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lit_galCan we just role play that we're adults? Part One!
Spike/Xander
Warnings: magical, mystery tour here. There is branding, but not what you're expecting, and not squicky (I hope)
Spike is only kinda sorta in this part, but I will have more parts to this today.
And I don't know if I'm going to finish my damn kink table today when the muses keep trying to write epics. Grrrrrrr.
Can We Just Roleplay We're Adults? (in 3 parts): Jump to part ~1~ ~2~ ~3~
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"This iz a bad idea," the guide said as he stood in front of Xander, blocking him from the gathering ceremony.
"Oh, I'm the master of bad ideas," Xander assured him.
"You have no idea how bad this will hurt," he said as he moved to block Xander again. Xander sighed and looked at Nolizwe.
"Hey, I appreciate the whole attempt to protect me from myself, but if this is what they require for me to take the slayers, I'm okay with it."
"Manhood ceremonies... not something... you are prepared for," Nolizwe said as he reached the edge of his English vocabulary. The man had endless words for describing demons or big game, but these more subtle cultural words would slide right past him. However, Xander had been around long enough to know that manhood ceremony probably included enduring something pretty painful. He was actually looking forward to it. Pain would mean feeling something, and it'd been a long time since he'd felt anything.
"My friend, pain is also my friend. My other friend. The friend you don't want hanging around and who is always stealing your French fries when you aren't looking and putting a 'kick me' sign on your back, but a friend anyway," Xander answered as he detoured around Nolizwe. Just like he expected, the flurry of unfamiliar words left the guide dazed and confused. That left Xander free to reach the dusty village center where a half dozen elders waited in a half circle around the village shaman.
Given the number of tattoos and scars the others wore, Xander had a pretty good idea of what it would take for these men to accept him as a member of the tribe and let him take the two slayers back to England for training.
"Okay, I'm ready," Xander said as he stepped over the circle of white stones. The animal skin loincloth made him feel like an extra from a bad Tarzan movie, especially considering the elders were wearing khakis and jeans, but Xander was old friends with both humiliation and pain. And if he was an extra from a Tarzan movie, then the shaman with his body paint and piercings and animal claw necklace was one of the stars.
The shaman gestured to the ground, and Xander sat cross legged in front of him, and shifted as he felt his cock slip under the way too small cloth. And if he wasn't careful, he was about to find out if flashing the shaman was a bad thing or a very bad thing in their culture.
"You seek to be a member of the tribe, but to be part of the tribe, the spirits must meet you and approve your heart," one of the elders said seriously.
"Hey, no problem. My heart is way better than my aim or my driving," Xander assured him. The elder traded a confused look with another man, and Xander silently ordered his mouth to just stay shut. The shaman chuckled.
"We shall see," he said, and Xander blinked in surprise. That old faker. For three weeks of negotiations, he'd claimed he didn't speak English. The shaman caught Xander's expression and smiled so widely that Xander could count the missing teeth.
Another gesture and two young men came out from around a hut carrying a metal pot swinging from a hook set into the center of a long pole. They set it next to the shaman, but even from several feet away, Xander could feel the heat pouring from it. "You must spirit walk and ask the ones who walked before to help judge your heart," the old shaman said as he used a heavy cloth to pull a rod of metal from the pot. The elders shifted; one started a beat on a drum that the others picked up with chanting and rattles. The sun sank under the horizon, and the orange glow that crept around the edges of the world took on a strange life of its own.
"Why do you come?" the shaman asked. As he sank the rod of metal deep into the pot, burning sparks flew out. A thick, pungent smoke drifted through the circle, and Xander looked over to see a young man dropping green branches onto a fire.
"To get slayers. We'll train them and then bring them home," Xander answered. He'd pretty much been trying that line for three weeks, so he wasn't surprised when it didn't work.
"Why are you here? What do you seek?" the shaman demanded.
"To help the slayers," Xander insisted. This time the shaman nodded and pulled the glowing metal rod out of the pot.
"To help them, you must ask the spirits. Ask them how you can best serve the slayers." The shaman stood, and Xander braced himself as the heat from the metal seemed to make the air wave. The shaman pressed the tip against Xander's skin, right in the middle of his chest, and for a second, the only thing that Xander could think was that it wasn't so bad. Okay, the smell of burning flesh wasn't good, but the pain seemed little more than a tickle. The shaman pulled back and about three seconds later Xander collapsed to the ground screaming as the agony struck him full force.
