Title: Survivor
Author: Shin Willow.
Spoilers: S4 The Yoko Factor, I guess.
Category: Drama
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel the Series in this story.
Summery: Xander likes his life. Spike wishes Xander was dead instead.
AN: This is a flip-side story to Aim Is True. Xander is perfectly capable of walking away. In this story he ran.
Xander loved his house.
Only thing he loved more was his wife and his kids—his family.
What Xander did on Saturdays when it was late and the sun was long set was sit out on the porch, on one of the padded folding chairs Mick used on her poker nights, and he watched the night blacken. The porch was one of those enclosed deals, practically a room unto itself. Twenty feet long and ten in width, perfectly sanded and lacquered floorboards, hooded with more wood and sheet metal. Glass and a wire screen door enclosed the whole thing, and a mansion of a birdhouse hung outside from the upper right part of the metal roof. Xander'd finished building it a year after he and Mickey moved in and she was pregnant with Nathan.
The neighborhood was always quiet, quiet like smallish town neighborhoods are supposed to be. Xander wasn't too sure if the monsters prowled this neck of the woods. Not that Chicago, well, a Chicago county lacked anything a progressive demon might desire, but he hadn't notice many in all the years he'd lived here. Then again, Xander guessed any place would seem barren of the super natural compared to Sunnydale.
So, Xander liked to sit on the porch, with a pitcher of Kool Aid or Lemonade and crystal clear glasses set up on the nice sturdy wrought iron and glass table (the extra glasses provided for any neighbor who decided to visit) beside his chair, and appreciated. Yeah, he treasured this time, this place—his life. He was happy and wanted to soak in it as regularly as possible. Xander knew better than anyone how seldom happiness came to anyone, especially to someone like him. Maybe a small part of him still expected Mick to open her eyes and see what a horrible mistake she made ten years ago, maybe pick up the whiskey bottle she made him put down and make home life explosively interesting for the kids.
A car drove by and Xander took a sip of his chosen beverage of the night, lemonade. The car was heading for the house down the street, where a polite little party was swinging. It was only nine p.m. and the party wouldn't stay polite for long.
Mick was gone for the night. She took the kids, five-year-old Owen and nine-month-old Nathan, to her parents in the city, they wouldn't return until late tomorrow. Mickey's folks are why they moved here, at least the deciding factor. Xander had gotten three pretty good job offers in LA, Wichita and Chicago. The one in LA paid more than either of the other two, but Xander really disliked the idea of being that close to the Hellmouth, among other things.
Xander seriously considered Kansas, seriously, but Mick teased him mercilessly about ruby slippers and wicked witches. She was a city gal through and through and a real snob about it, too. They split the difference and picked her hometown. It turned out to be one of the best choices they ever made. Even though Mickey never got on with her folks, Xander instantly fell in love with them. The Burkes were how Xander imagined his parents could have been if Jessica Woodall hadn't given up college and whatever her ensuing career to marry Anthony Harris. Without the guilt and the blame to spur on weekend long drinking binges. Instead, the Burkes were like your typical dysfunctional family: Mom worked too much and Dad was a little flaky—but he wrote some of the best damned detective novels Xander ever read—and the kids blamed both for how messed up they turned out to be.
Sure, they were screwed up, but Xander considered them prime "please adopt me" material. They loved him too, and the mutual love-fest bugged the hell out of Mick. They considered Xander the one force on Earth able to tame their wild-child youngest daughter. Providing them with their first grandchildren also ingratiated Tamara and Jason to Xander as well. Until Owen was born, they thought they'd die without ever having the chance to spoil somebody's kids.
The ritual is what kept Xander home that weekend. Mickey didn't even bother asking him to join her and the kids. She knew his habits, if not all the reasons behind them. Xander'd miss them, but he was superstitious about skipping traditions, another Sunnydale lesson Xander never forgot. Love, Life, friends slipped away if you don't take the time to appreciate them on a regular basis.
