Baby

Methos walked away from his former apartment, his diary securely in the bag slung over his shoulder. "Adam Sloane" had died in public, so it was a little risky to go back to his former residence to retrieve even that, but he wasn't willing to lose one of his diaries over so little risk. Of course, it was still risk, so he'd made sure to use a more discreet entrance – thus why he was walking down an alley.

He froze in mid-step as he heard a sound that didn't belong in an alley, because what person leaves a baby in an alley? Hoping he was mistaken – though he knew that the millennia of experience he had with sounds made it unlikely – he walked over to the dumpster the sound was coming from next to and looked down. There, lying on top of the mounds of garbage which had been piled next to the dumpster, in a blanket and gnawing on what looked like an opened letter, was a baby.

Dried and crusted blood was all over the baby's face, presumably having originally come from the scabbed injury on its forehead. Fortunately he didn't see any fresh blood. Methos couldn't smell anything over the smell of the trash, but he was willing to bet that its diaper was soiled as well, since it had obviously been left untended since it was left here, and probably before that, if the caretaker's pattern had held true.

Looking at the baby lying in the trash, Methos knew the child wouldn't be missed, and even though they couldn't reproduce Immortals still felt the desire to have children. With the experience of dozens of lifetimes of childcare, he scooped the baby up.

"Hey there, little one, I'm your new Daddy."

Watching the Watchers

It had always amused Xander that so few Immortals knew about the Watchers. How hard was it to notice somebody watching you, especially since they had the handy Watchers' symbol somewhere on their person – usually in plain sight - to make them easy to find? Sure, most of the smart Watchers watched from a distance as much as possible, but a lot of Watchers weren't smart, and even the smartest couldn't always Watch from afar.

Occasionally Xander somehow picked up a Watcher. Sometimes it was baffling how they knew he was an Immortal, with as few heads as he'd taken and how little he interacted with other Immortals, but they found him somehow. He checked the Watchers' archives occasionally out of curiosity, and none of his identities had been linked. Half of the time, they thought he was a new Immortal, which amused him. When Methos had been a Watcher, he'd pointed him towards the Chronicles of his past lives, which had set him off muttering obscenities in languages Xander pretended not to know.

Amusingly, though, a few of his lives in the period after he'd been sent back in time had been linked to his first life. The Watchers knew that Alexander Lavelle Harris was an Immortal and when he had been born. They just didn't know how long he had lived.

The New Linguist

Jack grinned as he heard the sound of Daniel's voice. If he was back from recruiting that Pierson guy he could be a good distraction from Jack's mounds of paperwork since Carter had already kicked him out of her office. And if the Buzz was anything to judge on, Daniel had succeeded in his mission. Jack just hoped the new recruit wasn't a headhunter.

He rounded the corner, words of greeting on his lips, but they died when he saw who was with him. "What are you doing here?" he asked, rudely because he was so stunned.

"Jack!" Daniel snapped. "Sorry, Dr. Thomas, Jack's a little…"

"We know each other from a while back," 'Dr. Thomas' waved off the attempted apology, then answered Jack's question. "Dr. Jackson just hired me."

"Hired you?" Jack asked in confusion. "I thought the only position you had open was for a linguist, Daniel."

"It was," Daniel replied. "Dr. Thomas knows more languages than I do."

Jack turned to 'Dr. Thomas'. "I thought you said you'd never be a linguist."

"Yeah, because I'd have to take courses to teach me languages I already know," 'Dr. Thomas' said. "My doctorate's in women's studies. Dr. Jackson wouldn't even have glanced at me if Adam hadn't recommended me so I'd stop bumming his couch."

Jack could feel a headache coming on, which he hadn't even known was possible for Immortals. "Women's studies? Why?"

The other man shrugged. "Seemed like the thing to do. Is us working together going to be a problem?"

Jack shook his head. "Just bad memories." 'Dr. Thomas' nodded in understanding. "Hey, why don't you come over to my house for dinner? We can catch up with each other's lives."

"Sure," 'Dr. Thomas' said. "I gotta stop by my house and feed the cats first though."