Smoke filled his lungs and made his eyes water, and Xander tried and failed to sit back up only to find his muscles too weak to manage it. When a painted face loomed near, Xander jerked back only to have an inhumanly strong hand reach out and grab him. Aw shit. Xander was so not up for dealing with feral slayer today. The First Slayer tilted her head at him, studying him like a bug, and Xander had a pretty good idea of just how pathetic he must seem through her eyes.
The black paint around her eyes made her face look vaguely skull-like, so when she thrust her face into his, he tried to scramble away only to have her hand hold onto him.
"How would you help? You are weak."
"No, no, I’m not," Xander immediately answered. That surprised her and she sat back without letting go of his arm. "And you're not supposed to be able to talk."
"It is your hallucination," she countered.
"Oh, okay, so we're talking hallucination and not, I don't know, weird spirit realm where you're going to kill me?" Xander asked hopefully.
"I have not decided," the slayer said as she leaned in again. "How would you help?"
Xander frowned. Maybe this was some sort of native form of sodium pentothal. Maybe it wasn't the first slayer but the shaman asking.
"I can teach them about demons."
"All the demons they will meet in this place, they already know. They can feel the coxix crawling under the ground and the vampires stalking the night."
"I can teach them about others," Xander said. "And other slayers can teach them how to fight. If they have more skills, they're more likely to survive."
"Why must they leave? Why send you? You are weak." The first slayer let him go, and Xander scooted back a foot, not that it would do him any good if this was the first slayer.
"I know how to survive when everyone around you is stronger. The slayers today, they aren't as strong as you. The demons are stronger."
"Then they deserve to die."
"No, they don't," Xander insisted as he moved forward. "We always fight something that's stronger. But we win anyway. I won. I stopped Willow when she was so much stronger than me that she could have killed me with one finger. It isn't about being strong, it's about being right."
"Then why was I created?" the slayer asked as she stood up and spread her arms.
That left Xander silent for a second. "Because men were afraid. Because they didn't want to have to fight something stronger, and so instead they stole your life. But I can't just let these slayers die because the men who made you were too afraid to fight their own battles." The first slayer looked at him, and then vanished into smoke and Xander found himself face to face with the shaman who was holding him up. Xander looked around and all the elders were still in place. The music pounded into his head, and his chest burned like a son of a bitch. It burned and it smelled.
"You have taken the first step. Will you become a man and face the other spirits waiting for you or will you go home?" the shaman asked.
"If I go home, can I take the slayers with me?" Xander asked. No way was he walking away without the slayers, not after that.
"The tribal spirits have not yet met you and judged your heart. Another pushed into your visions first," the shaman said seriously.
"Yeah, the first slayer is like that. Shove into your dreams and spirit kill you first, ask questions later," Xander shrugged. The motion brought new fire to his chest and Xander gasped in pain. By the time the red cloud blurring his vision cleared, Xander could see the shaman looking at him with some confusion. "I met her once before," Xander admitted. "And if I have to face more spirits, bring 'em on," Xander said with a whole lot more confidence than he felt. His legs were trembling and his stomach would have embarrassed him by sending dinner all over everyone if he hadn't been fasting for the day.
The shaman nodded and helped Xander to his knees before he went back and pulled the metal rod out of the pot of embers. Xander thought this one was worse because he knew the agony that was about to come. He had to fight an instinctive urge to pull away that second before the hot metal touched his skin an inch below the first, and both circles instantly burned so hot that Xander couldn't breathe. The shaman pulled the metal away, and Xander fell forward onto his hands. He tried to keep himself above the smoke, but his arms trembled and then collapsed as Xander went face first into the dirt, the smoke billowing up on either side of him.
"You really are a shadow. Look at you. Pathetic. Xan, Xan the one-eyed loser man," a voice sang, and Xander didn't have to open his eyes to identify this one.
"Jesse."
"Wrong."
Xander opened his eyes and found himself nose to nose with a green-faced demon with dozens of little horns sprouting out of its face where a human would have eyebrows and a beard. With a yelp, Xander sprang back.
