Fiction Making The List

Making The List

Author: Restive Nature (aka Bavite)

Genre: Crossover of BtVS and Star Wars

Type: Standalone

Rating PG-13

Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. They belong respectively to Joss Whedon and George Lucas.

Summary: Santa’s decided that someone’s been a very good by this year.

Timeline: Post BtVS series finale. For Star Wars, during Return of the Jedi.

A/N- For the Twisting the Hellmouth Fic-for-all. Pairing # 406 Xander/ Princess Leia

Xander sighed to himself as he absently readjusted his eyepatch. His normal eye, his good eye was blinking rapidly, trying to stave off the tiredness he felt. He glanced to his right, where he was perched on the rooftop and let out another soft moan. "Only a hundred billion more feet of lights to go," he muttered to himself. What kind of idiot was he? Volunteering to put up lights around the mansion just outside Cleveland that housed the new Slaying Academy. Oh yeah, that’s right. He was a male idiot. Who knew that even though he’d learned to overcome the combined effects of Buffy, Dawn and Willow poutage, that he was definitely susceptible to the addition of Faith, Kennedy and all the hundreds of other girls they’d collected over the last few months?

Xander didn’t tell them the exact truth though when he finally agreed. It wasn’t the nubile young ladies that swayed his heart. It was the sniffle from nine year old Kayla and the heartbreaking way she’d hidden herself in the corner to cry over her homesickness and traditional family Christmas dinner missage. He knew exactly how she felt. There’d been a strange ache in his chest as well the past few days. But no amount of lights or decorations would take it away.

Finally though, as midnight drew near, Xander managed to staple down the last part of the strand he was working on. Without nailing his glove to the roof even. "Okay Dawnie!" he called. "Light ‘er up!" He waited a moment and then his eyes widened in horror as none of the lights came on. "Oh no! Oh man!" he groaned. "Don’t tell me I’ve got Hellmouthy lights that require some sort of ritual spell before they’ll work." His head drooped down, as he contemplated many more hours of work. "Unplug ‘em Dawn. Something’s no good up here in frosty land!"

He glared at the light snowfall that had begun. But then realized that the sound of the fat snowflakes drifting down was all he could hear. "Dawn?" he called again, but there was no answer. He glanced down and somehow wasn’t surprised to see that the yard, if the grand expanse of land could be called that, was completely empty. They’d all gone to bed! "Traitors," he muttered under his breath as he scooted over to where the ladder was positioned.

Well if that’s how they felt about it then he’d just hie himself off to bed as well. Lights and Christmas be damned. But he just couldn’t resist checking the lights after all. And to his massive relief, every single one came on, lighting up his face in hues of red and green. With a satisfied, if tired nod, Xander turned and headed inside. He’d take care of the ladder later. Right now he just wanted to fall into his bed and sleep a hopefully dreamless sleep.

But it was just not meant to be. Xander pushed open the door to his bedroom, stripping off his gloves and coat wearily. He threw them onto the dresser that sat beside the door and made his way over to the bed to work on unlacing his boots. He was halfway through the first set when he realized what exactly was wrong in his room. With a startled yell, he leapt from the bed as if it were on fire and spun around to take in what his eye had told him was there, but his brain was too tired to register. Until just then.

A nearly naked lady, lying on his bed, adrift in peaceful slumber.

A nearly… naked… lady.

"Oh man!" Xander gasped, glancing around the room. Any moment now he expected someone to jump out from behind some piece of furniture and scream ‘April fools!" But that was the wrong season of course. Xander realized that his yell, though sharp hadn’t been very loud. It barely disturbed the woman at all, but as she shifted on the bed, her little costume twisted about as well and Xander hurriedly averted his eyes from the expanse of creamy skin she displayed.

"Okay hormones," he muttered to himself, "stop with the racing heartbeat. I’m getting too old for this. I don’t wanna have a coronary for at least another thirty years."

The woman moaned again and Xander’s eye was drawn back to her. The gold fancy looking bra and gauzy purple skirt she had on did little to calm his ever-ready libido. But what finally got his racing pulse under control was the fact that the woman was wearing a collar. And the collar had a very suspicious looking link of metal that was joined by another and then another. In fact, those links looked very much like a chain.

"Oh man," Xander panted to himself again. What on earth had he done to deserve this? He wasn’t sure whether to weep or laugh at the kinky imagery his brain insisted upon producing. He shook his head to clear it and then approached the bed with extreme caution. He tentatively reached out to shake at the woman’s bare shoulder. "Hey lady?" The reaction he got was actually one he more or less expected.

In seconds, they were lying together on the floor, the woman wide-awake, her eyes snapping with fury, her hands wrapped around his throat. But as she came awake fully her fury turned to confusion and then to horror. "You’re not Jabba," she muttered. And then scurried back off of him.

"And you’re definitely not a demon," Xander retorted and then massaged his neck. She was strong. Not as Slayer strong as the majority of his friends, but he was sure she’d given him quite a bruise. "At least I hope not."

Her face twisted up as she stared at him in shock. "I assure you I’m not a demon," she spoke in low tones and then her eyes darted around the room. "Where am I?" she demanded, seeming a little surer of herself.

"Uh…" Xander’s mouth decided not to work as the woman adjusted her skirt, trying to cover her legs up. But every time she pulled the material to one side, it just bared the other. She cleared her throat and Xander’s eyes snapped guiltily up to hers. Then he remembered that she was waiting for an answer. "Cleveland." She repeated his word silently and her face scrunched up again. "You know? Ohio?" But that didn’t register either. "United States of America? Earth?" Her eyes widened at that one. She started to tremble, just slightly.