"You still have those menaces?" Jack asked, a horrified expression on his face.

He rolled his eye. "Not the same ones. They don't live that long, you know."

"I don't care," Jack said emphatically. "Your tigers are not invited to dinner."

"Tigers?" Daniel asked, breaking into the conversation they'd started to think of as semi-private.

Norms

It was strange to come back to Earth after a year or two of living in Atlantis. Not because Earth had changed, but because they were.

People on Earth lived in large communities – whether cities or even small towns, all but the smallest of them was larger than most Pegasus communities. But although they lived in large communities, they were very detached from other people in comparison to the natives of Pegasus. Pegasus communities were all intertwined, through trade and sheltering with other civilizations, often even merging several of them together after bad cullings – it was a bad idea to not make as many friends in the galaxy as you could when any day your entire civilization might be struck down by Wraith or disease or famine, making you depend on others to survive. And in Pegasus, it was far more common to see as many generations as were still living all living in the same house, with their spouses and children and parents and random relatives and friends thrown into the mix, in direct contrast with many Earth societies' living patterns.

It would be foreign to all but the most far-flung traders and Runners from Pegasus to walk into a marketplace and know no person there; much less one which they visited regularly. But on Earth, it was normal to do that, to be entirely alone in even the largest crowd in the most familiar settings.

Of course, all but the largest communities in the Pegasus Galaxy – the Genii and the Atlanteans – would, on their own, be smaller in population than even a small movie theater.

Instincts

It took him a while to get used to being around humans again. Not that it was so long in his no-longer-new sense of time, but compared to the lives of the human lifespans surrounding him it was.

It had been far easier to adapt to living on his own, a solitary hunter in the wilderness. There hadn't been very many long spans of time in which to think, and if he spent a while singing every song he could remember or arguing with friends he wished he could hallucinate so he'd have company, the animals weren't going to care except for about how noise meant he was probably easy prey.

When he had returned to civilization, if it could truly be called civilization when language was still a relatively new thing, he'd found it hard to act according to even the skimpy social norms that they had had at the time. His usual behaviors had been trained into him over millions of years, and it was hard to break habits even when they weren't so firmly established. So he was sure they spoke of him behind his back as the twitchy (because how could he not be twitchy when there were a million things around him that were just wrong to his learned instincts?) weird (he could live with this description; he'd been weird his whole life, even if for most of it there wasn't anybody to call him it) guy. That description, obviously, didn't make anybody truly happy to have him around, but if there was one thing he'd learned in his millennia of life, it was how to hunt, and hunting was of major importance if they wanted to live.

By the time things got a little more organized (and he'd traveled around a bit, because somebody not aging was a bit suspicious, especially with such short lifespans as people had) he'd managed to retrain himself to be less twitchy and weird and blend in a bit more. He could hide his weirdness entirely if he wanted to, although that was always boring. He'd always be twitchy, because his hunting instincts weren't the kind of thing he could get rid of, even if he wanted to. But it was useful to know when somebody or something came up behind him, or on his blind side, even if it made him more likely to draw weapons when startled.

He wasn't startled often anymore; the solitude had honed and trained his senses enough that most of the time he could tell exactly what was going on around him without more of a clue than a slight noise.

Loss

It wasn't the first time, and he doubted it would be the last. He'd known when he had adopted her that one day she would die, and when she'd been Called he'd known that her time had been even shorter. But when he outlived everyone around him, even the other Immortals, by as much as he did, the only thing that really mattered to him was how she had died.

Old age would have been the best possibility, of course, even though old age in this day and age was nothing like what he'd used to think of as old age – living to 85 was rare, not an average in this time. An accident, not deliberate on anyone's part, would have been acceptable too, or an illness. Once she was Called he knew that she would likely die at the hands or paws or teeth of a demon or vampire. He wasn't happy with it, but he couldn't protect her forever, only make sure she lived for as long as she could.

There were a lot of ways that he would have considered acceptable for her to die, even if he wouldn't have been happy about them – what kind of a father could be happy at his daughter's death, no matter the cause? But this? This worthless death at the sword of an Immortal who wanted to force him into the Game? That would never be acceptable.

