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buffyfic-digest       Monday, November 30 1998       Volume 02 : Number 382



In this issue:

       BUFFYFIC: Twilight (2/?)
       BUFFYFIC: Twilight (0/?)
       BUFFYFIC: Twilight (3/?)

See the end of the digest for information on (un)subscribing to the buffyfic
or buffyfic-digest mailing lists and on how to retrieve back issues.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 20:15:33 EST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: BUFFYFIC: Twilight (2/?)

TITLE: Twilight
AUTHOR: Shadows
DISTRIBUTION: [e-mail]
DISCLAIMER: I haven't the money to be sued or bailed, so I list clearly that
none of these characters belong to me. I'm just (mis)using them.


Twilight - Chapter 2

    "You bleed you learn"
     -You Learn, Alanis Morissette




Giles was sitting behind the check-out counter in the school library, stamping
bar codes in some new Social Studies textbooks when he heard the swing doors,
well, swing open. He looked up, not at all surprise to see who had entered.

    "Hello Willow, Buffy," Giles said, stamping one last book and then standing
up. He walked over to the front of the counter. "Um, how is Xander?"

    "That's what we came to talk about." Buffy and Willow sat down at the table,
Buffy with a still, solemn face, and Willow wringing her hands nervously and
eyebrows that practically shot up to the heavens. Giles was instantly on alert
and stood on the other side of the table, trying to read their expressions.

    "Is Xander . . . n-not well?" Giles had never liked the Harris boy too much,
but he never wished for anything too serious to happen to him. And the last
thing Giles wanted was another victim racked up on Angel's scale.

    "He is. He's out of the coma." The two girls watched Giles sigh in relief.
"But . . ." Buffy paused here, not really wanting to go on. She herself didn't
quite believe that Willow had truly seen what she said she had seen. Xander
was not the type to do that sort of thing. If anything, he hated vampires more
than the Slayer, especially since her ex-boyfriend was Evil Vampire #1. Xander
would never intentionally do anything like that . . .

    "We, I, didn't tell you everything," Willow said, her voice breaking. "And it
might be important that, that you know so in case anything can go really bad,
you can, like, tell us it's going to happen."

    Giles was drawing a blank on what was happening to the girls. Still slightly
uneasy about looking at Buffy, he turned instead to Willow. "If I can help,
Willow, I will. But you have to tell me first."

    Buffy noticed that Giles was shying away from her, and she gave a quick
blush. She knew that it would not be as easy as Giles forgiving her just like
that, but it still felt so odd. Giles was the father figure that her real
father was missing out on being, and Buffy was feeling the way she had when
her parents had done the "we need some time off for a little while" thing.

    "Xander, he . . . he drank. I mean, Angel's blood." Willow looked down at her
lap. "Angel drained him and then gave Xander a few drops of blood before I,
uh, saved him I guess."

    Giles sat still and quiet for a moment, contemplating this information. Then,
slowly, he said, "Is Xander a vampire?"

    "No!" both Willow and Buffy shouted, leaning forward. Giles took a step or
two back, and then the girls sat back in their seats, blushing red.

    "Well, than, there's nothing to worry about," Giles said matter-of-factly.
"It seems as though Xander has not had enough of Angelus' vampire blood to be
turned into a demon himself. And," he moved towards the bookcases, "with that
said, Buffy, there is something interesting that I'd like you to see in the
Middle Age's."

    "Yeah, ok," Buffy said up and gave Willow a friendly pat on the shoulder.
"Don't worry, Will, Xander isn't going to go all wacky on us." She then went
to bury herself in the stacks with Giles, when she felt a strong hand on her
shoulder.

    Giles was holding her back. "Now wait a minute," he said softy. "I think that
you'd better rethink what you just said." He sighed. "Buffy, you remember how
you were when you came back to Sunnydale a year ago after you had been almost
killed. You were-well, I don't have to get into details, but you weren't in
the best of moods, exactly. And that may possibly-probably-be how Xander is
going to react. He's going to be changed, and you are going to have to take it
in stride." He looked back down the stairs. "That goes for you too, Willow."
Willow nodded. "Well, that said, let's go look at what I have to show you."
Giles and Buffy disappeared into the bookshelves.

    Willow got a sudden shiver up her spine, though she didn't know why. Lately,
she had begun to somewhat sense things-well, not really sense, but just a
quiet little something in the back of her mind that spoke up at certain times.
And now was one of them.