Xander had actually seen this before. Some sort of shock was settling in on her. So whatever had happened, however she’d come to end up in his room, at least he could handle this. He quickly rose to his feet and turned to the door where his bathrobe, slightly ratty hung on a hook. He turned back to her and held it out. "Here, why don’t you wrap up in this?" The woman glanced up at him and he could see the relief in her eyes as she stood to take the robe from him. "I’m Xander, by the way."

Her eyes flicked coolly over him. "Leia," she returned shortly. She pulled the robe on and grimaced when she heard the dull clunk of the chain slithering the rest of the way to the floor.

"Oh hey," Xander frowned as the chain pulled her slightly off balance. "That can’t be comfortable." He stepped past her, over to the toolbox he kept in his room and threw open the lid. "We should get that off ya."

"If I had the key, don’t you think I would have already," she snorted.

"Who needs a key when you have handy dandy bolt cutters?" Xander exclaimed triumphantly as he held the tool aloft for her to see. But she was puzzled by this, as everything else it seemed. Xander just took it in stride, since he’d seen far worse than this minor calamity in all his Hellmouth years. He moved over to her and gathered up the chain, moving it away from her, letting it coil upon the bed. He pulled the strand out and set it in her hand. "Hold this, will ya?"

Leia tensed as he got closer to her with the gleaming, sharp metal. But her eyes drifted shut as the resounding dull clunk of metal shearing metal was heard. "Thanks," she sighed, rubbing at her neck with her free hand.

"Uh oh," Xander mumbled. He’d been settling the chain, taking it from her hand when his eye caught sight of a slip of red paper on the bed, drawing his full attention.

"Uh oh?" Leia demanded, spinning around. "What’s uh oh?"

"That," Xander declared, pointing it out. Leia followed his gaze. She couldn’t see what was so horrible about a piece of old, colored parchment.

"Don’t look at me," she whined slightly. "It’s not mine." Xander didn’t reply, just bent to retrieve it. He shouldn’t have been surprised that his name outlined the front of a merry card in silver ink. He flicked it open and carefully read the script inside.

"Dear Xander," the ornate printing spelled out "Thank you for being such a very good boy this past year. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. With love from Santa Claus"

"Oh man," Xander grumbled. "I’m gonna be in so much trouble. And who does that fat red man think he is? He’s supposed to be an evil demon for crying out loud!"

"What?" Leia demanded. "What is it?" In clipped words, Xander read the card to her. By now, he was getting used to the look of permanent confusion. "Christmas? What’s Christmas?" Now it was his turn for shock.

"How can you have not heard of Christmas?" he demanded. "It’s only like the biggest money making scam and religious holiday around!"

"Yeah?" Leia retorted, her hands going to her hips as she faced off with him. "Well maybe I’m not from around here?" That deflated him a little.

"And where would you be from then?"

"The planet Alderan," she sniffed delicately. The loss of her home world had been a devastating blow. But she had much more important things than grief to deal with. "Which is most definitely not this planet, since it was destroyed. And I doubt it’s Tatooine either, judging by the snow falling outside your window." Now confusion was his. "Tatooine is a desert planet." He nodded.

"You’re an alien?" Xander breathed suddenly. Oh man! Wouldn’t Andrew be jealous? But then he shook himself. "Well, at least that’s a step up from demon." His eyes went wide. "Oh no! I didn’t, did I?"

"Did what?" Leia demanded her tone full of irritation.

"Make a wish!"

"What has that to do with anything?"

"Oh, um," Xander scrambled to explain. "See, here on earth, there’s these things and uh, they’re called demons…"

"Yeah, I got that part," Leia scoffed. "Go on."

"And sometimes, if you make a wish, they grant them."

"What’s so bad about that?" she demanded, smiling wistfully.

"Well," Xander hedged. "They don’t always turn out like you might think. Things go bad. Very bad. Wishes are much with the badness."

"Oh," Leia nodded and then her face fell. "Oops."

"Oops?" Xander’s eye widened. "No, don’t say that. Everybody knows that saying oops jinxes things. Or was it saying that something wouldn’t happen and then it does?" He shook his head and stared at the woman before him. "What oops?"

"Um," Leia bit her lip. "I think I made a wish."

"You did? Oh no, not good. What did you wish for?"

"To be somewhere safe and warm, where I didn’t have to worry about my life every second of every day."

Xander shook his head sadly. "Oh lady. Did you ever come to the wrong place." He sighed heavily again. "Well, there’s just no use for it. We’ll get some sleep and in the morning, I’ll ask Wills to figure out how to get you back home."

"Do we have to wait?" Leia asked sadly. She had responsibilities. And while not having to endure that hideous chain around her neck could be nice for a while, she had commitments and promises to her friends to keep.

"Yup," he nodded, slightly cheered again by the woman’s easy acceptance of the things going on around her. Aside from some very natural reactions, she was handling the situation with an aplomb that had taken their gang years to develop. He had no idea that she’d been trained to be like this since birth. "So? Sleep?"

Leia grimaced and glanced back at the bed. "I’d rather not," she half-smiled. "Who knows where I’d end up then?"

"True," Xander agreed. There was no telling what might happen if she had made a W-I-S-H and vengeance demons were involved. He wasn’t really counting Santa, ‘cause apparently that guy was just a run of your mill, eat children not cookies demon. "I’ll tell you what. Why don’t we go downstairs and have some hot apple cider and I’ll explain exactly what Christmas is?" He held his arm out; after all he did have some manners drilled into him.

Leia studied him for a moment before taking his arm. "That sounds… really good." But before he could lead her out of his room and to the floor below, she stopped him. He glanced back down at her, his face softening as she stood on tiptoes to press a kiss to his cheek.

"What was that for?" he asked quietly. His few serious relationships aside, he just wasn’t used to pretty girls kissing him without wanting something more.

"For making my wish come true," Leia shrugged delicately. "At least for a little while."