

Xander returns to his old apartment. There's a new vacancy in the complex. The building was built in the 1970s, and it shows. He notes the scratched up walls and the weeds growing out front, the chunks taken out of the inside doors. The landlord gives him a key and lets him take a look on his own. Top level, fifth floor. There are vomit stains on the carpet. It is only three in the afternoon, but Xander hears a girl's moan next door, and a boy's "Give it to me," sweaty and efficient in the dry midday heat. He stands there, listening to them, feeling like he is in limbo, and this is a freeze frame in a cartoon; any minute the action shot will follow. Her breath vaporizes over his skin, the memory of it. "Oh, yes," she whispers, warm and salty in his ear, and she sounds nothing like Anya, her voice transparent in its tinny smallness through the thin walls. A fly buzzes near the faded window. He stares at the empty kitchen. The sink drips, the punctuation startling in the otherwise silence.

The landlord does not remember him until he calls up his records on an Excel spreadsheet. He bends his head over the desktop computer in the property management office – a desk, four walls, no window, dying plant in a pot in the corner. The landlord has a handlebar moustache, and greased-up hair, and three bright red horns. Xander only rents from people who know a little something firsthand about living on the Hellmouth. He isn't stupid. He went to Sunnydale High.

The landlord's face fake-glows with attempted enthusiasm when his eyes find "Harris, Alexander." Xander twitches in front of him, tossing the borrowed key from hand to hand. Under the eye patch, his skin needs scratching. It smells bad in the office, like melted crayons and toilet water. But Xander doesn't wrinkle his nose. He isn't stupid. He certainly isn't rude.

"Apartment 4B, right? I'm afraid that's been rented out. But we have a fine room still available, if you're interested. Those fifth floor digs? Pretty airy place even in the winter, if you ask me," says the landlord demon, feebly, his eyes hovering on Xander's eye patch, as if he's wondering what happened but takes a gander at a guess.

"Thanks," Xander says, like he's interested, but he doesn't fill out the form, and he doesn't take the apartment.

He crashes with Dawn a few more days. They eat popcorn and watch chick flicks. He makes her oolong tea. She reads fairy tales for some college course. Mythology. She's majoring in preternatural studies. Dawn tells him he should think about going back to school. She could be Xander's study buddy. They would make s'mores and try not to get their textbooks sticky with fried marshmallow goo. And it would be good for him. There was more to life than a construction lunch break. But no rush. It was pretty cool, just hanging out, Dawn and Xander together again, like old times. Made Dawn remember when she was more than just any other girl. She liked that. She had forgotten that.

Xander visits his old job site. The work's pretty much done, aside from a few finishing touches. He would have gotten a new assignment by now anyway, moved on, signed a different contract. He stares up at the rafters, the top of the frame. It will be a huge office building. He wonders how much they'll lease the offices for. He wonders how much the topmost floor will cost. He watches the guys at work, as he is sitting in his used car, eating Cheetos and getting sticky orange powder all over his fingers. They're good guys, really. He remembers what it was like to be one of them. He had a few buddies. They told him to keep in touch. But nobody ever did.

It's different here, too. The images are sharper, the way the construction workers move around the site, even in the distance. Xander thinks it is like getting woken from a bad dream, and your lover is lying next to you and they look at your face and ask you with concern in their eyes, "What's wrong?" And you smile carefully because you don't want to upset them, "Nothing," you say, and then nothing really is wrong, but you can't go back to sleep because the world is now focused and unfuzzy. Real. More pronounced than the sleep-visions in your head. And your lover smiles at you, and you kiss a face that leans to you, and smells just right, and presses warm lips on yours.

Xander finishes the bag of Cheetos and drives on.

Xander walks the streets at night, alone, wary. Dawn knows where he goes, but she keeps her mouth shut. He likes that. Xander doesn't do anything stupid, like wander into unlit graveyards alone. Sunnydale High grad, Scooby, the whole nine yards. Xander didn't earn sidekick cred saving the world from apocalypses at the Slayer's side by lacking common sense.

