Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me

Xander did everything he could to guarantee a good night’s sleep. He’d called Giles and told him he’d be skipping school the next day, hoping that he’d finally get to figure out what was going on.

He’d gone through the laundry hamper and found a shirt of Spike’s that hadn’t been washed, and put it on. Warm milk with nutmeg. You name it, he gave it a try. Because he had a very odd feeling that a lot of things, a lot of people, depended on what he was about to learn. If he could get his dreams to cooperate with him.

It was hard at first. He was worried about Spike, and the Scoobies, and about the Judge and about a million other things. It took over an hour, during which time he deep breathed so much he ended up hyperventilating twice. Finally fatigue set in and he drifted off to sleep with a mantra on his lips.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I can learn from my dreams. I can learn from my dreams. I can learn from my dreams. I can learn from my dreams. I can learn from my dreams. I can learn from my dreams.”

Xander slowly opened one eye and then the other. It was night and he was in the playground he’d first met Spike in. The slide was even still tilted over as if it had had too much to drink and was about to collapse.

The swings were all going, higher and higher as if invisible children were pumping their legs as hard as they could and Xander was reminded of a Stephen King movie.

He quickly tried to push that thought out of his mind. If he could be aware of his dreams he might be able to influence them and he really didn’t need giant boxwood topiaries to chase him; he had enough problems.

Suddenly the merry go round started spinning all on its own behind him.

“Ring around the rosies…”

The voice came from out of nowhere and everywhere all at once. He turned around but didn’t see anything.

“Ring around the rosies…”

“Who…who’s there?”

“Pocket full of posies…”

“Hello? Anyone here?” His voice echoed around the empty playground and he had the odd feeling that there was nothing beyond the monkey bars. Nothing there but a void of nothingness and all that existed was a dead place where children should be playing and one Xander Harris.

“HELLO?” And he knew he was panicking but he couldn’t help it. He needed to find out the reason for the dreams but if nothing was there, how could he learn it?

“Ring around the rosies.
Pocket full of posies.”

Suddenly a face appeared before him in the darkness, too fast for him to make out anything more than gold eyes in a pale face framed by a fall of dark hair.

“Ashes, ashes. We all fall down!”

Suddenly he was in the mall. At least he thought it was the mall. The florescent lights flickered and were dimmed, casting more shadows than light. The horrible musak that was usually playing over the speakers was gone, leaving a sort of static that hummed on the edge of his hearing, masking sounds.

The walls were charred as if the building had been in a terrible fire and all around him there was nothing but dirt.

Then Xander realized it wasn’t dirt. It was ashes.

Human remains.

It was then he realized he’d been smelling burnt flesh and he scrambled back. He tripped over a handbag that had been dropped by someone and fell on his ass. He tried to crawl away, but there was no change. The entire mall was nothing but a giant charnel house. He saw the remains of one poor person’s arm but it turned to ash and blew away on a wind that he couldn’t feel. Then he noticed that the handbag was the pink purse Willow had bought the day before.

He got up, sobbing, and ran for the exit. What he saw there was ten times worse than what was inside and Xander fell to his knees and vomited.

Buffy. He might have problems with Buffy but he still considered her his friend. She was laid out on a bench in one of the alcoves, her hands folded over his breast.

It was obvious that she’d been fed from; there were fang marks on her neck. It was also obvious that she’d been raped and brutally beaten.

“God…Buffy…”

He reached one hand out to touch her face. Just to see if it was real or still a dream or just…if she was really dead.

And then her eyes snapped open. And they were gold.

He started running again, out of the mall and into the daylight. Only it wasn’t ordinary daylight, it was a reddish brown sort of light, even though the sun was directly overhead. Somehow he’d come out in front of the school, which wasn’t anywhere near the mall but, hey, a dream.

Once again there were signs of a big fire. Trees were black and smoking and the school was nothing but rubble. Xander thought of Giles and his books and started crying again, using the sleeve of his shirt to wipe at his face.

He took a deep breath and tried to remember. Okay, that Judge guy, he liked to burn things. Human type things and from what Xander was seeing he’d pretty much gotten the entire town.

