A/N: I am re-watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, from the movie onwards (I know, I know, the movie is amusing in its inadequacy, but I still love watching it – it's so amusing in its campy-ness), and I just watched "The Body" in Season Five. I'm so freaking depressed (major WARNING: Angsty Rant Ahead).
Last year, in October, my grandfather passed away. He had the exact same condition as Joyce Summers did – he had a successful tumour removal from his brain, and he got as good as he ever was…until he had a haemorrhage, and he died very suddenly. Watching that episode is, in some ways, like a knife to the gut. And I think that's why Buffy was so successful: it reaches into you and makes you feel.
So, you'll excuse me if this chapter is a little angst-y, but I really need to work this out of my system. So I'll write this chapter as to how all of the Scooby Gang react to having Xander taken away, and this will just be the theme throughout Angelus' kidnap of Xander. After this chapter, I'll get on with the rest of the story – it's just one of those spur-of-the-moment things that I have to get out of my system. Thanks for bearing with me—you guys rock!
NOTE: The chapter title stems from the song lyrics, obviously, and Hello was written by Amy Lee and Ben Moody of Evanescence – all rights reserved, blah, blah, blah…
the Passion of Angels and Demons
Chapter IX
Hello?
Oz and Jenny were standing by as they watched the 'Scooby Gang' fall to pieces.
Playground school bell rings
Again
Rain clouds come to parade
Again
It wasn't the most obvious of things; most of the people who knew them couldn't tell. It was more of an internal thing, it was more of something that the two people who were close to insiders of the Scooby Gang could see because they knew what they were looking for. It was in the little things. The way that Buffy and Willow snapped at each other, and then instantly looked horrified that they'd fought and made up faster than most people could count to three.
It was there in the way that Giles would frantically research everything and explode at anyone who interrupted, before furiously cleaning his glasses off and apologising profusely for his rudeness. "He's being so much more…British," Willow would explain to Oz sadly, in the few times that she was really willing to open up and speak to him.
Has no one told you she's not breathing?
Hello
I am your mind
Giving you someone to talk to
Hello?
Buffy now had a scar on her midriff; she'd been doing a routine patrol when a dark-haired vampire had jumped out at her. She'd hesitated; it might have been Xander. What she got instead was an airhead minion who'd gotten a lucky swing with a butterfly knife. When Giles found her at her home, her knuckles were bleeding. She'd beaten the thing to a pulp, to the point where its demon fled from its face, thoroughly cowed, and the human visage had re-emerged. Once she'd found that it wasn't Xander, she had just kept beating it until she'd decapitated it to dust with her own fists.
When Jenny had heard about this, she'd been shocked. She'd known, of course, that all that was weighing on the Slayer's mind was bound to hurt, but Buffy had never seemed capable of such utter…rage before. Until…
If I smile and don't
Believe
Willow had never before attempted a bolt of harmful energy before (to most Wiccans, most commonly called a jinx). Jenny had carefully instructed her in how to channel her energy, but not to let her anger and darker emotions bleed into the spell. Giles had been checking books into the library when he'd stumbled across a volume that Xander had checked out in better days. The mention of her best friend's name made Willow flinch. Oz and Buffy leapt backward as Willow's pupils suddenly expanded beyond human comprehension, staining her eyes pure black, as she shot a burst of red energy from her hands, burning a hole in the wall where the door leading to the courtyard had once stood.
Soon I know
I'll wake
From this dream
Giles drank more now than he used to. Jenny watched this with concern, a concern that Buffy shared. While the Slayer and the Gypsy still weren't on the best of terms, Buffy seemed to have more or less forgiven her for her involvement in the Angel/Angelus debacle. Jenny would come to Giles' apartment to find the bourbon or the brandy or the scotch down on the kitchen counter.
He wouldn't speak to her about it, but she knew, anyway. Xander came from an abusive home; it was obvious to anyone who knew him, even without Willow's first-hand knowledge. Xander had latched on to Giles as the father figure that he'd never really had, and Giles had taken that responsibility as gravely as he took his duties as a Watcher. It was disturbing, the level of depression that one boy's disappearance could take on the band of evil-fighters.
And depression was settling in, to a point where people could see it. Cordelia even remarked on it to Oz when she passed him in the halls that Buffy and Willow both looked even worse than they usually did. Since dumping Xander for the whims of her in-crowd, Cordelia had gotten a little deeper. She thought more now than she used to, which the werewolf supposed was a good thing.
Maybe the only good thing that had come of this mess.
Don't try to fix me—
I'm not broken
Thankfully, there had been no more direct attacks from Angelus since Xander's disappearance. What was it now? Three weeks? Nearly a month, and they still hadn't figured out Angelus' new hideout. Nearly one month. They didn't even know if Xander was alive. Not that Jenny or Oz were suicidal enough to mention this to the three remaining core members of the Scooby Gang.
Hello
I am the lie
Living for you so you can hide
Don't cry
It was easy to see that Xander had meant more to the Scooby Gang than most people would have guessed at first glance. His wisecracks in the face of death, his constant and supporting attitude that lifted Buffy up enough to feel that she had some help in holding the weight of the world by herself. Willow was drawing in to herself, her extroverted friend suddenly gone. She was rather monosyllabic, and she only really spoke to Giles or Buffy or Oz or Jenny.
Buffy and Willow had nearly come to blows one day when Buffy asked what Willow had meant when Willow had said that Xander had run away with Angelus. Jenny had been forced to use magic to break the two apart, and Giles drew even deeper into himself as his two girls fought over the disappearance of his boy.
They had all gone together to Xander's parents' house to find most of Xander's things missing after a couple of days. Xander's mother was recovering from a non-lethal neck wound after she'd drunkenly invited some of Angelus' minions into her home. Giles had pointed out that this was an encouraging sign that Angelus wasn't planning on Turning Xander. Buffy had snorted and stormed out of the house.
Suddenly I know I'm not dreaming
It hit them all like a cold glass of water one day, like it had to. Xander was gone. They had no way of getting him back. And Oz and Jenny were forced to watch as they fell apart. And there was nothing to be done about it. Nothing to be done…
Hello?
I'm still here
All that's left of yesterday.
A/N: Like I said, major angst-fest. If you'll notice, though, this chapter spans for about a month-and-a-half. This chapter is all that was happening to the Scooby Gang while we're busy reading about Xander and Angelus – just a head's up.
(Fifty-five reviews!)