Xander just walks. He passes near the Bronze, all the old hangouts, the memory of Willow's laughter hanging over the stone steps; he walks around the rebuilt high school, the campus, feels his way around the new layout. It doesn't even look like the old one, especially not at night, when he only has the stars to see by, and the shadows loom over the modern building. It doesn't look like anything. Just some school. A bunch of kids go here in the daytime and walk the halls and park their cars in the parking lot and laugh with their friends and smoke secret cigarettes in the football field bleachers and gossip in the locker rooms. That seems like another life. Not Xander's life.

One day Xander takes his things, stands in front of Dawn, the living room behind him. This portion of his life already behind him. His hands are in his pockets. He can't believe it's only been a month or so. Maybe less. He hasn't really kept track of time. He doesn’t even have a watch any more. He flips calendar pages in his head, whoosh goes the passage of time, but the dates of his comings and goings all blend together, ink on ink on ink.

"I'm going," he says. "Thanks for the free hotel. Thanks for everything, Dawnie. I mean it, kiddo." He holds up a hand in a peace sign. Like that counts for something.

"Xander..." she says, and the worry is all over her face. He knows what she's thinking: She never asked. And he never told. Africa was an unspoken blank between them, and that was the attraction for him. He thought, anyway, that was why he stayed here, because little Dawnie, little safe Dawnie, didn't need to know. "I didn't even get to see your pictures. You never talked about…"

"I broke my camera the second day out on safari camp. Lion ate the lenscap, the telephoto, everything. Swallowed it whole – you should've seen it. Seriously, it wasn't even a demon this time," says Xander. He grimaces when he catches Dawn's expression. He jiggles his car keys in his lefthand pocket. Dawn blinks, that unspoken blank between them stretching and filling the silence with vague tension. "Sorry, Dawnie. I would stay longer if I could. But I just gotta go. Gotta do some things. Xander things. There are things … that the Xan-man must do. And don't ask me why speaking about myself in the third person is suddenly so appealing - really – don't ask."

"Will you leave a forwarding address just in case that porno arrives that you mail-ordered last time you were here? You know?" said Dawn, raising her eyebrows hopefully, doubt in her eyes.

Xander rolls his eyes. "Come on, like you don't have that stash yourself, the one you keep hidden in that closet third down the right upstairs-- No worries, news like that won't reach big sis's sensitive eardrums. Pinky swear. Honest to God Almighty and all the saints," he says, voice quickening at Dawn's annoyed expression. "Try the Hyperion. Or that law firm. Whatever. I'll likely wind up there."

"Won't Angel be pleased to see you," says Dawn, deadpan.

"It won't be my first port of call," says Xander. "Trust me. Sleepover with Dawnie is a treat, but crashing at Deadboy's big and drafty house of horrors? No thank you, little sister. Just sayin', if you need me, that's where messages can reach me. The ways of the universe are mysterious and you must never doubt them. Trust in that, my child."

"Right, okay, the Hyperion," says Dawn, rolling her eyes. "And the others? What if they ask about you? Buffy- She'll want an update-"

"Tell them it was a barrel of laughs," says Xander, his face betraying nothing. "I went body surfing off the coast of Mozambique. Hang ten, Dawnie." He wills her not to draw out this goodbye any longer than absolutely necessary. It's already long. Longer than long. And Xander has places to go, and people to ... well, Xander hopes he doesn't have to run into many people, actually.

"Yeah, Xander, whatever. Come on, then, hug me before you say goodbye. For reals, Xan man, it's been real." Dawn's thin arms go around Xander's waist. She hugs him tight, and for a minute he's afraid to let her go. But he knows he has to let her go.

"See you round the universe." Xander waves as he backs off, his keyring tucked around his fingers. Dawnie rubs her nose with her wrist but her eyes are clear from far away.

"Later, alligator," she says softly, and Xander nearly doesn't hear her as the distance grows between them. The distance is like a knife through his heart. Gentle, like the chilled denouement to a story that's lost its punchline.

ii.