And while he might have forgotten how to lean on someone enough that his life changed completely when he lost them, he had never forgotten how to fight.

Age

If there was one thing Immortals were blessed with it was a good memory. Their long lives were split between being a blessing and a curse, but their memory was all blessing. No Immortal would forget their lost loves, or their first kiss, for long; something in them seemed to reset their memory when it became damaged, even if it took longer to heal than any other injury.

Xander remembered, with all the clarity that one remembers repetitive tasks, every day of his extremely long life, from his first memory through the rest of his first life, and on through the millions of years he had lived. He remembered the yellow crayon incident and Buffy coming to town and hunting in the jungle, the desert, the forest, the plains.

What he didn't remember was being young. He didn't remember what it had felt like to live in a world where he wasn't the oldest person – possibly the oldest being – alive. He didn't remember what it was like to be inexperienced, or naïve, or bad at fighting. He knew he had been all those things, once, but he didn't remember what it was like.

The Past

"Of course he's made mistakes," Xander passionately told Cassandra. "He's human in all but life span, just like the rest of us, and humans make mistakes."

"It wasn't a mistake," she spat. "They were the Four Horsemen, and he was the worst of them. He kept me captive after they slaughtered my village. That's not a mistake that can be laughed off like you're trying to do."

"And?" he asked. "We're none of us innocents, and especially not those of us who have lived longer than kids like MacLeod who haven't had their idealism destroyed yet. So he went a little insane for a while; so what? You live as long as we do, and it happens sooner or later. Human minds, and human coping methods, aren't designed for living for so long when those around you die. The only difference between his breakdown and mine, or yours, or anybody else's, is that he had the resources to lay waste to the world – and people who wanted to do the same thing at his side."

"And that excuses it?" she asked incredulously. "You weren't there! You didn't see how bad it was, or how long it lasted."

"No, I wasn't there!" he roared back. "I was following behind, doing what I could for the survivors and burying the bodies! You think I don't know what it was like? There have been far worse things than the Four Horsemen on Earth, and I've lived through a lot of them. So don't you tell me that I don't know what it was like, because I know! And if you can't see that Methos isn't that person now then you're the blindest person I know."

Houseguests

"I don't get it," Duncan said, watching Alex's antics. "Why is he so…" he trailed off, unable to think of a word.

"Most Immortals have at least one period of strangeness – maybe even insanity – if they live long enough," Joe said.

Methos snorted. "Alex hit that period before I met him, and he hasn't returned to sanity yet."

"When did you two meet?" Joe asked, including Alex as he walked over to them. He was excited to be learning new information about the usually taciturn Methos's life, even if the Immortal would probably kill him if he included it in his report to the Watchers.

"Bronze age," Alex said, as if he hadn't just told them that he was one of the oldest living immortals. "At least, I assume it was the bronze age, what with all the bronze weapons." Methos nodded in agreement, taking a swig of his beer.

"Bronze age?" Duncan asked. "Isn't that when…" He trailed off, unsure of whether Alex knew about the Four Horsemen.

Methos got a horrified expression on his face and started drinking faster, which Duncan assumed was either because of the memories or because he'd almost let the secret slip, until Alex spoke. "Technically speaking, but we met before he had his little teenage rebellion." Duncan and Joe both choked and had reason to be glad they hadn't been drinking at that moment so nothing came out of their noses. Apparently bored with the subject, Alex changed the subject. "So, you've got a spare room or a couch or something, right?"

"Yes," Methos said resignedly. "I suppose you want my spare room?"

"It's not like I can find anywhere else with a yard on such short notice," Alex told him.

"A yard? Why would you want a…" Horrified realization dawned on Methos's face. "No! I am not going to have your…Hell-cats in my house! I had enough of them the last time I saw you."

"Hey! What did I tell you about calling them Hell-cats?" Alex snarled, slamming a previously-unnoticed knife point-first into the table in front of Methos.

