It didn't take long for the living room to fill. Buffy had barely had time to say "you mean like the movie?" before Dawn and Willow arrived, summoned by Buffy's call for Giles. Kennedy, of course, was following Willow, and the word spread quickly over the house that something strange, even for Sunnydale, was going on. The potentials were flocking into the room by the time Giles had finished cleaning his glasses, and a wave of whispering rose and fell with each new person, as those already there tried to surreptitiously fill in those arriving.

"Xander's Jesus!" Caitlin, one of the younger potentials, announced in a stage whisper to Molly. They were standing at the edge of the couch. She was not nearly as quiet as she thought she was being, but then, she seldom was. Xander groaned, and stretched an arm over his eyes. His head was throbbing.

"Oh my God!" Molly squeaked, honestly SQUEAKED, in his ear.

Giles released a long sigh. "As I was attempting to say, it seems-"

"He's not Jesus!" Willow seemed to take the statement personally. Xander tried his best to curl up into a ball on the couch. This was not happening.

"The stigmata," Giles raised his voice, cutting through the renewed whispers. "Is a phenomenon in which a person, usually someone deeply religious, spontaneously develops the wounds of one who's been crucified. It is a documented occurrence."

"It means he's been touched by God." Molly again. "It's a miracle." She said this without the reverence one might expect, as though stating a well-known fact.

"There's no evidence that the stigmata is a creation of the Christian god." Xander would be willing to bet money that Giles' glasses had left his face again. He hugged his knees to his chest. He'd just made Giles remove his glasses twice within ten minutes, and he hadn't even said anything. His back ached and shooting pains ran through his chest with every heart beat.

"Of course there isn't!" Molly was beginning to get angry. "God doesn't NEED evidence, He just is!" She lay a hand on Xander's forehead, and he tried to shake her off, but she was stubborn. "God is helping us, though Xander."

Some help, he thought. He felt as though he was dying, which supposed that should be obvious. How else was he supposed to feel? Crucifixion wasn't exactly the easiest way in the world to die.

"Actually," Anya's voice came from across the room. "I gave a man stigmata once. His wife was sick of him always leaving her behind when he went to church. She wished he could feel close to God forever. It's very painful."

Xander opened his eyes and stared at his ex. She was looking at her fingernails. It couldn't be, she wouldn't have done this to him, not for just going on a date, would she?

And if she hadn't, what did that mean? Was he supposed to be some sort of holy man? Because, that wasn't likely to happen. He'd been pretty much raised sans religion, the only thing he really knew about holy things was that they were good for killing vampires. If some god or another had chosen him, he (or she, he supposed) had chosen poorly.

Around him, the debate continued. Willow was arguing strenuously against Molly's god, neither of them ready to let up. Giles kept trying to intercede without a great deal of success. Many of the potentials were looking distinctly uncomfortable and had started trickling back out of the room. Others were peering at him with wide, reverent gazes.

Xander felt like he wanted to throw up. The voices of his friends were like thorns in his ears (or around his head, didn't Jesus have a crown of thorns? He wasn't sure). He wanted them all to leave so he could continue flipping out in peace, thank you very much.

It was as though Buffy had read his mind. She stepped forward, placing herself between him and the rest of the room. Dawn stood up beside her. They both shouted at once. "Enough!"

The room fell silent and looked at them. Giles looked relieved. After all, he'd already had to yell at the group once that evening, it didn't seem fair that he should have to do so again. Xander closed his eyes again and put his arms over his head.

"Look," Buffy put a hand on Xander's bare foot, then took it off again, almost immediately. "Maybe it's magic. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's God, or-or WHATEVER, but the fact remains: it's late. We're fighting a war, and we're all stressed, and we've just gotten another mystery handed to us. We'll discuss it tomorrow. For now, we'll patch Xander up and go. To. Bed."

Very slowly, everyone started trickling off to bed, or sleeping bag, as the case may be. Dawn patted Xander's arm. "I'll get the first aid kit." Xander tried to smile at her, but refused to move his arms. Buffy settled onto the floor by his knees.

"You're staying here tonight."

"I would disagree," Xander's words were muffled to his own ears. "If, you know, I thought I could move."

"Good choice." She rubbed his calf, carefully avoiding his sweat-and-blood soaked foot. "You okay with all this?"

