Hellmouth Recidivism 3 - #413 Prince Charming
Title: Hellmouth Recidivism
Fandom: BtVS
Prompt: 413 - Prince Charming
Words: 1458
Warnings: Psychic convo stylistically expressed with a complete lack of punctuation
Rating: Teen
Summary: An older and wiser Future!Canon!Xander has his soul placed in the body of an alternate universe version of himself who was vamped on Valentine's day.
Xander couldn't feel anything. He strained his senses but there was nothing to see, nothing to hear. He assumed that he must be floating, but without the pressure of water's surface tension against his skin he could just as easily be ascending, flying or falling. There was no way to tell, no air movement or caress of buoying fluid. He just WAS. Suspended in nothing between one state of being and the next. Just as Willow's spell was supposed to achieve. When she had described it, he underestimated how absolutely mindbreakingly empty it all was.
He could move, but despite the lack of resistance it was slow and ponderous, like he was dreaming the movement. His fingertips skated over torn, bloody clothing and curled into the gaping wound in his chest. It didn't hurt and didn't seem to be bleeding, but the blood on his hand was still fresh, slippery smooth rather than tacky and drying as it should have been. He sluggishly pressed his fingers to his wrist and his neck and his chest. His heart wasn't beating. Everything was paused in the moment that the spell had struck, fixed between seconds.
Willow had done good work, entrapping everything that lay in it's path into the gate, stuck forever between realms. Never escaping Earth, but never quite in phase with it either. He though about Glory, who was, as far as he knew, still exiled to Earth and yet didn't have a physical body to manifest herself into. He thought of the Clan of mad Djinn the Council had painstakingly captured, locked into their various receptacles on a shelf in the vault. How much baggage must their dimension have, he wondered. Tiny little carry-on dimensional pockets containing a god here, a djinn there, a Master vampire stuck in a Hellmouth like a cork for 50 years, a city gone missing behind an impenetrable veil of magic, seal off your annexed territory now and get a free displaced Scooby.
He floated in perpetuity locked with just his thoughts for an aeon or two, he didn't bother counting. He thought about the understanding forged between the members of the Council in the wake of Buffy's sacrifice and the disaster of her subsequent resurrection. It destroyed whatever lingering bit of their collective innocence had survived the Hellmouth to vow to each other an oath of abandonment, a covenant acknowledging that they were all one day going to end up as collateral damage. They had known what would be on the line and they had each solemnly sworn. Each of the survivors of the Hellmouth was equally willing to surrender their lives for the cause and from the moment of their pact, on until their inevitable deaths, their sacrifices, whatever form they took, would be respected. For good or ill, no intervention or rescue would come. He knew the score going in, stay out of the spell trajectory or be trapped with the rest. There was nothing that could be done for him without freeing the war goddess, Ishtar, and that couldn't be allowed to happen. He was dead anyway. There was no walking away from a through and through chest wound at least three inches in diameter. Parts of his spine and ribcage must be pulverized and at least one of his lungs was now roughly as capable of holding air as a popped scrap of latex balloon.
Slowly he came back to himself and realized that the void around him had grown cold. Not in any physical sense, but that dark chill of danger and impending doom sensed with the hindbrain instincts rather than the corporeal faculties. His mind began playing tricks on him as he heard phantom whispers chanting in the void, just beyond the range of comprehension. Awareness prickled along his skin as he realized that something was watching him. He peered into the nothing around him, but predictably, saw only nothing. He felt it though, a great dark presence, circling him like a shark, unseen but for a gliding shadow in the water. It was angry and vast, bigger in magnitude than he could comprehend, stretching on in both time and space. There was only one thing that it could be.
::Ishtar:: He tried to speak out, but there was no air to carry his voice and he couldn't hear himself in the silence, merely feeling the vibrations. She had better senses that he did, and probably more of them as well. The circling stopped and a great pressure began crushing into him with a sense of oily darkness.
