Fic: Souls, Slayers... and a Scythe???
Author: mkcrl120
Disclaimer: All the characters mentioned in this story belong to Joss Whedon or Mutant Enemy or some other people. I own nothing and wrote this just to get it out of my system.
Summary: Set two weeks after the events in Explaining Africa 3
Authors Notes: I have no clue about Africa. Which is probably always a good place to start writing a story. So if details I've used for place names, and tribal names and whatever are wrong then just (correctly) assume I have no idea what I'm doing.
Rating: 15 by English standards (mainly for language)
========================
Chapter 4c:
The next morning.
Xander awoke to the sound of his alarm. Turning his head so he could read the digital display, he noted it wasn't quite seven am yet. 'Too early,' he reasoned and hit the snooze button.
Approximately five minutes later, the alarm went off again.
This time Xander hit his alarm with more force, effectively silencing it for the time being.
Four and a half minutes after that, there was a knock on his door. "Go 'way." He shouted, the sound being muffled due to him being face down in a pillow.
He heard the sound of the door opening, lifting his head for the first time, he turned to face his visitor. "I said Go Away."
Amy's face beamed back at him, "I couldn't tell. It sounded like Ga yay. Which doesn't mean much, as far as I am aware."
"What do you want at this unearthly hour?"
"We all agreed that we were gonna catch the ten am flight."
"So?"
"Roger's been up for over an hour; he's made breakfast for everyone." Amy's comments were interrupted by the sound of Xander's alarm going off. "And see, your alarm's going now, so you would have been getting up anyway."
Xander moved to switch it off. 'You don't get up at the first alarm, you crazy woman. You have a set number of snoozes to half sleep through, before you actually need to leave the bed. The warm, lovely, snug, comfortable bed,' Xander thought, repositioning himself to get further comfort from his pillow.
Amy turned to leave the room, "Anyway, we don't think Faith has an alarm with her... so as her friend, we decided you get to be the one that checks she's up." she said cheerfully as she closed his bedroom door.
Now he was awake. 'Dammit... That breakfast had better be exceptional.' he thought as he tried to locate some clothing.
=====
Ten minutes later.
Roger waved at Xander as he finally left his bedroom. "Toast, egg, bacon and sausages." He called out, "A classic English fry up. Well... it should have tomatoes as well; but they didn't look that nice, so we..." He drifted off as he could see Xander heading for the box room.
'He's going to wake her up.' Roger could only stare as Xander approached the door.
"Faith. Food." Xander called, as he knocked one the door twice.
Roger watched as Xander started heading towards him, 'He didn't even confirm she's up.'
Xander walked right past, and onwards into the dining room. "Any of these two mine?", Roger heard him call from the other room.
"They're the same just pick one." He answered back.
Xander returned into the living room, just as Faith's door opened.
Roger turned around to see Faith walk out in a pair of knickers and a tee shirt. "Where?" was all she said.
"Kitchen table." was Xander's answer.
"Cheers." Roger watched as Faith walked into the opposite room. Suddenly, he felt something touch his face. Shocked he looked down to see Amy slowly closing his jaw with her hand.
"Don't gawp!" She told him.
Faith walked back in with a plate full of food and a fork. Digging in, she said, "Good food Xan."
"I didn't cook it, it was Rog."
She turned to face him, "Cheers." She managed to get out between mouthfuls.
"Thanks." He responded. Looking down at his own attire, he realised he was fully dressed. Quickly glancing at the others, he noticed Amy was also ready for the day; where as Xander was similarly dressed to Faith, just boxers and a t-shirt. 'Must be an American thing,' he reasoned.
Once everyone had finished their food, and two of the party had finished getting dressed they left the villa and headed towards the airport.
=====
During the flight.
Faith was seated next to Xander. Luckily the flight had been only half full, so when she'd ask Xander to talk to him privately they'd been able to move freely into a set of empty seats.
"So," Xander began. "What did you want to talk about?"
"The others." She whispered. "We discussed the Shanshu earlier."
"And?"
"Do they know about the soul mission that you're on?"
"Yeah..." she watched as confusion slipped across his face. "How do you know about it?"
"Giles told me." She said in more normal tones now.
"Giles told you about my search for Spike's wish demon?"
"Yeah."
"Well," he joked. "At least that lets me off the hook."
Now she was confused, "Huh?"
"That's the reason we're going to see this demon. We have information that leads us to believe this is a good suspect."
"Right."
"But why did Giles tell you?"
