FIC: Per Omnia Saecula Saeculorum (part 5)

["cdreramius" <mike_mcd@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Title: Per Omnia Saecula Saeculorum
Author: Tony McD
Rating: M (15+ for language and adult themes)
Summary: The events and consequences immediately after `Grave'.
Distribution: Anywhere, just keep my name on it. As long as I am
remembered, I will never truly die.
Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy the Vampire Slayer nor do I own any
other characters. This is a work of fiction written for your enjoyment.

*-*-*-*-*

They lost all track of time and when the doorbell rang it startled
Buffy to realize that half an hour had gone by. Opening the door,
Buffy was in for another surprise.

"Mr. Robinson! What are you doing here?"

"I said I'd send someone out and I figured that I'm someone." He
smirked. He was a tall, thickset, African-American. As he stepped
through the doorway, the limp produced by his prosthetic foot was
pronounced.

Giles and Dawn got to their feet.

"Rupert Giles." Giles introduced himself as the two men shook hands.

"Jim Robinson. Xander's told me a lot about you."

"Oh? Well... I, um..."

"You can relax Mr. Giles. I've got a pretty good idea of what's going
on in this town." Jim looked over to Dawn.

"And you must be Dawn. My daughter is in your class."

Dawn studied him and tried to figure who.

"You're Tasha's dad, right?"

Jim nodded before looking back to Buffy.

"Where's Xander?" he asked.

"He's upstairs in my room with Willow at the moment."

"OK then. How about we take a look at the damage?"

Together the four of them went out into the backyard and surveyed the
scene. Jim inspected a couple of the bullet holes in the side of the
house.

"I'd be careful using any of the power outlets in the kitchen until
this gets fixed. You never know what a bullet might have damaged."

Standing back he noted both the number and location of the bullet holes.

"Which window is that?" he asked, pointing to the one with a bullet hole.

"Tara's." Dawn blurted, then remembered. "I mean, it was... before..."

"Can I go up there to check out the window?" Jim requested. Buffy
looked to Giles for a moment before answering.

"I guess so. But there's still blood on the floor. I... the cleaning
company gets here later this afternoon."

"I've seen blood before." He told her, waving at his prosthetic foot.

"Oh, yeah. Right. I guess you would have."

They went back inside and headed up to the room.

Jim looked about the room. In addition to the broken window and the
blood on the carpet, he noticed a picture on the bedside table of
Willow and a pretty blonde woman that he reasoned to be Tara.

He closed his eyes, made the sign of the cross, and said a silent
prayer for the fallen youth. He had seen far too many young people
with their entire lives ahead of them get cut down by evil.

He opened his eyes again and grabbed his cell phone.

"Doug? Jim. I wanna ask for a favor. There's a repair job that I'd
like your crew to look at... House siding replacement, wiring check,
window replacement... ASAP... Good, thanks... I won't forget this... Bye."

Jim turned to Buffy.

"There'll be a crew coming out tomorrow to fix the window and the house."

"Thanks. They... uh... didn't happen to mention how much it might
cost, did they?" she asked. Money was tight in the Summers house and
Buffy wasn't sure if she could afford the repairs.

"It won't cost you a thing. Doug is doing this as a favor for me."

Buffy was about to object but Jim cut her off.

"Don't even think about objecting. It's the least I can do. Besides,
Doug knows that we've got some big contracts coming up soon and he's
gunning for his crew to be our sub contractor. So Doug does me a favor
and in return I give him the sub contract. He was going to get it
anyway so it's a win-win all round."

The gesture of kindness nearly brought Buffy to tears.

"That's most generous of you." Giles remarked, suspicious of the size
of the generosity. There was something else behind the act.

Jim picked up on his suspicions.

"Let's head back down stairs and I'll tell you a story."

Once they were all seated in the lounge room, Jim rolled up the leg of
his pants revealing his prosthetic foot.

"Did Xander ever tell you how I lost my foot?" Jim asked them.

They indicated that he hadn't.

"I was a chaplain in the Marines many years ago. I was young, full of
faith, tending to the spiritual needs of our country's soldiers as
they did the Lord's work.

"You youngster's are probably too young to remember, but Mr. Giles
might. I was in Beirut when the Marine barracks got bombed. Actually,
I was IN the barracks at the time.

"It was terrible. In that one attack I lost my foot, my friends, and
my faith. After I was discharged from the Corps, I was lost, drifting
around the country from job to job, eventually ending up here. It was
here that I met my wonderful wife who helped anchor me after drifting
so long. I got into the building industry, started my own successful
company. Life was sweet.

"Then, not too long ago, I hired a young lad by the name of Xander. He
was a bit of a drifter like myself and I decided to give him a go and
see how he went. He did great. He was a natural; hard working, good
with people, and he had a sense of responsibility that I hadn't seen
in someone so young since my days in the Corps.

"But there was something wrong. He'd come to work late sometimes with
all sorts of injuries and all sorts of excuses. He'd have all kinds of
`family emergencies' that he had to deal with. I asked him about it
but he never gave me a straight answer. I was seriously contemplating
firing him until a little incident happened after work one night at a
construction site of ours."

"I take it that you had an encounter with Sunnydale's less...
desirable inhabitants?" Giles asked.

"Yep, 3 vampires. It wasn't just me they nearly got; my wife and
daughter had come around to the site to pick me up for some school
production.

"So there we were, about to die at the hands of 3 demons from hell
when suddenly one of them explodes into dust and Xander literally
jumps into the fray. He starts yelling at me to get my family out of
here while trying to hold off two vampires with nothing but a wooden
stake and a cross. I bundled the family into the car then looked back
to see Xander manage to stake another vampire and drive the other one
away with the cross.

