This, my friends, my lovely friends, is the end… of the beginning. If you read Resolve 2.0 post at LJ, you'll know that this is not the end of the story, merely the end of the beginning of the story. Hell of a prologue, right? I figured this would be a good place to stop for a bit. I won't actually continue posting until I'm at another comfortable stopping point so… be prepared to wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. I am feeling pretty inspired these days [like firecrackers in the head, it's marvelous!] and will try to have it done before Christmas. I promise.

A curl of blood darting through golden syrup, then back in, and he felt his whole body relax. Slide down into the blue twilight calm he'd been carefully cultivating for years. His muscles slipped free, surrounding him with the warm rush of his own urine; he hadn't eaten in days. The blue got deeper as his heart slowed, thump. Thump. Restful, he could just sleep, for hours or days, numb and calm and away from everything… darker still. The bottom fell out of the world, crimson and silent and swallowing him whole, and his heart struggled feebly against the endless blackness, and for the first time, lost.

Xander's head was pounding when he woke up and still half-caught in his dream. Heroin. Cut with dimethocaine, he felt like it was still crawling through his system, and he thought it had been a pleasant way to die. Much preferable to… right now, for example. His head felt like there was a hatchet stuck in the back of it, letting the world in too close. Xander pressed a wrist against his aching temple, trying to press some of the pain out, and found gauze there, cocooning his hands. Fascinated, he held his arms out to each side, feeling the stretch of taut sutures across his side, and the fierce ache of his ribs. He felt like a giant Q-tip, each end covered in cotton fluff, and slumped back down again against the now-chilly sheets.

Whatever Spike had given him to knock him out and dull the pain had evidently worked. Waking up was like coming up from the bottom of a lake, and his head was full of muck. He lay there, trying to ignore the throb in his skull, trying to breathe himself awake, but the lids of his eyes were heavy and a tingle was spreading in the back of his mind, dragging him down again, and Xander slipped back under the surface.

It wasn't so bad now that the stillness had come. She watched her sister go yesterday, finally, her soul escaping in the heave and thrash of one last convulsion. The long brown arm of her sister's body still stretched before her, but she was weak. Too weak to tend her sister's shell, too weak to tend her own. Someone would find them eventually. The doctors had not been here in months, there was no use, and she had come to accept it, but it was not so bad now. The chills, and the pain in her joints; she ached with every movement, days of agony and weakness, hunger and vomiting, and then the seizures. Every muscle screaming tightness and pain at her as her body betrayed her, thrashing and cramping and dying by increments. But it was over now, better now, or not so bad. She had gone for water, pushing herself away from the broken mattress, but the convulsion had taken her and she lay on the floor, breathing dirt and dust and her sister's arm as her mind floated away. Floated, and it wasn't so bad now.

Xander opened his eyes for the second time that day, too drained, for once, to make much of a production of it. The word "malaria" tasted unfamiliar in his mouth, but no matter how many times he spat it out it came rushing back, carrying him away on dark wings. It could have been worse, had been worse, and he did not question that these things were real. The first time he'd felt Master's fangs sinking into his neck by proxy, the first time he'd felt himself die in a car wreck, sudden and crushing and full of fear… those were worse. There were worse things, but he lived them less often. "That's enough of that," he muttered aloud, and made the herculean effort of pushing himself upright.

Spike had left a candle burning for him. He hadn't noticed the first time he was awake, too concerned with the pounding in his head to register much of anything, but now that he was conscious and determined to stay that way, he was appreciative. Xander clung to that fat little pillar in the dark space, watching it flicker gently in the crypt's air currents, breathing in the heavy tallow, creamier and not quite as dark as the ones in Master's castle. He tried not to see the shadows that danced on the walls; he tried not to anticipate the faces slipping through the gloom outside its comforting corona. But the faces never manifested, never slid in and out of the shadows to press their despairing souls against his skin, looking for a way home. Xander didn't know what to make of this development. It was worrying. He had grown accustomed to them, accustomed to his madness and its quirks – change was troubling. He wanted Master to take the change away, would rather go back there than see what happened next. Spike had been uncharacteristically kind, too kind to be real, and change was coming. Xander wanted Master. He focused on the candle.