"Really, really not."

Buffy smiled sadly at him, scooting over to push his hair off his forehead slightly. She touched one of the wounds there. "Does it hurt?"

"Kind of a lot."

"You'll be okay, Xander." She leaned back as Dawn returned with the well-used first-aid kit. "Maybe I didn't try to take care of you earlier, but I will now, okay?"

Xander nodded and closed his eyes again as the two sisters started bandaging him up.

Xander woke up shortly before dawn. Someone, most likely Buffy or Dawn, had stretched him out on the couch and thrown a brightly knit blanket over him. He struggled to sit up even as his muscles screamed at him.

For as much as his body ached and complained about moving, his mouth and throat were speaking louder.

His tongue had gone dry at some point in the night, and was now painfully cracked, a foul tasting film of mucus over top of it. The inside of his throat itched, tightening painfully as he swallowed convulsively. His headache had grown to epic proportions, pounding on either side of his eyes and blurring his vision. He could swear he heard his knees creak as he levered himself off the couch.

He'd been doing construction long enough to recognize the signs of dehydration within himself. He needed something to drink, badly.

The living room was an obstacle course of teenaged girls, stretched out in sleeping bags and blankets, covering every inch of exposed floor. His feet ached just looking at the treacherous path, so he turned toward the path of least resistance, the hallway.

His steps were lurching things, his feet protesting every time he put weight on them. The bandages were pink with leaking blood and slid across the hardwood floor. He leaned against the wall, one arm wrapped tightly across his chest. The kitchen seemed like it was miles away.

Halfway down the hallway he stopped to catch his breath, and wondered if might have been a better idea to wake someone up and ask them to bring the water to him. He shook his head. He was halfway there, it was a bit late for that.

It took him ten minutes to get from the couch to the sink in the kitchen. He filled a plastic tumbler from the faucet, then settled with a ragged sigh into one of the stools at the breakfast bar. The water felt amazing on his tongue and throat, but he forced himself to take small sips. It would do no good for him to have to throw up everything he drank.

"And what the hell happened to you?"

He didn't have the energy to jump. Instead he peered blearily at the back door to where Spike stood, just out of reach of the first rays of the sun. The vampire leaned against the door jam, raising an eyebrow.

"S'ke." Xander winced. His throat had tightened down sharply on the single syllable. For a moment he thought he saw something like concern on the vampire's face, but if it was there, it didn't stay.

Spike pushed himself away from the door and approached Xander casually. "That bloody date of yours didn't do all this, mate. What happened?"

Xander drank a few more swallows of water before attempting to answer. "We don't know."

Spike's head was cocked to one side. His expression was no longer blank, but perturbed, almost . . . scared. Long, pale fingers hovered over one of the cuts in Xander's forehead before drawing back. Spike's nose twitched. "Smells . . . off."

"What?"

Spike glanced down at his eyes, almost as though he'd forgotten it was Xander he was talking to. "The blood. It smells . . . off. Other. Stuff like this," he gestured to the darkening red patch on the bandages across Xander's hands. "Usually makes the demon go all nuts, you know. Supposed to smell good. Tasty. Almost smells like you've gone sour."

Great. Xander leaned forward and let his head rest on the edge of the counter, his hand clenching around the glass of water. Not only was he some sort of religious curiosity all of the sudden, he smelled like expired milk. "Oh. Good." He lifted his head back up to take another long drink, as Spike's finger just barely brushed against his knuckles. Xander, unprepared for the contact, jumped slightly, sending water across the top of the bar, splashing onto both of them.

Xander cursed softly. Spike leaped backward, clutching at his hand and shouting obscenities. Xander stared at him. His hand was steaming.

"Bloody hell!" Spike glared at him. "What the hell are you drinking holy water for?"

Xander could feel his body start to shake. "I wasn't."

"Oh wow! You were!" Both vampire and carpenter whirled at the soft, sleepy voice from the hallway. Molly, her hair in a disarray from sleeping on the floor, clutched a small bear to her chest and grinned at Xander.

"Molly,"

"You were, you totally were." She reached out a hand as though to touch him, then stopped. Her hand drew back and she used her thumb to draw a small cross over her chest.

Spike watched her perform this ritual then spun back to stare at Xander again. "Bloody- what's going on?"

