The Adventures of Deadboy and Zeppo

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Angel closed his eyes and indulged in a long debate with Angelus. If he tried doing this at the hotel, Cordy would accuse him of brooding or Wesley would start nervously polishing crosses and wooden stakes while smelling of fear. Being kidnapped was almost worth the privacy. Well, as much privacy as a narrow prison cell with one entire short wall covered in a one-way mirror could provide. Angel would have considered the mirror a tactical error except that the chain attaching his ankle to the wall didn't reach far enough for him to break the mirror. And the mirror had steel rods embedded in a grid pattern. And a half dozen of guards waited on the other side. He hated the military.

Resting his head against the cold white brick, he lay on a bunk and listened as Angelus whispered to him about the need to save himself. After all, Mugabe was a torturer, a man who promised to help the people of Zimbabwe only to grab power for himself. Some would call executing him a righteous act. Angel's life was worth more than Mugabe's. One little assassination wouldn't damage his redemption. That one made Angel snort. He wasn't sure he even had a chance at redemption any more.

Angel was grateful that his captors had left him chained in the cell so that he didn't have a chance to cave in. Angelus persuasively argued that killing one dictator in the name of democracy was a small price to pay in order to keep his own life. But thinking like that had led to the incident with Dru and Darla and a room full of lawyers, and from the others' reactions, Angel had no doubt that his moral logic had failed there.

He remembered closing the doors and hearing the first scream as one of the vampiresses had chosen her first victim. He remembered Angelus' answering growl as the urge to join his clan nearly overwhelmed him. Images of evil lawyers draped over the furniture in lifeless sprawls, blood dripping from torn necks and open eyes staring into nothingness rose from Angelus, half memory of his own kills and half imagination as he put the faces of his enemies on the bodies of his previous victims.

Angel shivered as his body reacted to the idea of his enemies dead at his feet, and Angelus pushed against his poorly balanced sanity. A laugh echoed in his mind as Angelus asserted himself, pointing out that Angel grew weaker by the day. Sending a quick prayer up to Doyle, Angel closed his eyes and tried to just rest. Sooner or later they would make a mistake, and he would be there to take advantage of it. If he wasn't already so close to the edge, he would have agreed to the assassination and then double-crossed the bastards. The problem was that he wasn't sure he could stop himself from killing once the words passed his lips. Part of him wanted the kill. Part of him resented missing the lawyers' massacre.

Angel had been staring at the insides of his own eyelids for a good hour when he heard the lock turn. Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he waited to find out their latest offer. Hopefully it would be something slightly less pathetic than the IRS threat.

Angel wasn't prepared for the sight at the door as two uniformed men dropped a shackled and unconscious Xander Harris on the ground before stepping over his body and pointing tazers at him.

"Move to the far side of the room, please," and officer standing behind the two soldiers ordered. Angel hadn't realized he'd gone into game face until he growled. He found the officer's unctuous attitude with his fake apologies and empty pleases far more annoying than outright aggression. It reminded him of Angelus' constant good humor. However, he couldn't do anything without getting tazered back into unconsciousness, so he stood from the military cot and walked toward the one-way mirror until he ran out of chain.

"Turn around and put your hand behind your head, please," the short brown-haired officer asked in that same overly polite voice. Angel did as he was ordered with Angelus providing a running commentary in his head…. 'pathetic humans… no right to order us around… necks would snap like dry twigs under our feet.' Angel had an uninterrupted view as one soldier dragged Xander far enough into the room to chain the fledge's ankle to the ring on the opposite side of the room from Angel's ring and bunk. It looked like he was getting a roommate. The soldier quickly removed the cuffs around Xander's wrists. Angel would have made his moved and hoped that these men had the key to unlock the chains except that they moved with a precision that ensured that at least two tazers had a clear shot at his unprotected back at any time. Angel had to suppress a growl of frustration, but there really wasn't much else he could do.

The soldiers finished and left Angel alone with the badly damaged Xander. Angel could smell the fledge's blood—his sire's blood—coming from the body as he walked over and easily shifted Xander to the second cot.

"He would seem to be rather special to you," a disembodied voice commented over a hidden loudspeaker in the ceiling. Angel didn't respond to the voice although he did slip into demon vision just long enough to get a good look at the man behind the one-way mirror. These people obviously didn't know everything about demons.

