Unconventional Approach

[madimpossibledreamer]

i'm still behind on everything, sorry :(
but here, have another weird au

giles is their guardian/executioner and frequently pained that they have all the survival instincts of lemmings
buffy gets mad that she tried to avoid all this magic stuff and here it is finding the slayer-cop
the rest of the coven are on the high council too as well as jenny
This is fascinating to write.  Also, I’d like to point out, Xander doesn’t need the pull of dark magic to be a jerk (I’m going to try to use ‘dark’ rather than the canonical ‘black’ because someone pointed out that’s kinda racist and it’s my au I can change the terminology if I want to, lemme know if I mess up because I probably will), and Willow canonically has already broken several of the Laws—she killed Warren with magic, she accidentally re-ratted Amy, which might not count, she enthralled the entire Scooby gang once and probably Tara more than once, she brought Buffy back from the dead, and she might’ve done the Buffyverse equivalent of reaching beyond the Outer Gates when she was grieving and Dark Willow and absorbed power to destroy the world.  Maybe.  That one’s a little unclear.  But, in-canon, she’d broken at least three of the Laws, no question, and in this world she probably would’ve done it, too, if not for the meddling Wardens who got there just in time.  (They might’ve still done the stay of execution, as Rack was definitely enthralling them both, but they kind of have a ‘stains the soul’ mentality that may or may not be reality.  The High Council are kind of jerks.  They have much in common with the Watcher’s Council, which is why, in this version, they’re probably going to be the same thing.)
Xander as Dresden is way too easy.  In canon both of them have some pretty strong sexist and chauvinistic tendencies.  I know this isn’t a controversial statement about Xander.  It kind of is about Dresden, at least from what I’ve read.  Don’t @ me, chivalry is just being an ass if all of your “nice” actions are over the top and against the will of the person you’re being “nice” to.  You know what would be gentlemanly?  Assume that the lady in question is an expert on their own life and is an intelligent human being who knows what they want and is capable of making those decisions.  Also don’t @ me with in-universe explanations of “oh, well, supernatural beauty” or “oh, well, Winter Knight mantle”.  I’ll just refer you to the youtube video The Thermian Argument.  In-universe, sure, there’s a perfectly plausible explanation of why Dresden has to objectify an underage wizard he’s known all his life, but the point is, the author isn’t incapable of sitting back, going, “no, that’s over the top”, and deleting it.  Leaving it in your work is a choice.  Also don’t tell me I’m being mean to Jim Butcher.  At this point, he seems very much like one of those people who wants to do better about writing these things and has no idea how to go about it and rather than doing the hard work and research and asking for readers to help, he just gets defensive and sits on his hands.  I don’t blame him for being overwhelmed, and I’d still love to see one of his characters in game and maybe even meet him in person, but I’m also justified in being frustrated and low-key judging him.
*Ahem* I probably shouldn’t have been reading those reddit threads.  Anyway.
I realize after the fact that I’ve added Willow as Elaine.  Which, she doesn’t get killed off for Manpain (though she might come back later in the books?  I don’t know, I haven’t read probably half of them at this point.  I don’t know which book, exactly, I stopped on), but she is still a bit out of control of her own situation.  Magic does that to her.  I didn’t realize it, but she and Xander have pretty similar fears.  Both of them want to be irreplaceable.  They’re scared of being abandoned and get kind of clingy.  They both get kind of entitled, too.
They’re codependent here, though they’re working on it.  I’ll have to write her pov sometime.  Given her magic specialties she’s going to be the flashy wizard type.  Xander gets the quieter moments.
…It occurs to me that Xander has Dresden’s personality, and is working on it, but in approach?  Willow is Dresden.  Because where she goes there is fire.
This should probably not amuse me as much as it does.  But it is hilarious.
I started writing this as just a shipping thing and then it got away with me.  The feels train came out of nowhere. 
