Life (or Unlife) Goes On

A/N: Okay so you should know the title, author, summary, rating, warnings and pairing by now. Thankyou to everyone who is reading I can't beleive this story has had so many hits
Reveiws: Do I need to get on my knees and beg cos I will.


Chapter Twenty-Two

Thyme’s POV

I’m so bored, they have kept me chained up in this basement for what seems like forever. Well they moved me to the opposite end of the basement so that the Nina-beast could be locked up. I still haven’t woken up from this hallucination, I would consider that they were right that this is truly the real world except for the fact that it is so unbelievable. They are all upstairs yelling at each other, something about who gets to carry ‘the whelp’ upstairs whatever that means. I’m stuck ‘chained’ in a basement with a werewolf, puhlease, like they’re real and a female who must think she’s some kind of superhero. Brownish-red leather all over, blue hair and some sort of blue contacts. At the moment she seems to be watching a fly, and I’m the one tied up. At least she didn’t pester me like that blond that was down here last night, kept repeating her name and asking if she was the reason I was in America. I didn’t even know this was America. Apparently I’m not American, I’m Australian. I don’t know anything about Australia except that they have koala’s and say g’day mate a lot. I can hear feet coming down the main steps into the lobby and out the door, then some steps seem to come back closer until they are descending into the basement and I can see that it is the vampire who bit me. Spike, I think his name is and his hair and clothes remind me of something. I have so many of these moments and sometimes I remember things of a time where everything seemed normal and I was happy, which lends weight to the this is the real world theory but I haven’t yet decided.

“Blue, Angel wants you to help kill things, they are outside waiting for you.”

“I do not go where I am called, I choose where I go.”

“Yeah and you want to kill things right? See how many different ways you can dust a vampire.”

“I will go but just because I want to and not because your leader orders it.” The blue haired woman leaves and I am with the growling werewolf and the Billy-Idol wannabe, that’s what his clothes reminded me of but I don’t know who Billy Idol is.

“Whose Billy Idol?” Who better to ask? Maybe Spike’s real name is Billy Idol like how they keep telling me my name is Tori Keecher.

“Some punk who stole my look pet, did you remember it from before?” I nod my head, I’m so confused, I wish there was an arrow telling me whether this reality was real or not but then again, I would probably think that I was seeing things. “Okay luv now I’m going to undo the chains and you can come up with the others on two conditions, one that you do not try to eat anyone and two you do not try and run out of the hotel. You understand.”

“Yes, I agree.” If this is a hallucination then I had better let it play out and if it isn’t then these people are mostly nice and interesting so I might as well hang around.

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Angel’s POV

I follow Faith out of the latest alley that we have searched near the demon bar where Spike and Lorne saw Drusilla.

“What did you do?” I look up at Faith startled. What does that question have to do with finding Dru? What is she talking about? “Angel, What did you do to Spike? Yesterday the two of you were all over each other and today you hardly look at each other. Which means that about the time everything was a little crazy with Wesley’s father and Queen B back in town, the two of you had a fight. Why?” I sigh, looks like Faith has decided to take on Cordelia’s old job of confidant.

“Nina. Well, that started it.”

“You wanna try for longer sentences there. What exactly happened?” Great now I am going to have to talk about it, then talk about my feelings. Doesn’t anyone realise that I am a vampire. We don’t talk but no they continually force me to. “I told Spike that Nina and I were history when I hadn’t talked to her since before the Black Thorn but we were on a break and…”

“You weren’t going to ring her, were you? Crap Angel. What were you thinking, you need to break it off with her.” She stand there staring at me, I knew that she would yell at me, they always do, I always manage to stuff it all up.

“We are history now, she smelt him on me when we rescued her.” She just shakes her head at me.

“Okay so have you told Spike?”

“He said some stuff while we were fighting. He tried to rape Buffy.” That sentence is so hard to say but I can’t help flashing back to the moment in the alley where Buffy punched Spike in the nose and then proceeded to play tonsil hockey with him.

“Yeah he did and I’m not trying to defend him, your right, it was wrong but how I see it there were other things going on. First the chip didn’t work on Buffy since Willow brought her back. Spike could have killed her at any time but he didn’t. Secondly, that was the reason Spike went and fought for his soul. I think that as soon as he left Buffy’s house he knew what he had done was wrong. Lastly, the way I hear it told Buffy and Spike’s relationship was built on violence. B was courting the dark side and no always meant ‘yes more’ until that one time and Spike didn’t know but he told me that as soon as he did know he left.”