The stars were out, a lot of them. So very un-California, where you can count the stars in the sky on both hands and have a couple fingers left over. The moon was full and Xander smiled to himself, imagining Oz out there somewhere running wild and free. He talked to Oz last week on the phone; the rocker/lycanthrop recently bought his own piece of land in Alaska. A place he went to when the Dingoes weren't touring. Acres and acres of enclosed woodland where he could let go of the wolf. Let the beast run free. Xander couldn't recall Oz talking so animatedly about anything before.
Xander saw him, a flicker of motion behind the Mann's high hedges next door. It was the hair. Spike was just too much a creature of habit. He didn't know how to move on. Xander took one more drink of his lemonade before he got up from the chair and strode down to the end of the porch. He passed the screen door and got a sense of the rapidly cooling weather beyond the shelter of his enclosure. Soon all the heat absorbed into the structure during the day would decay and disappear. Xander reached the end of the porch and unlatched the outward swinging window and opened it.
He couldn't see Spike skulking in the hedges and waited several minutes before he decided to call out to the hidden vampire.
"Spike, you might as well come out and get it over with."
A few moments pass before Spike emerged from the bushes; his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his black and beaten leather duster. His timeless face possessed a grim, hard set, silently expressing enough hatred to burn the house down around Xander. Xander stared back placidly, because he wasn't afraid of Spike and he had enough apathy for Spike left over from the bad old days to fill a decent sized swimming pool.
He hadn't seen Spike in years, and like with the others, Xander neglected to say his good-byes. It was ironic, Spike was the one who set it all off. Split them up, the scoobies, as deftly as a surgeon would a cancerous mass from healthy flesh. No, wait, cancerous may be a harsh way of putting things. Xander got over the badness, most of it anyway, a long time ago. But back then he couldn't get far enough away from Buffy and Willow. Where does the irony come in? Spike calls himself consumed by the fact Xander's still alive, consumed with the unfairness of it all.
"It should have been you," he says.
Xander doesn't know what to say to that. But he does know he's glad it wasn't him who died fighting beside people he no longer had any connection to. The good fight alone wouldn't have been enough to excuse him being there, neither was loyalty. Loyalty wasn't much to fall back on once you got used up and thrown away. And Xander figured out that's exactly how he'd end up, discarded, and he had Spike's little skull-fuck to thank for finally opening his eyes.
"A worthless coward like you sucking air, but they're gone… She's gone," Spike goes on to say, walking up to the window.
"You have yourself to thank," Xander replied. "Go on, Spike, pat yourself on the back for a job well done."
"Fuck you."
"Go back to LA. Go home, Spike, and leave me alone."
"I'll dance on your fucking grave."
"Hm. You probably will. Your kind has a way of surviving."
Xander words had the desired effect on the vampire. Spike growled and Xander saw the tension in Spike body as he fought the urge to rush the house. Xander wasn't worried for a couple of reasons. One, Spike never did get that chip out, and likely never will. Two, the porch was enclosed and solidly attached to the main structure, so the invitation rule still applied. And an invite was something Spike would never receive.
Spike took off snarling, disappearing into the night, and Xander turned away and went back to his chair. Xander couldn't help feeling the fear Spike inspired after one of his visits. Xander will never forget what Spike is, nor will he ever forget what all vampires are capable of. Spike might come back one night, chip-less and aching to take up his infamous career of murder and mayhem. Starting with Xander's family, or just Xander if he was very lucky.
Xander dreamed of dusting Spike. He could do it too. But… but he was afraid, deathly afraid of the taste. The taste of violence, the hot tang of danger, and he knew he'd want more when he was done with Spike. No more. He'd call Angel and tell him to keep a closer eye on his pet project. It was dangerous trusting any vampire, but he needed to believe Buffy in this one instance. Maybe Angel was a force for good and really did protect people from monsters like Spike—even him.
Xander hoped he would never have to pick up another stake or weapon to use against the monsters. Because just like he was a recovering alcoholic, he was a recovering Scooby just waiting to face an abyss that didn't just look through you, but gobbled you up like a ravenous beast constantly hungry for heroes. Worms will feed on him soon enough, but not before he watched his sons grow into men, men a hell of a lot better than the man he's turned out to be.