The Adventures of Deadboy and Zeppo

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Evening hadn't yet fallen when Angel woke with the smell of dust and stale blood and vampire assaulting him. For a moment he couldn't even figure out why he had a heavy weight anchoring his left side, but then he looked down at the dark hair and pale flesh curled up against his own red shirt. Xander's fingers tangled with the fabric of his hem, and Angel reached down and slowly uncurled Xander's fingers. The fledge was tired and still recovering from the near starvation levels of blood Giles had provided and the emotion of facing his former friends.

Angel could feel Angelus' heavy anger at Giles' treatment of Xander, but he also knew that Giles didn't know how to care for a fledge. Spike could have told them they were starving Xander, but Angel doubted Spike wanted Xander around at all. Once Spike overcame of his own strangeness, he resented any reminders of his young life. And Xander certainly did remind Angel of the young William. His humanity was still draped around him, except in Xander's case even more so.

Angel brushed curls away from a face indistinguishable from the real Xander Harris. Drusilla had created her most human childe with this one. He had thought Dalton was the height of her madness, but Xander exceeded even that bookish vampire. He had cried about his parents even as he had snarled his fury with their neglectful care and their drinking. Angel could identify considering his own issues with his father.

Angel reconsidered that thought. His anger at his father had taken on demonic proportions, including killing not just his father but about half the village where they had lived. Angelus had killed Kathy, but at least his little sister had died quickly, and not all the people of his village had that blessing. However, Xander's vengeance had been limited to the people who had actually hurt him in life. But then again, Xander had killed to get the car to come to L.A. He'd killed quietly and efficiently and without remorse. Angel considered Xander's beautiful, childlike face. He'd killed without a second thought, but he hadn't let his prey suffer, choosing instead to kill and drink from dead bodies. He was an enigma. And considering the emotional pain Xander had suffered at home, he was surprised that Xander's parents had earned a quick and quiet death.

Back in Sunnydale, Angel had once or twice thought it strange that Xander could be out half the night without anyone commenting. Buffy would have to sneak out or lie. Xander's parents never commented. He should have realized. If Angel had known how much Xander had suffered.... he thought about that for a moment. He probably wouldn't have done anything. While he knew how to deal with an insane slayer strangling the boy, he wouldn't have known what to do about a father who regularly introduced Xander as the poster child for abortion. From what he could tell from Xander's fragments of stories, Tony Harris had found the drunken joke amusing no matter how many times he told it.

It took several minutes of looking down at his newest childe before Angel realized he didn't feel Angelus threatening to strip his sanity. Angelus certainly sent up suggestions about the best way to remind a childe of his place, but as long as Xander was willing to submit, he was willing to live without the more sadistic games. Angelus had enjoyed William's loyalty and submission just as much as he had enjoyed William's pain and humiliation, so having even part of that joy back had quieted the demon's complaints.

Well, it had quieted most of the demon's complaints. Xander had fed heavily, and Angel could feel hunger twisting his guts. He slowly slid out of the bed without waking Xander who clearly needed more sleep. Angel picked up both empty pitchers now crusted with dried blood before heading out the door.

Angel's demon growled its hunger as he headed toward the kitchen despite having consumed the entire pitcher of blood he had brought up for Xander. He hadn't had so much blood since... since Sunnydale and the whole reign of terror. However, back then, he hadn't been trying to feed a starving fledge back to health. He needed blood.

"So, does this make you his sire?" an English voice asked from behind him on the stair, and Angel just continued to descend. "The watcher's diaries are rather vague on the exact nature of siring a fledge; in fact, the relationships between you, Dru, and Spike have spawned dozens of papers on the subject. When Spike publicly claimed you as sire in Sunnydale, there were quite a few teachers at the watcher academy with egg on their faces.

Angel really had no interest in what the watchers thought or who was caught off guard by Spike's comment. Drusilla had made Spike, but he was Spike's sire. He taught the boy to hunt. He had raped and fed beside William. The two of them had fought countless battles side by side, and he had to admit that a small part of him missed that. However, he didn't think either Wesley or Cordelia would sleep any better for knowing how much he missed certain parts of his past. So he didn't give any answer at all.
"So, what exactly is his place in the organization?" Wesley just kept talking and following until Angel had to push down the demon's frustration. "I mean, is he going to be going out on calls with you? Might I show up one night and find him minding the phones? Is he to be trusted and given full access to the hotel or will he be spending his free time chained to the wall in his room?"

"Enough, Wesley."

"No, quite frankly, it's not enough. You have been acting on impulses that the rest of us cannot even understand and you refuse to explain yourself or even give us any reason to trust that you still have full control of your faculties. I am reasonable in asking what exactly you mean to do with Xander."

