Broken (AKA Beautiful Broken)

“Oh my.” Xander woke at the softly spoken words, but he had no response to Joyce’s obvious horror since he was still caged. God, how much did the woman have to suffer, he wondered. She had lost her daughter, obviously taken in an emotionally unbalanced vampire, and now she had the nutcase in the cage to deal with. Of course, this is a woman who once threw a party attended by more dead people than live ones, so maybe seeing him in a cage wasn’t that big of a deal. He really couldn’t bring himself to believe it considering the expression on her face. He felt a stirring around his cage and he realized that Spike had fallen asleep lying on the cage.

“Oi, don’t start,” Spike said even as Joyce handed him a mug of something.

“I said I wouldn’t be judgmental of him, and I won’t be. My disapproval is aimed entirely at you, William.” Joyce’s mildly indignant tone reminded him of the way she used to scold Buffy for sending a demon though the living room window with no more vigor than other mothers complained about a scratch on the car. Xander felt another wave of pain, but this time just one more surge in the grief that was his life. The flood waves had passed.

“Bloody hell, it’s too damn early for this. Sun’s still up, innit?” From the sound, Xander could tell Spike was pushing himself up and he missed the feel of leather brushing against his fingers. He had expected Spike to free him, but instead the vampire lifted him up to the top of the dresser so that he was now chest high to them and he could more clearly see Joyce’s dismay. Yep, leave it to Xander to bring joy and happiness into others’ lives, he thought to himself.

“I don’t really care about the sun considering Xander is stuffed in that cage like a contortionist.” Joyce stood there looking so much like one of those perfect T.V. moms who always knew when the kids stole the cookies, that Xander found himself wishing he had been her son. Of course that would have made the whole Buffy thing really ew, and Xander felt another surge of pain. Buffy never had brothers or sisters, and now she would never have sons or daughters. She had been the slayer, and now that she was dead, another slayer got called and the council moved on. There was nothing left of her but a group of pathetic people looking to each other for some sort of comfort. He could see that in the way Joyce used her best mother voice on the vampire.

“Ya saw him last night, so ya know soddin’ well I had to do somethin’.”

“And ‘something’ included torturing him after everything he’s been through?”

“Not bloody torturing him.”

“Looks like torture to me.”

“Torture involves more screamin’ and beggin’.” Spike’s voice had an odd echo, and Xander imagined he was talking while drinking his blood.

“Hard to scream gagged like that.”

Xander listened to the argument slightly shocked. He’s always figured that if Spike got the chip out, he’d take a nice long trip to the sunniest place he could find: the Sahara desert maybe. But here was Joyce going at the vampire without even a qualm. Nervy woman, but then again she’d raised Buffy so what else could Xander expect.

“Joyce, he’s not hurtin’. Well, he is which is why he’s in the cage, but he’s hurtin’ from losing the slayer and his little friends and his dreams about comin’ back and bein’ able ta go back to what he was all gone in one stroke. Shouldn’t have told him everythin’ at once.” Xander closed his eyes for just a moment as Spike ran a hand through his hair and then he opened them and watched his master’s expression. If he’d ever thought of Spike seeing him, and he could admit that he had thought it once or twice, he’s always imagined Spike laughing at him or making him do something horrible. Instead Spike continued to pet him as he looked down with an unreadable expression.

“William, get him out of the cage.” Spike turned around, and Xander now had a view of a leather coat and very little else.

“Joyce, ya need ta trust me on this one,” Spike asked, and the two of them were silent for several minutes. Xander of course simply added to the silence even as he wondered if it would have been better if he’d been sold to someone else. His presence was obviously making everything more difficult, so maybe everyone would have been happier if he’d gone to some nameless demon and been left to slowly lose his fantasies to time instead of having them ripped away. However, Xander had to accept that it wasn’t his choice, he just had to accept whatever life and Spike handed him.

“Spike, I trust you with my life, and I trust your intentions, but he’s human. He needs to start being Xander again.”

“So, ya want me ta get him an apartment and a job and send him out to do the nine ta five thing?” Spike asked, and Xander felt his stomach start to ache, but he really didn’t have a vote, so he just worked at calming his panic at the mere thought of Spike turning him away like that.

