Broken Revenge

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Xander lay curled half on the bed and half in Spike's lap, and boy could he possibly act like *less* of a man? No wonder Willow worried about him. Normal-guy Droopy Harris may have dressed bad and babbled way too much, but at least he didn't crawl in another man's lap after a good crying jag. Then again, Droopy Harris wasn't a rapist. Okay, he'd tried with the whole hyena-Buffy thing, but he'd never actually done the deed. Xander hiccuped.

"You back with me, pet?"

"Yes, Master," Xander whispered miserably as he picked at the edge of the tape holding a bandage over the cut on his knee. He hoped that Spike got the punishment over with quickly so that he could go back to lying in Spike’s lap, and again with the lack of manhood. Xander felt a near-hysterical giggle bubble up and he considered that he might need to start checking his manhood periodically to make sure it didn't just fall off from lack of use. Well, not lack of use in terms of sex-type using because he was getting more sex now than he had when he was dating Anya, which was actually a lot of sex. If anything, he was going to wear his cock out. Xander realized he had wandered off into an internal babble when Spike tapped his nose.

"Master?" he asked, focusing on two amused eyes and one raised eyebrow.

"You ready to talk?"

"I'm sorry, Master," Xander immediately offered as he looked around at the tipped cardboard boxes, the brightly colored clothes flung around the room, the blood dripped on the carpet, and the shiny shards scattered randomly as if a CD bomb had exploded.

"Bit of a mess, innit?" Spike’s tone was light. Xander wasn’t expecting that, and for some reason it made the little knot of panic in his belly grow colder.

"Yes, Master. I'll clean it up," Xander said as he started pulling himself out of that safe embrace.

"Bollocks. Clean later, talk now," Spike said, and Xander really didn't have a choice since strong arms closed around him, keeping him in the nest formed by Spike's legs. Xander sighed a little as he curled up and pressed in even farther. Strong fingers now started combing through his curls, gently separating strands stiff with dried sweat.

"So, start with what you're feelin' right now."

"Guilty, Master. Angry. Weak. Like I shouldn't have survived." Xander whispered the last part, and arms tightened around him.

"Got a right to be angry, pet. Only person I ever knew who had more of a right to be angry was Dru and she was a bit on the loony side." Xander made a small snorting sound; he wasn't sure he entirely qualified as sane himself. "Was waitin' for ya to finally find that anger I could feel running under your skin." Spike's words caught Xander so off guard that he twisted to get a better look at Spike's face.

"Master?"

"Ya scared a century of live outta me trying to take your anger out on those fledges, chasin' 'em like that." Spike took a deep breath, and Xander was floored by the sudden realization that Spike had been so worried about him. Before Xander could apologize again, Spike continued. "So, angry I can figure out, let's start with guilty. Why guilty, pet?" Spike's words brought up the image of those green eyes, and now Xander could remember the face, long and narrow. Pretty in an exotic sort of way, but slightly disturbing in its proportions, or maybe she just looked that way because of the metal bar gagging her mouth. "I asked you a question," Spike said in a sharper tone of voice, and Xander hiccuped again as he tried to get enough breath to admit his guilt.

"I raped her," he muttered, the words burning his mouth.

"Who?" Spike asked without any condemnation in his voice, but then again, this was a soulless vampire he was talking to.

"I don't know her name," he admitted, somehow feeling even worse for that sin.

"When did it happen?" Spike asked in a nearly emotionless tone.

"I don't know."

"Closer to the time you were taken or closer to the time when I found ya at the auction?"

"Near the middle, closer to when I was taken maybe," Xander said as he tried focusing on the details he’d pushed so far back in his mind that he had lost them entirely.

"Right then, about four months ago."

"So, what happened?" Spike's fingers continued their task of freeing individual curls with one hand while the other hand ran gently down Xander’s side as he lay curled in a ball. Xander focused on those hands as he tried to pull up individual details without losing himself in the whole memory.

"Leshar caged me and two others. We drove for a long time." Xander remembered the rough road and the way his body ached at every bump, as he flexed his fingers and toes just to remind himself that he did still control his own body in some ways, even if it was a pathetically small way. That had been before he'd seen Leshar take bolt cutters and neatly cut off the fingers of another slave who did the same thing, snipping them away while the man's wide, panicked eyes streamed with tears around the rod down his throat that kept him silent. Xander pulled himself out of that memory and returned to the even darker memory of the woman.

"Before he uncaged us, he gave us each a shot. And there were handlers there and I hoped it was something that would just kill me." Xander knew he should feel something about that, but he couldn't seem to feel any emotions at all, as if Spike's lack of emotion had leeched into him through Spike's hands. Xander hiccuped and took another breath as he tried to figure out how to say the truly difficult parts.

"I started feeling wrong. Hot. Sore. The handlers put a strange leash on me that went around my upper legs with a loop that circled my cock and balls, and I remember being surprised that I was hard. I wasn't interested or excited, but I was hard and aching and the cold steel around me made me want to touch myself." Xander stopped as he remembered the feeling even though he couldn't quite connect to his emotions. Shame. That was the one emotion he couldn’t help feeling.