Anyway, Spike as Marcone, partly because it’s a shipping thing and partly because it’s fascinating putting Spike in that situation.  I’m pretty sure he might stab his vampire self.  I’ll talk about that more when I get to it.
Buffy as Murphy, again an obvious choice.  Though she gets to continue to be a Slayer.  It’s another stuation where she managed to get under the radar, having “died” and called another before the Watchers found her.  I have the feeling the Watchers are probably Council-affiliated.  I’ll have to think about the worldbuilding there.
(And it's been a while, but I vaguely remember the mention of some wizards who don't mess up tech as much, and I'm kind of sad that wasn't followed up on.)

Main Points:
Buffy/Dresden Files Crossover
Chapter Summary:  Willow and Xander's wizard story is both more and less tragic than Dresden's.
Word Count: 3953
Rating: Teen
Warning: implications of noncon (only a kiss between Willow and Xander, possibly worse between Willow and Rack and Willow and others; there were weird implications even in canon), some casual violence (Xander's still a punching bag)

            Apparently, as things go, Willow and I are strange wizards.  Yeah, big surprise, I know.  Neither of us are as hard on tech as some of our peers, so we can keep a computer or TV or console online for a bit.  If I’m emotional, only for the space of an episode, but that’s good enough to get my B5 fix and calm down.  Occasionally I’ll watch something else when I’m upset, but you can’t beat the classics.  Willow, in contrast, can last for a couple more hours even when riled, but then, she’s got better control than me.  If we’re calm, we can keep these things going for days, weeks even.  We can have cell phones—not the newest models, sure, but then, we’d never much cared about being in the in crowd.  They were much too stuck up, anyway.  Giles is bemused by that.  To be fair, Giles is bemused by a lot of the things we do.  He still has to wrap his head around Miss Calendar on the Senior Council.  It’s a good thing that the most he’s wanted to interact with technology is the old, old TV like the rest of the heathens, mostly because he has to get his Doctor Who on.  It’s a patriotic thing for him or something.
            On Willow’s side, it’s just because before all this stuff computers were what she knew.  On my end, well.  I’d read the classics, Tolkien and all that.  I’d seen the Arthurian legends brought to life in several movies and the like, and since then read some of the originals.  So I could have gone with the whole medieval schtick.  I tried, for a couple years, but it never felt very me.  They were hardly my favorite types of wizards, and that gave me the wiggle room I needed, when I could experiment, find myself.  Magic—that’s somewhat individual just from the sheer nature of it.  Because, at its core, there’s belief.  You have to have the will and belief to shape the magic inside, and then the training to get it to go the way you want after that.  Willow goes for the whole Wiccan thing.  Me? 
            My absolute favorite wizards are the technomages from Babylon 5 and its spinoff, Crusade.  Babylon 5 got a lot of things right, and the technomages were awesome.  Especially in their own book spinoff saga.  All that power, the touch of the Shadow, and yet a good (or bad, but a stated reason which is more than they usually give) reason to stay out of the war.  Even the whole infighting stuff.  Most of it has to do with the mystery and power and charisma.  They’d stuck in my brain from one single episode, so much so that I genuinely didn’t care Crusade suffered from the same issues as late-game B5 (I’ll admit that once JMS wrapped up his whole plan early and then got another season, his ability to improvise was a little more lacking).  Galen stole the show.  That kind of power just screams wizard.  I can’t pull it off in quite the same way, but I’d want to.  Apparently I do, sometimes, when I’m wrapped up in actually figuring out and/or casting a spell, but most of the time I’m still the same bumbling fool I was before I figured out I had fire at my fingertips.  What can you do, right?  (I was still coming to terms with the little revelation that part of it was that I found Galen attractive.  And Kirk.  And a couple others.  I didn’t mention it to Willow, since she’d just think I was trying to one-up her by having a sexuality crisis at the same time, though I think she leans more towards liking people of the female persuasion and I’m a little more, uh…if I say open that doesn’t make me sound like I’m easy, right?  Because I’m not, all those demons and creatures of the night wanting me in the nastiest of probably-ending-in-death ways.  And given the state of my love life, i.e. dangerous and unlucky and lots of manly screaming, I can afford to take my time figuring out what the hell my brain is up to.)  Point is, technomages could have their own personal ships, so a little thing like a computer?  Not so much of a big deal.  A lot of that has to do with the fact that all the power came from tech in the first place, so that cognitive dissonance might’ve been enough to knock down my ability to not accidentally hex things a couple notches, but still.  It was something to work with.