"He traded himself for you," the voice continued, and that made Angel glance up at the mirror.

"Unlikely," Angel said as he crossed his arms and stared back at the man who thought he was safe from Angel's scrutiny.

"Oh, I assure you, he did. When we told him you were uncooperative and therefore unnecessary, he offered to kill a hundred humans for us to keep you safe. Does this surprise you?"

Angel kept his features neutral even though inside he was more than surprised; he was astonished. He knew that the infusion of sire's blood from an older vampire in the line could sometimes turn a fledge to a new master, but the one time he had tried it, his efforts had mixed results. William had reacted to his blood as sire's blood, and he had used his connection to demand a sire's right to respect and obedience, but he had never managed to wrest William completely away from Dru. While Angel had hoped that feeding Xander would give him enough control over the fledge to keep Xander from killing indiscriminately, it seemed that the fledge had accepted him as full sire. Only the minion or childe of a Master Vampire would offer its own life for its master. He wasn't sure he even wanted that kind of devotion from Xander Harris.

"Fledges sometimes show loyalty to older vampires in the line. I'm surprised Xander feels that way toward me since we have hated each other quite effectively for quite a long time now," Angel hedged.

"So the elder feels no loyalty in return?" the voice asked, curious now. Angel considered his answer for a brief moment, well aware that the chess game had begun now that Xander had put himself in the middle of it. Outright refusal wasn't really an option now.

"Normally, no. The loyalty in a clan is about dominance and power. As a fledge, he has none."

"'Normally' implied you do have some feelings then."

Angel paused as he phrased his answer in his head before saying it out loud. He certainly didn't want to announce that he would kill a hundred humans for Xander, and Angel didn't even know what was in the fledge's head to make such a ridiculous statement. Obviously Xander's ability to speak without thinking had survived his death.

"Guilt," Angel finally said. "As a human, Xander was someone I had reason to admire from time to time." An image of Xander breathing life into Buffy flashed in his mind.

"So his continued existence is something that you value." Angel saw that trap entirely too easily. This man was either new or exceptionally incompetent.

"I wanted to stake him. I think I owe him a clean death." Angel couched his words so that Xander would hold enough value to avoid killing outright but not so much that the military would make excessive demands.

"I have to say, you are somewhat of an enigma. You will clearly allow your human companions to die in the name of your cause, you seem to hold no value for your own family members, and you appear unimpressed with threats against your own person."

"Family?" Angel narrowed his eyes.

"Oh yes, we have been listening in on the conversations within the hotel. We are well aware that your childe Drusilla created and then abandoned him." Angel turned his back to the mirror as Angelus lunged madly out of control, threatening to strip his control at the idea that these people had invaded his territory. "We had been considering using your first seer as leverage, but your willingness to let him die was unexpected." The words caused Angelus to roar in fury even louder as Angel struggled to hold on to his balance. Angelus considered Angel's humans to be property, his to keep or break or disregard as he saw fit, but Doyle's death at the hands of another left Angelus swearing for vengeance. Now those curses returned to echo in Angel's ears until he could hardly hear the voice from the ceiling.

"Our intelligence suggests that a young vampire might not be capable of carrying out this plan, so I guess we will have to see how far your guilt goes. The death he would suffer in here if you fail would be far from clean." The voice droned on, but Angel ignored the words as he fought to regain control. If he said the words, he didn't know if he could keep himself from actually killing, but the thought of these people torturing his childe ripped at his sanity as nothing had since Doyle's death. Angel stood stoic and silent as he tried to regain his balance while the officer babbled on. The man knew nothing of intimidation tactics.

Angel glanced down as Xander moaned his way to consciousness one inch at a time.

"One… Mugabe only." Angel paused. "And only because he already deserves to die, so don't expect me to cooperate beyond the one assassination."

"In fifty years, we have only required your special services twice. I assure you that we would much rather hold you in reserve for the most serious situations than betray your trust in our agreements." Angel didn't even both to answer that as he sat on his own bunk on the opposite wall from the bunk where he'd laid Xander. The speaker went silent, and Angelus' chuckle rolled through Angel's mind at the confusion the men behind mirror expressed when the microphone was off. Angel wasn't entirely sure what the relationship was between this government group that had now twice kidnapped him and the group that had chipped Spike; however, if the Sunnydale group was as stupid as these guys, Angel could understand how Spike escaped.

