Title: Twilights End

Author: Scorpio

Email: scorpiofic@aol.com

Archive: The Nesting Place, CKoS, RCoST, The Den

Fandom: Buffyverse - Herc/Xenaverse crossover.

Rating: R

Pairings: Xander/Anya, Xander/Spike, Cupid/Strife(implied)

Disclaimer: The boys & girls of the Buffyverse belong to Joss Whedon & Mutant Enemy. All hail the Grr Argh monster! The boys & girls of the Herc/Xenaverse belong to Ren Pics & Flat Earth Productions. All hail Ares, Studmuffin of War! ::drool::

Notes: Xander's POV.

Spoilers: Yes! For every season of every show! Just... um, be current. ::grins:: Let's see, that's S5 of both Xena & Buffy. Post The Gift and post the Twilight of the Gods.

Warning: Spoilers for "The Gift" and angst.

Summary: Glory's opening up of the Mystic Gates between realities has some unexpected reactions that alter the lives of the Scoobies

Twilights End
by Scorpio

Always count your Blessings. Then, subtract them from your Damnations. If you break even, you're doing all right.

No. It's true. I've learned that the hard way.

You see, it all started right after Dawn's blood opened the Gates between the Dimensions by summoning the Mystic Portal. Of course, Buffy managed to close the portal before the Gates completely collapsed, but it was at a terribly high cost. Her life.

In the aftermath of her loss, we tried valiantly to pull ourselves together and continue to fight the good fight, but it was a difficult time. And it wasn't just because we no longer had a Slayer with us. We had lost not *just* a super-warrior, but a good and true friend and that's a hurt that's both deep and subtle.

If that wasn't enough to tear us down, the breaks and cracks in reality that the portal caused didn't reverse themselves once the portal closed up, they simply stopped getting bigger. A large tenet building filled with families forever disappeared to be replaced with half of an alien building filled with alien creatures. Large crevasses tore open the earth in the middle of Main Street and it was filled with some strange glowing blue gas that stunk horribly and made anyone who came near it ill. A bunch of stunningly beautiful flowering plants sprouted up in the middle of the local baseball field and along with it a whole bunch of small furry creatures that scurry around whispering in some foreign tongue. The creatures are harmless but the plants shoot out deadly poisonous thorns whenever a person gets too close.

So, not only were we mourning and in shock from Buffy's death, we were also suddenly faced with a myriad of alien creatures from other worlds that we had no knowledge of what-so-ever. None of Giles' books helped because they only had information on the various creatures of *this* world. So, we were on our own to try and figure out which ones were harmless victims of fate and which ones were deadly predators. Then we had to figure out how to kill the predators.

That's probably why it took me so long to notice it.

At first, it was just these really odd dreams. I could never really remember them once I woke up, but I would remember the *flavor* of them. The emotion they left behind.

Some left me feeling good. Happy, I guess. As if I had dreamed of jokes and snappy come-backs and tricks that were amusing and witty. Of course, I'd feel all guilty about it once I was fully awake and realized that, in truth, there was *nothing* to feel happy about.

Some of them left me feeling almost as if I was in the middle of an adrenaline high, but not in a bad way. There *is* a difference, you know. A *good* adrenaline high is when things go right and your victorious. You've beaten the odds and it's time to celebrate. It's a great feeling. A *bad* adrenaline high is just the opposite. It's when you're fighting for your life and things look grim and you just *know* that you're not coming back. I still wake up like that, as if from a horrendous nightmare, but not as much as you'd think considering everything that has happened.

It was odd, but nothing to hold my attention long. I had work, I had Anya and we all had a bunch of grief and dangerous patrolling to do. I blew it off thinking that some strange dreams were to be expected and since I hadn't started sleepwalking, they weren't dangerous. I never said anything.

Time moved on and little by little we jerry-rigged the broken pieces of our lives back together. Our grief and guilt lessened even if our wishes that Buffy was still alive didn't. I missed her terribly, we all did, but we had learned to live with that loss. Patrolling became easier as we identified more and more of the alien creatures. Many of them were their world's versions of humans. Dangerous, but mostly just wanting to survive the shock and fright of being thrust onto a strange planet. However, the rest were deadly. These ones were either toxic or they looked at humans as "the enemy" or "the food" for them.

Anya and I were officially engaged by this time and had begun to make plans for our wedding. I think that this, more than anything else is what pulled everyone out of their funks. It gave all of us something positive to think about and a focus for a brighter and happier future. Even Spike got into it with his announcement that he, and only he, was allowed to organize my bachelor party and that the "birds" could all fuss over the ceremony itself. Silently wondering when I'd slipped a cog in my brain, I agreed to let an evil undead vampire host the party.

