Title: Vanilla Suicide
Author: Juliet DeMarcus
Rating: R
Spoilers: Buffy up to and including "Entropy." Angel up to and including "Double or Nothing."
Summary: Will the events of "Entropy" lead to a tragedy of near-Shakespearean proportions?
Disclaimer: "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel" are not mine. (But I can dream, right?) I'm not making any money, so don't sue me.





Thursday night


Xander Harris was a little drunk... As a matter of fact, he was plastered. He had some vague recollection of having been drunk since he left Anya, Buffy and Spike in front of the Magic Box, the day before yesterday. All he'd known since that moment was one big dark cloud of alcohol-induced oblivion. It felt good. Or at least, as good as anything could feel after having seen the woman he loved having sex with the soul-less vampire he hated. Then finding out one of his best friends had *also* been having sex with the same soul-less vampire he hated! 'Who's next!? *Willow!?*'

Xander fumed now, walking through the cemetery. This wasn't Spike's cemetery but Xander knew that the chipped wonder did come here to patrol almost nightly.

He wasn't entirely sure of why he was here... If he would really be able to kill Spike if given a second chance. Would Spike fight back this time? He didn't even know if he had been conscious of coming here. However he did know that at least part of his semi-conscious reasoning had to do with the fact that he wanted to have another run in with a certain bleached blonde *without* Anya and Buffy around to interfere, and also without really appearing to have been seeking out his revenge. At the very least Xander wanted to make the damage Glory inflicted on Spike last year look like a scratch! And at the very best, he wanted to stake him.

Spike hadn't even fought back! That was the part (or one of the parts) that really got him, for some reason. Maybe because he knew that he could've actually killed him had he moved fast enough. Maybe because that meant the vampire didn't even think Anya was worth fighting over. Xander's brain was warped and twisted now and he couldn't reason out anything other than... 'Spike slept with Anya. Spike slept with Buffy. Buffy and Anya saved Spike, a soul-less demon...saved him from me.'

The image of Anya on the Magic Box table with Spike was now burned into his brain, and it was consuming him from the inside out. 'Spike and Anya...' No matter how many times he repeated the thought, no matter how many times he replayed the moment he had first seen them on Willow's laptop monitor...it could never become any less painful, any less shocking, any less *wrong*! And each time it played out in his mind, he became increasingly certain that he needed a more permanent solution to Spike than beating him within an inch of his unlife. He wanted him *gone,* for good.

God, he wished he had killed him! He wished he had moved just a little faster for the kill instead of the hurt. Wished he had just gotten it over with before Buffy had come and pulled him away.

If that...Halfrek, demon friend of Anya's ever showed her face again, *that's* what he'd wish for.

They would've gotten over it. Anya had said herself that 'he was just there.' It's not like she really cared about the guy. Not like she needed to care about a guy before she banged him... And Buffy...with Buffy it had to just be a one time...mistake. Because she came back from heaven and was confused and there was no one else... Buffy always had a thing for vampires after all. But it wasn't like she...loved him or anything.

He hoped that if he didn't happen upon Spike he would find another vamp to dust soon. He had too much built up energy, rage... He wanted to kill something. 'Something' in particular. But at this point he was desperate enough that any undead creature of the night would do until the time of the main event.


Xander found himself nearing a familiar area of the cemetery now. He hadn't even realized he was headed toward it. Yet, this didn't really surprise him.

It was a place that many of them went when they were feeling confused or hurt. It was like a natural instinct, something each of them did without thinking. Joyce had, after all, been a mothering figure to each of them. A counselor and the only parent out of the entire scooby clan that knew the nightly supernatural dangers they all faced.

When things were bad, sometimes, he would go there. When he didn't feel like talking to anyone else. He could vent to her, she had always been easy to vent to. He hadn't been the only one to visit Joyce's resting place for some quiet time and talk. He knew Willow had too...and of course, Dawn had, after Buffy was... For her, for all of them during that time...it had been something to help keep them sane.

But now as he neared, finally seeing her grave appearing out of the shadow of the trees, it appeared that someone else had already arrived to talk to Joyce.

He couldn't really tell who it was in the darkness. As he crept closer the outline became clearer in the distance. And it wasn't Willow...it wasn't Dawn either.

Dressed entirely in black, he would've almost blended into the darkness of the cemetery had it not been for that blindingly bleached hair...

*Spike!* A searing hot wave ran through his body. He stopped, shock and fury overtaking him along with an agonizing twisting in his gut.

Xander's entire form became tense, hand immediately going to the stake in his jacket pocket and clutching it with a painfully tight grip. He felt the energy burning in his legs, waiting to be released. He could feel himself about to surge forward, about to attack...like he'd done outside the Magic Box, only *this time* he wouldn't drop the stake and there'd be no Buffy, no Anya, to save Spike from what he deserved.

