A Sires Revenge: For My Childe

SUMMARY: Xander explains the situation in Sunnydale to Angel.


[[thoughts]]


Xander was having a strange dream. He was back in his parent’s basement, tied to the sofa bed. People kept coming in and taking pieces of him. Carving little chunks of him off and carrying them away. Everyone he knew had come in for a piece. Buffy took his heart, Giles his brain, Willow was trying to cut out his soul, while Tara wrung her hands and cried in the background. His parents were standing at the door, charging people as they came in to get their share. There was two armed commandos standing guard by his parents. Riley was standing near the bed waving people forward. Cordelia showed up and took his tongue, and then it was Larry’s turn. As he reached down to cut off his dick, Angelus swooped in, a threatening shadow, encased in black leather. He rushed to the bed, black duster billowing behind him. Angel grabbed Riley, bent his neck back, and drained him. Then he threw Larry against a wall and yelled “MINE! No one touches what is mine.” Xander sat straight up in the bed with a scream. He was gasping like he had just finished a marathon, and had tears streaming down his face. “Shit, just a dreoh soh shit, just a dream, just a dream.” He ran his hand down his body just to make sure, “Everything’s here, nothing gone, just a dream.” Xander jumped when he felt a cool hand on his arm.

“Xander, are you alright?” Xander looked up at Angel, expecting to see scorn and dismissal. What he saw was concern and maybe, just maybe, he prayed, acceptance. “You screamed like the hounds of hell were after you.”

“Nope, no hounds. Just a lot of people with sharp, pointy knives, carving off hunks of me.” Xander looked down next to him and saw Spike. He was pale and motionless. [[Of course he’s motionless, idiot. Vamps sleep like, well, like the dead.]] “Angel, is Spike gonna be okay? He hasn’t fed in at least two weeks. He just quit…quit everything, shut down.” Xander’s stomach chose that time to announce its presence. Xander blushed and looked up at Angel.

“I take it you haven’t eaten lately either? Come on, Xander, we’ll head to the kitchen and get you something to eat. We can talk about what’s going on down there.”

Xander got up out of the bed, felt a cool breeze and started blushing again, a full body, scarlet red blush. “Gah, naked…me…naked..no clothes. Deadboy, where’s my clothes? Who..who took…naked here….Angel, where’s my clothes???” Angel smiled at the stuttering boy and handed him his jeans.

“Deadboy? Is that any way to talk to your Master?” With that parting shot, a smiling Angel left the room. Xander pulled on his jeans and raced after the vampire.

“Master?? What do you mean? So not going down that path again. Nope, no thrall for this boy. Am not going to be the bug eating man-bitch again.” That stopped Angel, he turned and looked at Xander.

“W you you care to explain that? Thrall? Bug eating man-bitch? What in the hell has been happening in Sunnydale?”

“Angel, it will take me days to fill you in on the happenings in Sunnyhell. But the thrall is easy to explain. We had a new visitor, actuallyery ery old visitor. Did you know Dracula was real? I mean really real? He showed up and decided to use one of the Scoobies to get to Buffy. Guess which one? Yeap, good old me. If you have to do something really fuckin’ ugly to a Scoobie, I’m your guy.” Xander’s speech may have been light and joking but the look on his face wasn’t. He looked tired, frustrated, and at the end of his endurance. “I can’t take it anymore, Angel. I can’t go back this time. I don’t mind the fighting, you know I don’t, but I don’t make a difference there. We don’t fight for the good anymore.” Angel just shook his head and led the boy to the kitchen. He knew that the humans that worked with him kept food here, but he wasn’t sure what there was. He went through cabinets until he found cereal and handed the box to Xander.

“There should be milk, bowls are in that cabinet to your right, spoons in the drawer under it.” While Xander got settled with his breakfast, Angel fixed himself a pack of blood. He took the warmed blood out of the microwave, and sat down with Xander at the table. “Alright, Xander, are you ready to tell me just what happened to my childe, and why you’re acting like the two of you ‘escaped’ from Sunnydale.”

