Confronting Duncan

Duncan stopped mid-sentence, tensed, and turned to the door of the bar, alerting Joe to the presence of another Immortal. Who would it be this time? Amanda? Methos? Another of Duncan's Immortal acquaintances? Somebody who would inevitably try to kill him? Maybe the years of being so close to Immortals had jaded Joe, but it seemed like it was never good news when an Immortal Duncan didn't already know came to town, and usually when one he did know came to town, too. At least they didn't tend to see Joe as a worthwhile target. He was just Duncan's bartender, after all, not somebody who could make Duncan fight a Challenge by being threatened, not like it had been with Tessa Noel.

The Immortal who walked in through the door wasn't anybody Joe had expected. For all their faults, the Watchers actually were fairly good at keeping track of the Immortals, and as the Regional Supervisor, Joe was supposed to be notified of any Immortals coming into the area. The number of Immortals moving in and out of the region lately was not inconsiderable; Immortals always had been more mobile than mortals, and modern transportation had only increased that movement. But still, Joe was certain that this Immortal had not been one of the Immortals he had been notified about. Even if the eye patch was false--and he didn't think it was likely that an Immortal would give himself an identifying mark like that, but then again there were Immortals who made themselves more identifiable, and at least an eye patch was easily discarded--none of the Immortals who should be in the region matched his stats. Either some Watcher had forgotten to send in his report, or this Immortal didn't have a Watcher.

"Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod," Duncan introduced himself. "Why don't you sit down and have a drink?" Ah, the subtle method of ascertaining if the Immortal's intentions were peaceful.

"Duncan MacLeod?" The other Immortal asked, his voice cheerful. "Just who I'm looking for!"

"Oh?" Duncan asked, relaxing at the Immortal's tone. "Why's that?"

"You killed three of my students," the other Immortal said flatly. "Now, I know the Watchers will cover the bar if I take your Quickening in here, but it's only common courtesy to go outside for a Challenge, so if you don't mind..."

"What...?" Duncan couldn't make a full sentence, he was so stunned. Joe took over.

"You know about the Watchers?" he asked, seeing another reason the Immortal might not have one.

"It's kind of hard to miss when you're being stalked," the Immortal said. "Or, well, when other Immortals are being stalked, when you're hanging out with them, since I only picked up a Watcher a couple of times. But it's cool. A bit creepy, but since most Immortals try not to leave much of a legacy I guess it's the only way they're going to be remembered. And it's not like I can't lose a tail when I get one, just like every other Immortal with sense."

Joe had to snort at that. Even the most conservative estimates said that most of the Immortals still alive had Watchers, and hadn't even noticed them, much less lost them.

"Well, it's not like most Immortals have any sense," the Immortal said with an eye-roll. "It's all The Game this, and 'oh, my insulted honor' that, and that's not even counting all the stupid debate about what being Immortal means, and how we should act towards mortals. It's all so stupid." He looked back over at Duncan. "Is he going to stay like this all night? I mean, not that I have anything else to do, but shouldn't we get this done before your customers start to arrive?"

"I think he's still trying to figure out who he killed that would make you want to kill him."

"He kills that many people?"

"Mostly he only kills bad guys."

"Bad guys? What the hell does that mean? Just cause a guy's done some bad things in his life, doesn't mean he should be killed!"

"Mostly, they try to kill him or somebody else first."

"Whatever happened to trapping people in a well until they've learned their lesson, huh? Why isn't that good enough for the kids these days?"

Joe gave him a strange look. "That's how it's been as long as the Watchers have been keeping records. And what about you? Didn't you just Challenge him?"

"That's different. You don't mess around when it's family, you send a very clear lesson to anybody else who might be thinking along the same lines. But you didn't say anything about *his* student getting killed, so he's got no excuse for killing *mine*."

"Look, I don't know who your students were, but they probably attacked him first."

He opened his mouth to reply, but at that instant Duncan stiffened again at another Immortal's presence. The other Immortal was smooth about it, though; if Joe hadn't had Duncan to watch, he never would have realized that another Immortal was approaching until the door swung open to reveal Methos.

Methos froze as soon as he saw the other immortal, and Joe groaned mentally. If those two had a history...he didn't want to have to write the termination report for Methos. But although Methos looked dismayed, he didn't look alarmed. "Beer," he said to Joe.

"He's mine, Adam," the other Immortal said. "They might have been your brothers, but they were my students."

"I killed Silas," Methos said quietly. Joe had to hold himself back from interfering. If the Immortal was so willing to kill Duncan, he wouldn't be any less willing to kill Methos. But it wasn't his place to interfere. And besides, Methos was still...not relaxed, exactly, his shoulders were tight with tension, but unafraid. It made no sense; Joe had to be missing something, and not just the fact that this Immortal had apparently trained the other three Horsemen.

"Oh, Adam," the Immortal said, sympathy in his voice, completely different from his reaction to Duncan. "Why?"

"Kronos and Caspian...they were rabid dogs, unwilling and unable to change their ways even after so long, and you know Silas always went along with them..."

"They hadn't changed?"

"Upgraded their methods, but they had the same goals in mind, and I don't think even you could have changed their minds."

The Immortal smiled sadly. "You did good." He turned to Duncan. "I release you from my Challenge. If Adam says it was necessary, it was necessary."

"Stick around?" Methos asked. "I'm sure Joe's full of questions, and you can always ignore MacLeod when he gets preachy."

"Sure, I've got some time on my hands now that I don't have to spend it recovering from a Quickening."

