the Passion of Angels and Demons Chapter 26: XXIII: Swamp Ophelia, Broken Reflection, a buffy: the vampire slayer fanfic

A/N: Okay, so I know 5 in the morning on Monday doesn't quite count as end of the week, but still, here it is. I'm not entirely sure how happy I am with this chapter, but on the other hand, it gets done what it needs to get done. Be warned: plenty o'angst and darkness lie ahead, so I tried to throw in some light humor where I could.

The title to this chapter is inspired by the Indigo Girls' ballad "Touch Me Fall" off of their supremely excellent album Swamp Ophelia. The imagery was just too perfect for this chapter that I had to adapt it in there. The quote was also hugely appropos, so I borrowed it from the superb Buffy season 8 comics. If you're a Buffy fan, they're so worth it. I'm not so into getting each comic as it comes out, so I just wait till they come out as graphic novels, but yeah. Amazing!

What with all of that out of the way, read on for:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

the Passion of Angels and Demons

Chapter XXIII—

Swamp Ophelia (Broken Reflections)

"Bad day. Started off bad, stayed that way." – Buffy Summers (Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8, Vol. 4—Time of Your Life)

Cypress moon

I'm bald in June

Like the granite in a stream

Swamp Ophelia, I'm torn down

Let your waters let me drown

Touch me, I'm so beautiful....

Indigo Girls, "Touch Me Fall" (Swamp Ophelia)

Xander looked down dully at the broken mirror. His reflection stared back at him, shattered, fragmented, a reflection of his insides instead of his outside. Maybe, Xander reflected pensively, no matter how much glue you shove in the cracks, no matter how you try to fit the old pieces back together again, the mirror is always going to be broken, and you'll never be able to make the reflection look the way it used to look. Maybe the mirror stays shattered, and there's nothing you can do about it. He wrapped his arms around himself and leant up against the bathroom door, sinking slowly to the floor. Maybe his reflection would never be whole again.

More than anything, Xander wanted to turn the clock back. He wanted this to never have happened. Never, never, never…

Two Days Earlier

Xander woke up in a strange and way too plushy bed, and automatically he searched with both body and mind for Angelus next to him, but he found nothing. He was alone. Weird, he thought, since the sun was obviously up, and since when did Angelus invest in windows? Maybe the court had convened for some special vampire power meeting. Xander had a very odd thought of Angelus in a business suit, sucking down coffee as one of his underlings presented something on the projector.

He stretched cautiously and winced as his muscles started screaming volleys at him. Since when had he been fed through a meat grinder? Because that was what it felt like, and he was so not liking this. Normally when his muscles protested it was because they hadn't tried that position before and it was normally a good ache—Xander cut his thoughts off with a blush. He glanced around him. The room was strangely familiar, but it was nowhere in the factory that he'd seen. In fact, it looked like he was in an actual house. Wouldn't that be just like the vampire, to move them all and not even bother waking Xander up, just for the hell of it?

Just then, Xander spotted a book on the bedside table. It was enormous, and it was old, and it was meticulously well-kept with a special bookmark in it so as not to screw up the pages. It was a very Gilesy thing to do, and though he knew that Spike actually did enjoy reading (reading and torture, alternately) there was no way that the brash British vampire would be that anal retentive about the condition of his…tomes. Not that Spike had tomes. He thought. In fact, this mahogany theme was very restful and very English, and more and more Xander had the feeling that he knew exactly where he was, but for some reason his mind wouldn't tell him.

Well, the last thing he remembered was falling asleep exhausted after Angelus had started experimenting on him to see how far this Cruor Aduro mind-meld thingy went, and that had been fun for the first hour or so, before Xander had passed out from sheer pleasure—stop that now, he told his growing erection firmly. We're likely prisoners in a strange place, Xander Jr. This is no time to be a teenage boy! He swung his feet off the side of the bed and experimentally tried to stand. His muscles grudgingly accepted, though he nearly stumbled. Okay, vampire sex was interesting and marathon-like, but every part of his body felt like Xander had just tried to do the Tour de France sans bike.

Come to think of it, he was dressed in a severely shredded white t-shirt and equally trashed khakis. Okay, Angelus is good, but even he couldn't dress me without me waking up. And, also, Angelus was way gay about fashion when it came to dressing Xander to be seen by other vampires. As far as Angelus was concerned, the less clothing Xander wore in their bedroom, the better. So, these clothes? Definitely not something he'd have in their closet thingy that Angelus kept trying to call some fancy French word that Xander laughed at him for.

Something tickled at the back of his subconscious, but it was a very painful something, so Xander chose to ignore it. That jacket hanging over the back of the reading chair was looking quite tweedy, Xander noted soberly. The tickling was becoming something of an aching pressure, and the pain was really starting to grow quite fierce. That was bad. Xander instinctively reached for that place in his mind where he could feel Angelus, but there was only silence. That was really bad. Angelus only couldn't be felt when he was far away, like when he was hunting. And Angelus would never leave Xander unguarded if he was hunting. And Lucien was not outside his door, because he didn't have a door in this bedroom, just stairs. Familiar stairs. Painfully familiar stairs.

The pain was becoming a throb, but Xander desperately tried to fight it back. Slowly, his heart in his throat, he crept forward, step by painful step, toward the top of those stairs. Stairs, he thought, and there was a flash, like a movie memory, and Jesse was sneering at him, saying those awful awful words and then the pain as he was falling down those stairs and screaming Angelus' name in his mind but Angelus was gone and he wasn't going to help Xander out of this nightmare—

"No," Xander whispered as the pain metamorphosed into a knife that began to dig into his skin. Something sick, something oily and evil creeping crawling through his very veins and it's too much too much to fight and he's falling into darkness and pain and he knows that Angelus has abandoned him to this—

"No," Xander whimpered desperately as the knife was suddenly coated in acid and it was crawling through his veins. Memory cruelly slammed into his waking mind as the events of the last forty-eight hours that he'd so desperately repressed came rising to the forefront, demanding to be dealt with. There was a bathroom downstairs, Xander remembered, and he stumbled down the stairs, the gorge rising in his throat. Frozen in tableaux as he hit the last stair were every painful thought that he'd tried to not think about while he was with Angelus – Buffy, Willow, Cordelia, Oz, Giles, Jenny Calendar – all gathered in the destroyed living room like living emblems of the destruction of the best days of his pathetic life, and Xander sobbed aloud and then he was racing to the bathroom and crumpling to his knees as he vomited desperately into the toilet, again and again, sobbing, fighting to breathe.

Giles was suddenly there, mopping the sweat off of Xander's brow, rubbing his shoulders, murmuring comforting reassurances as Xander fought for air, and that was bad because Giles should be yelling at him and treating him like the dirt he was, and yet he found himself hating Giles and he hated himself for that because he couldn't hate Giles, and Xander just sobbed all the more because he had the sense that he'd lost something precious and he couldn't figure out what it was.

"Xander, it will be alright," Giles whispered, but it seemed important to tell him how not alright it was.

"I feel like every train in the station has a part of me that was good on it and they've all left and now I'm on the track all alone with everything bad and no one ever finds me," Xander sobbed desperately, and then he was throwing up again, and after a moment it all went black again, blissfully black.

***

"Oh, my lord, will he be alright?" Joyce Summers asked frantically as Giles emerged from the bathroom. Joyce had been waiting for Buffy when Giles had dropped her off. To Buffy's extremely pleasant surprise, after the expected rant about Buffy's "play at amateur detective, I mean, honestly, Buffy, you aren't living in a TV show!", Joyce had then frantically hugged her daughter and called the school to explain that Buffy would be absent the next day. After some much needed sleep on both their parts, Joyce had taken Buffy right back to Giles' to check on Xander. They'd found Willow already there. Oz had crashed on Giles' couch cushions the night before. Cordelia had arrived soon thereafter.

"I think so," Giles said hesitantly. "He's going through…quite a bit."

"And you never told me whether you found anything last night, Buffy," Joyce said worriedly. "I mean, God only knows what's happened to Xander all these months – could he have been raped?" She folded her arms. "Maybe his parents should have him see a therapist; it could take years to get over something like that. Speaking of which, where are his parents? Shouldn't they be here?"