It was at that point that I started remembering my dreams, well... at least a tiny portion of them. I could recall a pair of pale eyes that crinkled up in the corners from laughing and the sound of giggling. But that was it.

That's also when my sense of humor returned. After Buffy had died, I just couldn't see the humor in anything any more. It wasn't that I didn't want to, it's just that everything seemed flat and stale to me. Dusty. However, that wooden feeling of being stiff and dry flaked away bit by bit until I was back to my old self. Cracking jokes and making sarcastic remarks off the top of my head left and right. I began to smile and laugh again.

That's such a freeing feeling. Laughing, I mean.

And still we patrolled. Usually as a group rather than singularly or in pairs. It was safer that way. Gradually, it became glaringly obvious that both Willow and Tara were getting more and more powerful with their magic, but in different ways. Willow could do amazing things, but so could Tara, however, most of the new things one could do the other couldn't.

Spike also changed subtly. Before, he would willingly kill any demon that crossed his path, but he was usually pretty straight forward about it. But there was one breed of alien that, for some reason, just brought out the evil in him. This particular type of alien was tough, fast and tended to feed on anything it came across. Spike began to start carrying around his namesake weapon once again. At first, it freaked the rest of us out, but after a while we realized that he was careful to make his kills clean when any of us were around.

That's not to say that *all* his kills were clean. I stopped by his crypt one time to drop off a new supply of blood and couldn't find him anywhere. Worried because it was still late afternoon and the sun hadn't set yet, I tried to find him. I did. He has an underground cavern under the main room of his crypt that leads to the tunnels. He had transformed the cavern into a sort of torture chamber and he had five of those aliens strung up in various stages of dying.

It should have frightened me to my very core. I should have run from the room screaming, but I didn't. Granted, I will probably die of fright the instant I hear that his chip has finally fried, but at the time that wasn't a concern. I stayed there for a half an hour and watched him as he tortured one of the aliens. He lectured me on technique the entire time. Which, if you think about it, is the freakiest part of all.

Now that I think about it, that's when the urges hit. At first, it was a vague feeling. I began to *really* look around at the town when we were patrolling or when I was out making wedding plans with Anya. I now know what I was looking for, but at the time I didn't. I just knew that when I found it, I'd know.

And I did.

A lot of property was damaged when the portal opened. *Many* people moved away. Turning a blind eye to demons and the Hellmouth is one thing, but I guess living in a town that sports a few alien buildings - complete with the aliens in it - is a bit much. However, not everyone left. The city hired a few construction companies, mine included, to tear down the structures that couldn't be fixed and to repair the ones that could.

Because of this, there were lots of vacant lots springing up all over from ruined buildings that had been torn down and no longer had any owners to rebuild. I found one of those vacant lots. After a bit of finagling, I bought it. Cheaply, I might add.

I knew that I wanted to build something there, but I wasn't sure *what*. Anya wanted a house and for a while I entertained that idea, but it wasn't *quite* right. At the time, I didn't know why.

Time passed and life went on. The plans for the wedding were almost complete and Spike began to drop hints about the bachelor party he was planning. Giles was going to give the Bride away. Willow was to be the Maid of Honor while Tara and Dawn were to be Bride's Maids. Spike was to be my Best Man and my boss and my best friend from work were to be my Ushers.

While all of that was occupying Anya's attention, I was busy compiling a whole bunch of building material and tools. I gathered bricks and stone at insanely low prices from all of the buildings being torn down all over the county. It was a little more difficult to get PVC and copper piping, but I did. Not to mention a whole bunch of other stuff too. Lighting fixtures, a fuse box sans fuses, a huge porcelain tub and several vases, urns and what-nots.

At the time, I wasn't even too clear on *why* I was doing all of this. I'd just see something and I *had* to have it. I still wasn't sure what I was going to build with it all. Oddly enough, only Spike seemed to notice my new obsession, but then again, I was the only one who ever sat in on his torture sessions either.

Then it was time for the wedding. I'll admit it; I was a bundle of nerves. My dreams flip-flopped between the now normal ones that featured those strange pale eyes and new interesting ones that revolved around the wedding. I think the worst "wedding" dream was the one where Anya got back her demon powers and then cursed me with an eternal boil on the tip of my nose and male pattern baldness combined with hairy ears for not building her a house on my vacant lot.

The good news is that she didn't turn back into a Vengeance Demon, the bad news is that she left me at the Alter. Sort of.

