Tuesday Night/Wednesday Morning
Mar. 1st, 2006 05:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
soldtoarmenians
It hadn't exactly been an eventful day; his only class was Art History and that had been a blow-off movie hour with the crazy nun again. The crazy art nun, not the crazy sex-tips nun, although they looked disturbingly like they might be related. Hadn't been a bad day, either, especially not compared to ~OMG Robots Attack!~
But Xander's head was starting to ache again, and his burned finger throbbed; he really wasn't up for heading out to see whether there was anybody in the common room who didn't know about his new weird power and could be freaked out by some less than random channel flipping. Fun, but maybe later when he wasn't so tired and achey.
While he dutifully followed doctor's orders and didn't use booze to bribe the little guy with the mallet, Xander did substitute an overly-large handful of Excedrin, and a twinkie. Because caffeine and sugar? Always conducive to a restful night's sleep. They cut into the headache a bit, but not the tiredness; by the time he'd read and answered a couple e-mails from Parker, Xander was falling asleep over his laptop, and barely had time to move it off the bed before he zonked out completely.
~~
And then he's dreaming.
He's in the library, and he's still kind of inexplicably cheerful, but he's trying to find... something. Searching the bookcases near the entrance, all he can see are a bunch of copies of the Photographic Kama Sutra and an entire shelf full of naked Greek art. The actual art, not the books. Daphne turns her head and glares at him from the second shelf down, but the limbs of a nearby shrubbery start groping her decidedly masculine arm, and s/he goes back to batting them away. Xander shakes his head; pretty, but not what he's after today. Apollo is sitting to the side, legs dangling off the shelf, sketching something; he looks up and tilts his head at Xander appraisingly as Xander turns away.
Behind him, the Investigators' Club sits sprawled out around one of the meeting tables. They could help him, Xander supposes; it's kind of what they do. Angel is busy trying to sell chocolate bars for the Student Council fundraiser, but Bridge wiggles one gloved hand at Xander, who waves back absently. Probably not a good idea; they might get butter on the books or something, and the library assistants would keel them both ded. This isn't an I-Club thing anyway; it's not that important. Xander shakes his head again; Bridge shrugs and goes back to kissing Jake, while Krycek looks on and smugs. Yes, that's a verb. No, Jake and Krycek aren't in I-Club.
There's the library aides, though. It's actually their job to help Xander find stuff, right? Rory's at the desk, glaring across at Krycek, but when Xander goes up to talk to her, she holds up a hand. Faint wisps of steam float up from her ears. "Waitaminute, I think my head's finally coming off! Cool, huh?" Um, NO, Xander starts to say, but no words come out, and Rory reaches up to pull her head off.
Instead of coming off, though, it just spins around in her hands like one of those creepy kewpie dolls, and when her fingers tighten it into place, it's Parker's face looking at him from Rory's shoulders. "Whaddya looking for, Harris?"
"I don't know - I can't find it," he answers with a frown. Though an inexplicably cheerful one.
"Ya think? Sort of the definition of 'looking for.'" She rolls her eyes, and they don't stop rolling, just sort of spin there in her face, which starts to make Xander dizzy. "So you need into Special Collections, then. Good, you can be the first guinea pig for the new maps." She holds out a folded-up brochure over the counter.
Xander takes it, but tells her, "I can't get in; I don't have a pass. Hell, I don't even have a library card."
Parker's eyes roll so hard that one falls out of her head and starts to roll away down the counter; she grabs it and pops it back in. "Gilmore, keep your powers to yourself, please," she mutters. Then adds, "Ok, fine, we'll show you the secret back way in. I've got to watch the desk, but Zero can take you." She reaches up and spins her head around again, and this time it's Zero facing him.
"Get a move on; not much time left," she tells him in Cat, and hops up on the counter. She's not a cat, she just hops up on the counter. Then over it, and starts stalking into the stacks. "Well, you coming or not?" she calls back.
"...Sure? I guess?" Xander runs after her.