Xander pushed back his half-eaten bowl of cereal and sighed. “It’s gonna take awhile, An Bef Before I start, I wanna know if Spike’s gonna be okay. Did I get him here in time? I was afraid it was too late.”

“Spike should be fine when he wakes up. He’s had enough blood to fall into a healing sleep. It’s almost like being in a coma. He’ll be this way for at least two days. I’ll rouse him tonight, just enough to get him to feed again; he should be awake by tomorrow night. Now, what happened to him and what possessed you to invoke riterite of protection? How in the hell did you even know about it?” Angel asked.

t met me start at the beginning and work my way up to now. It’ll make more sense that way.” Xander took a deep breath and began. “ Things started to change after that mess at graduation. Buffy started to change. She got more controlling over me and Willow. She ordered us around kinda like she owned us. She started pulling this ‘I’m the Slayer! I’m the Chosen one!’ crap all the time like we should bow down and kiss her feet. I mean, she’d always been, well, you know…” Xander shrugged.

“”Self-centered and self-involved?” Angel asked. “Xander, I know Buffy’s short comings and ego is one of them. But she was never vicious and hurtful, especially to her friends.”

“Well, things change, Angel. And this year they changed a lot. It started when her and Willow started at UC Sunnydale. Did you know that Wills got some big time scholarships? Places like Harvard and Oxford, in England. She was so excited at first. Then Buffy started playing the guilt game. “I’m gonna have to get used to being alone”, “I’m just a Sunnydale girl, I’m sure I’ll get by fine fighting on my own”, and the best one “It won’t be the same, trying to fight all this badness without you”. Willow gave it all up to stay in Sunnydale, go to a second rate college, and spend most of her time researching for Buffy. She is still doing her Wicca-ness stuff, Giles helps her, but that isn’t enough. She could’ve gotten out of there, made a better life, been somebody really important. Shit, I’m getting away from the point of the story. It just makes me so mad to think of what she gave up. You got something to drink around here, preferably with plenty of caffeine?”

“Cordy keeps some diet something in the refrigerator. Help yourself.” Xander got up and got a can of soda out and sat back down.

“The real problems started after their classes got going. We began to hear rumors about soldiers, some kind of commandos roaming Sunnydale at night. It wasn’t long after that we noticed that the demon population was getting thinner. Of course, Buffy was thrilled, less patrolling. It didn’t bother me too much either. That was about the time Spike showed back up. He was all crazy and depressed because your crazy, uh, crazier childe left him for a chaos demon. He went around drinking and moaning about his ‘dark princess’ leaving him after all he did for her. Got on the nerves I gotta tell you. I was tending bar by then, in a little off campus place. Spike used to come in once and awhile, drink himself blind, threaten me, and then leave. You know, just being Spike. It was about two weeks before I noticed that Spike hadn’t been around.” Xander stopped to finish off his drink.

“That’s also about the time Buffy introduced us to Riley, some Midwest jock type she met at the college. Man, he set off my all bells and whistles the first time I met him. Soldier boy was going crazy in my head. And the hyena, man, it went bananas.” Wanted out, wanted to kill, to protect the pack.”

“Hyena? What are you talking about?” Angel was getting confused.

“You know about the soldier boy, right? Well, sophomore year I went on a little field trip and a group of us were in the wrong place at a really wrong time. We ended up possessed by a pack of hyenas. Can you guess who was pack leader? When Giles figured out the dispossession thingie, all the others were totally clean but somehow mine stayed. I don’t know,be bbe because she was alpha. I keep her under control but I am aware of her enough that I recognize the scoobies as ‘pack’. I guess that somehow, in my over-possessed brain, I had accepted Spike as pack, like the rest of the gang. During one of our usual ‘demons in town, we’re all gonna die’ nights, Buffy ran into the commandos. Turns out Riley is one of their squad leaders. We found out they are a government-sponsored group called The Initiative. Their job is to round up demons and study them to find out better ways to destroy them. We, or at least I, think they’re also doing ‘evil scientist’ kind of experiments on them.”