"I had a body. I had one. You took it from me," the demon snarled as he grabbed Xander with clawed hands. "You send me back."
"Jesse's body," Xander breathed as he realized what he was looking at. And he was so about to get eviscerated. He wondered if dying in the spirit world would give him a heart attack or something in the real world.
"Now, now. No need for rudeness. Especially not when rudeness is accompanied by blood. Messy stuff blood."
Xander closed his eyes and tried visualizing himself out of his hell.
"Oh, this isn't hell," Mayor Wilkins informed him. "Hell is much less pleasant. Not that I plan to stay there forever, of course. There will be a doorway one day, and I will make a point to look you up." Xander opened his eyes and found himself looking into Mayor Wilkins' smiling face. "You are such a little fish in such a wide ocean. However did you manage to undo so many of my plans?" The mayor tsked as he turned his back. The Jesse demon shook Xander so hard that his head felt ready to flop off.
"Hey, I was just the sidekick. Why don't you go haunt someone else's pain and drug induced nightmares, only no, don't. No haunting nightmares for either of you, go rot back in hell where you're supposed to be."
The Jesse demon growled, and then Xander's body exploded in pain. Xander looked down to see a long claw sunk deep into the second burn mark, blood sluggishly trickling down from it.
"Oh really?" Wilkins asked in that same friendly voice. "Who got the weapon to blow up the Judge? That would be you." Wilkins poked a finger in Xander's direction. "Who stopped those idiot zombies on the night they were supposed to blow up the slayer and that ridiculous vampire? You. Who set the explosives that blew me up? Oh yes, you had help from that pretentious librarian that time."
"Kitten sees through the cracks. Every picture has cracks, only he pokes and pokes until the cracks grow like fire," another familiar voice said.
"It's just old home week for psychos," Xander said sadly as he continued to watch his blood trickle out of his body.
"You're not properly dead. You being here is a breach of protocol," the mayor informed her primly. Drusilla just danced into the picture, and suddenly the featureless white room became the main hall in Angelus' mansion.
"Pet the kitty and he'll put claws in you, which you will only think a scratch." Drusilla spun several times and ended up right next to Xander. "Time for the knight to go questing," she said as she planted a kiss on his cheek, and then Xander was gasping as smoke and dust filled his nose. The shaman's hands were on his shoulders pulling him up, and Xander's fingers went to his two burns. Neither was bleeding, but just touching them set a new fire through his whole body, and Xander was left cursing brilliantly. He no longer cared what the tribesman thought about his manners.
"Don't tell me, the evil brigade pushed in and the tribal spirits didn't get to judge my heart," Xander just about growled as he pushed himself back up to his knees. The shaman looked at him with clear distress. "Let's just do this. Sooner or later your guys have got to show up," Xander said as he gestured toward the pot of embers.
"Young one," the shaman started.
"Oh no. I’m pissed now. No way are those three keeping me from doing the whole heart judging thing. I helped kill them—well two of them— fair and square, and they are not screwing me up now. Either tell me that I can take the two slayers for training or get going with the branding iron." Xander gave the shaman his best impression of a Willow resolve face. After a second, the shaman traded looks with the other elders. Only then did Xander realize that the music had stopped. The man on the drums picked up the rhythm and the others followed as the shaman moved in to brand the third circle on Xander's chest.
Knowing the pain was coming didn't make it any easier, but Xander rode through the waves and let himself fall back into the smoke this time. Blinking his eyes open, he found himself in Sunnydale. "Well shit on a shingle. I'm guessing the tribal elders aren't here, so whoever is going to come out and threaten me, bring it on," Xander told the silent night. Footsteps came down the street, and Xander didn't even bother turning his head. Anya's face poked into his field of vision, and Xander stopped breathing.
"Ahn?" Xander sat up and reached out for her, and she took his hands in hers. "Oh god, Ahn. Is this real?"
"Real would be the wrong word. The right word exists in a couple of demon languages, but you're bad with demon languages so I'm not going to bother trying to teach them to you," she said bluntly. It was all the answer Xander needed. He gathered Anya to his chest and hugged her, ignoring the pain.
"Anya. Oh god, I should have protected you better. I'm so sorry."
"For what?"
