Gray
Gray
After having her world destroyed by the Winchesters, Eve wanted to rebuild her family. She claimed a soul with his own dark power and his own moral gray. He would be her champion. Hopefully. Xander just wanted to go home, preferably before the hunters Sam and Dean Winchester caught up with him.
Chapter ONE :: Chapter TWO :: Chapter THREE :: Chapters 4+5 :: Chapter SIX :: Chapter SEVEN :: Chapter EIGHT :: Chapter NINE :: Chapter TEN :: Chapter ELEVEN : Chapter TWELVE :: Chapter THIRTEEN :: Chapter FOURTEEN :: Chapter FIFTEEN :: Chapter SIXTEEN :: Chapter Seventeen :: Chapter Eighteen :: Chapter Nineteen :: Chapter TWENTY :: Chapter TWENTY-ONE
Chapter Twenty-Two
Xander wakes up and finds that the frying pan has, in fact, become the fire. You know, this was supposed to be, get in, introduce Xander to the Winchesters, and get out. What the crap happened?
Xander woke up unhappy. Under other circumstances, his first complaint would have been the heavy steel restrains around his wrists or the way his shoulders ached from having his arms behind his back too long. But today, Xander decided his biggest complaint was the dull gray cinderblock walls and bars. Yep. Prison cell. Even worse, Spike was nowhere in sight.
Xander groaned and rolled onto his side. “Ow ow ow.” That hurt. Xander got himself upright and realized that he was definitely not in a jail cell built for a human. No toilet, no sink, no nothing, or lots of nothing, depending on how you looked at it.
“Hey,” Xander said to the guard who stood with his back to the bar. The jackass didn’t even twitch. “Hey, I’m awake here. Would you like to tell someone that?” Nothing.
With a sigh, Xander leaned back against the cold concrete wall. He hated the government.
Xander took a few deep breaths and braced himself for whatever might come-tortured demons, werewolves taken apart at the joints, hellmouthy type fun. Instead he saw only the faintest of ghosts. A blonde woman with eyes that glowed slowly paced and a guy who looked a little like a middle-aged He-man stood looking indignant. But both were faded imitations of visions, and Xander could tell they were attached to the cell and not any people by the solid edges. People’s thoughts tended to get all fuzzy around the edge and then dissolve into some other thought.
Like the guard. He was totally thinking about having sex with his very beautiful girlfriend, but the edges of his girlfriend kept fading out so that the woman looked more and more like Kirstie Alley from her Cheers days.
“Seriously, I do not need to see your Kirstie Alley fantasies. Besides, your girlfriend is way cuter.”
That finally caught the guard’s attention. He whirled around with murder in his eye, and all Xander could do was flatten himself against the far wall of his cell.
“At ease, airman.” Dorsey walked in.
“But sir…”
“Hey, the general told you to avoid thinking classified thoughts. I think he pretty much assumed that’s where your mind would go,” Dorsey said. “It’s okay. Step out and catch a breath of fresh air. You and your Kirstie Alley fantasies have five minutes to then get back here.”
“Yes, sir,” the man agreed before leaving.
Dorsey leaned against the far wall and looked at Xander. “So,” he said slowly, “I hear you almost killed me.”
“So,” Xander shot back, “I hear you attacked to people who’d agreed to meet under a truce.”
Dorsey flinched. “Actually, it was Giles’ guys who opened fire. Our people just came in when the free-for-all started.”
“Oh, well then, that makes everything okay.” Xander pulled against the hard steel around his wrists.
“We arrested the two who brought guns to the park. They’re being charged with federal firearms violations, public display, endangerment, and generally pissing off the general, and the general does not like being pissed off. Or poked. Or told to play nice.” Dorsey shrugged.
“And Giles?” Right now, Xander wanted Giles in the cell next to him. He would say he wanted Giles in his cell so he could bawl the man out, but Giles still kinda scared him.
“We didn’t have a reason to hold him.”
“And you do have a reason to hold us?” Xander pushed himself up onto his feet, and Dorsey took a fast step back. “Where’s Spike? Is he okay?”
“You know things are different with you and Spike.”
“Because we’re monsters?” Xander demanded. “Hey, newsflash. Neither of us actually asked to be monsters. Both of us just had the bad luck to run into scary and slightly less than sane women. I was saving the world way before I got monsterfied, and I’m trying to do the same thing now, and Spike closed a hellmouth and stopped a whole Armageddon on his own, even after he’d joined the legions of the unbreathing.”
“In your universe,” Dorsey said.
“Yes, in our universe. We haven’t actually been in this universe very long, and right now I’m kinda thinking I don’t want to stay here any longer than I have to. You don’t have the welcome mat out.” Xander’s voice was rising into girly-pitch land, but he couldn’t get himself to stop and breathe.
Dorsey nodded. “If I could help you leave this reality, I would.”
“Right.” Xander dropped down onto the narrow cot. “You’d just escort us home and wish us luck. I’m not actually as stupid as I look.” Xander frowned. That hadn’t come out the way he meant it.
“I never thought that. I came to that meeting honestly hoping to work things out, and while clearly this is not a best-case scenario, I do still hope we can talk.”
“Then give me Spike back,” Xander said. He had to clamp down on all the panic and fear that rose just at Spike’s name. What if they’d dusted Spike? What if he was really seriously hurt and they wouldn’t give him blood? Xander tasted the metallic bile rising in his throat.
