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This page was last updated: September 9, 1998
(c)Sept 1998
URL: willow12.htmlThe following is a bit of alternative fiction based on certain characters from the Xenaverse It is not meant to infringe on anyone else's rights. If you don't agree or disapprove, please go read something else.
This story is part of an Altaverse based on Bite Me and the Fonder Heart. It can be found, along with other such stories, at The Realms of the Xenaverse, under Blood and Roses. Xena is Ares' Daughter and Gabrielle is Bacchus' Daughter
Characters from Buffy: Vampire Slayer have also been borrowed for the purposes of this story. All of this is written with the utmost affection and the no desire for renumeration (except for possible emails). The same above disclaimer is in effect. There are certain changes that have been made to accomadate this particular Xenaverse. Buffy's Vampires are really part of the Kin, renamed for purposes of this story
Xex Alert: Yes, there definitely will be, between two consenting immortal women even. Maybe even more
Violence Alert: Yes, probably, given that this is a story involving slayage and Xena.
Chapter 12
Gabrielle slipped quietly amidst the shadows of the darkened library. Her booted feet padded softly up the curving stairs of the library, her immortal eyes easily discerning the librarian's outline as he sat, his back to the stairs. So as not to startle him with her soundless approach, she called out quietly, "Willow told me I could probably find you here."
The sound of glass shattering on the hardwood floor indicated to the bard that she hadn't been successful in not scaring the mortal.
Whoops... He's a bit jumpy...
Giles whirled around, the remains of his drink dripping down a long-fingered hand. He had taken off the ever-present tweed jacket and had rolled his sleeves up. His glasses were off, and his hair still rumpled. All and all, the arrival of the Sunwalker and her consort, the Destroyer of Nations, had the Watcher in something of a dither... His head fairly reeled with the universal implications of the whole thing. Now those luminous green eyes were staring back at him, and he felt inexplicably reassured and warmed... in a way he hadn't felt since Jenny's death. "Ah... Sunwalker... um..."
"Gabrielle..." A radiant smile creased the bard's face. "Remember?"
"Right. Gabrielle." He nodded and for some reason, all the considerable words at his disposal seemed to flee him, leaving him only to contemplate the immortal gazing back at him.
"Do you... uh... want me to help you clean that up?" She gestured bemusedly at the liquid still dripping down his hand. Sometimes mortals were like this... particularly when they were associated with the Center. Giles had spent his entire adult life studying the legends and lore of the Twilight Realm, but it was only rarely they confronted it. Well... at least that used to be the case... Gabrielle thought wryly. Buffy seems to have changed all that.
Her solicitous inquiry seemed to jar him back into action, for Giles did a kind of quiet double-take, as if he had only realized that he had dropped his glass. "Oh dear... I do seem to have made a mess, haven't I?"
Gabrielle started forward. "Let me help--"
"No, no... I've got this quite in hand." He bustled about his desk, retrieving a handkerchief from his jacket and mopping up the mess on the floor.
"Be careful..." the bard warned. "There's lots of glass down there. You don't want to cut yourself." Giles swallowed audibly, seeing the barest tips of the Sunwalker fangs, and Gabrielle belatedly realized what the Watcher had glimpsed. "Relax," she reassured him. "You're perfectly safe." Inwardly, she berated herself for forgetting that the heat of her lover's body still lingered, rousing her immortal senses to a greater awareness than normal. The Blood always burned hotter when she was near the kin... with Sunnydale sitting right on top of a Hellmouth, quite frankly Gabrielle was surprised she hadn't surrendered the to the impulse to simply devour her lover as she had wanted-- hunting be damned.
No wonder my fangs are showing...
"Ah...." Giles looked completely abashed at his fear. "I know... it's just that..."
Gabrielle smiled understandingly and adopted Willow's vernacular, "I'm a bloodsucking fiend and you're a little nervous about being alone with me."
That broke the tableau, and both the Watcher and the Sunwalker shared a genuine laugh. "Well, then... that about sums it up, I suppose." He gestured to the desk. "I was just fixing myself a little toddy. Care to join me?"
The rich scent of the spilled alcohol reached her nostrils as she closed the distance between them. "I'd love to." She perched on the edge of the desk while the mortal bustled about finding two new glasses for their drinks.
