Chapter Text
Xander was small, young running from a man laughing and laughing. The older man scooped him into his arms and tickled his stomach before spinning him around. “Daddy daddy tickle,” he was laughing so hard he could barely form the words.
The man laughed amused stopping tickling him so he could catch his breath. “Did daddy tickle his baby boy?”
“Not baby, big boy,” Xander said pouting though he was still laughing slightly.
The man just laughed spinning him slightly. “You’re right, you are my big boy. How old are you now? Three.”
“Four and a half.”
“Four and a half, no way. That’s practically full grown.”
“Silly daddy,” he said giggling. A beautiful woman with long dark hair ran into the room. Xander felt only excitement seeing her, “Mommy,” he cheered.
Instead of glee about seeing her son she was panicked. “Pack your bags,” she said quickly. “Grab your things we need to go now.”
“sh*t your bleeding,” his father said worriedly though he was already moving grabbing things quickly.
“I got caught by six of them,” she admitted. “I got them, but they were his. I saw the markings. We need to skip town fast. Too many of his leaches. I can’t hold them back Damian.”
He sat down his son and immediately started putting the weapons in the bag. “Mommy,” Xander whimpered slightly.
The women looked at him with a heart broken expression, stopping what she was doing. “Hey,” She said stopping glancing down at him as she scooped him up. “Its okay baby.”
“Mama hurt.” His small fingers touched her arm where blood was running down. “Kiss better?”
“Your kisses always make mama feel better but mama’s okay sweet boy. Remember, mama is special, I’m a slayer remember? I’ll heal right away no worries.”
He sniffed slightly. “We goin’ gain?”
“On an adventure,” she said gently. “Go grab your teddy and we will go. On an adventure.”
Despite it being very clear that she was trying to cheer him up and distract him, it didn’t work. “Are da bad people coming.”
“Hey, Alexander baby, mommy and daddy promise, we will never let the bad things get you,” his father said gently stopping what he was doing. “We have you okay. You don’t have to worry about the bad people. Remember? Mama and daddy are like superhero’s. We fight the bad guys.”
It took a while, but Xander fell asleep or was dosing in the back seat as his parents talked. “They are coming closer and closer every time,” she said in near tears. “I do not think I’m strong enough Damien. I thought that by now he would have gotten tired of hunting us.”
“Cas, vampires fixate and what’s three years to someone whose been dead thousands. He once fixated on a slayer for four years, hunting her all over the world. Once he gets a target, it’s a game and he won’t rest until he is found.”
There was an exhausted sob from the women. “Ian, I have no idea what to do. By the powers I don’t know what we are going to do. Maybe we should hunt him.”
“Cassy darling we tried. We had two wet works teams with us, and we couldn’t even get close,” Damian stated seriously. “Running at this point is the best option.”
“I’m the slayer Damian. And A vampire has me running across the world.”
“You may be the slayer but you’re still one person and this vampire, he’s on a completely other level. He’s beyond anything we have ever faced, could face. We can’t get close to him because he has seer’s and witches and demons and…we aren’t miracle workers.”
“And I’ve damned our child,” she said. “He’ll never have a normal life because of me. I thought being slayer was a rough fate but our baby boy, our innocent baby boy Damian.”
He went to speak only for them both to scream as the car swerved. Suddenly they were flipping, and glass shattered around them.
Xander woke up biting back a scream. The nightmares were getting worse now that he knew what was really out there. Were they nightmares or were they memories? He couldn't breathe thinking about it. He had been told he was crazy, but he wasn't. These monsters really did exist.
He had heard Giles mention the day before about having copies of old watcher journals to Buffy. If he did then he might have one including the people Xander remembered as his parents. The question was, did he really want to know? The nightmares had been worse because now he could know. But what if he was wrong? What if they were really dreams? He had had them since he was a child and they had begun to fade before he found out about the supernatural and now, they were coming back faster and faster. He couldn’t escape them. Some were good. |His mom tossing him high in the air. Sitting on his dad’s lap as he read old tombs. Making jokes over the pictures of demons and things. Saying they were ugly or smelly. Making little stars and bubbles float around him out of nowhere. Magic.
Then they were gone. He was abandoned with strangers when he was about five years old. First with a grandmother he hadn’t known existed, then with an aunt and uncle he had met only a few times after his grandmothers’ death.
Gone were the happy games and good night cuddles. Jessica and Tony Harris never wanted kids, but his grandmother had made sure that he was cared for. If they got rid of him or something happened to him, they didn’t get any of the money she left them. He knew his grandmother loved him but was left wondering about his birth parents. Tony liked to tell him that his parents did not want him and abandoned him. That had hurt but he had no choice but to accept his words since he never again saw his parents.
