Cost Benefit Analyzing 4/5

[lit_gal]

Title: Cost Benefit Analyzing
Genre: Vague Slash, Angst
Warning: Nothing specific, but references to torture.
Pairing: Angelus/Xander (and not in the fuzzy, warm Angelusy way)
Rating: Hard R
Part: Four of Five

Summary: Long after the fall of the partners in LA and the closing of the Sunnydale Hellmouth, Xander wakes up to find himself in the hands of a man determined to change the balance of power... and willing to use Xander as the pawn he needs to get his way.

Part One: HERE

Part Two: HERE



"Well fuck," Xander breathed as he looked around the Gothic room and the familiar shelves. At least this time he was awake, but he really was going to nominate Adelle for the Willow award for wonky magic. The thought of Willow sent a sharp stab of regret and pain through him, but the fear that quickly followed pushed that to the side. Yep, he was screwed. Riley and his team had the potion for the return trip, and the minute this old guy saw him, Xander was going to have a one-way ticket back to Angelus' bedroom, which was one place Xander definitely never wanted to see again. He could feel his skin grow cold at the thought of Angelus, so the actual presence of Angelus was a big old 'no' in his book.

Eyeing the shelves, Xander quickly decided that he couldn't tell a desouling potion from a portal potion and better safe than turned into something slimy and soulless. So, if he couldn't escape, he needed a weapon. Xander went to the tall armoire and pulled it open. He'd braced himself for a lot of things: bodies, pieces of bodies, ancient weaponry. A neat kitchen with a window overlooking a purplish-blue sky would not have been one of his guesses.

"Oh. Hey." Xander looked right and the old man was standing there with a giant sandwich, and at that point, Xander was really pretty sure that he had either developed a severe concussion or breathed in hallucinogenic demon spores. The old man slowly put the sandwich down on a wooden table that sat in the middle of the kitchen, and that prompted Xander into movement. He darted forward and grabbed a knife from the far counter.

"Stay away. You so much as touch a vial, and I'll use this," Xander said as he waved the dirty butcher knife, and he was even a good ninety percent sure he meant it.

"Xander," the old man said softly, and then double doors came slamming open. Angelus was there, his long hair pulled back into a ponytail, and when did Angelus have time to grow a ponytail, not that Xander cared about ponytails because he was more about panicking. He was caught somewhere between wanting to kneel and wanting to run like hell and his brain couldn't get his legs to do either one.

"What's going--" Angelus spotted Xander and stopped. His eyes scanned the kitchen, the open door to the dungeon room, the sandwich sitting on the counter.

"We have a visitor," the old man said with some humor, and Xander was up to being ninety-five percent sure he'd stab the guy.

"Xander," Angelus said softly, only Angelus didn't do soft. Angelus did pain and humiliation and even did mind-blowingly good sex when he was more into humiliation than pain, but Angelus did not do soft.

Xander gripped the knife harder and tried to negotiate some sort of deal with his legs for partial custody of the muscles, but they were pretty much locked in place. The old man spoke quietly. "Xander, this isn't Angelus, this is Angel. You know as much as you hate Angel that he'd never hurt you."

At the same time the old man was talking, the vampire slowly slid forward, and Xander brought his knife up. Of course, a knife against a vampire wasn't really much of a fight, especially when the vamp was all supercharged, only this vamp might not be supercharged because this vamp wasn't looking like Angel or Angelus. And Xander was fairly sure his brain was just going to break. He quickly reversed his hold on the knife and pointed it at his own throat. Okay, if he had to do this, this was going to hurt like a son-of-a-bitch.

Angel froze. "Xander," he said in that desperate tone that was all soulboy.

The word finally broke the hold panic had over Xander's legs, and he turned and bolted for the door, the knife tightly clutched in his hand as he raced out into the sunshine, into safety, only the sunshine might not be safe with the old man back there.

His heart pounding with fear and with exertion, Xander dashed past neat houses with picket fences, all with perfect paint jobs. He didn't see a single kid or a face at the window or even a stray dog. Instead, he raced down a street that was somehow just wrong. At the end of the street, a circle street went off in four directions, and Xander randomly chose right and started at a more steady trot, still ready to panic at the first sign of old guy, but until dark fell, he should be fairly safe.