A hot streak slipped away from the flame, collapsing the paper-thin edge and dribbling down the side, translucent and perfect, and Xander realized he had to pee. The water he'd been drinking, the food he'd been eating. It was amazing how readily bodily functions were forgotten until they weren't. He had never imagined a need for toilets in hell, but perhaps the alternative lacked realism; maybe hell was really needing to pee and not being able.

It was some distance to the hole in the floor from where Xander sat. Miles of bed to swim through and about fifteen feet of cavern floor that stretched out like the Magadikgadi, but now that he'd noticed it, he felt like his bladder was going to explode. Master hadn't cared where he'd gone, hadn't noticed one way or the other if Xander was hydrated enough to urinate; sometimes Xander snuck draughts out of the fountain and pissed in the potted ficus; or on the marble floors, too crazy and too beaten to care. He wouldn't do that to Spike, though. Not yet. So he made an effort and crawled away from the luxurious bed.

Walking was tricky. Xander had learned to move carefully, like walking on one roller skate, each step a careful balancing act as he gingerly placed his weight on his injured leg and heaved himself forward before the ankle collapsed under him. He could scuttle with some speed if pressed, but took his time in the gloom of the crypt, desperate not to stumble and fall, spend the morning lying in a heap and his own urine. Spike would be so upset. Slow and careful. He was happy in this small victory. Happier still when he discovered that he could learn comfortably against the rough-hewn wall of the crypt, fumbling, a little urgently now, to aim himself away from his own feet and trying to keep the fresh gauze on his hands dry. Pissing felt so good it hurt, a low ache that radiated through his bladder and kidneys as he let everything go.

He stood there for a moment, wondering if he dared to brush his teeth again, if he dared to fiddle with the tap. But Spike had turned it on with a wrench, and Xander had no illusions about his ability to manage that for himself. He would have to wait. Wait for Spike to come back if Spike came back at all, wait for the opportunity to ask. He hoped Spike would come back, and hoped he'd stay away, and hoped for a million other things besides that he didn't dare to name. Xander was good at waiting. Things were changing. He wondered if this wouldn't become some new torment, and tried not to speculate as he made his way back to his spot.

About five feet from the bed, the pain hit him. Something went snap inside his head, and what had been merely persistently and exquisitely painful became genuinely intolerable. The leg he was standing on, the throbbing mangled state of his hands, shot suddenly beyond the consistent ache and were a white-hot tearing pain that ate, in one howling mouthful, his ability to think, to breathe, to be anything but a searing nerve. It burnt the edges of the world to gray and the bottom dropped out of his stomach, and Xander collapsed in a heap on the floor, trying to breathe and seconds from fainting.

Pain that he hadn't realized was at a remove, distant enough to be analyzed, processed, put to the side, was now so much a part of him that it swallowed his mind. Excruciating, from the Latin excruciatus – to torture – that was Giles in his memory, something he'd been told once, and his memory was lit up like fireworks, his life before Spike choking him with details he would rather have forgotten. He hadn't forgotten because forgetting was impossible, but he hadn't minded. And now he was swamped with caring, stomach heaving trying to eject the bugs and filth and nightmare.

It took a while to calm himself down. Laying in the darkness, heaving and panting was doing him no good, and he knew it more clearly now than he'd managed all week. Remembered everything with a clarity that was nauseating. Something had changed. Something had peeled a layer of haze and grease away from his mind and everything was coming in perfect and sharp like ice. Too much sensation at once as the barriers came away. He was screaming.

Master. It was Master. The presence that hovered in his mind, a way of thinking so deeply engrained in his every action that he lived and breathed it, was gone. Gone and it raked open a hole in Xander's head that filled with pain and blackness and the smell of bile. It was Master who had made the barrier; Master who protected Xander from the howling pit of anguish that was his many wounds, even as he was inflicting them. And now he was gone. Was Xander grateful? Grateful that he'd never been allowed to pass out, grateful that the pain was distant enough to contemplate, distant enough to keep from sending him into the electric gray arms of shock, but nevertheless oh-so-intimate? Yes. In that moment, Christ with his blood on fire, in that moment he was grateful, would have given anything to have Master back with him.

