First is Xander in Africa - "Quiet Exit"
Second is the son of Willow turned - "The youngest Aurelian"
Third is another short glimpse of dear Pet!Xander's life in Loyal and Gentle
Title: Quiet exit
Author: josie_h@yahoo.com
Archived at:
http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=rngrdead
Pairing: Xander/Spike
Rating: Mature Audiences – for content and themes
Warning: Character death
Summary: Xander post Sunnydale - three years on in Africa
Disclaimer: Don’t own the characters nor make any money from stories etc, and bow down to their original creators Joss, et al., plus all the wonderful online writers who continue to give the Buffy/Angel verse characters life.
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He knew he was dying, everyone did.
His feet tingled in a way they shouldn’t.
He got sick *every* time someone sneezed, but then…
He was ‘fuzzy’ in the head much of the time – not enough to stop work – just enough to know things were wrong.
He’d lost enough weight in the last three months that he could now put his fingers around his ankles and skin was loose over what used to be powerful arms
He woke at two or three every night thirsty and muscles in his legs either twitching or cramping.
Cuts no longer healed and strange lesions appeared and gradually opened wider.
He knew too much, so had kept things to himself for as long as possible, but his best friend Damon called him out when he collapsed on the job.
In fifty degree Celsius Sumalian heat, he had always been fine before, but this time he woke on one of their own hospital stretchers. The doctors finally diagnosed something he knew already but had avoided discovering… He might go home from Africa, but it was likely to be in a box.
He didn’t just have HIV, he had full blown AIDS and he was in an African hospital, well away from pretty much any of the drugs available in the first world to control the manifestation of the condition.
In the second week after the diagnosis, he had a couple of very bad days. He had asked to go home. No point taking up space in a hospital that was bursting at the seams with similar or worse cases. Better to let a sick child have his bed. So now he lay on his thin mattress on a camp stretcher, limbs feeling utterly powerless, and stared at the ceiling of the hut for almost an hour before somehow he forcing himself up. It took four ‘goes’ to haul up into a sitting position. It made his head throb, his breathing was too rapid, every part of him felt like lead, and each time he drank a little more of his water his stomach churned.
By the time Damon came to check on him he had given in to his own sense of helplessness, had slipped down a little so was leaning uncomfortably against the wall behind his bed, head flung back and tears tracking from closed eyes into his hair.
Xander was eased back fully onto the bed, had his lesions dressed, a blessed painkiller injected, and managed to ingest a little clear soup and a couple of pieces of an orange that his dear friend had somehow rescued from the market visit the previous week.
Damon replaced the towel that had been positioned between his legs. He ate little but what he did eat seemed to stream out ‘the other end’ with all the control of a newborn. There was no dignity in death.
The following night his dear friend lifted him and carried him out into the cool of the evening to watch the sunset and enjoy the company of others. He rallied and joked a little with his fellow workers resting after yet another shift at the hospital. French, Italian, Swedish and English were the languages around that night, not all humour translated but all made an effort as one of their number faded with the disease they were all fighting to stem.
Damon and he tried to work out when he contracted HIV – it could have been in his last weeks of his time in the USA. A one night stand with an unknown… boy… girl… he really had limited recollection. It was a drunken night before escaping the ‘bright lights’ and his own grief for a life of service in another country. Or it could have been blood from anyone of his (now fellow) victims, despite his own hygiene and care, or… he just didn’t know. There had been a couple of ‘lady friends’ in Nairobi when he first arrived but they had always used precautions… or maybe once or twice hadn’t... completely.
It was irrelevant now.
Damon was a friend not a lover – and he was in no condition to spread anything to anyone, though prayed that he had not passed things on earlier
He asked Damon to leave him reclining on an ancient ‘banana lounge’ to look at the stars for a time. Damon complied, promising to return in an hour or so, then left his ill friend to his own thoughts.
He watched as a shooting star made its way across the vast expanse of shining dots on blackness, and made a sincere wish.
He wished to die quietly and without fuss. He wished his friends Anya and Spike now rested in peace – despite their pasts, and that Willow and Buffy and co. would live long and happy lives. Then he asked for forgiveness for all he had done wrong in his life. The meteor burst into three tiny specks of light that raced across the sky before disappearing.
He felt a cool dark presence as suddenly standing by his shoulder in the warmth of the evening.
“Never figured you for religious… Nice set o’ wishes though… Dyin’ does that to a chap o’ course.” Spike sniffed dramatically, patted his trademark duster for cigarettes, came up with nothing then snorted in disgust, “You’d reckon the Powers could at least let me ‘ave *one* vice!”
