Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer belongs to Joss Whedon, Marti Noxon, Twentieth Century Fox Productions, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, Mutant Enemy, and UPN. Highlander belongs to Davis/Panzer Productions, Gaumont Télèvision, and Rysher Entertainment. Any copyright infringements were not intended. This story was written for entertainment and not for profit.

Spoilers: Major spoilers are for all of the Immortal Life stories from "Too Late" to "Mes Amis". Other spoilers are for the Highlander: The Series episodes "Judgement Day" and "One Minute to Midnight."

Timing: The first part of this story takes place before "Too Late." The second part takes place during and after "Need." The third part takes place before, during, and after "Alternative". If you can't figure out which part is which, I recommend re-reading (or reading) the stories mentioned.

Summary: In "Mes Amis," Joe Dawson meets Alex LaVelle in 1996 Paris. In "Need," Joe appears in Sunnydale 1999 where he meets the younger version of LaVelle, only he doesn't give any indication that he recognizes Xander. This story explains why. It covers a time span from February 1999 to May 1999 or from "Too Late" to "Alternative".

Today was an average day in the life of a Watcher, namely me. It started out that way, anyway. I woke up in the afternoon after a long night at the bar. Forty minutes later, I was back at said bar, going over the bills and last night's receipts and making a list of what needed re-stocking. I also added more money to the old man’s insanely large tab. I need to ask Alex if he knows of any way of tricking-or, if that fails, convincing-Methos to pay it.

After I got all of that taken care of, I booted up my laptop and logged onto the database. I checked my e-mail for any late reports and was very pleased to see that my lecture on turning reports in on time had done its job. Roberts and Penn were the only ones that still needed to send me their monthly reports; the rest had, dutifully, sent me theirs overnight.

I smiled as I scrolled down the list. Melinda "Mina" Harker’s name got my attention. I smiled. I hadn’t seen her since the time we ran into each other at the Watcher Headquarters in Europe. That was five months ago. She was assigned to Peter Lionhardt, a three-centuries-old Immortal who preferred living in one of three places: France, the southern states, or the northern United States metropolitan cities. Mina had been assigned to him for close to three decades now.

Jeez, that’s a long time. It’s hard to believe it’s been that long. I’ve been watching MacLeod for eighteen years now, and it still feels like I started yesterday. Okay, maybe it doesn’t-not with everything that’s happened-but still.

Anyway, Lionhardt moved from Europe to Chicago less than a month ago. Although Chicago isn’t in my range of oversight, Lionhardt travels along the west coast for his business, so my bosses decided to make me Mina’s boss and placed her under my direct supervision. This e-mail would be her first report given directly to me.

I selected the link and the e-mail loaded onto the screen. I wondered what sort of things she’d be reporting, and knew that whatever it was, it would be interesting. Lionhardt had a penchant for the supernatural – he owned an occult shop in Chicago, and many of the items he required could only be found in California of all places. Mina also loved the supernatural, and that was the basis behind her being given the assignment of watching Lionhardt. Her particular fixation on vampire novels had earned her nickname, Mina, after Wilhelmina Harker, a character in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

I clicked on the link and began to read, wondering what kind of fantastical myths and items Lionhardt had discovered this time.

To my curiosity, the e-mail wasn’t her report. Instead, it was a sort of prelude to it.

Date: Thurs, 11 Feb 1999 23:35
From: M_Harker@field.us.watcher.org
To: J_Dawson@field.us.watcher.org
Subject: something interesting

Hey, Joe. How’s the bar? Here’s something that I think will interest you. Lionhardt has taken on a student, an Alexander LaVelle Harris. We’re in Sunnydale, CA, and it looks like we’ll be here for a few months – Lionhardt intends to teach Harris the basics, and it looks like Harris doesn’t need much more than that. I’ll send my full report on Saturday. Below is a picture and a description of Harris.

I checked the database in case Harris was one of those Immortals that pretend to be newbies. While I couldn’t find an Alexander LaVelle Harris, I did find an Alexander LaVelle, currently residing in Paris, and the photos of LaVelle in the database resembled Harris incredibly. Scientifically, there’s no way they could be the same person. I won’t bore you with the magical theories. What do you make of it?

Mina H.

Could there be two Immortals out there that resembled each other so much, as well as having a similar name? It was quite a coincidence-that was for sure.

I scrolled down and did a double take. Alexander LaVelle Harris looked exactly like the man I had met three years ago in Paris, France. Brown hair, brown eyes, square jaw, high cheekbones, Harris' height – all of it matched my own memory of him.

I frowned at the screen. Something strange was going on, and only Mina or Lionhardt would be involved in something as strange as this sounded. I needed more information.

*****

Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1999 16:26
From: J_Dawson@field.us.watcher.org
To: R_Calais@field.weu.watcher.org
Subject: lookalike

Hey, Ron. Long time no hear. How's Paris? It's been a few months since my last trip to France - care for a game of poker next time I'm in town?

