Reasons For Living

by
Narcolepticcat

14 Wasted Time

"...Spike, if you said you were dead, I swear..." Buffy said.

"I said I was dead, and what do you swear, exactly?"

Buffy scowled, and then relaxed her face. "Oh, I don’t know, really. I didn’t think that one out."

"But look at it this way, whatever you swore, at least you did it and not Buffy."

"Huh?"

"The whole thing, with the third person."

"There’s someone else here?" Buffy looked around, then back at Spike, an unusual sparkle in her eye. They both laughed, long and hard...

...The room was quiet. Xander blinked his eyes open. Then they popped open and he reached for the body that should have greeted him. He groaned. His neck hurt and his head swam. He leaned up on his elbow and became aware of the darkness. He became aware of his ability to see in it. The room lit up as he looked around. Smells he’d never noticed before soared into his perception. He heard water running through a pipe somewhere and someone talked on the phone across the wall behind his head.

Xander heard his stomach growl, and the thought of real-live stick-it-in-the-microwave food squicked him.

Oh god.

He stood before his feet were even under him. The carpet beneath his toes was coarser than he remembered and smelled like plastic. The room, quiet at night, filled with the sounds of walls talking. The room smelled like construction. Wood and plaster and some steel and glass and plastic. Someone rooms, or maybe floors, away had an orgasm and Xander heard. Collapsed on himself in the middle of the room. Hugged his knees and listened, his hearing like a scream, looking for a way into silence. Looking for some corner of the world that did not teem with sound.

Oh god. Oh god. Oh god. Oh god. Oh god. Oh god. Oh god...

...Willow lay in her bed. The bed in the room in the house that had been Joyce's. She thought about the little girl, the little redhead who looked like she and Xander combined. We have to try that. Really we do.

Willow didn't cry anymore. She smiled when she thought about the past.

She smiled when things hurt because tears burned, but laughter was real...

"...Doug?"

"Yeah baby?" Doug said.

"Will you still love me when I'm big with the 'oink' for a living?"

"Are you going to eat donuts and slap people around? And show your butt like Sipowicz?"

"That show got cancelled… finally. And the actor has a name. And no. But I will probably slap people around."

Doug thought about this for a moment.

"Then I'll still love you."

Dawn laughed and stepped toward the naked man in the bed, pulled shiny handcuffs that twinkled in the candle-light from behind her back, waved them at her boyfriend...

...Giles wandered at night. After the second high school ended it got harder to be afraid of the little go-bump-in-the-night-ies. Giles was mildly frightened.
Rupert was less frightened. Ripper flat out didn't care.

At my age I'm happy to walk anywhere, which is of course an exaggeration, but I am happy and no bloody demon can take that away from me.

The streets of Sunnydale spread out wide and short from the shop back to Giles' apartment, and he walked them, footfall after footfall in the long quiet dark...

...Anya woke screaming.

Her eyes and ears filled with visions and words she never imagined she'd ever hear.

Smoke and a flash of light and D'hoffryn appeared at the foot of her bed. She clutched her sheets to her chest and pushed her sweat-matted hair behind her ears and in a tangled pile on top of her head.

"Something interesting has happened Anyanka," he said.

"Has it? I was just having the worst nightmare ever. The apocalypse was coming and he-who-fucked-me-over had to stop it with blond-he-who-fucked- me-over; and the only way they could stop it was if blond-he turned he-who into a vampire like blond-he, but blond-he turned into a human and he-who turned into a nineteen-year old and didn't understand why he'd been living with blond-he for the last seven years and…"

"Shut up. Anyanka. This is very good news, from a vengeance perspective…"

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

"You can take your own revenge on a demon."

"Wait, the dream happened? Oh god."

"Take your revenge now, Anyanka. While the boy writhes in pain and confusion in the room you once shared with him."

"D'hoffryn," Anya said, "have you not been paying attention to my life the last couple of years? I know all your tricks, and I'm done with you. What's more…" D'hoffryn stared at her with cold confusion in his eyes. "Blechpoarkameenastrizch. Bitch."