Xander shook his head. "I got the water from the sink."

"And you blessed it!" Molly started bouncing. "I was right. You drank the water, and it became holy. Because YOU'RE holy. God's saving us."

"What-" Spike studied Xander for a long moment, eyes moving from the cuts on his head, to the bandages on his chest, hands and feet. His fingers twitched on his burned hand. "Bloody HELL."

Willow sighed softly as she stood up from the bed. It had taken quite awhile to calm everyone, especially Xander, down after the events of last night and this morning. Molly had been especially irritating, full of bold proclamations about Xander being the second coming, how he would be able to destroy the Turok-Han with his "holy glory", and they'd all be saved. Willow had been tempted to smack the girl, but had forced herself to reign in her emotions. Someone had to be the rock of the group, and as Xander was having a well deserved freak-out, the task had fallen on her shoulders.

The look on Spike's face when someone suggested they test Xander's holy water making abilities had been priceless. She was sorry that Xander had missed it; it probably would have cheered him up.

Willow leaned back against the bed and pulled her laptop onto her legs. Xander was either asleep on the bed, or playing a really good game of possum. Either way, she was loathe to disturb him. In the meantime, she would get some research done. There would be time for Willow's own religious crisis later. Right now, they needed answers.

A search for "stigmata" had turned up a number of sites on the movie, which she skipped over. seemed to have an article on the phenomenon, and after some hesitation, she clicked on it. If nothing else, it might help to go straight to the source of the mythology.

Ten minutes later, she really didn't have much more to go on, though she had found an extensive list of saints and "blessed" that had received the stigmata, and an interesting theory that the wounds were psychosomatic in nature that she really hadn't expected to find on the official website for Catholicism, but not much on what the stigmata actually was, or what it did. She doubted that Xander would be happy to learn that he could look forward to periodic repetitions of the wounds, possibly for the rest of his life.

The site also told her that the stigmatics experienced not just the wounds, but the "sufferings" of Christ's death on the cross as well. Out of curiosity, she fired up the search engine again, to search for the effects crucifixion had on the human body.

She was skimming through an article on the scientific process of using the evidence provided by the Shroud of Turin and careful experiments on living volunteers when a voice made her jump.

"Stop it."

Willow slammed the top of her laptop down and stared wide-eyed at the woman who stood in front of her. She spent a long moment trying to pull breath back into her body, then sneered angrily.

"Get out of her form."

Tara crouched down to eye level. "Willow, researching isn't going to help."

"You're not Tara, you're the First. Now get the hell out of here, I'm not going to listen to you." She reached up and grabbed the first thing her fingers found, Xander's empty water glass, and hurled it at the apparition. It sailed straight through to crash against the door to the room. On the bed, Xander shifted and muttered wordlessly, and Willow tried to force herself to calm down.

"You're right." Tara continued to crouch in front of her, smiling that tiny smile that used to set Willow's heart on fire. "I'm not really Tara. But I'm not who you think I am."

"Get out of her form!" Willow hissed this out through clenched teeth, trying not to wake up Xander. Her vision started to blur at the edges as tears leaked out of her eyes. "You have no right to desecrate her like this! Tara was a good person."

"The best." The Tara-thing was still smiling, remaining absolutely calm in the face of Willow's fury. "Are you going to listen to me?"

"No!"

"I'm not going to go away. I have some really important things to tell you."

"I don't care, I'm not-" Willow stood sharply. She didn't want to leave Xander alone in the room with the First, but she was not about to stay here and let it torture her with the shape of her dead lover. "We're going to stop you, do you hear me? We're going to rip you to pieces." She felt magic well up within her as she started shaking. She could almost feel her eyes turning black. She couldn't do this. It wasn't fair, the First wasn't supposed to take Tara's shape. Anyone else she could handle, not Tara.

"I really hope not." Tara peered up at her. "I'm not the First Evil."

"Bullshit." Willow winced. She didn't like to curse, but she simply couldn't come up with another term to describe that statement. "We know all about how you operate, you sicko."

"I'm not the First Evil." This time, Tara stood. She held her hands behind her back, tilted her head to one side, and let her hair fall across her face, half-hiding it. The gesture was so familiar, so completely Tara, that Willow could practically feel her heart-breaking all over again. "Willow, you know this. You know there's a balance to everything in the universe. If there's a First Evil, it stands to reason, there has to be . . ."