But was it a premonition or just his fears? And he still hadn’t found Spike. Or Cordelia, or…well he had a pretty good guess where the Scoobies had made their last stand but still he really hated to think about it.

He really hoped it was just a dream and not what was going to happen tomorrow.

“Damn it, I wish I had like an instruction manual or something! This is just…too much!”

“Wishes are like flowers and once you pick them you can’t put them back in the ground.” He turned around and there in the shadow of the gym was the same figure he’d glimpsed right before being transported from the creepy playground to the ashtray that the mall had become.

She wore a burgundy dress. He knew the color after listening to hours of Cordelia picking out a new pair of boots. It was old fashioned, like something out of A Christmas Carol that he used to watch with Jesse every year. The long dark hair framed her face but this time here eyes weren’t gold, they were dark. Black. Fathomless.

“You know some wishes are roses and they smell so sweet. Then there are the man-eating wishes that gobble you up and leave you bleeding for more.”

“You…you’re Drusilla right? I mean, Spike talks a lot about you and you sound…” He was going to say sort of crazy and then he figured he'd best shut his mouth. It wasn’t smart to poke fun of the crazy vampire type people.

“Once upon a time I was Daddy’s little girl but now that Daddy came back I’ve turned into starshine. I can’t help Daddy; he’s all twisted inside, like licorice.” She crooked her finger at him in a very childish gesture and beckoned him into the darkness. “I know a secret and it tastes of burnt sugar. The plague has come and you’ll need posies in your pockets to take away the smell of smoke. Want to know the secret? Of William being offered up to the pyre?”

Xander took a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah, I need to find Spike. Will you help me? I mean, I know he can take care of himself but I’m worried.”

Drusilla smiled and put her hands behind her back and rocked back and forth. “That’s because you can see, little Kitten, but you don’t know how to look. Miss Edith can help you, but she isn’t a nice dolly. She can open the door but the latch is broken and if you do it will never close again.”

Xander bit his lip and took a step towards the shadows she was standing in. “Umm, okay, I really didn’t get that. Is it dream imagery, or is it, well, you? No offence, I kind of like you because of Spike but that was confusing. Can’t you just tell me where he is?”

She gave a sad sort of smile. “I can do better than that, I can get Miss Edith to show you, but that’s knowledge and it has a price. All power has a price that must be paid, and you must give a coin to Charon if you’re going to cross the Styx.”

“Oh no, I don’t want to be dead. Well, dead dead. No River Styx for me, thank you very much.”

Her face shifted to its demon aspect and she snarled. “You can’t read the story without paying for the book! If you want to help William, you must pay!”

Xander didn’t know what to do. He would gladly die for Spike but how would being dead help?

A random thought popped into his brain. One of the few fights he’d had with Jesse when they were young. It had been over Spiderman, and Jesse had thought it would have been so cool to have those powers.

But Xander remembered how badly it had hurt Peter when his Uncle died. Or when someone hurt MJ or his Aunt. And he didn’t think he’d like all the responsibility.

Because that was the main thing Stan Lee was teaching with that comic. With great power comes great responsibility.

Up until now he could walk away from the fight. He wasn’t the Slayer, he wasn’t even a Watcher in training, no matter how many times Giles tried to get him to sign on. He liked learning about demons and how to kill the bad ones but it had been a hobby. One he could walk away from at any time.

He hadn’t even really made a big commitment to Spike. Sure, he’d said he loved him, and they were together but he hadn’t given Spike the two biggest things to prove that he belonged to the vampire. His blood or his body. Sex was a big thing and Spike was waiting for him to be comfortable enough to make that commitment. And Xander knew that Spike would love to mark him as belonging to the vampire, but he’d never done anything more than leave a hickey that could be hidden.

Maybe that was the price? He’d have to make commitments he had been putting off?

“Tick tock, little cat. There isn’t much time before the plague starts and London will be burning again. If you want to find William, pay the price and step into the dark. And then you shall see."

In the end, there wasn’t really a choice. He’d do anything for Spike; he loved him. And if their positions were reversed, he knew deep down in his soul that Spike would do the same for him. He took a deep breath and stepped into the shadows.

