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The Seventh Gift


Prologue

The thing about spells is that they’re terribly susceptible to the caster’s intentions.  The caster’s focus summons the energy, and the words shape it, but the fine details are frequently determined all by the caster’s intentions.  The amount of power in the spell helps, of course.

Willow had seen that the battle with the First Evil would take all their lives – Buffy, Giles, Faith, the Scoobies, her own dear Tara – all of them would die.  Xander would have to be there – the others already had their various parts to play, and Willow needed someone to protect her so she could cast the final spell with no interruptions… and she needed to survive long enough to do it.  Xander had to be there.  But Willow had also seen that Xander was the only one of all of them who had a chance to survive: He was not killed by the fight - though he was hurt, the wounds were survivable.  No, Xander was killed in the backlash of Willow’s spell, which is what gave her the idea.

Willow hated that in the end, Xander, who was perhaps the best of them, would lose everything and be mourned by none.  Forgotten, when he should be hailed as the hero he was.  But Willow could change this, could give him the gift of life after Sunnydale – but such a life could only be lived if his wounds were looked after.  He would need a healer, and Willow was sure she could construct a spell to send Xander to one who would take time to tend close to his patient.  This, then, was her first wish: that Xander have a healer nearby who would tend and defend his patient, and would use his gifts willingly and without question for her friend.

Xander, poor Xander.  Of all of them, he fought alone without psychic or supernatural powers, completely human against the completely inhuman.  Xander had taken hit after hit in a battle he was severely under-trained and under-armed for.  Some of it was unavoidable, if one lived in Sunnydale: how could one ever hope to train or prepare for a giant, man-eating preying mantis in mating heat?  Some of it, such as the Incan mummy, had been a painful coming of age.  But much of it, most of it, were battles Xander chose to fight – vampires, demons, possession – knowing that the battle might be hopeless, but hoping anyway to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves.  Thus, her second wish:  That Xander would know the safety of having someone always at his back, a brother in arms, both ready to defend him against all comers, and defend the innocent against himself.

Willow’s regrets in life were few.  She did not regret her relationship with Tara in the least, despite the difficulty such a thing imposed upon her.  Nor did she regret her decision to take up the study of magic, knowing as she did that it was a great help in their fight against the forces of darkness.  And while she did not regret the learning experiences of her own childhood with her nose solidly in her book, she did, supremely, regret that she had not been a better friend to Xander.  She should have, she thought, been with him when he was discovering bike ramps and bottle rockets, should have shared the experiences of mud pies and mudskippers and secret candy stashes won at the fair.  Too late now to correct her own childish solemnity of play, her third wish formed nearly subconsciously: that Xander would know a friend of the heart, a friend to revel in his childhood with, to discover the joys of adulthood with, and most importantly, to share his most secret and sacred fears with.  Xander, she hoped, would never be without friends in his future.

Xander was Willow’s first crush, for she recognized in him the beautiful, gentle soul that was.  Strong without crushing, caring without coddling, sensitive and sweet.  Young as she was, she knew from the moment she had discovered romance that Xander would be perfect.  It was somewhat unfortunate that his perfection was simply not for her.  Still, she wished him the loving and nourishing relationship he so deserved, if he could but find it.  Such was her fourth wish: that Xander have a teacher wise in the ways of women, one who would delight in showing him how to attract quality members of the opposite sex (or the same sex, if Xander swung that way!).

Moreover, Willow had always felt it a shame that Xander had not been able to get into college.  Aside from the monetary issues, Xander himself was actually quite intelligent, but school had ever been hard with him.  Willow herself did not understand what blocked Xander’s talent from showing – whether the material was presented in an inaccessible manner, or if Xander himself had chosen to under-represent his talents, but in her fifth, fervent, wish, Willow asked Xander to find a teacher, one understanding of his weaknesses in the classroom and able to capitalize of his strengths to help him succeed as she knew he could; her Xander was much smarter than he let himself be.