But he resented too. Felt, for the first time. Resented the necessity, hated Master and his women and his beautiful cruelty and the things they had done to him. Things that he could remember, could feel; things he knew, now Master had abandoned him, were wrong. He didn't understand how he'd earned this, and he supposed it didn't matter because the world was swimming and there were bigger fish-shaped questions.

Eventually, his mind built its own defenses. Ancient self-preservation mechanisms pushed back the swallowing gray. He breathed slowly, carefully, weight on his knees and his elbows, and he tried not to move as the world shifted through crimson and tried to settle around him. It hurt. By god it hurt, and for a while he could only pant as his heart came back out of his throat and into to something like a rhythm, and his mind began to process linear thoughts – how to get from the floor to the bed in sixteen easy steps, guaranteed to hurt or your money back. He pushed himself up to his knees and elbows, swamped again by waves of nausea as the pain threaded through him, slick and cold and too fucking much. He was unbelievably grateful to Spike for patching him up before this happened. The aftershocks were enough.

Slowly and laboriously, fighting back bile and the cold of shock, he crawled to the bed, dragging his weight on hands and elbows, pulling himself forward. Xander felt himself break into a cold sweat, but he pushed himself up on his good leg, bracing his elbows against the sheer cliff of Spike's bed and flopping forward onto the mattress in a way that made every hurt shriek. The three-day-old ribs groaned and creaked, the shredded muscles in his calf rattled and the gray came swooping back, threatening to suck the air out of the room. Xander lay there, huffing and puffing with the exertion and the effort of not screaming, but screaming did no good. Crying did no good, and he could only lay there, feeling for the first time that not only the pain belonged to him, but the damage as well; his body, not his Master's body of work.

He tried not to breathe too deeply, tried not to move, tried desperately not to let his mind wander into its own dusty corners. He couldn't bear to think, couldn't bear to remember, so he let himself be lulled into the rhythm of his own heart, striving for something like an equilibrium. His mind was on fire but refused to melt back into complacent oblivion. He watched the candle, flame and tallow and cotton wick, and let it burn for him. It was more than an inch lower before Spike came back.

Xander heard movement in the crypt above him and froze, thinking it was a demon having smelled dinner when he was at his most exposed. The thought was almost absurd, and just then he would have welcomed a demon. Welcomed the novelty and the sudden uncomplicated brutality. Xander couldn't remember the last time he'd had his brutality without complication, and found himself longing for it; maybe it would kill him. He tried hard not to be disappointed when it was Spike. Spike would help him if he asked.

Xander considered pretending to be asleep. He hadn't been able to think in straight lines in a long time, and he wanted to give the vampire a few minutes before inflicting his madness on him, thought it would be nice for both of them. But he hadn't been much good at that when he was alive, and now he was sure Spike would hear the difference anyway. So when the vampire slid down the ladder, a little clumsily with a disposable cup in each hand and a white paper bag clenched in his teeth, Xander greeted him with casual warmth, "Hey. Thanks for the candle."

"Brought breakfast." Spike said shortly, the words muffled behind the bag. He plunked the cups on the table near the candle and let it fall out of his teeth, "Had a good night, and I thought you might like something you could chew for a change."

It was easier, with someone else in the room, not to succumb to the yawning chasm that tried to open up under him whenever he moved, so Xander slowly and painfully rolled over and made himself sit up. His leg throbbed angrily at him, but he was surprised to note that the rest… it hurt, but perhaps not as badly as it had before. Spike was beaming at him and wriggling out of his duster, cursing a bit as some of his shirt came away and took his skin with it. "You're hurt." Xander said stupidly, stunned by the possibility. The hurting was for him. "Your skin…"

The grin was wolfish, and gruesome as Spike stripped out of the remains of his t-shirt, leaving a long streak of blood across his belly. "Toldja, I had a good night." Xander didn't even think to look away as the vampire kicked off his boots and started working on his jeans, "Tell you what? I need a shower, then we'll eat breakfast, yeah?"