"Okay," she began, 'Need to work out how to tell him this.' "Remember how when you started this case, you were discussing with Giles how much leeway to give Spike?"
"Ermmm.... no."
"Giles told me, that you both wanted to know about Angel's earliest history."
"We know about Angel's earliest history; ran with Darla, parted from the Master, part of the Scourge of Europe... you're talking about when he first had a soul aren't you? He told you about those times?"
"Not exactly."
"So... who told you? And how accurate do you think they were?"
"Oh... very accurate. It was Angelus that took me on the tour."
"What??"
"You heard I had to bust out of jail to take Angelus down?"
"Yeah."
"Well, it ended up with me taking a very freaky trip into Angel's mind. I saw lots of events from his life, and had Angelus along to give me the running commentary."
=====
Half an hour later.
Xander was resisting the urge to pace up and down the plane. He turned to face Faith again.
"So basically what you've said is that Angel... Angel, had his good days and his bad, like anyone?"
"Yeah."
"Apart from the brooding and moping, which he really took to a new level, he basically just existed from one day to the next until Whistler gave him a mission?"
"Xan, he wasn't a vampire... and he wasn't human... think about it. Even if you take away all the guilt of what his demon had done with his body; then you're still left with something that doesn't fit into either world."
"He was something new, I get that okay..." He was refusing to lose his temper. "I got that way back when Buffy explained about him having a soul... I get that... I do..."
"So what's the problem?"
"What I don't get is why people keep giving them second chances... I mean, most vampires we see, we just stake... we don't debate over whether they would be useful if we gave them a soul."
"Not that many of our friends have become vampires, Xan."
"Harmony did!"
"You didn't even like her. I didn't even go to your school, and I could tell the attitude she always gave you, when you saw each other at the bronze."
"That was something different. She blamed me for Cordy."
"Cordy..? Cordy was doing fine until that coma thing. She seemed the same when I saw her."
"But I cost Cordy her popularity. And although she accepted it, least until we broke up anyway, the others didn't."
"So this is about Harmony? I seriously doubt it Xan."
He thought back to his friend Jesse, 'He'd have loved to hear tales of how I lost it to Faith.' He mused, 'Though Jesse didn't ever get to find out what a Slayer was, never mind meet Faith.' "What I want to know is why everyone is so willing to give them a second chance. When they lose their souls, or their chips or whatever, why do we go out of our way to give them yet another chance?"
"I don't know about B... well, okay I kinda get that she's been involved with both of them, and that's a major part of her deal but... well I owe Angel big time. That's why he gets the special treatment from me. He was the only one who came to visit me in jail. He was the only one who believ..."
"Faith. We should have... I should have..."
"Xan, no sweat, seriously. Me and you had major issues between us. I don't know if I would have even agreed to see you if you'd turned up."
"Faith..."
"Xan... although I'm still not big on the talking about it... prison did teach me how to deal with a lot of the shit I went through."
"Fai..."
"I used to play the 'what-if' game you know? What if I'd done some things differently. What if I'd never been jealous of B, of course you dropping that 'she should have been jealous of me, as I was the real-deal' bombshell on me sent that 'what-if' up the spout."
Xander sat in silence as Faith appeared to be opening up to him.
"Others weren't so good... what-if I'd simply ran when I came out of the coma, instead of staying to get payback on B? Would I still be fucking up other peoples lives even now?"
"What-if I'd done my job at the very beginning? You remember? When you told me Angel was back? What if I'd staked him like I was trained to, fuck, like I was designed to? Would anyone have helped me? Or would I have succeeded in killing one of you, so that B would have had no response but to take me down."
Xander felt himself gulp when she referred to killing one of them, a trace of a memory of powerful hands gripping his throat jumped unwelcome into his brain. 'Even now, it's one of my scariest memories.' He tried his very best to not let any of it show.
He was taken out of his thoughts by Faith giving a small chuckle. "Hell. If I'd killed Angel back then, she'd have probably killed me anyway... before I had a chance to stray from the path, ya know... then it'd probably have been B rotting in jail."
Sighing Faith continued. "There were a hell of a lot of what-if's Xander. What I realised is that as many of them were my fault as there were not."
"What I'm trying to say.. is that prison... scary though this thought may be... I needed prison. Prison made me face up to what I'd done... what I was on the way to becoming. And a Slayer with that mindset... not a good combination... well, not back then anyway. I reckon today we might be able to handle it."
"Ya think?" He joked.