"We tried to call them last night, but there wasn't an answer," Willow said uncomfortably.

"Hmm," Joyce said, pursing her lips. "Well, let's at least move him back up to a bed." She moved Giles out of the way and wetted a washcloth in the bathroom sink. She carefully mopped the sweat and vomit from Xander's face, then wrung the cloth out and put it in warm water. "You're lucky that storm didn't ruin your bathroom or your kitchen, Mr. Giles; they're the two most expensive rooms in the entire house to fix," she commented absently as she placed the warm cloth over Xander's eyes. Giles carried Xander up to the bedroom, and Joyce clucked worriedly about Xander's weight loss.

When they'd gone upstairs, Buffy sighed and buried her head in her hands. "He looks awful," she whispered.

"Well, of course, you would too if that had happened to you," Cordelia said.

"It's not like he was raped," Buffy muttered meanly, then instantly felt awful for even voicing the petty thought aloud.

"What?" Cordelia asked.

"Nothing," Buffy said quickly. Cordelia gave her a look, but Buffy avoided her eyes. She wasn't going to go into detail about what she'd seen in Xander's mind about his and Angelus' relationship, not to him or to anyone. In fact, it'd probably be more on the healthy side for her if she worked on completely forgetting it anyway. Willow frowned, likely because she had heard Buffy. She, Buffy and Giles had never mentioned to any of the others that Xander had gone with Angelus willingly. Oz and Cordelia didn't need the extra stress, anyway.

"What are we gonna do?" Cordelia asked after a moment. "I mean, really. It's not over, not all the way. God, if Angel was here—"

"Angelus," Buffy corrected her flatly. "There's a difference."

"No there isn't," Cordelia responded, her eyes narrowed. "And don't give me that look. Angelus is Angel, or whoever Angel was when he was human, just with demony badness. Angel is that demon with a soul and a conscience. So don't try and tell me that they aren't really the same person, because that's why none of us can kill him, because all we see is Angel and we don't want to see the demon that's bent on torturing all of us to death. He already almost did torture Xander to death."

Buffy couldn't think of anything to say to that, and a sort of funereal silence descended downstairs. Joyce and Giles slowly came down. "How is he?" Willow asked, breaking the stillness.

"He's pale and whimpering. I think that he's starting to deal with what happened to him, which is good," Giles said after a moment.

"Willow," Joyce began, then paused. "Look, back in LA I did some volunteer work at a battered women's shelter. And people who go through traumas like this…it's possible that he'll never quite be the Xander that you knew before. But what's important is that he has a support network of friends that aren't going to treat him any differently."

"I didn't know you volunteered there," Buffy said after a moment. She and her mother shared a smile, but Buffy's felt forced. Joyce put her arms around Buffy and pulled her into one of those very special mom hugs and Buffy felt like crying again. But then she didn't want to start crying again because if she did she wouldn't stop for a long time, and Xander needed her more than that right now.

"Alright," Joyce said after a moment. "I'm going to go in to the gallery, Buffy. I'm going to expect you to go right back to school tomorrow, so don't even try to stay up so late tonight." She fixed her daughter with a very stern look. Buffy smiled blithely, and Joyce somehow managed to look even sterner.

"Yes, ma'am," Buffy said meekly. Joyce nodded in satisfaction and kissed her daughter on her forehead.

"Mr. Giles, if you need another adult hand around here, you know you can call me. And someone really should get in touch with the Harrises," she said as she gathered up her purse.

"Thank you, Miss Summers," Giles said. "And we'll keep trying." She nodded and headed out the door, into the sunlight. Buffy smiled wistfully at the beautiful California day, the one that her mother and really all of her friends belonged in. And yet here they were in the wreck of an apartment, stuck in the gloom. What a depressing thought.

"Fine, Buffy, your mom gets mom of the year awards," Cordelia sighed, as if passing on a victory. Buffy blinked.

"Um, thanks?"

"Whatever," Cordelia said, automatically reaching a hand up to make sure that her hair was coiffed.

"I'm going to go sit with Xander, make sure that someone's with him when he wakes up," Buffy announced after a moment.

"Do you want any company?" Willow offered.

"Nah," Buffy said, shooting her a smile. "You stay here and help Giles out. And maybe see if you can find out what happened to Xander's parents – not that they really care, I'm sure, but still…"

"We'll try," Willow assured her. Buffy smiled gratefully and slowly climbed the stairs. In the loft, Xander lay on top of the covers, looking pale, the warm washcloth draped over his eyes. Buffy smiled tenderly and ran her hand through Xander's hair. He sighed in his sleep and muttered restlessly. She settled herself in the chaise lounge next to the bed and drew herself into a cross-legged position. Slayers, she'd learned, didn't require as much sleep as the next person. Instead, if she wanted, she could be way patient and just sit, sort of like a trance. She could snap out of it when Xander woke up.

Cordelia's words bounced around restlessly in Buffy's mind, refusing to go away when she tried to let them go. Was she right? Of course she is, Buffy thought. You knew from the night that you found out he was a vampire that Angel was, for all intents and purposes, a demon stuck in a dead body. But you wanted so much for him to be that mysterious lover that came and went with the night that was every girl's dream – Angel was the safe harbor after a night of fighting tooth and nail for life and sanity, and then in the biggest ironic twist ever their moment of true happiness led to her being face to face with what – not who – she'd allowed herself to love.

Buffy felt a tear slip down her cheek as if in mourning for all innocence lost in life as she stared at Xander's once-whole body.

***

"Do you think she'll be alright?" Willow asked Oz. They were standing out in Giles' courtyard. Willow was glad that it was springtime; Giles' landlady always filled the courtyard with beautifully scented red and yellow flowers in the flowerbeds. She soaked up the sunlight and felt the growth in the air. It was a fresher feeling than the apartment. She was planning on offering to do a cleansing and banishing ritual for Giles after it was rebuilt just to get the stale and negative energies out.

"I think that her mom was right," Oz said after a moment. "It's going to take a lot of time. There's a lot that went on that we just don't know about. Buffy and Xander are the ones that got hurt more than anyone in all of this."

"What do you mean?" Willow asked. He smiled gently.

"Willow, I'm a werewolf," Oz said calmly. "I can smell and sense things that other people can't; I don't have to be fully wolfed out. I know that Xander went with Angelus willingly because he's had a serious yen for Angel for months now."

"He has?" Willow gasped. "You mean, Xander's gay? And he didn't tell me? Does Buffy know? Did he tell you? Why wouldn't he say—but he's always gone after girls!"

"Not seriously," Oz corrected. "I mean, you don't pick and choose who you fall for. And he's never really gone for a girl, scentwise, if you know what I mean."

"Oh," Willow said, blushing furiously after a moment. "Okay, so…so Xander likes guys. Why wouldn't he tell me?" And Oz breathed a sigh of relief; this was what Willow was really upset about.

"Well, the gay thing, I mean, it's complicated, Wills," Oz said after a moment. He took her hand and led her over to the wrought-iron courtyard furniture. "It's not like religion or even skin color. People…react differently to this. He was probably scared, and confused, and most likely wishing that it wasn't true, which would be why he chased after Buffy so hard at first."

"Well, I know that," Willow said, waving her hand. "I mean, it's not like I care – my parents are psychologists, I know it's not a choice or a disorder or anything. But we've been bestest of best friends since we were tiny. I remember when he went away to Avalon – not that either of us knew that was where he was going at the time, but still, I remember him being gone and I remember him coming back. He stole my Barbie! Which, y'know, is suddenly seeming more significant than it did, at the time," she commented absently. "But still – why couldn't he have trusted me?"

"Because you're a scientist, Willow," Oz explained.

"What does that have to do with anything?" she asked, confused.

"You question things because you like to understand them. One of the first things you would have done is ask how he knew. Would you want to explain to him that you'd gotten lusty thoughts for Buffy's beau?"

"Oh! Um, no," Willow admitted. "I mean, that would be even more awkward than me suddenly getting lusty thoughts for Buffy."

"Yeah, actually," Oz acknowledged. They sat in thought for a moment, and then blushed simultaneously, and then blushed harder when they caught the other one blushing.