“Anyway… Here’s the bloody deal… you get to say when and where and I do the dirty work… got it?”
“What?” Xander turned his head painfully to stare at the shadowy shape of Spike
“Me… Angel of Death (well one of) blahh blahh… You get out of life free card, Soul gets another go… All good… Now give us a timeframe here – on one of those bloody ‘performance check’ thing-a-ma-jigs. Boss ‘ll want to know I’ve done me bit for ya.”
Xander was sure he was hallucinating so simply said, “Later tonight… [painful cough] a couple of hours… just need to say goodbye to Damon… and thanks.”
“Right then, guaranteed easing of the way.”
“No turning?”
“What you think I can do that any more?! Not a bloody vamp you goit! Still if ya want me to drain you, still can oblige, nice way ta go that done properly. That your choice?”
Xander simply looked relieved at the slightly irreverent way Spike spoke of his looming end and then relaxed back eyes closed sighing, “Seems right for a Hellmouth boy don’t you think.”
“Hell of a Hellmouth boy… bloody white knight… reckon Heaven’s a waitin’ for the likes of you…” The last words were as though carried away by a gentle cool breeze and Damon came to carry his desperately ill friend back to the hut.
“You’re smiling… Xan… haven’t seen that for a while… You gonna be OK if we head back to your place? Or do you wanna stay a bit longer?”
Xander tried to struggle up a little but gave in and simply looked into the chocolate eyes with his single one with absolute gratitude and genuine love for a friend. “Thanks… but can you just… take me home… that would be nice… Thanks.”
They talked for a little time at the hut, Damon made him some weak tea and left the drink bottle within reach.
Xander grabbed Damon’s hand just after his ‘towel’ was replaced and the light sheet tucked gently around him. “Thank you… If anything… my things are in the strong box…”
The strapping young Aussi nurse Damon looked distressed for a moment, then patted Xander’s shoulder… “OK mate… but don’t think you’re heading off that soon do you?”
Xander simply smiled said “Thanks” again and closed his eyes as Damon turned off the lamp and left the hut.
He snoozed for a time before feeling the presence.
True to his word, Spike’s ethereal form ‘bit’ him on the neck, taking the life source not his blood and lifting him from the world of pain to another place.
His last thoughts were, “Glad it’s Spike.”
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Title: The youngest Aurelian
Author: josie_h@yahoo.com
Archived at:
http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=rngrdead
Pairing: Xander/Spike
Rating: Mature Audiences – for content and themes
Warning: Character death
Summary: Willow has children, but has to call on an old friend after a tragic event.
Disclaimer: Don’t own the characters nor make any money from stories etc, and bow down to their original creators Joss, et al., plus all the wonderful online writers who continue to give the Buffy/Angel verse characters life.
Calem was lying face down.
It had been his first rugby game for the firsts, he was a swimmer for goodness sake!
Collected around the neck by a high tackle the full back had been ‘pile driven’ into the ground, even he heard the snap before losing consciousness.
Within minutes he was strapped to a spinal board, and an ambulance ride later was on the operating table, anesthetised with his spinal column at the ‘C’s to the ‘T’s open for all to see. The news was not good.
A week later Willow’s only son lay on a special bed with bolts in his skull and screws entering four vertebrae, plus a full body cast to hold him rigid. With catheters and a feeding tube plus extra oxygen, he had been placed in an induced coma, the best prognosis was ‘high function quadriplegic’ meaning he would perhaps at least breathe on his own… eventually… but would be condemned to a powered chair and need assistance to do even the simplest of tasks. Feeding would be through a tube for at least another three months, after that someone would still need to help.
Willow begged of Spike something she would ask no-one else. If turned as a Childe, and fed on Sire’s blood – and the blood of older members of the line, there was a possibility of healing Calem. And with his heritage and ensouled, the possibility of remaining, somehow, the sweet boy she had produced but eighteen years previously.
She convinced the doctors to release him to her care before time– proving that there was adequate facilities at the coven to care for him, then took him home.
That night, as the entire coven prayed Spike and his Mate Xander, and a very worried Angel, knelt at Calem’s bedside, removed all the tubes and additions, and sent the Powers their own message for clemency before simultaneously biting down on the boy and draining him of his blood.
Spike then fed of his Childe then Sire as he made another, feeding the boy the most powerful of all blood, that of a Master, as his mother chanted and ensured Calem’s soul was fixed in place.
Angel had another Great-grandchilde and Xander had a brother in blood, though it would be five days and many feedings of his Sire before a healing body was able to adequately host the demon.