“That might be best. We could get him some therapy, maybe some live-in help to get him adjusted back to being Xander.”

“Joyce,” now Spike sounded tired. “He isn’t Xander anymore, no more than I’m William, and you’ve got ta accept that and move on from there.” Xander blinked rapidly at that comment.

“You still have a lot of William down in you,” Joyce replied softly.

“And he’s still got a lot of Xander in there, but it’s not the same as him bein’ Xander. He’s not Xander, and if ya ask him to be, he’ll kill himself tryin’ ta make ya happy, but it won’t change the fact he’s not Xander.”

“He shouldn’t be in the cage.” It didn’t escape Xander’s attention that Joyce had done a sudden shift in conversation the type Buffy had once used to distract Giles from her lack of practicing or prevent her mother from asking about grades. He let the wave flow through his soul, giving himself permission to grieve for her loss and his own small part in it. Of course, if he’d stayed, he just would have been one more victim to get picked up, prodded, poked, and then captured and enslaved by demons. Ironic that.

“Xan needs the cage right now, Joyce.”

“No one needs that kind of torture. Maybe you don’t remember what it’s like to be human, but no human needs *that*.”

“Oi,” Spike hissed and then the silence fell as Spike breathed deeply, something Xander hadn’t noticed him doing before. Eventually Spike started again, and Xander could hear the placating tone.

“Imagine you’ve been in a closet for six month and every time ya come out ya get beaten or tortured or made to…perform. You’d get mighty fond of that closet after a while.”

“I’m aware that he has an attachment, but it’s not healthy. We should find him a therapist…”

“No,” Spike cut her off using a harsher voice than Xander had ever heard the vampire use toward Joyce. “No therapist is going to soddin’ understand what he went through. Leshar employs a bloody Pockla demon—they do the type of healing mojo that ya need when you’ve done real damage ta the body like pulling out someone’s guts or ripping off a limb. You don’t effin’ know what can be done ta a body when ya got a way of puttin’ it back together at the end. So he bloody feels safe in that effin’ awful cage and it doesn’t matter whether you or I think the thing should be turned ta scrap, he *does* need it and if ya can’t accept that, I’ll take him elsewhere.” In the middle of the rant, Spike started pacing, his hands clutching into fists and his game face slipping into place so that Xander felt real fear for Joyce, but now that Spike had moved, he could see her standing her ground, hands on her hips in a perfect imitation of Buffy’s frustrated pose.

“William,” she started.

“No. I’m not kiddin’. I don’t want ta leave, but one good shove and we’re sendin’ him right off the edge, so maybe it’d be better if we just packed up and found another place ta lay up for a while.

“Spike,” Joyce started again, but she fell silent when Spike continued on his rant.

“Need ta get out of this bloody town. I’m a soddin’ vamp; I shouldn’t be carin’ about people or tryin’ ta take care of ‘em. I should be out there snacking on a couple of locals, not drinkin’ bagged blood and arguin’ over how ta fix Droopy.” Xander simply looked on, but his Master’s use of that old hated term made him happy he was in the cage, unable to react and unable to earn punishment.

Xander could see how much Spike didn’t want him as a slave. Xander blinked a couple of times as he discovered that something else could hurt him as much as Buffy’s death. He really hadn’t ever been the brightest, had he? He had chased Buffy until she had turned him down cold and gone running around town with an Initiative soldier, and he’d made up this whole relationship with Spike that didn’t even exist; of course the vampire had given him the decoration and kept his slave by his side considering Spike wanted the girls back. Xander promised himself that he’d stop lying to himself and just accept that his Master needed him to impress the other slave-owners and nothing more. He’d do it; he’d obey and he’d help get Willow and Tara home and maybe then he could just ask Spike to make it all end. Slaves didn’t get old, so Xander hadn’t ever expected to live more than a couple of decades, but a couple of decades could be so very long. If he obeyed and helped, maybe he could ask his Master for a quick death by fangs rather than a trip to another slave auction.

“Spike you are not the kind of man to walk away from your word, and that doesn’t make you less of a vampire. What’s the body count now?” Xander had to mentally replay the last part, convinced he had missed something in his self-pitying rambles.