    "Hey!"

    Willow whirled around, not knowing what to expect, but surely not what she
saw. Xander stood there, books under his arm, still looking very pale and
weak. He had a little smile on his face, and he leaned on the counter for
support. His eyes seemed too large and round for his face, which had gone
surprisingly gaunt, and his lips much too red. He was still sick, but he was
here.

    "Xander!" Willow squealed, and ran into his arms. For a second Xander almost
lost his balance, but steadied himself and hugged his best friend back. "You
know, Will, I'm still a little bit sick, so give me a warning when you're
going to tackle me," he joked as Willow pulled away from him. She looked
sheepish.

    "Sorry," Willow said. Then she yelled back at the stacks. "Buffy, Giles, it's
Xander!"

    Xander looked off into the stacks, and then back at Willow. "Where's
Cordelia?" he asked. His voice was hoarse, and rasped in a sexy sort of way.
Huskily.

    "She's sick with the flu," Willow reported. "She finally caught it. Guess
that mean's she normal like the rest of us."

    "Doubt that," Xander chuckled. "Um, what's up with them?" he asked, gesturing
with his hand to the bookshelves in which Buffy and Giles had yet to appear
from. Willow shrugged.

    Just then Giles appeared, a very large and very old book in his hands. He
gave Xander a smile, although he seemed to be occupied with something else.
"Xander," Giles said, as if to affirm his presence. "I hope you're feeling
better."

    "I'm not," Xander answered truthfully, wincing at a sudden pain in his chest.
"Snyder called my mother at the hospital and demanded that I come back to
school. For some reason, my mother agreed."

    "I smell a lawsuit," Willow said cheerfully, hands clasped in front of her.
She smiled at Xander, who smiled back at her.

    "Oh," Giles said, and then he awkwardly stood there until scurrying back into
his safe shadows. Xander looked at Willow quizzically.

    "What happened to him while I was gone?"

    "Nothing much happened to anybody, really," Willow said, shrugging the
question off. "Oh, but Buffy did get the flu. She was on the floor above you,
right over your room. But she was never in there, I mean, in her room. She was
outside yours, like, guarding in case anything else came to visit."

    Xander nodded. He didn't really care what had happened or what was going to
happen to Buffy. He did care, though, that he was going to be late for first
period. "Almost time to go," he said, looking at his watch.

    Willow gave him a humorous look. "Since when do you care about being on time
for class?" she asked, raising her eyebrows at him.

    "Since I can't wait to fall asleep. We have Mr. Brodie for first hour."
Willow rolled her eyes. "I know," Xander said. "See, even you hate his class."

    "I don't hate his class," Willow said, going back to the table and gathering
her things, shoving them into her backpack. "I just don't like the way he
teaches it. He's so dull. Really, you know, if I wasn't teaching Computer
Science, I would take over that job so that kids could have fun and learn at
the same time."

    "Willow," Xander warned as they left the room, "you just used 'fun' and
'learn' in the same sentence. I hate to break it to you, but they don't go
together at all."

- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- ----------------------------

    "And so, by the time I got to Math just now, I was like 'Thank you for the
sympathy, but enough's enough.' Teachers that I thought would just love to see
me wiped off the face of the Earth were telling me how sorry they were and,
get this, Mrs. Jacobson said she 'felt for me.' I almost keeled over laughing
there."

    Willow let out a light laugh as Xander continued the narrative of his morning
back at school. It seemed as if all the teacher's had been informed that
Xander had been a victim caught innocently in a fight between two warring
gangs. He could not get over the look on one particular teacher's face.

    "So Gabowski turns towards me, goes white as a sheet, starts praying to God
and saying 'Xander, is that really you?' 'Yes, Mr. Gabowski, live, in the
flesh, and ready to earn my D-minuses!'"

    Willow giggled as she sat down, plopping her brown lunch bag before her.
Xander rubbed her arm gently and said, "I'll be right back." He went off to
buy his lunch, leaving his books and stuff in the seat next to her.

    Willow sat there for a while just staring at her bag, then sighing happily,
she began to open it. She peeked in and instantly frowned. Yet again another
peanut butter sandwich. That was all her mother, Tara Rosenberg, ever ate, so
she figured Willow would have to follow in her footsteps.

    "Willow?"