And now Xander started thinking about defenses, about finding help, about finding someone who knew enough to send him home or holing up until Adelle could send Riley and reinforcements. But this whole town was setting off Xander's wiggins dial. Bracing himself for monsters behind bushes, Xander detoured into one of the yards. The tulips were lined up and all perfectly blooming without a sign of bug and if that wasn't a sign of evil, Xander didn't know what was. With a growing certainty that he was screwed no matter what he did, Xander reached out to ring the bell. Inside, nothing happened. Xander couldn't even hear the doorbell.

Step two was knocking, and by the time no one answered that, Xander felt like the damsel from pretty much any standard horror movie because he had an overwhelming urge to try the doorknob. Calling himself stupid using as many synonyms as he could, Xander swung the door open and checked inside.

The whole perfect theme kept right on going inside. There was no dust, the living room looked like the jacket of a book for decorating with ferns. Xander slammed the door and turned his back before he did something really stupid like searching the house and finding bodies. Just wanting to get away from town now, Xander started trotting down the road, passing perfect house after perfect house until finally the perfection started slipping in little ways. On one house, the windows were a little too small. On another house, the front door was missing, and yes, this would be where Leave it to Beaver met the Twilight Zone.

Xander stopped in the middle of the road as it dead ended into a field with hip-tall grasses swaying, their movement broken at perfect intervals by white dots sticking up through the spears of grass. Wading into the field, Xander pushed the grasses aside to reach the first dot which turned out to be a neat cross. The crosspiece read Addy Arsham-1966 - 2051.

Okay, if he was Giles, this so would mean something important and meaningful. For Xander, this just was one more weird on top of way too much weird. Turning his back on the neglected graveyard, he eyed the houses and tried to decide where to hole up for a while.

"Harris?" a voice, called, and the sight of Spike jogging down the road, his white hair gleaming in the sun was just way, way too much. Xander sat down right in the middle of the field and waited as Spike came closer, his duster flying like a cape, although saying that would probably earn him a slap upside the back of the head.

"Harris? You hurt?" Spike asked as he finally reached Xander and started a borderline inappropriate frisking as he checked for broken bones. Xander's first reaction was cold terror, and Spike rocked back on his heels and stared at Xander.

"Bloody hell, Harris, just checking for broken bones. Wot? You don't trust me now?" he asked, and it was just too normal. It was normal like they were back in his parents' basement, but he hadn't been that Xander for a long time. The insult still came to his lips quick enough.

"Like I trust the bubonic plague," Xander blurted.

Rather than being insulted, Spike smirked. "Yeah, not like I trust you, either, mate, not unless I'm looking for someone to muck up a spell; you're a treat in that department."

"You're dead," Xander said softly, afraid that if he looked away, Spike would turn to smoke and one more piece of his world would vanish.

"Blue did something to shove us through into some bloody void. I have to assume she had a plan other than trapping us, but bein' a god and all, she wasn't really big on sharing. Angel just yanked me out."

"Angel," Xander trembled as he remembered how the old man had pulled the souled one out of the void. He tightened his grip on the knife he suddenly remembered he had in his hand. "The old man took his soul out and turned him against the slayers. Everyone's dead. Buffy…" Xander swallowed. "Willow." Xander felt the tears started, and he waited for the jab and jokes, but instead a hand caught him by the back of the neck. Struggling, he threw himself backwards and brought the knife up, but strong fingers captured his wrist, holding it safely to the side while Xander was pulled close, and for a second, the fear nearly overwhelmed Xander, but this wasn't Angelus. This was smoke and leather and sharp bony angles. Eventually Xander gave in and sobbed for long minutes, clutching Spike's t-shirt in one hand.

"You bloody bastard, do ya think I can't smell ya?" Spike's voice was soft but angry, and Xander stiffened in Spike's arms.

"It's a long story." The voice was little more than a whisper, but Xander froze, his lungs unable to even pull air in. He hated losing himself to the fear, to the darkness that rose like a bubble in him when he least expected it. Riley kept telling him it was normal, but it wasn't. It was broken. Xander reached out and grabbed Spike's coat, the leather a familiar part of his old world. These arms had held him when Caleb had poked his eye out.

"What the bloody hell is going on?" Spike demanded, but Xander ignored that, he focused on trying to hide his face. Spike was a vampire. Maybe Spike could protect him.

