12Disclaimer: refer first chapter.
A/N: I went a little tongue-in-cheek here. I am not ashamed.
The Usual Suspects?
Chapter Twelve: Of Eggs and Chickens, Cats and Kings
—ox-oxo-xo—
"Don't get me wrong," Whistler went on, "it's a good choice. Tara'll do you good. You just didn't pick her for all the right reasons."
She wasn't the leader.
It was… Buffy had kinda expected it, in a way, ever since Drusilla said her piece. What do you want, she'd asked. What do you want? What do you want? Pick what you want, because it's your last pick, she might as well have said. Picking Tara might have been for Willow's benefit as much as for everyone else's, but she still did pick who she wanted. And now she wasn't the leader.
…Wow. Despite the disappointment, Buffy found it surprisingly easy to bask in it. Sure, she was still in this, but now that much pressure had disappeared off her shoulders.
"Okay," she said through a bright, easy smile, "what did we miss?"
"You're not upset?" Willow blurted, reflecting the others' surprise.
Buffy shook her head, her smile widening. "Nah, I'm good. I'm done leading. Will not miss the stress."
"And I'm glad to hear that," Whistler replied. "What you missed was a hint from me, a hint from Twinglish over there," he punctuated that with a thumb pointed at Wesley, "and one assumption you all never quite questioned."
"Ah," Wesley said. "So I was right about the Standard Bearer reference being important."
"Yep. Sadly, it seems you've been working alone for just a little too long. If you'd spent a bit o' time selling it to the others instead of trying to just slip it in, your point might have sunk in Buffy's head a little better. And the others might have caught that assumption in time."
"What assumption?" Tara asked, quietly but minus the stutter several of them were used to hearing from her. Months on end as the amateur therapist had done wonders for her confidence. "Even I was sure the Heart was the important thing. It was one reason I thought I would have a good chance of being picked."
"Simple. How many mandatory picks did I say there were, in total if you include Buffy here?"
"Six," several voices droned out.
"And how many mandatory roles or skills did I say there were?"
A moment of silence followed, filled with minds sifting through their short-term memories.
"Si— darn it!" Willow exclaimed.
"Yup. I did say I could call her a bearer of the Standard. Which she has been, in a sense. As a whole, you've all tended to follow her general standards, though there has been some straying from some of you – Summers included. Guns are bad. Monster is as monster does. Never kill humans. The fight matures you. Keep the fight in the night. Might makes right…" Whistler shrugged. "Most of you follow those standards as a matter of course, without even thinking about it any more. And mark me, it's bitten you a time or ten – though to be fair, straying from those standards has cost you all even more.
"I could call her a bearer of the Standard. What I didn't call her was the Standard Bearer."
"…Okay, what crap are ya peddling now?" Faith demanded, clearly recognising sophistry even if she didn't know the word for it. "And what's a Standard Bearer anyway?"
Wesley replied, "In…let's call them 'medieval' times, especially in large-scale battlefields such as were common in those times, a Standard Bearer would be a mobile rallying point for a regiment of troops. The troop would march or sortie under the Standard, or Banner, which is traditionally a very long pole or pike with a flag of some description mounted onto the top end – carried by the Standard Bearer. The idea is for both leaders and their troops to be able to tell at a glance where everyone under that command should be." He sighed.
"The problem, as I apparently did not allude to Ms. Summers in sufficiently clear language, is that Standards are very heavy and extremely unwieldy. The troops would guard most vigorously against any enemy who sought to attack the Standard and its Bearer – not only because striking the Standard would be a great blow to their command capabilities, but also because the Bearer was greatly hampered by needing to hold up his Standard and could not be trusted to survive on his own in the heat of battle."
Whistler then took up the banner of exposition. "And the gist of that role is: the Standard Bearer is the one that everyone else protects. In chess, they'd be the King – lose the King, lose the game."
The dozen absorbed this.
