Fic: Deathboy &Co 1/?
Title: Deathboy & Co
Authors: Nash (nashmaveric
Fandom: BtVS and Discworld
Pairing: Spike/Xander at some point in the future
Rating: PG for now
Characters: Sadly, not mine. Two of my most favourite character creators made them up. They all belong to Whedon and Pratchett, may they both keep on writing for years to come.
Concrits: welcome in comments
Author's note: Death’s apprentice and adopted daughter had two children, Jessica and Susan Sto Helit. Jessica didn’t like the idea of being Death’s grandchild so she run away from home to another dimension, married the first man she met and had a kid ::points to Xander:: The plan was, Death’s powers could not be part of someone who had produced life so she’d be off the hook.
---------------
Prologue
Death watched the girl stand up.
“Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” she asked, looking a little puzzled.
“WE HAVE MET. TWICE IN FACT.”
“Oh. Shouldn’t I remember you?”
“PEOPLE USUALLY DON’T. BUT THEN, THEY RARELY GET A CHANCE TO SEE ME MORE THAN ONCE.”
“Yeah, I don’t always do what other people do. You’re not evil are you?”
“NOT AS SUCH.”
“Huh…”
The girl seemed to be working up the nerve to ask another question but before she could try to ask she disappeared.
Death frowned as he saw the girl return to her body.
“THIS IS GETTING TIRESOME.”
He watched as she woke up and was embraced by her friends.
“MY VERY OWN GREAT-GRANDSON…”
He shook his head and disappeared.
************
It was a morning like any other when Xander Harris snapped awake, weirded out by the dream he’d been having. Ever since evil Willow had made her appearance he kept having strange dreams. There was a lot of black in them, black roses, black towels, black clocks with no hands. Sometimes there had been the general impression of sharp teeth. He frowned as he remembered those dreams. With the teeth came an odd grey colour surrounding him and a sense of contentment which should have been reassuring but was damn scary instead.
This time there had been a vague picture of a sac of bones and an odd kind of mouse. The weird thing wasn’t the bones so much, Xander had been raised on the Hellmouth after all, but the fact that he somehow got stuck with the feeling that there had been a human skeleton pouting at him.
How can skeletons pout anyway? he thought sleepily.
Shaking his head to clear away the last of the dream, Xander went about his usual business, getting ready for work. Ten minutes later he was on his way to the site, dream already forgotten in the bright light of day.
“Xander! Wait.”
Xander stopped walking and grinned widely before turning to face his favourite aunt. Aunt Susan lived in Europe and didn’t visit often but Xander liked her more than any other relative ever. Of course, given the rest of his relatives it wasn’t that great a compliment.
“Aunt Susan? When did you get here?”
“We don’t have time to waste. I know about vampires and demons and I also know about Death. With a capital ‘d’. In fact we’re related,” she said in her usual matter-of-fact tone.
Xander looked at his aunt carefully then sighed. Sometimes he wondered if things like this happened to him because he lived on the Hellmouth, or if he lived on the Hellmouth because such things happened to him.
“Come on, I’ll call in sick again and you can tell me what’s going on,” he said with a sigh.
Aunt Susan had always been Xander’s favourite relative. She had a shock of white hair with only a black stripe giving it a splash of colour. When he was younger, Xander could have sworn Aunt Susan’s hair moved on its own accord but his mother had told him not to be silly.
Unlike the rest of his family, Aunt Susan hadn’t ignored or talked down at him. She’d told him stories about demons and trolls, explaining how different they were where she lived.
One time she’d even taken him for a holiday, to visit his great-grandfather. They’d spent weeks and weeks there. Xander couldn’t remember much but he remembered having fun, and that his great-grandad smiled a lot.
Funny how he’d forgotten about all that until he’d met Buffy. He had wondered whether Aunt Susan had been telling him the truth back then, but seeing how differently real live monsters behaved he’d dismissed the idea. They were just stories after all.
***
A couple of hours later, he knew that every story Aunt Susan had ever told him was the absolute truth and was no longer all that happy about his aunt’s return. In fact, as Xander burst into the Summers home, dragging his aunt behind him, he decided that he was rather upset about it.
“Buffy! You are not gonna believe what happened! Tell her Aunt Susan,” he ordered, pacing around the room behind the couch.