He vanished from her room.

"Oh god," Anya stood, pulled on her coat and ran from her apartment into the night. "Xander…"

15 A Sorta Fairytale

In the beginning there was nothing.

Then there were gods and demons. The gods and demons were neither good nor bad. The gods were no stronger than the demons; the demons were no stronger than the gods.

Then there were animals. The animals were prey and game for the gods and demons. Each creature knew it's place; each place knew it's creature.

Then there were men and women and children. They appeared from the edges of the world where the gods and demons did not live, did not dare tread. Dark caves of the old world. Deep jungles of the third world. Ice of the tundra. The gods and demons were stronger than the men; the men were stronger than the gods and demons.

And the men were stronger than the gods and demons and the men drove them all away. Some men took up the worship of the gods because they liked the sound of the word "gods" and these men also took up the scorn and banishment of the demons because they disliked the sound of the word "demons."

The gods grew cocky; the demons grew bitter. Some became good; some became evil.

When the last demon left this world it drank from man and made the man to drink back from the demon. This was the first vampire. This is where they came from.

Then there was the Slayer.

"It's a long story, love."

Spike said, cigarette hung from his lips, hands run through his hair.

"I know, Spike. Seven years and counting. But I, we, the gang and I… We still don't know anything about what happened back then. I mean, sorta figured out the you and Xander and ishy sex stuff, but… Why? How did you find each other? And why did you have to leave? I mean, you don't have to say anything. I'd just kind of like to know. I'm curious."

Spike thought for a moment, but he kept his thoughts to himself for once. He stood, walked a few steps from the grave where he'd left Buffy perched like a vampire-slaying canary, and stopped. He held his ground for a moment and then motioned Buffy forward, and when she reached his side they began to walk.

"I'm going to show you something…" he said, not a hint, not a revelation in his voice. Then he spoke again and his tone sounded warm. "The seed, pet, was planted, if I had to point to one plant in one row of one field of barley, ten years ago. There was bondage," he paused, looked at Buffy who kept her eyes forward but still smiled, "involved."

They moved again, walked slow and deliberate. Buffy noticed their flight from the cemetery, began to feel like she was on a vision quest, she imagined for only one moment that she was on ice skates and that Spike was her partner and they were ice dancing to Bolero in the Olympics; she imagined a transcendant moment and then tuned back into Spike's monologue.

"…so, I was riding up and down on his cock, and he started to come. It was the first time a happy meal had come inside my ass. Bloody brilliant, it was." Spike stopped, turned. Buffy stood ten good paces behind him, her jaw slack.

"You were really saying all that to me?" she said.

"Yeah, love. Why? Were you somewhere else again? Ice skates?"

Buffy smiled and caught back up with Spike. They walked on. "You know me frustratingly well, and I've barely seen you except to threaten you in seven years."

"You don't really want to hear about me and Xan's mad crazy buggery, do you?"

"No, not really, Spike… I am curious why you're dead again and this morning you were big with the sunlight."

"I'm a little curious about that too, honestly, but that's what I'm going to show you."

Buffy looked up. In less time than it had taken her to notice they were at the door of Xander's old apartment building. "He still owns an apartment in Sunnydale?"

"Well, or… Actually, I own the building."

"What, Mr. Snitch-for-a-few-quid actually has money somewhere?"

"You knew I had to. Angel had money, right? I am the offspring of his bloody loins."

"Ew, Spike. Ew." Buffy's nose scrunched.

"Your nose scrunched."

"Did it? Well, whatever. Ew. That's my story and I'm sticking to it."

A moment passed where laughter was much closer than was appropriate, and it passed into silence. Spike moved toward the door.

"You should come up, Buffy. You should see what's happened." His pulse, if he had one, would have pounded, but instead it remained silent in his chest; in its place his mind raced madly.

"What's happened, Spike?"

He said nothing, fumbled to open the apartment door.

"Spike. What did you do?"