"…You wanted Xander, didn't you?" Buffy stated more than asked. Xander sounded like that – at least, he was the one other than Dawn and Mom that everyone tried to protect, no matter his protests. "Or… Mom?" Dawn wasn't the Heart, she was too young for it. But Mom could have been both.
"Actually, picking Tara for both the right reasons would've worked out fine," Whistler corrected her. "See, I actually had three Tara Maclays, from two different realms and your home one, waiting on your call. If you'd said 'screw that' to the advice you got and just went with the matchmaking, I woulda delivered on that. If you'd asked for Tara as both Heart and Standard Bearer – or, because that is a pretty clunky and out-there term and I'd know what you meant anyway, something like 'someone for us to protect' or maybe even 'the one who brings us all together' – then you would have got the other Tara."
"What was the difference between us?" Tara asked. "I mean, between me and the…third Tara?"
"Willow. In that one, Gingee was the one Warren shot and killed. That Tara went just as nuts as Gingee would have, did almost as much damage as Gingee would have… but her Xander talked her down just the same. The two of them bonded a lot over that, losing someone as central as she was to both of them. So did the Summers duo. From there, it wasn't much of a stretch to treat the Potentials the same way. So, Heart and Standard Bearer."
"…And how exactly does that make her a Standard Bearer?" Willow wondered.
"Hmm, how to explain this one…" Whistler grinned. "Okay, Red. You're on record as enjoying some fan-fiction. Do you know what a woobie is?"
"Oh? …Ooh! Ohhhh…"
The others waited. Willow shook herself.
"Oh. A woobie is someone with a tragic back-story that makes you feel all protective. So, someone we'd all want to protect emotionally, not physically."
"Uh-huh." Spike emitted an abrupt snort. "And…how many of us have tragic back-stories here? I mean… Buffy. 'Nuff said. Angel – couldn't find happiness or he'd lose his soul. Willow – her lover gunned down in front of her. Me – again, 'nuff said. Dru – tortured to insanity and death, kills for a century, then stack on Angel's problem. Fred – offed just as she's hooked up with her beau. Tara – offed, then her lover's best friend offs himself to bring her back to life. So, why the hell didn't any of us make that grade?"
"Simple reason, Billy: Standard Bearers stay off the front lines – either because they can't hack it there, or because they're just valued too much by everyone else for it to be worth putting them there. Remember, you all form around the Standard Bearer – that means the Standard Bearer is in the middle."
Whistler shrugged. "But, it's seven roles on six picks – and keeping someone back from the battlefield, that gets touchy… Unless they also have another required role that also makes them better off back behind the lines."
"The Heart thing." Faith of all people was nodding thoughtfully. "You wear your heart on your sleeve, you'd better be ready for people takin' potshots at it."
"And the King," Wesley murmured.
"Bingo!" Whistler pointed at Wesley. "Buffy and Angel, even Riley and his squad – they had to be on the front lines, because they're pretty much the heavy hitters. But this fight? This one's going to be wide-scale. You need someone back in the middle giving general orders anyway."
"So, you'll be choosing our leader," Giles summed up.
A snippet of memory bobbed up in Buffy's mind for a moment: the Graduation Day battle.
"…And again you wanted Xander, didn't you?" Again, that was not a question.
Whistler grinned. "Well, yes. And not because he's weak or anything either! No – it's because he's versatile."
Almost everyone blinked at that. Xander… versatile? That was a new one for most of them. Sure, he had a grab-bag of minor or seldom-used skills. But still, versatile?
"Lost? Well, I can See further than you can. And lookin' across a fat swathe of the Multiverse, I can tell you this: the Hawaiian is the single most versatile one out of the lot of you. First, there's the fact that he's not destined to be…well, anything! You're all locked into what you do by what you are, least as far as the fight's concerned. Slayers slay, Watchers watch, vampires stay out of the light. Iowa and Texas, they would never have got involved with any of this if they'd picked different jobs. And Gingee's almost always a witch – it's something she doesn't know, so of course she wants to know it.
