Chapter 13

Messages

I dump the grocery bag on the kitchenette bench and drag the chair over to the fridge so I can sit down as I bin all the science experiments inside.

The answer phone is blinking full, and I couldn't care less. I didn't call Giles or Buffy or Willow whilst I was in the hospital. I didn't call anyone. I just sat there in a haze of heavy painkillers and heavier emotions.

I couldn't help but think of Cordelia, hurt and heart broken as she sat in that hospital bed. She shut me out when I tried everything to reach her, to explain, to get her to forgive me. I left call after call on her answering machine. I pleaded, a begged, I played the lovable rogue, the jackass, the penitent man. I squirmed like a worm on a hook. But I didn't deserve a second chance. Because I had already spent it. I had a hundred chances to not cheat on her. I did. I kissed Willow. Me. It wasn't a fluke. It was a choice. A fork in the road.

Cordelia Chase was the hottest, most popular girl in the school. She could have had anyone, but she chose me. And as much as she pretended otherwise, I realise now she actually was in love with me. She fell down all those social rungs to be with me. She lost her friends to be with me. She acted tough, and bitchy and shallow, but under it all she was as vulnerable as me.

I may as well have driven that rebar through her myself.

And there I was, a year or so later, experiencing the same thing. Just a girl in a bed, humiliated and alone, with a broken heart and a broken body.

I deserved to suffer every single second of it.

So I did.

I shake myself back to the now, where I sit in my apartment staring at the blinking answering machine.

I unplug it and then shove it off the bench so hard it smashes against the wall.

I wince as I reach for the bag and slowly I begin restocking the fridge.


Garbage are playing at The Bronze tonight and it is packed. The one thing The Mayor did for this crazy town he created was pull enough strings to get record companies legally obligated to tour major acts here. It's bait, of course. The sacrificial lambs like their music.

I work my way around the outside of the crowd with the intention of reaching the office, but #1 Crush begins to play. I love that song. I stop to watch them cast a spell over the young crowd.

I was a simple 'yes' away from being one of the dark things that prays on them. Lurking at the back like this, looking to the herd for the vulnerable. And it was tempting.

As I watch the band on stage, I remember Jessie trying to sway me to their side. He was the first I staked. By accident, but the first nonetheless.

"Remember, Xander. If you see Jessie, you are not looking at your friend. You are looking at the demon that killed him."

Spike wanted me. Wanted to give me power. Immortality. To be at his side like Drusilla. And in that wanting, in his desire for me, I felt powerful. Maybe that was enough. But it wouldn't be me, would it? And I realised I hadn't stopped my road journey of discovery when I limped back to Sunnydale. I was on strange roads as we speak. Roads that twist and carry me into strange new places and new feelings. And at the end of that road I get the thing I set out for in the first place- I get to know who I really am.

And to give all that up so Drusilla 2.0 could take over the wheel? No. I refuse.

"Alex?" Maggie Mott gasps out as she passes me. "It is you… oh my dear girl."

And she hugs me. My boss actually hugs me. She looks me up and down.

"We all thought you were dead." She says.

"I was." I shrug. "For about five minutes. All the angelic voices said "Alex...go towards the light… and I was all like… shush bitches, I can't die now, Maggie will kill me if I do."

Maggie pulled me into another hug, this time to deliver a whisper into my ear.

"You are back, right? It's been chaos around here without you."

"Is this an "of course you can have your job back and we will promote you to assistant manager and up your rate so you can pay your hospital bills after your near death experience" kinda hug?"

"Wait, you mean you actually… hold on"

A few moments later she has dragged me into office. Door firmly closed behind her, she turns and tips her glasses. "What happened?"

I am tired of all the bullshit, so I just I show her the puncture scars on my neck. Maggie isn't stupid. I suspected she knows the score in Sunnydale, but it's hard to bring up the subject with your employer without coming off crazy.

She nods in understanding.

"Why didn't you call from the hospital?" She says softly. Why didn't I? Because I wanted to shut the whole world out and pretend it didn't exist. But I am an asshole, so I lie instead.

"I did. I left a message with Casey K. God… she is such a stoner, she forgot to tell you, didn't she?"

"Alex, Casey's dead." Maggie sighed. "Like I said. It's been chaos."

When I find my voice again, I whisper "How?"

"Officially? Wild dogs."

I nod. Enough said. I slip my hands into my bomber jacket pockets. Damn this town. I liked Casey K. That dumb, muppety, kind, weirdo... I feel cold tears slip across my hot cheeks.

"You okay?"

"Maggie, I need… I… would like to get back to work."

"You think your ready?"

"All I know is it has been one hard fricking month. I just need to focus on something that's of the else. I just want to get back to work."

"Well. Wipe your face and get your ridiculous bony little ass downstairs and get to it, Alex with an E."

"Thanks boss."