They claimed the monsters he remembered were stupid dreams and didn’t exist. Years of being told he was stupid and remembering wrong had half convinced him he had made up every shred of memory he had of his parents just to make himself feel better about their abandonment. Because if monsters were chasing them then of course they had to go, only there was no such thing as monsters and slayers, demons and vampires.
Then the slayer came to Sunnydale, with her watcher. He killed or re-killed his brother in all but blood. He’s seen things he shouldn’t have, things he remembered; the way a vampire dusted, the fact that anioren demons’ bloods green, dark magic existed, Sunnydale was over a hellmouth. How could he have dreamed of these things as a child and have them not exist now?
The only possible answer was that he wasn’t crazy and the things he remembered as a young boy were true. Slayers, one per generation. Was his mother a previous slayer? Is that why they were gone? What happened to her and his dad that made them leave him? Clearly his mother would have to be dead but what happened to his dad? The parents in his dreams loved him so why was he with the Harris’s. His grandmother never spoke poorly of his parents leaving him, promising that they had no choice and loved him, but years of hearing bad things coming from the Harris’s did its tole. Did he want to know?
His parents had seemed so intent on protecting him. They seemed to want that more than anything. Did he want to spend the rest of his life thinking bad things about people who loved and cared for him? He had the opportunity to find out for sure. Giles a Watcher was here. He could tell him. It worried the teen to ask though, so he realized he had another option. The book cage held a lot of Watchers journals. They weren’t to touch them. Copies of old journals over the last 50 years.
So, he did. He had had enough of the indecision and the confusion and went to the library before school and into the book cage and looked over the books. The slayers in the last fifty years. There were 20 slayers. 20 slayers in fifty years. It took him a moment to do the math. That would mean most of them probably lived about two and a half years. Some more possibly but that would also mean that some survived much less. It was a scary number. Terrifying. If his mom was Slayer, she had to have been one for at least five or six years. Maybe more which meant most of them made it less than two years.
He went through the names. He wondered if she'd be in it. Whether or not he was just dreaming nonsense. His fingers stopped one name. Cassandra Lavelle. It confused him because he had two journals. One written by Alexander Joseph marked from 1974-1977 and then a second written by Damian O’Haron. from 1977 to 1986. She was a slayer for twelve years. She really was a slayer. Her name was right there. It also suggested that she died the year that he was left to live with his grandmother. It didn’t have months, but he assumed inside would. He had been left to his grandmother in 1986 June. He was six years old.
He pulled out the thick book written by his father, bringing it to the table. He opened it up recognizing the handwriting, it was scratchy in places similar to his own.
“Damian, you’re a watcher, why does your handwriting look like chicken scratch.”
“I’m a wet work operative Cassy. I never thought I’d need to do it. I’m only a watcher because of you.”
“I bet this is why those stuffy old men in Jolly good England are so stuffy. You don’t write like a librarian.”
“Stuffy old men in jolly good England,” he said dryly getting a laugh in return. “Go work out. If I don’t write this crap down, they’ll get all twitchy. You know the pencil pusher’s there way like to have everything written down.”
His fingers trailed along the words. The name. He opened it to the last few pages. While he fully intended to start at the beginning, he wanted answers more.
September 6th 1986.
There is not much you need to know so I have not bothered to inform you. We have hidden Alexander, and I won’t even begin to suggest when we left him so there is less of a chance that he could ever be traced down. No one will find him. That we can at least hope. What his life will be like we don’t know. We are running out of options. The wet work team you sent to assist us have failed. We dare not even tell the council where we left him in case someone speaks of it and word gets back to him. I do not care what you think when you read this.
I am well aware someone had to keep selling us out since there is nowhere in this world that we have gone to that Veanos has not followed. Cassandra is fading fast. We don’t believe that we will survive the next fight with him. I have been her watcher for nine years and we have made it far longer than any of you thought possible. I am sending this journal as is my duty. It has all the information we have gathered in the last year of this master vampire. Good luck to the next pair. Hopefully you all do not fail them as you have Cassandra. To those responsible for this, I’ll be seeing you in hell I promise you that.
Xander looked at the words in shock. The watcher’s council sold them out. They were supposed to be the good guys, right? These were days probably following him being left in Sunnydale. There was a second piece of writing, in a different handwriting.
Cassandra Lavelle-O’Haron, died September 14th 1986 at age 26. Damian O’Haron her watcher and husband is missing presumed dead on September 19th 1986 was the last date of correspondence and the wet works team that had been sent to aid them died in the conflict. Their killer was a Vampire Master named Veano’s, the collector.
He had never known if they were dead or alive, but this had them as dead. It explained why they never came back for him. Veanos. The name of course was said many times during memories and dreams, but he didn’t know who it was or why.