Willow frowned. "A first good."

Tara's whole face lit up in a smile. "Yes. Exactly. I'm here to help you, Willow. But researching isn't what you need to be doing right now."

Willow closed her eyes. "You're lying, you're evil, you have to be evil. I won't believe you."

"You have to." Willow felt something warm across her cheek, and opened her eyes again, to see Tara pull her hand back. "I'm not Tara, Willow, but I have her inside of me. That's what Heaven is, that secure place that Buffy described, that's becoming a part of me. Of all that's good and safe and wonderful in the world. Tara is here, so is Joyce, and Jesse. They could never be a part of something evil."

Willow sobbed openly now, as she fell back against the bed. She grabbed Xander's hand in her own , giving it a small squeeze. "If you're good, you wouldn't be doing this to me. You wouldn't-you wouldn't make me see her, not now. I can't handle it. She would know that."

"You have to handle it." Tara stepped back, fading slightly. "I'm sorry to hurt you, sweetie, but you have to know. You won't find the answers on the computer, or in any books. You have to find it somewhere else."

"Where?"

"Inside you. Inside Xander, and everyone else. Even Spike has the answers now."

"I don't understand."

"I know." Tara faded from sight, and Willow sobbed again, forcing herself not to reach out for her. "I'm sorry."

And then she was gone. The room was empty, cold. Willow wrapped her arms around herself, unconsciously putting Xander's hand over her heart. He stirred again, and opened his eyes. "Willow?"

"Go back to sleep, Xander."

He tugged slightly, probably trying to get his hand back. "You're crying."

"Yeah." He tugged again, and Willow let him pull her down on the bed.

"It's okay. We're going to be okay." He pulled her up against him, and she shifted, careful not to hit his damaged chest.

"She was here, Xander."

"Who?"

"Tara."

Xander stiffened, then wrapped his arms tighter around her. "It was the First."

"Yeah." Willow put her forehead to his shoulder, ashamed that he was comforting her, when by all rights, he was the one who should be needing comforting. "I'm just not sure which one, is all."

"Okay." Willow looked over the Scoobies gathered in her room as she leaned against Xander. He was still feeling "achy", and his wounds were still bleeding sluggishly, so the meeting of the "bigwigs", as Andrew had put it, was happening here. "What do we know so far?"

"Well, there is the physical evidence of Xander's wounds." Giles carefully placed his glasses back on his face. "And the incident this morning."

"Incident." Spike rolled his eyes. "I nearly get my hand burned off, and you call it an incident."

Giles leveled a glare in his direction. "While I cannot say for certain, I am not aware of any of the other stigmatics on record manifesting extraneous powers, so I daresay that Xander's may be something of a special case. And I'm afraid I'm still baffled as to the reason."

Xander shrugged. He was trying to pretend that he was taking all of this in stride, but Willow could feel the tension in his body. He was still borderline freaked. "I'm a carpenter. Jesus was a carpenter. Sounds like the punch line of some sort of cosmic joke, to me."

"Right." Anya snorted. "So now every carpenter in the world is suddenly a religious figure? It's just a job."

Xander scowled at her, but didn't comment further.

"There's Tara, too." Willow spoke softly, avoiding anyone's eyes. "I know it seems like we should just assume that was the First Evil, but what if she was telling the truth? What if she really was a good guy?"

"We can't trust what-ifs right now." Buffy looked exhausted. On the other hand, Buffy pretty much always looked exhausted these days. Willow closed her eyes and nodded.

"I know."

"Um," Dawn glanced around the room, half-raising her hand. "It's been a really long time since Sunday school, but I definitely remember that Jesus brought Lazarus back from the dead. And Xander brought Buffy back, not once, but twice."

Willow grimaced. "Xander isn't Jesus." She crossed her arms. "Besides, we don't even know if anything in the Bible actually happened. I know I'm a biased opinion, what with having been raised Jewish and all, but we can't take the Bible as solid fact."

"That's true." Giles nodded. "There are many details in the Bible that the council's studies have revealed to be patently false. The entire book of Genesis, for instance. However, as our current dilemma is somewhat, er, Biblical, it would not be a bad place to start for information."

