Involuntary Bodies
by
Anna S
Part Four
June 30, 2001
"I'm sorry, Xander, I just can't do this anymore."
"And this is how you decide to tell me?"
He stood with one hand to his head, more or less keeping his skull
intact while everything inside threatened to blow. The magic shop was
stacked with cardboard boxes marked 'Fragile' and crates overflowing
with excelsior, half its contents swaddled in newspaper and packed
away, the other half organized in ready piles. The front window held
two signs, For Rent hanging next to a Going out of Business banner.
These had been his first clue that Anya was leaving.
She was holding a multi-armed statue with ram horns and her gaze
dropped to it. "No." Genuine upset twisted her face. "You weren't
supposed to come here. I had it all planned." She set the statue on a
counter and dug a piece of paper from a skirt pocket, saying as she
unfolded it, "I was going to break it to you gently. I wrote a script:
'ANYA: Xander, I need my freedom. It's time for me to find myself. I'll
be looking in Cleveland, where I'm relocating and opening a new shop
and possibly a web site. This is difficult for me to do, because Giles
isn't legally dead and didn't have the foresight to put the business in
my name.
XANDER: I understand.
ANYA: I love you.
XANDER: I love you too.
ANYA: I wish it didn't have to happen like this.'"
She stopped and looked up, as if interrupted by her own regret.
"There's more, where you tell me I'm the best lover you've ever had,
and I tell you how glad I am that you were here when I became human
again. And I promise to write, and then you take me in your arms and
tell me everything will work out." She took a few steps closer, lips
parting, gaze nailing him in a hopeful way. "Do you want to take me in
your arms now?"
"I can't tell you it'll work out," he said tightly. "You know I can't
do this by myself. What happens when Dawn goes back to school? Who's
going to look after Tara?"
"What about Wesley? You could move to L.A. I'm sure they have plenty of construction work there."
Xander felt the gulf between them widening along the fault line. She'd
turned away and resumed packing, and maybe guilt could keep her here a
week or two longer, if he worked on her, but that would mean
negotiating a deal, and he couldn't see far enough ahead to make the
effort worthwhile. It didn't matter when she left; the lurch she left
them in would be the same. And he couldn't blame her, not the way he
kept wanting to blame Buffy and the others. Over the last month Anya
had been tired and frazzled and increasingly irritable as she tried to
juggle shopwork and the kind of intense adult babysitting that would
tax even a professional nurse's nerves. What on the surface appeared to
be selfishness was really a stronger survival instinct than his own.
They weren't facing a fight they could win. This was the kind of fight
that wore you down.
Looking around the half-stripped shop again, with its empty shelves and
bare walls, he saw it in a new perspective, like a stage set being
dismantled. Something was ending, or already over. People could
change their lives, tear down what they'd built, leave Sunnydale. Is
this what he needed to do?
"I have to be out by the end of the weekend," she said, hands busy with
a rustle of distractions. "I'll be driving. This isn't goodbye...yet."
He nodded and said something inane and left. At home Dawn was watching
TV from a deep nest in the couch, and Tara was sitting on the floor in
pajamas, arranging crackers in irregular towers on the coffee table.
"How about pizza tonight?" he said.
"Cows think that's funny," Tara said, breaking off her work to give him an earnest frown. "You should ask for more than that."
"Extra cheese it is."
"I have too many fingers." Worriedly, she chewed the ragged edge of a nail. "Too many fingers to play the notes."
Dawn followed him to the kitchen and stood in the doorway while he
hunted for a flyer. "She's been upset all day. I think it's the
weather. She doesn't like rain."
The print on the pizza flyer blurred as Xander was reading; for a
moment, everything turned inside out, Dawn's voice becoming a buzz, the
rain outside growing into a roar. His damp clothes felt tight and
heavy, and a band of pain circled his head. He looked at Dawn and
blinked, seeing her for the first time. Fear kicked him in the gut.
"What happened? You have a black eye."
"I do?" She swung around and peered in the hall mirror. "Wicked cool!"
Turning her head this way and that for a better view, she said, "Tara
hit me--totally by accident. Do I look like a delinquent?" With a
dramatic sneer at her reflection: "I'm gonna mess you up."
It wasn't a large black eye, thank god, but the significance wasn't
lost on him. What if Dawn had fallen, hit her head? What if Tara
started a fire--by accident, on purpose, it didn't matter. This was
fucked.