She smiled, the first genuine smile she had since she got there. "I think prison made me face reality. Especially when Angel came and told me B had died. There I was, the only chosen one in the world, and who exactly was I helping? Luckily it turned out that I was helping someone, myself. You see prison, especially maximum security ones, they exist to show the people in them that they are not immortal, they don't have the right to decide whether people live or die, that the guards have all the power and you're just a little individual."
"Sounds scary... I've never thought I could handle prison." He confessed. "Being locked away, all your freedom removed... surrounded by really dangerous men..."
"Exactly. It didn't work that way for me. Wouldn't work that way for any Slayer. You see an armed guard standing ten feet away from you and you know they couldn't miss... I saw people coming close enough, that I could disarm them and have their weapon pointed at another guard, before they could blink. You see a cell that's there to stop your freedom; I saw a door that would make some noise if I had to rip it off it's hinges. You see a ten foot wall with barbed wire; I saw something that would require a running jump. You see the worst gang in the yard, I saw some bitches who'd be wise to keep out of my face."
Xander just looked confused... it must have shown in his face because she suddenly revealed.
"Prison wasn't designed for people like me. I realised that unless they're gonna keep me drugged up on that slayer serum thing that they gave Buffy on her eighteenth... which they wouldn't do as they didn't know about it, didn't know about me. In fact unless someone from the council had been assigned to the prison and managed to drug my food, then prison just didn't apply to me. That scared me Xan, prison didn't apply to me. The thing that was the major worry when I was a kid... If prison didn't apply, that people couldn't keep me in control, well to me that meant there were two options; either I had to accept the control and the responsibility, or sooner or later I'd have to be killed. Not much of a choice eh?"
Xander watched as she smiled at him. "Enough depressing talk for now; I'm gonna see what Amy knows about this demon, see what I'll need if we have to kick its ass." With that she got up and started to walk towards the others.
Knowing her Slayer hearing would pick it up, he remained seated and said. "Faith... I think you were right about needing to take responsibility for your life. But... I think you were wrong..." He watched as she paused in her step just a few rows away from the others. "You've definitely learning to do the talking about it thing. Regardless of what you might think."
She turned and smiled before entering into a conversation with the others. Xander got up and joined them.
=====
End chapter 4c:
========================
Author: mkcrl120
Disclaimer: All the characters mentioned in this story belong to Joss Whedon or Mutant Enemy or some other people. I own nothing and wrote this just to get it out of my system.
Summary: Set two weeks after the events in Explaining Africa 3
Authors Notes: I have no clue about Africa. Which is probably always a good place to start writing a story. So if details I've used for place names, and tribal names and whatever are wrong then just (correctly) assume I have no idea what I'm doing.
Rating: 15 by English standards (mainly for language)
========================
Chapter 4c:
The next morning.
Xander awoke to the sound of his alarm. Turning his head so he could read the digital display, he noted it wasn't quite seven am yet. 'Too early,' he reasoned and hit the snooze button.
Approximately five minutes later, the alarm went off again.
This time Xander hit his alarm with more force, effectively silencing it for the time being.
Four and a half minutes after that, there was a knock on his door. "Go 'way." He shouted, the sound being muffled due to him being face down in a pillow.
He heard the sound of the door opening, lifting his head for the first time, he turned to face his visitor. "I said Go Away."
Amy's face beamed back at him, "I couldn't tell. It sounded like Ga yay. Which doesn't mean much, as far as I am aware."
"What do you want at this unearthly hour?"
"We all agreed that we were gonna catch the ten am flight."
"So?"
"Roger's been up for over an hour; he's made breakfast for everyone." Amy's comments were interrupted by the sound of Xander's alarm going off. "And see, your alarm's going now, so you would have been getting up anyway."
Xander moved to switch it off. 'You don't get up at the first alarm, you crazy woman. You have a set number of snoozes to half sleep through, before you actually need to leave the bed. The warm, lovely, snug, comfortable bed,' Xander thought, repositioning himself to get further comfort from his pillow.
Amy turned to leave the room, "Anyway, we don't think Faith has an alarm with her... so as her friend, we decided you get to be the one that checks she's up." she said cheerfully as she closed his bedroom door.
Now he was awake. 'Dammit... That breakfast had better be exceptional.' he thought as he tried to locate some clothing.
=====
Ten minutes later.
Roger waved at Xander as he finally left his bedroom. "Toast, egg, bacon and sausages." He called out, "A classic English fry up. Well... it should have tomatoes as well; but they didn't look that nice, so we..." He drifted off as he could see Xander heading for the box room.