Harker's pegged an Immortal that looks a lot like LaVelle. Has LaVelle been taking any trips to the California coastline recently? Let me know ASAP.

Dawson

*****

Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1999 17:52
From: R_Calais@field.weu.watcher.org
To: J_Dawson@field.us.watcher.org
Subject: Re: lookalike

Hey, Joe! You're right, it's been way too long. I'm not in Paris anymore; LaVelle moved to Chicago just last week. They haven't put me under you because LaVelle still makes frequent trips to Paris-even has a house there. LaVelle hasn't been anywhere near California since the 1850's-don't know who this lookalike could be. You said Harker spotted him? You know, that's odd. Ever since LaVelle got here, he's been keeping a close eye on Peter Lionhardt's affairs-isn't Lionhardt Harker's assignment?

Keep me posted if you find anything, all right?

Calais

*****

Over the next three days, I contacted other sources and did a little research of my own into the connection between Lionhardt, Harris, and LaVelle. With every new piece of information I found, I ended up with more questions than answers. Ron's e-mail didn't help me feel any less bewildered.

I remembered when I first met Alex LaVelle three years ago at MacLeod's barge in Paris. Not long after LaVelle had shown up, MacLeod had a visitor from another Immortal named Ian Madison. Madison turned out to be LaVelle's student, Marc. That was about all I knew about the situation…until now. I looked into Marc's chronicles. I wasn't all too surprised when I discovered that Marc was in Sunnydale, California, in the winter of 1995, only a few months before Marc came looking for his teacher in Paris. His Watcher reported that Marc had been fine until the day he gave a lecture at Sunnydale High School. After that, Marc had acted as if he was in shellshock for months until he came to Paris and re-united with his mentor, Alex LaVelle.

The Watcher had no idea what had shaken Marc so much, but I had a suspicion that it had to do with newbie Harris. Harris was, according to school records, a student at one Sunnydale High, and he would have been among the students that Marc lectured.

Some of the pieces of the whole Harris-LaVelle puzzle began to fall into place. Marc had visited Sunnydale on business where he saw a Pre-Immortal that looked exactly like his teacher and mentor. It was so shocking to him that he had to find his mentor in order to confirm that Harris wasn't him, and he does so when Marc and LaVelle catch up to each other in Paris in 1996.

I was pretty sure by that point that Harris and LaVelle were two different people. So why, if that was the case, did they look so much alike, and why did they have almost identical names?

*****

Everyday life caught up with me after a few days of researching. MacLeod breezed into town for the rest of the winter and the spring, and he kept me pretty busy. One fact about being MacLeod's Watcher is that there is never a dull Sunday afternoon. With all the Watchers that passed through, whose assignments either settled down in Seacouver, managed to pass through it without fighting with MacLeod, or fought and lost to the Highlander, I hosted a poker game every week at the bar. I had very little time to do any researching, even with help from other Watchers.

Before I knew it, two months passed since Mina sent me the e-mail telling me about the new Immortal down in Sunnydale. It was still a mystery to me, but I'd put aside trying to solve it for now. At least I had until I sat down in front of my computer near the end of March. That day, a few late March reports were in my inbox, unopened, but what caught my interest was a different message, one that had a blank where the return address should have been. There was no subject, and the date was also missing. All there was in the message was an attached file labeled JerryDamon.zip.

I recognized the name. Jerry Damon was the Watcher I'd put on Harris back in February. Damon had sent weekly reports on what Harris was up to until the middle of March. His last report had stated that Harris had won a challenge against Bryan Costello, then Damon simply disappeared. I'd sent a couple of Watchers down there to investigate, but they hadn't seen any sign of the missing Watcher. I assigned one of them to watch Harris and posted a warning to Watchers everywhere to look out for Damon, and that was the end of that as far as everyone was concerned.

I never expected to receive a message with an attachment named after the MIA Watcher. I saved the file to my hard drive before unzipping it to discover that it contained a WAV file:

"Damon, this is Jerry. I just wanted to say that I'll be late tonight. Harris and his friends have decided to spend all night researching another demon, and I have to stay and record it all because the battle always comes next. Both you and the Watchers want to know what his skills are, although they'd never believe me if I said he was fighting demons and vampires and not Immortals. Anyway, see you later. I'll tell you everything that happens."

It was a phone conversation, probably a message left on an answering machine. Beyond that, it didn't make a bit of sense. Demons? Vampires? Had Jerry gone insane? Was that why he dropped off the face of the Earth? If it had been Mina, and she'd been talking about demons and vampires, I wouldn't have been concerned, but Jerry was a practical guy.