"Yeah," Xander husked back, throat dry and tight feeling. He could smell warm ham and coffee from across the room and felt like a monster. The candle's light didn't penetrate that far into the room, but he heard Spike crank the pipe open and step into the spray with a soft curse about the cold. Xander remembered, or thought he could remember because that life had been so long ago and the details blurred under water, bringing Spike breakfast once or twice. Pigs' blood from the butchers, or a choice packet of human that Giles managed to obtain, Xander had never asked, and never cared. He'd never brought it with a smile. Had never, for that matter, seen Spike smile at him or for him the way he had been this week; he didn't deserve this. Didn't deserve what he thought he knew would be coming next either.

"You should've seen it, Harris!" Spike called out from the darkness, making him jump. The voice was pure pride and visceral enjoyment, "It was bloody brilliant! Some things I couldn't do cause the fucker couldn't feel 'em, but… when I used a safety pin to dig out his eyes, he started howling and crying… it was brilliant! Haven't felt this good in years!"

The wrench squeaked, the roar of the water tapered off into nothing, and Spike came out of the shadows, toweling his hair into chaotic dandelion tufts. He was so excited, so very much the confident, young monster Xander had first known, but he found himself hesitantly enjoying it because Spike was happy and there was too little of that here. He smiled softly as he watched Spike pace around the crypt, first for trousers, then to light a few candles around the room so the air glowed. Finally, Spike snagged the bag and coffees off the table and joined Xander on the bed, moving carefully so he didn't tip him over.

Xander didn't completely manage to keep the pained wince off his face, "Sorry, pet – Xander! Did I hurt you?"

"No." He covered, because it had passed now anyway. Spike very gently slid a latte in the cradle of his palms, considerately turning it so Xander could drink from the hole in the lid. "You're still oozing." This was true too, Spike still had score marks in his shoulder, gently trickling blood down his chest. Xander watched the trail with something like sympathy.

"Oh. Right." It should have disturbed him to watch Spike swipe up his own blood with a finger and pop the digit in his mouth. Much of this week should have disturbed him, but it was funny how priorities changed. Spike wiggled his eyebrows wickedly, and dug around in the bag, first bringing out a steaming parcel wrapped in white paper, followed by a dark bottle. "Hope you don't mind if your breakfast and mine were keeping each other warm."

Xander shook his head and drank his coffee. It was good, milky, and sugar free the way he liked it. He was surprised how well it settled in his stomach, aroma and flavor and the warmth seeping through the bandages on his hands thoroughly relaxing him. He watched as Spike uncorked his own bottle and swigged from it. The contents were almost black in the candle light, really too dark to see and too subtle to smell, but Spike rippled towards his true face and back, clearly enjoying it. As Xander watched, some of the damage criss-crossing Spike's hip bone sealed and faded. "Fhreulelean blood." Spike said casually as a sigh, dropping the bottle into the bag and setting it on the floor. "Not cheap, but in small doses it works better than human, and I… I bloody deserved it."

"You could have had some of mine," Xander said plainly, hoping this wouldn't inspire the same reaction that some of his other offers had. He meant it honestly, more honestly than he knew he was still capable of. "If you'd needed…"

Spike twitched. "S'all right, love. S'my job to feed you." Xander didn't know what to make of that, so he let it pass while Spike unwrapped a warm bagel loaded with egg, sausage, and cheese. The vampire broke off a piece and held it up to him, but backed off, suddenly looking sheepish. "I know you'd probably prefer to feed yourself…" he said apologetically, nodding towards Xander's hands. He'd needed both of them just to hold a cup of coffee. "But we don't want to get your bandages greasy, do we?"

"It's okay. Thank you," Xander said because it always paid to be polite, and when Spike nudged the bit of bread and cheese against his lips again, opened his mouth to accept it without shame.

It took some time. Xander had to keep fighting down swells of nauseas as his stomach tried to accommodate something more substantial than liquid, but Spike was patient. He refused to break off another piece of the sandwich until the piece in Xander's mouth had been good and swallowed. By the time the bagel was gone, the dregs of his coffee were stone cold, and Xander was full and heavy feeling, like he'd been swallowing lead. He said "thank you" anyway, again and again until it was gone and Spike was trailing assessing fingers over his stitches.

"These are looking better," the vampire murmured softly, words brushing Xander's skin into waves of goosebumps as he peered closer. "Ready to come out in no time."