He was handsome, in a rumpled professorish sort of way. Tall and broad-shouldered, but with an unmistakably gentle air surrounding him. No one would ever mistake him for a slayer. He seemed well suited to his life as a Watcher, but Gabrielle suspected that Buffy was a bit more than Giles had been prepared for. Her respect for him rose several notches as she realized that despite all the anomalies in this Watcher-slayer relationship, Giles had held it together. His advice had helped keep Buffy-- not to mention her rather surprising band of cohorts-- alive. Maybe she and Xena could help take away some of the strain so clearly etched into his features.
He finished pouring their drinks... Scotch... the bard noted by the smell... and handed one to her. "Cheers." They clinked glasses softly and regarded each other in the dimness. Watching Gabrielle swallow the rich amber liquid, he shook his head dazedly. "An immortal who walks in the light. Who eats, drinks..." he hesitated, "Loves... Just like humans..."
"I am human," Gabrielle reminded him.
He jerked his eyes back to her slender figure. "Yes, you are. What Buffy faces... those creatures..."
"Have had their humanity raped away from them." Gabrielle's face took on a pensive cast. "Sometimes... sometimes I think the kin lust for the Blood so much because it's the only way they can maintain the illusion of being human."
"What do you mean?" Giles was fascinated. This woman could possibly hold the answers to centuries worth of questions that the Center's scholars had long been asking. And she was talking to him. A giddy thrill ran through his body.
"Have you ever really looked at one of the kin--" Seeing his confusion, she clarified, "A vampire-- Just after they've fed? Their skin loses its pallor, their bodies warm-- they're always so cold-- did you know that? They feel aroused... alive..." She gazed steadily into his eyes. "Human... in a way they can't any other way. They hunger... not to feed... but to be..."
"Like they were before."
The bard nodded softly. "Yes."
"How did it happen then?" He blurted out. "What went wrong?"
"You mean how did the kin evolve.... if I... exist?" Gabrielle chuckled ruefully. "I honestly don't know. I wasn't my sire's only child. Some of my siblings were less scrupulous than me, I suppose. Or maybe I just got lucky and thwarted what I was supposed to be."
"What do you mean?"
"I found Xena." She took a healthy sip of her drink, enjoying the unfamiliar harshness at the back of her throat. She rarely indulged in hard liquors, preferring white wine on those occasions she felt the need for... external... stimulants. The gods know that sharing a life... and a bed... with Xena is usually stimulating enough. She allowed herself a private smile at the thought and then returned her attention to the Watcher. "People never really understand who or what she is. Historians-- if they even believe that she existed-- see her as a vicious warlord who lost her edge and turned soft, giving up the sword and traveling around with a lowly bard. Those who are more familiar with her... lineage... only see her as my mate, dismissing her importance the same way the historians dismissed mine." Gabrielle shifted comfortably in her seat, pouring herself another drink. "The only difference is it doesn't matter if the historians get it wrong. But if the Watchers do, then it's...."
"Bye-bye world." Willow's voice echoed unexpectedly through the library.
Giles' second glass would have gone the way of his first had it not been for Gabrielle's lightning fast reflexes. "Maybe you ought to invest in some plastic tumblers," she murmured, wrapping both the Watcher's hands around his glass.
"I didn't mean to interrupt," the red-headed teen said hesitantly.
Gabrielle regarded her niece fondly. The girl really was striking in an unusual sort of way. Certainly, standing beside Buffy-- who was beautiful in a much more conventional sense-- she might seem plain, but trust Xena to pick up on the rare nature of her niece's beauty. Her lover had an uncanny ability to see beyond what was presented to her, and reach the kernel of exquisiteness hidden inside. The dark, foreboding warlord had done it with a little peasant girl from Poteidaia, and now... it looked like she might just be doing it with her shy, quiet niece. Looking at the bright intelligence in the young woman's eyes, the bard decided that it might not be such a bad thing. "Everything okay, Willow?"
"Yeah...." Willow replied earnestly, then her face fell. "Well.... no, not really. Sort of. I mean it's nothing life or death... Or it may be if we don't get there." Seeing the utter confusion on the adults' faces, Willow took a deep breath and started over again. "We need to go to the Bronze and catch Xander before he does something stupid."