"Listen," he said. "I need to tell you something." He made her come sit
with him at the table and took a deep breath, not meeting her eyes, as
he figured out what to say. "Anya's leaving." Well, that was simple.
And in no way was it that simple.
"Leaving. Like for a vacation?"
"No."
"Oh, great." The sharp sound she made didn't quite measure up to a
laugh; he could tell that Dawn was going for cynical indifference, but
the shell was so fragile it would crack with just one more degree of
pressure. "I guess you'll be leaving next. Everyone does sooner or
later."
"I'm not leaving you." He tried to take her hands, but she pulled them
away. "Dawn, I'm not leaving. Not unless you want me to." At her
betrayed, fearful expression he said quickly, "I mean, if you changed
your mind and wanted to live with your dad--"
"I don't want to live with that son of a bitch," she said, venomous and
tense as a little snake that's been cornered. He had a feeling she'd
never referred to him that way before, that she was crossing a line she
wouldn't be traveling back across. "I never want to see him again. All
he cares about is his new wife and their baby. He didn't even come to
mom's funeral."
He didn't remind her that her dad had been in the hospital at the
time--he couldn't even remember himself what for, and it was beside the
point. "Then I'll stay. If you want me to."
Dawn didn't say anything; didn't have to. Tears lined her eyes. He
reached for her hand again and this time she let him. Her nearest hand
was a fist on the table and he wrapped his palm around it. In the
rigid, miserable lines of her body, he caught hints of future
possibilities that his mind spun into horror stories: traumatized by
loss, she'd rebel, growing angrier and angrier, until one day she'd
just give up hope and run away, become a hooker, a junkie, la femme
assassin. Or--and how tragic that this was the most realistic fear--a
vampire.
"Things are going to work out," he said, and he prayed it wasn't a lie.
Part Five
Walking the streets of Sunnydale at night alone, with Buffy and Willow
and Giles far out of reach, made Xander realize how much he knew about
his town that he didn't want to know, and how very insane he'd been all
those times he'd gone zipping around by himself in the past, as if just
being pals with the slayer was a good-luck charm. Even Harmony would
scare the bejeezus out of him now.
The rain had stopped and at first the sky was a solid greyish-pink from
street lights, but as he moved further downtown, the shadowy spaces
between working lights grew wider. His sneakers crunched on broken
glass, some from bulbs, some from bottles. From the accumulation of
litter, it looked as if no one had swept the streets in weeks. Some
stores had boarded windows, others were defaced with graffiti, and
several electric signs showed damage.
"Welcome to the other Bedford Falls," he murmured to himself, kicking
an intact beer bottle to see how far it would go. It shot down the
sidewalk a few yards then hit a crack to spin and roll. He was watching
it when a shiny boot came out of the shadows and settled on it,
stopping the motion.
The boot attached to a leg in torn fishnets, and the leg stretched up
and up to presumably meet a handful of girl bits barely hidden by the
skirt of the sleaziest dress he'd seen outside the Oscars.
"Looking for a friend?" the woman asked.
Xander's feet slowed but brought him near enough to see her clearly
when she stepped out from the cover of a tree. She wasn't a woman, just
a girl, and she wasn't even that, of course. Her eyes should have been
cloudy with drugs or boredom, but were bright and watchful instead,
surrounded by blue raccoon blushes of eye shadow. By this point, she
had to be aware of his skittering heartbeat, though she might put it
down to excitement rather than fear.
"Not a new friend. Sorry." He gave her his best boyish smile, pausing in front of her with hands in pockets.
"Hey, I know you," she said.
He blinked, retuning his scrutiny and searching his memory. He had to
broaden the context pretty far before he found a match. "Jordan," he
said. "You went--you, ah, go to school with Dawn."
"Mmm. Dawnie." A smile cracked across the frozen fifteen-year-old face. "How is she? Haven't seen her around in a while."
"Maybe she hasn't been where you've been." He took any sting from the remark with his own false smile.
"I should drop by and see her." Jordan curled her tongue behind her
teeth and cocked her weight onto one hip, her gaze measuring him from
the neck down before yo-yoing back up to his jugular.