"Not that your conversations aren't adorable in their fits of geeker passion, but next time close the door behind you," Cordelia complained from the open doorway. "And, honestly, Willow, if you hadn't figured out that Xander's batting for the other team by now you're more hopelessly with the non-computerized crowds than I thought."

They all paused thoughtfully for a moment. "I wonder if Xander's the guy or the girl?" Willow asked hesitantly after a moment.

"Oh, please," said Cordelia dismissively. "Xander? Complete submissive type. I bet if he and Larry ever—"

"Shut the bloody door!" Giles yelled from the kitchen.

***

Spike was starting to get worried about Angelus. The master vampire had returned from hell knew where during the daytime, carrying a trash bag full of stuff, covered in blood, up through the sewer entrance near the mansion they'd moved into. The big demon had then retreated moodily up to his bedroom, and it was clear that he wasn't sleeping because Spike could hear him pacing and muttering furiously to himself through the stone walls.

Angelus and Drusilla had gotten home the previous morning, late, Angelus looking like he'd been dragged through hell and back and Drusilla silently staring after her sire. When Drusilla knew enough to not speak aloud to Angelus it was usually enough to send alarm bells rolling down Spike's back that Angelus was not to be fucked with that day. The fact that they'd returned home looking that beat up after that lovely little spike of dark power had rippled through Sunnydale's vast underworld without droopy boy was likely the source of Angelus' current tension.

Drusilla had gone straight to sleep, rising later to go hunting by herself that night. Spike wasn't too worried about her. Ever since they'd stolen Angel's blood to resuscitate her, Drusilla had become more and more self-sufficient, and the ties that Spike had thought would bind them for eternity as they had done for more than a century were loosening by the day. It was a two-way sort of thing, surprisingly enough. At one time Spike would have thought that nothing in the world would hurt more than his sire's rejection, especially after Angelus had left them all. Instead he felt…sort of free, oddly, like the weight of Drusilla's madness had been lifted from around his neck.

Spike was smart enough to know that he wasn't like most vampires, most likely thanks to Drusilla's being his sire and all. He'd retained much more of his humanity than others, although when it came right down to it so had Angelus, and that was probably why the old demon always went after what made him feel most human so viciously. And Spike was starting to like Sunnydale – this Slayer was more fun than any Slayer he'd faced before. She'd almost bested him in battle, too, before her own bloody mother had hit him over the head with an axe. Spike smirked at the memory.

Aside from the rather interesting thoughts of the Slayer, there was just the Hellmouth itself. The dark energy of the mystical hell-hole was enough to put some extra bounce in any demon's step, and the fact that by virtue of his bloodlines Spike had inherited a seat of power over most of the town's undead populace couldn't be seen as anything but a bonus. What Spike was really starting to get quite concerned about was that Angelus was likely going to bullocks it all up now that he'd lost Xander.

This whole crazy problem with Xander was…well, crazy, and Spike was just sick of it. So what if the boy was some sort of mystical whoosit, it didn't mean jack shite to Spike. The boy wasn't aware of his powers and he just yammered on and protected the Slayer – when he wasn't fucking her boyfriend, that is. Sure, Spike could appreciate the boy's puppy-dog eyes and golden skin…and alright, a smooth, round, juicy arse, to be sure – not that Spike was looking, because then Angelus would castrate him, publicly, and though Spike was sure that vampires could grow their balls back it wouldn't be fun.

But the real issue was that Xander had stirred something powerful in ol' Angelus, and that Claiming had been wonky from the start. Angelus had been completely whipped by the boy's every whim and the boy had been able to just go right inside the vampire's mind, which, by all rights, since the mystically dead didn't have the same brain patterns as other beings so usually mind readers couldn't get much on them. And then there was the whole matter of the boy being the reason the factory blew up. Now, Spike could admit to himself that he had more balls than brains, but usually that signaled a power not to be fucked or fucked with, and Angelus was doing both.

Spike heard Angelus' pacing falter, and he sighed. Something was going to come to a head in good ol' Sunnyhell soon enough, and when whatever happened happened, when the chips fell, it still remained to be seen whether or not Spike would side with Angelus. Maybe, he thought with a wicked smile, it'd be worth it to see whether or not Saint Buffy was a natural blonde. Now there was a problem worth pondering.

***

Buffy jerked out of her trance when Xander opened his eyes. He didn't look disoriented this time, instead he just blinked a few times. There was a darkness in his eyes that didn't used to be there, and Buffy sighed, letting out a breath that she hadn't been aware that she was holding. Reacting to the sound, Xander turned to see her sitting there. Guilt and shame flashed across his eyes, and Buffy tried to find the anger that she knew should have been there, but for the moment, there was nothing.

"I'm sorry, Buffy," Xander whispered. "I'm so sorry."

"Xander," Buffy said, shaking her head. Then she slowly crawled into bed next to him and pulled his head down onto her lap, stroking her fingers through his hair as the tears started falling on his cheeks. They stayed like that for a long time, taking comfort in each other's presence. Buffy felt a tear falling down her cheek, and she wondered if she was crying for Xander's pain or for her own. Maybe it doesn't matter, she thought. The sun slowly started to set behind the curtains of Giles' bedroom window.

***

"I'm starting to get really worried about Xander's parents," Willow said after a moment as she hung the phone up. "I mean, I know they drink a lot but Mrs. Harris never lets the phone go off more than three times before she answers it to scream at whoever it is to stop calling."

"I love how you know drunk peoples' phone habits, Willow," Cordelia said as she continued organizing Giles' possessions into keep and throw away piles. "This throw pillow is going in the garbage pile."

"I'm a rebel that way," Willow responded absently, staring at the phone.

"But that pillow isn't ruined, Cordelia," Giles said mildly from the kitchen.

"It's ugly as hell," Cordelia shrugged, placing it firmly in the trash pile.

"I like the pillow," Giles said firmly. "Whatever isn't ruined, we keep."

"Fine," Cordelia said with a frown. She picked up a ceremonial knife that had gotten knocked off the wall at some point and calmly shredded the ugly brown piece of offending furniture. "Now it's ruined and going in the trash pile." Giles stared at her in horror before stalking toward the kitchen to make himself some tea. Cordelia smirked victoriously and kept sorting.

"Willow, do you want to drive by and check on them?" Oz offered. "Before the sun sets. Their house is only about five minutes from here, right?"

"This is Sunnydale," Cordelia reminded them scathingly. "What isn't five minutes away by car?"

"Point," Willow conceded, before she stood up to follow her boyfriend out the front door.

"Be careful," Giles reminded them softly. They all looked up at the meaningful tone in his voice as he glanced up the stairs. "Let's all remember that Angelus will most assuredly not give Xander up that easily. And heaven knows what sort of grudges he is still holding against Buffy. The fact of the matter is that to a torturer like Angelus, any one of Xander or Buffy's friends is now a target to vent upon, or even to try to use as a bargaining chip against one of them. Always carry at least a cross and some holy water. You're no match for Angelus in a fight, Willow, no matter what spells you know."

"We'll be careful, Giles," she promised him. "We'll be in and out before the sun sets. Just to check and make sure that they're okay." She showed him the cheap cross necklace that she and Oz had gotten each other on their one week anniversary. "And Oz still has some slaying supplies in the back of his van, so we're set."

"Good," Giles nodded.

"Why am I always a target lately?" Cordelia demanded, aggrieved.

"Karma," Willow stage-whispered. "What?" she glanced around innocently. Cordelia shot them both death glares as she and Oz quickly headed out the front door.

***

The Harris house was surreal, Willow thought, almost haunted as the van slowly approached. Oz's proverbial hackles rose as he looked at the house. Willow's senses went on full alert. "The lights are on," she said weakly. It was weird, those lights being on, because it was still late afternoon and there was plenty of light. It was the weakest way she could voice the wrongness screaming at her, but it was what she said.

"Willow," Oz said warningly, but he subsided. Willow nodded tersely and moved the cross necklace out to full visibility, just in case. Then she whispered a quick protection spell. She didn't tell Oz what a drain it was; the magic that she'd used the other morning was still weakening her, but she couldn't allow herself to think of that. Besides, this was just a sort of early warning system – the spell would work enough to repel something long enough to let her and Oz get away.