-You- The voice was dripped directly into his brain, pure understanding without the middle steps of communication. There was no sense of expression and message reception, just unadultered knowledge of what She wanted him to know and a sense that his inner voice was no longer private. -You insignificant maggot-
::That's me a real Prince Charming::
-What have you done-
::We locked you up You'll never break through::
-You think you have won You, damaged and powerless, the least of your cohort You are trapped here, abandoned to my wrath by your allies-
::It was worth it We stopped you and my friends are safe::
-Are they really- The voice was silent for an age, letting him mull over that cryptic statement for time uncounted. His attention faded after a while as he retreated into his mind, forgetting that Her presence was there, watching his wandering thoughts until She spoke again. -You ensnared only a handful of my highest priests How long do you think it will be before one of my legion slips a knife between the ribs of your witch and sacrifices her magic to me Whether she dies in my name or at the ravages of time she will fall, and her magic will fall with her Or perhaps with my gate barred they will simply rip the energy out of the human key and create another-
::Wills is strong enough and smart enough to make the spell stick indefinitely and no one on the Council will ever let anything happen to Dawn::
-Perhaps-
-Either way you will never see them again and that is the worst punishment you can imagine isn't it- A tendril of corruption stabbed directly into his worst fears, ripping them open to bleed. She was laying him bare to the void and picking through his pieces at her leisure. -I have an eternity to break free you will be mad long before that Swear loyalty to me and you may take succor in my power I will protect your mind until such a time as we break free-
::Thought I was a damaged maggot::
-If you prefer I can cause you suffering beyond measure- Blackened rage curdled the edges of his mind where the presence wormed through him. It made his soulmind itch and sting.
::You can try::
-You see yourself as a crusader a martyr- Her voice mused. -You are so full of bravado that you fear not damage to yourself but to the betters you battle alongside The banal little boy made more by his association with the champions of the realm If they fall you will be alone and return to nothing-
He could feel the great mind pressed against his churning over his character flaws. He could hide nothing from Her and had no defense against whatever She may do to him. Even his inner voice had left him and he couldn't think of anything to say. He had become aware of his flaws and insecurities over the years, and while they would never be comfortable, he had done his best to make peace with them.
-You are aware of your irrelevancy You will never bend while they are at risk and if broken your mind would be free of suffering The worst fate you can imagine is becoming a threat to those you love-
Xander shivered at the implications of that.
-I cannot advance or retreat but it is a simple thing to slip an insignificant worm such as yourself through the mesh of this net You are not of use to me I will make an example of you You will never see your home again but you will suffer with daily reminders of all you have lost-
Xander felt the weight of Her full intent seize his being and push. His senses were overwhelmed as he felt himself rushing through and past unknown forces, each having it's own pull that grabbed and grasped at him as he was thrust past. A sudden impact jarred his whole being and an overload of sensory input assaulted him. Light, sound, taste, touch and scent strained and overwhelmed him and his tired soul faded from consciousness.
Fandom: BtVS
Prompt: 413 - Prince Charming
Words: 1458
Warnings: Psychic convo stylistically expressed with a complete lack of punctuation
Rating: Teen
Summary: An older and wiser Future!Canon!Xander has his soul placed in the body of an alternate universe version of himself who was vamped on Valentine's day.
Xander couldn't feel anything. He strained his senses but there was nothing to see, nothing to hear. He assumed that he must be floating, but without the pressure of water's surface tension against his skin he could just as easily be ascending, flying or falling. There was no way to tell, no air movement or caress of buoying fluid. He just WAS. Suspended in nothing between one state of being and the next. Just as Willow's spell was supposed to achieve. When she had described it, he underestimated how absolutely mindbreakingly empty it all was.
He could move, but despite the lack of resistance it was slow and ponderous, like he was dreaming the movement. His fingertips skated over torn, bloody clothing and curled into the gaping wound in his chest. It didn't hurt and didn't seem to be bleeding, but the blood on his hand was still fresh, slippery smooth rather than tacky and drying as it should have been. He sluggishly pressed his fingers to his wrist and his neck and his chest. His heart wasn't beating. Everything was paused in the moment that the spell had struck, fixed between seconds.
Willow had done good work, entrapping everything that lay in it's path into the gate, stuck forever between realms. Never escaping Earth, but never quite in phase with it either. He though about Glory, who was, as far as he knew, still exiled to Earth and yet didn't have a physical body to manifest herself into. He thought of the Clan of mad Djinn the Council had painstakingly captured, locked into their various receptacles on a shelf in the vault. How much baggage must their dimension have, he wondered. Tiny little carry-on dimensional pockets containing a god here, a djinn there, a Master vampire stuck in a Hellmouth like a cork for 50 years, a city gone missing behind an impenetrable veil of magic, seal off your annexed territory now and get a free displaced Scooby.