Xander does the driving thing a lot.

He picks empty scenic byways, winding territorial highways. If the roads are not on the main interstate, then they're as good as gold. He's got all the time in the world, after all. And no time at all. He's the time guy, at your service. Demons? Who needs 'em, not when Alexander Harris has got more time than Bill Gates has Benjamins. Time is money and money is time. And there just might be David Bowie on the cranky radio stereo. Maybe a little Madonna, just to freshen things up.

It's fun for a while. The open road. The stuff of hippie counterculture fiction. He's not jumping trains and he's not hitching, but the theory's laudable. He likes the idea. He feels cool, and right now that's all that counts.

Xander buys popsicles at gas stations and waits until the sun melts the chocolate down to the stick before licking them. Or he buys chewing gum and dollar cups of styrafoam coffee that sometimes come free with a full tank of gas, if the station is out of the way enough. He likes the nice, gentle, easy country air; it fills his lungs, makes him forget.

Xander wants to forget.

Xander stops in these little towns off the scenic byways and stays for a couple of nights or three or four. Xander buys coffee at little coffee shops on lost little streets. He sips his cappuccinos in their cardboard takeout cups and sits by himself and pretends to read free weekly magazines that are actually nothing but advertisements. He listens to the talk around the shop. If he goes around ten in the morning, a couple hours before lunch, it's usually the right time to catch all the local gossip. Xander tries to imagine himself living in one of these towns. He can't.

After a while he gets used to the routine. It's a good routine. Comfortable. He doesn't mind the credit he's been racking up on his plastic at all these dusty little roadside stations. He just wants to feel what it might be like to live like that. It's nice, for a while. It would be easy.

He overhears bookshop owners and the real estate brokers argue about city council business over their lattes. He stops in the bookstores and gets fingerprints all over used, well-loved books: the classics, and the science fiction section. He stops in the real estate offices and picks up brochures and sees little dumpy houses in the middle of paradise selling for a quarter of a million and he looks at the for sale signs flapping in the wind and the prim, suited real estate agent standing next to the for sale sign, smiling happily. "This could be you," the pictures say. "You want this, don't you?"

After a while the routine becomes a real routine. It's not comforting any more. He doesn't even know how long he's been gone, how long he's been doing this. It seems so unreal.

The *different* in the world now is not like the *different* that Xander felt in Sunnydale. Instead it's a hot taste of longing in his mouth, a strong, sharply undefinable flavor sitting loose and restless below his tongue. It's touching a life and watching it fall apart when fingers connect with vision. It leaves him shivering and unsatisfied when the feeling passes.

One night he miscalculates his driving time and winds up at a gas station an hour before midnight or so. He's lucky it's still open. Around these parts the businesses tend to close at nine, or ten, or even eight, in many cases. The clientele isn't worth the risk.

He sits in his car and turns off the engine. It's dark out, but the lights around the gas station are sufficient. He stares out his window and waits for just a bit, clears his head. In front of the convenience store, a big man with sweat stains on his white t-shirt smokes a cigarette. He is wearing a Dodgers cap that looks like it once was some color other than mud. And he is staring at Xander as if he has never in his life seen a Xander-shaped being. He's just chewing his cigarette and calmly looking. Gives Xander the creeps.

Xander pops his tank, then shuffles outside his car to fill up. Unleaded. He waits until it's full, hears the click.

Then thrusts his hands in front of his face, hearing the clank as the nozzle strikes the pavement, and the motion is so fast and sharp it shocks him. It's not entirely unexpected, though; he barely has time to roll away from his vehicle, the exhaust and the gas fumes coating his face with soft residue, grab the stake he keeps hidden for emergencies like this. There's two of them, and that's the strange thing, because if they wanted easy prey, if they didn't know him, they wouldn't have suspected anything that required reinforcements.

He launches the stake into the heart of one of them. Dusted. He grabs air for the missing wood, but the other vampire's already grabbed it, snarling in game face.

"Xander Harris," says the vamp Xander doesn't recognize. "It's a shame they want you alive."