The message had to be investigated. I contacted my bosses in Europe and informed them of the situation, and would have done a little checking of my own if MacLeod hadn't entered the bar at that moment. Amanda was with him, and from what I could hear from within my office, Amanda was having some guy trouble of the police kind. So I logged off of the database and shut down my computer before leaving the office to find out what was going on.

*****

Less than a week passed by. I was getting ready to open the bar for another night of business when the door whooshed open. I looked up, half expecting it to be the resident Immortals coming for a drink. I was surprised to see Watcher Tribune Patricia Elmwood standing just inside the door.

I somehow forced my lips to form a smile. "Ms. Elmwood," I greeted her. We weren't on the best of terms. Three years ago, I had been placed on trial by the Watcher Tribunal. The charges had been falsifying chronicles and consorting with an Immortal, namely one Duncan MacLeod. Elmwood had been the Supervisor of Eastern Europe at the time. She was also on the jury that found me guilty of all charges. I nearly got a bullet to the head because of it.

She was, however, my superior now, whether I liked it or not.

"Mr. Dawson," she greeted me, and I immediately understood that she was here on business only.

I pulled out one of the chairs that I had just lowered off a tabletop and motioned that she should sit in one of the other chairs. We sat down. My gaze drifted down to the file folder she placed on the table between us. It was considerably thick.

"What can I do you for?" I asked her.

"I'm here to discuss the situation with Jeremiah Damon," Elmwood announced without preamble. "We have investigated the WAV file you sent to me last week. We're also aware of your own investigation into what is going on in Sunnydale."

I shifted in my seat. As if sensing my discomfort, she raised a reassuring hand. "Not to worry, Mr. Dawson. Your curiosity is perfectly understandable, considering the likeness between the two-thousand-year-old Alexander LaVelle and the new Immortal Alexander LaVelle Harris. The other tribunes and I have decided to fill in whatever gaps you may have encountered in your search."

I stared at her. "Why tell me anything?" I asked, suspicious. At the same time I wondered what they knew that I didn't.

She took a deep breath. "We want you to go to Sunnydale to bring in Damon. You will command a team of ten Watchers, and you are authorized to use whatever force necessary to escort him to Watcher Headquarters."

"What?" The question came out sounding like a semi-hiss, semi-yell.

"We believe that Damon may have gone Hunter on us," Elmwood told me. "We also have reason to suspect that he may have persuaded many of our newest recruits to his way of thinking. As a Watcher with quite a bit of experience with the Hunters, as well as being the supervisor of this corner of the world, the Tribunal feels that you are the best man to lead the arrest."

Best man my ass. I didn't get by in the Watchers all these years without learning how to spot a liar. Elmwood was telling the truth for most of her speech and only started lying when she gave me the Tribunal's reasons for ordering me on this mission. She's a good liar-she probably would have pulled it off if not for the grimace of distaste that she had trouble covering up. After all, she didn't much approve of my relationship with my assignment. No, I bet that the real reason why the Tribunal was sending me to do their dirty work was because of my service record, as well as my reputation. Sure, I had a few friends here and there, but there were a lot of rumors that weren't in my favor circulating among Watchers stationed everywhere.

I snorted but refrained from comment. Elmwood said nothing about my rudeness.

"So what does Jerry have to do with Harris and LaVelle?" I asked her.

"As you know, Damon was Alexander LaVelle Harris' Watcher before he was officially declared to be missing in action a little over a month ago. You are also probably aware that Harris' teacher was Peter Lionhardt, an Immortal who owns an occult shop in Chicago, and that Lionhardt believes in the existence of the supernatural, such as vampires, demons, witches, and those sorts of things."

I nodded, wondering where this was going.

"Well then, Mr. Dawson, you may have trouble believing this, but all of those things do and truly exist."

I gave her an incredulous look. What the hell was she trying to pull? We weren't friends-not even close. We likely never would be. Was she really trying to pull a joke on me?

"I assure you that I am not lying and I am not insane," she told me. She removed a file from the densely packed folder and held it out to me. "You may see my cat-scan if you like, taken yesterday morning."

I glanced over it. "So you're sane, Ms. Elmwood," I said. "That doesn't prove anything."

"You're right, it doesn't." With that said, she handed over the rest of the stack. I flipped through it. I saw very life-like pictures of things with horns and red, scaly hides. A number of newspaper clippings were also included in the assortment. The articles told about bodies found all over the world with tiny wholes in their necks. Cause of death for every single one of them was bloodloss.

I felt my doubts become less and less with every article I read. There was no reason why the Watcher Tribunal would spend all the time and energy required in fabricating this much material, even with their resources.

"Okay," I said carefully. "Let's say I believe that vampires and demons are real and that magic exists. What then?"

"Then I tell you about our theories concerning Alex LaVelle and 'Xander' Harris, as young Harris prefers to be called. But first, I will tell you a little bit of LaVelle's confidential background."