            The bigger issue, on my end, was what language to use.  Again, Willow figured out her end, what with the whole wiccan angle, pretty quickly, but me?  It’s best to use a language you’re unfamiliar with and probably aren’t going to be speaking otherwise so you don’t walk around accidentally casting spells.  I’m banned from speaking anything, but Latin in particular, in front of the books.  I tried going the traditional route, back when we were under Rack’s thumb, and just…no.  Maybe it worked a little, back then, but I’d been drafted to help Giles read through and catalogue his books, and I’d learned enough of Latin to actually be dangerous.  Plus I had a nasty habit of reading parts out loud I had issues with, and that was just an accident waiting to happen.  I’d set a book on fire once, just by joking around, and half been convinced that Giles didn’t care about any further breakages of the Laws of Magic, just the near-death of a book, and was about to take off my head.  In the end, he just shrugged it off provided it never happened again.  So Latin’s out.  And I’m not allowed to read at least the Latin out loud anymore.  I could go the whole Constantine route, but given my Latin issues plus the man is a walking Law of Magic Breakage waiting to happen, that would be a bad, bad idea.  I am, let’s put it simply, not good with math, so Galen’s method is out.  I mean, I could try it, given that it fits the whole ‘don’t understand it’ part enough, but it’s a little too foreign, if you get me.  I wouldn’t have the belief to make it work.  Plus I could make a bunch of mistakes that could be incendiary or deadly, and as fun as that sounds, for the sake of Willow’s peace of mind I’d pass.  I’d taken to the whole research thing with numerous instances of falling asleep and a whole lot of determination, so while I don’t have the confidence to speak most of the dead languages I’d learned, I knew too much for them to be useful, either, particularly since I tend to read out loud when I’m stuck on difficult passages.  Or at least mouth the words, and, again, I’m not sure Giles would take the chance.  I can’t even blame him, because I wouldn’t want to take that chance either.  Elvish?  Same.  Klingon?  Same.  Minbari?  Ditto.  Willow pointed out I was being vaguely neurotic (that’s a change) and should just pick something, which is easy enough for her to say.  That ended in a pillowfight, but she had a point.  Wordless spellcasting is possible, but I really didn’t want to deal with the headache every single time, so I had to figure out something.
            I thought about it.  Really thought about it.  And decided, in the end, that the power of association, should I go with something like Elvish, would be ‘wizards that belong in fantasy’, which would mess up the whole ‘I can kind of get along with tech’ mojo I had going for me.  And then I thought about it some more and laughed, because we didn’t know enough of the Minbari language (or any of the languages spoken) for me to be able to use just one.  So, cobbled together.  I could do that.  And it matched me, really.  I mean, I’m haphazard in everything else, why not this too?  I could even sneak in a little Elvish as long as I didn’t use too much.
            Willow went traditional, too, with her staff, a nice, old-fashioned rowan.  I couldn’t make a replica of Galen’s staff.  For one thing, it wouldn’t be mine, and that connection to the self is part of the whole thing.  But I did make it of metal, forged it myself (and burnt myself, which hurt a lot but was actually good for the process because pain like that helps tie things together, not that I’d do it on purpose; I’m not a masochist) and carved on hieroglyphics, because I could always make the Stargate-and-thus-technology association with them rather than the past-and-therefore-old association.