And silently as always, Willow raged that her brother, her best friend and half of her soul, had been subjected to the horrors of his own youth.  She was never sure quite when she became aware of the problems at home.  Mixed in with her earliest memories of ‘playing doctor’ – the wrong way, according to her friends now – were memories of gently cleaning and bandaging cigarette burns, putting cold compresses on black eyes and belt marks edged in blood, and the first knife scar.  Xander would lie silently clutching her pillow, tears leaking from his eyes, while she read to him from her books.  She read Herakles to him, or Ulysses, and while Xander gave no sign of it, she had known her presence was appreciated, had known that her own parents’ encouragement of her independent studies of biology, first aid, the human body might be all that stood between her friend and death some day.  And she had known a heartbreaking truth, even then, that she could heal the body, but she couldn’t heal what was broken.  So was her sixth wish: that Xander have one available to him who was wise in the ways of the soul, who could help heal his own mental and emotional wounds gained in a life no child should ever have had to bear.

Willow loved Xander for having the strength to make it through his childhood without bitterness and hate.  Loved that he was loyal, courageous, and generous with his heart.  Loved him all the more because she knew how very hard it must have been for him to be so brave when his father tried to beat and rape his independence and spirit out of him.  And his mother, drunk, drugged, willfully blind, never tried to protect him, sometimes even roared that all he was good for was taking it when she was too tired to stop Lester Harris’s fist or his advances.  And thus was Willow’s seventh and last wish formed: that Xander would know the love of a man who cherished and valued his son, a good father-figure to counter his own so very cruel one.  And she hoped that this man would be one who had no problems beating the crap out of Lester Harris, if need be.

All of this was perhaps why when Xander woke to cold pre-dawn darkness after the fight with the First Evil, he woke with a body that was still covered in scars and missing an eye despite his somehow being de-aged to a mere 8 years old again; why he woke in a small dirt alley, huddled against the branch-and-bark-stripped tree trunks that made up the wall of a small building in a small town made almost entirely of other wooden structures.  There were no contrails in the sky, nor was there any light pollution to blot out the stars, nor any other sign of modern civilization that he could recognize at all.  There weren’t many places in time that could offer all the sanctuaries Willow wished for Xander, after all.  And of them all, there was nowhere and no-when where there was also an appropriate father-figure, a person who would face no consequences whatsoever should Lester Harris suddenly cease to exist after crossing paths with them.  Nowhere, no-when, and no person, that is, except in a little town in the American Old West called Four Corners, where in 1872 a group of eclectic men had taken up the mantle of peacekeepers.   They were led by a hard, embittered man in black.  A man they called Chris Larabee.



*****************Mag7 X BtVS*********************************

Part 1: Past Tense

Xander struggled to wake, head aching and vision in his one good eye blurring.  It was cold, bitterly cold, but the acrid stench around him seemed to cling anyway.  The cold dirt under his toes was what finally cleared and focused his mind – it was such an unexpected sensation that it temporarily cut through all the distractions of a confused mind and pained body to afford him some much-needed clarity.

He was in an alley – that much was clear – as was the wooden wall across from him.  He felt another wooden structure behind him as he tried to pull himself up to stand.  A sharp pain in his lower leg stopped him, and he fell back to the ground, gasping, and for a moment, he was bathed in pain: his left leg, his right arm, his head, his ribs felt like they were going to disintegrate with every harsh breath, and even his ass seemed to be one massive bruise.  He concentrated on breathing shallowly and slowly and as his sight cleared up – again – he raised his hands up to see what was wrong.

His hands were small.  And pale.  He swallowed; he hadn’t seen his limbs this delicate and dainty since he was a child – and he was a small child before he’d hit puberty.  When he’d shot up to tower over just about everyone right before high school, all he could think of was to be grateful that he wouldn’t be picked on anymore.  That relief hadn’t applied to Lester Harris, who had seemed more determined than ever to make sure Xander knew just how much of an aggravation he was.  Frowning, he tried to think back to why he might be this way.  Ah, that was it – Willow had said her spell would require a sacrifice of 12 years of their lives from each of them.  They had all assumed they would live 12 years less than otherwise.  Obviously, they had been wrong.  And now, in addition to being eight years old again – a shitty year if he’d ever had one – he’d broken his right arm.  He studied his unnaturally bent forearm, and could only hope it was a clean break.

