I cannot say this enough: DARK FIC!!! Evidence of my state of mind when I dreamed this up.
Disclaimer: Joss, WB, UPN et al. own Buffy. I do not. Panzer/Davis etc own Highlander. Deep feelings of depression after reading are in no way my responsibility. You chose to read it, ignoring all the warnings…
Author: Paradigm Shifter
Title: Lost Immortal
Rating: Oh, hell. Everything I write is R, cause I don't know what the ratings mean. However: MULTIPLE CHARACTER DEATH!!!
Pairing: No real pairing. Just very slight Buffy/Angel, Willow/Oz, Xander/Cordelia
Feedback: Yeah! But no flames… The warning is at the top: DARK FIC!
Continuity: Up to Graduation. (Season 3 Finale) Then goes totally off track, no road trip, no Angel and Cordy leaving. But, in one respect, they do…
Notes: This is a diversion to get me writing again, after being thoroughly disheartened by the progress of a novel I'm (trying) to write. My Latin is a bit rusty, sorry. Also trying to make the opener more than just one sentence…
*
Xander stood in the clearing created by Acolytes to the demon Buffy was currently fighting. A shocked expression covered his face, which was deathly white.
The little colour that was left drained out as he looked at where his chest should have been. Where it had been just seconds before, lungs, heart and bones, nothing was left in the hole, which was eight inches across, a perfect circle straight through his body.
It came about by the demon, which Xander would have been the first to admit he would never survive a head to head with. It wasn't the run-of-the-mill demon that was all brawn and no brain. While large, this one had both brawn and brain, in equal measure. While Buffy attacked it, and Angel blindsided it carefully, it had merely defended itself, and made a complex motion in the air.
Syllables that sounded completely alien came out of the demons mouth, while air rippled around its fingers. "Aloc Norodere Infusirerior…" The final syllable echoed in the suddenly still air, as the ground shook, throwing Buffy off of her feet and into Angel, who dropped his sword to stop her fall. A small area around the demons hand rippled and condensed, as the air thickened around his closed fist. The strike had been aimed at Buffy, but with the ground shaking, she wouldn't stay in one place. The ball of solid air passed harmlessly over her back as she overbalanced again, and continued on. The demon growled at the waste of a spell, but teeth showed when he saw that it had hit someone after all. Xander.
At Willow, Oz', Giles and Cordelia's frightened gasp, he looked up to see Buffy and Angel, instead of fighting the demon, watching in horror as Xander collapsed on the dirt floor. He was dead before his knees touched the ground…
*
Angel and Buffy stared in horror at the sight of Xander with a hole in his chest. Well, if it could be described as a hole, because it was so big that it wasn't so much a hole as the sudden surgical removal of most of Xander's chest. It looked like a tank shell had gone through him.
Angel shook himself out of the stupor caused by shock, and grabbed Buffy, pulling her away from the demon. "We have to get out of here! We can't beat this thing!"
Buffy shook him off. "NO! XANDER!"
Angel quickly made a decision. "Sorry Buffy." He muttered under his breath, before slugging her in the jaw hard enough to knock her out. He slung her on his shoulder and ran to Giles.
"We have to get out of here!" Screamed Angel as the demon summoned another magical conflagration. "Get Xander!"
Giles was shocked out of his trance with those words, gripping Oz' arm, asking for help. Willow and Cordelia stood mute now, with silent tears steaming down their faces.
Again, Angel had to be cruel to be kind. "Mourn later! For now, get out of here!" Pushing the two roughly with his free hand, he headed for the exit, making sure Giles and Oz were close behind with the body of Xander.
*
It was the funeral of Xander Harris. The Scooby Gang stood around in silence, watching the priest give the final blessing before the coffin was lowered into the ground.
The priest made the sign of the cross over the mourners, which Angel flinched from. He was a vampire after all.
"Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus…"
Angel muttered something under his breath. "May the soul of this man, Xander Harris, and the souls of all the Faithful departed, through the Mercy of God, rest in peace…" Before Angel had been turned, his family had been Irish Catholics. Angel himself had not been a good one, but some stuff just sticks with you, even after 220 years of disuse.