You see, Spike's party was a great success. Lots of drunken construction workers mingling with lots of drunken demons of the harmless variety. The bleached vampire even went so far as to invite Angel, or "The Great Irish Ponce" as Spike called him. Angel brought Wesley Wyndham-Price and some big black guy called Gunn. Spike almost got himself staked by constantly
referring to them as "The Pouff's Minions-to-be". This started a huge argument in which Angel insisted that he'd *never* turn them, but if he *did*, he'd make them childer and *not* minions. I don't think that Wes or Gunn found that very reassuring.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Still, a good time was had by all. I woke up the next day in Spike's crypt and in his bed. I was smooshed between Spike himself and a set of soiled silk sheets. I was hung-over like a dead horse, but I finally managed to convince, read that as threaten, Spike not to breathe a single word of our late night and early morning activities.

Feeling like the inside of my mouth was coated with glue and sawdust, I left to go get ready for the "practice run" that was planned for that day. The way I understood it, the practice was so that we all knew our parts and didn't screw up in front of the audience the next day during the "real" wedding.

So, I headed home and hit the shower. Trust me, I needed it for a bunch of reasons. I drank down a couple painkillers with cold water and hobbled off to the church. Typically, I was the last to arrive. Spike, the bastard, didn't look like he had spent the night in a drunken haze and then had nasty dirty sex till the wee hours of the morning. Me on the other hand, I looked bad enough for both of us.

Anyway, we all took our places and waited for the signal. The preacher walked us through our paces and gave hints and advice on how to do each little thing. We got most of the way through the practice run when suddenly Anya got very still and pale. Then she began to shake. Worried, I turned to reach out and ask what was wrong, but I never got the chance.

She began to cry and she stepped back away from me. A quickly mumbled, "I'm sorry. I can't do this. I'm sorry." and she was gone. Out of the church, out of the town and out of my life. To this day, I don't know why. She's never called and she's never written. I tried to find her, but it's as if she just disappeared.

Needless to say, I went into a deep funk. For about three weeks I rarely spoke or ate and I certainly didn't smile or joke around. I felt as if I had been sucker-punched in the gut and I couldn't seem to catch my breath back.

Then, like a bolt of lightening out of a clear blue sky, I knew what to do with that vacant lot and all of my building supplies. Like a man possessed, I went about getting building permits and zoning permits and all of those other legal type things squared away.

Then, I contacted an architect that I know from working on various job sites. I told him what I was interested in doing and showed him the plans that I had drawn up. He looked them over and admitted to being impressed. He only made a few suggestions that would change, not the appearance, but would merely enhance the structure's integrity. When he asked where I learned to draw up plans, I had no answer. I just *knew* how the building should look and what I needed to get it that way.

Then I started building. I was able to do a lot of it myself, but the majority required more than one person. You can't frame a building by yourself, no matter *how* good you are. Some of the guys from work offered to help out occasionally for nothing but beer and pizza. Willow and Tara also helped too. They could hold things immobile with magic until I could nail it into place, not to mention that they could lift and move heavy stone around easily. They saved me a lot of money on rental fees for equipment that could handle heavy weights.

As work progressed on my building, I began to notice some odd things happening. Other people seemed to be caught up in their own bizarre little obsessions as well.

Giles, for instance. He still owned and operated the Magic Box, and Buffy's training room was inviolate, but he purchased the abandoned building next door to it. He turned it into his own personal Library and research area. We all used it regularly when we had to figure out a plan to fight demons. It was much more private than the store and it was larger and more comfortable. Not only that, but he decorated the entire place with owls.

Willow and Tara managed to talk Giles into letting them have the leftover space in the Magic Box. Where we once planned our campaigns against the Hellmouth creatures now stands a permanent Alter to Hecate, the Goddess the two witches call upon for their magic. Oddly enough, even though Willow and Tara are the only ones to worship her, we have all gotten into the habit of leaving things on it for her. Incense, fruit, feathers, bells. Whatever comes to mind. What's more, I'm not the only one who whispers "Watch over Willow and Tara please." when a token or gift is left.

Spike's torture chamber has also undergone a transformation, however, I'm the only one who would be in a position to notice. The witches and Giles *never* venture down there. I visit, while not a lot, often enough.

The biggest difference is that he found a lovely wooden cabinet somewhere and brought it in. He stores the majority of his instruments inside of it. All except his metal railroad spike. It sits up on top on a piece of black silk. He's also placed about thirty-to-forty candles down there and they are always lit. When one burns out, he replaces it. Don't even get me started on the various metal bowls filled with alien body parts and fluids that are scattered about the room.

I should probably find his "play area" the most horrifying place on the planet, but I don't. Spike's a genius at inflicting physical pain in the same way that Angelus was at inflicting emotional torment. Watching him work is somehow spiritual. He enjoys it, not because he hates his enemies, but because he likes pain. What can I say? He's a demon.

Then there's me. And my building.

It took me almost a steady 20 months of working on it before it was even close to finished. It was around that time that IT happened.I was almost done. I just had to put this last stone in place to complete the Alter, which is the focal point of the main room. It was heavy though, so I'd need help with it.

