DISCLAIMER: OK.... here we go... all and sundry legals.
I do not own Giles, Jenny, Buffy or any of the rest of the cast. They belong to Joss, (whom I also do not own and hope I will not get sued by because I got no money), WB and Mutant Enemy, who is also sometimes known as Joss but only while the moon is full. It is almost new right now so I feel safe. I don't mean these insults Joss, I really do love you and want you to continue doing the show, but I feel that the characters might not agree with me.
In this story I made a reference to a story called 'A Woman's Remorse' by Alexis Victoria and also the more well-known 'Friendship' by Melinda S. Dawney and I STRONGLY do not reccomend that you read them if you are the prudish sort or if you have a delicate stomach. I mean it. But I thought giving credit was the polite thing to do anyway. Sorry Lex and Melinda.
Xander walked into the library. That in itself does not sound like a particularly foolhardy or even unusual thing to do, seeing as Xander was one of the two original Slayerettes, who held their headquarters in said library. The circumstances were rather different at this jucture, however, seeing as the sign outside of the door said 'LIBRARY CLOSED FOR RENOVATION', which was the Slayer Squad's code-signal for "KEEP OUT." Add that and stir to the fact that both Buffy and Willow had determinedly told Xander to Stay Out of the library and their hair today, and we can now view Xander's entrance in a different light.
He half-expected them to be involved in some sort of witchcraft, probably directed at him, or halfway through a long, dramatic 'women-talk' that, he suspected, was nothing more than an excuse to vivisect various members of his gender behind their backs.
Whatever he was expecting, it was certainly not to find the library lights dimmed, with only the glow of computers to illuminate Willow, who was curled in one of the wing chairs and softly moaning as if in pain, and Buffy, who was still gamely seated at one of the terminals scrolling through pages of text.
"What's going on here?" he asked, startled into breaking his self-appointed Stealth Mode. Willow didn't even look up, but Buffy slowly turned to face him, with eyes the size of dinner plates and a looks of vacant shock on her face that closely resembled the one she wore the night after she'd died. She simply shook her head, wordlessly, and turned back to the screen. Upon coming a few steps closer, Xander clearly heard her mutter, "My God..."
Now distinctly worried, Xander turned instead to Willow, taking a moment to turn the lights up. He gently took hold of Willow's shoulders and shook her, trying to bring her out of her shock. For a moment she looked at him, and recognition glittered in her eyes; then, she returned to her semi-catatonic state. This time, Xander managed to catch some of her words.
"Friendship..." she muttered, over and over again. "Friendship."
"Buffy?" Xander asked, beginning to get nervous. "What's going on here?"
Buffy seemed to shake herself from a trance at the sound of his voice. After another glance at the screen with fascinated horror, she closed the document she had been reading and backed away from the computer as if it were a snake. She looked back at Xander, and a perplexed expression came over her face. "Xander, I thought we told you to stay away."
Xander gulped. "You did. I didn't."
Buffy shrugged wearily. "Well, it's not really that important. This may turn out to be far worse than either of us originally suspected, and you ought to be informed."
Xander nodded and braced himself. "So... what is it? A succubus? Some prophecy? Another ghost loose in the Internet?"
Buffy looked up, startled, and then laughed. "Oh. No, no, it's nothing like that. You see --"
Unfortunately, she broke off just before explaining when she noticed Willow's condition. She bent down and gently shook the redhead, attempting to break her out of it. "Will? It's okay. It's all gone. It's just a story, it isn't real."
Willow shuddered. "I will never be able to look Angel in the eye again," she declared with utter conviction.
"What? Willow, what's going on?" Xander demanded. "I can see I'm missing something information here."
Buffy took a deep breath and began to explain. "Well, I'd been wondering where Joss, curse his name, had been getting some of the crazy ideas he had been using in his latest plots..."
"...and I suggested that he was possibly getting inspiration from stories and scripts being written by the fans," Willow took up the story line. "Like, the aborted... thing... between you and me; it just wasn't natural, not at all."
Buffy nodded. "And that thing, with Giles being so unreasonable about Angel..."
Xander snorted. "Oh. Unreasonable. Is that what you call it when you get ticked at someone because they smashed your life, killed your girlfriend and physically tortured you for hours on end?"
Buffy got a steely glint in her eye. "I didn't say he didn't have reason to. But he of all people should know the difference between the acts a demon does and the acts a human being does. And who gave me that whole lecture thingie about forgiveness not being something you have to earn? It just wasn't natural..."
"You're talking about the emotional marathon man..."
"Guys!" Willow interjected. "You're getting off the point. Which is, Joss is just getting more and more unpredictable. I've been hearing some really nasty rumors, and if they're true... well, we could all be in a lotta trouble."
Buffy forcibly reoriented herself. "So the Willster came up with the fanfic theory, and we decided to go on the web and do some checking out. And what we've found..." Another shudder ran through her; dramatic, possibly, but understandable. "If Joss is getting his ideas from fanfic, and it's looking more and more like he might be, and he continues to do so..." She trailed off, leaving the rest unsaid, and simply shrugged.
"...We could be in extremely deep... you know," Willow finished for her.
"Really?" Xander looked sardonic, even for Xander. "I find it very hard to believe that anyone could write worse scenarios for us than Joss' wild flights."
Buffy looked at him with pity. "Xander," she said kindly, "you have no idea."
Willow just shuddered and said, "Never never never have I been so glad to be Joss' puppet, as opposed to someone else's."
Xander was beginning to look nervous. "It couldn't be that bad, could it?"
The girls nodded simultaneously. "It could."
Buffy looked at Willow. "I guess we'll have to prove it... we'll have to show him."