Calem’s first risen act was to lift from the bed and fall to his knees at his mother’s feet to hug her. The coven had been chanting healing spells for days and a tearful Willow simply sunk down to embrace her son, despite his newly emerged fangs and ridges, too overwhelmed to speak.
To all his schoolmates he died at home. To his mother’s wiccan friends he had stepped over to the demon side. To his mother and others ‘in the know’ including the Watchers’ Council, he was now one of the Aurelian Line, an ensouled vampire, special, a white hat, to be schooled, trained and trusted.
As an Aurelian he would never want for money, but as a vampire, never again feel the joy of basking in the sun.
He wished he could alleviate the guilt of the two boys who had done the ‘pile drive’.
As far as they were concerned, they had inadvertently crippled a fellow player in the heat of competition, and he had consequently… died. Willow asked that no charges of bodily harm or manslaughter be laid, but that the ruling re the ‘pile drive’ become absolute. There had been others whose lives had been stolen in just such a fashion. Willow wished she could help them all, but it was not to be.
It was almost two months post accident that Calem woke properly. He had little memory of anything beyond that he had been in a football match… sometime. And he remembered *Sire*.
Spike felt the fledge coming to life, as did his brother Xander and his Great grandsire Angelus. All were present, along with his mother, and as he fed from the breast of all three Aurelian relatives, Willow continued to stroke him and kiss and whisper all the words he remembered now from a very distant past. She too had fed him, but now, as his relatives in turn took one or two sips of his stolen blood, he knew the difference.
He reached up and touched his beautiful white haired mother’s cheek, said “I’m sorry!” then caught her first tear on the tip of his tongue with a speed that confirmed his status.
There was nothing else to be said. He would be young and beautiful long after she was dead. Willow rejoiced in that as she watched him exit the Coven flanked by his relatives to live and train with his Sire.
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Title: Loyal and Gentle - another drabble
Author: rngrdead
Archived at: Here only.
Pairing: Xander/Spike Rating: Mature Audiences – for content and themes. Also species manipulation & dark themes.
Summary: Petxander is very childlike purpose bred and pampered... and yet... when a dimensional shift pushes the two between their realms... Poor Master? Poor Pet!!? .
Warnings: M/M – if you don’t like boys together, don’t play here! Not BDSM but slavery of sorts
Disclaimer: Don’t own the characters nor make any money from stories etc, and bow down to their original creators Joss, et al., plus all the wonderful online writers who continue to give the Buffy/Angel verse characters life.
And finally - a little more of Pet!Xander just for warm fuzzy moment
Pet!Xander worried.
He had seen various changes in the neighbourhood. Key!Dawn had explained the intricacies of the rules of the partnering of human… something or other… It was really all too hard.
He simply had to go with what he knew from his own life.
Obviously the sire of any offspring would have many females to service… Unless of course you were one of an exclusive line – which obviously the free range pets over the road were not… Indeed even their canine and feline co-inhabitants were not purebred! But he still grieved for his young friends that he had played with, particularly Josh and Erin.
They were almost at breeding age when their ‘family fell apart’ according to Key!Dawn. He hoped that didn’t mean it literally – it would be very messy and terribly painful… but Key!Dawn had been really helpful and explained in detail. She said that it had happened to her family too, and he worried for her. So much so that she felt compelled to take him for a special day in the park and took great care to tell him that in this realm, being loved by someone, like Master, was all that really mattered; that he shouldn’t worry about her, or her children; that she was fine, and that the children over the road who had just moved away would be ‘OK’ and probably ‘have a nice life somewhere else’.
He squeezed her hand and tried to look hopeful, but still worried. Then Key!Dawn reassured him that ‘Buster’ the canine and ‘Jasper’ the one eyed feline had also gone with the family, and he felt a little better. Not even a pet of a pet deserved to be left behind.
That night he was caressed by Master and realized something for all time. Master would *never* leave him behind.
He let the emotions take him, and Master licked away his tears, having already talked to dear Key!Dawn. Master always knew if he was upset, but let him show it. He said it was ‘a show of trust’ if his Pet cried and allowed Master to give comfort.
Now, after the tears that had been lovingly licked clear, he lay back arms outstretched and head thrown back in bliss, and groaned his appreciation… Pet!Xander knew his life… it was summed up by a few words “Adore and serve and be adored.”
His head fell back on the pillow, he released into his master’s mouth and then rejoiced as he was slicked and entered to the delighted groan of the Master Vampire he most adored.
He would thank Key!Dawn tomorrow – but today it was all about letting Master feel his joy and relief.
In another dimension, his alternate, the now vampire Childe Xander did an identical act for a very different reason but with an identical result.