Xander sighed.  He didn’t know where he was, and sure as heck wouldn’t know anyone who could help him.  As an eight year old, he’d been pathetically unable to defend himself.  He’d been smaller than the other kids his age, making it easy for them to gang up on him.  Knowing what he knew now, he supposed he could avoid those problems again – he still had his adult knowledge and experience, and if he couldn’t outwit an eight year old with that, he deserved to get kicked in the shins.  Adults in his childhood hadn’t been any better, ignoring him or worse, kicking him away when he tried to ask for something.  Neither of his parents were particularly good at seeing that he was kept in food, clean clothes, or clean self.  For all of that, even by eight, he had preferred to take care of himself: when his parents paid attention to him, it usually resulted in pain.  Now, broken, battered, in a strange place, he would have to do so again.  But hey, he’d survived the Hellmouth, he was sure he could survive childhood again. 

But he’d have to find a way to set his arm, first.

****************Mag7 X BtVS****************************************


Vin leaned casually against the wood pole holding up the porch roof in front of the jail, surveying the small town of Four Corners in the early morning light.  The place wasn’t much, but somehow in the last few years, despite his better judgment, it had become home.  It was the place his brothers lived, it was the place that provided sanctuary, it was the place they protected.  Except for his first few years of life, Vin had never known a place that felt as safe and secure as this: a place he’d be glad to bring a woman to and raise a family in.  Even though he had loved his brothers in the Comanche tribes, the feel among their tents had been one of uncertainty and impending doom, and he hadn’t quite been able to think of himself bringing childer into such a tumultuous future.  But here, among the wooden clapboard houses and the white-man’s worrisome ways, he had nonetheless found peace.  Peace, and thoughts of the future, despite a bounty put upon his head by those same white men he now lived among.

One of the major reasons for that feeling of peace was sitting right beside him: Chris Larabee, dressed in his customary black, sprawled lazily in the chair on the jailhouse porch, sipping his morning coffee.  His scowl might be forbidding to the other residents of Four Corners, but Vin found it a reassuring sign of normality, much like all of his six brothers’ quirky ways.  He was much more worried when Chris’s face was a complete blank, or when he got that crazy gleam in his eye – the first was Chris’s ‘war paint’; the second, the sign of a plan gone crazy, one that could save the day, or end in disaster for all of them.  Worse, Vin was never sure if Chris-of-the-gleaming-eye was in the mood to short-sheet Buck, or take on the entire Mexican army (nor was he actually sure which of the two was the more dangerous).  But he did know that he would follow the man beside him into hell, because Chris Larabee was just crazy insane enough to get them back out again in one piece. 

It was a stupid thing to say.  It was one of those things you said to make conversation, even when you knew your partner was just as, if not more than, aware of the surroundings as you were.  Still, Vin said it: “Y’ see what I see?  By th’ water barrel next to th’ alley.”

Larabee stared into his cup as if it held all the secrets in the world.  “Mm-hmm.”

The barrel in question was holding up a young’n Vin didn’t recognize.  Perhaps his family had come in on the stage while he was out on patrol, but he didn’t think so: Chris didn’t know who the lad was either, or he would have said something.  The dark-haired lad was concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other, taking a few limping steps before stopping to rest, hand on whatever was next to him – the wall, then the barrel, then the wall again.  He seemed stymied by the steps up to the boardwalk, staring blankly at them for a long before glancing around.  It was only a moment, but the boy’s face was turned toward Vin and Chris long enough for them to see an eye patch over his right eye.  Chris shifted restlessly beside him, jaw tightening.

The boy finally limped along the base of the steps, electing to use the edge of the boardwalk for his support instead of walking on the firmer footing of the boardwalk itself.  Chris grunted.

“Think his arm’s broke, Chris.”

“We need to get him to Nathan’s then,” Chris said, getting to his feet and ambling down their own boardwalk’s steps.  He nodded at Vin to circle ‘round – even across the street the child had looked scared and in pain, and you couldn’t tell what a kid would do when they were like that.  Kids were like wild animals in that sense, not of a mind to know friend from foe when they were hurt, and like an animal, it was best to plan for their fright.  Vin didn’t think the boy could run on that leg of his, but you never knew.