Yet, for some reason...he couldn't move. Couldn't go forward. At first he thought the blinding rage had paralyzed him somehow. That the sensation had been too much and his body had simply shut down. But then he gave some thought to where he was standing... It didn't seem right for such a violent act to take place over Mrs. Summers' resting place. Joyce had known too much violence in her lifetime...having a slayer and a key as her daughters. It just wouldn't be right for the violence to follow her, even here...

Not to mention the fact, that for some unimaginable reason, Joyce had actually tolerated Spike. Even invited him into her home to have some cocoa or something with her, and talk, on multiple occasions! It was her one flaw that Xander was aware of -- her blindness when it came to him. Her inexplicable acceptance of him, a soul-less vampire.

*But* that didn't mean he couldn't track him. Once he got away from the grave site... *Then* it would be all over. Evil dead would finally get what was coming to him. And it was about time too! It blew Xander's mind to think that they'd let something like Spike live among them as long as they had. But he'd crossed the last line, this time...and no one, not even if Buffy was there with her superhuman strength, could stop him from killing *this* vampire.


Xander gained some ground on the unknowing figure. Not wanting to be too far from him, understanding from experience that once he showed himself Spike could quickly evade him, if he so wished. And it seemed apparent from their earlier encounter Spike would run, rather than face him. 'Coward...' Xander's mind was full of the hateful assault of words he wanted to wage against Spike before he dusted him once and for all. But he kept quiet for the moment, very quiet... He heard a noise...a voice, too low for him to make out the words... Spike -- he was talking to Joyce!

'He actually has the nerve to come here and talk to Joyce!'

Xander crept closer. Wanting to be privy to what would soon become the vampire's last words. His eyes narrowed, anger increased by yet another trespass into a place Spike should have never thought to tread -- he didn't belong here. He belonged in the ground,...or on it, as a pile of dust scattering in the wind.


Spike was knelt over the grave now. He was reaching out tenderly, running his fingers over her name. Speaking in a soft, low tone that was making Xander grow more dangerously close minute by minute. Finally, Xander halted, holding agonizingly still as he listened.

"...but love, why couldn't you have just stayed around a while longer? You... You have no idea how much everybody needs you. How much I need you. You're the only one of the lot of them who ever...," Xander listened intently to Spike's words, taking in how slurred his voice sounded, how desperate. How...something else... Something Xander pushed away and did not allow himself to acknowledge. "You're the only one I can ever really wonder about...well, you and the bit. It was always like, you looked not at what I was...but who I was. Even after everything I'd done," Spike reflected and shook his head in wonder. "I actually think sometimes,...that you might have loved me. Did you?," the question was not loud, but it was desperate. It was a question that would not have an answer however. "It felt like you did, Joyce...," his voice was wavering, moving from low tones to soft whispers. "But how could you love something like me. Lower yourself to love something like...this? But I wanted to let you know,... I had to let you know I appreciated it, honest to God, it was the most...bloody lovely gesture. You and that hot chocolate...way you put in the little marshmallows for me and everything. And, you listened to me, treated me like... You never seemed to care what I was."

Xander now heard another sound...he blinked a few times, as if he thought he were hallucinating and needed to come out of it. Spike was beginning to sniffle, beginning to cry.

"Why?," he asked, voice raw, a sob escaping with the word. A word that was so filled with agony that Xander caught his breath in spite of himself. Almost as a mechanism of self-defense he gripped the stake a little tighter.

One word that expressed so many questions.
'Why had Joyce trusted him? Why did he have to get that chip? Why did Joyce have to die? Why did he have to feel like this?'

The one word had also launched a battle in Xander's mind, and the death-grip he now had on the stake was not enough to stop it. It was a war between the rage, the overwhelming need for revenge...and...something that was harder to identify, a complex web of emotions. Confusion, regret...ultimately sadness, and the overwhelming need to understand...

Then came the sound that froze Xander's blood in his veins, taking him back to that moment, when Buffy had died. When they first saw her broken body lying there so still. Almost a year had passed, Buffy was even back now, and still the memory held that unbelievable pain, that shock, that chill. It was the same sound he had heard then, a sound he never thought he'd hear once, let alone twice, from the vampire once known as "William the Bloody." Harsh, broken sobs, that filled the air.

"I said it was the boy but it wasn't!," Spike cried, his tear-filled voice a mixture between rueful and enraged. "Joyce...I buggered it all up! You could never understand how much I've buggered it up! I hurt Buffy! I crossed the line, that even I wouldn't cross. And you may be the only one that knows what I mean by that...but you remember the way I was with Dru...I would never... Never! It's the one thing I have respect for! I went too far, Joyce. God, I went to far! ... I think I'm losing my mind..." He covered his face with his hands, sobbing into them, trying to hide his face from the night. The sight was shocking, even the second time around.