    Oz slid into the seat next his girlfriend, dropping his backpack next to
Xander's books. He scooted his chair a comfortably close distance to her and
asked what was going on.

    "Oh! Xander came to school today," Willow said brightly. "He's getting lunch
right now." She lowered her voice and head nearer to Oz. "He doesn't look that
well, ok? So don't really say anything, ok? Even though I know you would
never."

    "'K," Oz agreed, nodding. He picked up his backpack and moved so that he was
in front of Willow instead by her side. She leaned over her peanut butter
sandwich and began a heated conversation about a hacking web site she had
found just yesterday on the Internet.

    "And I was just like, 'Wow! The CIA code!' and then I realized that I was
like, doing heavy-duty trouble-stuff so I click the little button to the
right, and then-"

    She was interrupted by a sharp, loud cry of pain that came from the lunch
line. Oz and Willow both turned around to see; it was easy because everybody
was backing away to make space. So Willow and Oz got quite a clear view of
Xander bending over his lunch tray in pain, clutching his chest like an old
man in cardiac arrest.

    "Ohmigod!" Willow said, jumping out of her chair to run towards Xander as her
best friend fell to the floor. Oz followed right after her, trying to keep up
with the frightened redhead.

    Willow dropped to the floor next to Xander, and the first thing she did was
check his pulse. It was weak-very weak-but it was there. "Get help!" she told
Oz breathlessly, and he nodded, running off to tell the nearest authority
figure.

    Meanwhile, Willow held on to Xander's wrist, and the same chill as those
countless times before creeped up her spine. The other seniors in the
lunchroom were creeping closer now. "Don't go Xander, ok?" she pleaded to him,
as if he could hear. "Don't go."

End of Chapter 2

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 20:09:52 EST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: BUFFYFIC: Twilight (0/?)

TITLE: Twilight (Completely and totally revised because the author is making
it go in a different direction than previously conceived)
AUTHOR: Shadows
DISTRIBUTION: E-mail me at [e-mail] and tell me where it's gonna be.
DISCLAIMER: I own none of these characters, officer, I swear!
Now on to the fic!


Twilight - Prologue

"New blood joins this earth
And quickly he's subdued
Through constant pain, disgrace
The young boy learns their rule"

- -The Unforgiven, Metallica




"So, where's Buffy? Isn't this slaying thing her deal?"

Cordelia Chase walked through the cemetery alongside Willow Rosenberg and
Xander Harris, clutching a small cross at her side. Her long, well-manicured
nails tapped against the wood, creating an annoying tip-tap-tip as they went
deeper into cemetery. She was rather scantily clad for such a cold night, but
seemed to not notice the brisk breeze that blew through the neighboring willow
trees. What she did notice, though, was that she was doing somebody else's
job, and that pissed her off.

Next to her, Xander rolled his eyes. "Because she's sick. She's at home, in
bed, not with us." He tossed a look at Willow, who smiled back. "Why don't you
do that, Cordelia?"

"Get sick?" Cordelia said, her face and voice registering total shock. "Ew! Do
you know how'd gross I'd look?" Her mouth snapped shut as she contemplated
what it would be like to catch the flu.

Xander and Willow looked at each other and shared a silent laugh. "Have you
guys noticed, though," Willow said, attempting some conversation, "that there
aren't that many vampires out? I mean, that's weird, right? Because we're on
the Hellmouth and everything."

"What, do you think something's up?" Xander reached inside his jacket to touch
his hidden stash of stakes for comfort. He, Willow, and Cordelia might not be
Slayers, but everybody knew the basic strategy-find, aim, plunge, party. Yeah,
he'd killed some vampires in his time.

"I don't know," Willow said, shrugging off the sudden eerie feeling she'd had.
"I mean, there should be more of them."

"They were reluctant at first, I must admit," said a voice from behind, "but I
finally convinced them to stay home. I'm so selfish. I wanted the fun all for
myself!"

The three Slayerette's whirled around in surprise at the sound of the voice.
Stake and crosses held high, they opened their eyes wide enough to see who it
was.

Angel.

Willow's blood ran hot through her veins. Here, in front of her, stood the
demon that had killed Jenny Calendar, her role model and good friend, and in
result, had dragged Giles through emotional hell.