            It was magic that got me to, well, really think about myself.  See, I’ve known forever that Willow’s smarter than I’ll ever be.  And, it turns out, even with magic she’s stronger.  Everyone kept telling me that I’d just end up like the rest of my family, except to people like my dad, who kept telling me I’m a pansy.  I was bullied for not being ‘manly enough’.  I tried desperately to figure out what that meant, and apparently according to fiction it meant I couldn’t care about how other people felt.  I couldn’t show emotion.  I always needed to be the hero or at least the comic relief, and people had to pay attention to me.  Guys can only be attracted to girls and vice versa, unless there’s something wrong with them, and lots of stuff like persistence is the key to a girl’s heart.  Stars, I’ve got entire books of stuff about heterosexual romance I have to unpack and promptly throw in a fire.  That Willow made.  Because fire is, uh.  I have interesting stuff happen with fire magic.  And by books, I mean metaphorical ones, but that doesn’t undermine my point at all.
            So, obviously, when we learned we had magic, I was really excited about it.  For once, I shared something really cool that Willow could do.  Obviously, I could do awesome combat magic like Gandalf and monsters would fear my staff…
            Yeah.  No.
            I suck at evocation, mostly.  Willow, she’s the queen.  I couldn’t get it down, which made Rack angry.  I think that’s basically when he gave up on me.  Which made me anxious, and try to live up to his expectations, and his expectations were not of the good, no more than my family or…
            But anyway, he still would teach Willow.  And Willow would try to teach me.  And there was something wrong.  I could tell there was something wrong.  She was happy, really happy, and I tried to be happy for her, but she was too happy.  Like, yeah, okay, so I’d be super happy, too, if I was actually learning magic and being badass and everything like I wanted, but.
            But she scared me.  She would rely on magic for everything.  And it was changing her.  Some days I didn’t even recognize her anymore.
            I tried to tell myself everything was fine.  That nothing was wrong.  That she was just growing into her power, becoming stronger.  I’ve always been really, really good at lying to myself.  I’ve had had to be.  It was how I’d convince myself that everything was normal and not worth worrying about because everything was normal.
            And then I ticked Rack off, and unlike how Tony would use his fists, Rack threw a fireball, and on instinct I threw up a shield.  With wordless evocation.  No staff, no blasting rod.  He blinked, anger forgotten, because he’s a magic junkie, and then instruction moved on to Willow throwing magic at my shield, and sometimes, when I’d played the magic crash dummy enough, I’d get a bit of instruction, too.
            It was hard to get excited about it at first.  I wanted to have good evocation flashy magic stuff, too, like Willow, but nah.  I’m good at parts of evocation.  Specifically, wind and shields.  Occasionally earth, but that tends to do shield-like stuff and be redundant, though it looks all cool and Crazy Diamond-y.  Fire tends to be what happens when I mess something up.  I do have a few fire spells I can use, but they’re never as strong as accidents.  Warden Giles finds that confusing.  I’d explain, except I have no clue either, so I just stay quiet and hope it comes off as mysterious and not clueless.  Shields are my best work, though.  I’m best at thaumaturgy.  I can do some of the subtle stuff, like tracking spells, but it’s not my best.  My best is healing.  Yeah, I didn’t see that coming.  I’d wanted to be the badass wizard, only I was kind of more like the comfortador sidekick.  I was all pouty about it, but Willow was really happy about it.  In that same creepy over the top shiver-inducing cheer that worried me.  I mean, there’s a hint of a clown about it, which is just…
            “Magic is an extension of the person using it,” Willow explains to me, glowing with excitement.  “And you’ve always been so supportive.  That’s your superpower.”
            I hadn’t, though.  I’d been jealous, or wanted to brag because Willow, the smartest girl in the class, she was my friend, not the friend of any of the meanies.  I’d seen her first, like laying some kind of claim.  Only I got kind of terrified when she wanted to claim me back, because all my insecurities would rise to the forefront, because no matter what I told myself, in the end, I knew I was kind of, sort of, maybe a little bit of a terrible person.