“He talked to you about this?” I know there are more important revelations in what Faith just said but I need to know first of all how reliable this information is.

“Yeah, once. I was trying to hide from the SIT’s and he was sitting in the basement having a good try at brooding, but with cigarettes.” Sounds like he was trying to do the right thing even before the soul, I wonder why. We head out of that alley and into the next one. We walk in silence for a while as I ponder what I’m going to do with Spike.

“So what about Xander?”

“What about Xander?” I ask trying to appear calm, I was hoping to avoid this conversation.

“Well I’m trying to work out why Angelus went for Xander specifically.”

“Did you hear about the time Buffy was in hospital with the flu?”

“Yeah, the stress of Angelus, that teacher’s death and the need to kill the guy she was in love with got too much for her.”

“Well, late one night I went to visit her while she was in the hospital, I was planning to torture her then. However, Xander was guarding the hallway, by himself he stood up to me and he succeeded.”

“Shit, that boy always had guts. We need to remind him of that but are you telling me that the only reason Angelus took Xander was because the boy stood up to him?” Sighing I decide that I had better tell her the whole story because otherwise she is just going to continue to nag me.

“Do you want the whole truth, Faith?”

“Yes Angel, I want you to tell someone even if it isn’t me what is going through that head of yours. Its not healthy to keep secrets.”

“Before I reverted back to Angelus, Xander and I were good friends well at least when the others weren’t around. You see Xander was attracted to me, I could smell it and he was therefore jealous of Buffy. He never said anything, I think because Buffy was his friend and also he was being faithful to Jessie’s memory.” Faith directs me to sit down on a crate and she sits on one of those metal rubbish bins. I stare at my hands while trying to work out how to say the next part. “For my part I was attracted to him but I was with Buffy and also as a human I had never been with a man. I associated those tendencies with the demon part of me, I think partly because of my strict Catholic upbringing.”

“So Angelus went after Xander to what? Confuse and abuse Xander as well as tormenting you for what you wanted but never took?” I nod not looking at her, I wonder if she will work the last part out?

“How do you feel about Xander now?”

“I still want him,” I admit quietly. “But its so complicated, I also want Spike and he has been hurt so badly. What am I supposed to do?”

“That’s for you to decide. Come on, we had better keep trying to find Drusilla.” I follow her out of the alley, trying to figure it all out in my head.

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Xander’s POV
Ow my head hurts, is the first thought to flicker across my consciousness then I feel so hot and try to shake off whatever it is over me. Oh it’s a blanket, I’m in a bed in what I suppose is my new room in the Hyperion Hotel, LA. I don’t feel too good, I’m all shaky but I’m not actually shaking. Wait a minute how did I end up here last I remember, I was down in the lobby talking to G…G, wait, it starts with G. Doesn’t matter someone must of brought me up here while I was passed out. I’m used to waking up in strange places these days. My arm goes searching for a bottle and when my hand finds a glass of water and a note, I remember why I feel worse than normal. They have taken my whole stash of stuff to make me numb and forget. Well I still have my vast array of sex toys, at least they didn’t take those. I wonder who went through my stuff, must have been Faith or one of the vampires anyone else would have brought it up at the meeting. I take a sip and look at the note


Xan,
Your going to go through withdrawals that will make blood
lust look like a picnic. Try to eat something, even if you just
bring it back up, you need the energy. I will be up later to
check on you. Try and get some rest.
Spike.


Why is he being so nice to me? I was always awful to him, never trusted a vampire, how could I when I staked my lover just because he was one. No I can’t think on this. I need a drink, ow does my head hurt. I get up and find a bowl of chicken noodle soup on the small table in the living area. Its home made as well, who here can cook? I flick on the radio and take my soup and blanket to a chair near the window. I can see out over LA and all the lights twinkling in the night. The sky is almost black hanging overhead. I won’t be able to see the stars from here. That’s the one thing I miss about Africa, how bright the stars were. Nothing else though, some of those poor children’s lives make my childhood seem absolutely ideal. My stomach starts to protest the soup, I can’t remember the last time I ate. I put it down and go back to staring outside. Life truly sucks but I don’t have the guts needed to end it permanently. I can’t even be buried where I want to be. In the Restfeild cemetery alongside Tara, Jessie, Larry and Joyce. Anya doesn’t even get a gravestone even though those for the others have now disappeared, so what does it matter. And everyone forgets, until I’m the only one who remembers.
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A/N: Okay its not huge on the action but its setting things up for the next few chapters. The more reveiws I get the more I'm inspired to write, the quicker a chapter will appear