“Seventeen, or eighteen really. Xan took out Riley, so I’m countin’ that as one for the home team.” Eighteen what, Xander wondered. Dead soldiers? Would Joyce talk that way about dead soldiers?

“He killed Riley?” Xander would have expected a question like that to sound horrified, shocked, condemning, but Joyce simply sounded curious.

“Captain Cardboard got vamped. I’m just sorry I didn’t find him before he got used as Xander’s visual aide in the auction.” Joyce just looked confused. “They were billin’ him as a great vampire hunter turned pet, so they had him demonstrate his skills on soldier boy. Xan went all trembly and shaky lookin’ and then when Riley rushed in convinced of a quick kill, Xan staked him so quick and clean a couple of the audience members missed the whole fight. That’s when I knew he wasn’t as broken as Leshar’s normal lot.” Joyce gave a small strained laugh.

“I suppose there’s justice in that somewhere,” she said, and then she walked over. Xander watched her approach passively, determined to return to his training and not let himself get confused again by his place. He was Spike’s property.

“He really feels safe in this horrible thing?” Joyce reached out and touched his forehead as though checking for fever, and Xander simply waited and tried to take the part of himself that longed for touch and put it in the back of his mind with all the other non-slave thoughts. He was a slave and slaves just accepted, isn’t that what his trainer had whispered to him as he’d stood outside Xander cage first stroking Xander’s hair and then driving the thin metal rod into the fleshy part of his shoulder? As a slave it was his duty to accept both forms of attention equally, and Xander reminded himself of that lesson, a lesson he’d studied hundreds of times before learning. Accept whatever comes. Spike didn’t understand the cage. It wasn’t about feeling safe because his trainer had used the open front to hurt him with sharpened rods and hot irons as often as he’d comforted him with gentle strokes and a healing touch that erased all the little pains. No, the cage wasn’t safe, it was acceptance.

When he was in the cage he didn’t have to worry about doing the right thing, about bringing punishment down on himself, about being the one to blame for a nameless girl’s death as he knelt in her blood. In the cage he didn’t have to fight or feel guilty for not fighting or hate his own stupidity for fighting when it was so obviously pointless to fight. In the cage he got to let go of all that and just exist. His trainer and now his Master could do whatever, and he couldn’t stop or fight or submit. He just existed and accepted. He accepted that he was a tool for Spike so he could live up to his promise to Buffy, and that should be enough for him. That was more than he ever expected to have. Seeing Spike had just made him feel more and want more and he had to get over that.

“He asked for the soddin’ thing,” Spike said, and now he came over to put a strong hand on Xander’s shoulder. Xander silently watched his master.

“I don’t know if I can take this,” Joyce finally admitted, the hand pulling back slowly as though afraid that the cage would reach out and grab her if she moved too suddenly.

“Maybe we really should go somewhere else, luv. It’s not like you haven’t already been through enough.”

“No. No, I want you here.” Joyce’s hand returned to his forehead, but Xander continued to watch Spike. “He’s the beginning, and now we’ll get the others back. I just never expected...” Joyce took a deep shuddering breath. “Will the girls…” She stopped, but Xander knew what she meant. Would the girls be absolute nut cases ready for the loony bin the way the boy is?

“Witches are valuable for their magic. They’ll be taught not ta turn on whoever owns them, be…convinced…to obey, but breakin’ a witch makes her almost worthless for doin’ magic. I suspect they’ll get along a whole sight better than Xander.”

“How can people do this?” Joyce sounded on the verge of tears and turned and left without even waiting for an answer.

“Bloody hell if I know,” Spike answered the empty doorway through which she had disappeared.

“Right,” Spike said with energy as though shaking off the mood left by Joyce’s visit. “Here’s how it goes. If I let ya out and you show you’ve gotten control back, you’ll stay out. If I let ya out and ya start sliding toward the short side of sanity, you’ll take care of your human business and go right back in, got it?” Spike asked as he leaned down and went nose to nose with Xander, but Xander gave the same response he always gave in the cage: he blinked.

“I’ll take that as a ‘Yes, Master,’” Spike said as he lifted the cage back down to the floor. Spike unhooked the front and pulled it out before setting it to one side and undoing the other restraints. Xander wiggled out and went into a full Position kneel at Spike’s feet: head down, back straight, kneeling up straight with his hands behind his back. He tried to review everything his trainer had told him as he waited for a signal.