Oz got out of the van first and opened the door for her. It was one of those nice automatic romantic things that he did that she treasured so much, and she clutched his hand tightly for support as they slowly walked toward the house. The whitewashed two-story was a fixer-upper. Years ago, when Tony Harris had still been making an attempt at getting out of the beer bottle, he'd kept the lawn in good condition, but that was a long time ago. Willow felt her stomach roll as she glanced at places where she and Xander and Jesse had played hide-and-seek so long ago.

There was a sickening familiarity to the wrongness that Willow saw before her, and she suddenly put her finger right on what it was. Last year, at the end of that eventful school year where she'd met Buffy Summers, Willow and Cordelia had walked into school one Saturday morning to find the boys that had stood them up to set up the sound equipment for the Spring Fling dance being held at the Bronze. In the A/V room, they'd found the boys watching cartoons, or that's what it had looked like. Even then, alarm bells had been rolling through Willow's system.

They'd walked in to see bloody handprints on the cartoons, the boy's spread in sickening poses in order to best portray the vampire bites and torture wounds all over their pale, disfigured corpses. That image had stayed with Willow and likely would for the rest of her life. Later, explaining it to Buffy, she remembered saying "It wasn't our world. They made it theirs, Buffy, and they had fun!"

Now, she could feel that same wrongness pervading the air, only now her senses were superior and heightened by witchcraft, and she could feel the haunted quality of the air like chalk in her veins. She squeezed Oz's hand tighter and slowly walked up the creaky staircase and pushed the unlocked door open. Willow took in the shattered, bloody living room, and what was left of Tony Harris' body without flinching, without vomiting.

Jessica Harris wandered through the living room, her eyes huge and glassy, her pupils dilated. She reminded Willow violently of Lady Macbeth, and she half expected to hear Jessica scream "Out, damned spot!" as she wrung her hands. There was nothing they could do for the woman. Instead, they climbed back in the van and went back to Giles'. They had to stop along the way so Willow could violently lose her lunch on the side of the road.

***

"How much do you remember?" Buffy asked after an eternity. Xander had cried himself out on her lap, and they'd sat in companionable silence for what felt like an hour.

"I remember everything," Xander said bluntly. "It was…I felt so helpless, like I was stuck in a prison full of pain, and I could feel me doing things, but I couldn't do a thing to stop them. He felt so…oily, so evil, I wanted to be sick but I couldn't even make myself puke."

"That's awful," Buffy whispered.

"No, the worst part was when I realized that my body was hurting my friends. I tried so hard to come back then, but every time I tried he'd just fight me back. I felt so damn helpless! And now I feel weird – like part of me is the same old Xander, but like I could just reach out to the moon and crush it…" Xander sat up to regard her seriously, an odd expression on the face that she was so used to seeing look like a puppy dog, so eager to please, so perpetually cheerful.

"Do you think you could?" she asked him, just as seriously.

"I really friggin' hope not," Xander said. "I have enough problems with math; the last thing I need is someone telling me that I could destroy planets with my hands."

"Technically, the moon isn't a planet," Buffy said lightly. Xander stared at her in disbelief before he chuckled. She smiled back hesitantly. Seeing the hesitation, Xander sighed.

"Buffy," he whispered, a world of desperation in his voice. Buffy could allow herself to be angry and vengeful at that moment, she felt, so she cut him off.

"Xander. I love you. You're like my brother, and I'm so happy to have you back and in one piece that I couldn't even put it into words." She touched his cheek lightly. "But on that front, you need to understand that things are not of the good between us. But that doesn't mean that we can't work through it. I just need you to let me be selfish and give me some time here."

"You're not selfish, I'm horrible, I feel—" Xander started, but she cut him off again.

"Xander, not now, okay?"

"Okay," he said after a moment. They looked away from each other. Buffy sighed. It felt selfish, to not confront this when clearly it was something huge that they both needed to work through in their relationship, but she couldn't handle it right at that moment, and every once in a while, if she wanted to stay sane, Buffy felt that she could take a moment and be a teenage girl. Finding out that the guy that you'd thought had a huge crush on you was actually lusting for your boyfriend, and then having said boyfriend go after the first guy, well, it was sort of awful-making, and Buffy was firmly not thinking of Xander and Angelus making whoopie. And who the hell thought of calling it that in the first place? she wondered.

"So, what all did I miss while I was out?" Xander asked finally, breaking the uncomfortable silence.

"Well, the Lady of the Lake said—"

"The Lady of the Lake is both real and here?" Xander asked incredulously.

"Oh, God, don't ask me to tell you that story," Buffy sighed. "It's way long and crazy-making, and I'm sure that Giles'll tell you the whole thing from memory anyway. Yeah, she was here. Actually you've met her before; she took you to some special school when you were really little."

"Marie-Claire?" Xander asked, his eyes huge. "She's a witch?" Then he frowned. "How come I don't remember this?"

"Because Avalon put the whammy on your memories when you were little," Buffy explained.

"I went to Avalon when I was a kid? And I don't even remember it? What a jip!" Xander exclaimed indignantly. Buffy smirked.

"Anyway, since your mojo's getting up and running now after…what happened, Avalon's going to send some teacher here so you can control it and not make the world go boom."

"Oh," Xander said intelligently.

"Um…we're trying to get in touch with your parents, but we've pretty much decided that you're gonna stay with Giles for a while. If that's okay with you," she said quickly. Xander nodded. "And my mom's gone into way momma bear mode when it comes to you, so expect her to be checking up on you constantly. She wants to get you into therapy to deal with your kidnapping 'issues,'" Buffy said exasperatedly, making quote signs in the air.

"Really?" Xander asked, and Buffy felt a pang and a real desire to pound Xander's parents into the dirt as she saw the pleasure her mother's concern caused Xander.

"Yeah – actually, come to think of it, we could tell her your teacher is your therapist and smooth that whole nightmare over before it starts," Buffy continued.

"Not a bad idea," Xander conceded. "Provided I like whoever it is."

"Well, as long as that's what's worrying you, I think we don't have to worry too much about your potential evilage," Buffy sighed as she stood up.

"Hey! I'll have you know I can be a scary evil," Xander protested, affronted.

"Whatever," Buffy tossed over her shoulder as she headed downstairs. Xander followed hotly on her heels, but he stopped short when he realized that Cordelia, Giles and Jenny were in the living room. Buffy kept going, leaving the choice up to him. Xander had a sense that if he chose to cowardly hide underneath the covers upstairs and pretend to still be asleep rather than face them, she wouldn't squeal. But it would be pretty wimpy to try to hide from them now, especially after the last two days.

"Hey, guys," Xander said softly as he took the last step down the stairs.

The silence was the kind that you usually only read about, where you can hear a pin drop, but at the same time Xander thought that it was likely the loudest silence he'd ever heard. Then Cordelia gave something of a gasping sob and she was hurtling across the room in a very un-Cordelia Chase way to grab him in a desperate hug and Giles was grinning in his gruffly affectionate way as he too grabbed Xander in what was likely the first hug the British man had ever given him. Xander wondered how he could feel so surrounded by love and so guilty and shamed at the same time. Even so, he sank into the comfort of a miniature Scooby cuddle puddle. This was good—this was home.

"I hope you're hungry," said Jenny from the kitchen as the embrace slowly split apart. "We've been making dinner." She gave Xander a hesitant smile that Xander didn't understand at all, but maybe she was still guilting over the whole Angel curse thing, so he just smiled at her. There was enough guilt in this living room with him in it, after all. He tried to remind himself that he should feel like big guilt-having guy, but somehow the way that even though the apartment still looked crappy, there was a place set on the counter for him, like somehow in Giles' ruined flat he'd found the home that he had never had with his parents.

"Yeah, actually, I'm pretty starved," Xander admitted. He was ravenous; he hadn't eaten that he could remember since the day...night before the ceremony on the beach—He shied away from the thought. Food—and, hey, water!—suddenly sounded like big priorities. "Thirsty, though."