"Spike," Angelus sighed. Only that wasn't Angelus, that was Angel. Either way, the sound sent a tremor through Xander.

"Bloody fuck, Xand?" Spike asked, and Xander nodded.

"It is you, isn't it?"

Okay, that didn't make sense. Xander looked up, but Spike wasn't looking at him, Spike was looking down the street. Xander twisted so he could see what Spike was looking at. Angel stood with his arms crossed over his chest. His clothes were simple, and the shirt made out of rough cloth. His hair was too long, and pulled back into a ponytail that made Xander think about Highlander. Behind him, the old man stood.

"Peaches, you want to explain what exactly you've fucked up this time?" Spike asked. "Or was it Red? Seems like the boy's just the bloody center of every fucking spell gone wrong in the universe, don't it?"

Xander pushed himself away from Spike, and Spike let him go, rocking back on his heels as he tilted his head and studied Xander. "Pet?"

It was like when Faith refused to call him 'boy toy.' It was proof that he was wrong because Spike didn't call him 'pet.' Spike called him 'wanker' and 'git' and if he was in a good mood and Xander hadn't tripped him recently, 'mate.' The single word made Xander scramble to his feet.

"Wait, you aren't burning," Xander suddenly pointed out. Spike rolled his eyes, and Xander actually preferred that… that was normal.

"Not our dimension, is it then?" Spike asked as he studied the purplish sky.

"It's a refuge,"Angel said softly.

"Not bad." Spike finally found a pack of cigarettes and pulled one out.

"The last of humanity," the old man said, like that made any sense, which it didn't.

"So, what's up with the split personality here, mate?" Spike asked as he waggled his cigarette between Xander to the old man.

Xander inched closer as the old man gave a low chuckle that made the hairs raise on Xander's neck. "Good to know someone still recognizes me."

"Can't say I did right away, mate, but the smell doesn't lie."

"Okay, time for all insane vamps to start speaking English," Xander interrupted, and the panic attack had faded, leaving embarrassment and more than a little anger behind.

Spike rolled his eyes and nodded toward the old man. "That's you, ya git. Mind you, it's you with about eighty years and a whole lot of ugly on top, but it's you."

The old man smiled wryly. "Hey, not all of us have the eternal youth thing vampires have going. Come on, Xander, you know I look like a cross between Uncle Max and a sharpei."

The minute the old man said it, Xander could see the similarities: the shape of the eyes, the gray curls of hair, the caterpillar eyebrows. "Oh fuck." Xander grabbed for something and ended up catching Spike's arm as reality shifted beneath him. Spike cocked his head and gave Xander a look that made it clear Spike was questioning Xander's sanity, which was fair since Xander was questioning Xander's sanity.

"Xander, we need to go back to the house," Angel said, and Xander had heard that tone, that 'don't fuck with me tone' too much. That was the tone that meant that Xander had to obey or Angelus would pull some girl into the room crying and begging and kill her slow while telling her how Xander could have saved her, how Xander could have given her a quick death if he wasn't so stubborn or so stupid or so selfish. Xander could feel his legs respond, and he moved a half step closer even as his brain screamed and ran in circles like a monkey on crack. Yep, so much with the not-sane.

"Peaches, mind telling me why the pup is ready to have a heart attack and why he smells like you?" Spike carefully turned, one hand still holding one of Xander's wrists as he turned most of his attention on Angel.

Angel sighed. "It's a long story."

"You still got that soul tacked on tight?"

Angel answered "Yes" at the same time that Xander gave a firm "No."

The old man stepped forward and put a hand on Angel's arm, a way too familiar hand. Xander felt nausea rise up and challenge fear as the dominant emotion. "We're from the future... or maybe *a* future is a better way of putting it. Ahn had a way of explaining all these dimensions, the could be's and might have's and worlds without shrimp." The old man closed his eyes for a second as though in pain.

"And future me thought that past me needed a good raping by Angelus? Okay, why did no one lock me in a little cell when I lost my mind?" Xander demanded, intentionally vetoing the crack monkey in his brain who wanted him to fall to the ground and start shaking. Spike let him go and shifted into a stance Xander had seen a thousand times, usually right before some fledge got his head ripped off. The fact that Angel was the center of Spike's focus made Xander feel a whole lot better.