“So, I’m takin’ that as you havin’ control,” Spike commented, and Xander waited. Spike finally started talking again. “Right, bathroom for human stuff,” he ordered, and Xander rose as gracefully as he could and padded toward the bathroom with his head bowed and his hands at the small of his back. Once in the bathroom, he quickly used the toilet and showered and drank as much water as he could since Spike had spoken of putting him back in the cage. Within ten minutes he was once again kneeling at his Master’s feet. A tap on his head sent him into the Down kneel with his butt on his heels, but he left his hands behind his back as he waited and tried not to move. His Master shouldn’t be bothered with him, and he hoped Spike did order him back to the cage because he was finding it hard to just accept that Spike didn’t want him.

“Oi, you’re back ta being the perfect little slave,” Spike commented as a hand found his hair, and Xander realized that he had slid away from his training in the three days that Spike had owned him. He’d slip into the more comfortable Down kneel without order, he’d try to get his Master to do things for him, and he wasn’t serving as he’d been trained to serve. Xander accepted the criticism in silence.

“Feelin’ guilty about the scene last night?” Spike asked, and Xander suddenly remembered that he’d tried to hit Spike. He’d already been ordered into the Down kneel so he couldn’t put his forehead to the floor in shame.

“Yes, Master,” he replied in his quietest voice.

“We all want her back, pet.” Silence descended again.

“What do ya need, pet?” Spike asked, and Xander tried doing a self check. He didn’t need anything, he’d accepted, or at least he was trying to accept, and that’s all he needed.

“Nothing, Master.”

“Nothin’ my arse. Ya need something so bad I can hear the wheels in your head spinning.” Xander knew what he was thinking about, but it really wasn’t his place to ask, and Spike certainly hadn’t asked a question.

“I expect honesty from you, so tell me what ya need.”

“Something I have no right to ask for, Master.” Xander answered honestly, but Spike’s sigh made it clear that he didn’t like the answer. “A promise, Master?” Xander nearly whispered the request, knowing that it was almost sacrilege for a slave to ask for a promise, but Spike had wanted to know what it took to keep Xander sane, and Xander suspected that he needed the promise because sanity was running a little thin.

“What do ya need?” Spike asked again, and the tone did it. The concerned tone that reached into Xander’s head and made him think that Spike might actually care even knowing the way the vampire felt. The truth bubbled out of Xander at such a speed that it had escaped before he even had time to regret that he wasn’t in the cage where forbidden thoughts couldn’t come out in an unguarded moment.

“I know you just need me to find Willow and Tara, and I promise to be the perfect slave even though you don’t want one, and if you want to just send me to another room I promise not to start talking to stars or breaking my training, but when we have the girls back please don’t send me back to the auction, Master.” Xander took a deep trembling breath before finishing. “Please just drain me, Master.”

Xander thought he had earned the biggest punishment in the history of slavery when a hand reached down and grabbed his arm, but Spike pulled him up and into the vampire’s lap where Spike wrapped strong arms around him and held him until Xander couldn’t even comfortably breathe.

“Bloody hell. I’m going to find Leshar and I’m going to pull his soddin’ internal organs out one at a time. I won’t promise ta kill him because I’m going to let my slave have the pleasure of doin’ that, but I’ll make him sorry he ever touched ya, pet.” Spike started gently rocking, and Xander tensed, the kindness too much for him to take. For the first time he actively fought Spike, trying to pull away, but Spike just held him until Xander could feel the tears trailing down his cheeks.

“I bloody remember sayin’ somethin’ like that ta Angelus. Poof had gone and gotten his soul, and Darla sent him out into the night. I went running after him, begged him ta take me with him. He may’ve been a sadistic son of a bitch, but he’d taught me ta hunt and I’d kill a hundred humans ta get one ‘That’s me boy,’ out of that bastard. He took one look at me and told me ta get away from him. I told him he’d have ta stake me, and I blocked his way, but he just knocked me into the wall so hard I blacked out. By the time I came round, he was gone, and I think that’s when William died too. Became Spike that night. Spike went with Darla and ate the damn gypsy women and children, but I never cared for anyone the way I cared for that bastard, not even Dru.”