"Xander, though? Consider just how much magic's been thrown at the kid over the years – is it so surprising that some of it sticks? He's a soldier, a super-strong hunter, a logistics whiz, a mechanic, a porn star, a nexus of chaos, a vengeance demon, a Lord of the Dance! Heh, there's this one Gingimmortal from way in the future who tracks down Xanders from different realms and turns them into tentacle monsters! For that matter: that hypothetical Xander with the all-guy foursome and the M-preg? That's actually happened."
"What." Buffy didn't know or care who said that. For all she knew, it was her. The mind boggled.
The balance demon gave them all a truly evil smirk. "One word: Anyanka. Honestly, the Powers mostly don't have a use for him, so his fate…fluctuates, let's say. On top of all that… You all may not have noticed, but Xander Harris: more fragile in the head than he looks. But when he breaks? Hoo boy does that kid break in interesting ways…
"But back to what you were saying, about me wanting Xander. Understand, he was never mandatory. No-one was, except for some version of Buffy Summers – the bosses need roles, not faces. That said, the guys upstairs already owe a few people some favours – and me picking a Xander helps cash in some in the long run."
"So," Spike snarked, "we're getting our own Droopy. As our leader, no less. This'll end well."
Whistler burst out laughing.
Drusilla burst out laughing even harder.
Everyone else stared, although Angel did snicker a bit when he got the joke.
Whistler straightened, wiping his eyes. "Did you, miss the whole thing on versatility? Dear kiddies, you are not being given a Technicolour Cream-Puff. I mean, you might have got one – but toots here did the Slayer thing and went for the power, so why not keep on that theme?" He suddenly became serious.
"See, here's the thing. Right up till we brought Tara in, we had a whole lot of people on the line, just in case you picked all the way right and ended up with one more free pick. Or you picked both reasons right, but the pick you wanted wasn't available; if that happened Buffy would have been the leader, but you'd all have had to run through names until one that was popped up." Whistler paused, and looked over at a swaying, white Willow. "Ease up, girl – your original beau's in the good place, she didn't mind staying and waiting a bit.
"Anyway, I know youse well enough that it wasn't that many left – and getting towards the end, there's a few who had big chances. Just for instance, there were actually seven Taras available, but only the three of them had any real chance of getting picked. Same with Joyce and Dawn—"
"Wait!" Buffy exclaimed. "You actually thought… Dawn?"
"Why not? Joyce could have worked as a Heart and Standard Bearer if you'd picked her that way – and if you got a free pick out of that, why not pick Dawn just to round out the family unit? Wasn't likely, I'll grant you – but still far more likely than Drogyn the Battlebrand, and I even had one of him on the line."
"Who?" Fred asked.
Wesley answered, "An immortal warrior… charged with guarding the Deeper Well I believe – that's the collective gravesite of most of the Old Ones. In any case, he is about as old as Anyanka, and has been a warrior for the light for most of his life." He frowned. "Obscure but I suppose he was a legitimate possibility…"
"Now – as for the Xanders," Whistler continued, "there were three major ones of him too. The first one, I cut out with most of the rest. It's that Xander." He pointed over at the cluster of statues.
"Your Kitten was ever so grumpy. He missed the show," Drusilla interjected, from next to Willow. Then she proceeded to explain her statement with two loud smacks on Willow's butt.
Spike started sniggering very loudly.
Whistler added, "The eye would have been easy to fix. None of you lot turned up here impaired, did you? Even a teensy little empowerment for his boon-in could have been arranged – probably immunity to all mindscrews on top of a Farmboy Lite and the standard One Who Sees package. But hey, you all seem to like keeping him wrapped in cotton wool anyway, so no big loss. That one would have been favourite for Heart and Standard Bearer."
"Darn," Willow muttered. Why hadn't they thought of that? Buffy wondered.
Oh wait. She remembered this one, all the way back from sophomore year: "Accept no substitutes." That explained it all, really.
"The second Xander? Well, Buffy nailed the Heart part of the test. But if she'd only nailed the Standard Bearer? Or if she missed everything, or went for her own personal favourite and left it in my hands to pick the leader? Well…"
With that, a viewscreen popped into existence. It was met with groans as Whistler walked off to the side.
