Xander's Student Years - overview

[soldtoarmenians]

Arrival

Fandom High's Xander never got as far as seeing the giant snake. A few (handwavily vague) days before graduation, Buffy (who probably had a little more advance notice of what exactly the Mayor would turn into than canon Buffy did) decided that the possible loss of students from fighting the demon themselves would be too great. She went to the Watchers' Council (who she'd previously told to take a flying leap) asking for help.

In exchange for Buffy coming back at least somewhat under their control, the Council arranged to pull all of the Sunnydale High students out of town, and send them off to different schools -- some in other dimensions -- to avoid any sort of vengeance by the Mayor or his minions. They were plucked straight out of the end of their current year and shunted forward in time to the beginning of the school year for wherever they'd been sent, which could only help with the Mayor's people not being able to locate them.

Xander ended up at Fandom High. Willow went to Hogwarts, where she didn't so much re-take her senior year as get extra magical education. Buffy (along with her mom, since Joyce was one of the few monster-aware parents around) was at first sent to Pine Valley, because sometimes I think I'm funny. Then when the Council realized that the Mayor-Snake was still wandering around terrorizing the town of Sunnydale, she was recalled there, where, since there was no open high school, Giles acted as tutor/Watcher/landlord. Various other students who actually died in canon (Harmony, Larry) survived and were sent to still other schools.

Yeeeeah, it's a wee bit farfetched. Shh. Have a twinkie.

First Semester

(This is more in the form of Random Things That Happened than a narrative, partially because life was a lot handwavier back then, and partly because he appeared less back then. I was in the middle of another huge fannish project, was shy about initiating interaction with people I didn't know -- which was almost everyone -- and hadn't yet had Xander fall into a crowd of characters who make things happen around them - because Xander as a character and I as a player are both pretty passive when it comes to actually creating plots of our own.)

Xander's first roommate was notstakedyet, back when he was notsouledyet, because principalconnor thought she was funny, and that the best way to break up a shouting match between them would be to make them live together. They... didn't like each other a lot. They also didn't actually spend much time in the same room, though Angelus developed an endearing running gag of putting his cigarettes out on Xander's bedspread.

During Zombie Weekend, Xander was on the medical lines for the big defensive battle. He didn't eat the funky Bake Sale food, but he got to witness the joy that was Faith and Angelus thinking they were Buffy and Angel, and offered to kiss Marty Blank on the mouth for getting it on tape. Which actually happened, albeit a good six months later.

Xander went to Homecoming with Cally, but it was just as friends; Cally had been left dateless as the result of a mixup, and Xander admittedly seemed to be more interested in posturing with Angelus than devoting his full attention to his date.

There was an incident where a fear toxin was released at Spike's Pub; Xander was among the people affected; it threw him back to the end of sophomore year, trying to do CPR on Buffy, only he didn't succeed, and she wouldn't wake up. Basically his biggest fear is being useless - which explains a lot about what he did his workshop on that summer.

Among other not-so-plotty-but-backstory-contributy things, Xander met up with a back-from-the-dead Tara at the Sunnydale Reunion Dinner and got some info on how things went for the canon version of himself, at least as far as graduation from SDHS. He also picked up a pet frog in Journalism class who features a bit more heavily later, and spent a lot of time not looking at other guys. In leather.

The big group project for Journalism was a campaign to get the students to Just Say Yes to something; Xander's group consisted of himself, Logan Echolls, D'anna Biers, and Alex Krycek. Logan suggested, as a controversial subject likely to get them points, just say yes to vampires. Xander countered with just say yes to sanity.

They still ended up doing Logan's suggestion; Xander was, iirc, nice enough not to say 'I told you so' more than three or four times after Angelus killed Kitty Pryde, attacked Logan and Rory Gilmore, and ended up getting a soul shoved back in him.

The night the re-souling happened, Krycek and Jake Gavin got Rory to the clinic, while Logan came back to school looking for weapons and Angelus, possibly in that order. He got as far as stopping by 406 because he knew Xander would have stakes, etc., before he came close to collapsing from injuries and blood loss, and Xander helped get him to the clinic as well. Then started his long tradition of always being the guy to call Veronica Mars with bad news.

From the point where Angelus was fingered for killing Kitty and disappeared, until second semester, Xander had a single room in 406 - once Angel was souled, he'd moved into 238 with John Crichton.

Thanksgiving, aside from being when Jeremiah turned purple, was also when Xander re-established contact with Willow; before this, though Xander had been home once to pick up a bunch of his things, the Sunnydale students hadn't been given each other's contact information. Willow hacked the Watchers' Council database and found it.

The aftermath of Angel's re-souling saw the creation of the Investigators' Club, which was something like a much larger version of Scoobies 2.0; it's where Xander first got to know Miss Parker after their initial conversation about what a bad guy Angelus was (back in the 'told you so' link).

Other moments of random amusement included a gremlin-bite-induced lapdance from Veronica, who later interviewed him about life on the Hellmouth, discussing Gay as Blazes with an unknowingly lust-spelled Angel, and a trip into the Special Collections division with Logan Echolls to look for porn art porn. They got ... a little lost, and had to be rescued by Rory (now Logan's ex) and Zero.

Then on Christmas Eve before leaving for break, Xander slept out in the Common Room because well, he's not used to sleeping in a bed on Christmas Eve. But hey, it meant he got to witness the gremlin Christmas Carols.

Second Semester and Summer

From the beginning of January 2006, Xander's journal is pretty comprehensive, and covers events in order. Though I'll still try to do a little summarizing later.

Spring 2006
Summer 2006

Or if you're reading for the Xander/Bridge backstory, this will take you from Xander's early moments of Not Noticing Guys through Prom 2006 and Xander coming out to his home-version of Willow.

Lost Years In Sunnydale

When Xander went home to his own timeline to join Buffy and Willow at UC Sunnydale, he got stuck there, and couldn't communicate with Fandom or get back to it for the next six years.

Lost Years (2000 through 2007 in Xander's home dimension)

Return to Fandom

That happened in January of 2007 while tracking down a Slayer who turned out to be Melaka Fray, and everything from then on can be found here.