Angel got a sour expression on his face. "I never wanted you hurt. The spell... it connects me with your version of Angel, and I can't say how sorry I am," Angel seemed to shrink as he backed up. But the old man was there, shaking his head.

"And I felt everything you went through, and it isn't a drop in the bucket compared to the future if we didn't turn Angelus loose," he argued.

"Drop in the bucket?" Xander temporarily lost words as he tried to find a way to express just how angry he was about that. "Drop? Bucket? Buffy's dead!" he finally screamed. "Angelus killed her in front of me. And Willow is dead and Kennedy and the slayers. And Giles..." Xander gasped. Giles wasn't supposed to ever die. Giles was supposed to always show up out of nowhere and fix things, that was Giles' job. Hot tears burned, and Xander couldn't even remember the last time he'd cried.

"What the fuck is going on?" Spike demanded as he turned back toward the other two, a deadly calm over him, and the old man stepped in front of Angel, which was funny considering that no way could Xander, much less a geriatric version of Xander, protect anyone from Spike.

"We lost the world," the old man offered as he leaned back into Angel's body, and Angel's hand came up to his shoulder, and now Xander was fairly sure he was going to be sick.

"Lost?" Spike asked, but from the expression on his face, Spike was nearly as squicked by the Angel and geriatric Xander show.

The old man sighed. "When I gave Buffy CPR, we unbalanced the scales. Evil used that opening to try and tempt Angel to the dark side of the force, only Angel didn't go, and everything was balanced again. When we brought Buffy back, we unbalanced the world enough to let the First through, and a good time was not had by all. So I'm really not sure what we were thinking when we activated hundreds of slayers and opened hundreds of doors for evil to keep coming through. I'm not sure we were thinking at all."

Angel shook his head. "It wasn't just you. The universe might have righted itself after a few hard years, but then we took out the senior partners. Good had hundreds of new champions and evil lost three of the most powerful champions. The universe was too unbalanced."

"Are we going to have this fight again?" the old Xander asked with some fondness.

"If you try to take all the responsibility, yes," Angel immediately answered, and that was just a wrong, wrong expression for Angel's face when he was looking at Xander, especially an old and gross Xander. That was a creepily soft expression that made Xander think of the way Giles used to look at Jenny with this cross between affection and annoyance.

"Bloody hell, you mean…" Spike straightened up, his cigarette hanging forgotten from one hand.

"We won the battle and that lost us the war," Angel said wryly. "All my plans for fixing the world just sent it crashing down. I think the word is hubris, and I have had a few years to think about just how badly my hubris affected the universe."

Old gross Xander spoke, his voice uneven. "We all had the same arrogance. Me and Willow pulled Buffy out of heaven, and that is where everything started changing." He closed his eyes, and Angel tugged him close and held him tight, and that was just so disturbo. Eventually the old man started again. "We lost Buffy and Dawn first. They were grabbed in Italy, and what happened to them..." Old Xander shook his head. "They shouldn't have died that way. They shouldn't have seen each other suffer that way." Angel's arms tightened around Xander's stomach, but old Xander looked over at Xander. "I saw your Buffy die through your eyes, and I'd take every rape, every beating and more just to give my Buffy that ending. But I can't. We're trying to fix things, but time is like a river. We can divert most of the energy to your universe so that most Buffys get to die quickly, but we can never divert all the energy. My Buffy will always live for so much longer than she should have. She--" the old man stopped.

Angel took over the story. "Willow tried to harness white magic to save Buffy and Dawn. She gathered her power, but the minute she had all the white magic concentrated in her own body, thousands of miles away, the monks in Tibet lost control of their hellmouth. No prophesies or warnings or mastermind, just a hellmouth suddenly gaping and thousands of demons flowing through. Willow felt the hellmouth go, and she tried to close it, but she was sucked into it."

Xander stopped breathing. He wasn't sure when he'd started believing these two, but he did. "Willow's in hell?"

The old man shook his head. "Willow's stuck like a cork in a bottle... always in pain, always growing older, always hearing Tara and Adelle, but never able to join them. She says that she can see her freedom coming, but she may be there a thousand years before the last human on earth dies and the dimension falls. There are plenty of humans on farms or in kennels. We couldn't save them... we couldn't save hardly any of them." The old man turned his head and laid his cheek on Angel's chest.