Vin ambled to the steps in front of the mercantile, and took a seat so he wouldn’t appear so large to the boy as he came into view.  Up close, Vin could see more alarming details. The boy’s clothing was too big, and under the dirt, it was torn and bloodied besides.  A long, deep slice along the left side of his forehead was still slowly oozing blood.  Through a rent in his trousers that was perilously close to the boy’s crotch, Vin could see an old scar, healed now but obviously serious at the time.  His thought was to strike up a conversation with the boy and convince him of the wisdom of seeing Nathan, the town’s healer, but it didn’t quite go as planned. 

Pain lines etched the boy’s face, eyebrows pulled down in concentration as he continued his step-step-step-stop a bit pattern.  He was concentrating so hard that he didn’t even notice Vin until he bumped right into the seated man.  The boy gasped and Vin watched a tumble of emotions flash across face is swift succession – surprise, pain, wariness, and then sheer terror.  He spun around before Vin had a chance to say anything, and tried to run – only to crash into Chris, who’d been quietly following along behind. 

“Whoa there, pard,” Chris began, starting to kneel down to child-level himself.  But the boy’s quick maneuver was evidently just too much for his leg, and he suddenly collapsed, face pale beneath the dirty hair.  Chris’s arm flashed out, preventing the child from falling.  He cradled the lad against his chest as he stood up again.  “So light,” he murmured. 

“I’ll rouse Nathan, Cowboy – take your time.”

*********************Mag7 X BtVS***************************************

Interlude: Nathan, the First Gift

The second time Xander woke up, he was warm and covered in blankets.  His aches were distant, and his head felt cottony, and he knew he had been drugged, but he couldn’t muster up the energy to worry.  A cool, wet cloth was sponged across his forehead, and a deep, comforting voice told him to go back to sleep.  He was unable to do anything but comply, and slipped back into the darkness.


Nathan frowned at his small patient.  He disliked using laudanum on such a small child, but he had known the boy would need it when he tallied up the visible problems: broken arm, sprained ankle, the scratch on the boy’s head, and a few more bleeding wounds elsewhere, the broken ribs.  He’d set what he could set, wrapped what he could wrap, and cleaned what needed to be cleaned, but the boy’s problems were greater than he could heal in the clinic.

His clothes had been inadequate for the chill late-fall weather for one thing, and who dressed a child without proper under-things anyway?  (He’d had some kind of breech-clout on, but the stitching was too finely done to be an Indian product – Nathan wasn’t sure what to make of it.)  Perhaps his parents were poor; that would also explain the too-thin body, and maybe even a few of the scars.  Malnutrition would lead to easily broken bones and an even more easily bruised body.  But poverty couldn’t explain everything – like the missing eye (Nathan had checked underneath the patch in case it hid an infection); the obvious knife scars, some of which had been very deep and dangerous; the whip-scarred back; and worst of all, the evidence of old violence in the most private of places. 

It made Nathan sick to think about it, angry on behalf of this child.  Why didn’t someone stop this abuse?  And as he’d worked on the him, he’d come to a decision: the boy’s parents were obviously unfit, and he’d personally take this child and any others they had away from them and see to it they found good, loving foster families.  If it came down to it, he’d foster the children himself, even if he had to move from Four Corners to escape prejudice and further violence to do it.  He would have to convince Chris that his young patient shouldn’t be returned to his parents without an in-depth investigation into their moral fitness, first, but he didn’t think that would be too hard to do.  Might be harder to convince him not to tell the parents where the boy was at all right now.

Quietly, he washed and disinfected his hands in a basin of hot water before he went out to talk to Chris and Vin. 

*******************MAG7 X BtVS***********************

Part 1: Continued

Nathan walked out to join them on the clinic’s balcony, the determined look on his face telling Chris more than he wanted to know, and yet, not enough.  Trouble was stalking his town once again, and the boy was probably the center of it.

“Well?”  Chris turned to Nathan and leaned his butt on the rail.