"For letting you die." Xander pulled back and looked at Anya's face, waiting to see the disappointment and anger. Instead she rolled her eyes at him.
"You always gave good orgasms, but you are no more logical today then you were back then. I was mortal, so I was going to die."
"But not like that, not so young," Xander protested about three seconds before his brain reminded him that he didn't want Anya mad at him. She just smiled.
"But dying like that means I have another chance. I'm in balance, good and evil, so I can go back and try again. And I lived for over a thousand years, Xander, so whether I died at thirty or sixty was really not significant. I've slept through thirty years before, although D'Hoffryn was not amused. I know I'm making this harder for you," she sighed as she reached out and fingered the third brand. The pain stabbed through Xander, but he didn't stop her. "I just had to see you. I can feel your guilt, only you don't have anything to feel guilty about."
"I've screwed up a lot of stuff, Anya. You don't know."
"Oh please," Anya sniffed, and for a second, she sounded a lot like Cordelia. "You screwed up? I gave my soul to hell and cursed men's dicks to make them shrivel. I think I win on the screwing up front. And yeah, you made some bad decisions, but you are in serious danger of turning into Angel."
"What? Am not!" Xander protested.
"Are too!"
"So am not. I do not brood."
Anya nodded slowly and gave him an expression that made it pretty clear she didn't believe him. "And what are you doing in Africa?"
"Not brooding. I'm doing good work, helping Buffy."
Anya's fingers trailed down Xander's stomach and ended at the top of his loincloth where she got a very familiar expression. Xander groaned and started to harden just like the good little Pavlovian dog he was. "White faces stand out in Africa, but instead of sending an African representative, Rupert sent you?"
"Well, yeah," Xander said, and maybe it was Anya's fingers slipping under his loincloth, but he suddenly had trouble understanding the logic of that.
"What assignment had you asked for?" Anya whispered as she ran fingers over the head of his cock. Xander grabbed her shoulder and let his eyes fall closed in lust. That lasted until she poked his third burn.
"Ow!"
"Focus. What assignment did you ask for?"
"Okay, so I asked him to send me to Antarctica or to check to see whether we could set up a council house on the space station, and Andrew was weirdly excited about the idea of slayers in space," Xander admitted.
Anya reached down and kissed the third burn reverently before she stood up and looked him in the eye. "Stop being such a moron," she suggested, and then Sunnydale turned to fog and Xander found himself lying on the ground in the village with a hard on that made his cock peek out from under his loincloth. Groaning with humiliation, Xander moved his hands down to cover himself, but the shaman seemed more interested in Xander's chest. Old fingers moved to the third burn, and when Xander looked down, he realized it had healed to a scar already. The shaman looked at him in shock.
"Um, does that work in place of meeting with the tribal ancestors?" Xander asked hopefully. It took the shaman several seconds to answer.
"No."
Xander sighed. "Right then, back to the burning pain. And guys," Xander said as he looked up at the sky, "I love you, I really do, and I realize I've been doing a little too much brooding lately, but I promise to work on it if you will just not come pushing into my spirit walks here. I'm trying to get a job done, and you're not making it easy for me." The tribal music stumbled, and for a second, the elders were all on a different pattern before they could get themselves back in sync. Xander nodded and pushed himself up to his knees as he gestured toward the pot of embers.
"We should stop," the shaman said quietly.
"Not unless you're going to let me take the slayers."
"You have not been judged worthy."
"Then we keep going," Xander said firmly. The shaman opened his mouth, but Xander was already shaking his head. "You promised me that I would be able to complete the ceremony and prove my worth. So get on with the branding."
This time the shaman moved slower as he got the rod. Xander sat on his butt and put his hands behind him to brace himself. The blinding pain made him scream this time, and he was pretty sure he passed out. Waking up in chains was new, but not unexpected, weirdly. Another green-faced demon had him, so this was going to be another vampire encounter.
The demon had a branding iron of his own, and he pressed it to Xander's chest overlapping the fourth burn mark. Xander screamed, and the demon chuckled in a low voice. "Suffer, boy," he hissed.
"Aw fuck. Spike, nice to see you. You're looking horny." Xander closed his eyes and called himself an idiot the minute that word was out of his mouth, but the Spike demon just chuckled again.