"Fine, I won't call them…" He didn't finish the sentence when he saw Xander's eye narrow. "But they can't come in the house, and that's final."

"Okay," Alex said, suddenly cheerful again. "I planned for them to stay in the yard anyway." He walked off whistling, vanishing the knife through some sleight of hand. When the door closed behind him, the only sign that he had ever been there were a deep gouge in the table and Methos, still groaning over having fallen for that.

Pets

Xander had never planned to get a pet. With the life he'd led, when would he take care of it? Pets needed to be played with and cuddled and everything, and he was usually too busy to do that in between saving the world, hunting demons, working so he'd have money, and real life. And then he'd been flung into the past, and if he'd wanted a pet then what was he going to do? Adopt a velociraptor?

But if he remembered right, dinosaurs (which he'd had the joy of meeting) became extinct something like 65 million years before what he used to consider the present day, and humans were relatively new in the grand scheme of things, like having been around less than a million years new. He hadn't ever imagined he'd consider a million years old new, but living as long as he had had a way of putting things into perspective. And being alone for that long would make anyone feel lonely.

So when he saw an animal that looked something like a cat, in the way some of the animals now looked something like what their descendents would look like – he could see hints of them, but for the most part they just like completely different animals because it was so far in the past – he made overtures to it. Unless he had to deal with demons he was good enough that he always had enough food for himself and some left over to try to make friends by sharing it. And when the "cat" had kittens, he made overtures to them. And to their kittens as well.

It wasn't easy to make friends; these were no domesticated cats, or even feral cats; these were wild cats, and he had never expected to win them over in one generation. But if there was one thing he had, it was time, and with as much time as he had, he had learned to have patience. With every generation he was allowed a hair closer without being attacked. With each subsequent generation the cats were friendlier, even if they never acted like house cats.

And over the years he watched over his cats, keeping them safe from the demons which were a threat to every living being. He saw them change, so minutely with each generation that only by thinking back did he realize the changes that evolution had wrought. They interbred with a few of the more neutral demons, expanding their intelligence further than he'd thought possible and cementing their loyalty to him.

Xander no longer had pets, he had friends, even if they walked on four legs and couldn't speak any human language.

Phone Home

Xander sighed unhappily as he hung up the satellite phone. Willow and Buffy were obviously starting off on one of their 'special girl' kicks again, where they tried to make him quit because they thought he was too normal to be risking his life.

So he'd gotten into a few scrapes in Africa; so what? They'd all gotten into more, and worse, in Sunnydale without even trying, and Africa was a dangerous country in parts. Parts he had to go to because the Slayers he had to find were in war zones. And it wasn't like they even believed him when he told them about the tigers which sometimes followed him; it had been all "Tigers don't live in Africa" and "are you sure you don't mean lions?"

Sometimes he wondered if they'd stop trying to make him quit if he told them his secret, but most of the time he thought that they wouldn't, although they might think he was a demon.

Linguistics?

"I'm back!" Methos called.

"Really?" Xander asked. "That was fast. I thought you'd take the opportunity to run away. Who's your friend?"

"Daniel Jackson," Methos said, and waited to see if Xander recognized the name. He'd always had the strangest ability to at least know of the widest variety of people Methos could imagine.

"The Egyptologist and linguist, or a different one?" Xander asked, right on schedule.

"That's me," Daniel said. "Can I ask, how do you know the name?"

Xander shrugged. "I visited Chicago a few years back and got in a bar brawl with Steven Raynor, who has a huge grudge at you by the way. Your landing pads theory sounds like fun, and don't worry, I took everything he said with a grain of salt."

"That's good…" Daniel said, obviously trying to put Xander into a category in his mind. It was impossible, though; Methos, who had been around long enough that he could easily categorize every person he met in his mental system, still hadn't been able to put Xander in a category with anybody else. "And you're Alex Thomas, right? Linguist?"

Xander burst out laughing. "Adam told you that?" he asked between peals of laughter.

"Not in so many words," Daniel said, looking back and forth between the two in confusion. "I told him I was recruiting for our language department, and he recommended you instead."

