STIGMATA

Title: STIGMATA
Pairings: later on: S/X, probable S/X/A(us)
Chapter: 1
Rating: R - ( NC17 later )
Warnings: DARK FIC, spoilers, religion abuse, expect anything really. Character death(s), torture, possible Non-con, angst, anything really.
Disclaimer: I don't own them, Josh unfortunately does.

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Chapter 1

As they started to lower the coffin into the ground, Xander closed his eyes. It was finally over. They were all dead, he was all alone. A small thud made him open his eyes and he couldn’t help but look into the grave.
Dawnie. He was putting Dawn in the ground, in the dark, in the cold. For a split second he wanted to jump into the grave and open the coffin. Taking the girl he’d loved as a sister out of this prison. She’d never liked the dark when she was on her own, it made her think of all the creepy crawlies and what they were capable off. Funny how you tended to ignore every possible gory fate that could be bestowed upon you when you weren’t alone. Once in group, they all thought they were invincible.
Strength in numbers most people called it. Suicide in his book. No matter how long he’d been helping Buffy in the fight against ‘Evil’, he’d never lost track of all the unpleasant things that could have happened to him. He never once lost the fear that resonated through him since the first time he’d been faced with fangs and scales and…
But it was over now, it didn’t matter if he’d survived because of his fear. The others hadn’t. They were all quite dead. He looked sideways and his heart missed a beat as he read the headstones.

The first one, a simple white marble headstone with the name Tara Maclay. Willow had been frantic in her grief, without having to worry about what to put on the headstone, so Xander had taken care of it. Willow had grieved, raged, flayed in Sunnydale then shown remorse in England. Yet Xander had buried Tara.
It didn’t seem fair to him that he had been the one to do it on his own. Always so alone. Still, he had done it. Buffy and Dawn had been still too caught up in the drama to involve themselves in the process of honouring their friend. Still high on the euphoria that they truly were sisters and loved each other, still deluded that their relationship would ever evolve beyond petty remarks and feelings of superiority and inadequacy.
Xander had been left alone then as well, and alone he’d prospered even if he’d not been happy. Xander shighed, his fingers traced the smooth edges of the white marble in a near dancelike fashion. There were no inscriptions beyond Tara’s name. No remarks about the ‘soul mate’ she’d left behind. No allusions to the family that had never been able to value her. No words regarding friends.
She was beyond that.
Xander kissed the white marble gently.
He looked the grave over once more, then turned to the next one.

He looked at the obsidian stone with the blood red inscriptions. The undertaker must have thought that he was mad, when he’d requested this gravestone. Then again, the man hadn’t been all that human so he’d have know of the terror that Willow had unleashed in her rage. The sheer power and death that she’d been capable of. It was fitting somehow.

Willow Rosenburg

No inscription beyond that. The stone looked fierce and angry. It represented rage and death, blood and life. It represented his Willow. Too powerful for her own good, for her own conscience and it had killed her.
After the battle against the First, after that taste of magic, she’d known. She’d known that she could never give it up. Magic was her essence. Magic was her life. If she had to give up that, she might as well be dead.
Kennedy had left after the funeral. He’d been alone then as well.
The others were still too distraught over the fact that Willow could have taken her own life, they grieved but weren’t recovering. Well, not in time to arrange anything for her funeral at least.
Kennedy hadn’t shed a tear, angry at the world that she had been gifted with her lover’s death in the aftermath of the Slayers’ victory.
He’d been half tempted to slap the spoilt little brat for thinking of Willow as part of the ‘spoils of War’, but he’d kept his mouth shut. The girl wasn’t worth it, and besides could he blame her for desiring Willow as an object when Buffy had been more than happy to think of Willow as a weapon.
The girl might one day realise that Willow’s death hadn’t been about her. It hadn’t been about Buffy or Dawn, Giles not even him. It had been about Willow. Selfish? Maybe, but then again it had been Willow’s own life, Willow’s own death. If you couldn’t be selfish about that, what could you be selfish about?
If Kennedy couldn’t see that, well… Her limited grasp of reality would shorten the already short lifespan of any Slayer.
He looked at the two next stones. Both solid granite linked together.

Rupert ‘Ripper’ Giles was the first one.

Giles died in a way no field watcher dared to imagine. He’d died in his sleep. Too young to die, hardly someone you could label ‘old’, but he’d just slipped away silently. Willow’s death hit Giles hard. He knew that the older man saw them all as his children and to loose Willow, the girl he’d tried to save… Maybe it was too much for the Warlock who’d sough redemption in the fight against evil.
A week after Willow’s suicide, Giles followed her.
Buffy and Dawn had been inconsolable, and he’d been left alone. Again. Buffy had taken Dawn to see Angel in LA and hadn’t come back until a week after the funeral.
He’d never forgiven her for that, not even when she’d brought back word that Spike was back, undead, unchipped, unsouled. He could still see the indignation in Buffy’s eyes when she regaled the fact that Angel didn’t seem to mind having a certified William the Bloody living in his hotel. Frankly Xander hadn’t cared much at all, besides the fact that he was glad that the soul was gone. It hadn’t suited Spike, no vampire who’d wished for a soul really needed one. He’d never have said that to Spike of course, but it was the truth.
Buffy’s absence had created a rift between them, one too large to ever cross. Still, her absence had been a blessing in disguise as well, there was no way that he could have ever honoured Giles the way he wanted to when she’d been there.
Giles had been buried at the witching hour in a warlock ritual, courtesy of Ethan Rayne. Xander still remembered the sheer agony in the man’s eyes when speaking the words that insured that Ripper made safe passage to Heaven. From the intensity of those emotions, Xander had thought that Ethan Rayne would be joining the man not too long after the funeral. He’d been right. The day after Giles’ funeral, Ethan Rayne had died much in the same way. Xander had found the man on his sofa, tear tracks on his face and a small smile on his features.
He had him buried next to Giles, two granite stones linked together.