The note, on the bedside table, said:

Xander;

  This happened. I don't know if you'll be you when I see you again. I hope you are. I knew coming back here I would do this. I didn't know when, or why. At first I thought it was for us. Then I found out it was for the world. And now I would take it back in an instant if I could. Don't listen too hard to the world around you, it can make you crazy when it first happens. Don't smell your own armpits either. I'll be back soon. I'll bring the Slayer.  

  Love and Vampire kisses,

   William the Spike.

Anya found Xander naked, a ball curled in on himself in the floor. She'd had the lady super let her into the apartment. She'd made up a story about cats and plungers and the super-lady had turned green, literally, and pushed a tail from under her dress, and "…if there are goddamned cats in the goddamn plumbing again I'm gonna fucking kill that goddamned Jersey Devil in the basement…"

And Anya strode (and tried not to look too panicked) into Xander's apartment, the one she knew so well and had once loved deeply in. She knew love better than most; had been as betrayed by it as anyone of the women of the Scoobies; had lost just as much for even smaller reasons than death and apocalypse and simple insane mass-murdering boyfriends.

She'd lost everything she had because she didn't know how to keep it. She hadn't been able to figure out Xander's wind-up mechanism; she certainly hadn't been able to wind it back down. She never knew what was wrong with Xander; so she could never fix it.

But now, in this place that she knew, as the landlady closed the door and grumbled down the corridor outside, Anya knew all she had to do was whisper, and she was glad because she was sure it was all she could manage.

"Xan, baby…" The words emerged even tinier than she could imagine from her throat and she heard a growl in the bedroom. It sounded unconscious; a sleeping, dreaming, nightmare growl.

She moved as undetectably as she could into the bedroom, found Xander in the corner, found a note on the bedside table. She found that she wasn't as angry as she thought she'd be, about the turning; and more angry that Spike had left their Xander to wake up with new senses, new strengths all by himself without a hand to hold him up, cover his ears, and guide him.

Anya kept her eyes off the man she once loved. She was afraid to look too closely and know, even without being a demon, just what was missing. She was terrified to see the thing inside the man she once loved, and to see the stuff, the manliness, the swagger, the innocence she used to love, gone. She sat down on the edge of the bed. The note in her hand.

And waited.

The thing about Hellmouths is that if you close your eyes to them, you're already dead. Sunnydale isn't the only Hellmouth, but it is definitely the Hellmouth. The river from which all "mystical energy" streams into like tributaries into the Amazon.

Apocalypses come and go. They've come and gone for hundred of thousands of years ever since there was nothing. An apocalypse has shepherded in every evolutionary leap. But apocalypses don't have to be fast. The can be slow; an ice age, global warming, a couple of world wars and a couple not-really-but-they-still-thought-they-were wars.

The Hellmouth is it's own apocalypse, and everything that was aware of these things knew (in the days of Xander and Spike's return to Sunnydale) that the Hellmouth's apocalypse was speeding up. Xander and Spike and their little strange prophecy just put a fresh cork into Hell's very own Mt. Vesuvius.

It would blow eventually...

"Do I really want to see this?"

Buffy and Spike stood outside the door of the apartment. Spike's mind free-fell and soared back up; did all the work his heart couldn't do.

"Pet, I'm not sure I really want to see this," Spike said.

They crossed the threshold and moved through the apartment. It was dark. Buffy heard quiet. Spike listened to all the sounds that he knew were making Xander insane: someone chatted on the phone through the wall behind the bed, the downstairs neighbors had gotten up and turned on Headline News, somewhere else a neighbor breathed heavily and someone slurped away on his manhood.

Spike twisted the doorknob and slow now boy, pushed the door open.

A bolt flew into his shoulder. Buffy pushed him out of the way, produced a stake from out of nowhere, and leapt into the room.

Anya stood, crossbow in hands, aimed at chest level.

"Just let me kill Spike."

The Watcher, the last of the old ones, walked through the dark of Sunnydale. Driven by some strange sense of doom he strolled past all the familiar landmarks: the Bronze, the high school - the fourth charred, decrepit building marked by yellow tape to stand on the same spot, the house on Revello, he looked at, but did not visit the Mansion, he walked by the dorms, the coffee shop, the Magic Box.