Susan looked at the Slayer that cheated Death three times. She was…small, a little bit too thin. Susan was a firm believer in womanly curves. This Buffy person looked like she would break in a small gust of wind. She certainly didn’t seem the kind of person who could survive her calling. At least, not until you looked into her eyes; there was strength there and stubbornness.
“Well…” she began.
“Apparently I’m Death’s great grand-kid! Death with capital ‘d’. Capital! And my dear sweet mother, who I’m going to scream at a lot when I see her again, only had me so she didn’t have to do Deathy stuff. Something about life springing from her loins or some such shit.” Xander was gesticulating madly as he spoke, “Tell her Aunt Susan!”
Buffy was staring at Xander as if she thought he was verging on the insane. Susan remembered her own reaction when she had first seen the Death of Rats and tried to explain as gently as possible. The girl might be used to seeing vampires and demons but Death was on a different scale of belief.
“It seems that Xander here…”
“…gets to carry a scythe or whatever you call those things and be able to disappear and do some thing with his voice. Which is fucking stupid. I’m already remembering the future! The future! And it has teeth in it! How can someone remember the future? This is freaking insane! I’m the token normal one! I cannot be related to Death! And ohhhhh let’s not forget the itty bitty little Mouse Death!”
“Death of Rats,” Susan corrected. The Death of Rats got very offended if you called him a mouse.
“Whatever. So I’m getting Death’s job! Because apparently he’s on strike! I still don’t understand how he decided to go on strike,” he said, tapping his foot and looking at Susan expectantly.
Susan tried to figure out how to explain Death’s thought process. It was a difficult task at the best of times but now, how could she explain that Death, the anthropomorphic personification of everyone’s end, was sulking?
“Well, grandfather got a bit upset…”
“Turns out, Mr. Death there got a little miffed that you didn’t stay dead not once, not twice but three times. Something about how it’s bad enough that he has to do the job, we can’t go around undoing it. So he decides to upset the normal balance of things and go on strike! And he took the little mouse death with him.”
“Death of Rats,” Susan corrected again.
“Whatever.” Xander spared another glare for his aunt before he went back to his rant. “Let’s not forget the fact that I met him when I was younger because apparently Aunt Susan took me to his house to see him. Which is why I got the feeling I knew him in the stupid dream. Him and his little skeleton-mouse pet.”
“Death of Rats,” Susan corrected yet again.
“There’s gonna be a big white horse knocking on the door any minute now with a big scythe for me because I, like you, am the Chosen One. Of Death! And his little mousy friend!”
“Rats, Death of.”
“I DO NOT CARE ABOUT THE MOUSE DEATH AUNT SUSAN.”
Xander stared at his aunt in shock.
“Oh my God, I did the voice thing,” he said and fainted.
Buffy watched Xander go down and sighed.
“We’ll put him on the couch and then you can tell me what that was all about.” she said.
*********
“…so Xander must take over Death’s duties to…fill the hole left in belief?” Buffy waited for Susan to nod before continuing, “…until Death forgives the Powers That Be for allowing me to come back three times.”
“He’s not very happy with Xander either to be honest. To be cheated by the same person three times is hard, but to have it done with his own great-grandson’s help? All three times? Albert said he was muttering on about how different things would be if Jessica had allowed Xander to visit some more.”
“That’s not good,” Buffy muttered, then frowned as she thought of something, “He doesn’t want me to die again, does he? Cause I have to tell you, I kinda got used to being back here.”
“No, he’s just upset. He’ll get over it, he usually does.” Susan shrugged.
“Well, good.”
Having cleared that up, Buffy started thinking about the problem at hand. “Not to sound rude but why don’t you take over. You did it before and you’re closer to Death than Xan is.”
Susan fought the blush threatening to bloom on her face. She did not blush. Ever. She was entirely too sensible to blush.
“I’m pregnant,” she said simply.
“The whole life springing from your loins thing, huh?” Buffy leaned back against the couch, feeling a little dejected that her brilliant deduction had gone to waste. “So what, Xander will have to show up at every death? Including demons? Cause I gotta tell you, that’s impossible, we live on the Hellmouth, there’s a whole lotta death.”
“He only has to do the really important ones, the ones that keep the flow moving. Everyone else is done automatically,” Susan said.