"Of course," Giles declared, sounding like a host who'd forgotten that his guests were coming. Cordelia nudged him and rolled her eyes and Xander couldn't help chuckling, like it was a normal day with the Scoobies. He shouldn't feel like crying, really he shouldn't, he tried to tell himself. Buffy sighed in pleasure as she grabbed at the spaghetti that Jenny had thrown together out of what was left of Giles' larder. Xander laughed somewhat meanly at her, and she stuck her tongue out. The sheer amount of food Buffy could put away in one sitting was astounding, but then her Slayer metabolism kept her going without much body fat all the time. Cordelia tried to pretend she wasn't jealous as she declined all tomato sauce and went for the salad.

It was strangely like a big family get-together, discussing their day over dinner. They all skirted the topic of Xander's absence by mutual consent. Instead, Cordelia determined to catch Xander up on everything in Sunnydale that had happened in his absence.

"Well, for starters, the swim team actually started winning, which was lovely until they morphed into demonic fish things and ate people," she sighed dramatically as she speared a leaf of lettuce.

"Demonic fish things?" he asked in disbelief as he scarfed down his second plate of spaghetti.

"Total rejects from Creature from the Black Lagoon," said Buffy with a shudder. "You remember Gage, the cute one that everyone had a crush on? He went mucosy and popped right out of his human skin right in front of me. Of course he got away because I was so busy gagging, but it wasn't that much of a tragedy considering that once he started winning at sports he and the whole team turned into a bunch of jerks." She squared her shoulders self-righteously.

"Buffy got irritated and went a little overboard rejecting them," Cordelia explained. "And then of course Snyder tried to blame the entire thing on Buffy, again."

"I don't know why that useless little rat has it on for me so bad," Buffy sighed. "Even poor principle Flutie didn't watch me this closely."

"Which probably explained why the idiot locked himself in a room with a pack of kids who'd just eaten a raw pig," Cordelia observed cuttingly. "I mean, the man wasn't the brightest bulb in the box, but still, even he should've thought to maybe bring the security guard in?"

"Speaking of school," Xander said after another swallow. Funny how he wasn't full yet. "Where's Willow?"

Everyone at the table paused so delicately that Xander had a feeling that he would've missed the entire silent exchange if he hadn't been watching for it. Was Willow avoiding him? The thought sent a knife through his heart and punched a hole right through it. "Willow's running an errand that I sent her on," Giles said, breaking the silence too brightly. "We weren't sure when you were going to wake up. She wanted to be here when you woke."

Xander felt a huge swelling of relief, but a small stab of worry. "But she should've been back by now?" he guessed, glancing outside. The sun wasn't that far away from setting. He could sense it by the time even easier than looking at it, and he felt a pang of pain rolling through him as his head suddenly filled with hot golden eyes and vicious fangs and a beautiful sculpted body over him, owning him...Cursing internally, Xander squeezed his eyes shut and fought the images away. It was like battling a living thing; he was starting to get that damn itch that just crawled over his skin whenever he'd been away from his vampire for too long.

"I wouldn't worry about it too much," Buffy said lightly, laying a comforting hand on Xander's arm, obviously seeing Xander's sudden discomfort and misinterpreting it. "Oz is with her, and you know he'd never let anything happen to her, even if she was in danger. Which she isn't. In danger." He gave her a small smile, but he could feel pain building in his chest and he clenched his fists under the table as he desperately fought it back.

"Aren't you full yet?" Cordelia asked critically as he reached for another helping. Xander stopped as he realized that Cordelia was right. He'd put away three big helpings of spaghetti and two plates of salad. There was practically none left for anyone else. And he wasn't even close to being done. The entire meal was unsatisfying, no matter how good it tasted. Xander could tell why – he was having a big hankering for steak, or, really, meat.

"Really, how long has it been since you ate, Xander?" Jenny asked. He could see the sympathy on her face and he knew then that it would be so easy to lie to them, to all of them. He could tell them that he was starved, that he was raped and beaten and used. Everyone but Buffy, he could fool. Everyone but Buffy and himself.

"About two days, I guess. I didn't get a chance to get dinner before I...got out," Xander said vaguely. He could say that much, couldn't he? He didn't have to tell them that if he'd so much as made reference to wanting food from a specific restaurant in Sunnydale, then Angelus would get it for him no matter the price, and most likely hand-feed it to him as a prelude to seducing him. Angelus loved to watch Xander eat, and participate in Xander's eating, some master-human thing that Xander understood and loved himself. It was how Angelus took care of him and showed him that he cared.

Or, that was what Xander had thought, before he'd seen...He longed to reach up and finger the Claim scar on his neck, but a bolt of illness shot through him at even the thought of the mark, so identical to each and every one on the bodies of the wretched human slaves that Angelus had kept in that filthy, disgusting basement...

"No," Xander whispered.

"Oh, yes, my dear. This is where you're gonna end up. If I were you, I'd just kill myself now, because these little bastards are too miserable to even try anymore. We keep them for in-house snacking and the occasional hot human fuck when we're in the mood. That's gonna be you, sport. That's all Angelus wants you for."

"Speaking of school," Giles said after a moment, changing the subject. "We feel that it would be best if you started as soon as possible. Willow has come up with a plan to fabricate a sick relative that you have been taking care of these past months. That way you should be able to re-integrate into Sunnydale without too much undue attention or questions. She assures me that we'll be able to verify that you've been on a temporary homeschooling situation. I'm confident that with tutoring and coaching from both Willow and myself, you'll soon be caught up in your schoolwork."

"Sounds like a plan," Xander said, wondering if Giles could hear the hopelessness in his tone. The mere thought of reentering Sunnydale High School and trying to be the same old Xander Harris was enough to feel like a crushing weight was squeezing the air out of his lungs. And entering the library, where every memory of Angel resided, waiting to pounce? Where he would have to try to face Buffy every day with this wretched thing hanging between them, trying to pretend like nothing had changed?

Not seeing Angelus every day?

Xander's spaghetti sauce was starting to look like blood on his plate and he uncomfortably pushed it away from him.

"We don't have to talk about this tonight," Jenny said softly, rescuing him. He shot her a grateful look and Giles nodded sheepishly in understanding.

"Yes, of course," Giles said, sounding flustered.

"Actually, I need Willow to get home so I can hang with mom tonight," Buffy noted as she took her plate to the kitchen sink. "I'm frankly stunned that she let me stay here today, so I just know that she's got a mountain of homework waiting for me. The joy!"

"Ugh, home," said Cordelia joylessly. "Where the parents live."

"I'm sure you'll survive," Buffy said mercilessly.

"You can talk, with your mom buzzing around campaigning for mom of the year," Cordelia said venomously. Buffy might've responded, but instead she screeched in horror as the tap water turned rusted brown and started spitting left and right.

"GILES!!" she hollered, aggrieved. "GET YOUR APARTMENT FIXED!!"

Xander was forced to crack a smile as Cordelia laughed meanly and Jenny and Giles rushed up to try to stem the flow of disgusting, stinky water. Buffy tried to wipe the brown off of her skin, but she was staring mournfully at the light blue shirt she was wearing, which was clearly either ruined or needed some very expensive dry cleaning.

"Yeah, you just laugh," said Cordelia. "This is your evil body's fault." That blasted the wind right out of Xander's tentative sails. The weak happiness he'd tried to distract himself with emptied as he contemplated what his actions had caused him. And he couldn't figure out if he felt worse because of the guilt or because of the stupid Claim-bond thingie that was making him miss Angelus like a junkie missing his fix of heroin. "It was a joke, Xander," Cordelia said softly as she realized that her words had hurt him. Xander felt disgusted that he'd managed to make Cordy feel guilty, too.

"It's okay, Cordy," he whispered as the other three yelled at each other and at the sink and at plumbing in general as they combated the foul nastiness vomiting from Giles' once-pristine taps. Cordelia sighed and held his hand in hers, her strange strength flowing through him and abruptly he felt like crying again. After a moment the water had been stopped, and Giles led them all to his courtyard and asked them to wait. After a few moments, he appeared with two bags, both full, and his phone.