A puff of smoke shoots out from a side branch of shelves, and Lockheed is shaking his head at Xander when he turns to look. "In this place, you cannot guess, or you'll get lost and make a mess." That he says it in Rat is only a little less disturbing than the fact that he's wearing a wig made of tiny green snakes.
"I'm good; I'm following Zero," Xander says. But when he looks, there's only the tip of a pink kitten-tail disappearing around a corner, and when he runs around that corner there's no kitten at all.
He sighs and looks at what he can see of the folded map, but it doesn't make any sense. It's in English, but the places in the library are labeled with phrases like "Crossover -- see Mars, Veronica" and "Season 6: here there be dragons. Avoid the frying pan." Xander unfolds it to see if it's any more coherent that way, but it just keeps unfolding and unfolding, more and more paper, and won't stop. Eventually he drops it in a panic and scurries away, as the paper starts to fill up the aisle behind him. A small, tinny voice shouts "Littering is wrong!" but he doesn't look back, just runs blindly further into the stacks.
A sylph-like white shape beckons him into a room at the back, giggling girlishly at him, and though it seems familiar and like something he's being a real dumbass for doing, he follows -- into the dark. The door slams shut behind him and Xander starts to really panic, but his hands find the knob easily shut up and it turns in his grasp. He's not trapped. He walks back out - into the empty Sunnydale library.
"This isn't the back way; it's the same way I came before," he says. A bear wearing Rory's cute little stripey hat thing ducks its head out of Giles' office. "Tranquillité, sil vous ples. Vous réveillerez les fishies."
"Have you seen Zero?" he asks it. "Or Giles, is he in there?"
The bear doesn't answer, but from beneath a fallen shelf, Xander's younger self pushes books away from him with a broken arm and says, "Find Willow, dumbass. She's here somewhere."
"Good idea, dumbass who is me." But Willow's not here somewhere; the library's empty except for the bear and fallen dumbass Xander. There's noise, sounds of shouting and a scuffle, from Giles' office, though, and Xander pushes past the bear.
No Willow within, and no Giles. Just three figures bent over a flatbed scanner; the sounds of shouting are coming from a tv screen on the desk next to them. One of the figures is a shoeless John Crichton, one's Ms. Calendar, and the third is Moloch, the Corruptor. The tall, horned demon gives Xander a mechanical fingerwiggle that's eerily familiar, except he's not wearing gloves. "You suck," Crichton mutters as he hands the robot another book to scan in.
"Are you looking for something, Xander?" Ms. Calendar asks. "And by the way, did you get your dream journal done? You missed class on Monday."
"Working on it," Xander answers. "I'm looking for--" On the tv, the channel switches to something he's not going to watch with Ms. Calendar in the room. Xander facepalms and tries to change it to Smile Time, but it won't budge. "Hey, why won't my powers work?" he asks uneasily, inexplicably cheerful mood finally pfft-ing itself away with an actual, audible *pop*. "Did you guys break the spell?"
"There's no spells on you, Xander," Moloch says, eyes glowing an electronic red. "Way to forget that, dude. You're turning into a bibbling idiot these days."
"Dude?" Xander repeats reflexively, but then he's too busy punching the thing in the face to question its vocab. "You suck. You seriously, seriously suck. I was in an inexplicably cheerful mood, dammit, and you just totally--"
"Xander?" It's Willow's voice, but when he stops punching, which ow because metal, and looks over his shoulder to see her, she's not there. Just the book cage door swinging open. Xander drops the robot and goes into the cage; behind him, he glimpses John stealing Moloch's shoes.
There's books scattered around the cage, and maybe one of them's actually what he was looking for, but nothing seems quite right; he can't read any of the lettering. "Xander, come on, dumbass!" comes from the back of the cage, and he pushes past a stack of African masks and out into more bookshelves.
A laptop comes whizzing past his head.
"The hell? Willow?" Xander ducks and spins around as the computer is joined by a Quick Quotes Quill that writes 'Dumbass' on his forehead as it flies by. Willow is hefting a paper shredder at him now, about to fling it hard. "Did you lick the frog?"