Xander listened and realized that Spike was sharing something that wasn’t even in the Watcher’s diaries because Xander had sneaked into Giles’ office often enough to know that the Watchers had no clue what had caused Spike’s sudden personality shift, a shift they had described but not explained. That’s what Spike had meant about William not existing anymore.

“Master?” Xander half sobbed, not willing to trust his own conclusions any more.

“You’re mine, pet. You’ll be mine until the day one of us dies, and if I have anythin’ ta say about that, the day won’t ever come. I know you’re not Xander any more, and I’m bloody grateful because that git talked too much and never trusted himself ta do anythin’ right. Was annoyin’. Nearly as annoyin’ as this other git I knew who wanted ta please everyone so much he made a soddin’ fool out of himself. But you’re you now, and we’re goin’ ta figure it out.” Spike’s voice became clearer. “Down,” he said and Xander slipped off into the Down kneel.

“So, let’s start ya with somethin’ Droopy never was good at: swords.” Spike stalked over to the closet and pulled out two long swords in black leather scabbards. “Droopy never listened well enough ta get the hang of them, and he never seemed ta be on speakin’ terms with his body; he was about as graceful as a pregnant ox. You, however don’t have those faults, so I think this new person you’re goin’ ta be could be one hell of a sword fighter.” Spike walked over and dropped a sword on the floor in front of Xander. Xander’s hand started reaching before he pulled it back in horror, realizing that he was breaking the rules only minutes after promising himself to not break rules.

“Ya can have that later, I think clothes are in order first.” Xander hadn’t noticed his nudity before, but he did now and he pulled on the jeans and boots Spike tossed his way. Joyce must have gone shopping once Spike called. The jeans wouldn’t have fit him at all before he lost weight in his trainer’s care, so Xander suspected that the vampire had given Joyce his new dimensions.

“Before I give ya the shirt, we gotta do something else.” Spike said, a blue shirt still hanging from his hand and delicate black chains hanging from the other. Spike tossed the shirt on the bed. “Pet, stand with your back to me.” Xander had knelt to tie his boots, so he rose and stood with his back to Spike.

“Tell me why I gave you these in the first place.”

“For following you around even when you acted like a git and forgot to give me the right command, Master,” Xander answered, and boy wouldn’t his history teacher have appreciated a Xander Harris who listened that well. Xander had known he was broken, but he always seen it as a choice between rebuilding Xander Harris or staying broken. He’d never considered Spike’s solution.

“Oi,” Spike complained even as Xander felt hands at his collar. “Ya don’t bloody have ta remember that well.” The hands finished, and Xander felt the chains resting against his back, the small gems tickling his backbone. “Gave them to ya because ya did what I wanted and ya didn’t let trainin’ or fear stop ya. That’s why you’re stronger than Leshar and that’s why ya bloody well survived him, whether he realized it or not.” Xander thought about that and for the first time in months, he felt at peace.

“So, shirt and then fighting,” Spike announced brusquely. “See ya downstairs.” The vampire turned and left before Xander could even pull his brain out of the happy fog he’d entered. Realizing that his Master was waiting, Xander slipped on the shirt and hurried downstairs.

Xander found Spike at the dining room table, and he went to the Down position since Spike always signaled him down anyway. Joyce was sitting at the table carefully watching him, and Xander caught small glances at her before a piece of sausage appeared before him. He reached out and started following his training, but he suddenly realized what that would look like to Joyce. If they were eating with demons, the demons would be impressed with Xander’s training, and Spike would be able to get some relief by having Xander finish the job under the table like at the food court at the auction. But here Joyce would be horrified and Spike would be frustrated without being able to relieve that frustration.

Xander limited himself to taking the food and chewing, omitting the NC-17 portion of the meal. As soon as he took the food, he felt a tug as Spike grabbed the upper stone hanging from his back chain and gave it a quick tug. Xander understood the gesture’s tacit approval of his decision to break training, and when a piece of dry pancake appeared, Xander simply took the food. The meal continued until Xander was past the point of full, and then Spike stood up and picked up the plate they had both eaten from. Xander stood and followed at the big bad master vampire took his plate into the kitchen and loaded it into the dishwasher before returning to the dining room.