"Well, yeah," Xander said. "But because I can do the work, not because of what my degree's in. I'm a doctor of women's studies, not linguistics."

When Daniel stared at Methos like he was crazy, he responded defensively. "What? It's not like I was in contact with him while he was getting his degree. And he knows more languages than both of us combined, and counting the overlapping languages twice."

Xander snorted. "Like that's hard."

"I speak twenty-seven languages," Daniel protested.

Xander shrugged. "I speak more."

Recruitment

Daniel knocked on the door and was surprised when it was yanked open almost immediately. He opened his mouth to say something, but Adam was faster than he was.

"Daniel!" the man exclaimed too loudly. "I forgot you asked if I wanted to go to lunch. I'll just grab my coat."

"Actually, I-" Daniel started, but Adam clamped a hand over his mouth and motioned for Daniel to be silent.

"I'll see you later, Alex!" Adam called back through the door moments before he slammed it behind him and dragged Daniel back to his car. His voice slightly hushed, he spoke to Daniel again. "I don't care why you're here, but thank you so much for saving me."

"Saving you?" Daniel asked in confusion, his vivid imagination enhanced by his time at the SGC conjuring scenarios Adam might have needed to be saved from.

"Nothing too major," Adam reassured him, "just the houseguest from Hell."

"Relative?" Daniel asked, unable to imagine another reason he'd let somebody stay when he didn't like them.

"No," Adam said, "but he's the closest thing I have to one. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful to him – I don't think I would have lived this long without him – but the man is completely insane."

"Oh?" Daniel asked. "Oh, any preference for food, since I'm apparently taking you out?" he asked as an aside.

"There, actually," Adam said, pointing. "Parking's up ahead, though."

He pointed out where the parking was, and as they were walking to the restaurant Daniel asked, "So, how is your – friend? You never said a name – how is he insane? Literally, or figuratively?"

"Alex Thomas," Adam told him. "And hell if I know. He's functional, even if I get the urge to kill him, so it doesn't really matter which. I doubt even a psychiatrist could tell even if he didn't snow them."

They paused to get their names on the list and a beeper to call them, and then Daniel launched into another question. "So if you call him insane and he hasn't been diagnosed you've got to have a reason, right?"

Adam smirked at him. "Oh, the stories I could tell you about Alex. You wouldn't even believe what he gets into."

"Oh? Like what?" Daniel asked, all innocent curiosity.

"Hmmm," Adam said, selecting a story to tell. "I guess the most relevant is the one that made me start avoiding him."

"You avoid him but you let him stay in your house?" Daniel asked.

"Oh, Alex is like a hurricane. You can't stop him when he wants to do something, the only thing you can do is minimize damage." Their beeper went off and they were led to their table, and Adam took up the story where he had left off. "One time, Alex decided that it would be a good idea to circumnavigate the world."

"I assume you don't mean in a plane or anything," Daniel said.

Adam snorted. "I wish. No, we were in an accurate recreation of a ship from sometime before Christ."

Daniel pushed up his glasses and stared at Adam. "You what?"

Adam nodded. "If you ever get the urge, don't. Although that actually wasn't the experience that made me hate boats. But we were doing the whole thing very authentically, so when we landed in South America we stocked up on chocolate as well as everything else, and until it ran out I was stuck on a boat which was nowhere near large enough. Alex on chocolate is a scary thing to behold."

Daniel laughed. "I'll bet," he said. "So, did you make it? Where did you start from?"

"We started from Northern Africa – I don't remember the country, but somewhere in there. And we did make it, although the boat only made it to India before we had to make our way back by land, so I'm not sure if you'd count that as making it."

"Wow," Daniel said. "That far in a ship that wasn't even made for it? I'm amazed. How much of a crew did you have?"

"Just me and him," Adam said, "which only made it worse."

Daniel chuckled. "I can imagine. I can see why you're so exasperated with him."

"And you don't know the half of it," Adam told him. Just then, their food arrived. "Fast service today." He waited for the waiters to clear away, and then asked, "so, what brings you here, since I assume it wasn't Alex stories?"