Xander almost runs, but the vampire's too fast this time, even deprived of its partner. It grabs Xander whole and presses a warm, wet cloth to his face. Xander squirms, still trying to fight back.

The last thing Xander sees is the fat guy. But he's dropped his cigarette.

iii.

There's nothing like home. There's nothing like home.

Dammit, Dorothy, Xander thinks, blinking into broken consciousness.

Images flash like contorted visions. He thinks he sees Angel's face. Angel's hair is unkempt, the strands falling out of place along his forehead. Xander wants to laugh, but he is too broken. Angel? With hair out of place? Who would've thunk?

He wants to tell it like a joke to one of the Scoobies, maybe one of the Slayerettes in training so they'll think he's a cool, funny guy and not just Buffy's best friend who sometimes kills things, but they're not here.

"Xander?" Angel's voice. So.

Xander blinks a couple times, wincing as pain rushes through his face.

"What did they do to you?"

Xander opens one eye. Realizes he is lying on his back in the lobby of the Hyperion. It's just Angel, and Gunn, and Wes. Gunn's jacket is muddy and slick with raindrops.

"Ow?" Xander winces. "Who- Deadboy?"

"Come on, Angel, give him a break," says Gunn's voice, distant and not distant. "The interrogation can happen later."

"Yes, obviously he needs rest and recuperation, Angel," says Wesley. He's standing up. His face is clean, dry. The light here is dim, something about the way the shadows fall in the old hotel.

"What did they do to you, Xander?" Angel asks again, in a tone that bleeds his intentions. Angel's voice sounds like a dagger piercing Xander's jaw. So delicate, the skin, the voice whispers along his cheekbone. The way the angel likes it. Darling boy. All you have to do is sing for him and it can end.

Xander's world goes black again.

*

"You're up." Angel puts down his book. Xander's in a hotel room. His head is shot through with a throbbing, dull sort of pain. The kind of pain that clings awkwardly to the fuzzy edges of consciousness.

"Wuh?" is all that comes from Xander's mouth. He can't find his tongue. His lips are swollen and chapped.

"Water's on the end table." Angel doesn't even get up. Xander eyes the title of the paperback: Wuthering Heights. He brings himself to drink. It's a great effort, though.

"Your concern is awe-inspiring," Xander says, when he finally finds his voice. He licks his lips. He just wants to lie there. This feels good.

"I'm here, aren't I?" says Angel. "Buffy called, by the way. How was Africa?"

"Hot," says Xander.

"Welcome home – or something."

"Thanks. Or something. How did you find me? Not that I really care – but – I was in the middle of nowhere, not exactly wanting to be f—ow."

"Remember the water. Cordy had a vision."

"'Course," says Xander. "I forgot about those."

"Drink water," says Angel. He goes back to his book. "Wesley said it would help."

"You just want information, don't you, Deadboy?" Xander narrows his eyes.

"Got it in one, ace," says Angel, not even bothering to look up.

Xander sleeps.

*

Xander dreams in black and white.

In Africa, nothing was black and white: It was a continent of startling bursts of color on a dry landscape. Like Technicolor calligraphy strokes on ancient parchment.

Xander dreams of knives, of dull blades scraping along his bone. He dreams of obscure tribal leaders, human bone in headdresses. He dreams of civil war, blood on children's faces. The knife is the easiest part. He longs for the knife after a while.

It's the singing that's hardest.

Sing for me, the woman weeps. She bends her head in front of him so he cannot see her tears.

Sing for me and they'll spare my daughter.

Sing the words of music you know. Sing anything, it doesn't matter what. But sing for me.

*

"What do you remember?" Angel asks on the third or fifth or sixth night. Xander looks at the book. This time it's the Tao-te Ching. Xander doesn't recognize the translator. Well, well, full of literary surprises, Deadboy, Xander wants to say, but doesn't.

Xander talks about colors and shapes. Angel draws on a sketchpad. Xander doesn't know what he remembers. All the memories are jamming together.

