Chapter Text
Whateverday, June Summerth
“Xandra, could you get started on the lasagna?” Mom called down, a while after most everyone else had left. “I'll be down in a minute.”
“On it!” Xandra called back. Willow hummed and leaned against the counter, smiling; Suyana curled her arms around Willow from behind and rested her chin on her shoulder. “What?”
“Just... this,” Will said. “I like this. You look happy.”
She blinked and thought about it for a second, then gave the redhead a soft smile and a quick kiss, then one a a few inches to the side for Suyana.
“I am,” she concurred, “so happy.”
Suyana smiled. “Good.”
They curled up on the couch while Mom finished up the lasagna and while it cooked, then gathered around the table for dinner.
After they ate, the girls headed out, Xandra grabbing her bag on the way, and – with Mom letting her use the car – they left to meet up with Giles and Oz at the library.
The teens dragged Giles into joining them for card games, with Oz playing from inside, until he felt the shift coming. Even with the wolf’s howling (in both ‘human-shaped’ and ‘fecking-big-wolf-shaped’ forms), thanks to a much more reinforced cage, it was a lot more boring than the first night they’d tried it. Though, admittedly, Buffy had said he was less restless the first and third nights than he was the actual full moon.
###
“I’ve spoken to Sam Zabuto,” Giles said, voice low, returning with mugs of tea to where Xandra sat at the library table. Willow and Suyana were asleep on the floor, curled up together – Xandra had to admit she was watching them more than she should, and the Wolf less – and the Wolf asleep in the cage, head pillowed on his front paws.
“Kendra’s Watcher?” She stifled a yawn.
“Indeed.” Giles’ face shifted, briefly, into something like a grimace, before he wiped it off. “We also spoke to the Watchers’ Council.”
“The stuffed shirts back in England? What’d they say?”
“Kendra is permitted to remain in Sunnydale over the summer to recuperate, but must return to Jamaica in the fall.”
“That’s not fair. She doesn’t even have any friends down there.”
Giles sighed, and rubbed the bridge of his nose, beneath his glasses.
“I am well aware. Nonetheless, those were the instructions. Her area does have its own problems, though she ranges, erm, farther afield than we do here.”
“Yeah. Hellmouth kinda brings ‘em to us.” Xandra shifted the subject. “Well, at least they were fine with her filling in for Buffy.”
Giles was looking at the cage, not at her, but it was the kind of looking that said it was more that he wasn’t looking at her, and the cage happened to be there.
“Giles?”
“I may not have mentioned Buffy’s absence.”
He sipped his tea.
Xandra fake-gasped. “Lying to your bosses? Wow, G-man. Next you’re gonna go union.”
Giles raised an eyebrow.
“The union is for keeping you children out of trouble.”
“How’s that working?”
Giles sighed.
“Oh,” Xandra thought, changing the subject since Giles had sounded kind of depressed there, “is there like, a Slayer fund? Do you think you could get me a motorcycle? Picture me driving into a crowd of vamps with a sword out. That’d be sick.”
Giles sighed again, though this one sounded more amused, and shook his head.
“Ask your mother.”
###
Sword- check. Daggers- check. Bedroll- check. Boots, cargo pants, tanktop, jacket, underwear- check.
And… she checked her list again to make sure, and nodded. Should be everything. Now she was just waiting until the rest of the gang left, and then she’d be off.
She carried her bag downstairs on one shoulder and dropped it by the front door.
“What’s with the bag?” Angela asked.
“I don’t wanna start forgetting any of Sonja’s camping skills or anything, so I’m gonna spend a couple weeks in the woods doing that, training-”
“Training trip?” Jon scrambled over the back of the couch. “Lemme get my pack!”
###
“Here look good?” Xandra asked. It was a fair-sized clearing, empty except for a big old stump maybe six inches high, with the sound of moving water audible through the trees.
“Yeah,” Jon agreed. “Nobody nearby, and we’ve got that stream over there for water.”