"Sorry, I'm a library aide here - librarian's on break, so I have to cover for her. Run that way!" She points to a side aisle. From it, he hears Nadia's voice saying something in Spanish that he can't understand.
"That's not the way out. Besides, she's like a sister to me."
"It's out of the flight-path, dumbass! You won't get hit!" Willow launches the shredder.
"Since when do you call me dumbass?" Xander ducks, but into another aisle.
"It's written on your forehead! Will you just get out of here? Don't make me throw John at you like a ninja star. I will!"
"But I still haven't found what I'm looking for!" And Xander totally sings it, which makes him clap a hand over his mouth as he shuffles backward. And right over a pile of post-it note pads and staplers with Logan's hand sticking out of it, clutching a cell-phone. Xander falls on his ass.
"Dude? Little help?" comes a muffled voice from the pile of office supplies, and Xander, after scrambling to his feet, reaches down to pull them off him. "Not with that, with getting out of here, dumbass," Logan says irritably, standing up by himself, pencils dropping from his clothes and for some reason flying up to get stuck in the ceiling. He hands Xander the phone. "Two months is a damn long time to be buried under staplers, man. I'd get us out myself, but you're the one with the magic channel-changey powers."
"Those don't work on phones." Xander shakes his head, but holds the phone to his ear.
"Can you see what I'm saying?" a woman's voice says, in Inuktitut. How Xander knows what she's saying since he doesn't speak Inuktitut is anyboy's guess. It's a dream, dumbass. And then the horns kick in, and his shoes start to squeak, and Xander drops the phone on Logan's foot.
"Wrong number. Anyway, what do you mean, get us out. We've been out. We're fine. There was..." He frowns. "Zero was here somewhere. And there's been, like, study group since then. And new freshmen; I've got a girl for a roomie. And we sang - well, people sang, I, um, didn't sing. At all. In front of anybody. And the new security guy climbed out our window and we played Spin the Bottle. Not with him."
"Not me," Logan says.
"Well, no, you weren't there, but--"
" 'Cause I've been here, dumbass. Just like you. You've been dreaming or something. None of that stuff happened; there's no new freshmen, and Rover's still dating my ex, and nobody sang anything in front of anybody. Now make the call, dude - get us out of here."
"It's your phone." Xander picks it up, though, and stares at it. "None of that happened?"
"You deaf? No, none of that happened. It's Christmas break. Make the call, and we can all go home. Christ."
Xander holds the phone in his hands, and it starts to get warmer. And then hot. And then it burns his fingers, but he doesn't let go. "Who the hell am I even calling?" he asks, stalling.
Now there's sparks shooting out of it, and one of them sets a shelf of books on fire. "Just call, dumbass, before you burn the whole place down!" Willow's voice yells from three or four shelves away. A water-filled condom-balloon comes sailing over the top of the bookcases, but misses the fire completely.
"What if I don't want to make the call?" Xander's little finger is burning where the sparks have become full-on fire shooting out of the earpiece, and then it possibly takes the question out of his hands, because the phone starts ringing. Louder and LOUDER and LOUDER and LOUDER and LOUDER and LOUDER and--
--
And Xander smacked at his alarm clock with a muttered FRAK. He hit his burned finger on it, and followed that up with a FRELL that wasn't remotely muttered.
And it was 7 a.m., and he had to get up for Shop, and damn if he could remember what the hell he'd just dreamt. He guessed he really would just have to make something up for class today. Also, cheerful? Not so much. Though not entirely inexplicable, what with the hour and the ow.
__
{Dream people utterly modded without their permission, OMG.}
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-03-01 06:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-01 10:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-01 09:32 pm (UTC)"That's not the way out. Besides, she's like a sister to me."
Bwah! Nadia's taking over Willow's role of unrequited crushingness! *loves*]
no subject
Date: 2006-03-01 10:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-01 10:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-02 04:00 am (UTC)