The three girls were huddled together, crying at their friends demise. It would be hard to decide which needed comfort more, Willow, his best friend, Cordelia, his girlfriend, or Buffy, the one who was meant to be looking after him. Oz stood near Willow, face impassive, but eyes showing the depth of his grief. Giles stood apart from the group, watching the grave, trying obviously not to cry.
He wasn't successful.
Angel just stood and watched the group, falling apart already from the death of just one of their number.
Little did Angel know, that with the death of Alexander Harris, that before the year was out, he would be the only remaining member of the Scooby gang…
*
Xander screamed loudly in his dark prison. No one was there to hear him. No one went near the cemeteries any more. They were too dangerous.
"Where the hell am I?"
No response.
"Is this hell?"
No one heard the question.
Xander felt about in his coffin. "Am I in a coffin?"
Panic gripped him. "I'm in a coffin! HELP!"
Struggling, Xander started beating at the lid. It refused to move. "Oh God, they buried me alive…" The words struck something in Xander's memory. "No. They didn't I was dead. I was DEAD! What the hell is going on here? Why am I still alive? Am I a vampire?"
Xander felt his chest, remembering the gaping hole that had been there. His heartbeat thudded against his probing fingertips, assuring him he wasn't a vampire.
"What the hell am I then?" With that question foremost in his mind, Xander began to dig his way out…
*
Sunnydale, 4002 AD.
The Hellmouth slowly opened revealing the conflagration inside. The demon which two millennia before had killed Xander Harris was standing at the entrance. The sad remnants of the Scooby gang surrounded him. Sunnydale had become damnable place in which all manner of demons took refuge from the world that they sought to destroy. For the past 2000 years, Sunnydale had become the pariah of America, and indeed the whole world.
No one was allowed in, and no one was allowed out. The demon saw to that.
Demons of all shapes and sizes could freely pass as they wished. The human population of Sunnydale however, was used primarily as feeding source for those required them. Those that chose to serve were rewarded with several possibilities: they could be turned, becoming one of the demons themselves hunting on those they used to protect, or they could be used as the concubines of whatever demon desired them, whether male or female some demon would always pick them.
Xander was about to stop this. For the third time, he had sneaked his way into Sunnydale. Giles was aware of him, and therefore probably so was the demon. When he had visited his friend's graves that Angel told about when they met in LA, he had encountered Giles and what the demon had done to him. Horrors beyond imagining had been committed against the defiled corpses of his friends. Their graves desecrated, and their bodies destroyed. The demon seem to have power over just about everything, because he had done horrible, terrible things to those Xander had once called his friends.
Giles had become what he spent his entire life fighting. A vampire, a dark creature of the night, formed to feast on the blood of the living, and hunt those he had spent his lifetime protecting.
As the hell mouth opened its widest, Xander stepped forward and bellowed a challenge to the demon that had made his life, his never-ending life as an immortal one of unbearable torment. Before the demon could even respond, Xander was cut down by hail of lightning from Willow, before being attacked by whatever it was the demon had turned Buffy into. The disgusting rotted corpse of Buffy attacked him with the same vigour that she used to attacked vampires with.
The immortal form of Xander, after 2000 years of trying to get revenge for what the demon had done to him and his friends, was while far stronger than the zombie that Willow had become, useless at magic. The electrical arcs surged through Xander's body, overloading nerves and bursting organs as it went.
As the immortal form of Xander collapsed onto its knees, the demon stepped forward toward him, the swirling energies of the Hellmouth giving a stark, chaotic background to the slick, oily look of the demon.
"You will never win, boy. Your friends will see to that…" The demon hissed at Xander, before drawing back its hand.
Xander, in the final moments looked at the demon that caused his downfall straight in the eyes.
"It is not whether you win or lose, it is how you play the Game…" a sick laugh, twisted by the ravages of time escaped his lips, displaying the madness his friends death inflicted on him.
The laugh echoed, and was slowly sucked into hell, as the portal opened further.
As Xander closed his eyes, the demon brought down its hand, cleaving off the immortals head, ending his torment finally…
*
It isn't over yet, there will be further chapters, expect it to switch scenes very quickly (like highlander) it will be short (only a few chapters) it is only intended to get my muse going again. It seems to have been on holiday with no forwarding address for the past few months…