The last place he walked by surprised him. He hadn't been there in years. Didn't even know that he still remembered how to find it; Xander's apartment.  

He stared up at the building and heard glass shatter and something whizzed by his head. He turned to see a crossbow bolt lodged neatly in a tree.

He ran as hard as he could into the building and up.

With the gods and demons gone, men became the gods. The Slayer became their emissary against the vampires and the minor demons who began to resurface in the realm of men.

The time came and Buffy Summers was chosen. Untrained, cocky, beautiful and graceful she changed forever the high water mark for a slayer. Outlived all that had ever been called (while still managing to shuffle off the moral coil, twice) with only one exception due to incarceration.

What made Buffy special, the gift she was blessed with that none of the other Slayers ever possessed that granted her such longevity, was the gift of family and friends; something to fight for that was more than her own life, and more tangible and immediate than simply "the whole world."  

Because what is the whole world?

"Has the whole bloody world gone utterly insane?"

Giles held Anya in a headlock while Spike, with a crossbow bolt still sticking out of his shoulder, held Buffy back.

"I'm not insane. I just want to kill Spike."

"For what, vengeance bird? For saving the world?" Spike said.

"I can so take her. She's not even a vengeance demon anymore," Buffy said.

"Shut up." Giles and Spike looked at each other. "Don't do that." They glared. "Stop it." Spike growled. "No you stop it."

The room got quiet. Spike and Giles' creepy choirgirl routine ended. Spike sniffed the air.

"Oi, old man, you're turning the bird on - better watch those hands."

Spike laughed.

Giles wrenched the crossbow from Anya's arms and stepped away from her. He walked over to where Xander lay, unconscious, dead in the corner.

Anya crossed her arms. "I already tried kissing him to wake him up. He's dead. I mean, not dead, dead; but he doesn't breathe anymore, look."

Spike looked at Anya and spoke. "That's the best idea you've had all bleedin' century."

He released Buffy who continued to glare at Anya until they both realized what Spike meant to do. They took a step back. Giles rose, patted Spike's cheek with his hand and said, "Here's hoping Xander wakes up here and not something else."

"Here's hoping." Spike leaned forward and kissed Giles on the cheek. "Thanks, librarian."

And Giles crossed the room, stood with one arm on her shoulder behind Buffy. They all watched, held rapt by the moment and its swoon.

Spike knelt down.

The man rooms away had another orgasm.  

The woman next door hung up her phone.

Downstairs, Headline News became The Dick Van Dyke Show.

A refrigerator opened, jars clinked inside it, and closed.

Spike stroked Xander's hair, ran a hand slow down the front of Xander's chest. He lifted Xander's head and pulled the body flat onto it's back, positioned himself between his audience's eyes and Xander's short and curlies. He took of his coat and covered Xander with it. Then he leaned down.

His lips connected with Xander's and it was like a slow electric pulse. There was rightness here. He heard Buffy gasp, heard her turn around and bury herself in Giles' arms. He knew then that Xander, unconscious on the floor had gone into gameface; he knew then that he had as well.

Spike searched through Xander in that kiss. Slow now, boy and the man beneath him began to respond, Xander's fingers began to dance around the arms supporting Spike. A low growl began in both of the men's chests. The kiss deepened.

Xander sucked Spike's lower lip into his mouth, scraped it with his new teeth. His eyes never opened.

Xander drank from the tiny cut and the world around the two men vanished.

Spike lay in bed beside his fledgling vampire. The girls and Giles left hours before, Spike wasn't sure when.

The fledgling hadn't said anything though it's eyes, even yellow and violent, were still Xander's. Spike wished he could be sure. He reached over to the bedside table, the note with tear stains on it covered his cigarettes, he fished under the paper and emerged with the pack and his lighter.

He lit a cigarette and closed his eyes; found real darkness behind his eyelids and waited until answers would come from the fledgling in bed beside him.

He could wait. He had to and he would.

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