This is rated Tfor a reason. Violence, implied and attempted sexual assault, a favorite character turned into a vicious vampire, and language. If you can't handle those things, don't read any farther.
This is not like my usual happy fluff. You have been warned.
This story takes place during Season Four, around and during the following episodes: "The Harsh Light of Day," "Wild at Heart," "The Initiative," and "Hush." Assume the other episodes, minus Anya and Xander, take place as shown.
None of the characters belong to me, they all belong to Joss and ME. I'm just taking them out to play.
Homecoming
Chapter 3
Xander woke up in a place that was lit so brightly it made his head hurt. He tried to remember what had happened.
"Willow!" he screamed when he remembered the loss of his prize. He leapt to his feet and charged head first into a wall. He clutched his head and roared in anger, his face vamping out.
"Calm down, mate," said Spike's tired voice. Xander looked through a clear partition to see Spike sitting on the floor of the cell next to his, head resting on his knees.
"Spike, where are we? What's going on here?"
"Dunno, whelp," Spike said. "Been here a while. Keep sticking things in me, needles and such. Some places they don't belong, if you get my meaning."
Xander looked at the older vampire. He looked…beaten. Tired. What could do that to a vampire? Especially one as powerful as Spike?
Xander had no more time to ask. Two men appeared outside his cell. Suddenly, the room lit up with electricity and he collapsed to the floor with an anguished scream.
Spike watched as they dragged the younger man away, and sighed. Better Xander than him, he thought.
Oh, bugger, he added, when they came back to his cell and the light flashed again.
When Xander woke up, he felt strange. First of all, he felt cold. He hadn't felt cold in three years. And he was hungry. But not hungry for blood. Hungry for…a cheeseburger?
He raised his head, looking around him. He was strapped onto a gurney, yellow liquid dripping from an IV into his arm.
"What's going on?" he asked. His voice was weak.
An older woman in a lab coat came over and looked down at him.
"Ah, Hostile 22 is awake, I see," she said. She scribbled something down on a clipboard.
"My name is Xander Harris," he said.
"Now, tell me, did you use that name when you were a vampire?"
"Yeah, I…." Xander paused. He shook his head as if rattling his brain would help. "What do you mean, 'when you were a vampire'? I am a vampire."
She laughed.
"Not anymore," was all she said. She walked away, leaving Xander very confused behind her.
His brain tried to process what she was saying, then he passed out again.
The second time he woke, he was sitting in a chair, arms strapped down. Two people were arguing behind him.
"What do you mean he 'escaped'? Hostile vampires don't just 'escape'. And how could you lose one with that hair color, anyway? It's not like he could hide in the dark," demanded the woman's voice. Xander suppressed a chuckle, glad that Spike had gotten away. What he heard next took all the laughter out of him.
"The chip will prevent him from doing any harm to a human," said man's voice. "He can't hurt a human, can't feed. Perhaps he'll just starve and disappear."
"Could we be that lucky?" the woman asked. Sighing, she looked at Xander.
"So, Mr. Harris is awake again," she said, leaning down to look into his face. He prepared to lunge for her throat, then realized he didn't want to.
"What did you do to me?" he asked, horrified.
"We separated the demon from your body and replaced it with some lovely computer technology that, according to what we've found, should operate in place of what some people would call your 'soul,'" the woman said in a matter-of-fact tone. "You are, actually, a human being again. Beating heart and all"
Xander groaned. Closed his eyes. Remembered all the people he had killed. Girls, women, he had raped and fed upon.
And Willow. What he had done to Willow.
"Kill me," he hissed, eyes clenched shut.
"Not by any means, Mr. Harris," she exclaimed. "You're too valuable. You are the first vampire to survive this process. I had almost given up on it. We had moved on to other technology, as I'm sure Hostile 17 is discovering right now."
She turned back to the other person in the room. "Perhaps it is because he became a vampire so recently. All the others had been taken over by the demons many, many years ago. Although his demon melded well with Adam."
"You don't understand!" Xander shouted at her. "I remember it. I remember all of it. Everything I did. Everything I felt. The…good God….the pleasure of what I did. I can't live with what I did."
Bile rose into his throat. He tried to choke it down. Then he remembered Willow's pleas for release. And he vomited all over the floor and the doctor's shoes.
Dr. Maggie Walsh ignored his demands for death, and assigned a close watch on him to ensure that he didn't take matters into his own hands. Xander felt like two people: the Xander Harris he had been before he was turned, and the vampire he had become.
If he could have forgotten what he did, it might have been survivable. But he couldn't.
He finally understood why Angel was so damn broody all the time. He had a hundred years of evil memories to face. Xander only had three. But they had been a busy three years.
When he slept, he remembered the faces of his victims. The blood, the feel of forcing his way into their bodies. He woke screaming, covered with sweat, and, sometimes, with erections that shamed him to tears. The demon might be banished, but the feelings remained.
He had no idea how long he had been trapped in this place. Weeks, he thought. The lights never went out, the people never went away. He was stuck with needles and tested more times than he could count.
Walsh and the male doctor disappeared at some point. No one would tell him where they had gone. After they vanished, though, everyone was too busy to pay him much attention.
Xander couldn't decide what to do. Kill himself, try to escape, or just stay here being a test dummy for the rest of his natural life.
Finally, he decided to escape. If nothing else, he could apologize to his friends for what he had done to Willow.