The next stone was Buffy’s.

Elizabeth Anne Summers
Buffy

He looked at the grey stone and sighed. She had been a whirlwind that had destroyed his life and he’d been grateful for it in his hatred. It wasn’t easy to know that the monsters in the dark were real, just as real as the ones that lived during the daytime. He firmly believed that ignorance could be bliss and damnation all wrapped into one. He was thankful that he’d learned about the Sunnydale nightlife. It had saved him from a few unpleasant deaths but it had also broken him.
Xander closed his eyes. So much loss. Hyenas, Incan princesses, Anya… All because or for this woman. Her cause, her life, her love, her hate.
He opened his eyes again.
Buffy. Arrogant, powerful, pretty, friend, enemy.
So sure that her life had been targeted by all things unholy. So sure that she was The Chosen One. So sure that she decided what was right and what was wrong. And sometimes she’d been either and chosen both.
So sure that she’d die fighting in continuous battle against evil.
Instead she’d been mowed down by a drunken driver while shopping with 3 of the new Slayers. Dawn had been heart broken, Xander…-
He’d been oddly vicious in his lack of grief towards Buffy, especially in his eulogy.
He could still see deadboy’s eyes widen when he’d spoken out loud that Buffy had finally gotten her wish. Be normal. Live normal. Die normal.
Dawn had latched unto him and hadn’t let go after that. She hadn’t been angry with him, more understanding. He knew that she’d loved her sister, but it was hard to keep grieving for someone who still couldn’t help but look at you and see a means to end the world. Dawn had wept and grieved, but once she’d cried her tears she’d been finished. She’d supported him and had been oddly reluctant to face their compatriots of LA. She hadn’t even hugged Spike, no matter how much she wanted to.
Attempted rape and betrayal as well as abandonment had rattled the teen too hard to accept Spike with all her heart once again. He’d seen the flash of hurt in Spike’s eyes when Dawn hadn’t gone to him, but he had been beyond caring at that point. Beyond caring for anyone but Dawn. Precious, sweet, fierce and raging in her essence. Xander had known that she’d die too.
He’d been overprotective of her in the months following Buffy’s death until they both were near breaking point. They’d had fights about it, until Xander admitted that she wasn’t a little girl anymore. She’d gotten a car as a birthday gift and an increase in her allowance which she never spent because she’d learnt the value of money the hard way and was responsible.
A month after her birthday they’d been shopping for her prom dress, when she’d collapsed in the mall. She’d lapsed into a coma and Xander had known that she would never come out of it even before the doctors breached the possibility of pulling the plug on his beautiful girl. His baby sister, even if she’d been placed with Buffy. Her organs had given up, the doctors hadn’t been able to explain it beyond the fact that it was as if she’d burnt out her body. As if she’d outlived her purpose a priest had said when he’d tried to give Dawn the last rites before he pulled the plug. He’d put the man into a hospital bed himself.
Dawn, a force of the universe, who lived in fear of herself and her existence. They’d taken her away because they didn’t think she was useful anymore. If he ever met the ones that used Dawn as a play ball for their amusement’s sake, he’d show them what true rage meant.

Xander looked at her headstone, then at the workmen who were waiting for his approval. Anxious to leave the graveyard. Not wanting to spend more time in the dark in the place where death lingered in more ways than one. He nodded at them and they left him alone. All alone. He looked at the stone once more.

A pale blue stone with golden inscriptions.

Dawn

He’d buried her at dusk. Her favourite time of day. The ceremony had just consisted out of him. He’d called no one, had alerted no one. No one had sat beside her body like he had done and no one had called in the week that she’d been lying in the Hospital bed. Of course he’d told no one. Dawn never wanted to be the centre of attention, she’d told him that on the day they buried her sister. She wanted to be put to rest in peace. So he had. Alone.
He hadn’t specified her name with Summers. She wasn’t Dawn Summers. She was just Dawn. His morning glory and she would remain that way for all eternity.
He shivered slightly.

It was over now.

Anya and Joyce were buried at other plots on the graveyard, but he’d gone to see them this afternoon. They were nowhere near this line of combatants and it felt right for some reason.

Xander closed his eyes.
It was over now.
All alone.

He never registered the blow that knocked him unconscious, nor the childlike harmonious voice.

“Oh yes Miss Edith, the stars were right. So lovely in his grief.”


TBC