"I've hurt them all. And I'm sorry! Why am I sorry?," he sounded like a heartbroken child asking his mother why people had to die. "I'm a vampire! I'm not supposed to be sorry! I'm not supposed to feel like this! But...I *didn't* want to hurt them. I just wanted to make it stop hurting for *me.* *I just wanted it to stop!* Now I've lost them all for good. I've lost Buffy... I've lost Dawn... And the rest of them...*and I don't even know why I care!* I crossed my own bloody line and I'm going to pay. I - I didn't mean to... I mean, it's not what I sought out... I hate the whelp, but I wouldn't do *that* to him. To Anya... I wanted to help her. I wanted to stop how she felt, cause I... I understood it. And I only made it worse. I've ruined them, Joyce. ... Buffy, Anya -- They should've let the whelp kill me..." the last sentence was quieter. Spike had his arms wrapped around himself, as if he were cold. His eyes were glazed and his face wet from crying and he was still staring at Joyce's headstone but not really focused there. Like he was looking past the engraved name to the lost woman's face. "I wish she had let him kill me. He deserved to have it out with me, I would've."

Xander's grip on the stake loosened.

Spike was quiet a while. Wiping the tears roughly from his face with disgust. His voice was wavering but more stable when he spoke again.

"I'm just a bloody pathetic bastard," he shook his head slightly. "That's what I am, always have been. At least before I had 'the big bad,' now... I'll never know why you showed your kindness to me, love, but... I couldn't leave without saying a proper thank you and apologize...for hurting them. And to say good-bye. You're a class act, Joyce. And I know, that from your perch up there you probably hate me too...but, if anybody could forgive me it's you. So, I had to try... Any case, hate me or not... I... I love you." His voice nearly broke again on the last three words. "You'll never know how much the time we spent together meant to me... It was something...I haven't known in so long... It was everything." He stood up slowly, still staring at the stone before him, not able to take his eyes away from her name.

He reached out again, resting his hand on the top of the stone, stroking the granite surface gently with his thumb. "Good-bye, love."


He was moving! Walking slowly away from Joyce's grave. And he said he was leaving!? Isn't that what he said? Goodbye?

Xander's muscles tensed again. But, it wasn't the same. He felt oddly deflated. He knew what he wanted to do, or at least he knew what he had come there to do. But now, it all seemed...empty. It was like feeling Joyce's loss all over again. The blinding hatred was overwhelmed by a sadness. A sadness that seemed to now permeate the very air he breathed. He swallowed hard. Still unable to digest and accept the scene that had played out before him. Not wanting to accept. Not wanting to have witnessed what he had just witnessed. It only made things more ambiguous. He saw things in black and white, clear, easy to call...ambiguousness was not something Xander Harris liked.

He was desperately trying to come to some decision inside his cluttered mind, when he felt the strong arms take hold of him from behind, violently forcing him off his feet and back against them. Two of them... maybe more. He heard their growls of hunger and pleasure. Fast. It had happened so fast. The stake fell from his hand and softly landed on the dewy grass.

He groaned, trying to fight as the cool hand pushed his head to the side effortlessly then savagely bit into the flesh of his neck.

The fangs hurt. He'd never had fangs in his neck before... Funny... He almost laughed at the thought. It was so ironic. All this time, fighting vampires... the Master, Darla, Angelus...*Dracula*! And not to forget, Drusilla and Spike! All that and he'd never even been bitten! And *now* he was going to be taken out by, what was likely to be, a few newly risen vamps while stalking Spike for revenge that he had ended up being too soft to take! God, his life was turning out pathetic! He'd survived so long, so much...even a hell-god last year. *And for what?* To lose his love? To feel the chasm between himself and his best friends grow deeper by the week? To die by the hands...or fangs of a couple of fledgling vamps!

He felt the rage he'd been fighting within himself on and off since he had first stumbled across Spike at Joyce's grave now rise to a fever pitch. He utilized the entire force of his fury to struggle against the cold, solid bodies of his attackers.

He fought hard, not out of a desire to live, but out of pure seething anger...at the injustice of the irony.

'*I can not die like this!*'

But his struggles, no matter how much power he seemed to have behind them, proved fruitless. He felt himself growing weaker, as another set of fangs penetrated the flesh of his wrist.




To Be Continued...


A/N: Sorry for the cliff-hanger. I hadn't planned it this way, it just seemed right. :) I should have a couple more chapters up very soon! You won't have to wait long, I promise. Thank you so much to everyone who has reviewed -- your encouragement means more than you know! With the words and enthusiasm of Dawn I say, "I love you guys!"