            Except every time I thought about that, the magic wouldn’t work right.  There was a lot of fire to start with, only it was never on purpose so neither Rack nor Willow was pleased.  And I didn’t care about living up to the creep’s expectations, but Willow.  I really wanted to impress Willow.
            Maybe it doesn’t work this way for other people, but for me, magic is this incredibly personal thing.  I mean, it’s not just a case of ‘believe it’ll happen so it’ll happen’.  It’s a state of mind, too.  I could totally be selfish, but only when using shields, because unless I’m protecting other people with them it’s all about keeping myself alive.  But the wind stuff?  I’d have to feel free.  Healing?  I’d have to call up my empathy.  Tracking spells and subtle, detective-y magics?  I’d have to think about the why.  That I didn’t want innocent people to suffer, that I wanted to help.
            I make it sound easy.  It was not, in point of fact, easy.  It was really freakin’ hard.  It only worked because I wanted it to work more than I was, I dunno.  Embarrassed by how girly my power was, I guess.
            Saying that out loud makes it sound worse than it did at the time.  But that’s fair, because it is a pretty ridiculous thing to say.
            Willow had all the cool magic.  Sheer offensive, flashy evocation.  Ritual thaumaturgy.  At the time, I was more jealous than proud, I think.
            We weren’t allowed to mingle much.  We didn’t have, or use, tech.  We could have, but it would’ve made us harder to control, I imagine. All that stuff about my staff and how we can use tech and the spell-language I used, those all came after.    Rack was pretty controlling, but Willow kept explaining how discipline was important to learning magic.
            And then I walked in on her and another girl kissing.  It hurt.  And all that jealousy and Ridiculous Boy Thoughts crept up in my head, and then Rack slammed me into the floor using just a wave of his hand.
            Willow dreamily explained, once I’d finished having my ribs crack on the floor and they were done with their spell, that it was a good way of powering up your magic.  I wanted to believe her.  Wanted to believe that it was her choice to be there, that it didn’t go any further than a kiss, even though from the sound of it, they’d done it before, wanted to believe that she’d never kissed Rack.  (I don’t actually know.  I’m not sure she does either, either because Rack messed with that memory or it was connected to the enthrallment.  The only thing I sort of know for sure is that magic considers us both virgins, but then, there’s a lot of Bad Stuff that can go on that doesn’t require that and makes my heart hurt for reasons having everything to do with a friend getting hurt and only a little bit about that selfish part of me that feels responsible for I am Man.  I’m still working on it.  Then again, with magic, you don’t even have to touch someone.)
            So, in my Infinite Wisdom, I decided to sneak out and test it.  I went out and found a club and used illusion to create an ID I didn’t have.  It wasn’t the Bronze.  It was bigger.  I was excited.  I felt free.  No Willow, explaining how creepy things were perfectly normal, no Rack demanding I couldn’t have any fun.  The couples there were mixed—some heterosexual, some not, and it struck me as weird how normal it all looked.  Like, this isn’t some other world.  I live here.  I could have this.
            And then a guy comes over and starts chatting me up, and I’m probably blushing so hard you could see me from space, but he’s charming and funny and he’s perfectly cool with just sitting and talking and not trying to feel me up, which is probably for the best because I wasn’t kidding about the cracked ribs, even though wizards heal faster than most humans do.  For once in a long time, it feels like someone’s seeing me for me.  Not for my magic.
            Of course, my life being what it is, that’s the point at which Rack busts in, furious.  He starts yelling about curfews and being underage, and the cute guy tries to protect me and gets backhanded.  I hope he’s okay.  I never actually figured out what happened to him.
            I get dragged back to the house, and don’t get fed for a bit, because food is a big motivator in the Xanworld.  And then the next person Willow’s kissing is me.  It’s everything I’d dreamed of.  I’d thought about her.  Not seriously, because Before Willow didn’t argue with me and, I realize now, I need someone to tell me when I am being a jerk, and After Willow was smiling all the time like a clown and I have this thing with clowns where they scare me.