"It's not the sex for them, you know. They're beasts," a quiet voice offered. "They feed on blood and power, and as long as they can get both, they don't have any other desires."
"Yeah, right, except for the ending the world kind," Xander said as he turned his head to the new voice. "Spike?" he asked, but that was not looking like Spike. That was looking like a really nerdy version of Spike with curly hair and glasses.
"William," the other man corrected him. "And if the demon tries to end the world, then it's because the human memories have told him that ending the world is powerful."
"And your demon is not about ending the world?" Xander asked as he looked over at the green vampire demon that was reheating the hot poker.
"Not so much. He learned about power through me, I'm afraid."
"Which means?" Xander asked as he pulled on the chains that held him to the wall. A book appeared in William's hands and he looked down at it sadly.
"Love."
"Okay, I’m missing the connection," Xander said. The demon was happily stirring his own pot of embers and making sparks fly.
"Love is power. He did everything to keep Drusilla because to keep love means to be powerful. He hates Angelus because Angelus left him, but he wants him too, because to earn back that love would make him powerful." At the name Angelus, the demon turned and growled at both of them, showing his teeth.
"And this is about love?" Xander asked as he pulled at the chains again.
"Yes," William nodded. "You have love. He wants loves."
"The jolly green giant is jealous of me?" Xander demanded incredulously.
"You lit his cigarette. You said kind words that made him think that he might be part of that strong love you have with the others. He thought he could have love that never strays. Willow tried to end the world, and you still loved her. Giles left you alone to deal with the pain, and you still love him. He wants love that he doesn't have to earn over and over. He died hoping to prove his love. And now he's alone. We're alone."
"In hell," Xander said softly, and even he had to admit that sucked. As much as he'd been suspicious of Spike, the vampire had stood by them time and time again, and Xander had started to think of him as a friend. A friend who you didn't totally trust, but a friend.
"In L.A.," William corrected him.
"What?"
"The amulet took us back to L.A. We nearly died again trying to fight Angel's war and earn his love. Everyone except Angel and Spike died, and now we're lost. We can't bring ourselves to love Angel because he caused so many deaths... deaths that never should have happened. We can't go back to Buffy because we saw her with the Immortal."
"Don't mention that because I'm still squicked at that one," Xander said with a grimace. William ducked his head and smiled shyly.
"We're stuck without any love, without any connection, and the beast is starting to hunt for the power he needs."
"Hunt as in you're losing control? I don't want to have to hunt Spike down. I really don't," Xander said with his voice shaky. This was coming too much, too fast. Spike was alive and alone and hurting, and part of Xander wanted to reach out to that, but if Spike was hunting again, he couldn't just let the vampire kill.
"Don't hunt us, find us," William said as he moved close and let his finger trail over the fourth burn. The caress followed the same trail down over Xander's belly that Anya had used. And then William was caressing his cock.
"I don't... I can't..." Xander stammered as he pulled on the shackles.
"You even asked Willow to gay you up, you can," William said confidently. And then Xander spotted the vampire demon coming close with the branding iron.
"With a vampire, no, really can't. I mean, could you stop your alter ego there?" Xander asked as he watched the branding iron come closer. All he could do was squirm, but then William was kneeling in front of him, his hands on Xander's hips.
"I don't control the beast, but I can love you, and he can feel possessive about you and feed from your love," William pointed out.
"Not feeling the love," Xander yelped.
"Yes, you do. He died for you. He wants love and loyalty more than he wants blood, so let me help you through this," William said as he pulled the loincloth to the side. Xander was more than a little embarrassed when his hard cock slipped free, but then William took it into his mouth, and Xander's big brain sent all the blood south. Or maybe that was Xander's little brain... either way, Xander's whole existence narrowed down to just his cock as that warm mouth worked him.
A hot flare burned down his stomach and into his cock, and Xander jerked as the heat made the whole world turn into a Technicolor streak. He was panting, writhing in pleasure even as the smell of burnt skin told him he should feel pain. He didn't, though. He felt heat, he felt a tightness in his stomach and his cock—a tightness that made the rest of the world seem like a pale imitation of life. With a scream, Xander came so hard that the world started fading to black, and the last thing he felt was lips touching his fourth scar.