******
Xander could see the walls around him, once again in varying shades of black. Something was touching him, caressing every inch of his body. He was floating in a sea of pleasure.
He snapped awake much as he had done that morning, totally weirded out by the dream. One glance at Aunt Susan and everything came flooding back. He closed his eyes again and sighed.
“Death, huh? I went and got myself a destiny didn’t I?” he asked, resignation evident in his tone.
“Yeah. Sucks doesn’t it?” Buffy said sympathetically.
Xander got up to a sitting position. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”
Susan patted Xander gently on the back, trying to offer a little bit of comfort. Xander was taking the news relatively well. She’d very nearly freaked out when she’d remembered that Death was her grandfather. But then, she’d been raised on logic and sense, while Xander had to deal with demons and witches for a while now.
At that moment, the front door opened and Willow walked in, pushing a grocery-laden Andrew in front of her.
“Look who I found. Guess who was buying mass amounts of blood at the butcher's shop.” She pushed Andrew inside, and turned to frown at the door.
“You do know there’s a huge white horse on the front lawn, right?”
“Her name’s Binky.” Susan provided helpfully, “She belongs to Xander.”
“Death’s horse is called Binky?” Buffy asked, grinning widely.
“When did you get a horse?” Willow asked, at the same time.
“About the same time I became Death.”
“You what now?”
“Buffy’ll explain. I’ll go check out the horse. Aunt Susan? D’you mind tying this guy up? He’s one of the bad guys.”
Xander walked outside warily, coming face to face with a horse standing on the porch.
“Just so you know, I don’t think Buffy will like it if you shit on her veranda,” he said solemnly.
The horse gave him a look that could only be interpreted as ‘I’m Death’s horse. Who cares what a mortal thinks?’
“You say that now but wait till you see her all angry and screaming,” Xander replied to the look. “Look at me, I’m talking to a horse. So, Binky, seen any good movies lately?”
Xander could swear that Binky rolled her eyes at him. She neighed and took a step to the right, standing next to a chair and throwing an impatient look over her shoulder.
“You want me to climb up?” Xander asked, approaching slowly. “Sure why not, worse that could happen is I fall and break my neck.”
Xander climbed on the horse and sat gingerly on its back, loosely holding on to the mane.
“Now what?”
Authors: Nash (nashmaveric
Fandom: BtVS and Discworld
Pairing: Spike/Xander at some point in the future
Rating: PG for now
Characters: Sadly, not mine. Two of my most favourite character creators made them up. They all belong to Whedon and Pratchett, may they both keep on writing for years to come.
Concrits: welcome in comments
Author's note: Death’s apprentice and adopted daughter had two children, Jessica and Susan Sto Helit. Jessica didn’t like the idea of being Death’s grandchild so she run away from home to another dimension, married the first man she met and had a kid ::points to Xander:: The plan was, Death’s powers could not be part of someone who had produced life so she’d be off the hook.
---------------
Prologue
Death watched the girl stand up.
“Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” she asked, looking a little puzzled.
“WE HAVE MET. TWICE IN FACT.”
“Oh. Shouldn’t I remember you?”
“PEOPLE USUALLY DON’T. BUT THEN, THEY RARELY GET A CHANCE TO SEE ME MORE THAN ONCE.”
“Yeah, I don’t always do what other people do. You’re not evil are you?”
“NOT AS SUCH.”
“Huh…”
The girl seemed to be working up the nerve to ask another question but before she could try to ask she disappeared.
Death frowned as he saw the girl return to her body.
“THIS IS GETTING TIRESOME.”
He watched as she woke up and was embraced by her friends.
“MY VERY OWN GREAT-GRANDSON…”
He shook his head and disappeared.
************
It was a morning like any other when Xander Harris snapped awake, weirded out by the dream he’d been having. Ever since evil Willow had made her appearance he kept having strange dreams. There was a lot of black in them, black roses, black towels, black clocks with no hands. Sometimes there had been the general impression of sharp teeth. He frowned as he remembered those dreams. With the teeth came an odd grey colour surrounding him and a sense of contentment which should have been reassuring but was damn scary instead.
This time there had been a vague picture of a sac of bones and an odd kind of mouse. The weird thing wasn’t the bones so much, Xander had been raised on the Hellmouth after all, but the fact that he somehow got stuck with the feeling that there had been a human skeleton pouting at him.