"Like this?" Angel says. He holds up a drawing of a demon.

"Yeah," Xander says, even though nothing's clicking. "Yeah, something like that. You ever thought about picking up some freelance work? It could be a lucrative side venture, picture illustration. You could be a comic book colorist. I could get your autograph."

"Shut up," says Angel. He studies the picture. "That's one of the demons we've been tracking lately. I wonder what it wants with you."

"Beats me," says Xander.

"You didn't bring back any diamonds from Africa, didn't you?" Angel still doesn't look at Xander.

"No," Xander shrugs. "Just tapeworm."

Angel narrows his eyes. "No need to be crude here, kid."

"Seriously, wouldn't it be cool to have a tapeworm? Oh, wait, don't answer that, you probably had one in 1834 on your way to raiding some Western African fiefdom, or something."

"1801," says Angel. "Ate some bad beef in Scotland."

"Right. Of course."

"Go back to sleep. There's water," says Angel. He taps his finger on the face of the illustrated demon.

"How about a steak dinner?"

"We're going to kill your demon, Harris. But first we're going to find out what it wanted."

Xander's about to make some witty comeback, something about sidekicks and superheroes swapping places, when the stabbing pain enters his face again. It's got a distant melody of old aches, ancient hurts. It feels like a lullaby.

Deadboy's taking care of everything. He usually does a bang-up job, despite Xander's personal grudges.

Xander sleeps.

*

"You idiot." Xander can't tell if there's affection in the tone or not. Angel puts down George Eliot. "That wasn't the right demon."

"Sorry," mumbles Xander around some water.

"He wasn't super happy about getting killed for no reason." Angel crosses his arms.

"Sorry I screwed things up so bad for you, Deadboy. Wait a minute. Hey, I'm not sorry. Imagine that."

"We've got an idea, Wesley and I," says Angel. His stare is unwavering, and Xander remembers the knife, with its blunt tang of subdued desire. Then he shakes himself. Angel's talking. Right. "You could sing for Lorne. That might do the trick."

"No," says Xander, a wave of nausea sweeping over him. "No singing. Please. No singing."

And he thinks, he's never begged Deadboy for anything in his life.

"Fine," says Angel, but his voice comes from a great distance between them now. He sounds so far away, and that knife, the blade on his skin, that is closer, that is his familiar. "Fine, Xander, no singing. We'll go for Plan B."

Xander brings himself back with effort. "Look, it doesn't matter. Obviously the demon's not coming after me, and obviously there's no apocalypse. I'm just gonna lie here a little longer, all right? You don't have to fix everything. Some things can't be fixed."

"You're wrong." Angel's eyes become unfocused. The distance thing again. And once more Xander is struck by how different this world is, too. L.A. is different. The Hyperion is different. It's like unexpected spice in a plain-looking dish. Xander's vision wobbles, and he thinks about Disney movies. Why can't everything have a perfect ending? "I'm going to find whoever did this to you, Harris. You have my word."

Xander laughs, but that's an effort, too. "Like that matters to me, Deadboy."

"It matters."

Xander almost believes him. But the voice in the distance is humming a little tune, tantalizing and soft and sweet. Just like this, says the voice on his neck. It can be like this, it can be so easy, it can be so good. Just like this.

The heat flushes out Xander's eyes, the hot dry heat, the brush strokes piling up like blood curdling over an infected wound, and there's blackness again.

*

"Tell me about Africa," says Angel, when the demon recognition doesn't work.

"No," says Xander, and that's all he says.

After hours Xander hears Wesley and Angel arguing behind closed doors. "Let me talk to him," says Wesley. "I don't understand why it has to be you. He's never exactly been fond-"

"It has to be me," says Angel. But Wesley doesn't give up.

"Why? Because it was as he said? You have to fix everything of Buffy's that gets broken?"

"No," says Angel. "That's not it. Don't try to psychoanalyze me, Wes. I'm not in the mood."