"Well," Buffy smiled at Xander. "At least we know we can throw out the old ‘virgin birth', thing, though. I mean, after all, we've all MET Xander's father."

Xander grimaced. Willow squeezed his hand. Neither of them looked at anyone else. She could feel Buffy's gaze.

"What?"

"Um," Willow glanced at Xander, and he nodded slightly. "We were never really sure that Tony Harris IS Xander's dad. He used to always say that Jessica lied to him. But we don't know that he isn't, either."

"Oh." Buffy sat down on the edge of the bed. "Um. Okay, so maybe it was a virgin birth." She wrinkled her nose. "Which would at least mean that you could avoid the whole ‘oh my god, my parents had sex' issue."

"Yes, well." Giles reached up for his glasses again, then seemed to consciously force his hand away from them. "Barring a DNA test, we'll simply have to let that factor fall to one side for now. Is there anything more. . . definitive we could bring up?"

"Boy's got a martyr complex, for one," Spike smirked. "Always throwin' himself into danger the way he does."

"Hey," Xander's protest was half-hearted. "I don't have a complex." He looked sidelong at Willow. "Do I?"

"Nope."

"See, no complex. So there."

"I've got some stuff we could use for research," Andrew held up a backpack he'd been lugging around. "Amanda and I went out this morning to get it."

Giles raised his eyebrows. "Indeed? What have you got?"

Andrew beamed. He began digging DVD boxes out of his bag. "I've got ‘Stigmata', of course, and ‘End of Days', ‘Jesus Christ: Superstar', ‘Godspel', ‘The Ninth Gate', and ‘Dogma'. Ooo," He grinned at the room. "And I ordered this one a few weeks ago, just for laughs, but I think it might be good!" He held up the black DVD proudly. The showed a woman in a red vinyl cat suit, a man dressed as Jesus, and a Mexican wrestler. Dawn took it from his hands. She snickered.

"‘Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter'?"

"Sure to be an instant classic!"

Xander blinked. "You're kidding, right?"

"Nope." Dawn held the box out to him. "The tag line is ‘the power of Christ impales you'."

"While I'm sure we all appreciate your attempts to help, Andrew," Giles looked somewhat appalled. Willow sympathized. "I doubt we're going to get the information we need from Hollywood."

"Ooo, but JCVH is Canadian!"

This time, Giles didn't bother to stop himself from cleaning his glasses. "Dear lord, we're doomed."

Xander was still peering at the box. "Doomed or not, we are so watching this tonight."

"You're searching for something, girl. What would that be now?"

The young woman stepped back slightly, startled by the tall priest. "Oh. You. I was looking for you."

The priest smiled slightly, his eyes squinting beneath the coverage of his long bangs. "Is that right?"

"I heard you speakin' tonight. Preachin'. I felt your words go straight to me."

The priest's smile turned ever so slightly wicked. The First Evil watched, and smiled. "Well, the truth is like a sword, isn't it, girl? Cuts deep."

The First Evil studied the priest, watching as he spoke to the young woman about truth and humanity, before killing her. It smiled, pleased.

It had picked Caleb weeks ago, before the First Good had complicated things, and the preacher was coming along nicely. He would play a significant role in the war, but the First needed more than just this woman-hating creature, now. There were no guarantees that Caleb's seminarian background wouldn't be a factor in his dealings with Harris, and the it wanted guarantees. It's position was simply too precarious at the moment.

There was a slim chance that it wasn't going to win, and frankly, that worried it.

What it needed, then, was a wild card. Someone with ties to the so-called Scooby Gang, someone who knew them well enough to know their weaknesses, and who hated them as thoroughly as it did. It really was such a shame that the brunette slayer had reformed. She wasn't nearly as easy to manipulate these days, even within the confines of her prison cell. She would have been perfect.

The thought of prison cells reminded the First of someone. It would be risky, of course, perhaps more of a wild card than it really wanted, but there was a man who had every right to want to watch the Scoobies, especially the watcher, fall. It would take some doing, and effectively divide the First's attentions for a time, but the chaos would be worth it.

In less time than it would take for a human to blink an eye, the First was elsewhere, in the midst of a hidden military prison.

It was time to pay Ethan Rayne a visit.