There was a loud bang causing Xander to jump, turning sharply to face Giles who did not look impressed. Probably because Xander had not gotten permission. "May I ask why you were in my book cage; I have asked that you all wait till I am present."
Normally the clear scolding would have bothered him but at the moment, Xander didn’t care. He had a date. Answers. He wasn’t crazy. "Who is Veanos."
"Excuse me."
"Veanos, a master vampire. He killed a slayer, almost ten years ago. Who is he and is he still around?”
Giles took a look at which book he was reading, he assumed by the mention of that particular vampire which journal he grabbed but he had been hoping otherwise. "It would be best if you not read these books." As Giles reached for it to remove it from his grasp, Xander's hand grabbed Giles’ wrist stopping him. The watcher looked at him startled but Xander did not release his wrist. "If you wish to read, I would not advise reading this one. It is one of the darker histories."
"Aren't they all dark," Xander returned because these were about slayers. When they were chosen then to their deaths and these girls were all dead, all of them. He had seen over fifty different diaries all with the names of young girls who died. While Xander didn’t claim to be any sort of expert, he knew that much. "They end the same way. A dead slayer."
That logic was not what the man had expected, he tried to gloss over the darker parts where he could. Not to Buffy per say because she had to know some of it but focusing on the death aspects was not something he tried. "If you’re interested, there are other books."
Other books were not what he wanted. He needed answers, now that he had begun to have some, he needed them even more. He couldn’t ignore it anymore. "How did she die, Cassandra and her watcher. How did they die? Did they both die? The book claims they did but how?”
"Mr. Harris..."
"Please," Xander said surprising him as it was clear he was desperate for the information. "How did they die Giles? I need to know."
He looked at him for a minute, wondering about the interest, and the vulnerability in his voice that he had not heard before. He found he could not really deny the teen his request. "Veanos is a master vampire, believed to be well over two thousand years old. By far one of the deadliest of all of them. He had killed a large number of Slayers before Cassandra Lavelle. He makes a game of it. The council has tried time and time again, but they know that sending any slayer up against him is a death sentence. Cassandra came across him in passing and was a unique slayer, so she drew attention.”
“How so,” Xander asked. Why was his mother unique? Was it because she had two separate watchers? Or was it something else?
This was the first time any of the Scooby’s seemed really intent on listening to what he was saying so Giles took a seat. It was a harsh reality, but they were already involved in many ways. There was no shielding it from them anymore. Perhaps it would even drive them to take the dangers more seriously. “Well, Cassandra was chosen when she was 14 which was fairly normal, but she got pregnant. Her watcher and her had begun a relationship and she ended up pregnant from this relationship.”
Was it the pregnancy or the watcher and slayer relationship? If it was someone Giles age perving on a teenager Xander would be bothered but his father hadn’t looked much older than his mom. “So that doesn’t happen a lot, I mean the slayers are all girls, what’s so strange about her getting pregnant,” Xander said. “Her getting pregnant shouldn’t be that weird?” She would have been about twenty after all. He was fairly sure a lot of twenty-year-old's had kids.
Giles took off his glasses as if realizing he was suddenly discussing sex with a teenager, but Xander just waited. “Yes, they are all girls, most chosen just on the cusp of their teen years, so they tend to be quite young for pregnancy.”
It was the words he was not saying that caught Xander's attention. “You mean most die too young to make a family,” Xander challenged.
“Yes well,” Giles started before clearly changing the subject. “Very few Slayers in history have ever given birth to children. It is hard with the lifestyle most lead to get the opportunity to have a relationship that goes far enough and there are higher risks of being pregnant. Those who do often Most of a Slayer’s life is fighting. It is very rare a slayer to survive the pregnancy without losing the child. Of the known slayers, no more than 30 slayers became pregnant and had children following their calling. A few have had them prior to being called but that is the suspected number in nearly five thousand years.”
“A slayer doesn’t tend to live long do they,” Xander asked.
“That is a mixed answer,” Giles admitted, surprising him. “Many do not live long but those who get through their first year tend to make it much much longer. Cassandra lived twelve years and had she not caught the attention of Veanos likely would have made it decades longer. She was a fierce fighter and fought many remarkable foes. She is a slayer whose name will go down in history for that alone. But yes, pregnancy and surviving it is a rarity of the slayer line. It’s not easy to manage a relationship of any sort as a slayer. Few are willing to step in and deal with the craziness and most travel, so they don’t tend to stay in one place long enough to develop close friendships. Cassandra and Damian were closer in age than most watchers and their slayers. It tends to be a more parental relationship rather than sexual.”
“But she ended up with her watcher.”
“The council tried to separate them but she...well expressed her dislike for the idea very strongly and it was decided that they worked too well together and there was a child involved. He had not met her until she was 17 and he was only 20 at the time. Her first watcher died during a previous fight where they prevented a very dangerous demon from running free.”