“I set his arm, wrapped his ankle and ribs, cleaned the cuts – that head wound is shallow just like you thought, Vin, but you know how head wounds bleed.”  Chris and Vin both nodded absently, having had prior experience with head wounds.  “There’s not much more I can do, but Chris, that boy’s a map of scars.  I can give him a clean place to rest, but he needs a lot more than that.”

“Saw that leg scar,” Vin offered, “it was purty deep.”

Nathan nodded.  “He’s been whipped on, Chris, whipped bad.  I’d guess his injuries are just in the latest in a long line of beatin’s.”  Nathan hesitated, not sure how his most important news would be received.  “Boy’s been used, too,” he said softly.  “More’n oncet, by the looks of it.”

“Sonofabitch!” Chris hissed, face flushing deep red.

“Easy, Cowboy,” Vin said, his own expression hardened steel, “we’ll make sure tha’ pervert what done it cain’t no more.”
 
Nathan wondered if he should feel quite as satisfied as he did.

“Do we even know where to start looking for that… man?” Nathan asked.  The boy had been too out of it to say anything to him, but – his hopes faded as Chris and Vin looked at each other, dismayed.

“We didn’t get the kid’s name, either,” Chris sighed.  “Vin checked his back-trail, but it ended in the Cooper’s alley.”

“Ezra,” Vin suggested.

“All of us, discreetly,” Chris disagreed.  “We should keep the boy under wraps until we know he’s safe, too.”

“Well, I’m already in the clinic most of the time.”

Vin frowned.  “Don’t think he should stay there longer than he has too.  Be the first place the boy’s father’ll look for him, if’n he does.”

Chris grunted at that.  “My cabin.  Not many would bother us there.”

“Too far if something goes wrong – he needs to stay in town, Chris.”

“How ‘bout my room, then?  I don’t hardly use it, anyways…”  This suggestion suited the others; Vin’s room was next to Chris’s, and they could rotate a guard on the boy for quite a while before it was noticed.  And it was close enough that an emergency could easily be dealt with.

“Still want him here for a couple of days, though,” Nathan said.  “He’s lost a lot of blood, and I need to keep a close eye on him.”

“Might be a good idea to get Buck to stay with him, if’n you’re needed elsewhere, Nate,” Vin said thoughtfully.  Buck loved little kids, and the boy couldn’t find a better defender.

Chris shook his head at the same time that Nathan replied, “Might be better if he don’t see too many people at first.  What he’s been through – he’s got to be scared.”

“Buck’ll be so pissed if he sees him, he won’t be able to keep his mouth shut,” Chris added.  “And we can’t have him going off half-cocked at every strange man walking around town.  I’ll sit with him.”

“You sure?” Vin ask softly.  Unspoken, the specter of Adam, Chris’s son dead these 5 years, hung in the air.  Chris nodded, and gripped Vin’s arm in silent appreciation of his concern.

Nathan grinned suddenly.  “Anyways, it’s not like people ‘round here aren’t used to seeing you extra grumpy!”  Vin chuckled with him at that.

Chris scowled at his men, but as usual, it didn’t seem to have any effect.


The third time Xan had to struggle to wake up in those days, he found himself in a darkened room, although the bright light of day came through the closed window drapes and a lantern was lit on a small dresser nearby.  He was still a little fuzzy, but he thought lanterns – with actual flames, not those flame-shaped light-bulbs – had gone out of style years ago.  Maybe even last decade.

“Decided to join us, son?”

Xander started at the soft, gravelly voice, whipping around to see a familiar figure – the man he’d run into yesterday (or rather, when he’d last been awake) still dressed head to toe in black.  He was reclining on a hard chair at the foot of the bed, long legs stretched before him, crossed at the ankles.   Xander saw that his hat (black, of course) was hanging up next to the door, and the man’s pale face was crowned with wheat-blond hair. Xander wondered if he practiced that deceptively relaxed pose deliberately, and then decided that was a stupid question:  the man was obviously dangerous, and knew it.  Such a man wouldn’t do anything that wasn’t deliberate.