"I'm going to call a hotel and make arrangements. Tomorrow I can start engaging repairmen," he explained as he shut the door behind him. Xander turned and surveyed the courtyard. The sun's fiery death was glowing like blood over the red flowers. He turned back to the people in the doorway. Everything was reminding him of Angelus. He clenched his fists furiously. Even in the sunlight he couldn't get away from the damned vampire that had started this whole mess!

Just then, an engine shut off nearby. Oz and Willow appeared, hand-in-hand, as they came down the steps to the courtyard. Or, rather, Oz was holding Willow steady. The redhead looked even paler than usual, and her eyes were horrified.

"Willow!" Buffy gasped, darting forward. Willow collapsed into Buffy's hug, and Oz gratefully leaned back against a wall.

"Good lord, what happened?" Giles asked, hanging up the phone. Xander froze. That weird sixth sense that he'd begun noticing in the factory was starting to twinge again, in a way it hadn't done since he'd woken up. There was badness in the air. Something was about to change, something bad that he wasn't prepared for and yet he knew that didn't matter.

"We went to Xander's house," Oz said helplessly, and Willow shuddered. That was when the knowledge seemed to leap into Xander's mind from Willow's. He froze so completely that he couldn't even feel his heart beating. Numbness radiated from his mind, allowing him to deal with the shock.

"What happened?" Buffy asked.

"My parents are dead," Xander answered. Everyone in the courtyard jumped; he'd been so silent that all of their focus had been on Willow and Oz. Willow slowly detached from Buffy to stare at Xander with her heart in her eyes. "My parents are dead and Angelus killed them," he continued with absolute certainty. "He did it yesterday after I made him leave."

"Willow?" Cordelia asked. Willow nodded wordlessly, and Cordelia gasped in horror as Giles squinted furiously, fighting back some thought or other. Xander could watch this all calmly from the detached area in his mind where he resided now, where the thoughts and the hurts couldn't touch him.

"Xander," Giles said firmly, stepping forward, surprising him. "This is not your fault, and don't you dare blame yourself for the actions of an unhinged vampire." He grabbed Xander's shoulders and clasped him with strength. "This isn't your fault," he repeated, and Xander could feel a small crack forming in the shield he'd so hastily thrown up against his emotions. The shields shattered, so fragile against the wall of so much pain.

"He killed them, Giles," Xander gasped desperately. "He promised that he wouldn't kill them!" It seemed important that they know this. Buffy turned away, her fists clenched, as Cordelia held on to Willow. "He promised, Giles, he promised," Xander sobbed. He wanted to be dead, he wanted to be nothing. This was all his fault, it didn't matter what Giles had said. If he had just not been such an idiot and played with magic in the first place, Angelus would never have noticed him. If he'd been a good person, he wouldn't have gone with Angelus in the Bronze. And if he wasn't such a loving fool, he would never have trusted a vampire to keep its word and he would have made sure that his parents were all right.

"Where am I going to go now?" Did his voice really sound so lost, like a child who couldn't find his parents on the playground? How did that child ever find what he'd lost?

"You're going to stay with me," Giles said, still in that same firm, comforting voice. "We'll figure this out, Xander. Together."

The somber scene in the courtyard froze in a silent tableaux of mourning as the bleeding sun finally heaved its last breath and sank behind the hills, leaving a bitter and uncertain night in its wake, the shadows swallowing all that was left of the light.

***

Angelus presided over his Court. It was a pale mimicry of his former coven, but still, he had forces loyal to him again. Only five vampires had survived both the Slayer's attack on the factory as well as the subsequent explosion courtesy of...the boy, whose name Angelus refused to contemplate: himself, Spike, Drusilla, a minion named Allen, and an older vampiress from the Master's court, Lucy. Spike and Drusilla had since Turned three each, and Lucy had chosen only one. Though small, Angelus had instructed that each human be culled from the masses carefully, each having shown bravery when confronted with their would-be Sire and each having a glimmer of strength that older vampires could sense.

Allen had been put in charge of the new minions, which made him happy and more loyal to Angelus than he already was. That left him with himself as the King of the Court, Spike and Drusilla, his Childers, Lucy as his adviser, and Allen as the minion's lieutenant over the six newborn vampires. Only twelve, but of that twelve each and every one of them showed strength, courage, cunning, and a will to survive. They could be honed into an army, an organized vampiric force the likes of which the Hellmouth hadn't seen since the Master had reigned before he'd been caught beneath the earth.

The rest of the vampires that ran around Sunnydale at night, choosing to live in solitude or in filthy nests of two or three, were laying low or running away after the Slayer's little holocaust mission at the flaming wreck that used to by Willy's Alibi Bar. The word on the street maintained that Willy had finally had enough and fled town. That was a minor inconvenience; the disgusting little weasel had been incredibly useful for information and other shady dealings kept far from the light of day. Angelus figured that sooner or later most of the leaderless solitary vampires would come to him. Vampires were group creatures by nature. Most vampires didn't evolve from the minion mentality. The weaker flocked to the stronger for the protection they offered.

At the moment, Angelus was somewhat satisfied as each of his new vampiric children was introduced to him. His forces had chosen well. The first was a male, blond, handsome, and muscular. He looked vaguely like the Nazis of Hitler's Germany. "Eric," announced Allen. The lieutenant had taken to his task with zeal. The next was a female, a redhead with harsh features still wearing the Fish Tank biker top that she'd died in. "Helen." And so it went on, all six strong and sure, and all six looking up with sharp eyes, each having already learned to control their vampiric face and show their human countenance.

The last to be announced was Lucy's Childe, the first that she'd Turned in many years, or so Angelus had heard. A female, she was young, no more than fifteen. She had black hair and dark eyes, with lightly tanned skin. She stood loosely, with relaxed muscles in a stance he recognized as battle-ready. She'd clearly had martial arts training. Her name was Ella, and he could tell at a glance that she was lethal. She met his gaze steadily, with no fear that usually permeated the minions. In another time, another life, he'd already have her in his bed.

Now, the thought filled him with disgust.

"You've done very well," Angelus said, praising his forces. Allen preened and Lucy looked satisfied, but Spike and Drusilla maintained uncharacteristic silence. Angelus didn't show that he wondered what they were thinking. He nodded and showed his approval of his new forces, finishing the ritual that would keep Allen and Lucy satisfied as well as enthrall the new vampires. Ella shot him a look that he could not easily read as she left with the others to the quarters in the attic that Allen had prepared for them – far better than the squalor that his minions had lived in in the factory.

Unaccountably weary from the rituals of court, Angelus allowed himself to sag in relief when he was left in solitude save Spike and Dru. "What's up your arse, then?" Spike asked crudely after a moment. Angelus turned without the anger that should have been there at his Childe's insolent tone. All the passion that fueled him seemed to have been leeched out of him, and he knew exactly why. "Still moping after droopy boy?" Spike demanded.

"Shut up," Angelus hissed, the anger starting to simmer. But Spike would not be silenced.

"I won't," the younger vampire said flatly. "You're off your bloody rocker enough as it is, and I saw what he did to the factory. Think I didn't pay a lick o'attention to what you n' Dru were playing at? Think I didn't notice what you looked like when you came home without him? You don't hunt, you don't torture, you just glare. I'm wondering if I should be more worried about him coming here burning us all, or you finishing losing it and fucking the rest of us over."

"Xander is no threat to us," Angelus said quietly, his fists clenching.

"The hell you say!" Spike snarled, apparently not catching the menace in Angelus' soft tones. "If you want to sit there like a pussy-whipped bitch and—"

Angelus moved in a whirlwind of leather and rage as he suddenly had Spike pinned up against the cold stone wall of the main living area of the mansion, his fangs bared in fury as he slammed Spike with vicious violence against the wall over and over, until the back of Spike's head was leaving bloody patches on the wall. Spike yelped in pain and shock and genuine fear as Angelus beat him bloody with utter fury radiating out of every plane of his body. "Shut up!" Angelus roared as he let Spike drop to the floor.

Drusilla stepped forward, finally breaking her silence. "You hunger. You must hunt," she said softly, placing a hand delicately on his heaving shoulders.

"I don't want to hunt," he snapped, shoving her off.

