A/N In Ironbear's story 'And Another Thing I Hate About You', a story I love, Xander tells Angel that Angelus was basically a dumbass who managed to murder a computer teacher and a bunch of fish over the course of five months. In others words, Angelus didn't live up to his hype. And he didn't. Angelus was nicknamed the Scourge of Europe, he drove people insane, tormented parents by murdering their children. He was supposedly this terrifying, larger than life vampire and mostly what he did was make Buffy cry and while that made the audience hugely sympathetic to Buffy, it didn't really do a lot to make Angelus scary, the sole exception being the whole thing with Ms. Calendar.
And than there's the confrontation with Xander, something Angelus never does anything about. Never even mentions it. I read a fanfic by another author who also wondered why Angelus never did anything about it. Some reviewers commented that of course it was because Xander wasn't a threat to him. But scaring Willow by killing her fish? How was Willow a threat at this time, all it did was worry Buffy. Xander had, at this point, challenged both Angel and Angelus and both had backed down.
Cops, who we later learn worked for the Mayor, witnessed that challenge. Word should have spread about it. Either that Angelus was so weak he backed down from a powerless human or that the human wasn't powerless. At the very least Angelus' ego should have demanded a response.
I read a short story another author wrote where Angelus did retaliate and he got a lot of criticism for thinking Angelus wouldn't just kill Xander instead of destroying his life, but bear in mind, Angelus' got his reputation by doing just that, destroying people before killing them.
This story is going to get very dark, very fast because I'm going to take that basic premise, that Angelus would retaliate over that confrontation with Xander and carry it out. But bear in mind, that's just the beginning, I'm also going to change the Buffy story from the very beginning.
And although this is not a continuation of the Accidental series it does borrow a couple of ideas found in that story, although this story is not a crossover. Don't worry, I have plenty more crossover ideas on my list and I'll get to them, including a couple new kinds of Xander vampire stories that have been added to the list. Who knew there were so many kinds of vampires that actually are what the audience wanted to believe Angel and Spike were, verses what Joss wanted them to believe?
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Angelus paced in the hall of the Crawford Street Mansion, fuming over the confrontation with that boy, Xander. He knew from the memories of Angel that Xander had basically done the same thing to Angel as he'd just done to him, Angelus and Angel, weak fool that he was, had let him get away with it. While Angelus didn't understand exactly why either of them had backed down, he did know he couldn't just let it go. Twice in one night, the boy had bested him. First by stopping his attack on Buffy and second by challenging him outside her hospital room.
"I should have just torn his head off right then and there." He muttered. "Why didn't I?"
"Because kittens have claws, my Angel." Drusilla cooed. "And this kitten can roar when he chooses to."
"I'd rather he screamed." Angelus muttered. "That boy keeps saving her, both while Angel was around and now from me. If he was out of the way, I could play with her to my heart's content until she was finally broken."
"Why not break him too?" Spike suggested. "Or better yet, turn him against her so he stops wanting to protect her at all. Maybe turn him afterward."
"Oh Hell, I'm not turning him, he'd drive me insane!" Angelus exclaimed. "But breaking him, now that's something I can work with. Making him hate her might even be a greater masterpiece than Drusilla." He grinned the insane grin that Spike was beginning to hate. It was the same grin he'd sported before killing the computer teacher and leading the Watcher to burn out their home and try to beat Angelus to dust with a baseball bat on fire. What would it lead the boy to do?
"Pain and death, torture and screams." Drusilla chanted, lost in a vision.
"Sounds perfect." Angelus smirked. "I'm going to give that boy a lot of pain, death and torture and I'm going to hear a lot of screams before I'm done. I'm going to turn him against her, make him hate her. The next time I'm beating on her I'll stop when I want to, not when he sucker punches me when I can't see anything." He headed out to find his first victims. They wouldn't be his last.
Xander came home after a sleepless night spent with Cordelia as the two of them stood guard over Buffy's room at the hospital, eating donuts, drinking coffee and confiding in each other. The fact that she'd come back and helped him guard Buffy after marching off in a jealous huff meant a lot to Xander. He really did want to keep Buffy safe as in her current condition she couldn't protect herself and he really did appreciate his girlfriend's willingness to help. It also deeply thrilled him to think of Cordelia that way, as his girlfriend. Someone he could maybe really come to matter to and that he was feeling deeply connected to. He was daydreaming as he eased open the front door, on autopilot because he was so tired. At first he didn't see the mess in the living room. Then he smelled it. He stared blankly at the wall behind the tv and the message scrawled in blood.
'Was it good for you too?'