Xander, on the other hand, seemed destined to stumble gracelessly through every situation.  “Don’t you wear anything other than black?” he blurted.  The man raised his eyebrows in surprise, and Xander dropped his eyes to the guns slung low on his hip.  “Not that there’s anything wrong with that!” he hurried on.  “And just forget I said anything, because my foot just kinda lives permanently in my mouth, you know?”  Those guns, the spurs, the boots, the self-confidence that radiated from him, this man wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone, which meant Xander should be very afraid of him.  And he’d just had to go and insult his choice of wardrobe.  Good going, there, Xan – soon you’ll just be a Xander-shaped splat in the parking lot.  Jesus, why couldn’t he just keep his mouth shut?  This guy was gonna kill him.

“Hey, it’s all right.  I’m not gonna hurt you for asking a question son.”

“Huh?”  Confused, Xander stared at the guy. 

“I said,” and the man shifted to lean forward, emphasizing his words, “I’m not going to hurt you, son.  Certainly not for a little curiosity.”

“Oh, crap, did I say that out loud?”

The man frowned, and Xan automatically flinched at his forbidding face.  Reacting to this, the man leaned back and said, gently, “I’m not going to hurt you, son, but that kind of thing isn’t appropriate for a young boy to say.”

It was Xander’s turn to frown. “What kind of thing?”  He wracked his brains, but babbling idiot-Xan or not, he couldn’t figure out what he’d said wrong.

“Hmmm.  Well, let’s start over. What’s your name, kid?”

That was the first thing he’d understood since he woke up, even if he didn’t want to answer.  He didn’t know where he was, or who he was with, or what they might do to him.  He wasn’t sure he wanted to share critical information with a guy who held all the cards.

“I’m Chris Larabee,” the man said, holding out his hand for Xander to shake.  Xander stared suspiciously at it and finally the man – Larabee – withdrew it with a sigh.  “You met me the other day, sort of, when you…”

“Ran into you.  I’m sorry about that, I didn’t see you.”

Larabee’s mouth twitched a little.  “That’s all right, son, no harm done.  I’m the law in these parts – “ Xander instinctively flinched again, “- and I want to help you.  But I need your name to do that.”

Still, Xan hesitated.  Depending on where he was… well, he needed to ask then, and he did.  Larabee’s answer confused him even more – he didn’t have a clue where ‘Four Corners’ might be, although from the looks of things maybe it was some kinda re-enactment place where everyone was acting.  Yeah, like the Civil War guys.  But they seemed to be taking it a bit far, if his broken arm – now splinted and wrapped, he noticed – wasn’t enough for him to be in a hospital.  Or maybe they thought he was acting, too?  Just a little too caught up in the excitement, maybe?

No… no, that didn’t make any sense. 

Finally, Xan sighed.  Larabee was still waiting for an answer, and they had to call him something.  But he didn’t have to tell them everything.

“I’m Alexander, but everyone calls me Xander, or Xan.”

“No last name?”

Xander shook his head, picking at the worn blanket on the bed.

“Ok, then, Xander.  Don’t worry, son, I won’t let anyone hurt you again, I promise,” Larabee said softly. 

Xander shot him a surprised look.  And then abruptly, he yawned jaw-crackingly wide.

Larabee chuckled.  “Get some more sleep, Xander.  You’ve got a lot of healing to do yet.”  Xander let Larabee help him lie down again, it being the easiest thing to do in his sleepy confusion.  He watched as the man walked to the door, grabbing his hat as he did so.  At the door, Larabee turned around and smiled at him.  “I’ve got some things to do, Xander, but Vin will be here in a few minutes to keep you company.  Sleep tight.”

TBC...



Next Post: Part 1: Past Tense, Continued



-bs

Date: 2010-03-24 06:53 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] bugeyedmonster.livejournal.com
Eagerly anticipating the next chapter.

Date: 2010-03-24 12:01 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] boogieshoes.livejournal.com
thank you! :)

-bs

Date: 2010-03-28 05:24 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] luke-jaywalker.livejournal.com
I like. I like a lot.

Very good tensions you've built up, and this soon.

Want to see what Xander makes of this new universe he's found himself in. (Well, not universe, per se, but to him, certainly - "really serious re-enactment", when it's the real thing?)

And what Chris and others think of this 12-year-old kid who is, and will obviously soon prove, much more than he seems.