            And then I look into her eyes, which are vacant, and the whole illusion shatters, because she’s not even really kissing me.  I could be anyone.  I’m not even sure if she’s aware she’s kissing.  I feel a little sick.  And that’s where things get super fuzzy.
            The next thing I remember is waking up, head full of fog, in the middle of kissing a girl.  I didn’t see Willow.  Magic crackled around.  And then people in grey robes burst in.
            Rack, apparently, was a warlock.  Broke multiple Laws.  He’d been messing with my mind, with Willow’s.  And made Willow control me, too.  Just a line of puppets on strings.  He’d also killed.  Might have killed us, if he couldn’t control us.  He got his head chopped off pretty quickly.
            Willow broke the Fourth Law, to never enthrall another.  She got out of it with a Doom of Damocles because, at the time, she was enthralled herself, so not wholly in control of her own actions.  Technically, I was a victim only tangentially involved in the whole thing and didn’t break anything, but the trial had some sort of argument about the idea that just because something couldn’t be proven didn’t mean it wasn’t there, and someone should keep an eye on me anyway.  I honestly didn’t mind.  Willow’s essentially my best friend and sister all rolled into one.  She's not allowed to die without me.  Even if they tried to keep me out of it, the only difference would be that it would take longer.  I'd find a convenient drug deal to crash or the nearest demon to nom my face.  I'm stubborn like that.
            I’m not sure what happened to the others.  I care, but I’m too scared to ask.  It feels like the second I bring it up out loud, the Queen of Hearts (more like the Queen of Heads) will pop out of the nearest shrubbery.
            So we were given to Warden Giles, and for a while, I was scared of him.  And angry, because he might take Willow away from me.  And then I realized that Giles didn’t want to kill us.  Doesn’t want to hurt anyone.  But he would, if we broke the Laws.  He was even okay with us getting cell phones, if confused, but they worked fine as long as we turned them off before we got inside.  He…he cared.  So much more than any Adult Figure in our lives, which is kind of messed up if you think about it.
            I don’t want to think about it, which means I think about it a lot. 
            I think about Willow and me.  The kiss.  I wonder if she even remembers it.  I feel gross when I do.  I know she still thinks about me.  I’ll see that in her face, sometimes.
            Yeah, we’re both attracted to each other, and no, we’re never gonna act on it.  It might be something Rack put in our brains.  It might be just something that he ruined, what with all the forcing us to kiss and all.  The Wardens went through our heads to try to thoroughly disentangle any compulsions they could find, but couldn’t guarantee they found everything, and how could they?  Your mind is a bunch of interconnected things.  You can remove stuff by forgetting about it or whatever, but some things are attached to important things and pulling at the thread will just unravel everything.  Not fun.
            Did I mention I’m also a wizard at really convoluted metaphors?  It’s a specialty of mine.
           So, trying to be okay, happy, with who I was, with all that baggage, and keep Willow happy and out of trouble never mind that some days I didn't feel like I knew her anymore.  Learning magic.  Trust issues, but liking people too.  Eventually, we moved out to the city, Giles coming with but not living with us, because the Doom was still there, and Willow insisted we use our magic to help people.  I agreed.  Because I wanted to help.  Because I couldn't let Willow use the magic on her own, knowing that sometimes she seemed like an addict, and I needed to stop her from going too far.  We eventually got a rep and helped the police out, and I ended up working a lot of missing persons.  Heartbreaking, sometimes, and a couple of the cops suggested I was behind it, but they couldn't prove anything, and sometimes there were demons or fae or other stuff and I'd get hurt trying to bring them back alive, or at least to allow the body to be identified, and I got grudging respect from at least one of them, and it's...it's not perfect, not by any means, but it's my life, and it's not how I felt in the club but it's as close as I've gotten in years.