"Then let Cordy talk to him. They have a history, at least – a better one – "

"We're not having this discussion. Give him the pills, and it'll be all right. Trust me."

Xander hears Wesley's sigh in the distance, and it is painful, like the last breath of an ancient inflection. He winces. Music again.

*

Xander dreams.

He is sitting in Giles's study. It is very English. They are drinking tea out of fragile cups. Giles does not touch his Earl Grey. He folds his hands on his lap.

"You're sure you want to do this?" says Giles. There are too many books behind him; Xander knows Giles has read them all. Memorized key page numbers. "It won't be all safaris and sightseeing, you know."

"I know," says Xander. "But Buffy needs me to do this. It's important."

"There are Potentials all over the world," says Giles. "You are not trained as a Watcher."

"I could make a good scout," says Xander. "I have decent eyes – eye. I'm sidekick guy, right? The normal kid who can spot the magic in others. It's the secret ingredient in my special sauce. It's my mojo, G-man. You can't wreck my mojo by saying I'm too-"

"This isn't a walk in the graveyard," says Giles. "It's not even an apocalypse. Apocalypses are walks in the graveyard compared to what they'll put you through."

"I've read all about it," shrugs Xander. "What, surprised I read?"

"There's civil wars all over the place," Giles said quietly. "Too many people are dying. Too many sorcerers who once knew the old ways have become corrupt. I can't even trust-"

"Doesn't matter," says Xander. "Buffy needs someone in Africa. I'm her man. In a strictly non prison movie sense. More like an Out of Africa sense."

"You'll want out."

"No, I won't." Xander sips his tea. He's done with this staring contest. "I'm going, Giles. And there's nothing you can do about it."

Somewhere in the distance, a radio is playing old Eddie Fisher tunes. "Outside of Heaven" sounds scratchy and disparate. Giles tilts his head when Xander asks him if he's heard of Billboard, as if there's no music playing in the room after all.

*

"I can't fix a problem if I don't know how it became a problem." Angel puts down Camille. It's the seventh night, or the tenth, or the twentieth, Xander hasn't really been keeping track. Angel takes a sip of blood. It's either blood or coffee in a purple mug that's got a kitten on it. Xander thinks Cordelia must have picked out that one. "Throw me a bone here, Harris."

His voice sounds like a punch. Or cold water on his face, a rush of sensation colored by the immediate shock of temperature. Xander blinks three times. His face actually feels wet. But he touches his cheeks, and there's nothing but sweat and dirt.

"A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing," says Xander, but his voice is not a song. The melody is missing.

Angel hums the rest, filling in the tune. "Our helper he amid the flood of mortal ills-"

"No singing."

"Sorry. I forgot. No singing. Stupid Angel. Forgot you had a thing." Angel looks at the ceiling. Xander wouldn't have pegged a helpless look to give the vampire an expression at last. "It's just. I never pegged you for a Martin Luther fan."

"Why are you still here?" Xander's eyes are a little foggy. It's hard to see shapes in the room.

"I don't know," says Angel. "You tell me when you can be better so that we can go our separate ways again and forget this ever happened. I'd be totally down with that."

"Fine." Xander closes his eyes.

"Fine," repeats Angel, in a mocking-but-not-quite-mocking tone.

"Hey," he says. "Remember when you guys used to hang out at the Bronze so much? It was like, the place to be for the kids in town, or something?"

"You suck at small talk," Xander wheezes.

"Thanks for noticing," Angel shrugs. Then he turns his head. "Wesley! The purple pills!"

*

Xander dreams in fragments of color.

Willow's with him in England. She's touching his face. Then she's not.

"Are you sure you want to do this, Xan?" she asks, quietly. She only needs to ask once.

"Yeah, Wills," he says, and his voice chills even him. "I need to do this. Not for Buffy. For me. For Xander."

"You're so cute when you talk about yourself in the third person," Willow smiles. Then she slips something in his hand. There are two purple pills. They look like tablets, flashing dark in his skin.

"What-"

"Shh," says Willow. "During the trial. There will be a trial. It'll help to focus on something. Someone."