And what (as a reader, I can tell is going to be *something*) they'll find themselves up against.

This is good - at your usual top-5%-of-fanfic writing quality, but I take that as a given from you now. 'Good' in that I want to read more, and you better let me know when there's an update to this; I *want* to see what happens next.

Date: 2010-03-28 02:44 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] boogieshoes.livejournal.com
*grins* thanks, leo! :)

-bs

the neverending comment

Date: 2010-04-04 11:16 pm (UTC)
ext_18980: dichotomystudios.com (m7 chris comma)
From: [identity profile] slavelabour.livejournal.com
First of all, I really liked the prologue. It gave us enough of a background (crazy as it is) for Xan but it lets us focus on the Mag7 universe aspect while we file away the past prologue for future reference. I thought it was well done. (And after the first gift wish I started mentally cataloging which gift belonged to whom and then I realised WHY you chose the name Seventh Gift. And I laughed because I have an AU called Seventh Plague. Man, us Mag7 authors do enjoy our references to seven something.)

I've had various emo moments already.
- Xan is revealed to be missing that eye and it twisted me up a little. Most authors refuse to go all the way to kids with such public disfigurements, preferring to stay in the safe hidey-holes of hidden/psychological scarring. You are braaaaave, which I applaud.
- Vin's description of Chris because it made me LOL (I totally agree with Vin, fwiw) but also his solid belief in Chris being able to get them out of Hell alive.
- Nathan's decision that he'd protect Xan from his parents, even if he had to tuck Xan under his arm and run away with him. Man, Nathan is headstrong and opinionated and secure in his beliefs and I recognise him completely.
- When the spectre of Adam showed up and Vin expressed a little concern and Chris appreciated it, you managed to melt my hard black heart. Well played. (Sometimes it's the little things, yknow?)
- And, of course, the speck of trust that Xan gives to Chris there at the end is nice. Willow would be so proud of herself.

Typos?
- staring blankly at them for a long before glancing around. (Is there a word missing there?)
- I’d guess his injuries are just in the latest in a long line of beatin’s. (Did you mean Just the latest in a long line of beatin's?)
- More’n oncet, by the looks of it. (I think there's an extra T in there.)

And finally I have a question. Xan is de-aged, right? But he's kept all the scars and wounds he had before he died, yes? And yet he... regains the broken arm he had when he was eight? Wouldn't that be considered an old wound or did I misunderstand something there? So will he be regaining sudden repeated wounds as he ages? The whipping he had when he was nine, the knife wound he had when he was ten, etc.

Possible advice: Be careful not to cross the verbal anachronisms between Xan and the boys. I think you've done such a wonderful job here but it seems like something that might get problematic down the road unless, hee hee, the boys start adopting (hel-LO JD!) 20th century Xan-speak.

OK, chick, I have to admit I read next to nooooo WIPs because I hate them with a passion. I prefer not to read them and I won't post them (unless they're stand alone) because I've been burnt so badly in the past but also because I can be a godawful pest when it comes to nudging authors to pleaseGOD WRITE MOAR. And now that I've read this and enjoy it, you're so in trouble. :D

Re: the neverending comment

Date: 2010-04-05 12:21 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] boogieshoes.livejournal.com
*snerks* got another one, hee!

so in my head, the 'pre-story' goes like this: the scoobies fight the First Evil. during the fight, xan acquires all his current injuries, including the broken arm. his eye was from a previous battle - if this seems off for buffy cannon, that's because i haven't, to date, seen past the end of season 5. i didn't even realize xan *had* a broken arm at some point, i put it in as a result of the scoobies' final battle. if that isn't clear, then in the beta process, i'll need to go back and see if i can make it more explicit.

re: typos - those first two are typos, yes, are typos, and thanks for catching them. sometimes my mind goes so fast my fingers can't keep up.

the third one - 'more'n oncet' - is an attempt at dialect, but if too many people complain about (which would indicate it sounds out of character for Nathan), i'll go ahead and change it.

finally, thank you so much for your comments! i'm doing some research on this story right now, and hope to complete it by the end of the year. don't hold me to that, but i've decided to work primarily on this story this year. so...

i'm so glad you liked it!

-bs

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