"A job offer, actually," Daniel told him.

"You got a job offer?" Adam asked him. "After your talk I wasn't sure you'd be able to."

"Well, yes," Daniel said. "Actually, I got one right after I gave the talk. Literally, I was walking out after the talk and got it."

"Really?" Adam asked. "You never told me."

"I guess we haven't really been keeping in contact," Daniel said. "My job's been keeping me busy. But that wasn't what I meant, actually. I have a job offer for you."

"You're hiring?" Adam asked.

"Well, not me personally," Daniel said. "I'm head of the language department, but the whole thing is under the Air Force."

"I don't deal with the military," Adam said with finality. "And in case you hadn't noticed, I'm not precisely an American citizen."

"Hey, it's not entirely American anymore," Daniel defended. "And it's not like you'd have to go on missions. You haven't even listened to my pitch!"

"What's there to listen to?" Adam asked. "My specialty's dead languages. I don't know modern languages like you do, and I like working with dead languages."

"It is dead languages, dialects of them I'd never seen before, and it's nothing like anything else you'll ever do," Daniel said.

"I still don't work with the military," Adam said. "If you want somebody, take Alex. Get him out of my hair for a few years."

"Can he do the work?" Daniel asked. "Can he pass a background check for Top Secret clearance?"

"He's fluent in more languages than I've even heard of, much less speak," Adam told him. "As for security clearance, no clue. Like I said, I've been avoiding him. For all I know he might already have one." He let Daniel get the check and call one of the people from his job on his cell phone on their way back to the car. Daniel wasn't off the phone by the time they got to the car, so Adam took the keys and drove them back.

"They'll call me back with a preliminary yes or no in a few minutes," Daniel said. "Where are we going?"

"My place," Adam said. "If you're going to have to work with him, you might as well find out if you can stand him before you hire him."

Obstacles

"Dr. Thomas," General Landry said. "Would you like to go to Atlantis?"

"Of course," Xander said. "It's the city of the Ancients, why wouldn't I want to go?"

"Good!" the general said. "The Daedalus is leaving in three weeks. Can you be ready by then?"

"No, I can't leave," Xander protested. "I have to take care of my cats."

"Can't you ask a friend to take care of them?"

"Ah, no, because that would be illegal. When I say cats I'm not talking Felis catus, I'm talking a subspecies of Panthera tigris." General Landry stared blankly at him. "Panthera tigris, you know, tigers?"

"Why do you own tigers?" he asked slowly.

"Because I do," Xander said without any further explanation. "It's legal for me to own them and take them with me wherever I go as long as I'm not violating the health code or mistreating them, but the rule against pets going to Atlantis has nothing to do with their species, so I can't go."

"Shouldn't they be in a zoo? Or the wild?"

Xander's voice was flat. "I'm not putting my babies in animal prison. And I had some poaching problems on my land, which is why they're in America."

General Landry sighed. "I suppose I can your point of view, but Atlantis really needs someone who can read Ancient as fluently as you can. Are you sure you won't reconsider?"

39 days later, in addition to the usual scientists and soldiers, the Daedalus also beamed down five tigers: two adults and three cubs.

Dinosaur Timeline

[>65 million years ago]

• Dinosaurs rule the earth.
• Xander appears after being flung back in time. (Dinosaur)
  

[~65 million years ago]

• Demons come to earth and wipe out the dinosaurs.
• Xander begins to avoid all signs of civilization.
• Demons rule the earth. (Existence)

[Eocene Epoch (55.8-33.9 mya)]

• Xander sees "cats" and (semi-)domesticates them. (Pets)
  

[unknown]

• The Shadow Men create the slayer, and she drives the demons from earth with the help of an army.
• Xander returns to civilization. (Civilization)
  

[~4000 BC]

• Immortals' Watchers form.

[~5,000 years ago|3000 BC]

• The Goa'uld are driven from earth and the Stargate buried.
• Some version of SG-1 is stranded in the past.
• Methos takes his first head.
• Xander takes Methos on as a student. (Faith)
  

[bronze age]

• Xander takes Methos on trip around the world in a ship. (Referenced in Recruitment)
  
• Methos starts avoiding Xander.
• The 4 horsemen form.