“We’re goin’ out for a bit of trainin’, luv. Won’t be back until late—near sun up probably.”

“Have fun, boys.” Joyce answered as if her two teenage boys had announced they were going to the Bronze. The woman really had seen too much of the weird, Xander thought as he followed Spike up to their room to retrieve the weapons and leave.

A half hour later, Xander followed his master, glad for something to think about other than his own mistakes, other than Buffy, other than the loss of his girls and the disappearance of Anya, and how pathetic was it that he wasn't calling Anya one of his girls, but then he really was more of Anya's than Anya ever was his. He might not have been broken back then, but he'd had cracks. Anya had seen those cracks and moved in, offering to help hold him together in return for frequent orgasms, and now that he looked back, things really hadn't changed that much he mused as he followed his master toward the largest of Sunnydale's cemeteries.

The weight of the sword at his back and the stake tucked into his jeans reminded him eerily of following Buffy into the dark, trusting her to spot the vamps as he concentrated on covering her back, and when all else failed, falling down and distracting the vampires with the scent of him bleeding.

"Right. Not goin' ta have some helpless cub followin' me around, so let's get ya ta use that sword for somethin' other than swinging around your head," Spike said as they reached a grassy area. Xander would have pointed out that he really was better at the bleeding and distracting portion of vamp hunting, but he hadn't been asked his opinion, so if his master wanted him to fight with a sword, he'd do it.

If he'd expected Spike to take it easy on the poor little broken slave, Xander got over that delusion quite quickly. Spike would show him how to do a particular move, and no sooner would Xander master it, careful to listen to Spike's every word and instruction, than Spike would change his own defensive moves and send Xander crashing to the ground again. While Spike wasn't technically punishing him, the physical blow of getting slammed into the ground by a vampire and the pain of disappointing his master combined to drive Xander back up to his feet determined to not fall again. Of course that determination didn't prevent Spike from taking him out time after time until Xander was panting for breath.

"Stop tryin' ta avoid hittin' me," Spike snarled, and Xander realized with a start that he had been avoiding the killing moves Spike had shown him. "I'm already bloody dead ya git, and if ya can get the sword through *me*, I'll trust ya ta be able to get it through some soddin' demon. So come at me again and this time mean it."

Xander squared his shoulders and moved his feet into an attack position as he brought the sword up. Over and over Spike had surprised him by ending a formal sword attack with a punch or kicking a leg out from under him, so Xander decided to take a lesson from his Master's approach. Xander moved in, carefully shifting and watching Spike for signs of frustration that could lead to an opening. For a second, Spike's left hand dropped, but Xander ignored it having been flattened after going after a feign once too often.

Without warning, Xander drove forward, and Spike blocked his move; however, instead of trying to regain control of his blade, Xander let the sword fall and swung in with his stake while Spike was still off guard with surprise. Xander slammed the stake in low in the stomach, not wanting to risk any sort of accident, but the move worked and Spike went reeling back.

“Bloody hell!” Spike yelled, and Xander instantly knelt, his head to the ground.

“Not this bollocks,” Spike wearily ordered, and Xander looked up to see the vampire pulling the bloody stake from his stomach. “Told ya you could learn. Just didn’t soddin’ expect ya to learn so bloody quick.” Spike held the stake out to Xander, and Xander took it, slightly bothered by the sight of his Master’s blood, but reassured by Spike compliment. Xander rose and retrieved his sword, wiping it as Spike had shown him before replacing it.

“Well, I guess you handle that thing well enough for some vamps or lower demons,” Spike suggested as he poked tentatively at his own stomach. “Let’s go take care of the hell mouth, pet.”

By the time Xander followed Spike home, he had killed three vamps and knocked Spike on his back twice more. Of course, he had hit the ground so many times he couldn’t even really count, but he was the weak human slave, so anyone would expect him to go down, the surprise was that Xander could take Spike down at all, and tonight he’d done it a total of three times. They walked back to the house a couple of wounded warriors returned from battle, and Xander began to believe they really would bring the girls home. He silently added his own promise to his Master’s and only hoped that Buffy could hear him. Of course, if she could, she was probably laughing her ass off, but that was okay too, he decided.