How can skeletons pout anyway? he thought sleepily.
Shaking his head to clear away the last of the dream, Xander went about his usual business, getting ready for work. Ten minutes later he was on his way to the site, dream already forgotten in the bright light of day.
“Xander! Wait.”
Xander stopped walking and grinned widely before turning to face his favourite aunt. Aunt Susan lived in Europe and didn’t visit often but Xander liked her more than any other relative ever. Of course, given the rest of his relatives it wasn’t that great a compliment.
“Aunt Susan? When did you get here?”
“We don’t have time to waste. I know about vampires and demons and I also know about Death. With a capital ‘d’. In fact we’re related,” she said in her usual matter-of-fact tone.
Xander looked at his aunt carefully then sighed. Sometimes he wondered if things like this happened to him because he lived on the Hellmouth, or if he lived on the Hellmouth because such things happened to him.
“Come on, I’ll call in sick again and you can tell me what’s going on,” he said with a sigh.
Aunt Susan had always been Xander’s favourite relative. She had a shock of white hair with only a black stripe giving it a splash of colour. When he was younger, Xander could have sworn Aunt Susan’s hair moved on its own accord but his mother had told him not to be silly.
Unlike the rest of his family, Aunt Susan hadn’t ignored or talked down at him. She’d told him stories about demons and trolls, explaining how different they were where she lived.
One time she’d even taken him for a holiday, to visit his great-grandfather. They’d spent weeks and weeks there. Xander couldn’t remember much but he remembered having fun, and that his great-grandad smiled a lot.
Funny how he’d forgotten about all that until he’d met Buffy. He had wondered whether Aunt Susan had been telling him the truth back then, but seeing how differently real live monsters behaved he’d dismissed the idea. They were just stories after all.
***
A couple of hours later, he knew that every story Aunt Susan had ever told him was the absolute truth and was no longer all that happy about his aunt’s return. In fact, as Xander burst into the Summers home, dragging his aunt behind him, he decided that he was rather upset about it.
“Buffy! You are not gonna believe what happened! Tell her Aunt Susan,” he ordered, pacing around the room behind the couch.
Susan looked at the Slayer that cheated Death three times. She was…small, a little bit too thin. Susan was a firm believer in womanly curves. This Buffy person looked like she would break in a small gust of wind. She certainly didn’t seem the kind of person who could survive her calling. At least, not until you looked into her eyes; there was strength there and stubbornness.
“Well…” she began.
“Apparently I’m Death’s great grand-kid! Death with capital ‘d’. Capital! And my dear sweet mother, who I’m going to scream at a lot when I see her again, only had me so she didn’t have to do Deathy stuff. Something about life springing from her loins or some such shit.” Xander was gesticulating madly as he spoke, “Tell her Aunt Susan!”
Buffy was staring at Xander as if she thought he was verging on the insane. Susan remembered her own reaction when she had first seen the Death of Rats and tried to explain as gently as possible. The girl might be used to seeing vampires and demons but Death was on a different scale of belief.
“It seems that Xander here…”
“…gets to carry a scythe or whatever you call those things and be able to disappear and do some thing with his voice. Which is fucking stupid. I’m already remembering the future! The future! And it has teeth in it! How can someone remember the future? This is freaking insane! I’m the token normal one! I cannot be related to Death! And ohhhhh let’s not forget the itty bitty little Mouse Death!”
“Death of Rats,” Susan corrected. The Death of Rats got very offended if you called him a mouse.
“Whatever. So I’m getting Death’s job! Because apparently he’s on strike! I still don’t understand how he decided to go on strike,” he said, tapping his foot and looking at Susan expectantly.
Susan tried to figure out how to explain Death’s thought process. It was a difficult task at the best of times but now, how could she explain that Death, the anthropomorphic personification of everyone’s end, was sulking?
“Well, grandfather got a bit upset…”
“Turns out, Mr. Death there got a little miffed that you didn’t stay dead not once, not twice but three times. Something about how it’s bad enough that he has to do the job, we can’t go around undoing it. So he decides to upset the normal balance of things and go on strike! And he took the little mouse death with him.”
“Death of Rats,” Susan corrected again.
“Whatever.” Xander spared another glare for his aunt before he went back to his rant. “Let’s not forget the fact that I met him when I was younger because apparently Aunt Susan took me to his house to see him. Which is why I got the feeling I knew him in the stupid dream. Him and his little skeleton-mouse pet.”