[79 AD]

• An Immortal (name?) kills Lucia.
• Xander kills the Immortal on holy ground. It's his third Immortal kill. (Vesuvius)
  

[765]

• Methos learns to hate boats after a voyage with 6 monks.

[1981]

• Xander is born.

[1997]

• Buffy moves to Sunnydale.

[2003]

• Sunnydale destroyed in battle with the First.
• Xander loses his eye.
• Xander travels to Africa to find Slayers.

[undecided]

• Xander is still in Africa. (Phone Home)
  
• A careless wish sends Xander into the past. (Spurious Wishing)
  

[after undecided]

• (before undecided) Xander majors in womens' studies. Dade Murphy is his roommate.
  
• (possibly before undecided) Xander refinds Methos. (Houseguests, The Past)
  
• (after Xander refinds Methos) Xander is recruited by the SGC as a linguist. (Recruitment, Linguistics?,)
  
• Xander is sent to Atlantis. (Obstacles)
  

Events with undecided order:

• (sometime within Xander's natural lifetime) Xander learns he's immortal.
• Xander takes 5 of the 6 Immortals' heads he's taken in his life. (2 before Lucia, 3 after)
  

Lantean Scientists

When the Tau'ri took the Lantean scientists hostage, they expected them to follow the Tau'ri patterns of science vs. military, to in essence still be Tau'ri scientists.

They expected the scientists to not know how to handle a weapon unless they were on a gate team, to follow the Daniel Jackson model of being a civilian scientist and prefer diplomacy to violence. To sit and do nothing with guns pointed at them while they waited for their military to either capitulate or retaliate.

Lantean scientists were not like Tau'ri scientists.

For all that they had mostly been born and raised on Earth, they weren't Tau'ri. All Lanteans had combat lessons unless they were on the injury list, from P90s down to hand to hand and everything in between. All scientists were in the militia which protected Atlantis when threats came to it. And the enemies in their galaxy couldn't be talked around with a bit of diplomacy, not even the human ones. The Lantean scientists had adapted to their circumstances, just as they adapted to the latest situation and in short time had the Tau'ri military on their knees, hands on their heads, with pistols pointed at them.

Pegasus was a harsher galaxy than the Milky Way, and the Tau'ri finally learned that lesson.

Spurious Wishing

Buffy hung up the phone after the latest call from Xander and sighed. "He said he fought some of those demons with the blue fur and claws and the slime that gets everywhere, you know what I'm talking about?"

"The ones that killed Anna?" Willow asked.

She nodded. "He got wounded, but he won't go to a hospital."

"He's going to get himself killed. He's just a normal guy and he doesn't have any backup until he finds a Slayer."

"Yeah," Buffy said. "But this is what he wants to do, and it's not like we can stop him. You know how Xander is."

Willow sighed. "I just wish he'd go somewhere without demons and we wouldn't have to worry about him dying anymore."

"Granted," a voice came from behind him. "Technically it was two wishes but D'Hoffryn will give me some latitude since I finally took revenge on Anyanka's corrupter." Buffy and Willow turned around and saw the vengeance demon with a gleeful look on her face. They were about to attack when the door opened.

"Xander!" Willow cried, shocked. "I thought you were in Africa and then the demon-"

Xander raised a hand to cut her off. "Hold on," he said, and then turned to the demon and said something in a language that made him sound like he was gargling razor blades. It had obviously been designed for throats which weren't human. A glow briefly enveloped him and the demon, and the demon whimpered and disappeared.

"What did you just do to that demon?" Buffy asked.

"Nothing that vengeance demons haven't deserved for a long time," Xander said coldly. "Next time, don't make a wish. The only time Earth didn't have demons was before the dinosaurs became extinct."

Willow and Buffy gasped. "Then how did you get back?" Willow asked. "How did you know about the wish? I thought the wishees didn't learn about the wishes."