His hand flashed from his pocket and drove the stake through her chest
at the same moment her face shifted. "I don't think so," he said, while
her dust collapsed to the grass. It took him a moment to steady his
breathing back out. He remembered the job as easier; the recovery time
shorter. Too long since his last slay, maybe.
Or maybe you forgot how much it fucking sucks to kill school kids.
Shake it off, he told himself moodily, and headed through the cemetery
gates. Horror central, hello. But nothing stirred among the graves as
he passed, and he made it to Spike's crypt without another
encounter.
Inside, there were more cobwebs than he remembered, more dust of the
non-corpse kind, more darkness and silence. "Hello?" he called, kicking
aside old bottles as he moved further in. Did no one in this town
recycle? "Spike!"
Nothing answered him, and he picked his way carefully downstairs. He
hadn't thought to bring a flashlight--some Hardy Boy he'd make--and the
darkness rose to meet him like cold water. Only when his eyesight
adjusted was he able to make anything out. On the far side of the
cavern a weak light burned and he headed in that direction, interrupted
only by a spectacular trip over something he couldn't see.
"Damn it!"
The thing didn't groan, move, or bite, whatever it was, and he picked
himself up, wincing at the bang to his knee. He was close enough to the
light now to see that it was a lantern, turned low and covered by a
scarf. It sat on a table next to a bed, and in the bed was a lump of
blankets, and in the lump was Spike, curled on his side with his face
away from the light. A lot of things were obvious even at a single
glance: that he was barely eating, that he rarely moved, that he wasn't
taking care of himself. The shape of one shoulder blade cast a
prominent angle through a thin grey tee-shirt that Xander seemed to
remember him wearing when he'd last left Buffy's. Dirty roots had grown
through the wheat of his hair.
Xander looked at the bedside table, picked up a crumpled cigarette
package and fingered it. It was dusty and empty. A whiskey bottle stood
by the lantern, just as dusty but nearly full--that was even more
disturbing. Next to it was a blood pack whose contents had congealed
far too long ago. It was covering a piece of paper and he nudged it
aside to read. Spike, I'll be back Tuesday. More blood in the fridge.
Eat, okay? Yours, Clem.
Stepping back a pace, Xander nearly tripped again over a clutch of
cloth. He tried to kick it away, then bent down to dislodge it before
straightening slowly with the thing in his hands. It was Spike's old
duster, now slashed to ribbons. Somehow he didn't think a demon had
done that; except the one who had a right to.
He laid the duster on the end of the bed and hesitated, then gave
Spike's shoulder a little shove. "Spike...hey. Time to wake up."
The vampire didn't move or make a sound, and Xander, wondering if he
might actually be in a coma, pulled him onto his back. It was like
detaching a cicada skin from a tree; he came rolling lightly as if he
were empty, all shell, no meat. His eyes were closed; his face thin
enough that he almost looked like someone else, someone Xander had
never met.
"Spike," he repeated, sitting on the edge of the bed. A beetle scuttled
from under the blankets and along the mattress; he ignored it, focused
on the sharpness of cheek and collar bones, the outline of skull at the
temples, the tiny dry flecks of blood around Spike's lips from whenever
he last drank.
"You in there?" he asked, easing back one eyelid, then jumping when
both eyes came open, dark pools without recognition. "Remember me?
Xander. Xander Harris." Nothing. "Monkey Boy?" he hazarded helpfully.
That got him a blink, and slowly awareness filtered back into Spike's
face. He looked at Xander without enthusiasm; he looked a hundred
years' worth of tired.
"What do you want?"
His voice was so low and parched Xander could barely make out the
words, and by sickbed instinct he looked around for water, but there
was only the whiskey. He poured some into a dirty but not yet sentient
glass and tried to give it to Spike, who didn't exert himself to take
it, so Xander nudged the glass against his lips. The other man's eyes
sparked into a weak glare--proof that the pilot light was on,
anyway--then he sipped. A frown etched his brow; Xander suspected this
was as much effort as he'd made in weeks. When Spike finished drinking,
he let his head fall back with eyes shut.
"I used to think I was a nice guy," Xander said. Spike opened his eyes
again with what might have been a shadow of interest. "Now, not so
much. I haven't cared enough to find out how you've been. When Dawn
talked about you, I killed every conversation dead." A flicker of
something crossed the vampire's face. "Now I," he took a ragged breath,
"I'm here looking for favors. I need your help."