Xander's eyes narrowed in hate. He had never liked Angel when he had a soul,
but that had been for a trivial reason-his eyes were blinded by his puppy love
towards Buffy. But he had known then and now that eventually a relationship
between and Slayer and a vampire couldn't last, though he hadn't known back
then that it would end up like this.

Cordelia's eyes widened in terror. This was dangerous! She could get killed! I
mean, he'd already taken out Ms. Calendar! Who knew who'd end up dead next!
But besides the gnawing fear in the pit of her stomach, Cordelia had to notice
that Angel looked really hot in those leather pants.

"So, are you three going to do anything, or should I just eat?" Angel
snickered. Then, without warning, he pounced on top of the nearest Slayerette-
Willow.

Willow was knocked to the ground as the large weight of the vampire fell on
top of her. Angel grabbed her arms and held them behind her head, leaving her
helpless and pinned to the ground. Willow looked up into his blazing yellow
eyes and was struck with enormous fear. Xander, Cordelia, help me . . .

"Willow!" Although those yellow eyes were filling her mind, she could still
hear Xander's shrill cry. And then the world spun as Angel held her close and
they rolled along the ground. Out of the corner of her eye, she could spot the
blur of a fast-moving stake piercing the ground.

Xander tried to pull out the stake and, realizing that it had gone too deep,
reached into his jacket for his back-ups. He looked up to see Cordelia,
horrified, looking on at the Jenga pile that was Angel and Willow. "Well, help
her, dammit!" he screamed at her, knocking her out of her reverie. Cordelia
ran as fast as she could towards the two.

Angel had a good grip on Willow's neck, holding it tightly between his thick
hands. "I'll snap you like a twig," he hissed, smiling hideously and exposing
all his pointy little teeth, his large, blood-sucking fangs the most
prominent. "Just like that teacher of yours."

At the moment, Willow didn't care if he snapped her neck, because he was
presently choking her and she was running out of air. She beat uselessly at
the sleeves of his duster, a primal urge inside her screaming for her to live.
The world was beginning to spin, this time only in her eyes. "Xander . . ."
she managed to croak out.

Angel opened his mouth to ask for her final words when something hit him on
the back of the head-hard, drawing blood. He winced and let go of Willow,
rolling away. Willow looked up and saw a very frightened Cordelia holding the
blunt end of her cross, staring at it in horror, and then staring at Angel,
who was rubbing his head and swearing loudly.

Willow scrambled to her feet and tugged on Cordelia's sleeve. "C'mon Cordelia,
let's get out of here." She turned around to run, but ran smack into someone.
She looked up, and saw it was Xander, with a determined look on his face.

"Xander! We have to get out of here now before he gets up again!" Willow
looked back at Angel, who was slowly rising to his feet. "Xander! What are you
waiting for!"

"Yeah!" Cordelia demanded. "I agree with Willow! We can get killed here!"

Xander set his jaw firmly. He pushed Willow gently out of his way. "Go on, run
and get Giles or Buffy or something. I'm gonna stay here-I gotta get something
off my mind."

"Xander, don't be crazy!" But Xander had already marched off to a waiting
Angel, who had donned a big, happy smile. Cordelia just grabbed Willow's
sleeve and they ran behind a tall pair of bushes, hiding from view.

- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- ----------------------------

"So what have you got against li'l ol' me, anyway?" Angel asked as Xander
walked towards him, stakes in hand and such an expression on his face that
made Angel want to break out laughing. "Upset about Buffy? Jealous that I got
there first? Man, you just gotta deal with your issues-"

Angel was cut off as Xander slugged him-hard-in the face. Angel growled in
pain and took a few steps backward, looking at Xander with a face gaining a
slight respect.

"Wow, guess all you need to make a runt a hero is a little motivation," Angel
laughed, his eyes sparkling. And then, in a blur, Xander was pinned to a
headstone, Angel standing triumphantly above him.

"But you need a lot more than that to beat me, my friend."

Angel snarled and immediately morphed into his game face. A thousand ways that
Angel could kill him ran through Xander's mind in an instant. Along with that
came treasured memories of friends, families, and times that he would like to
remember forever.

And then Angel sunk his fangs into his neck.

At first it hurt tremendously, for he could feel the two sharp teeth digging
under his skin, piercing the veins. Then, he felt as though everything inside
his body was suddenly pulled into his neck, as Angel's hold around him
tightened and the vampire quickly sucked his blood.