"What…" Xander had been treading water in a sea of anxiety since he'd found Spike. The feeling had been steadily swelling since his fall, and now crested and broke, apprehension washing up against his ankles, as he asked, "what does that mean, exactly?"

"You're healing, Xander." It wasn't exactly the answer he'd been looking for, and he caught himself frowning with irritation. Spike had said it like Xander was precious and fragile, like he couldn't be expected to know what was happening, and Xander supposed that had been the case only hours ago. But Spike wasn't to know because knowing might change him, so Xander watched him carefully over the curve of his own shoulder, trying to trust him as implicitly as he had while the vampire prodded at his leg. "You're getting better."

"Does that…" Xander didn't want to finish the question, but he was going to make himself. This had been nice. But nice didn't last, and his head was so much clearer now. There was no part of him that wanted this to end, but he knew it would. Better to rip the band-aid off now, when he was expecting it. "Are you going to re-break me now?"

Spike backed off fast. Respectful, patient Spike. Xander was crazy, he knew that, but he would have to be completely stupid to think that was going to last long. Maybe it was a refining process and Spike was the next stage in the mill. Maybe eventually he would lose so many pieces he no longer minded. "No, Xander. I told you…"

"Master said I would be remade." He interrupted insistently, convinced and frustrated and wanting to know. Xander's eyes stung and overflowed, and Spike would not touch him. "He put me in a box. And he told me I would be new. And he buried me. Again." A whooping breath to drag himself back under control, and his voice held a hidden knife, "I think it's a reasonable question."

"Dracula's dead," Spike told him evenly, miles away. "You never have to worry about him again. I killed him. For you."

"I know. I felt it. Thank you."

Spike frowned, "What do you mean you felt it?"

Xander considered this for a long moment, digging into a memory that he hadn't wanted to touch. Pretending that it was a word he'd unearthed in a Gilesean book, "Thrall?" he managed tightly, the shape of the thing pointed and stuck in the back of his throat. The words came carefully, like drawing out splinters of glass; it had been like glass in his mind, and now it was broken. Xander tried to tell him so, "He explained it to me once. He told me that he took me from myself. That he locked my will away in a box in his stomach. And he liked to watch me fight it; it made him feel alive."

Dark rage and a swell of green, "That…"

"Everything was so far away. I couldn't… think. I felt, and I… I knew, but I couldn't think. And the faces… and I don't like to sleep…. And he took me away from myself, Spike. He took me, and now I'm back."

Crying in earnest now, he couldn't stop, couldn't breathe, and now Spike touched him, cared. There was cool, and calm, and a peace he'd never known under Spike's hands, gentle as they were across his shoulders. It felt like a confession; it felt like the last confession, and Spike pulled him forward gently, pressed Xander's cheek against the new and pink flesh of his shoulder, and let him cry, whispering reassuring nothings against his hair. Things like "It's all right. Let it out. I've got you, it's okay."

"Thank you." Xander said at last, emotions fragile at best, but calmer now, and breathing into Spike's skin. It was beautiful, shifting in the candle light; everything he had ever been. "I don't need to… fight… I think. I don't have to fight to think, but it's all… wrong. So wrong, Spike. I can't…. Thank you for killing M-Dracula."

"You're welcome."

"Would you kill me next? You can. I know you can."

"What?" Spike surged away, stunned, then angry, then crushed. Despairing. Spike was one of his faces now. "Xander… The thrall's gone. You're never going back there, love; you don't… need to…"

"Prove to me that I can. Please?" His voice cracked. He never imagined that the vampire would refuse; assumed, perhaps that Spike would take his time over it, but never imagined that he would have the patience to keep Xander alive for long. "I spend a lot of time waking up, Spike. I don't want to wake up anymore."

"I thought you were in hell." Spike tried to fight back with cleverness. Xander thought he might love him for it, always clever, always fighting. "What good would killing you do?"

"I'm willing to risk it." A dark chuckle, heavy with tears and irony, "And if I'm right, if this is hell… maybe I'll go somewhere where… I won't mind when they have to start hurting me. But not you. Please not you. You've been so kind."

The vampire stared at him, aghast. Xander abruptly felt guilty for ruining his good night; he had been so happy, so young. "I told you," Spike said finally, voice thick and wary. Xander didn't want to watch anybody hurt anymore. "I told you, I won't hurt you."