All interest drained away. "Need somethin' killed," he said, resigned, his words less than a question.
"I need you to come live with us."
Wan as a ghost against his pillow, Spike frowned up at him for several
passing ticks. "Sorry," he finally muttered. "Ears going funny. Thought
you said you needed me to come live with you."
"Anya's leaving. I need someone to look after Tara and Dawn. I need..."
Fumbling for honesty, Xander looked briefly away, unused to talking to
Spike like a person. "I need somebody to keep me from going off the
deep end."
"And where do you think I am?" The words rolled out hollow as smoke rings.
After a moment considering him, Xander reached out and took one of
Spike's hands. "I'll help you out," he said. "If you help me."
Spike didn't answer right away, but then his hand tightened and he let
Xander tug him upright. His skin was cold, his shirt loose, his hair a
mess. Head bent, he made it to the edge of the mattress and then sighed
and said, "I'm cracked, you know. Like a stopped watch. That's what it
is, being dead. The only time I keep is what I've stolen. All their
voices, tick, talk." A pause. "I'm a monster. I have dreams that show
me that now...red and screaming."
"I think I'd be worried if you didn't."
"Good point."
"Just consider it your eligibility requirement." At Spike's confused
look, Xander shook the hand he was still holding and offered a crooked
smile. "Congratulations. You're now an official member of the Freaks
and Geeks Club."
Part Six
July 6, 2001
For some reason there was a dust pan, a broom, and a box of cookies on
the porch. Xander picked them up as he entered the house. All the rooms
downstairs were already dark except for the kitchen, though as he moved
down the hall he could hear the singing of pipes overhead that meant
someone was in the shower, probably Dawn, who seemed to live there
lately.
Reaching the kitchen was a relief Xander didn't question and only
noticed as a slight relaxation in his muscles. His days were still
long, but he wasn't the only competent adult in the house anymore; when
he pulled in it was like making safe harbor and he could switch off
some of the hyper-vigilant systems he used to keep running non-stop.
Sometimes he even felt like his old self for ten, fifteen seconds at a
time.
"Hi, honey, I'm home."
Spike's eyes went immediately to the things Xander carried and the
guilt that was never far off settled in his features. "Sorry," he said.
He pushed the rough word out as if rubbing a lemon across his own
bleeding wrist. "I'd've got those."
"No worries." Xander had stopped telling Spike not to apologize--for
existing, for not breathing, for decades of murder, for dropping a
glass of orange juice. Spike clearly had a hard time separating it all,
and letting him apologize seemed kinder. "Should I even ask?"
Spike stashed the broom and dustpan in the cupboard. "Just some vamps.
Pretending to raise money for--what was it--oh, band camp. Can you
believe the brass?" His brows drew tight and he cocked his head in
reflection. "Town's getting weird." The box of cookies thunked into the
trash can as if to punctuate this judgment.
A week ago hearing about this would have freaked him out; a week ago it
would have been Dawn answering the door. But now Xander merely nodded
and decided no comment could really do the incident justice. He glanced
at the open cookbook on the counter, took in the smears of oil and
curls of carrot skin and haphazard mess of knives, and guessed
hopefully, "Chow mein?"
"Yeah." Spike picked up the pot lid and they both studied the contents. "Meant to put that in the fridge."
Deciding against an anecdote about Willow's germ-phobic two-hour rule,
Xander said, "Hey, I'm a guy. As long as it doesn't get up and run from
my fork, I'll eat it. I've never understood the point of putting
something in a little box in the fridge to get cold, if you're just
going to take it back out and reheat the whole thing. And then you have
to wash the box. Stop the madness, I say."
He got himself a plate, maneuvering around Spike, who maneuvered back
as he cleaned off the counter. Watching a vampire put dishes in the
dishwasher still ranked as one of the novelties of Xander's life.
Actually, there were a lot of changes to get used to, and an element of
strangeness running like a thread through all of them. Not long after
Spike's arrival, Xander had offered the other man some of his less
frequently worn clothes. Old Spike would have refused with a sneer; new
Spike accepted as if it were his duty. Tonight, the vampire was wearing
an old striped Oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up over his own
threadbare blue jeans. Take it further: the dead demon walking around
in the slayer's kitchen was wearing the shirt Xander's grandmother had
given him four years ago for his birthday. With his newly shiny hair,
he and the blue shirt made a walking hallucination. Xander had taken
some comfort from the visible evidence of soul Spike had when
found--his neglected hair had said, here's someone too scrambled to be
dangerous--but one of Dawn's first welcoming gestures had been to cut
and dye him back into shape. Now, blood-fed and cleaned up, he looked
more like his old self. His old unchipped self, as experiments had
confirmed.