'He's going to wake her up.' Roger could only stare as Xander approached the door.
"Faith. Food." Xander called, as he knocked one the door twice.
Roger watched as Xander started heading towards him, 'He didn't even confirm she's up.'
Xander walked right past, and onwards into the dining room. "Any of these two mine?", Roger heard him call from the other room.
"They're the same just pick one." He answered back.
Xander returned into the living room, just as Faith's door opened.
Roger turned around to see Faith walk out in a pair of knickers and a tee shirt. "Where?" was all she said.
"Kitchen table." was Xander's answer.
"Cheers." Roger watched as Faith walked into the opposite room. Suddenly, he felt something touch his face. Shocked he looked down to see Amy slowly closing his jaw with her hand.
"Don't gawp!" She told him.
Faith walked back in with a plate full of food and a fork. Digging in, she said, "Good food Xan."
"I didn't cook it, it was Rog."
She turned to face him, "Cheers." She managed to get out between mouthfuls.
"Thanks." He responded. Looking down at his own attire, he realised he was fully dressed. Quickly glancing at the others, he noticed Amy was also ready for the day; where as Xander was similarly dressed to Faith, just boxers and a t-shirt. 'Must be an American thing,' he reasoned.
Once everyone had finished their food, and two of the party had finished getting dressed they left the villa and headed towards the airport.
=====
During the flight.
Faith was seated next to Xander. Luckily the flight had been only half full, so when she'd ask Xander to talk to him privately they'd been able to move freely into a set of empty seats.
"So," Xander began. "What did you want to talk about?"
"The others." She whispered. "We discussed the Shanshu earlier."
"And?"
"Do they know about the soul mission that you're on?"
"Yeah..." she watched as confusion slipped across his face. "How do you know about it?"
"Giles told me." She said in more normal tones now.
"Giles told you about my search for Spike's wish demon?"
"Yeah."
"Well," he joked. "At least that lets me off the hook."
Now she was confused, "Huh?"
"That's the reason we're going to see this demon. We have information that leads us to believe this is a good suspect."
"Right."
"But why did Giles tell you?"
"Okay," she began, 'Need to work out how to tell him this.' "Remember how when you started this case, you were discussing with Giles how much leeway to give Spike?"
"Ermmm.... no."
"Giles told me, that you both wanted to know about Angel's earliest history."
"We know about Angel's earliest history; ran with Darla, parted from the Master, part of the Scourge of Europe... you're talking about when he first had a soul aren't you? He told you about those times?"
"Not exactly."
"So... who told you? And how accurate do you think they were?"
"Oh... very accurate. It was Angelus that took me on the tour."
"What??"
"You heard I had to bust out of jail to take Angelus down?"
"Yeah."
"Well, it ended up with me taking a very freaky trip into Angel's mind. I saw lots of events from his life, and had Angelus along to give me the running commentary."
=====
Half an hour later.
Xander was resisting the urge to pace up and down the plane. He turned to face Faith again.
"So basically what you've said is that Angel... Angel, had his good days and his bad, like anyone?"
"Yeah."
"Apart from the brooding and moping, which he really took to a new level, he basically just existed from one day to the next until Whistler gave him a mission?"
"Xan, he wasn't a vampire... and he wasn't human... think about it. Even if you take away all the guilt of what his demon had done with his body; then you're still left with something that doesn't fit into either world."
"He was something new, I get that okay..." He was refusing to lose his temper. "I got that way back when Buffy explained about him having a soul... I get that... I do..."
"So what's the problem?"
"What I don't get is why people keep giving them second chances... I mean, most vampires we see, we just stake... we don't debate over whether they would be useful if we gave them a soul."
"Not that many of our friends have become vampires, Xan."
"Harmony did!"
"You didn't even like her. I didn't even go to your school, and I could tell the attitude she always gave you, when you saw each other at the bronze."
"That was something different. She blamed me for Cordy."
"Cordy..? Cordy was doing fine until that coma thing. She seemed the same when I saw her."
"But I cost Cordy her popularity. And although she accepted it, least until we broke up anyway, the others didn't."
"So this is about Harmony? I seriously doubt it Xan."
He thought back to his friend Jesse, 'He'd have loved to hear tales of how I lost it to Faith.' He mused, 'Though Jesse didn't ever get to find out what a Slayer was, never mind meet Faith.' "What I want to know is why everyone is so willing to give them a second chance. When they lose their souls, or their chips or whatever, why do we go out of our way to give them yet another chance?"