Angel reached up and traced circles on the old man's back. "A whole clan of Verka were chasing Faith. She led them in circles until she was surrounded, and then she blew up a gas station. She took out herself, the entire clan and half a city block. Andrew was eaten alive from the inside by Uita bugs. Riley was publicly drawn and quartered along with most of the other soldiers the demons could catch, which is why the government collapsed fairly quickly. Dawn..." Angel stopped for a heavy second. "Dawn died not long after Buffy. Spike, you were bringing newly activated slayers to the council house when you were attacked. You took on Dracula and his brides and bought them time to get away."

"But I didn't win," Spike said thoughtfully.

"You took out Dracula and about half his childer," Angel offered.

"Not bad, especially considering the ponce has a few years on me," Spike answered with a shrug and a smirk.

"You had an advantage at that point," Angel said as he stared at Xander. "As the only fully human member of the group, Xander and Ilyria did a ceremony turning him into an oporotheca."

Spike frowned. "A fruit cellar?" he asked with some confusion.

"A human whose blood carries some of the power of the old ones. Xander became a blood fruit so that you and I would have a better chance against the evil that just kept getting more and more powerful. But when Ilyria was trapped in a globe and shattered, it was down to just me and him, and we knew we'd lost. That's when we started looking for an escape."

"You ran away?" Spike asked, one eyebrow raising, and Xander could see Angel's anger gathering--it was a familiar expression.

"We evacuated as many as we could, and when the demons overran our Cleveland base, we closed the portal behind us."

"But we didn't give up," the old man quickly added. "We could contact Willow because she wasn't properly in any dimension, and this place is the same, it isn't part of a real dimension. As near as we can figure, it's a left over from some wish-verse where the wish has started to fade away. It had houses and when we first came, there was still electricity and running water."

"Not now?" Xander asked.

The old man shook his head. "The dimension is failing. After I die, Angel is going to have to find somewhere else to live because this whole place is slowly vanishing... literally. The edges are just fading out to black. But the big worrywart doesn't want to drag me around dimension shopping only to have me get eaten by something bigger and nastier than him. I have a bad track record with demons." Spike made a noise that roughly translated into agreeing.

"What about all the people you brought through; you can't just leave them," Xander pointed out, but even as he said it, he looked at the empty streets, the magically perfect houses with no sign of life, the overgrown cemetery with white dotted flowing grass that went as far as Xander could see.

The old man shook his head. "They're all dead of old age, and whatever magic created this world, it didn't create it right somehow. No one could ever have children. We saved a few thousand people from being food for demons, but we didn't save the human race."

"So ya come up with a plan to change the past, and the best you can come up with is ta turn Angelus loose?" Spike sounded downright contemptuous. "Mate, I've heard better plans outta Crackerjack boxes."

The old man shook his head. "The scales were out of balance."

"And now, now Buffy is dead and most of the slayers are gone, and my world is pretty much about to turn into your world, only with Willow dead instead of stuck in a hell bottle, and I never thought I'd be glad that Willow was dead." Xander just stopped, the pain of losing Willow still raw where Buffy's death had grown worn and dull with all the remembering.

"Good went too far, and now evil went too far. It's balanced," the old man said slowly. "I asked you if you would trade places with Dawn, if you'd rather have her raped, and you said 'no.' If I hadn't done this, if I hadn't made you the sacrifice, there would have been so many more deaths. Your Dawn is still healthy and quietly researching in a little library in Tibet, and without Willow to throw the balance out of power, the Tibet hellmouth is about the safest place around. And the last slayer just died, so the whole tangled mess that was the slayer line just ended and can now restarted with the chosen one, and not the chosen four hundred or so."

Xander stopped breathing again... and he really did know how to breathe regularly, he just couldn't seem to get his body to do it today. "Faith?"

The old man nodded. "She died yesterday, and with her, the corrupted energy of the slayers is gone."

"You son of a bitch." Xander lunched forward, and Angel flashed into game face, pushing the old man behind him as Xander moved. But before Xander could get there, Spike's arm was around his waist, swinging him around and forcing him back while Spike snarled at Angel.

"She was your bloody friend!"

"She was the last tie to a spell that was going to destroy the world. Do you think she would want to live knowing that her life would be at the cost of everyone else's?" Angel yelled back, and both vampires were in gameface. "She earned her redemption, so let her have it. Don't turn her life into one more perversion."