Xander woke up dizzy and the sound of the drums and the rattle hurt like a knife through the brain. It took a few seconds for him to put all the pieces of reality back into place. There was the shaman kneeling beside him. Aw shit. There was his own semen staining his leg. Yep, if there were a way to humiliate himself, Xander could pretty much find it.
"I really need better friends, ones that don't keep sticking their astral projection butts in where they aren't wanted," Xander said wearily, but he had to admit that he wouldn't have sent that vision away if he could have. If Spike was back and alone, Buffy should have gone and gotten him. Yeah, the bleached wonder was a pain in the ass, but he was one of their pains in the ass. "Okay, I can do this," Xander said as he unsteadily shoved himself up and nearly toppled over in the other direction. The shaman was there holding his shoulders.
"We should stop."
"Can I have the slayers?"
"You have not been judged."
"Then I'm saying 'no' to the stoppage," Xander said firmly. He'd feel a lot better about it if the world didn't keep fading out to black and white. It was probably hypoglycemia. He definitely needed about two liters of soda to bring his sugar back up. Reaching down, Xander fingered the fourth scar. Like the third one, it was already healed, but it had doubled in size, the white puckered skin spreading out to nearly an inch.
"Young one," the shaman sighed, but Xander shook his head. "I'm not stopping."
"Young one," the shaman tried again as he grabbed Xander's hand and brought it up to his chest, sliding it below the dozens of necklaces until Xander could feel a small round scar. "One. Two." The shaman slid Xander's hand down to touch the second scar. "Three. Four. Five." Xander blinked at the evidence that the shaman had gone through this same rite. At least that meant they weren't making fun of the white guy.
"Hurts, doesn't it?" Xander asked. "But I'm not stopping until the tribal elders have judged, and I don't care if I look like a connect the dots puzzle."
The shaman shook his head and reached up to touch Xander's cheek. "The fifth voyage is dangerous."
"Dangerous like OD'ing on hallucinogenic smoke?" Xander asked as he eyed the smoke around him with some suspicion.
"The fifth voyage makes one a shaman, opens a door which cannot be closed."
Okay, that made Xander stop and think. "Opens a door to hell or a door a demon can use to crawl into your dreams and kill you?" Xander asked. The very fact that the shaman had to stop and think about it made Xander worry a little.
"Maybe," he finally admitted. "Have your spirit guides not spoken to you of the final trial?" he asked as he looked at the four marks already on Xander's chest.
"These are not spirit guides. In fact, in one case, these are evil doers of the first degree," Xander said as he pointed toward scar number two.
"We may learn from good and evil, both provide a light by which to judge our own actions. But only you can know if you should take the fifth journey. "
"And if I don't, you won't let the slayers go with me," Xander guessed.
"You have not been judged."
"I'm really starting to hate that phrase." Xander reached up and poked at his first scar, hating how much the damn thing ached and itched. When the first slayer appeared across the fire, Xander screamed like a little girl and jumped to his feet.
"If you think the weak can defeat the strong," she said with a tilt of her head, but then she didn't finish her statement. Instead she looked at him again and gave a dismissive snort. "I think you will die in the judging." She vanished, and Xander was left with only the tribesman. Weirdly, they weren't even looking at him like he was weird. Xander felt weird.
"Okay, my spirit guide seems to think I'm going to get my ass kicked," Xander said.
The shaman looked at him with relief. "But I'm not good with taking advice. You should ask my friends. I really suck at listening when people tell me I'm going to fail. So fifth voyage, here we come." Xander sat down and really tried to ignore the drying semen that made his leg itch. Unfortunately, the very memory of William's blowjob and the heat from the demon's brand pushing him into something so all-consuming... Xander started getting hard again before the shaman had even gotten back with the brand.
The fifth brand set Xander's whole world on fire, and he collapsed back before the shaman could pull the brand away. The pain went on and on as Xander writhed on the ground and choked on the smoke that thickened in his throat.
"He would steal our daughters," an unfamiliar voice accused him, and Xander tried to speak in his own defense, but the smoke choked him, and he kicked his legs in desperation as death crept in on him.
"He is a good man."
"He is part of the shadow men. They steal our daughters."
"The shadow men are gone, killed by the evil they hid from."