"You must drink, Angel," she insisted. "You make yourself weak, denying yourself. The prince shall never return to the deck if the king is too weak to maintain." Her eyes bored into his, large and dark and entrancing, and he spat out a curse and a snarl as he shook off the drowsy hypnotic compulsion of Drusilla's glamour.

"Fuck," he cursed, knowing that she was right. Spike watched him warily from his crumpled position on the floor. Angelus smelled the blood scent in the air and he hungered to drink from Spike, but he knew that if he bit the vampire now he would have to worry about Spike's revenge schemes for months to come. Bowing to the inevitable, Angelus cursed again before heading out into the night air.

The air was humid and fetid, the Hellmouth's miasma practically glowing in the wretched heat of southern California. Angelus' angry steps began to slow down as he headed towards the center of the town. He'd overreacted to Spike's taunting and in so doing he had lost control, an unforgivable thing. Even more, he'd given Spike ammunition to use against him. Angelus was losing control of himself quickly, and he couldn't think of a way to regain his easy mastery. The fact of the matter was that Spike was right: he didn't feel like himself. But Spike had never been tied to any creature on Earth the way that Angelus was tied to his boy; how could Spike appreciate the hell that Angelus was going through?

His boy, his lovely, his precious, perfect boy, had rejected him. His boy was scared of him, which was worse. But it went deeper than that. He'd Claimed Xander, and it had been beyond those meaningless marks of ownership his kind put on their slaves. He'd marked Xander as his Mate, as his companion, as his Blood Bond. He'd given Xander immortality that they might spend it together. Xander was his Cruor Aduro, the one human conjoined through ancient alchemy to Angelus' essence. And Xander loved him, which shouldn't be important but it was. Xander waited for him to come home and made him laugh and attacked him with kisses and the sex had been earth-shattering at least.

Now his boy was in the enemy's house, a house his Cruor Aduro had chosen to stay in because he no longer felt safe in his master's house. The mere thought was agony, the memory of the horror on Xander's face was enough to feel like a metaphorical knife was hovering over his heart, stabbing into him viciously in some twisted echo of his long-lost mortal heartbeat. The remnants of Xander left in his consciousness, from their strange, magical joining, was enough to make him lose interest in pain. The thought of drinking blood that was not Xander's was enough to make him gag.

And what was worse was that the deeper he went into Sunnydale, the closer he got to the Watcher's apartment. And the closer he got to Xander, the more he could feel the magical compulsion of their bond urging him to find his Claimed, to soothe away his fears and take him home and make him understand that Angelus would always, always take care of him no matter what. He knew that Xander must feel it as well! Surely Xander wouldn't reject him if he'd give him the chance to explain!

But he could feel sorrow and betrayal through their bond and he knew that he had broken Xander's faith when he'd killed that miserable bastard who had dared to hit his boy. He'd broken a promise to his boy. Angelus wasn't used to dealing with the consequences of his impulses, and now his bloodlust might have lost him his precious boy. He thought of the black plastic bag he had in his room at the mansion and snorted in disgust. He was Angelus, he who had once practically been the vampiric embodiment of the Prince of Darkness, and he had a few scraps of his boy's clothing in a trash bag so that he could keep the scent.

Miserable, disgusted, angry, Angelus wandered through the streets until he saw a young man in the street. He had long, dark hair and dark eyes, and if Angelus squinted it could have been Xander. Filled with...something, something desperate and dangerous that he could not name, Angelus ran at full speed at the man-boy who looked like his boy, and he grabbed him before the teenager could so much as scream in surprise, spiriting him to the nearest alley. Up close, the boy had acne and his skin was too pale to be Xander's, but gods, the resemblance was like a cool drink of water in the desolate desert.

With something like a sob, Angelus struck swift as a snake and tore viciously into the young man's neck, his jagged fangs making a wound like a tiger's bite, worrying at the torn skin with his rough tongue to keep the blood flowing. The sweet illusion died with the first large swallow of blood. The boy's blood was spiced with terror, but there was nothing in it for Angelus. After Xander, no blood could possibly satisfy his thirst. Still, he forced himself to drink till the human's legs stopped twitching. He dropped the corpse with disgust, and reared his foot back. He brought it down with a satisfying crunch on the thing's face, punishment for daring to wear Xander's features.

He felt as empty as before.

***

Xander wondered if he was being stupid or suicidal as he slipped out of the hotel room after the clock struck midnight. They were staying in the Sun Motel, Sunnydale's one hotel service. It was actually in the good part of town, so it was fairly nice and quiet and clean. Giles had booked adjoining rooms for them, so they shared a bathroom but Xander could still have some privacy. They'd put in an anonymous tip to the authorities that night, Xander had heard through the bathroom when Giles had thought that he wasn't listening. That was how he'd found out that his mother wasn't dead, just finally driven over the edge. She was in a comatose state in the mental ward of Sunnydale Hospital, and the doctors weren't hopeful that she'd ever fully recover.

It was touching, really, how hard Giles was trying to take care of him, but Xander couldn't ever tell him what had happened. He couldn't bear the look on Giles' face if he knew everything that he'd done and enjoyed these last months.

Giles and Jenny planned on going to the Harris house while Buffy, Willow, Cordelia and Oz were in school and Xander was hopefully still resting at the hotel. That way they could gather Xander's things together before the police claimed them. They'd had to stop at a small store that was just about to close on their way to the hotel that evening to grab Xander some white undershirts and sweatpants and underwear, so he'd have something to wear other than the leather pants he had showed up wearing at the library.

Xander breathed the humid, sticky night air in and sighed. He shouldn't be doing this. But he couldn't not go, couldn't not see. Wrapping his arms around himself, Xander headed home.

It took a surprisingly short time to get there.

I'm waking from a dream

The neighborhood is green

All the sounds I've missed

All the years come down to wedding, death, and fear

All I've heard has been in vain

Like water on a stain

Xander could taste death on the air, feel the charge of the haunted as he looked at the house that he had grown up in. He was sorry, suddenly, that it was Willow who had had to go; even before her senses had grown sharp with witchcraft, Willow had been a sensitive and caring girl who felt everything deeply. Now she had felt this too, this awful, evil horror that was radiating sickly from a house that was once a home, so many years ago.

The grass felt stiff and uncomfortable beneath his feet, and he slowly stepped forward, each step a mile, each mile paved with knives. He paused on the old, warped wood of the porch. It was his last chance to turn back, but Xander already knew that he wasn't going to do the smart thing here. Instead, he opened the door and slipped under the bright yellow police tape to step into the shattered remains of his living room.

The air reeked of blood, and the stains above what was left of the television gave Xander some idea of what had happened. He gagged, but he didn't throw up. He thanked every god he'd heard of that the body had been taken. If he'd actually had to see the body, he wouldn't have the strength to finish this. He forced himself to keep going, past the ruined living room into the kitchen, where he would sometimes optimistically dump his father's beer down the drain while Tony was at work, only to be beaten for it after Tony had to go to the store and spend their grocery money on more beer, which meant more times he'd have to steal Willow's school lunches so that he could eat.

Xander closed his eyes and breathed. "Why did you break your promise?" he asked Angelus tonelessly.

"He hurt you," the vampire responded, his voice rich with feeling. Xander had known the moment the demon had stepped into the house, his entire body still so hyper aware of Angelus that it was practically agony to not go to him, to bare his neck, to...Xander sighed, a sound full of despair. Angelus reacted instinctively and wrapped his large, strong arms around Xander's chest, mouthing wordlessly into Xander's hair. And for an unforgivable moment, Xander let him.

Your father's killer! he told himself hysterically. You're cuddling the vampire that murdered your father! To protect me, Xander thought wretchedly. "My boy," Angelus whispered, bending down so that his voice was in Xander's ear, driving his words hypnotically into Xander's mind. The bond between them was singing sweet fire through Xander's veins at the closeness of the vampire. There were so many moral lines being crossed here that Xander's head was spinning, but he couldn't pull away. "I've missed you, missed this."

Angelus held him in the broken kitchen, the blood in the living room congealing behind them, and Xander groaned in self-disgust as he desperately shoved Angelus away from him and threw himself out the back door, away from the scent of death and back into the humid night air. Angelus followed, of course. "Stay away from me!" Xander yelled, or tried to, but it came out so much weaker than it should have. "You're evil, you're...you killed...God!" he moaned, running his hands through his hair.