"Is that what you are? A perversion looking for redemption?" Spike smiled, but that wasn't a pleasant expression.

"Yes," Angel said quietly, and the word drained all the anger from the argument. Spike fell out of his battle pose and even dropped into his human face as he stared at Angel. Angel repeated himself. "Yes. The Powers wanted the final battle, the end of the world. They used me to help tip the scales," Angel added. "They wound me up and aimed me at Wolf, Ram and Hart, and I dragged the rest of you along for the ride. Fred, Wesley, Cordelia... they died because I thought I could set myself up as a champion."

"Um," Xander raised his hand, "does that mean that you plan to do evil stuff because I'm voting that as worse plan ever, even behind the whole turning Angelus loose plan." Xander struggled to get his eyes to meet Angel's gaze, and felt like high-fiving himself when he could, even though his guts were ready to turn inside out and the crack monkey in his brain was approaching seizure levels of fear. Spike's hand found his arm, so Xander could pretty much guess that he looked like as big of a mess as he felt like.

Angel was already shaking his head. "No. That means that maybe I need to listen to William a little bit more and focus on the small ways to make the world better instead of... how did you put it?" Angel looked at Spike.

It took Spike a second to stop looking stunned and actually answer. "Wot? The bit about you running around like the great hair gel crusader poncing up and down the street in your guilt complex?"

Angel actually smiled. "I've missed you, you know. You're a pain in the ass but when you weren't around... " Angel just stopped, his jaw tight as he took a deep breath. Usually it was Spike who randomly started breathing, but Xander could feel the anguish rolling off Angel. "If I could do it all again, I'd have my detective agency and fight demons peeking into back windows and call Buffy when anything approaching an apocalypse appeared. But I just had to try and prove that I could handle it, and I screwed up. My granddaughter turned out to be a hellgoddess who wanted to eat the world, and looking back, she still would have been a better choice than the demons I did turn my world over to. And maybe this is hubris," Angel said with a wave toward Spike and Xander. "Maybe this is hubris and trying to change the past is going to eventually end up even worse. Maybe without the memory of bringing the end of the world, I'll go right back to destroying everything I love in some stupid attempt to prove I'm worthy of anything good. I don't have answers. I used to think I did, but I don't," Angel snapped, but for once, the anger didn't sent Xander fleeing. Angel's anger was all for himself. "I only know that I have to try and right what I've done. Willow's portals can't reach beyond the major stepping stones, so we couldn't go back farther than the alley. I just don't know if it's enough."

The old man, the old Xander, rubbed his hand up and down Angel's arm, making small noises under his breath. "The split slayer line was like an open door allowing one evil after another to come crawling into the world. Having hundreds of slayers meant hundreds of open doors. Now… now there's evil in the world, more than ever. But if you can kill the evil, fight it back, there aren't any more open doors. You can reset the balance."

"Right then, so you've reset the balance, so now the boy and I go back, get your soul shoved up your arse and get to work saving the world, seems like old bloody time, mate."

"No," the old man stepped forward, shoving Angel to the side and then trading looks with him that had everything to do with fond exasperation, the way Xander used to look at Jesse, and this was just too freaky. "Evil has the upper hand now so a little tipping to the side of good will just help the world balance, but somewhere on earth is a ten or twelve year old girl, one who would have been called into the corrupted slayer's line and shortly died if Faith had survived her last fight with Angelus. It's like we hit the cosmic reset, and I have great questions about any universe that requires a reset button, but that's way beyond me to figure out. The point, which I seem to have lost somewhere, though, is that when she's fifteen or sixteen, she will become the slayer. She will be the champion and as long as she's the only champion, evil is limited to only as much power as good has."

"Which means that you have to be out of the champion business before she comes of age," Angel said seriously as he focused on Spike. "You and your Angel have to quit... even if that means you move to another dimension."

"Quit as in..." Spike raised an eyebrow.

The old man rolled his eyes. "Quit as in help old ladies across the street and investigate good old fashioned disappearances and stake the occasional vampire and sit on the couch on Saturday night drinking blood with Wheatabix and watching soccer. Quit as in have a normal life."