After only a few seconds, the cemetery surroundings blurred and ran into each
other like ink in water. Everything acquired a glow-y sort of look to it, and
his body began to tingle. He was left with the lightheadedness one gets when
loosing large amounts of blood. But he welcomed it; Xander welcomed it all,
because there was no more pain, just . . .

Then Xander felt the two fangs withdraw from his neck so keenly as though the
puncture wounds were mountains lined with pain. A hand gently cradled his
head, as though he were an infant, against a hard structure . . . Angel's
chest. A voice, soft yet cruel, whispered in his ear, "Xander, you're dead.
I've killed you: you're dead. Unless . . ." Angel chuckled, and the sound was
like a train roaring in his ears. "Do you want to join us, Xander? The
national polls taken just last year show us to be the fastest-growing
community in the United States . . ."

Xander heard no more. At that moment, he was incapable of making such a large
decision. The only thing that was running through is mind was the animal
instinct to survive, to not give in to death, to continue living . . . and at
that moment the only way to do that was to drink from the wrist Angel was
offering him: the wrist that dripped with the sweet blood that would give him
life once more.

A single, delicious drop of vampire blood fell on Xander's eager tongue, and
he sucked it down hungrily. At once, a fire spread through his mouth,
spreading through his body, from his head down to the very tips of his toes.
Strength surged through him once more, just from a single drop of blood.

"That was just a taste," Angel whispered, and then shoved his wrist into
Xander's mouth. Xander latched onto it hungrily, starting to suck furiously
like an infant.

Then the wrist was gone, along with his lifeline, and Xander was thrown to the
ground. A face hovered before him, and an angry, incessant voice was yelling
at him.

"How dare you! Stupid! What were you thinking!"

Nothing, really, because his brain felt like it had met a brick wall-twice.
Xander's head lolled to the side, and he stared at the face in front of him
with a blank expression. He tried to make his lips move, but his nerves were
dead. Instead, he fell into unconsciousness, away from the pain.

End of Prologue

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 20:18:16 EST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: BUFFYFIC: Twilight (3/?)

TITLE: Twilight
AUTHOR: Shadows
DISTRIBUTION: E-mail at [e-mail] for permission, 'k?
DISCLAIMER: I am a slave to teh idiot box . . . slave to the idiot box . . .
the characters you see on teh idiot box do not belong to me. 'long to Joss &
Co. I stole them.


Twilight - Chapter 3

            "We can't help but feel that something has been lost"
             -Perfect, Smashing Pumpkins




    "Dammit, am I here again?"

    Xander had just opened his eyes to see he was in a white room, lying on a
white hospital bed and with Willow sitting next to him. The first that came to
his mind was that again, he was visiting good ol' Sunnydale General.

    "Nope," Willow said, looking up from the book she was reading. Xander twisted
his neck around to see the title of the book on the bind.

    "You're still at school, in the clinic. They were gonna cart you to the
hospital, but you woke up and started mumbling about Chinese food. You slept
until what, 8:00? They gave me a key to lock the door behind me once you were
able to be up and a-walkin' again." She looked to see Xander contorting his
neck in that strange direction. "Ew, stop doing that! You're going to snap
something."

    "Doesn't hurt," Xander mumbled good-naturedly, but he straightened his neck
away. Then he gave Willow a Look, the one that her father had perfected so
long ago. "'WiccaCraft', Willow? Is that a book your father would approve of
if he knew you were bringing it to school?"

    Willow's eyes widened, well, widely. "No, no! You wouldn't dare tell him!"
Then her face got a haughty little expression on her face that Xander's mother
had perfected so long ago. "I'll have you know, Alexander, that WitchCraft is
a recognized religion in the United States and if Stacey Carson can lug her
bible around I can carry a harmless little book of magick. Do you understand?"

    "Yes, Willow Algeria Rosenberg."

    "Ah!" Willow swatted Xander lightly on the arm when he spoke her middle name.
"Don't say it aloud! You promised you'd keep it a secret!" Around the time
they were in sixth grade geography, Xander found out her middle name was a
country in Africa, and he teased her mercilessly about it as only sixth grade
boys could. So even after Xander stopped with the teasing, she was forever
horrified of her middle name.

    "Who's to stop me?" Xander asked, his mouth twisting into a little evil
smile.