On the other hand, he didn't act like it. So far Xander hadn't been
given any reason to regret opening his home to a fiend of former
darkness. He watched from the corner of his eye as Spike read the
instructions on the dish detergent box with earnest intensity before
carefully filling the dispenser.
I make the repentant killer do dishes, Xander thought. With this level
of atonement, he should reach redemption in about ten thousand million
years.
"How was your day?" he heard himself ask unironically.
Head lifting like a startled deer's, Spike looked at him. "Oh...all
right." He paused, apparently giving the question additional thought.
"Did laundry. Cleaned the bath. Watched Trading Spaces with the girl.
Made her some paper dolls."
Xander tried to picture this. A grand failure of imagination blurred
the visual. He didn't feel guilty about the deal he'd roped Spike into,
not exactly, but even with a vampiric past taken into account,
gratitude was inadequate when measured against the job description.
With both Dawn and himself wage-earning to the best of their abilities,
Spike was left housebound to look after Tara all day, his limits
defined by closed curtains on every side. Personally, Xander was
certain he'd go bugfuck fast in a situation like that, but Spike seemed
to be settling in.
Upstairs, Tara's room was dark and she was sleeping, but Dawn's door
showed a crack of light, and he knocked. There was a creak of mattress
springs and an unidentifiable rustle that reminded him of his own hasty
attempts to conceal contraband before parental visits.
"Hold on," Dawn called. "I'm--I'm indecent." A half minute or so passed
before she opened the door. "Hey," she said brightly, stepping back to
let him in. "What's up?"
"Young ladies past midnight."
"Uh huh. Good one." Her cheerful lack of respect was strangely
reassuring. She hopped back to her bed, bounced her ass down, and
crossed her legs.
"Everything going okay?" He'd taken to checking in with her each night,
and they had a kind of understanding, that one question asking a dozen
other unspoken ones.
"Yeah. Highly copacetic." She maintained a sunny face, but he was
beginning to get the tickle that told him something was off. And of
course, something was. She had no mother, no father, no sister, and
behind her teenage façade, she was a newborn, a ball of energy
pulled together by monks and shaped into a girl.
Xander stuck his hands in his pockets and leaned against the door,
feeling awkward but holding her eyes directly. "Dawn, you know if you
want to talk about anything, you can."
"I know." Too quick, too easy.
"No," he said, head lowering a little to plow himself deeper. "Look.
I'm not being Father Knows Best guy here. We're all we've got. We're
like the people who get washed up on a desert island after a shipwreck.
If we don't pull together, we're just setting up our own little forts
on opposite corners and talking to monkeys."
"Who are the monkeys?" Dawn asked.
"What?" He couldn't tell if she was being serious, but her face had lost its luster.
"This is an analogy, right? So who are the monkeys?"
"I don't know," he said, shaking his head once. "Maybe all the people
who'd lock us up if we started talking about demons and portals and
hell-gods."
Dawn picked at a fluorescent band-aid on her ankle in a moody way. "So can I talk to you about girl stuff?"
Please, dear god, no, he thought, trying to recollect what he knew about tampons. "Uh, sure."
"I don't have any girl stuff to talk about right now," she said, mild and smooth as butter. "But if I do I'll come to you."
Xander had a sinking feeling he'd been played. "Okay. That's...good..."
He moved to go, but a sharp turn in conversation derailed him.
"What do you think Buffy's doing right now?" A head tilt. "Do you think
she's watching us? Like, sitting on a cloud in one of those glowy white
gowns, just watching us struggle down here like little ants?"
He took a steadying breath. "I don't know. She might not have time."
God, that sounded shitty, but what was worse--believing that someone
watched you and did nothing to help, or believing that she didn't watch
at all? "I mean, she's probably busy saving people--"
"Saving other people," Dawn said, her voice hard and merciless.
"Dawn, she loves you--no matter where she is. She had to go because she
was called. She'd never have left you otherwise. Not in a million
years."
He wasn't sure what the truth was, so he might not even be lying.
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