“’Swhat I was thinking.” Xandra dropped her bag against a tree, and Jon followed suit shucking his pack off his shoulders by another.
“I got kindling, if we wanna get the fire set up.”
“Good idea.” She twisted one arm across her body, stretching after the hike, then did the same with the other. “Then a spar?”
###
Jon panted, dropping back to sit on the forest floor and wiping his forehead.
“Man, that is no fair,” he complained. “You got all that extra muscle memory, I gotta work from scratch!”
Xandra, in Sonja-mode, dropped down to sit across from him.
“I gotta stay in shape both ways,” she reminded him, something she’d figured out related more to the amount of time she spent in each form rather than that spent in the other, but still accurate. She got some of the benefit in one body of a workout in the other, but not all of it; she wasn’t sure why. “I’m not cheating for the fun of it.”
“No, the hyena thing’s cheatin’, Sonja’s just rubbin’ it in.”
“Well- alright, hey,” Xandra thought. “The witches said the reason I have Sonja-mode is that, impression thing from Halloween, right? You’ve got one too, maybe if we switch next time and you try on my necklace? Xandra-mode needs the workout too.”
“Yeah, alright.” He held up a hand, and Xandra took off her necklace and tossed it to him. He put it on. Instantly, he grew a few inches, face shifting, and his hair darkened and lengthened from hitting his jaw to down past his shoulderblades.
Jon twisted his shoulders and grinned.
“Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!” He flipped backward from his seated position, bouncing off a handstand to land on his feet. “Oh, yeah.” He dropped into a stance. “Ready for round three?”
Xandra lost that one hard.
###
“It’s weird,” Xandra mused, arms folded behind her head as she looked up through the trees at the stars. “I look at the sky, and… it’s not the one Sonja saw. A lot of stars are different places. Some of them just aren’t there.” Of course, Sonja’d had familiarity with this sky, too, but Xandra tried not to dwell on that one; somehow it was weirder having memories from 20 years into a possible future than it was the rest of them.
“Do you think..”
“Mm?” Xandra turned her head, seeing Jon in a similar position staring up at the sky.
“It’s just… it’s, blurrier than it was right after – not a lot, writin’ stuff down’s helped, but… I think I still miss people that never existed.”
Xandra sighed.
“Yeah… I’ve tried not to think about that one.” At least Sonja’s lifestyle was a lot more ‘love ‘em and leave ‘em’ than she was the kind to settle down. “We know there’s other Buffys out there, probably other us-es… maybe Sonja and Ranma are real somewhere?”
Jon was quiet for a while.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “I like that.”
They were quiet again, except the soft sounds of shifting in their bedrolls, for a few minutes. Jon had taken in a breath, like he was going to say something else, when a long, drawn-out scream came from somewhere out in the dark.
“What was that.”
“Fox?” Xandra said. She hoped. “Or a cougar.” Again- hopefully. They were close enough to the Hellmouth it was hard to be sure.
“Ah. Cool,” Jon said. His voice sounded a little squeaky.
###
“Alright,” Xandra said. “Swap.” She took off her necklace and passed it over. They’d been trading off every few bouts over the last few days, and it was Jon’s turn. It was going pretty well – Jon had obviously already picked up some stuff from Ranma that was giving Xandra a challenge in normal mode, though not Sonja-mode; and with Ranma’s muscle memory added in, Xandra wasn’t coming anywhere near winning but she was learning a lot from losing. Jon was adamant he was getting close to figuring out ki, which Xandra was skeptical of but on the other hand, Hellmouth.
Jon put it on, and shrank an inch in height as his hair grew and reddened and his form shifted. Jon yelped, and snatched the necklace off.
“What the hell? It worked fine yesterday!”
“I didn’t do anything!” Xandra defended.
Jon squinted suspiciously at her, and then at the necklace.
He set it carefully on the stump and snatched his hand back fast.
“Let’s just go normal for this one.”
###
“This seems like a bad idea.”