“He’s two cells over, Xander. He took fewer hits than you did, and he woke up several hours ago.” Dorsey smiled. “He’s giving the guys down there whole new lessons in British profanity. They’ve had to look a few things up.”
“Then let me see him.” Xander stood again, hope rising.
Dorsey shook his head. “You’re in isolation because… because of the mind reading tricks.”
“I’ve read Spike’s mind already. It’s less fun than you might think,” Xander pointed out. Right now, he was expecting lot and lots of Angelus and whips and reckless young Spike with blood, blood, and more blood. Wait, why was he asking to share space with Spike again.
“The general wants you in isolation,” Dorsey said almost apologetically. However, Willow would like to see you.
Xander stopped breathing. Willow. He so could not deal with Willow right now. Dorsey was a stranger, so he could kind of understand the whole betrayal thing, but Willow… they were friends. Willow knew the other him, was best friends with other-him, and she still helped put him in a jail cell.
Xander had all kinds of things to say about Willow visiting, but he couldn’t get his tongue untangled long enough to say any of them. Dorsey took a step back, and the nameless guard returned, this time with Willow right behind. She had on a black t-shirt and army style pants with her red hair pulled up in a high pony-tail, and maybe that made it easier because she didn’t look like his Willow anymore.
“I’ll give you guys a few minutes,” Dorsey said. “Airman.” Clearly the two of them shared some sort of military hive brain because the nameless guard answered, “Yes, sir,” like he knew what Dorsey meant.
Once Dorsey was gone, Willow took a step forward and then stopped. “Xander,” she said in that tragic voice of hers, the one that normally came with baked goods and apologies.
Xander shook his head. “You aren't Willow. At least you aren’t any Willow that I want to know.”
She flinched. “I know you're mad right now, but see this from our side.”
“I know that my Willow would never have done this to me. I know that when Oz got werewolfified, my Willow didn't turn him over to the government. In fact, when the government kidnapped him and threatened to torture him, she saved him. She went up against the whole government to help her friend, and because it was the right thing to do.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand you're more the Nazi version of Willow with the hating of people because of who they are,” Xander snapped.
“Xander!" Willow's eyes went all big and her hands came up to her mouth. Guilt crawled up Xander's throat, but he refused to back down. So instead he turned his head so he faced the gray wall. This was so very bad. From now on, he was going to listen to anything Spike said, especially if Spike said it was a bad idea to get mixed up with anti-demon government forces. Yeah, that one seemed pretty obvious in retrospect. Willow’s breath came in little wet gasps, and Xander pulled his legs up under him and stared at the corner of his cell by the head of his cot. What an interesting corner. It had two walls and a place where to wall met and grout.
"Talk to me. What you did out there..." Willow sounded so wounded.
"If a vamp bit you, it wouldn't be your choice to be a vampire," Xander said softly. He was about to add that it would be her choice about whether or not to be evil, but actually, most demons didn't really get a choice, not the ones that took over human bodies, anyway. Vampires and werewolves pretty much killed people.
Only Oz didn't... not anymore. He'd done the whole zen thing and stopped being evil. And even before the soul, Spike had been evil light. And Xander didn't think he was evil. Did a person know if they'd turned evil?
“Xander,” Willow said softly. “I know you’re in there somewhere, but you’ve been turned, and we’ve seen what happens to people who get turned, and I don’t blame you for that.”
“But you’ll lock me up for it,” Xander finished for her.
“You haven’t asked about the people you hurt. I know Xander Harris, and he would never hurt anyone.”
Xander looked over his shoulder. “You never knew Xander Harris because the only reason he didn’t hurt anyone was because he was never strong enough. He wanted to punch every bully that ever called you a name. He wanted to dropkick Cordelia Chase off the top of the tallest building on campus because she made you feel like less of a person just by picking on your clothes, clothes which were just fine for someone who wasn’t trying to impress the entire football team. He wanted to wait until Larry had him on his knees and then punch that bully so hard in the balls that he coughed up blood. Xander Harris wanted to hurt a lot of people.”
Xander took a deep breath. “But having more power means you have to stop wanting to hurt people, even people who attack you. So no, I don’t care about those men because I tried my best to not hurt them, but they attacked me and they hurt me. If you think I’m going to let that happen, they you don’t know human nature very well.”
Xander watched Willow fight with her emotions. He took deep breaths because right now he didn’t want to know what she was thinking. He didn’t want to sympathize with her. He wanted to be angry because she never had seen him, not her-Xander and not the him who was here now.
“When they take me out to murder me, don’t lie to yourself Willow. You just helped kill Xander Harris. Right now you’re helping them kill me, and that’s after I’ve spent most of my life protecting the world from monsters. The only human I ever killed was keeping the teeth of the women he murdered as a souvenir so he could jerk off at night. That’s how far people have to go to get me into a killing mood, but your friends here, they aren’t going to take that much, are they? They don’t need any excuse at all.”
“Xander,” she whispered, tears finally slipping free.
Xander couldn’t take it. He turned away and pulled his knees up so he could bury his face in them. With his hands cuffed, it was the only way he could hide away from all this wrong.
“Xander, look at me,” Willow begged, but he tilted his head so she could only see the back of him. She wasn’t his Willow. She’d never cried on his shoulder or held his hand when he’d been hurting and didn’t want to tell anyone because he was afraid of getting called a wuss. She hadn’t gotten drunk with him as they toasted to lost lovers after Sunnydale fell into a hole. This wasn’t his Willow.
Closing his eyes, he kept telling himself that until her soft pleas vanished and he was alone again.