Age

There was no part of being an Immortal that was purely good. Every silver lining had its cloud. Their quick healing led to them often being rejected from wherever they made their homes, or killed- sometimes even tortured. Their long lifelines just led to grief, loss, and survivor's guilt. Their memories, sharper, clearer, and without loss, meant they remembered everything. It was a blessing for the good memories. Their oldest memory was as fresh as the day it was made. If they wanted to, they could relive their happiest memories on a daily basis, but it was impossible to live as long as Immortals did and only have good memories. They couldn't forget even their most tedious memories, or their most traumatic, and the worst of them had a habit of resurfacing when they were least wanted.

Xander remembered, as if they had happened only yesterday, every moment of his life. He remembered the yellow crayon incident and Buffy coming to town. He remembered the dinosaurs and the first mammals and Amy the rat. He remembered hunting for food, for survival, to save the lives of innocents. He remembered Jesse. He remembered the True Demons.

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 alive. He didn't remember what it was like to be inexperienced, or naïve, or bad at fighting. He had the memories, but somewhere along the way, those feelings had vanished, and no matter how hard he tried he couldn't remember what they had felt like. He'd forgotten what it felt like to be young.

[Edited 1/25/2010]

Faith

Methos had no memory of his first life, beyond vague impressions which were more feelings then memories, but he remembered the Gods, and he remembered that while he had never been the firmest believer in them, neither had he been the most skeptical.

So he sang to the Gods at sunup and sundown, trying to hold on to the few memories of his first lifetime that he remembered. Despite his teacher's assurances that he'd never forget anything again, he couldn't shake the feeling that if he'd lost his memory once it could happen again, if he didn't hold them tight. By his teacher's body language he knew he wasn't a believer, but he never said anything aloud.

"A lot of the Gods were or are Immortals," he told Methos around the fire one night five winters after he'd taken him in as a student. "You combine somebody with powers like ours, or magic, or anything outside of the realm of easy understanding, with people who don't have them, and you get one of two reactions most of the time: fear or awe. And either of those can turn into worship or a mob trying to kill you. We're only human. A lot of us were perfectly willing to be worshipped."

"Lyara? Soldash?" Methos asked. He wasn't sure he wanted to know, but he couldn't keep himself from asking. He clung to his faith as one of the few things remaining from his first life, not because he was convinced of the existence of the Gods, but because it was one of the few familiar things in a world that already seemed unrecognizable from time and travel.

"I don't know every Immortal, or every God," his teacher replied. "Anyway, I figure it's better to believe in Gods that don't exist than to not believe in Gods that do exist. You never know when a God's passing themself off as an Immortal."

"Inar?" slipped past Methos's lips before he could stop it. He felt the strongest connection to Inar of all the Gods. If his teacher picked that one to discredit… Methos held his breath.

"Inar?" his teacher said, a strange expression on his face. "I haven't gone by that in centuries. People are worshipping me?" He sounded disturbed. "I'm not a God."

Methos looked at him and thought. Inar was the God of hunting and knowledge and the kind of luck that kept you alive when you should have died. His teacher wasn't anything like how he'd imagined Inar to be.

He never said a word about it, but from that moment onward he had faith like he'd never felt before.

Reluctant Watcher

Xander's in some out-of-the-way place when he sees two guys fighting with swords. And then some other guy pulls him down and starts explaining about Immortals and recruiting him as a Watcher, and Xander can't turn him down because the only way to refuse is to say what he's really doing there. And with his preexisting knowledge of dead languages he gets tossed in Research despite his lack of college and runs into Adam Pierson. Possibly he's pre-Immortal.

All ideas are free for the taking.

To Live For

He'd long since discarded the idea of ever being normal; he was fairly certain that threshold had been reached well before his first death, and the time travel hadn't helped it any. He wasn't even sure if he could act normal; too many things had passed from habit into reflex for him to change his behavior anything other than slowly.

Somehow, he'd held out this hope that once humans were around everything would be all right, that he'd be able to fit in and live a normal life or ten. But that wasn't how it happened. He'd spent so much time pinning his hopes on the first humans he saw that the reality fell far short of his expectations. They were better than the demons, but the world was a rougher place than it had been in his first lifetime, even if the conflicts were smaller in scale.

Even after all this time, he wasn't sure if he even wanted to live to the time of his first life. What did he have there? Friends who were scattered across the globe and still managed to wish him gone, who he'd worked through all his emotions toward until they were as minimal as his emotions toward strangers. What did he have in this time? Not enough to live for, and that was unlikely to change any time soon.

Sometimes, the only thing keeping him sane was his students. Teaching them to the best of his ability was something to live for, and they were young enough to still be enthusiastic about the world, in whatever way they were enthusiastic.

He had a lot of students over the years; he travelled around enough to run into a lot of pre-Immortals and new Immortals, and he taught all of them who were the slightest bit receptive. Some of them were cheerful. Some of them were angry. Some of them were determined. But they were all enthusiastic about something, and that was something he could live for, seeing and fanning the fire in their eyes.

In a Funk

Some days, it was hard to get out of bed, much less muster any enthusiasm about doing the same monotonous thing for centuries if he was lucky, hours if he wasn't…although there were days when he thought the luck of those options was the opposite. Days when there was nothing new, nobody to live for. Nobody to put on a cheerful face for.

It was always worse when he died. No matter how much the others swore they felt normal when they woke up, he was always chilled, a bone-deep chill from his body temperature dropping as he spent time as a corpse and made him want to just stay dead when he came back to life. It never went away quickly, either, always lingering and making him lethargic and disinterested in anything, even trying to act normally as he did under any other circumstances.

He was surprised, every time he broke out of his post-revival funk, that he hadn't been killed for good. It was what every Immortal wanted, an unresisting Immortal at their mercy, right? But then, chaos had always dogged his steps, so maybe he shouldn't be so surprised when the unlikeliest things happened around him.

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.

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.

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.