"Been trying to get the wanker to chill out and just play a game of fucking pool for months. Never knew I was all connected to the greater good with that bit of advice," Spike smirked, and from the look, Xander was guessing that he pretty much planned to torture Angel with this for a long, long time. "Right then, let's get this show on the road."

"Oh no," Angel held up his hand. "We need to get the soul back into Angelus, but if you go back, no one is going to believe that Angel is soulless."

"Bloody hell, you can't expect me to just sit here while other people fight. I'm missing a good round of fisticuffs," Spike said with a cocky tone. "Not looking to save the world, and after a couple of years, I'm more than happy to let the new slayer and the gits in green take over, but it sounds like good needs a hand right now."

"Yeah, but you go down there and you'll really ruin Riley's plan, and yes," the old man said even louder as Spike opened his mouth, "I do know that you live to mess up Riley's plan. However, this time Riley has it right, and if you plan to get out of the champion business, that means letting guys like Riley do their normal, human jobs fighting with normal, old fashioned guns... only not so much with the guns being old fashioned."

Xander stared at the old man, suddenly struck by just how much that was totally him. Freakily him. Really, really old him. For the first time, Xander admitted to himself that he hadn't ever expected to get old, not just after the whole hell in a handbasket, but even before. Back in Cleveland in his bed with his gaggle of slayers, he still assumed he'd die before he had the whole Uncle Max look going for him.

"You know about the plan," Xander suddenly blurted.

Old Him nodded. "Angel and I are connected to you two, well, I'm connected to you and Angel's connected to Angelus."

"Then why the big surprise when I came through the door?" Xander asked suspiciously.

Old Him blushed. "Okay, I know what you know, which means I thought Riley's guys were coming through, but to be honest, I should have remembered that any time I'm in a room with a spell, it's pretty much guaranteed to go wrong. The armoire is charmed. If someone is armed with anything bigger than toenail clippers and they open it, they just get to see a closet full of clothes left over from the seventies, which is weird, but fairly boring if you're looking for a soul. I thought Riley would come through, check the armoire, and then find Angel's soul on the shelf in there."

"I should have known you'd get in trouble and end up in the middle of it," Angel agreed, and the friendly tone made Xander's skin crawl. Happy Angel equaled pain in his head, and he edged closer to Spike, who promptly gave him an odd look.

"I'm sorry," Angel quickly offered, and at least the guilty look didn't inspire terror in Xander's heart.

"Over three years," the old man said softly. "Angelus may not have bothered trying to break you, but over three years with him and you're close."

"Bloody hell. You left Harris with Angelus for three years? I'm not so sure you have your soul still attached, not if you could do that. Hell, I'm surprised he isn't curled in a corner babbling about stars." Spike reached out and pulled Xander close, and the feel of cool hands against his skin made Xander freeze.

"Oi, just tryin' to help, no need to have a heart attack, pet," Spike quickly said as he quickly let go.

Xander just stood with his hands around his stomach as he tried to get control of fear that was threatening to turn him into a gibbering idiot, and being near Angel really wasn't doing much to make that feeling go away.

"I'm sorry," the old man said as he walked forward. "I know. I remember my life and yours."

"You did this," Xander said quietly as he watched Old Him walk closer. The old man slowly reached out with and age spotted hand and rested it against Xander's shoulder.

"Yes, I did. Someone had to sacrifice, and I made the choice to have it be us. I made the choice to have it be the two of us and Angel who will always live with the memory of what he's done."

"We made the choice," Angel said, and Xander's gaze snapped over to the vampire, but he was keeping his distance.

"Don't listen to the idiot," the old man said. "He's been feeling so guilty for so long he pretty much goes along with whatever harebrained idea me and Willow come up with. Willow wanted me to turn her dark again, to turn her against the slayers she had created."

Xander opened his mouth, and the old man chuckled before Xander could say one word to argue about what a bad idea that was. "I know. Willow had already sacrificed enough, and we always did think we needed to prove something, you and I. Well, the two of us and Angel. I always hated how sure of himself Spike seemed, soul or no soul."

"Oi," Spike objected, but he didn't sound actually upset.

The old man's weak grip tugged Xander forward. "We'll meet you back at the house, Angel," the old man said, and Angel opened his mouth as if he were going to argue.