“And Veanos caught sight of them.”
“Yes, he grew interested in them both. You see she was a great slayer. Not only long lived but the things she stopped, the times she saved the world drew attention. She was truly one of the best slayers in at least the last few centuries, strong, fearless and they made an impeccable team. Damian was a warlock. A magic user. Most watchers, we are there to guide, to know information, to assist our slayers so they are not caught off guard, to train. Damian was different. He was a fighter, and they saved the world many times. This drew some not so friendly eyes.”
“They were a challenge then,” Xander guessed.
“The biggest, he had never gotten a slayer that was so well trained. But his interest changed since he found out she had a child. He had never tasted the blood of a slayer born before; they are rare. “
“30 ever born,” Xander realized.
Giles nodded, “Exactly. Slayers had had children pre-calling but rarely a child born after. It’s a rather unstudied phenomenon. No one knew if he would grow to develop slayer like abilities or be just a normal child. Veanos was instantly enthralled. Now he would have hunted them for fun either way. They had annoyed him. But he made it his mission to hunt down the child, put a bounty on his head.”
That did not sound good at all. “A bounty,” Xander said confused.
“He sent out the entirety of dark armies out for him. The person who brought him the living child would have riches and I'm not just talking money. Now, slayers normally do the hunting, but they ended up being hunted. As I said it was one of the darker stories. They were being hunted and the armies they fought to protect their child. They were being worn ragged. Fight after fight, it was draining them both. They knew they could not get close enough to Veanos to stop him or to get everyone who wanted their child.”
“So, what happened.”
“They knew they could not continue protecting him. They wanted him to survive. So, they hid him. No one knows where. They died without saying anything to anyone. To give him a chance to live. Cassandra died quickly; she had been badly injured. But he did much much worse to Damien but as far as everyone knows, he died without saying where he was. They had both went full forced against him, to take him out. Three months after they hid their child, they were both dead. They destroyed hundreds of his forces. Even supposedly did quite a bit of damage to him too. Jennifer had died and they had just left her body. Damien went missing. The council got one of the vampires and got the information. They were going to turn him to get the information as torture did not work. But he killed himself in order to keep his silence.”
Xander's hands shook slightly as they trailed on the book. “And no one ever found the boy.”
“No, they never told anyone where he was left. He wore so many charms and things to hide him from Veanos that when he was hidden...the watcher’s council couldn’t even locate him.”
"And they didn’t trust the council to help protect him."
"Damian tended to be a bit of a loose cannon. He trusted some of the council but not all of them. He was very powerful in his own right. Why the interest."
Xander refused to let the watcher change subjects. "Why didn't he trust the council."
"He feared that they would use their child...study him. A slayer born child is so rare and there’s an inherent magic to it. Because slayers have had children before being called but there are so few after no one quite knows what effect it can have."
"Do you think they would have."
"I think a couple of them may have exploited him. I think a few others would have been willing to hand him over but most of them have been cleaned out of things. There was a serious cleanup. Damian had two brothers who tried to clean up a lot of corruption in the council, by any means necessary. And they got the worst of them. There are still idiots of course, including the head of the council who views slayers as tools, but the majority are good people. I think most would have died to protect him. I know I would have. They were good people. And the boy did nothing wrong but be born to a slayer. Any watcher with a soul would have protected him. But it was a dark time, someone was giving information on where they were going to be which led to them always running, but when they did not tell the council, it took longer for them to be found. So, there was a leak."
“Was the leak found.”
“Yes, by Damian's brothers. He found them out and... disposed of them. They had been selling out the council since before Jennifer was called leading to the deaths of a number of slayers and even helped demons get some relics. They had done it for money and protection. Being a Watcher, is not the safest career either. They got power, money, and safety in return for selling out the slayers and council. But that I assure you was delt with. The death of Cassy and Ian was the final straw.”
Xander noted the use of what would be nicknames. Giles clearly knew them well enough to use that rather than their full names. "You knew them?"
"Damian was a friend. We were in the academy together. I left for a short while and he was the one who helped me find my way back. He was young to be chosen to work with a slayer, but he was one of the best. Too close in age though, he fell in love with her. I met her once, and her child. She was a very nice women...girl. Of all the journals to pick up, why this one. It’s not the most recent. It may be the largest but...it is probably the most gruesome of the newest tales.”
Xander closed the book. He had a lot to think about. "Because I've wondered for years where they were."
"Where what?"
"Because I've only been Alexander Harris for like ten years. My full name’s Alexander Lavelle Harris," Xander said getting up. “Thank you...I well I needed answers. Thank you for taking the time to tell me, I know you don’t really like me but well...thank you.
Giles gaped as he walked out with the book.