"I vote stake him," a deep voice said from the doorway, and Angel felt Angelus rise up in fury at the suggestion. Angelus might main or even kill his underlings, but no one else had a right to suggest the same. Gunn's off-handed remark had stirred Angelus back into motion. The moment of quiet sanity he'd enjoyed since waking up ended, and again the demon stalked his mind seeking any crack that would allow his rage to escape.

"You won't touch him," Angel curtly ordered as he continued toward the kitchen. If he had to deal with Wes in an aggressive mood and Gunn in a staking mood, he definitely needed blood. Maybe Gunn recognized the danger because he followed silently until Angel had heated his mug.

"So, I take it he's your homeboy now." Gunn leaned against a counter and watched with sharp eyes. Angel also didn't miss the way Gunn's hand stayed near the waistband of his jeans. Angel felt both his own frustration at having to constantly prove himself and Angelus' cold rage at a human who had the nerve to issue such a challenge.

"I'm not evil, Gunn."

"Really, cause I heard you spent the night sleeping with the monster you got chained upstairs." Gunn's words made Wesley flush, and Angel didn't have to ask where Gunn had gotten his information.

"He needed to talk. Vampires aren't by nature solitary, and he needed to have someone there. I didn't do anything that would make Wes blush, and I didn't lose my soul." Angel glared at both men, and he could feel Angelus' swirling raged making suggestions about more effective ways of making them go away.

"Funny enough, it's getting harder to tell since the lawyer buffet," Gunn shot back. "So what's the deal with the dead Zeppo?"

"Don't call him that," Angel snapped before he could fully regain control of his temper, and Wesley's eyebrows nearly disappeared into his hairline. However, Wesley voice was clear and calm despite the rising smell of salt-sweetened panic.

"Since I know that you had very little patience for Xander while he was in Sunnydale, I assuming that last night changed things between you," Wesley observed quietly, and Angel sighed in frustration. He didn't want to have this discussion with these two men, especially since what he was feeling right now had nothing to do with his redemption. What he was feeling had to do with his vampire nature: the need to feel his childe submit, the need to feel his childe feed, the need to make his childe beg. Angel pushed those thoughts aside and tried to find an explanation that wouldn't horrify either these two men or Angel himself. He wasn't Angelus and he wouldn't allow Angelus' needs control his life.

"He's helpless. He may not have a soul, but his turning didn't go right, and he isn't a mindless killer."

"Didn't go right?" Wesley stepped forward in curiosity, and Angel was caught between not wanting to have this discussion and being grateful that Wesley's attention was off his own relationship with Xander.

"Dru's childer are sometimes more human than they should be." Angel froze when he realized his mistake. He thought about explaining that he wasn't suggesting that mindless and vicious killing was right, but instead he remained silent and hoped they missed the implication of that 'should be'. He could hear Angelus' quiet laugh echoing in the corners of his mind, and Gunn's sideways glance suggested that he had caught the slip. At least Wesley was too distracted.

"How exactly to you turn a vampire 'wrong'?" he asked.

"I have no idea. I would sometimes watch while she turned a minion, but when I was watching, she would create normal minions. But if I wasn't watching her..." Angel thought again of Dalton who was so human Darla wanted to snap his neck. Only Drusilla's whispers of stars and prophesies had kept the vampire unalive. "She sometimes created vampires who still held on to their humanity," Angel finally concluded.

"You mean they kept their souls?" Gunn demanded.

"No." Angel added quickly. "They didn't care about right or wrong in general, but they cared about whatever they cared about in life." For some reason, Angel didn't want to share the pieces of Xander he'd learned while soothing the crying fledge. Even Angelus had taken those shared pieces of Xander's pain as an offering. The demon didn't feel sorry for Xander, but he took Xander's willingness to endure and share the agony as a childe's submission to his sire. However, Angel wasn't sure how else to explain how Dru's childer differed from a typical vampire.

"Xander killed his parents because they had abused him. He doesn't feel guilty about killing them, but he still cried because now that they're dead, they won't ever apologize to him or try and make up for what they did. He didn't torture them because some part of him still saw them as his parents. Xander won't kill his friends from Sunnydale. He had a chance to kill Giles and even though he was hungry, he didn't." Angel could see Gunn's suspicions as clearly as if they were written in bold block letters on his head. Wes just seemed slightly bewildered. Angel couldn't blame the man since he'd felt pretty much the same way the first time he'd met Dalton.