"That's wrong."

"Yeah. Maybe…. Christ." Spike shot him a look so full of frustration and bafflement that Xander laughed. "S'not right, a vampire who doesn't want to kill, but I don't. This isn't hell, and I don't want to hurt you."

Things were beginning to fray. Spike wasn't supposed to cling, wasn't supposed to hold him here, and maybe there could be no escaping. Maybe Spike would if he could, maybe they were both trapped here, destined to play the thing out to its bitter end, when all Xander wanted was to walk out of the movie. He was mixing his metaphors, his whole brain had been molested and now he knew it and he just wanted out. That Spike had wants too, incompatible wants, was shattering. "What do you want?"

"I want to help you. Wish you'd tell me what was wrong so I could fix it, yeah?"

"What's wrong? It's all wrong. Everything is wrong, everything is broken, and it can't be put back together," Xander said at a fast and desperate rattle. He couldn't explain it, had to. There was only one way for Spike to fix this, and now Xander had to explain. "I see things that… can't possibly be real, Spike. But they are. So real, too real. I see people dying all the time. How, and when, and I feel what they'll feel when I touch them. Master… Dracula, the bastard, thought it was so clever… and over and over again. And always hurting, but I never get to be dead."

"That's…" Spike's face painted him pictures that his mouth would never describe. Angry even in neutral, but he looked stunned, and he looked scared. Xander didn't want him to be scared, but things were beginning to fray. It had to be now, it had to be soon, because Xander didn't know how long he could wait. Was desperate not to have himself anymore. "We can make it better. You can be better, I promise."

"I am insane!" He shouted, then was guilty about it, tried to make amends. Softly, "All I see… I am insane. There is no getting better."

"I'm prepared to deal with insane, Xander."

"I'm not." The tone was frank, "Spike, when I look at you… you're beautiful."

"That makes you insane, does it?"

Xander's grin burst forth on the breath of a guffaw, ironic and self-aware but meant, and he reached up and pressed the inside of his wrist against Spike's chest. He wanted the contact, wanted for all the world to press his hand there, wanted Spike to feel the truth and to feel the truth of him. "Did you know that vampires are green? Somewhere – wherever you're from, you're green. And I can see your ashes. And I can see the man you were, and he was luminous. And when I touch you…. You went so willingly. You gave yourself with love, and peace, and I can feel it. I to look at you, and I want to touch you because you're beautiful." Spike was utterly taken aback. The words were perfect, the words were unspeakably perfect, but Xander's face, that smile… was seconds from screaming, torn and so very wrong. And his voice, when it reemerged, was broken and soft, "When I look at anyone else… all I can see are expiration dates."

"Xander…"

"I'm dead, Spike. I'm dead. And it's… wrong that I should be not dead."

"Xander… can we think on it for a while? Can you give me… a few days to prove you're wrong? That you can be well again?"

"Please Spike?" The soft smile hadn't yet left Xander's face; he knew he had won, that he would be getting his way, the rest was just quibbling over details. "I could probably do it myself, but… I would prefer if you did."

"It's still suicide, even if I assist," Spike tried to snarl, but it emerged mulish and empty. "Or did you assume I would enjoy it?"

"I trust you." Xander said, and let his whole bodyweight sag against the vampire's, and Spike's arms came up automatically to encircle bony shoulders. "I trust you to get it right. Prove to me this isn't hell… Let me out."

It was all the argument he had needed. Spike's hands came up to cradle Xander's head, framing his ears, feeling the contours of his skull. "I'm gonna miss you," the vampire said, honest, and sad, and hoping – for once – that this was the right thing. "Don't know why I let myself get so bloody attached…"

Xander was beaming. Spike dropped a kiss on his forehead, soft and patient, willing himself to move. "Thank you."

Crack

And Xander's heart beat-beat-beat from momentum, then stopped.

It was a long time before Spike was willing to let him drop.

*checks for torches and pitchforks* Hi. Um. Before you assemble a mob, you should re-read the summary, such as it is. And um. Sorry.

Also, the Buddha says, "Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace." I personally think that's awesome.