"Someone like Anya?"

"No," says Willow. "Someone in which there is a convergence of everything that made you who you are."

"Buffy?"

"Close," says Willow. She clasps his hand. "Good luck. I know you'll find some kick-butt Slayettes. You have a gift."

He covers her hand with his own. She squeezes back with strength he always knew she had. "Thanks, Wills. I'll see you when I see you."

"Don't let the lions eat you on the way back," she whispers, her breath light and dodgy, the fragment of envoi. He shivers. He hears Frank Sinatra somewhere. But the voice is not strong enough to carry over the distance between himself and Willow now.

*

"It'll help if we get Anya here," says Angel to Wesley. "I think."

"Now you decide to bring in reinforcements," says Wesley. "I agree. It would help."

"Okay. It will help."

"Have faith. We'll get to the bottom of this."

"Before..."

"If you don't say it, it won't come true."

"I didn't say it."

"Good."

Their voices are like the glint of cadavers in the dark. Xander feels the pain through his skin.

*

"So what's bothering you, big boy?" Anya throws Angel's book on the dressing table, disinterested. What was it this time? The Sorrows of Young Werther. "You have us all scared shitless, you know that, right?"

"Yeah," says Xander. "About that."

Anya sits on the bed, a seductive posture. She drapes one leg over his. "Won't you tell us what happened, or are you just going to lie there like that, all beaten up and horrible looking, I mean really, you do look horrible and awful and disgusting – Xander Harris. Just tell us what's going on."

"I can't," he says.

"Well, that's better than the crap you were giving Angel before. You can't. You won't, you mean. Don't mince words, Xander. Not with the one whom you love," she says. She brushes a toe along his thigh. He shivers.

"Loved."

"What was that? I didn't quite hear you."

"Nothing."

"When we were together times like these would be easy to get through. You'd screw up, I'd forgive you, and we'd have really hot make up sex. Can we do that now? Have make up sex?"

"No, Anya."

"Why not?"

"I'd rather talk to Angel."

"Deadboy? You want Deadboy?"

"Miracles never cease."

"For that sleight I will leave you in peace. But don't think you're getting off easy."

She lay on the bed, hands stretched along his sides, her breasts touching his chest. He remembered once when they didn't have to think. He watches the flush of her skin with a subjective eye.

"All you have to do," she says, her voice smoky and warm in his ear, hot and longing all the while. "Is sing for me."

"Can't."

She draws a hand along his neck. Heat races down his skin to match her touch. She licks his chin. Her breath is a warm vapor, moisture on his face. His flesh melts.

"Won't, you mean." She sighs. "Lesser males have fallen for the same tricks. Why not you?"

"Can't," he says. He tastes bile in his throat. "Deadboy."

"Fine." She places her lips on his jaw, and he likes the memory of her touch. It was so soft and sweet. But she touched him like she meant it. Without provocation. "You'll make it up to me later."

*

Xander's body is boneless and weightless. He remembers things that never happened. He remembers everything that happened. The desert is hot and lurid, and he watches small children carry automatic rifles on their bony shoulders. A twelve-year-old aims a twelve gauge shotgun at his head. He thinks, I faced worse than this in Sunnydale. Two or three or four apocalypses, and I am frightened by a skinny, hungry, desperate kid who thinks he can shoot.

There are no lions in Africa. Xander wants to know where all the lions went.

"Take this," the man says, the man with no bones, the man with human bones in his hair. He shoves pills between Xander's cracked lips. "Now we can begin. Or you can sing for me. And sing for me songs of Slayers. Sing for me songs of power. Sing for me, Mister Alexander Harris, and the pain will stop."

The knife makes a dull line below his ribs. Xander bleeds from the inside out, then from the outside in. Then there is just blood, and pain, and nothing else matters.

*

They're kissing. Xander doesn't know how that happened.

Angel's tongue is like a blade, probing the hurt in Xander's mouth. He lifts his body down to Xander's, careful to avoid the scars. Xander curves and undulates underneath the weight of his body. Xander is missing a few connections. But he doesn't care.