“Hey, it worked for me.” Jon shrugged. “Anyway if it goes wrong that’s what the bucket of water’s fo- whoa! Hah!” The bucket tipped off the stump beside him, and he just barely dodged the splash zone. “Missed me!”
“Are you taunting a puddle?”
“...no?”
Xandra shook her head and looked back at the flames, judging the bag of chestnuts in her hand.
“Okay, I’ll try it.”
###
“OW! Ishtar’s tits, Jesus, ah, ow ow!”
“The point is to be fast, dude.”
“Do you wanna see how far I can throw you? I got a solid ten feet on a vamp a foot taller than you.”
“Shutting up.”
###
“Excellent biscuits, Joyce,” Rupert said, after the first bite of his oatmeal cookie.
“As usual,” Jenny agreed, leaning back with one of her own and taking a sip of her coffee.
“Thanks, I try to keep my baking skills up. Not that I have much reason, a lot of the time.” Her younger daughter had managed to wrangle her eldest into successful baking, at least when they were working together; she wished she could take credit. But it did mean she was pretty spoiled for baked goods, though at least she was fairly certain Xandra had finally stopped thinking of baking and chores as ‘rent’ or ‘repaying her’. “I’m thinking about banana bread next week. Someone at my book club mentioned it, and now it’s stuck in my mind.”
“Ooh, that’d be good,” Jenny agreed. “How’s that going, by the way?”
“It’s been a good way to fill the time. I have a lot of it, with the girls gone right now.” She shook her head. “I haven’t had this much time in an empty house in a while.”
“Yes, I-I know what you mean,” Rupert said. “Well- er, not being busy, that is. Other than visiting Kendra, and my usual reading of the papers for anything, uh, unusual.”
“That is what the internet is for,” Jenny said. “I can talk to people online in multiple time zones, and there’s more being put online all the time, old and new. I have a friend at MIT researching the intersection of magic and technology. I even have a program set up to look for any weird activity in our area.”
“Ah, no. No, thank you,” Rupert said.
“I still don’t understand that stuff,” Joyce admitted. “Willow’s tried to show me on her laptop… it does seem like a good way to keep up to date, but I don’t even have a computer here at home. I’m still figuring out the gallery email.”
“Well, I’ve been teaching Suyana how to use the computer,” Jenny said. “If she can figure it out, I bet I can help you, too.”
“How’s she doing?” Joyce asked. “I know you said she still had nightmares…”
She and Rupert both leaned in some. Jenny sighed.
“Yeah… she’s doing better, especially with the nightlight you suggested. I’ve noticed the girls do a good job of keeping her from getting stuck in her head, too. She’s adapted pretty well to modern life since she started going to school. She actually took Willow out bowling today.”
“That is good to hear,” Rupert said. “I, uh, I-I’ve been helping her with history and sociology, as well, and I believe Willow has been doing some of the same.”
Joyce relaxed after hearing all that.
“Good. That’s what it’d been looking like, while she was over here, but I didn’t want to ask the girls about it.”
“How’s Kendra doing?” Jenny asked next.
“Teaching her American sign language has been going quite well,” Rupert said. “She’s a quick study. She is… perhaps too eager to return to fighting shape, but I suspect some of that may be bravado on her part, after…” He trailed off, not needing to repeat her experiences.
“I was planning to visit her again tomorrow,” Joyce said. “The doctor said they’d be letting her out of the hospital soon, so I’ve been getting things set up for her here, Buffy said Kendra could use her room over the summer. Being here to spend time with the girls should help her. I can’t believe the Council treats her that way.”
“There- there are reasons I am rather circumspect in my reports,” Rupert admitted.
“And you haven’t told them about Cordelia?” Joyce prodded. Rupert shook his head.
“No, that- you convinced me well enough, I’ll let that remain her secret.”
“Good.”
Rupert looked to Jenny.
“Have you made any progress on Kendra’s healing?”
“Not yet. I’ve been looking, with Amy and Angela, but we haven’t found a restoration spell I’d trust enough, yet.”