She handed him a box wrapped up as a gift, silver wrapping with a blue bow, and he opened the top…

And screamed.

******

He was still screaming when he woke up and he could taste copper on his lips. He sat up in bed and tried to calm down, tried to slow his breathing but it wasn’t working. He could feel blood pouring out of his nose and tears running down his face and it wouldn’t stop and there was so much pain that he wished he could die but he couldn’t because he could see what was going to happen to Spike.

He could SEE it!

It was almost as if his bedroom was a dream and what he was seeing behind his eyes were real. He could see Angel but it wasn’t Angel because he was dark and had blood on his hands and Kendra’s body at his feet and the bastard was laughing!!

And there was Spike, looking bruised and sort of broken. One of his legs was pointing in an odd direction and Angel, no, ANGELUS was kicking at it and laughing again. Xander thought he’d hated the bastard before but he really hated him now!

Then everything got disjointed, even worse then when he was dreaming, so maybe he wasn’t really awake? And this giant blue demon came up and put his hand on Spike’s chest and he started screaming Xander’s name and there were tears in Xander’s eyes to see Spike suffer so much and he could taste them and they tasted of the ocean.

He could see the bits of William that made up Spike like a shadow around his lover and it burned away, leaving Spike even more bloody, more ruthless than before and Xander knew he couldn’t let that happen because he loved Spike just like he was. And it was going to happen, in the future. He could tell because the present tasted like strawberries and was yellow but when Spike was burning he could taste the burnt sugar that Drusilla talked of and it was a dirty brown.

And he could hear the stars even though he couldn’t see them and they were whispering behind his back. Talking about him. Orion was stumbling around, blind as Xander was, and Cassiopeia was even snottier than Cordelia on her worst day and the Twins kept on chasing Virgo, trying to look under her skirt. They were always such rowdy boys; the Pleiades were always talking about them.

He scrambled from the bed, falling onto the carpet and he could see the time that Spike had tickled him till they rolled on the floor and it was bright yellow and there were bubbles of laughter all around, tickling his nose like champagne.

He finally crawled into the corner and started beating his head against the wall because the damned stars just would not shut up with their constant chatter; it was like being in the cafeteria at lunch but the volume was turned up. The pain made it go away, even though he didn’t like the sickly green it made the room look like because it clashed with the blood on his face.

And beyond all of that was the knowledge of what was happening, what had happened and what would happen. Angelus had lost his soul in a moment of happiness weeks ago, when Buffy had said that she loved him, because that was the best thing that could ever happen to him. It had been Angelus that had been poisoning her mind and soul, keeping her away from her friends but he’d done it so quietly because he was the wolf with the sheep’s clothes on.

And he could see how Spike tried to get back to him after finding his Grandsire, but Angelus was ten times as cruel as he had been a hundred years ago and wouldn’t let the last remaining member of his line leave. And if Xander didn’t do something that Judge demon would burn the humanity out of him, burn Xander’s love and memory of him out of Spike’s heart and he would be just as cruel as Angelus.

What was worse, Xander could see how nothing worked against the Judge, not swords or arrows or any of their weapons and he watched as both Willow’s and Cordelia’s hair caught on fire and Oz as he tried to put out the flames and was taken by a minion from behind.

But then there was a door, and there were mirrors, each showing the same scene only different. It was a room full of maybes and what ifs and the halls echoed as he ran through them, looking for a solution.

After what felt like hours of looking, he found it. Found it in a mirror where he had his hand up Cordelia’s skirt and that was about as disturbing as anything else he’d seen. And while he knew it wouldn’t fix everything, wouldn’t fix Angelus, it was a start.

He slowly opened his eyes and looked around. Everything was the same, only different, and if he didn’t concentrate the whispers would come back and he couldn’t let them. It was how he guessed being crazy must feel like and he started laughing because now he knew what the price was.

So now he was psychic, or whatever the hell it was. Because he didn’t have a name for the gift Drusilla had given him, wasn’t sure at all but the price was this state of flux, this being between one world and the other.

And if he could save Spike, it would be worth every minute of insanity.

*****