Spike sauntered over and got Angel moving with a shove on his shoulder, and from the look on Angel's face, there was nearly a fight right there. "Yeah, Peaches, you can walk with me and explain exactly how bad you've mucked things up and where my universe is right now." And then the two vampires were walking up the road away from Xander and old Xander.

Eyeing his old self, Xander waited for the other shoe to drop. Yep, he knew manipulation when he manipulated himself. The old man chuckled. "Don't look at me like I'm about to eat you. I gave up eating children for Lent."

"If you're calling me a kid, you're way off track," Xander snorted. He didn't feel like a kid; he felt old, so old that his bones would turn to dust if he wasn't careful.

The old man had turned to walk back toward the house, but now he stopped and turned. At first, Xander thought he was staring at him, but then he noticed the old eyes scanning the field behind him. Xander turned to look at the gently waving grasses.

"How long to you think it took for every grave to seed over, for the mounds to be worn down by footsteps and soft rains, for the grass to grow up that even?"

"What?" Xander turned to look at the old man.

"The last of them died in 2094. Louisa was four when she came through. This world doesn't like change, so the grass refused to grow over the graves for a long time."

Xander stared at the old man. "But that means…"

"I'm a good deal older than you think. After all, I have to have been around long enough for Willow to teach me to make all those potions, which was not always fun or safe. I blew up our first house," the old man said with a crooked smile. "I'll tell you a secret. On the bottom of every vial I wrote crip notes-you know, which potion will blow up the house and which will open a portal." The old man pulled a vial out of his pocket and tipped it upside down so Xander could see the bottom. In tiny letters on a green sticker it said, "share memories."

"Why do you have that potion?" Xander asked, suddenly suspicious.

"You want to kill Angel," the old man said simply. "I don't want you to."

Xander snorted. "Now I know you're not me because if someone would've killed Angel the first time I said to, maybe none this would've happened."

"True," the old man agreed. "But he's suffered for that, too."

"Not nearly enough," Xander snorted. The shattering of glass interrupted him, and Xander choked as smoke like heavy velvet fell over him, suffocating him as he drowned in a thousand memories: Angel's teeth in his neck, gathering around a computer and watching demon porn that immortalized his friend's death, the sounds of Dawn's screams, the cackling boasts of Dracula's wife who'd appeared with Spike's duster, the fights, the losses, the long line of humans shoved hastily through a portal and the desperate struggle to get them away from the portal so others could come through, to make them move when they wanted to sag to the ground and cry.

He remembered Angel standing under the sun screaming at God and begging him to fix things when they both knew that nothing would ever be fixed again. He remembered watching Angel collapse and feeling so utterly helpless as the man… the vampire… he'd always envied turned into someone who couldn't even function without someone to take him by the hand. He remembered sitting next to the pool and casting the spell to let him talk to Willow and trying to hide his tears as he watched her turn into a monster-an emaciated form with a few straggling hairs and no teeth, her hands shaking with pain and the screams of hell around her as she tried to joke and pretend that her existence was anything but agony.

He remembered Willow softly saying that she deserved the pain, that she had corrupted the slayer line, she had killed in anger and the punishment was her crucible.  Xander had tried to not call her stupid because it wasn't like Willow needed him adding to her pain, but he wanted to scream at her that she didn't deserve this. She didn't need to burn her sin away because she had always done her best. He remembered the pain when they realized that no one would be having children, and how Angel had driven himself from one dimension to another seeking another home--a better home, until he had appeared through a portal so battered that Xander thought he might dust before Xander could get enough blood in him, and Xander had faced losing the last person who connected him to his past, he faced losing the vampire who had loved Buffy as much as he had, who had seen Willow as a little sister even while the demon in him feared her power. Louisa aged in his memory until he sat by the bedside of an old woman, holding her hand as she rambled about people who'd been dead for years, but she didn't know that. The Alzheimer's had been so bad she hadn't known anything by the time she died.

Xander remembered so much that the weight of a lifetime not his pressed down on him, making three years with Angelus fade into nothing. It was nothing. A rape compared to Willow's suffering in hell-a beating compared to Dawn's torture at the hands of laughing demons and their video camera-it was less than nothing.

Reaching out, Xander tried to find something to hold onto as the blackness filled his vision and the grief and pain pushed him over into a nightmarish sleep where his brain struggled to fit together more pain than Xander had even known existed in the world.