They hadn’t gotten any farther than the living room when Joyce’s voice stopped them.

"Spike, explain why Xander looks like abstract art," Joyce said in a calm and even voice that obviously provided a thin veneer for some serious mom-anger. Xander looked down and noticed the scrapes and grass stains and red spots and bruises visible on his arms and the portion of his back showing where Spike’s sword had caught the hem and ripped half the shirt off. Spike had stopped in the hall to talk, and Xander had gone to his knees without even realizing it.

"We were fightin'," Spike said, and from his place at Spike's feet Xander could imagine the vampire's shrug.

"Fighting as in you beating him black and blue?"

"Fightin' as in him learnin' ta use a sword without dropping it on his own foot."

"Spike," Joyce paused for a long time before starting again. "Spike, he's human and you have to keep that in mind."

"Pet, tell her what ya think of our lesson today," Spike ordered, and Xander had an immediate response.

"I knocked Master on his ass," he answered happily.

"Oi, and Master knocked you on your ass about a hundred times, let's not forget that part now pet." Xander didn't smile, but he felt one inside.

"He could have been hurt. What am I saying? He *is* hurt."

"He'll heal fine, and he's a good deal less likely ta get himself killed in a fight now."

"William," Joyce said in a shocked voice, and her use of Spike's human name reminded Xander of Angel--that same disapproval. "You can't take him out fighting with you."

"What? I should leave him here on his knees while I go out?" Spike demanded in a suddenly cold tone. "He needs ta be of use someway other than on his knees or you'll never get back any part of the Xander you knew."

"But he's so bruised, after everything he's been through....Spike, are you sure? I’m so scared we’re doing the wrong thing here."

"I know ya are,” and the warmth returned to Spike’s tone. “The best way ta make sure he stays broken is to act like he *is* some broken toy that ya have ta treat like glass. He's a hell of a lot stronger than you're givin' him credit for, and those bruises aren't goin' ta bother him. However, if those bruises help him avoid gettin' himself skewered by some demon in a fight, I'll consider them worth it."

Spike's hand suddenly found his hair, but instead of just petting him, the vampire pulled him off balance so that he half fell against Spike's legs, resting on his butt instead of his knees. At first he panicked, eager to get back into position, but Spike's hand held him firm, and he wouldn't fight Master so he eventually settled into the new position even though it was uncomfortable for him to be so casually leaning against his Master' s leg. As soon as Xander relaxed, he felt Spike's hand release his head and begin stroking his hair. Xander stayed where his master put him, sitting on the floor with his legs to one side and his head leaning against his master's thigh.

"But..."

"No 'buts.' He's mine, and I'm not going to turn him into little tiny pieces of broken bits because I'm tryin' ta ignore what happened or treat him like he's not one soddin' strong little bastard who deep down won't give up no matter what. Besides, I'll give him a touch of my blood tonight, and it'll only take a day for those ta heal up."

"I would suggest you stay home tomorrow then. If Giles is out on patrol and sees Xander looking like that...." Joyce didn't finish, but Xander could feel the tension in the room.

"Yeah, I know, luv." Spike finally answered, and Xander wondered what had happened that they weren't telling him. He tried not to think about what would be so horrible that they would hide it even after telling him about Buffy. "It looks like you're stuck with us tomorrow."

"I can live with that," Joyce answered with such tenderness that Xander was surprised. Spike had always been close to Joyce, talking to the woman about his frustrations and love life even when he'd been the big bad to everyone else, but now they shared a comfortable silence and a language of half-spoken sentences that spoke of a deep sense of family. Xander wondered at how much could change in just six months. Without another word, Spike headed for the stairs, and Xander rose to follow. The windows were still dark, but they'd been out for a long time, and Xander was loose, his muscles well stretched and limber, his body aching but not the way a beating would leave him aching. This was the well-earned soreness of a tough training session, and Xander appreciated every ache. He appreciated that Spike trusted him to take care of himself and didn't look at him like a tortured puppy. He appreciated that Spike had given him something to think about other than the pain in his heart.

Spike threw open the door to their room, not bothering to close it since Joyce’s room was in the other end of the house, and Xander decided to repay his Master for everything his Master had done to help him.