Angelus caught his wrists. "You have to listen to me, Xander!" he said, equally desperate, equally torn. "I never meant to hurt you like that! You know that! I was trying to help you!"

"Help me?! By unleashing what?! Some power source? Some world-controlling scheme! You just fed me line after line and I was stupid enough to think that I mattered to you!" Xander was yelling now, scratching at his arms enough to draw blood, but he felt dirty. "Was fucking me fun? Was it good to see me throwing myself at you? Did you like breaking me in?" he demanded.

"Don't say that!" Angelus roared, surprising Xander with his passion. "You're mine, damn it!" Angelus didn't know what to say in this situation, had no idea what was brewing between them, all he knew was that he wanted his boy back. "I never meant to use you— "

"I bet you said that to all the other slaves you had chained up down in the factory, too," Xander said bitterly.

"How could you ever think that I would do that to you?" Angelus asked, horrified. His boy, his Mate, in such squalor, such filth?

"Because you're a vampire, Angelus, which is something I should have remembered a long time ago. You're not interested in anything that's not evil. I'm not evil! I'm not!" Xander insisted.

"You're mine," Angelus insisted flatly. "Every part of you. I'll never let you go. I'll never let you down. I'll break no other promises to you."

"Promise to make the hurt go away," Xander asked, his voice tinged in disgust and bitterness, the emotions sitting wrongly on his sweet boy's smiling mouth. Angelus reacted to the bond between them and slowly bent down, capturing Xander's lips in a kiss, gentle and strong. Xander froze, but before he even knew what was happening his arms were pulling the big vampire closer and his mouth was open and Angelus' tongue was stroking Xander's, and there was something so right about this wrong, wrong thing that it made Xander want to weep and to laugh, all at once.

Throwing guilt to hell, Xander took the comfort the vampire offered, damning the consequences, and desperately groped for Angelus' pants, his fingers fumbling the buttons in his haste to open the vampire's pants. Angelus moaned so low and deep he sounded like a feral animal as he jerked Xander's sweatpants down to ruck around his knees, his huge hands cupping Xander's round ass and squeezing hard, drawing them closer together.

Xander finally got the clasp open and Angelus' massive erection sprang out, both of them moaning gutturally as their cocks rubbed against each other, but not enough, by the gods, not enough. Angelus lifted Xander up and slammed him with bruising force against the side of the house, the moon glaring down on them, Xander bathed in sweat in the humid air. Angelus suckled hard on Xander's collarbone, tasting, reassuring himself that Xander was here in his arms where he belonged.

Xander furiously kicked one of the legs of his pants off and wrapped his legs around Angelus' waist, humping hotly against Angelus' erection, seeking friction. Angelus hissed his pleasure and bit down hard on his wrist, bathing his cock in blood as he rammed two fingers in Xander's tight, hot hole. Xander growled in pleasure as Angelus swiftly fingered him, opening him, hurting him in his need to join them both together as they were meant to be.

Finally, Angelus positioned himself and rocked slowly, inch by inch, into Xander. The boy gasped in overwhelming pleasure as Angelus paused, fully seated in Xander, joined as intimately as two people could be. Xander latched his lips onto Angelus' neck in that perfect place where his head could hide in his protector's neck as Angelus pulled out and slammed back in. There was pain, yes, but Angelus knew just the right angle to ram Xander's sweet spot with every thrust, and Xander saw stars as Angelus' thick cock filled him up, joining them together in a sweaty, bloody baptism.

Xander felt black flames of pleasure licking through him, a pale echo of the ceremony on the beach where a demon had been awoken within him, and he surrendered to the darkness as an earthshaking orgasm burst through his entire body, draining him. Angelus roared like a lion as Xander's honey-sweet passage milked him vigorously, and he slammed into Xander one more time before his saber-sharp vampire teeth sliced through Xander's golden skin.

The blood was like electricity and it surged through his entire body, charging him from head to toe, making him cum hard enough to see stars as he rammed back into Xander's bucking body. A swallow and he was sated, full, complete in the loving arms of his Cruor Aduro. They both sighed as Angelus' softening cock slid from Xander's bruised hole, and Angelus slowly sank to the grass, his sweaty boy sitting on his lap.

"I shouldn't have done that," Xander whispered after a long, peaceful moment. There was so much self-disgust in his voice that Angelus froze to stare at his boy, but Xander wouldn't even look at him. The boy was shaking in self-loathing, shaking so hard he looked fit to shatter as he shoved his sweats back on.

"Xander," Angelus tried, but Xander shook him off and moved away.

"You're a killer," Xander moaned in agony. Angelus moved quickly to his feet, making Xander face him. "You're evil."

"You love me," Angelus said helplessly. What was he going to do, deny the boy's accusations.

"I hate you so much...you make me want to die, and you make me want to stay with you forever," Xander returned, scratching at his arms restlessly again. Angelus reached out to stop him but Xander stepped back out of reach.

"This...whatever it is. We can't—I can't, not ever, not anymore," Xander said.

"You can't throw this away," Angelus said furiously. "We're one, we're joined, don't you see? Xander, you're mine! I won't let you go!"

"Don't— " Xander yelped as Angelus lunged forward, grabbing him in a desperate move. Xander struggled furiously and Angelus held on all the more tightly, out of his head, not know what to do anymore but instinct. "Let go of me!"

"So what, you just fuck and run! You bring us together and now that you've got yourself off you throw me away like a whore?!" Angelus roared, frustrated beyond belief. Xander's chocolate eyes flashed expressively in hurt at Angelus' careless words, and the vampire cursed himself for a fool. How had this night spiraled so suddenly out of control into a world of pain where his boy was struggling to get away from him?

"God, please, just let me go!" Xander sobbed, fighting all the harder to get away from him.

"You can't! Xander!" Angelus leaned forward, to kiss him again, to show him, but suddenly he screamed in pain as what felt like a jolt from a tazer slammed through his system and he hurtled away from Xander, slamming hard into the side of the house. He slumped, dazed, as Xander stared in horror at his hands, at Angelus. "Xander..." Angelus whispered, holding his hand out.

Xander turned and ran, as far and as fast as he could, as behind him Angelus howled his pain to the uncaring night sky.

***

Back at the hotel, Xander stared at himself in self-loathing in the mirror, a mirror that showed a young man, his pupils dilated, his lips swollen with sex, his shirt ringed with blood from a bite wound on his chest, a look of careless power on his face as he remembered blasting Angelus away from him. He felt like a whore, remembering Angelus' cruel words. But then, that was what he was, wasn't it? He'd completely ignored every vile thing about Angelus, ignored what Angelus had done to his parents, for a fuck.

What was wrong with him? Xander wondered miserably. He just wanted the mirror to show Xander again, not this strange creature who hurt everyone around him. He remembered Angelus' howl of agony and he tried to make the thought go away but he couldn't, he couldn't. He brought his fist up and slammed it desperately into the looking glass.

More than anything, Xander wanted to turn the clock back. He wanted this to never have happened. Never, never, never…

***

Elsewhere in Sunnydale, Angelus stumbled back to his mansion, staggering like a blind drunk up the stairs to his room. He pulled one of Xander's shirts out of the bag and held it to his face to breathe in his boy's scent as he fell into sleep. He would get Xander back, no matter what it took, no matter if he had to murder everyone close to him. Xander would see. They belonged together, and tonight was proof of that. Soon, Angelus thought, breathing in his boy. Soon. His fangs bared in a cruel mimicry of a smile as he drifted into vampiric slumber and demonic dreams.

A/N: Biddy-bom! And don't you go getting all pissed about Angelus there at the end; let's not forget that he is a) a bad bad guy, and b) about as cuddly as a box of razor blades. And Xander certainly has a lot to work through. Next week expect: the evil of high school! But since that angst isn't interesting enough, there's also: Buffy's mini-meltdown (you knew that was coming), Willow's intuitive talk with Xander, and also, an interesting new player in the game...Xander's new tutor.

See you next time, folks!

PyroPadawan/Pfenix_Goddess