The sequence began within a place familiar only to Buffy: the hell sub-dimension she'd rescued Lily… no wait, Anne (Anne Steele, who now ran a shelter according to Angel's comment) and a bunch of homeless people from.
"Wanna see my impression of Gandhi?"
…In retrospect, the quip hadn't been her best effort.
That Buffy boosted Anne out, then jumped into the portal which was already beginning to harden—
Next was something that looked almost like a freeze-frame, of Buffy in a thick pool of inky blackness that somehow still left her fully visible to the dozen viewers on the other side of the portal. From the angle, she could just make out a wobbling wall her alternate was heading towards – like the surface from an underwater shot, so she guessed she was heading through the portal – just really, really slowly.
Next was a montage of short 'clips'. Faith coming to Sunnydale, finding out that Buffy wasn't there like she'd thought, only for the Scoobies' resident 'soldier' to loan her a pilfered… Riley called it a 'willy-pete' while grinning, but it exploded like a firework and toasted Kakistos but good. Angel being returned, Xander putting him down with a trank-dart while hunting Scott Hope's friend Pete but being stopped from dusting him…by Whistler, who promised him a favour when the time was right. Angel was handed over to Willow as Faith watched on, who nursed him back to health with Oz's help. Then—
the same freeze-frame of Buffy in the portal – only, she was just a little closer to the surface.
The Graduation Day battle, with Faith and Wesley front and centre but Giles missing – mini-guns for the lure, boom for the win. Little snippets of the next two years – Faith working with Riley, some guy Angel said was Doyle dying, the Enjoining Spell, Darla being resurrected— and the freeze-frame, a little closer. Dracula, and Faith getting extremely annoyed at him. Angel locking Darla and Drusilla in with a roomful of lawyers. Mom dying in an unfamiliar house and found by her horrified younger daughter. Angel's gang driving through a portal. Faith diving through the same portal Buffy had – while Dawn, who was somehow still there despite everything, watched on in tears—
and the freeze-frame again, a little bit closer now.
Vi, slaying something…someplace where there was snow – the new Slayer. Willow and Tara performing the resurrection of Faith, and her being pissed. Things running much the same from there in LA and Sunnydale for the next two years, except for a few things like Spike being dusted after painlessly hitting Faith, no Dawn (maybe Glory had kidnapped her to bring her to the ritual?), Xander marrying Anya despite the vengeful vision, and a woman Angel said was Harriet Doyle instead of Wesley. Every so often that freeze-frame would pop up, that Buffy getting closer and closer to the surface.
Buffy was just as glad time didn't seem to be running at normal speed in there – she'd have died within days otherwise just from lack of water.
The last Sunnydale battle they saw was a whole lot bloodier – Robin and Andrew dying with Anya, Faith wearing the amulet and dying, Kennedy dying along with Vi in the pit. Barely a handful of mini-Slayers had made it out, Rona clutching the Scythe.
From there, most of the clips were of that Xander (again with the eye missing) – travelling all over Africa, then the Middle East, then South Asia, then South America, then finally North America, recruiting and fighting alongside dozens of Slayers just by the clips' count. In the South America arc there was a birthday party for the increasingly gaunt de facto Watcher – the 'Happy Birthday Uncle Xander!' banner was a dead giveaway – and there were hundreds of Slayers there. There were a few single sequences of the others – a boardroom in England with Giles (yay, Giles was still alive!) as the Chairman, Wesley as head of Research, and an open video-conference line to Xander as head of the Field Watchers. That Willow cloistered with what her Willow said was the Devon Coven. Dawn working as Wesley's apprentice. Wolfram and Hart's office (according to Fred) and the Hyperion Hotel (according to Angel), bombed out amid signs of a massive battle. And that freeze-frame dropped in every so often.
The last two clips: that Xander touching down in LAX, and that Buffy's finger just a hair away from touching the surface.