"I asked," Xander said, baring his teeth. "I can be very persuasive." His predatory look sent chills of fear down their spines. "As for how I got back, let's just say that's where the second part of your wish came in." And with that, he turned and walked back out the door.

"Why's Xander acting like that?" Buffy asked in confusion. "Is he possessed again?"

"Buffy, dinosaurs have been extinct for 65 million years," Willow reminded her, a broken look on her face. "He might not even remember us anymore, and would you be happy with someone who made a wish that made that happen to your life?"

Vesuvius

An Immortal had killed Lucia to taunt Xander into taking his challenge, but now he was hiding on holy ground because he wanted to be the one to choose the time and place of their battle.

"You can't fight me now," the Immortal taunted. "I'm on holy ground and there's no hunting on holy ground."

Xander advanced on him, his sword out and at the ready. "You killed my daughter to force me into the Game," he said flatly. "I've only taken three Immortals' heads before now, but I'm willing to make you the fourth. And I don't care about holy ground."

The other Immortal had been so sure that holy ground would protect him that he hadn't even tried to defend himself from the sword which neatly swept his head from his shoulders. As soon as the quickening had been absorbed, Xander headed towards the edges of the city. He knew what happened when heads were taken on holy ground, and he knew what had happened to Pompeii.

Civilization

It had been a long time since he'd last ventured near signs of civilization. For the longest time civilization had meant demons which were smarter than the ones he usually faced, but now most of the demons were gone. So when he saw the smoke rising near him he didn't run away from it like he usually did, but cautiously approached the fire.

He'd become stealthy over the years, so he wasn't noticed until he was already within the clearing and the fire's circle of light. The fire maker looked up, a friendly expression on his face, and said something that sounded like a greeting in a language that Xander didn't speak.

In the beginning, he'd talked to himself about anything and everything, a constant running commentary on his life and thoughts. He'd always been a people person, and since there hadn't been any people besides himself he'd had to keep himself company. But when the demons had come he'd soon realized that it was a bad idea to make more noise than he had to. Talking that filled his ears kept him from hearing approaching demons. It hadn't taken him more than a dozen deaths for that lesson to be driven home. He hadn't spoken since, and that had been long ago.

The demons were weakened now, the worst of them gone completely, so it was safe to speak. Xander introduced himself with lips no longer used to speaking, which wrapped uncomfortably around his name. "Xander," he said, and the sound of his voice startled him because he hadn't heard it in so many years that he'd all but forgotten its sound.

[revised 1/18/2010]

Dinosaur

Xander looked around, confused. One moment he'd been in the middle of the Sahara and the next he wasn't, and he didn't remember seeing any portals or anything. Wherever he was, he didn't think it was on Earth. Earth didn't have plants that large, like some sort of giant plants, except for a few species of demon plants which weren't any of these. Just to be careful, he edged away from the freakishly large plants and checked his satellite phone. No signal, of course, because he was in some hell dimension with freakishly large plants. He called for Willow, without the phone, because she'd told him that she could hear him calling for help no matter where he was, even if it was a hell dimension. But there wasn't a reply, no Willow suddenly appearing out of thin air to take him back to Earth, and the ground was starting to shake like there were multiple earthquakes in a row or something really heavy was walking.

Xander heard a roar from high above him, and he looked up, and up some more, to see the demon that was roaring. But it wasn't a demon that he saw, but a creature he recognized from watching Jurassic Park.

Oh shit, he thought, figuring he'd been flung back in time rather than into a hell dimension. I don't want to be a dinosaur's lunch!

Existence

He fought. For days turned into years without name and, it seemed, without end, he fought. For his dinner. For his survival. For revenge against the demons who had put him in this position.

He lived and he died and he lived again, a thousand times before he lost count, never suffering the one blow that some part of him yearned for to free him of the burden of this existence. For it couldn't be called a life, not truly, when all there was to it was the endless killing and maintenance of his body.

And then one day there were fewer demons. The ones that remained were less, somehow, weaker than their brethren he'd only faced with difficulty.

And he knew that something had changed, but he didn't know how much it had changed.