Angel is there, covering him, covering everything, and there is heat and blood and pain blinding and tearing through Xander's head, but he doesn't care. Sunnydale is not Sunnydale and Dawn is not a normal girl and the pizza joint he used to work at is a trashy little hellhole and the construction site he used to haul pipes at is a fancy office building, and the top floor suites cost more than he will ever be able to afford in his life. Anya – he doesn't want to think about Anya just now. The high school where he used to attend class and made friends with a girl named Buffy who showed him things he could never have imagined, it's gone now, replaced by something modern and new, and everything in his life has replaced by something modern and new, even the memory of the looks Willow used to give him when she thought he didn't notice, on the stone steps in the streets in the halls of the place where he once lived before the demons came.

Angel fucks that right out of him, sliding between his thighs and coming carefully and politely away from his face, and he does not speak or moan or cry out but Xander watches his face, watches the way his face changes when there is nothing but response. Xander likes that. Xander thought it would be the other way around. Xander never thought everything.

Angel's thrusts are like the blade of a knife entering Xander's groin and his tongue in the hollow places on Xander's body is like the touch of a madman with human bones in his hair, a man who teaches children to arm themselves and choose between shooting their traitor mothers who might be Slayers and singing a song of revolution and blood and pain and everything that never happened and everything that could be.

Xander cries out, but it is not a melodic cry, it is not a song, it is not anything.

"No singing," Angel reminds him, constricting his hand on his throat and placing the back of his palm over Xander's eyes when the children shoot each other because Xander listens. Damn it Xander listens.

There is blood in Xander's mouth and blood all over his face and Angel is telling him, softly and sweetly with the voice of time that knows memories Xander will never know, "Hold on. Just hold on."

Then Xander closes his eyes because the bile turns to the hot knife-sharp thrust of bliss rising through his brain and he can't think, can't feel, can't move, can't remember, because this is it, this is it, and he is boneless and body-less and he can't feel his fingers. Angel fucks the sensation right out of him and Xander does not care.

"Don't sing for him," says Angel at the last minute, when they are sweaty and bloody and lying on top of each other in the dark room at night in the Hyperion somewhere in LA far from anything Xander's ever known. "Sing for me."

Xander kisses the melody right out of him, and the music flies silent and true. His own song now. He will only sing his own song.

Everything is black.

iv.

Tsu'yar bows his head, once. His hands are clasped. He stands in front of his tribe, who are all children, skinny, desperate, hungry children with guns. He is gap-toothed and his skin is stretched awkwardly across his face. His eyes shine brightly through hollows in his ancient expression.

"You have passed the trial," says Tsu'yar. "You did not sing."

"You have lost the old ways," says Xander, when he can find his voice. There are bruises all over his face. His body is tired. But he still remembers how to make an accusation.

"I apologize," says Tsu'yar. He points at his children. "But you see we are lost here. What good is magic when we cannot get food to eat? What good are spells when our children fight each other? What good is the future when no one cares about the present?"

Xander stares at him. He does not blink. He does not move his mouth.

Tsu'yar lowers his shoulders. "You have proven yourself worthy. Find a Slayer among us, warrior. But you will find nothing but boys and old men here, boys and old men who have forgotten the power of magic."

Xander walks through the crowd. The boys part for him. Their automatic weapons touch his shoulders when he passes too near. He looks at every face.

Then he walks to the back of the crowd. His examination is easy and authentic.

He sees her before she sees him.

He can see her bones. Her hair is greasy and broken. She wears an old t-shirt and plastic sandals on her bruised and knotted feet. She is about fifteen or sixteen. When she looks at him, there is power in her eyes.

"This one," he says, pointing her out to Tsu'yar. "She will do."

Tsu'yar laughs. Everyone else laughs. "This child? This child will defeat your demons, boy?"

"This Slayer will sing for herself," Xander says, when there's no more laughter.

Tsu'yar isn't smiling any more.

There is darkness in the sky.

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