“Speaking of,” Joyce brought up, “what was the latest on her situation with her brother?”
###
Xandra, in Sonja mode, dropped under Jon’s strike, dodged the real strike when the first turned out to be a feint, then knocked his feet out from under him, picked him up as he fell, and hoisted him above her head. He clapped his hands over her ears; she just managed not to drop him and chucked him into the stream instead, shaking her head.
“Gah!” Jon burst out, water arcing as he threw his head back. “Brr!” He shook his head, rubbed his hands over his face, and then froze and looked down at his now rather larger chest.
………...
After a long while of nothing but running water and a slight breeze in the trees, Jon spoke.
“Ohh-h-hohboy.”
“Ruh-roh,” Xandra said. It was a toss-up between that and ‘Mother of Mitra!’
Jon scrambled out of the water, considerably curvier than when he’d gone in.
“Ohhh, god, oh shit, how-” He stopped for a second, figured something out, and then jumped on her, bracing his feet on her hips and grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her. “YOUR STUPID NECKLACE CURSED ME!”
“YOU’RE THE ONE WHO PUT IT ON!”
“YEAH, ‘CAUSE YOU SUGGESTED IT!”
“WELL HOW THE HELL WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW?”
“...that’s fair,” Jon allowed. He let got of her and dropped to the ground, swinging his hands behind his head and looking up at her. “So whadda we do?”
Xandra thought about it. She’d watched some of the show before, Jon had tapes…
“You know how to make that waterproof soap?”
“Nope.”
“Then I got nothin’.”
“Hmm…”
Ten minutes’ further thought crosslegged on the forest floor didn’t bring any other ideas to either of them.
“Oh!” Jon smacked a fist into his palm, paused, then shook his head. “No, me neither.”
“Should we at least heat up some water and… see if you turn back?”
Jon blinked.
“Oh. Yeah, good idea.”
They sat on either side of the pan in silence until it was hot enough, and Jon dumped it over his head.
Surprisingly, he lost an inch of height in the shift back to his normal body.
“Wait- did turning into a girl make me taller?” he realized. He set the pan down and uncapped his water bottle to dump it over himself. “It did! How is that fair?”
###
“Thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty seven… How you doing?” Xandra looked across the clearing at Jon; each had taken advantage of sturdy branches as chin-up bars.
“I can go for hours! Getting tired yet?”
“No way!”
###
“Why-” Jon ducked, and then spun out of the way of the second one’s attack “-are there-” he flipped backward, kicking the first attacker in the chin in the motion and sending him backward to the ground “-vamps in the woods?”
Xandra leaned back to dodge a strike from one of her two, looking at her sword lying across the clearing.
“Yeah, don’t you guys usually eat people?” she asked the vamp-chick. The vamp-chick just snarled at her; going by that, and the ragged threadbare clothes, maybe these guys had just lost it or something.
Jonathan dove and somersaulted between the legs of his second vamp, landing by Xandra’s sword and chucking it to her. She caught it in the air, spinning with the motion of unsheathing it to then take off the vamp’s head. Jon pushed up in a handstand to kick his heel straight up into a hanging branch that came off the tree with a crack, and then launched himself to his feet and grabbed that. Once they were both armed, they made quick work of the remaining three vamps.
“What was up with those guys, were they feral or something?”
“That’s my guess.”
“Ugh.” Jon sniffed his arm. “That one guy grabbed me. Do I smell like vamp now?”
“No,” Xandra lied.
“I think I wanna boil my skin a little anyway. That guy’s pants weren’t doing much.”
###
Kendra rolled, then moved her piece three squares into the Study, then reached for Suyana’s piece and moved it to join her. She picked up her pen and wrote her question on the open notebook beside her; she would be glad when she had a strong enough grasp on American sign language not to need the notebook, as it would be ungainly in a combat situation, but for now it would suffice.
Professor Plum, in the Study, with the Lead Pipe?