“Spike? Is that what happened to Spike?” Angel asked.

“Yeah, soldier boys caught him one night. I don’t know how long they had him. I do know that he was tortured an..and they raped him, Angel.” Xander had to stop for a minute.

“Xander as much as it pains me to say it, but Spike has been raped before. When I...Angelus loved blood games and rape was one of them. He loved nothing better than to pound into William until blood poured and he was screaming. Sometimes it would take days for him to heal.” Angel hung his head while he explained what Angelus liked.

“I understand that, Angel. I mean, vampires right? I’m not a fool, it’s all about sex and blood. But you were still family, he knew that. But you have to understand this is so much worse. He has this damn chip is his head. They put a computer chip is his brain that keeps him from hurting anything. When they raped him, he couldn’t fight back. He was helpless. Humans, Spike’s happy meals on legs, did this to him. He couldn’t do anything to stop them. Somehow, he managed to escape and d upd up at my apartment. He hasn’t left there since that night, until I carried him out and brought him here. He won’t feed, he won’t talk, he just huddles in a corner and stares.” Xander stopped talking and stared at the wall a minute. “I can’t really explain it, Angel. I don’t know why it bothered me so bad, Spike and I were never big buddies. Spike is supposed to be ‘the Big Bad’, you know? When he first got to my place, he was like this injured child, like he knew he was hurt but couldn’t understand just why.” Xander understood that feeling; he had felt that way most of his childhood. He knew he hurt, he knew he had been hurt but he never understood why. Why his parents felt they had to hurt him. He, more than the rest of the gang could understand what Spike was going through, the helplessness and sorrow.

“What are Buffy and theers ers doing about this Initiative? Surely they can see that what they’re doing is wrong.”

“Are you kidding? Queen Bitch thinks they’re fucking wonderful, and Spike got what he deserved. Keeps saying ‘a chipped Spike is a good Spike’. All she cares about is Riley and the soldier boys. Of course, with them around town, her job has gotten a lot easier. They patrol every night looking for “hostiles”. Angel, they scare me like no demon we ever fought. I’m afraid for Willow and Giles and I am scared to death for myself. The truth is, I’m even worried about Buffy. None of us are exactly...normal. Hell, I’ve been possessed twice and they’re still in my head. Who knows what kind of experiments those assholes will be trying next, breeding their own little Slayers maybe? Or trying to siphon magical strength from someone like Giles or Willow. These guys are evil, really evil. No one deserves what they did to Spike, no one. That’s why I brought him here. I took a chance on the ritual, hoping the watcher that wrote about it didn’t make it up.” Xander looked up at Angel and was glad that it wasn’t him Angel’s rage was aimed at.

“Xander, I want you to understand what you did by invoking that ritual. You not only put Spike under my protection, but yourself as well. You’re part of my family now, not a Scoobie. You won’t be going back, not without me anyway.”

“We’re going back?”

Xander jumped when Angel’s mug hit the wall behind him. “They HURT MY CHILDE! My William! They will pay. I kill demons when I have to. But, I would never condone this type of experimentation and imprisonment. It’s inhuman. I somehow don’t think the Powers would condone it either. It won’t be anytime soon, but we will be going back.” Angel said it almost like it was a vow, a promise of retribution. “Starting tomorrow we have plans to make, and Xander, your training will begin.”

Xander looked at Angel and a slow, feral grin spread over is face. “I wanna be there when you meet farmboy the first time. He turns green every time your name is mentioned. He knows you’re Buffy’s ex, but he doesn’t have a clue who or what you really are: Angelus. And Angel, it’s not Xander, not anymore. Xander was a Scoobie, a Zeppo. Alex belongs to your family.” Alex’s grin turned into full-throated laughter and Angel joined in.