"Our earliest chronicle of Alexander LaVelle is dated roughly about 1130 AD when Amanda's Watcher observes them spending time together. I used to be Amanda's Watcher, so LaVelle's encounters with her are the ones I am most familiar with. He was going by Mark at the time, but the description matches LaVelle's. It was not the first time LaVelle and Amanda had met. However, we do not have any records of Amanda's earlier meetings with him. All of this is public information and could be easily found in the Watcher Archives. There are some parts of LaVelle's chronicle that are kept confidential, however. Such as the fact that, whenever Amanda and LaVelle weren't-you could say, sleeping-they spent quite a lot of time in the graveyards of churches with their swords drawn."

"They weren't thinking about fighting on holy ground, were they?"

"Yes, but not in the way you're thinking. They were waiting for newly arisen vampires to break free from their graves. Once the fledgling vampires appeared, LaVelle and Amanda would decapitate them, and the vampires would explode into dust. Apparently, killing demons on holy ground does not violate the 'no-fighting-on-holy-ground' rule."

I closed the folder with a loud thud and rubbed my eyes. This was a lot to handle. Could Elmwood really be serious? Sure, I felt the same way once upon a time about the whole 'Immortals-are-real-and-we-watch-them' deal, but…demons? Exploding-to-dust vampires, with Amanda doing the killing?

For some reason, that last bit was the hardest part to believe.

She waited a moment before continuing her insane story. "LaVelle has spent quite a bit of his lifetime fighting evil." A smirk appeared on her face. "Quite a bit of that time was spent getting Amanda out of trouble with demons as well as humans. As a result, we believe that LaVelle is quite the expert on demons and magic."

"As for his connection with Harris…Harris also fights demons and vampires, only he has done so as a Pre-Immortal for the last two and a half years. He works alongside the Slayer, a girl who has extra strength, speed, and skill needed to fight vampires. So, you see the similarities. Harris and LaVelle both fight demons and vampires, and they are both Immortals. Like you, we have endeavored to discover the reason behind this. Even within the supernatural community, Immortal twins born thousands of years apart are unheard of. We have employed many magic and demon exports to come up with theories. While any of them are plausible, the one I support the most has to do with time travel."

"Time travel?" I repeated, curious despite myself. I was starting to warm up to all of this stuff. After all, who said demons couldn't be real when Immortals were?

Elmwood nodded in assent. "Throughout my research into LaVelle's chronicles, I've come across inconsistencies. LaVelle often seemed to know when a major famine would hit or when a war would begin or end. Some of things he knew, he couldn't know unless he is either a prophet or he is from the future, and there is no evidence to support that he is or ever was a seer."

"So, what? You're saying that Harris grew up in Sunnydale, became Immortal, and then was transported back in time two thousand years?"

Elmwood nodded, smiling. "That's exactly what I'm saying."

I shook my head, incredulous. "This is ridiculous."

"Is it?" she challenged. "Who are we to say what is ridiculous and what isn't when we record the lives of beings that never age and never die?"

"What does all this have to do with Damon?"

"If we had known that Harris was so involved in the supernatural, we would not have assigned Damon to him. When Damon falsified his reports, he acted under the assumption that he would be thrown into the nearest insane asylum the minute he mentioned demons or vampires in any of his reports. This was understandable, and it is not the reason why we want you to bring him in. I’ve already said that we suspect him to be a Hunter, and I’m afraid that I can’t go into the details behind that."

"Why not?" I wanted to ask her. After all, if she was going to tell me all this, why not reveal a few more secrets? But I didn’t.

"You will act under the assumption that we wish to question him for falsifying chronicles. The men that will accompany you have no knowledge of the supernatural-they do know that Damon might be a Hunter and that he will likely have help. You will not discuss anything I have told you with anyone else. Understood?"

I nodded and she stood, taking the folder with her. "If you still have doubts, you won’t have them when you go to Sunnydale."

"Why’s that?"

"Sunnydale, California is no ordinary town," she said. I met her eyes and felt a chill go down me. The way she said that…did she mean there were demons there? "You will see what I mean when you get there. During your stay, Mr. Dawson, be sure to stay in a group whenever you go outdoors at night." She pointed at the cross hanging by a chain around my throat. "Keep that on you always. If you run into a demon, chop off or shoot off its head; that works for most of them. You can kill a vampire the same way, but a good stake to the heart will suffice."

"Stake?" I repeated. I did not like the sound of this. Elmwood wasn’t kidding around with me, if she ever was. She had the most serious look on her face, the kind my mother always gave me whenever she was telling me something that she wanted me to take directly to heart.

Elmwood reached into her purse and removed a piece of wood sharpened to a fine tip on one end. She handed it to me, then she passed me a plane ticket. "You will leave tomorrow at eleven fifteen AM. Good luck, Mr. Dawson."

She left me staring at the stake in my hand, wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into.