"I don't know about B... well, okay I kinda get that she's been involved with both of them, and that's a major part of her deal but... well I owe Angel big time. That's why he gets the special treatment from me. He was the only one who came to visit me in jail. He was the only one who believ..."
"Faith. We should have... I should have..."
"Xan, no sweat, seriously. Me and you had major issues between us. I don't know if I would have even agreed to see you if you'd turned up."
"Faith..."
"Xan... although I'm still not big on the talking about it... prison did teach me how to deal with a lot of the shit I went through."
"Fai..."
"I used to play the 'what-if' game you know? What if I'd done some things differently. What if I'd never been jealous of B, of course you dropping that 'she should have been jealous of me, as I was the real-deal' bombshell on me sent that 'what-if' up the spout."
Xander sat in silence as Faith appeared to be opening up to him.
"Others weren't so good... what-if I'd simply ran when I came out of the coma, instead of staying to get payback on B? Would I still be fucking up other peoples lives even now?"
"What-if I'd done my job at the very beginning? You remember? When you told me Angel was back? What if I'd staked him like I was trained to, fuck, like I was designed to? Would anyone have helped me? Or would I have succeeded in killing one of you, so that B would have had no response but to take me down."
Xander felt himself gulp when she referred to killing one of them, a trace of a memory of powerful hands gripping his throat jumped unwelcome into his brain. 'Even now, it's one of my scariest memories.' He tried his very best to not let any of it show.
He was taken out of his thoughts by Faith giving a small chuckle. "Hell. If I'd killed Angel back then, she'd have probably killed me anyway... before I had a chance to stray from the path, ya know... then it'd probably have been B rotting in jail."
Sighing Faith continued. "There were a hell of a lot of what-if's Xander. What I realised is that as many of them were my fault as there were not."
"What I'm trying to say.. is that prison... scary though this thought may be... I needed prison. Prison made me face up to what I'd done... what I was on the way to becoming. And a Slayer with that mindset... not a good combination... well, not back then anyway. I reckon today we might be able to handle it."
"Ya think?" He joked.
She smiled, the first genuine smile she had since she got there. "I think prison made me face reality. Especially when Angel came and told me B had died. There I was, the only chosen one in the world, and who exactly was I helping? Luckily it turned out that I was helping someone, myself. You see prison, especially maximum security ones, they exist to show the people in them that they are not immortal, they don't have the right to decide whether people live or die, that the guards have all the power and you're just a little individual."
"Sounds scary... I've never thought I could handle prison." He confessed. "Being locked away, all your freedom removed... surrounded by really dangerous men..."
"Exactly. It didn't work that way for me. Wouldn't work that way for any Slayer. You see an armed guard standing ten feet away from you and you know they couldn't miss... I saw people coming close enough, that I could disarm them and have their weapon pointed at another guard, before they could blink. You see a cell that's there to stop your freedom; I saw a door that would make some noise if I had to rip it off it's hinges. You see a ten foot wall with barbed wire; I saw something that would require a running jump. You see the worst gang in the yard, I saw some bitches who'd be wise to keep out of my face."
Xander just looked confused... it must have shown in his face because she suddenly revealed.
"Prison wasn't designed for people like me. I realised that unless they're gonna keep me drugged up on that slayer serum thing that they gave Buffy on her eighteenth... which they wouldn't do as they didn't know about it, didn't know about me. In fact unless someone from the council had been assigned to the prison and managed to drug my food, then prison just didn't apply to me. That scared me Xan, prison didn't apply to me. The thing that was the major worry when I was a kid... If prison didn't apply, that people couldn't keep me in control, well to me that meant there were two options; either I had to accept the control and the responsibility, or sooner or later I'd have to be killed. Not much of a choice eh?"
Xander watched as she smiled at him. "Enough depressing talk for now; I'm gonna see what Amy knows about this demon, see what I'll need if we have to kick its ass." With that she got up and started to walk towards the others.
Knowing her Slayer hearing would pick it up, he remained seated and said. "Faith... I think you were right about needing to take responsibility for your life. But... I think you were wrong..." He watched as she paused in her step just a few rows away from the others. "You've definitely learning to do the talking about it thing. Regardless of what you might think."
She turned and smiled before entering into a conversation with the others. Xander got up and joined them.
=====
End chapter 4c:
========================