“Death of Rats,” Susan corrected yet again.
“There’s gonna be a big white horse knocking on the door any minute now with a big scythe for me because I, like you, am the Chosen One. Of Death! And his little mousy friend!”
“Rats, Death of.”
“I DO NOT CARE ABOUT THE MOUSE DEATH AUNT SUSAN.”
Xander stared at his aunt in shock.
“Oh my God, I did the voice thing,” he said and fainted.
Buffy watched Xander go down and sighed.
“We’ll put him on the couch and then you can tell me what that was all about.” she said.
*********
“…so Xander must take over Death’s duties to…fill the hole left in belief?” Buffy waited for Susan to nod before continuing, “…until Death forgives the Powers That Be for allowing me to come back three times.”
“He’s not very happy with Xander either to be honest. To be cheated by the same person three times is hard, but to have it done with his own great-grandson’s help? All three times? Albert said he was muttering on about how different things would be if Jessica had allowed Xander to visit some more.”
“That’s not good,” Buffy muttered, then frowned as she thought of something, “He doesn’t want me to die again, does he? Cause I have to tell you, I kinda got used to being back here.”
“No, he’s just upset. He’ll get over it, he usually does.” Susan shrugged.
“Well, good.”
Having cleared that up, Buffy started thinking about the problem at hand. “Not to sound rude but why don’t you take over. You did it before and you’re closer to Death than Xan is.”
Susan fought the blush threatening to bloom on her face. She did not blush. Ever. She was entirely too sensible to blush.
“I’m pregnant,” she said simply.
“The whole life springing from your loins thing, huh?” Buffy leaned back against the couch, feeling a little dejected that her brilliant deduction had gone to waste. “So what, Xander will have to show up at every death? Including demons? Cause I gotta tell you, that’s impossible, we live on the Hellmouth, there’s a whole lotta death.”
“He only has to do the really important ones, the ones that keep the flow moving. Everyone else is done automatically,” Susan said.
******
Xander could see the walls around him, once again in varying shades of black. Something was touching him, caressing every inch of his body. He was floating in a sea of pleasure.
He snapped awake much as he had done that morning, totally weirded out by the dream. One glance at Aunt Susan and everything came flooding back. He closed his eyes again and sighed.
“Death, huh? I went and got myself a destiny didn’t I?” he asked, resignation evident in his tone.
“Yeah. Sucks doesn’t it?” Buffy said sympathetically.
Xander got up to a sitting position. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”
Susan patted Xander gently on the back, trying to offer a little bit of comfort. Xander was taking the news relatively well. She’d very nearly freaked out when she’d remembered that Death was her grandfather. But then, she’d been raised on logic and sense, while Xander had to deal with demons and witches for a while now.
At that moment, the front door opened and Willow walked in, pushing a grocery-laden Andrew in front of her.
“Look who I found. Guess who was buying mass amounts of blood at the butcher's shop.” She pushed Andrew inside, and turned to frown at the door.
“You do know there’s a huge white horse on the front lawn, right?”
“Her name’s Binky.” Susan provided helpfully, “She belongs to Xander.”
“Death’s horse is called Binky?” Buffy asked, grinning widely.
“When did you get a horse?” Willow asked, at the same time.
“About the same time I became Death.”
“You what now?”
“Buffy’ll explain. I’ll go check out the horse. Aunt Susan? D’you mind tying this guy up? He’s one of the bad guys.”
Xander walked outside warily, coming face to face with a horse standing on the porch.
“Just so you know, I don’t think Buffy will like it if you shit on her veranda,” he said solemnly.
The horse gave him a look that could only be interpreted as ‘I’m Death’s horse. Who cares what a mortal thinks?’
“You say that now but wait till you see her all angry and screaming,” Xander replied to the look. “Look at me, I’m talking to a horse. So, Binky, seen any good movies lately?”
Xander could swear that Binky rolled her eyes at him. She neighed and took a step to the right, standing next to a chair and throwing an impatient look over her shoulder.
“You want me to climb up?” Xander asked, approaching slowly. “Sure why not, worse that could happen is I fall and break my neck.”
Xander climbed on the horse and sat gingerly on its back, loosely holding on to the mane.
“Now what?”