"He was banged up a bit; cuts, bruises, stuff like that. He didn't
want to come back to our place for some first aid. The voice of
command changed his mind." Jim chuckled, remembering his drill
instructor from basic training.

"We got him home and cleaned him up. I started talking with him. At
first he was pretty reluctant to talk about his war with evil, but
eventually I got him to open up. A hold over from my Chaplain days, I
guess.

"Over the last few months he told me everything. About himself, his
friends, his war, his fears, his hopes. He's got a picture in his
wallet, the original Scooby Gang he called it. Showed it to me with
the pride of a father showing pictures of his kids. A Watcher, a
Slayer, a Witch, and Xander; warriors fighting at the very mouth of Hell.

"He restored my faith in God; something which I thought would be
impossible. I saw evil and I saw one of the Lord's soldiers do battle
and defeat the evil. I learned of the war between good and evil that
raged unseen on our streets every night. Once I learned of it I
couldn't turn my back on it.

"I'm too old and too short of limbs to take the front line like all of
you do. But I can help support those warriors that do fight."

"Xander's job." Buffy surmised.

"Not quite in the way you think. Xander's climb up the ladder is based
purely on his skill and ability at work. I do, however, cut him all
the slack he needs for his nightly war. I make sure that he has the
best medical and life insurance money can buy. If he needs time off or
to leave work early or whatever then I give it to him. And now that
you know that I know your secret, I want to offer you a job too. Same
deal as Xander"

Buffy didn't know quite what to say.

"But I tried the whole builder thing before and it didn't work." She
objected.

"The job isn't as a builder. Emily, my office manager, is leaving next
month to go to Denver with her husband. I know of your financial
troubles and I'll need someone to run the office when Emily goes. You
help solve my problem and I help solve yours. How about it?"

"Well... I..."

"It pays a hell of a lot more than the Double Meat Palace and I
promise you won't have to wear a cow hat." Jim smirked. Having been to
the Double Meat and seen the poor long suffering employees in their
ridiculous uniforms, he was pretty sure that this would be the deal
clincher.

"Done!" Buffy happily exclaimed. Jim Robinson smiled.

"Excellent. Although I must admit to being a little nervous. I never
had God's Chosen working for me before."

"Uh... I don't know what Xander told you about me exactly, but I'm not
God's Chosen." Buffy interjected. Jim looked at her curiously.

"You are `the Chosen One'? Aren't you?"

"Yeah, but..."

"Well, who do you think chooses the Chosen One?"

Buffy, remembering her history and Faith's history, was convinced that
God had nothing to do with selecting who was Chosen. But Jim was
convinced of it and she had no wish at get into an argument with her
new boss.

Besides, she reasoned, if God did decide who were Chosen, then all the
evidence pointed to the fact that God had piss poor judgment.

"I really think that we need to get Xander to the hospital to get
checked out." Dawn advised her sister. Buffy nodded her agreement.

"I'll drive him there if you'd like." Jim offered. Buffy gave him an
appreciative smile.

"Thanks Jim."

*-*-*-*-*-*

Et clamor meus ad te veniat.

(And let my cry come unto Thee.)

*-*-*-*-*-*

She was asleep again.

He ran his fingers through her red hair and shuddered at the memory of
her beautiful red hair turned black. Her alabaster skin showed no
signs of the ugly veins that pulsed with dark power.

She, the embodiment of all things good to Xander, had become a living
vestige of evil.

Had Warren deserved to die? Without a doubt he did.

Did Willow have the right to kill Warren? That was something that
Xander was in two minds about.

In the end it didn't matter. It would do him no good to contemplate
the philosophical aspects of something that he couldn't change. What
is done is done and Xander had to concentrate on the here and now.

He knew Willow better than anyone. He knew that the grief of Tara's
loss and the guilt of Warren's gruesome end was something that Willow
couldn't face, not by herself.

The moment of reflection was broken by the sound of knocking on the
door that also woke Willow up.

The door opened and Buffy, Dawn, Giles, and Jim came in. Xander was
surprised to see Jim.

"Boss? I didn't know you did house calls for firings." Xander half joked.

"He's here to take you to the hospital." Buffy told Xander. Xander
shook his head in disagreement.

"I can't leave Will. Not now."

"Xander, you HAVE to get checked out, OK? You took a hell of a
pounding and I want you to get the docs to check out your ribs. I'll
be here with Willow while you're gone."

"Buff, I really don't..."

"Go."

Willow's single half whispered word silenced the room as they all
stared at her.

"Are you sure?" Xander asked her, brushing her hair off of her face
and searching her eyes for her intentions.

"Go."

Buffy watched as her two best friends looked at each other and envied
their closeness which gave them the ability to communicate a thousand
words in just a single look.

What the hell happened between them up on that hill?

It was clear that one of Xander's reservations over leaving Willow
revolved around the possibility that Willow might try to harm herself.

"I'll stay here with Willow. She won't be alone."

Xander looked back and forth between Buffy and Willow before nodding
his agreement.

While Giles and Dawn helped Xander out of the bed, Buffy slipped into
it on the other side of Willow and held her friend as they watched
Xander being helped out of the room with Jim following behind them.

As soon as the door shut behind them, Willow burst into tears.

*-*-*-*-*-*

Cor meum doluit in vitalibus meis et terrores mortis ceciderunt super me

(My heart is pained within me, and terrors of death have fallen on me.)

*-*-*-*-*-*





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Willow: "It's a good fight, Buffy, and I want in."
Buffy:  "I kinda love you."
                     'Choices'

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