The viewscreen faded away, and they all turned to regard Whistler… who was talking to that Xander 'live' through another, smaller viewing portal. He was frozen just as stiff as 'their' (Buffy and Willow's) Xander.
"…So look there – you'll find her. She comes out in…" Whistler stopped and pulled out the pocket watch again. "Three hours. You won't remember this thing, but you'll remember talking to me and getting the info. Debt paid, Hawaiian – thanks for your time, and good hunting."
That portal closed. Whistler turned back round.
"So, that one? He could have been Leader and Heart – or Leader, Standard Bearer and Heart. And… yeah, as you saw, their Powers owed him for not dusting Ratboy. This was just an easy way to pay up."
…Buffy thought she could see Whistler's point. He would have been a pretty good leader. A soft one, like Giles on the global scale, but a good one. All those mini-Slayers clearly loved the stuffing out of the guy, if nothing else.
"The Xander you're getting, though? Well, Tara here is the Heart. Which leaves me to draft in a Xander that… well: Isn't."
Whistler's face went hard.
"There'll be no viewing of this past. There's no need. All I have to do is explain why is this:"
He pointed at Buffy Summers.
"Master's Cave. Spring '97."
…So she died there, and stayed dead. But just that couldn't be it… Right? Sure, he had the hots for her back then, but still!
Whistler's finger moved to Rupert Giles.
"Eyghon. Fall '97."
Buffy winced. That would have sucked… unless that Giles left after his Buffy died?
Then to Jenny Calender, a.k.a. Janna Kalderash.
"Angelus. Early '98. After Cordelia. But before Oz."
Okay, the timing sounded right…oh no. (And 'Cordelia? Really?' part of her misfiring brain snarked with a supremely ill-timed comment that she would never, ever admit to having right then.)
Then to Wesley Wyndham-Price.
"Balthazar. Spring '99."
Then to Faith Lehane.
"Mayor Wilkins. Graduation '99."
'…So Kendra died at some point too,' Buffy thought faintly.
Then to Angel.
"The Scourge. Fall '99. With Doyle."
Then to Riley Finn.
"Adam. Spring 2000. With Graham, but after Forrest."
Then to Tara Maclay.
"Your family. Your 20th birthday. Three days after Vi, by Glory. Her sister Dawn did live, though."
…That made some sense. If Vi was the Slayer, then Dawn as her little sister would work.
Then that damned finger moved to point at Willow Rosenberg.
"Xander, at Kingman's Bluff. Three days after Tara. Not so much luck talking you down."
Buffy suddenly found her stomach trying to climb its way out of her throat. 'Oh no oh god no Willow, he'd had to kill WILLOW…'
The finger shifting to Winifred Burkle was almost an anti-climax.
"Bach-nal feast, Pylea. Spring '01."
Then to Spike, "The Quiet, over the Gem of Amara. Soulless. Late '01." And finally to Drusilla: "Xander, one night after Spike. Again, soulless."
Whistler's arm finally dropped. He smirked humourlessly.
"Every body you're all wearing? Every body you could have asked for, bar a grand total of two? From an alternate realm where they died. In case you didn't notice, I never actually said 'realms'."
"The other one?" Jenny asked. It stood to reason that she would be pretty clear-headed. Buffy, on the other hand, just felt lucky Angel had steadied her.
Multiverse theory, a disassociated part of her realised – for something to happen everywhere, everything had to happen somewhere. And this one was the one where everybody else died but him.
Oh, and then all their bodies mysteriously disappeared.
Oh, except—
"Dawn Day, Slayer Violet Day's little sister – and even if you knew to ask for her, she's an unbound Key."
—that realm's Dawn. One who couldn't be picked.
"And," Wesley asked. "…The Quiet? I have never heard of the like."
"Let's just say…" Whistler's humourless smirk stretched almost into a snarl. "There's a reason I'm picking this guy as your leader."
And behind him, one last portal opened at the crater's lip.
Ending A/N: Honestly, anyone who's read my stories could have told where this was going. I even just explained why.