"Angel?" Xander rocked slightly on the cot. If Angel had doubts about Xander's loyalty, that word answered them. Only Penn had ever woken up searching for him like that, with desperation in his voice. Angel gritted his teeth in frustration. There was no moral high ground here; no way to do the right thing. The beast in front of him was a monster who had killed one dorky but brave and loyal human. But staking the monster meant destroying the last remnants of that same human. And Angelus growled fiercely at losing the childe that was his last link to his vampire nature.

"Angel?" Xander's voice was more desperate now as the fledge fought back the darkness, a hand twitching spastically. Angel wanted to reassure Xander, but he would not put the vampire in even more danger by admitting to the Demon Research Initiative that he cared.

"Angel?" Xander nearly shouted as he sat up on the bunk, the chain around his ankle jingling like demented Christmas bells.

"Right here," Angel pointed out dryly. Yellowish brown eyes searched for him, and when Angel looked back impassively, those eyes fell to the ground.

"I didn't…" Xander stopped.

"You didn't expect to see me. You didn't think you'd have to look at me and explain how you could offer to slaughter humans for me," Angel guessed. The frowning wince told him just how accurate a guess he had made. "A hundred humans?" Angel asked calmly, and Xander brought his knees up to his chest, the heels of his feet catching on the edge of the bunk as he pressed back into the wall.

"Do you think I want humans killed for me?" Those large eyes closed and Angel could smell the misery floating off the huddled boy in waves. For Xander's sake and for the sake of the people even now listening on the other side of the glass, Angel had to make this lesson clear.

"I won't risk my redemption for you. Would you put another hundred lives at my feet?" Angel stood and covered the narrow space between the bunks in four steps. The room might be long, but the bunks stood close to each other in the narrow space. Angel expected some answer since no vampire could understand the concept of human life having worth, but Xander just buried his face in his knees.

"Xander, you have to understand something," Angel said as he reached down and grabbed a fistful of curling brown hair, pulling up so he could make eye contact. "I will not have you kill for me. Not ever." Angel allowed his game face forward as he put on his show for both the observers and the fledge.

"I'm…" Xander stopped, and considering that the human had always been able to babble inappropriately, Angel was glad to see the demon wasn't exactly like the dead boy.

"You're what? Sorry? Angry? Pathetic?" Angel almost stopped when he saw the physical flinch at the last word. He let go of the hair, and Xander pressed his face to his knees again. Angel considered stopping, and then whispers from behind the mirror suggested that taking the fledge was a bad idea. A muttered conference now suggested that Xander was worthless as collateral, and Angel couldn't allow that either.

"Xander," he said again, far softer this time as he turned the hard grip on the hair to a soothing circle motion. "I'm going to kill a man, a dictator. When that's over, I'm going to come back for you, and we're going to settle some things." Angel left his words ambiguous. He knew the military officers would assume the settling included dust, and he could only hope that Xander's demon heard the sire tones and understood that Angel planned to lay down the law for the fledge. Xander flinched, but then Angel remembered Angelus flinching when Darla would threaten to settle some issue between them. She had given Angelus more freedom than most childer, but when she had been unhappy, Angelus had paid the price.

Xander looked up at him with eyes that now showed only dark brown, and Xander continued to hug his legs. Angelus was caught between wanting to take the childe and fuck him into a better mood or beat him senseless for his bad attitude. Angel just sighed with a desire to escape, but the military would let him out when they wanted and not before.

"The deaths would have been at my feet, not yours," Xander whispered even as his body leaned into Angel's touch.

"And I don't want that either. I know you care about humans or you would have eaten Cordelia after the number of times she publicly humiliated you," Angel pointed out, and Xander shrugged. Angel rubbed a soft curl between his thumb and forefinger remembering how it felt to have William at his feet looking up at him adoringly.

"I care about Cordelia, not people," Xander said in a small voice as if even he didn't understand the logic of that. It made more sense to Angel than it would to any other vampire with the possible exceptions of Spike who would deny understanding it and Dalton who had died for his humanity.