Angel thought out how to explain the rest. He couldn't in good conscience allow his people to trust Xander or think of Xander as human. "However, he doesn't have soul. So Cordy is safe around him because the human Xander cared about her. He might leave you alone Gunn because killing you would hurt Cordy. However, he doesn't have the same idea of right and wrong, so if he's hungry, he'll kill a stranger on the street and not feel any remorse at all."

Angel watched as Gunn's body relaxed somewhat. Strange, Gunn was more comfortable now that Angel had admitted Xander was still a cold-blooded killer. On the other hand, Wes looked shocked and confused.

"But if he is capable of caring for humans, how can he just kill?"

"He's capable of caring for individuals… he doesn't feel any responsibility towards humans in general. Wes, he's not human."

"There is nothing in the Watcher's Diaries that…." Wesley's words were cut off by Angel's angry growl.

"And there won't be. Xander is not a test subject and if watcher mercenaries show up here to drag him off, they won't survive the attack." Angel slammed his empty mug down on the counter. Immediately he focused all his attention inward as he struggled to force Angelus back. His demon finally had something that would make a demon happy: a childe who turned to him for life and death; a childe who writhed in pain and showed all that pain to his sire; a childe who clung to him in need while still being a dangerous killer. It was like having William back again, and Angelus had enjoyed his boy more than he had ever let on.

"Angel?" Wes asked in a sharp, high voice.

"Just… just don't put me in that position, Wes. He's helpless and chained and afraid, and I won't let him be turned into a guinea pig."

"The way the government turned Bleached Wonder Boy into an experiment?" Gunn demanded, his hand once more suspiciously close to the back of his pants. Angel slipped into his expressionless mask as he tried to process Angelus' rage fast enough to avoid saying something stupid.

"William, the human part of Spike, is gone. What he does with his life or what other people do to him isn't my concern," Angel lied. "However, Xander still has much of his humanity, so much so that he can't defend himself the way a normal vampire could. I won't let some sadists take him."

"Right. Considering my own exile from the Council came with some angry words, I doubt they truly want to hear any of my observations anyway." Wesley turned and started walking out of the kitchen. Angel could smell the near terror levels of fear coming from Wes after his own declaration that he would kill to defend Xander, but the man walked slowly and steadily, never looking back.

"Yeah, just keep that undead thing away from me," Gunn added as he followed Wesley although he managed to take a more winding path that allowed him to keep an eye on Angel most of the way to the door. Angel sighed and washed out his mug before putting it on the counter to dry. He reconsidered his earlier idea about getting his humans as far away as he could. Ever since Darla had started sending him dreams, he was finding it harder and harder to hold back on his instincts. She had stirred the demon, and he didn't want to spend the next hundred years lurking back alleys as he tried to get Angelus to give up on the struggle for control.

Angelus snarled angrily at the thought of those years of despair, and Angel wondered whether he was going to have a choice. Maybe he just needed to leave. Of course leaving would mean leaving Xander since his very presence make Angelus stir, but Cordy would take care of him. He'd protect her, and if she asked him to not kill, he wouldn't. Or at least he wouldn't kill openly or anywhere that Cordy would find out.

Angel walked out into the lobby and considered his plan. He needed to find a place as far away from humans as possible. Maybe he could work on his redemption later when he'd gotten control back from Angelus. The lobby was empty, and Angel allowed his thoughts to drift to Buffy. He ached with a need to be with her, but with Angelus so near the surface, he didn't even trust himself to call her on the phone and tell her he was leaving. Maybe he could send her a letter.

A commotion at the door caught his attention, and Angel strode across the lobby, anxious to take care of it so that he could act on his newly formed plan. Opening the door, he could see Gunn struggling with two men as a few dying rays of the sun scattered light across the courtyard. The two men were huge and one had Gunn's arms jerked up behind his back.

Ignoring the random rays of fading light, Angel rushed out and grabbed the second man who had poised his arm to punch Gunn again. Using more of his vampire strength than he intended, Angel ripped the man away from Gunn and tossed him across the courtyard. Angel reached out to pull Gunn away from the second man when he felt a bolt of heat and a sharp stabbing pain rip through his back. Angel fell to his knees with a howl.

He distantly realized Gunn was fighting to get to him, and he pushed himself back up to his feet, game face showing. Turning around, he found himself confronted by a dozen men in suits. Angel snarled and reached out toward one and a second burning pain hit him, this time in the thigh. Angel's leg collapsed at the electricity of the tazer ran through his muscle.

Reaching down to pull the tazer wires out, Angel felt a third and fourth strikes, one in his arm, and the second in his chest. Unable to fight off the pain or reclaim control of his trembling muscles, Angel sank down into the darkness of unconsciousness.