    "I don't know, Xander LaVerne Harris. Remind me again?" Willow knew she'd won
when Xander groaned loudly and bounced his head against the pillow. For some
reason, that reminded her of her responsibilities.

    "Do you feel up to walking out of here yet?" Willow asked, looking at
Xander's watch. "It's 8:05 and I want to get home so that I can watch
Charmed."

    "That show? About the witch sisters? Doesn't that come on at 9:00?" Xander
asked.

    Willow shrugged. "I want to be early. Last time, I missed a whole 5 minutes.
The entire teaser! I was, like, devastated,"

    "I know," Xander laughed. "You wouldn't stop complaining about it for days."

    "Five," Willow corrected him. "Five days. And I wasn't complaining-I was
whining. They're a little bit different from each other."

    Xander was silent for a while, just staring at the ceiling. "You know, you
better move," Willow told him, putting her book away. "If Principal Snyder
comes back and sees us not gone who knows what he's gonna do. I don't even
know why he gave me the key in the first place."

    "Maybe he's growing feelings in a container somewhere," Xander suggested, and
with the ease of a young, healthy eighteen-year-old boy, rose off the bed with
no apparent difficulty and stood up.

    Willow just looked at him, completely shocked. "Wow, power-sleep," she said
aloud, and the creases in her forehead deepening. Nobody healed like this
after being totally knocked out. Besides, although Xander had gotten a rosy-
hue to his skin, he didn't look completely recovered. But he sure did act it.

    "Well, I guess I learned something new about myself today," Xander said,
shrugging and adjusting his shirt.

    "What's that?" Willow asked. Xander gave her another Look.

    "It's private."

    "Fine," Willow said in a mock-hurt voice. She crossed her arms and pouted
like she used to when they were seven and he kept stealing her collection of
My Little Ponies. "Don't tell me. I just," she sniffed, "thought we were
friends."

    Xander grinned. "C'mon," he said, looking around to find his books. "Let's go
the Bronze."

    "No way, Xander," Willow said, picking up his books, which had been lying
next to hers, and handed them over. They walked side-by-side out of the
clinic. "No matter what your miracle recovery, you are in no way up to
Bronzing. You go home to your Mom, if she's there, and rest s'more, so that
you can be at full strength for the test in Language Arts tomorrow."

    "You make too much sense, Will!" Xander said. They stopped by the school's
front doors to wait while Willow pulled out the key. "I wish sometimes you
would just be normal."

    "Normal on the Hellmouth?" Willow asked, unlocking the doors and shoving the
keys into her overall's front pocket. "You're dreaming, Xander. Wake up."

- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- ----------------------------

    "Mom? Mom! I'm home!"

    Xander had taken off his shoes in the foyer and now his bare feet attracted
the cold from the cool tile floor, sending it shivering up his spine.
Strangely, he did not feel that cold. Instead, he felt hungry, and he wasn't
about to get in trouble for using his mother's credit card for food again.
Nope, that Mexican Villa deliveryman had taught him a lesson, but his mother
had also taught him a lesson, a 5,000-dollar lesson for harassing his female
customers.

    His mother wasn't answering, so that meant one of two things. The first
option was most likely, and although Xander disliked it, Lynda Harris did it
regularly. She would go out for dinner with a "client", not come back to the
house until 7 AM in the morning when Xander was getting ready for school, and
then making up a little excuse as to why she was late. Xander already knew the
truth: both he and Willow. Gosh, they knew everything about each other.

    The second thing was that his mother was upstairs with a cigarette and a
bottle of wine, two things Xander always dreaded she would go back to sooner
or later. And if indeed it were the second choice, Xander would be going
through a hell of a night.

    "Mom?" Xander wandered into the kitchen, and found it a mess as usual. Opened
cartons of food from the local German restaurant told him all he needed to
know. His mother was upstairs, passed out on the bed. Honestly, she said
repeatedly she would kick the habit, but she had a thing for German food, and
it always got her good.

    "Oh well, a growing boy's got to eat too," Xander said, going around the
kitchen table, He glanced to see if there were any messages on the
refrigerator door, and then yanked it open. It didn't open, so he looked down
to see the obstacle.

    The obstacle was his mother's body.

    Lynda lay on the ground much like a doll that had been carelessly thrown away
by an angry toddler. Her face was white as a sheet and contorted into an
expression of pure horror and shock. Her neck was twisted sideways and the
flesh was ripped at the base, but the two, fresh bite-marks were still
visible, dripping with unsucked blood.