"Your demon sees people as animals, food," Angel explained. "But you still have enough humanity in you to fight against that belief." For a long moment Xander looked up at him, the gentle rocking back and forth on the cot ended so that Xander's body was inhumanly still. Angel waited for some sort of reaction, but he hadn't been prepared for the smile that Xander tried to hide by burying his face in his knees.

He might have even thought he had misinterpreted the expression except Xander started laughing, a high hysterical sound that made his shoulders shake. Angel backed away a step and crossed his arms as Angelus growled in frustration. Before Xander could get enough control to look up, Angel was almost ready to give in to Angelus' suggestion of beating the impertinence out of the boy.

"I don't have demon and human parts," Xander said in a more serious tone, his laughter dying the minute he had seen Angel's glower.

"I know you don't have a soul, but Dru left pieces of your humanity in place, many too many pieces for you to function normally."

"Oh, I function fine. The gang member I ate died without ever knowing my whole vamp disability, and I know I was classified learning disabled in school and all, but I really thought I would be able to give up the extra special label when I died. It's a little unfair." Xander paused. "At least they don't have short busses for vamps." Angel opened his mouth to respond, but he didn't even have an answer for any part of that.

"I like Cordelia, so I won't hurt her, but it doesn't mean I won't hurt other people because in general, other people are big on the annoying me scale. And since I seem to be big on the annoyage myself, that actually seems fair, but you go right ahead and lie to yourself about how you have the soul on one shoulder and the demon on the other. It's still all just you," Xander finished with a shrug.

"Xander, it's not that way for me," Angel started, wanting to make his childe understand his soul, but not really knowing the words to explain his dilemma.

"Oh, please. You keep saying that you want to be human, but from what I saw Deadboy, you weren't working for human-status, you were trying for angelic what with the whole being perfect thing you had going on. You never let yourself get angry or frustrated or just have a pissy day. You took every evil thought you ever had and you stuck it in a corner and slapped an Angelus label on it."

"Don't talk about what you don't understand," Angel snarled, and he curled his hand around Xander's throat and slammed the back of Xander's head into the white-washed brick hard enough that Xander gasped for breath.

"You gave your fears a name, it's like a five year old with a closet monster issues," Xander hissed out, his fangs dropping even though he didn't go into game face.

"That's not it." Angel gave a tighter squeeze before dropping Xander back on his bed and retreating to his side of the room before he ripped the fledge's head off.

"Spike and Dru, they called you Angel. They didn't have a different name for the demon. Angelus, it's just another word for Angel."

Angel stood with his back to Xander as he stared at the wall in front of him.

"And when you found out about the whole 'kick his ass' comment, you didn't even yell. You got this whole patient, 'I deserved it' expression. A human would have been screaming and yelling and possibly doing some arm breakage. You aren't anywhere near human."

"Stop," Angel snarled, spinning around in game face, and this time Xander had the common sense to stop talking. "I have lived with my soul and my demon for a hundred years. You know nothing. You have judged me since the day you saw me and I took Buffy away from you. You just can't stand that I got there first, and you're determined to make my life as miserable as yours because of it." Angel stood burning with a need to beat the fledge until its flesh turned white and blood ran in rivers to the floor. Suddenly another image came to mind: a human Xander standing guard in the hospital stinking of fear and facing down Angelus who had just said pretty much the same thing. Xander's voice broke into his shocked moment of reflection.

"See, that's human: jealous, angry, petty, threatening, and totally wrong. Of course that also sounded a lot like Angelus, so what do I know?" Xander dropped his head back to his knees, and Angel was left trembling in rage and unwilling to indulge in the dark fantasies that rippled through his thoughts.

"I know how to do totally wrong, Xander," Angel said quietly. "I'm about to do something totally wrong because you put me in this position." Xander looked up with eyes that seemed suddenly devoid of any expression at all. Angel waited for the response, but instead Xander just sat on his bunk and stared at Angel with large eyes that followed every move as Angel paced off his energy.

A key turned in the lock, and Angel pushed Angelus' rage down to the back of his mind as he concentrated on finding a way out of this situation without getting anyone else killed. Angel just hoped that he could keep Mugabe on the alive and breathing list as well because if it came down to a choice, he would rather protect his annoying childe, at least long enough to beat some sense into him.