She held up the notebook to the other four girls at the Summers’ dining room table.
Willow held up a card quickly – the Study – and Amy showed her the Lead Pipe; she looked to Suyana and Angela, but neither displayed the Professor.
This was, of course, because she had him in her own hand, but now the other girls were making subtle marks on their pages. Kendra allowed herself a smile, and pretended to do the same.
Yes. She was enjoying Clue.
###
“Think we got everything,” Jon said, and Xandra nodded. They took a last look around, slid their packs on, and started back toward town.
They’d been hiking for maybe half an hour when Xandra’s hearing picked up rustling, and snapping like low branches splintering, and then – just after she’d yanked Jon to a halt – something seven feet tall or more, two-legged, and covered in hair dashed across the path in a blur and kept on its way heedless of their presence.
“...Welp – time to go home!” Jon declared. Xandra nodded sharply.
###
Xandra frowned up at the deep blue evening sky.
“Where did that come from?”
Jonathan, now soaking wet from the very brief rain, just sighed.
###
Xandra and Jonathan finally got back to Casa de Summers (being closer than Jon’s place), a little tired, but both feeling pretty good about the last couple weeks. The lights were on inside.
Xandra unlocked the door and opened it, and both stepped inside. She could hear a movie playing quietly in the living room.
“We’re back!” she called; a moment later, Amy, Willow, and Suyana all came running out from the living room.
“Hi! How was your trip?” Willow asked.
“It was good! I think we got a lot done,” Xandra said.
“Hey Ames!” Jon greeted meanwhile.
“Jonathan??”
“Yeah, why?” Jon blinked curiously. Amy stared at him, then her head tilted downward with her gaze. Jon followed it and cringed. “Ooooh right. Uh.”
That got Will and Su’s attention as well.
“Xandra…,” Willow said, sort of warningly like maybe this was something she did, which was ridiculous. She had nothing to do with it. Whatsoever.
“We can explain?” Xandra tried.
“My boyfriend has a better figure than I do,” Amy said, sort of hollowly. It was possible she wasn’t listening.
“Thanks,” Jon attempted, then determined “No, uh. Not helping.”
Kendra walked out of the living room, following the others, and frowned at Jon and tilted her head. She made a questioning gesture.
Jon groaned, and ended up dropping his forehead onto Amy’s shoulder.
“’m sorry ‘bout this.”
Amy sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose.
###
“So Xandra’s necklace… gave you a Jusenkyo curse?” Amy repeated.
“Well. Half of one,” Jon said. “Ethan gave me the other.”
“Right. But you turn back?”
“Yep!” Jon confirmed. “We made sure. It, uh, rained on the way back, so…”
“Of course it did.” Amy shook her head, but she was smiling too. “Alright, well, I guess we’re going shopping.”
“Uh… do we hafta?” Jon cringed a little.
“Unless you can convince me and Angela you don’t.”
Jonathan groaned.
###
After Mrs. Summers left to drive Jonathan and Amy back to their homes, that left Kendra, Xandra, Suyana, and Willow – the three girlfriends on the couch, with Willow leaning on Xandra and Suyana leaning on Willow, and Kendra herself standing by the doorway. She saw the way the three of them were looking at each other and tapped the wall for their attention. She gestured to herself.
<Walk,> she said. She gestured to the door with Mr. Pointy to make her intention clear. Not that she expected a great deal of trouble, considering the impact of recent events on the vampire population, but it was an excellent excuse to be somewhere else.
“Oh, want me to come?” Xandra asked. She didn’t seem to notice the exasperated look that got her from Willow, or the fondly amused one from Suyana. Kendra pointed at Willow.
<Busy.>
“Huh?” Xandra looked at Willow, who raised an eyebrow, then wiggled both of them. She seemed to get something from that. “Ohhh.” She cleared her throat. “Uh, have fun,” she said, and waved at Kendra quickly. She nodded, and made for the door.
With what she suspected the three of them were going to be doing, she wanted to be well out of earshot. And quickly.