chapter 2

Xander was up early, despite the relatively late night before. Nightmares of the last months of his life as Xander Harris made sleep a rare commodity these days. Willow and Buffy’s deaths. Faith’s. Oz’s.

Irony of ironies it hadn’t been a demon or a hellgod or even a stupid fledgeling vampire that had killed the oldest Slayer and the most powerful witch that had lived in centuries. It had been a drunk frat boy in an SUV going around a corner too fast and running over the pair heading home from patrol on foot a year after defeating the First Evil almost to the day.

Giles had started losing it, and when some cult trying to raise a demon from the dimension of Revkerrrek (or something like that Faith had called it RevCars Giles had corrected incessantly but no one really caught what the dimension actually was called) Giles really lost it. The cult started hunting for the Key to sacrifice to raise their demon or hell god or whatever it was. Faith and Oz had been killed in the fight to stop the cult of demons from getting Dawn, both Andrew and Xander injured badly. Well that had been the straw that had broken the camel’s back. Xander didn’t know how he knew it but he knew Giles had made the wish standing over Xander’s hospital bed after that fight. (Hello, head injury king. He’d been knocked out cold for who knew how long after the fight)

Giles wish had been damned elaborate. He’d specified just about everything--down to the fact that Xander now inherited the land and money in England of the Giles family estate and the title of Lord Summersfield which Xander found hilarious. Giles had made sure that his wish sent the three of them together and that they would be financially secure. The other slayers were a duty, a job. Buffy, Willow, Xander, Dawn, and even Spike and Andrew had become Giles children through the years. To varying lesser extents Giles had considered Faith, Tara, Oz, Anya, and Cordelia his as well. Giles had watched the children he considered his fall one by one. The last three of his children were going to be safe from demons at all costs.

Xander had the disturbing feeling that Giles had paid with his life to get his three surviving children to a world without demons where they would be "safe".

Safe.

Yeah.

Safe. Sure. Safe, quiet reality without demons. Yeah.

The last thing he remembered as Xander Harris was being knocked out in the fight with the cult of demons, he came to in a dusty tomb in Egypt with the corpse of Faisal next to him and a battered up Andrew on the other side of him. Dawn crying, Daniel trying to see if he was alright. Real auspicious beginning for the life of Xander Giles. Considering Xander Harris’ life, it was pretty well par for the course though.

Then the strange falling into place of the two sets of memories.

Aliens.

Even after three months, his basic training for the SGC and 1 training trip through the Gate to Alpha site, Xander still could not quite wrap his mind around aliens. This was an improvement over demons--how?

He shook his head, as if trying to shake loose the thoughts that seemed to circle back every time to Giles’ wish. Dawnnie and Andrew were coming home today. It had been two weeks since he’d seen his little brother and sister. (Really, thinking of Dawn and Andrew as his brother and sister was probably the easiest adjustment to make, after all they basically had become so in every way but DNA over the past years) Buffy and Willow as sisters in the past tense. Yeah that was an easy adjustment to make. Even big brother Spike wasn’t that much of a stretch, though trying to mesh what he remembered of his "big brother" Will--shy stuttering and clumsy--with Spike, the Big Bad Biteless pain in the ass that had been his on and off roommie well…that was a stretch. Will had been definitely more of the Bloody Awful Poet than Spike.

The picture in the living room caught his eye as he headed through to the kitchen. The focal point of the wall was the only family portrait of the Giles family in existence.

Mom and Dad. Joyce and Giles. Joyce’s hair was a little more of graying mousy blonde-brown than the Clairol-assisted blonde Xander Harris remembered. Giles’ glasses were more clunky than the Hellmouth’s versions but he was more or less the same, his hair darker but the picture was also a good around fourteen or fifteen years old as well. Will was about fifteen in the picture, honey blonde curls and huge blue eyes, pouting slightly. Xander remembered him complaining about the tie he’d been forced to wear, though that was nothing compared to the hell raised by a more brunette than blonde Beth over wearing a ridiculously frilly dress. Willow hadn’t been any happier with her matching dress but being Willow hadn’t thrown the same caliber of fit--just puppy eyes and a bit of a pout. They were about thirteen. Xander was ten, shaggy almost-black curls falling in his eyes, smiling wider than any in any childhood picture of Xander Harris that had ever existed. Andrew was eight, missing a few teeth and others growing in at various stages, he looked like a little goofus honestly. Dawnnie was sitting on Joyce’s lap, not quite four. It looked so totally wrong and right at the same time, the sets of memories warring over whether it was real or not.

~*~*~

"XANDER!!" the squeal preceded the tackling hug that nearly knocked him from his feet by only a split second.

"Dawnnie? What did you two do? Take off at four to get here?"

"Uh huh" Andrew nodded with a yawn. "She’s had four espressos"

Dawn stuck her tongue out at Andrew.

With Dawn securely tucked under one arm, her arms wrapped around his waist Xander reached for Andrew, putting his other arm around his younger brother’s shoulders and the three Giles siblings made their way to the kitchen to catch up. Dawn whining at Andrew to make chocolate chip waffles as they went.

~*~*~

"Andrew’s got a date" Dawn announced in an almost sing-song smug tone.

"Don’t tease the cook, you won’t get fed" Andrew glared.

"A date?" Xander grinned, raising an eyebrow. "With who?"

"Cassie Fraiser," Dawn grinned absolutely thrilled her best friend and brother were hooking up.

Xander’s eyes narrowed at his brother. "She’s SIXTEEN, little bro, don‘tcha think she‘s a bit young?"

Dawn snorted. "Like the blushing virgin over there is a real threat to her"

"I hate you" Andrew snarled at Dawn going nearly as red as the sweatshirt he was wearing. "And it’s not a real date. I’m going over to her house and have supper with her and Dr. Fraiser and watch a movie. We’re going to be in plain sight of her mother all evening. I’ll be home by just after 10."

"That I can live with" Xander nodded, approvingly. Not that he had anything against Andrew hooking up with Cassie somewhere down the line, it was just the sixteen and twenty-three thing at the moment. Though Dawn had a point too. Andrew was probably a lot less experienced than plenty of the guys at Cassie’s high school, given the life the Giles children had lived (and Xander sincerely doubted Andrew had seen too much action in his unremembered life as Andrew Welles for that matter as well).

"Ask Dawnnie about Jell-O shots" Andrew glared.

Xander turned a decidedly Spikish and dangerous ‘explain--NOW’ look on Dawn.

"I had THREE" Dawn glared at Andrew.

"And were drunk off your ass after two" Andrew shot back.

Xander managed to stay calm, barely. It took an awful lot of counting in four different languages to pull it off, but he did it. They were nineteen and twenty three after all, in college. Doing normal college things certainly less risky than the nomadic life they remembered growing up with--and all things Hellmouthy that they didn’t remember. Hell, he was stripping in Oxnard at not quite eighteen (at least Xander Harris him--Goddess the memories were confusing at times he lived in terror of saying the wrong thing out loud.) Once the full story was spilled--party, Jell-O shots, drunk and puking Dawnnie complete with hovering sober big brother Andrew--Xander could at least live with the story. And if it was edited to keep him from blowing his top, he didn’t want to know. Xander Giles had been responsible for his two younger siblings since he was twelve more or less. Yeah, they’d had Faisal watching over them, but Faisal had treated him as an equal and the one in charge of the younger two. Xander really didn’t want an unedited version of Dawnnie’s first college party and drinking binge. His sanity could only take so much.