He floated in perpetuity locked with just his thoughts for an aeon or two, he didn't bother counting. He thought about the understanding forged between the members of the Council in the wake of Buffy's sacrifice and the disaster of her subsequent resurrection. It destroyed whatever lingering bit of their collective innocence had survived the Hellmouth to vow to each other an oath of abandonment, a covenant acknowledging that they were all one day going to end up as collateral damage. They had known what would be on the line and they had each solemnly sworn. Each of the survivors of the Hellmouth was equally willing to surrender their lives for the cause and from the moment of their pact, on until their inevitable deaths, their sacrifices, whatever form they took, would be respected. For good or ill, no intervention or rescue would come. He knew the score going in, stay out of the spell trajectory or be trapped with the rest. There was nothing that could be done for him without freeing the war goddess, Ishtar, and that couldn't be allowed to happen. He was dead anyway. There was no walking away from a through and through chest wound at least three inches in diameter. Parts of his spine and ribcage must be pulverized and at least one of his lungs was now roughly as capable of holding air as a popped scrap of latex balloon.
Slowly he came back to himself and realized that the void around him had grown cold. Not in any physical sense, but that dark chill of danger and impending doom sensed with the hindbrain instincts rather than the corporeal faculties. His mind began playing tricks on him as he heard phantom whispers chanting in the void, just beyond the range of comprehension. Awareness prickled along his skin as he realized that something was watching him. He peered into the nothing around him, but predictably, saw only nothing. He felt it though, a great dark presence, circling him like a shark, unseen but for a gliding shadow in the water. It was angry and vast, bigger in magnitude than he could comprehend, stretching on in both time and space. There was only one thing that it could be.
::Ishtar:: He tried to speak out, but there was no air to carry his voice and he couldn't hear himself in the silence, merely feeling the vibrations. She had better senses that he did, and probably more of them as well. The circling stopped and a great pressure began crushing into him with a sense of oily darkness.
-You- The voice was dripped directly into his brain, pure understanding without the middle steps of communication. There was no sense of expression and message reception, just unadultered knowledge of what She wanted him to know and a sense that his inner voice was no longer private. -You insignificant maggot-
::That's me a real Prince Charming::
-What have you done-
::We locked you up You'll never break through::
-You think you have won You, damaged and powerless, the least of your cohort You are trapped here, abandoned to my wrath by your allies-
::It was worth it We stopped you and my friends are safe::
-Are they really- The voice was silent for an age, letting him mull over that cryptic statement for time uncounted. His attention faded after a while as he retreated into his mind, forgetting that Her presence was there, watching his wandering thoughts until She spoke again. -You ensnared only a handful of my highest priests How long do you think it will be before one of my legion slips a knife between the ribs of your witch and sacrifices her magic to me Whether she dies in my name or at the ravages of time she will fall, and her magic will fall with her Or perhaps with my gate barred they will simply rip the energy out of the human key and create another-
::Wills is strong enough and smart enough to make the spell stick indefinitely and no one on the Council will ever let anything happen to Dawn::
-Perhaps-
-Either way you will never see them again and that is the worst punishment you can imagine isn't it- A tendril of corruption stabbed directly into his worst fears, ripping them open to bleed. She was laying him bare to the void and picking through his pieces at her leisure. -I have an eternity to break free you will be mad long before that Swear loyalty to me and you may take succor in my power I will protect your mind until such a time as we break free-
::Thought I was a damaged maggot::
-If you prefer I can cause you suffering beyond measure- Blackened rage curdled the edges of his mind where the presence wormed through him. It made his soulmind itch and sting.
::You can try::
-You see yourself as a crusader a martyr- Her voice mused. -You are so full of bravado that you fear not damage to yourself but to the betters you battle alongside The banal little boy made more by his association with the champions of the realm If they fall you will be alone and return to nothing-
He could feel the great mind pressed against his churning over his character flaws. He could hide nothing from Her and had no defense against whatever She may do to him. Even his inner voice had left him and he couldn't think of anything to say. He had become aware of his flaws and insecurities over the years, and while they would never be comfortable, he had done his best to make peace with them.
-You are aware of your irrelevancy You will never bend while they are at risk and if broken your mind would be free of suffering The worst fate you can imagine is becoming a threat to those you love-
Xander shivered at the implications of that.
-I cannot advance or retreat but it is a simple thing to slip an insignificant worm such as yourself through the mesh of this net You are not of use to me I will make an example of you You will never see your home again but you will suffer with daily reminders of all you have lost-
Xander felt the weight of Her full intent seize his being and push. His senses were overwhelmed as he felt himself rushing through and past unknown forces, each having it's own pull that grabbed and grasped at him as he was thrust past. A sudden impact jarred his whole being and an overload of sensory input assaulted him. Light, sound, taste, touch and scent strained and overwhelmed him and his tired soul faded from consciousness.