    Oh god no. I'm dreaming. I'm dreaming!

    But no, he was awake, and his mother was dead. And he knew deep down inside
who had done it.

    "Angel," he hissed through gritted teeth. His hands balled up into fists, and
he visibly shook with anger. "I'll kill him."

- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- ----------------------------

    "Five vampires tonight I killed-can I go home already?"

    Buffy was perched atop a large headstone, and nearby Giles was making himself
and tools very comfortable on a bench. Buffy was sharpening her stake against
the rough edge of the tombstone, and slowly the stake was disappearing. Giles
looked on disapprovingly, and started to rifle through his bag for more
stakes.

    "First of all," Giles said, pulling out about five stakes and tossing one to
Buffy, "the correct way to phrase your sentence is 'I killed five vampires
tonight-may I go home?' and to answer your question, no you cannot. I will not
launch into another lecture on how this is your fate, duty, and likewise,
because I have repeated it so much that the mere thought of saying it once
again brings a sour taste to my mouth."

    "Bitter much?" Buffy asked.

    "Quite a long story."

    "Oh. Well, it's a long night." Buffy waited for him to explain himself, and
when he didn't, she sighed. She started to sharpen the stakes that Giles had
thrown to her. "I'm so bored."

    Something ran up from behind, and before Buffy could turn around and stake it
in the heart, in knocked her to the ground. Buffy, angry, did a double kick
and sent her assailant flying into the nearest tombstone. She got up quickly
and ran over to her attacker, stake held up high, ready to plunge into the
vampire's heart.

    She paused, though, and looked down confused. "Xander??" she asked, her eyes
widening. "What-?"

    She didn't have time to ask it, and Xander to answer it, because he was again
flew upon her in a rage, knocking her to the ground and this time around,
knocking the wind out of her. She looked up into his face, and she saw
hardened eyes full of hatred. Was he really this upset about what Angel had
done?

    "Xander, please, don't make me hurt you!" She held him a good ways above her,
but he grew angrier by the moment.

    "Don't make you hurt me? Don't make you hurt me! You already did, you b-h!"
He spit the last word out with anger and then punched her hard on the face,
with strength she didn't know he had.

    Then he was pulled off of her, and when the world came back into focus she
stood up and saw Xander thrashing wildly, held back only by Giles' strong
grip.

    "He did it! He did it!" Xander was screaming loudly, repeatedly. "Angel came
and killed my mother! You b-h! He's doing this to f-k with your mind, and
instead he's hurting me!" Xander stopped thrashing and his entire frame of
mind collapsed, leaving him sobbing like a baby into his hands. "He killed my
mother because you couldn't kill him. You lost someone you love and now you're
making it happen to everybody."

    Xander's words were like a slap in the face to her, although the punch was
significant imagery also. He looked up from sobbing into his hands and all the
anger and hatred were gone from his tear-filled eyes. All that was left was a
deep, infinite sadness that cut deeper into Buffy's soul than his previous
rage.

    Meanwhile, Giles stood there, in shock. Angel had claimed another victim.
"Did you call the police yet?" he asked quietly, looking at the ground.

    "No." Xander's eyes turned hard and accusing. "I came right here-blind with
rage." His voice choked up. "I had to punish the person responsible."

    "No, Xander, Buffy was not the one responsible. It was Angel. Remember that."

    Xander glared at the oblivious Watcher. "Keep imagining that if it makes you
sleep better, Giles. That doesn't cut it for me."

    Meanwhile, the accused just stood there, rubbing her swollen cheek. When had
Xander gotten so strong? "You should call the police," Buffy advised quietly.

    A single tear ran down Xander's already soaked cheek, but he cried no more.
"I'm going to. Right now. Even if it's just to get away from you." And with
that he stormed off, hands deep in pockets and with such an air around him
that not even mosquitoes would dare venture near him.

    Buffy watched him go, and then turned to Giles, who was still busy with the
ground. "You don't . . ." Buffy didn't know how quite to ask this question.
"You don't . . . think it's my fault too, do you?"

    Giles was silent, and the air around the two grew heavier. Then Giles turned
away from her and walked back to his bag, packing up all his things that he
had left lying around.

    "You can go home now," he told her quietly.

End of Chapter 3

------------------------------

End of buffyfic-digest V2 #382
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