In fact, I think *that* night was on a Thursday.

I ran my hand along the smooth polished surface of what would be the Alter's top and just smiled. After one last lingering look, I decided to head on home. It was late and I was tired. I wanted to grab a biteto eat, a shower and then hit my pillows.

Grabbing up my tools, I turned around and... came face to face with a stranger. One with pale eyes and a hauntingly familiar face. This was the same face that had followed me in my dreams since the night Buffy died.

"Who?..." My voice was a startled squeak. Nothing like good first impressions, huh?

He grinned a crooked smile and his pale eyes crinkled up at the corners the same way as they do in my dreams. "Hey Xander. I'm Strife; th' God a Mischief." The stranger then looked around my building with a pleased expression on his face. "Hey, ya did a great job at buildin' my Temple and all. Thanks."

I think I sputtered in confusion, but I'm not sure. He had this sense of presence like Willow and Tara do when they are doing a major spell, but it was a hundred times more intense. It was disconcerting to say the least. Fortunately, Strife took pity on me and led me over to the side area and helped me to sit down on one of the chairs I had put there. He sat down next to me and began to tell me a tale that turned my world upside down and inside out.

It seems that when Dawn's blood opened the portal it did more than just dissolve some of the barriers between the worlds. It also caused an earthquake type of reaction on Olympus, which is another level of reality.

According to Strife, the Olympian Gods were not a myth as most people believe, but very real beings with strange powers based on several things, one of which is faith and worship from mortals. The Olympians didn't leave or abandon their followers from any sort of maliciousness on *their* part, but because they had no choice. They faced an enemy that corrupted a group of people, some of whom had power of their own, and then this enemy taught the people a way to destroy the Olympians. Faced with a choice of going to war, which would have killed countless humans, or slipping off into a dreamlike trance known as Twilight, the Olympians choose to fall asleep. The portal opening woke them up.

Once awake, they realized that there were many people around the world who were unclaimed by other divine beings and that "resonated", whatever that means, to various of the Olympian's spheres of influence. What's more, their powers were no longer confined to the Mediterranean area of the world. So, going out into the world for the first time in ages, the Olympians began to "claim" different mortals and immortals for themselves. This spiritual claiming influenced or slightly changed most of the people, but in a few cases, the influence was strong.

I happened to be one of those lucky few. Strife says it's because I have "Priest" potential. At first, I wasn't too sure that I was what he was looking for. I mean, do I *seem* like the sort who would worship Strife? Yeah, I thought not, but when he explained it to me, I could begin to see it.

The way he tells it, he's Mischief. In *all* it's forms. From silly harmless jokes all the way up to murder. While I would need a *huge* reason to get deadly with another human, I am *constantly* killing demons and aliens. And I have been since before I could legally drive. And let's face it; I have a highly developed sense of humor. I can find amusement in *anything*. Well, except the death of a friend.

So, now I follow the Mischief God and run his Temple as best I can. I enjoy it and he's a blast and a half to hang around with. I let the lease on my apartment go and live at the Temple now but I still work construction and I still go on patrol.

Recently, I've been coming in after work to find stuff on the Alter. Gum, rubber bands, stickers, Barbie dolls and Matchbox cars. I wasn't sure where the stuff was all coming from, but Strife told me that children were stopping by and leaving him gifts. I've since found that kids *love* the Mischief God. Some come in and tell him stories about the pranks they've pulled and some come in to get advice on how to deal with bullies. And oddly enough, Strife adores the kids right back.

On another note, my favorite Olympian has given me the inside scoop on my friend's personal obsessions as well. Giles was claimed by Athena. It seems that she's not only the Goddess of Wisdom, but she's a War Goddess as well and she specializes in strategy.

Of course, both Willow and Tara were claimed by Hecate. I knew that. What I didn't know was that the claiming was different for each. Willow was claimed as a "Battle Mage" and Tara as a Priestess.

Spike now follows one of Strife's cousins. Like Strife, he's also a member of the House of War. He's the God of Pain and his name is Demios. As frightening as that may sound, it *is* oddly appropriate. When Strife told me that, certain things in my head clicked. Spike's torture chamber is really a shrine to Demios.

Now I only have one problem. I've pretty much gotten over my grief for Buffy. I still miss her, but I no longer feel like I'm torn up inside over her death. I've also put the whole wedding disaster behind me. I've been through hurt and grief over it as well as anger and confusion. Then, for a while I felt numb about it. Now I no longer even dwell on it. It's done and I've moved on.

However, Strife's lover is obsessed with seeing me in a new relationship. That wouldn't be such a big deal, but how do you tell the God of Love that you don't think you are the "right person" for a bleached blonde undead worshiper of Pain?

Even if he *is* one of your closest friends...