"A breedin' leash then," Spike said when the silence had gone on for a while.

"Yes, Master.” Xander nodded, unable to look up at Spike. He felt a heated blush climb into his cheeks. “They chained my wrists and then the handlers made the three of us stand in this concrete and steel building and I started feeling this need. I was the second one Leshar took into the building and there were all these pens with women, and a woman..." Xander froze as he remembered her strapped down with that green demon casually leaning on her as if she was one more piece of furniture.

"Where was she, pet?" Spike prompted him.

"Strapped down. I... I should've..."

"Pet, you were drugged and chained and leashed. I don't think you could've done anythin', and thinkin' you should have done somethin' is just foolish." Xander's memories felt like something he’d watched rather than something he had lived through. He suddenly couldn't remember what the leash felt like digging into his thighs and he couldn't remember the color of the walls.

"Green eyes," he said softly, as he remembered them burning into his. "Her eyes begged me to stop and I didn't. I raped her," Xander confessed in a whisper. He remembered driving into her the way he would remember a television show, in two dimensions with no smell or feeling or taste attached to the memory which was suddenly flat. "I raped her and then I forgot her." He shivered, turning his head away from Spike’s embrace.

"Not your fault, pet. Bloody wankers raped you just as much as her. Violated ya, made ya do something ya didn't want to do."

"But *I* forgot her," Xander protested as he pulled his knees all the way up. A good man would have remembered her and felt guilty and been sorry, but all he did was forget her.

"Soddin' idiot," Spike started, and the dismissive tone caught Xander so off guard that his guilt was temporarily derailed by confusion. "Normal to forget things ya can't handle. Brain's way of making sure we don't all end up talkin' to the stars and even worse, hearing them talk back.” Spike paused, and his voice softened. “Not long after Angelus did his whole disappearin' act I was lookin' for a whip to give Dru some attention. Found a book of poetry at the bottom of one of her chests." Xander tilted his head to look up at his Master because right now his Master wasn't making a lot of sense. He didn't see how poetry really had anything to do with his cowardice. Spike's eyes lost their focus for a minute.

"Bloody bad stuff, that. Bloody rot about love and roses and beauty." Spike's fingers stopped, and Xander could suddenly see a bit of the old William in Spike's soft amusement. "Problem being, I wrote the shite. Angelus, he taught to me to be ruthless. Humiliated and hurt me until I stopped being the weak creature Dru'd turned, and I forgot the bits that didn't fit in with the new vamp I'd become."

"We're both kinda messed up, huh?" Xander asked as he looked up and Spike smiled down at him.

"Yeah, pet. In some ways we are, but we muddle on. Bloody hell, at least we know we're missin' a few marbles. Most people never do admit to themselves that life's sent them arse over teakettle. We're one up on those poor gits who think they've got it figured out."

"Giles," Xander said quietly.

"Yeah, Giles. One day he's goin' to figure out that he's killing himself for lettin' his slayer die first, but that's a slayer's lot, innit? Life hands slayers the short end, sets 'em up to die." Xander reached out and put a hand on Spike's thigh and the fingers that had been playing with his hair stopped so that Spike could put his own hand on top of Xander's.

"You miss her," Xander said.

"Bloody hell, yes. She was a tough bird and a lady to the end. Cared more about you lot than she did about her life, and she bloody well taught a soulless vampire to be a better man." Xander fell silent as he thought about what he'd done. He thought about the woman's face and he wondered if she had blamed him, or their demon handlers.

"So, the demon who set this whole lot up--what'd he look like?" Spike asked in an overly casual tone of voice, and Xander looked up at his Master. He described the slave owner's green skin and horns and red eyes.

"Pylean, then. Those lot don't think much of humans. Probably breedin' and sendin' the rugrats back to his dimension." Spike's words sank into Xander like ice that froze his soul. Why had he been so blind? Oh, that was easy. When faced with his own weakness, he had always hidden, always pretended that the bad stuff didn't exist.

He dusted his best friend, then went home and got rid of every gift Jesse ever gave him. He tried to rape Buffy, and got Giles to go along with the whole 'can't remember' plan. He kissed Willow and then asked Cordelia to pretend that it never happened. He lied about the whole re-soul Angel plan and then when the guy turned up straight out of hell, Xander couldn't even bring himself to admit that he might have been wrong. God, a hundred years in hell should rate at least an apology, but no, not from Droopy Harris. Repress and forget were his favorite words. He started shaking again, his muscles trembling beneath Spike's arms.

"Pet?" Spike asked, and Xander opened his mouth, unable to get words out.

"Xander? Tell me what you're thinking." Spike's hand captured his chin and turned his head so that Xander was forced to look into intense blue eyes. He hiccuped again as he closed his eyes and tried to push away the pain that sent tremors though his frame.

"She's going to have my baby," Xander whispered, speaking the knowledge that had frozen his heart. "God, I always hoped I'd be a better parent than my parents managed to be, but my son or my daughter is going to grow up in a slave pen." Xander truly gasped now, his heart pounding out his panic as he curled his hands into fists so tightly that he could feel the cut on his palm open, a trickle of blood tickling his flesh.