Willow nodded. "Good call. But nothing about him, he'd freak; nothing about you, he'd freak even more; nothing about me, I'd freak... something about Angel, then." She dove to the computer, and began typing in one specific email address. "Here, Xander. Come read this, and tell me it's not worse than anything Joss has ever devised. Now, it was supposed to take place right before that Homecoming dance..."
As Xander read the first three lines, his eyes began to widen, much as Buffy's had. Two pages in, he was reduced to simply shaking his head in disbelief, or perhaps it was denial.
"Well?" Buffy prompted, quite deliberately avoiding looking at the screen.
"That's sick. That's really sick. And as much as I dislike Dead-boy... there's no way he could have done something like that."
Buffy nodded. "Not with the curse on him, anyway..."
"More to the point, where did he find the meat hooks?"
"Xander, do you mind?" Willow said. She had also not been reading, and had turned a distinctive shade of green.
"Sorry."
"But anyway..." Buffy started, "the point of that was, there are a lot of people out there, some with even better grasps of what we're like, that write fiction like that. What would happen if Joss read a story like that and decided to do a show like it? Next time, it might be you on the business end of a kitchen implement."
Xander shuddered. "I can see why you'd be worried."
Willow nodded gravely. "We keep running across eerie parallels, written even before Joss produced some of the shows... and there's this one girl who wrote this story -- I'll show you -- that people keep saying should be an episode. She's better than most writers, but still... I doubt you'd like acting out this story line..."
She began opening another window. Xander leaned over her shoulder and watched. He only had to read the summary, written underneath the words "What's Mine Is Yours", before agreeing with Willow; he wanted nothing to do with this. But Willow seemed determined to share with him his grisly fate. In an attempt to distract her, he pointed out another story on the page. "Hey, Will, what's this one?" he asked rather deperately. "'Source of Inspiration'? That looks like the sort of thing you were looking for."
Luckily for Xander, Willow gracefully allowed herself to be diverted. "I'll check," she said. She opened the file and began to read. "Header... disclaimer... story. 'Xander walked into the library. That in itself does not sound like a particularly foolhardy or even unusual thing to do...' hey, that's weird."
"What?" said Buffy, alarmed. She walked up behind Willow and peered over her shoulder. "What's weird this time?"
Willow highlighted a specific passage, which said: 'both Buffy and Willow had determinedly told Xander to Stay Out of the library and their hair today,' and said, "This just happened."
"Wow," Xander said, impressed. "Freaky. Keep reading."
Willow did. "And look!" she cried. "Now it has the conversation we just had. 'What would happen if Joss read a story like that and decided to do a show like it, next time it might be you on the business end of a kitchen implement,' yadda yadda yadda... and now it has this conversation."
Buffy looked aghast. "You mean, this fic is happening right now? All around us?"
Willow nodded solemnly. "Word for word."
Xander smiled, a bit hesitantly. "Whoa. You're not actually buying this, are you?" he said anxiously. "I mean, it has to be a coincidence. A fanfic is a fanfic, but this is real life!"
"Uh, Xander," Buffy pointed out as Willow scrolled down. A horrified look crossed his face as he read on the screen the exact same words he had just said.
He swallowed, hard. "Does the story end there?" he said in a faint voice.
Willow looked, then shook her head. "No. It's only about three-quarters finished."
"Oh, my God," Buffy said as the implications sank in. "Do you realize what this means..?"
Willow nodded grimly. "We're trapped in this story."
"YAAAHHH!!" Xander yelled, and, rushing away from the computer, began beating his fists on the wall. "This isn't happening! This can't be true! Lemme out! Lemme out!"
He continued like this, Willow trying to calm him down, as Buffy continued reading in the story, realizing that by doing so, she could tell the future. "Uh, Xander," Buffy said, cutting across his hysteria, "according to this, you just set up a chain reaction that will cause that part of the ceiling to collapse in just three lines."
He stopped, confused, but at least it calmed his panic. "What?" he said.
Fortunately, Willow had registered the statement, so she was able to yank Xander out of harm's way just as there was a creak, a rumble, and a support beam crashed down just where the two had been standing.
Xander regarded the mess glumly. "So now what do we do?" he said unhappily. "Live out our lives in a fan story?" He made a face. "I'm sorry, but the prospect really doesn't appeal to me."
Willow agreed, then her face brightened. "Hey! Buffy! Skip to the end -- see how we get out of here!" she said enthusiastically, and rushed back over to the computer which would decide their fate.
Xander followed, somewhat less optimistically. "We never will," he proclaimed tragically. "We'll be stuck here for the rest of our lives. Somehow I always knew I'd end up like th--"
Suddenly, Buffy burst out laughing. "Ohmigod, Xander!" she said hysterically. "You -- it -- Willow, take a look at this!"
Willow leaned over her shoulder, effectively cutting off Xander's view of the screen. After a moment, she, too, began to laugh, although after a quick glance at Xander she tried to smother it. "No, Buffy," she protested half-heartedly. "That's -- not funny! It's cruel and -- and it's horrible -- and it's not funny!"
"Yes it is," Buffy said between giggles.
Willow capitulated. "Yes," she agreed, "it is."
"What?" Xander demanded. "What is it?" His distress only seemed to provoke more laughter. "Whaaaat?"
The End
-The End-
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Please don't feed the authors (or rather, please do)
More more more! (go on to #4)
Calgon, take me away (whatever that means)
The Brotherhood ][ Last Man Out ][ Blacklight
Behind the Scenes ][ What's Mine Is Yours ][ 3 Thru The Merry-O
Swing Set ][ The Healer ][ Black & White
The Meek Shall Inherit ][ Rosemary For Remembrance
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