Fair brows knit together. "Describe stupid."
Giles bit back a snort of laughter. "Stupid and Xander often go hand-in-hand. He means well, though. And is very often smarter than I give him credit for. But he is a wee bit... impulsive."
"And this matters to us how?" Gabrielle asked.
Willow twisted her hands together. "Well, if I know Xander-- and believe me, I do, more than I want to sometimes-- he's gonna want to go hunting with Xena and Buffy."
"Ooh..." Gabrielle winced, knowing what was coming.
"Right. Somehow, I don't think Xena's gonna be too keen about that." Seeing her Aunt nod in agreement, Willow continued. "So we have to catch him before he leaves the Bronze."
"But Xena was supposed to be there half an hour ago." Gabrielle objected. "He's probably already left."
Willow shook her head emphatically. "No... he'll be arguing with Cordelia for a good for forty-five minutes. If we hurry, we can just catch him."
"You're sure about this?" Gabrielle was allowing herself to be tugged along by her niece's insistent hand.
"Trust me, if there's one thing I know better than Xander, it's Cordelia's effect on him."
"The babes ditch you, studmuffin?" Cordelia purred over his shoulder.
"Go away." Xander slumped dejectedly in his seat. After watching Xena and Buffy roar away on that bodacious bike, he slunk back into the Bronze, prepared to sulk for the next hour. Xena's curt dismissal of him hurt, but it wasn't exactly unexpected. After all, she hadn't spent the last two years staking vamps side-by-side with him. Buffy on the other hand... He had seen the brief shake of the slayer's head when Xena had silently inquired if they should take him, and it had floored him. It had also hurt more than he ever dreamed possible.
True to form... Coredelia was there to witness his humiliation... and rub just a little salt into the wound. At least she was here, which was more he could say for Buffy-- who seemed to have abandoned him for Xena-- or Willow-- who dumped him for Gabrielle.
He just couldn't win.
"Cordelia, don't you have some geeks to torture?"
"That's what I'm doing," she responded smugly, sitting down across from him. "Poor Xander. All alone again." She took a satisfied sip of her Diet Coke. The dark-haired teenager really didn't want to pick on her sometimes-boyfriend... but it was expected of her, and besides, it served him right for following Buffy around like a puppy. You'd think after the slayer and the leather daddy vamp got together, Xander would get the message. But noooo.... Honestly, that boy gave the word clueless a bad name. "Of course, you can't really fault Buffy's taste... that Destroyer chick is something. I bet she'd even look better in those pants that Angel wears than he does." Cordelia gave a contented little sigh, the mental image of the dark immortal in head-to-toe leather dissolving into the very real memory of Lisa, her dark-haired camp counselor the summer after her freshman year of high school.
It had been an unusual idyll in Cordelia's life... the camp was hundreds of miles away from Sunnydale and the pressures of being the most popular girl in school. Lisa had been two years older and wonderfully different from anything Cordelia had known. When she talked to the younger girl, Cordelia had felt a painful squeezing in her heart and an unfamiliar stirring in her stomach. One night, Cordelia had woken up out of a sound sleep... to this day she still didn't know why... and made her way to the counselor's solitary cabin. Lisa hadn't seemed surprised to see her and had simply led the girl into her room, her bed, and eventually her body. For the rest of the summer they had been inseparable... but perfect things end... and at the end of August, Lisa had returned to her home in Connecticut and Cordelia to Sunnydale. They hadn't had contact since.
Cordelia returned to the present to find Xander's astonished brown eyes fixed on her. "What. Did. You. Say?" He gasped out.
The teen rolled her eyes at the youth across the table. "I said..."
"I heard you!" he exclaimed, raising his hands to stop her from repeating it. "I just don't believe you said that."
"Oh get with the program, Xander. You're small-town roots are showing. Besides, if all dykes were as hot as Xena and Gabrielle, I'd seriously consider going queer myself. They certainly have a better sense of style than some people--" She glared meaningfully at her boyfriend. "I can name."
Gabrielle's voice was soft, but nonetheless audible to the two occupants at the table. "Who are you naming?"
Blood and Roses Realm | Fan Fiction Site | Home Page
This page was last updated: September 9, 1998
(c)Sept 1998
URL: willow12.html