"His path is unclear."
"He would try to do right."
The voices rose up until Xander felt like he was inside a megaphone.
"He would hurt our daughters."
Ignoring his instinctive need to hold onto what little oxygen he had, Xander gasped out the word, "NO!" All the voices fell silent and Xander was left to suffocate alone.
"Would you truly return our daughters?" a woman's voice asked.
Xander nodded his head, and the smoke thickened until the weight of it pushed down on him. "Yes, yes," Xander wheezed, and the weight of the smoke eased.
"Would you protect them?" An old man was asking, his face like a fun house mirror distortion inside the smoke.
"Yes."
"Judge his heart."
"Judge his heart. Judge his heart."
"Judge his heart. Judge his heart. Judge his heart. Judge his heart." The words from hundreds of voices, young and old, male and female, filled the gray void that Xander had fallen into.
His mouth gaping open as he struggled to breathe, Xander didn't have the strength to fight when some invisible force lifted him. His arms and legs and head dangled down and his heart pounded furiously. Xander had a feeling like someone had attached a rope to his heart and now he was dangling from it, only from the way the smoke was pushing in, he wasn't coming out on the good side of the judgment.
"Kill him," the whispers started. "Kill him. Kill him. Kill him." The words echoed and grew in strength and Xander could only dangle there slowly losing consciousness. The pounding in his head echoed against the inside of his skull, and Xander realized he was dying. He'd never see Willow or Buffy again, he'd never try to stop brooding like he'd promised Ahn, he'd never find Spike. He was going to die in Africa alone. Xander could feel his eye heat with tears as the gray around him started to fade.
The chants of "kill him" slowly faded, but Xander was so dizzy that he couldn't make out the words. And then the smoke started to thin, and Xander could pull air into his starved lungs. "He is judged worthy," the voices chanted. Right now, Xander didn't care how they judged him as long as he got oxygen again. He gulped the air and felt his sore muscles start to tremble as they came back to life. The pins and needles grew to an agony that surpassed even the burning in his chest.
"He is worthy," a voice boomed so loud that Xander whimpered as it echoed in his head. "His guides shall choose his prize."
Xander felt hands run across his body, sending cold chills through him as the world darkened even more. Then red streaks began to appear, and the sound of drums in the distance made his bones ache. Part of him wanted to get as far from those drums as he could.
"Xander, don't be so thick," Anya said in that exasperated tone of hers. "I know you've listened to Giles drone on enough to know that drums are used to help you find your body again." Xander looked over and Anya was backlit with firelight, her blonde hair shining.
"I miss you, you know," he said to her softly.
"I know," she answered as she raised her hand to his third scar. "The spirit realm is all about truth. Here is where we can't hide behind all the lies we tell ourselves. I pushed you when I knew you needed someone other than me. You need someone who will obsess about you as much as you obsess about them. I was too worried about being human in general."
"Ahn, it wasn't your fault."
"Not all," she said quickly. "You were just as big of a moron trusting a demon instead of talking to someone, but that's you," she shrugged. "And if you're not careful, you are so going to turn into Angel. So get your ass back to that body of yours and make some better choices."
She gave Xander a push, and then she vanished into smoke. Xander started walking toward the drums, his head pounding harder with each step until he thought his brain might explode out his ears, but in the end, he woke up with his head in the shaman's lap.
"Welcome home, young shaman," the old man said with a smile.
"My hurts hurt," Xander groaned as he reached up to scrub his face. His fingers first noticed the embarrassing lack of an eye patch. He hated for people to see his scar. But then when he went to cover his scar from the shaman, he nearly poked his eye out... his missing eye... which wasn't missing anymore.
The shaman chuckled at the look on Xander's face. "Being a shaman always requires a sacrifice and offers a prize."
"Well, this is going to be interesting to explain," Xander sighed as he struggled to sit up. The fifth scar had landed not far above his belly button, and where the others were white, it had a faint reddish tinge to it. Xander reached out and fingered the scar and felt a shiver though his body. The other four scars were healed as well, although the fourth remained twice the size of the others, and the second one had a red spot in the very center.
"Will you stay and learn some shamanic rituals before you take the slayers to England?" the old man asked. It was on the tip of Xander's tongue to say no, to say that he had a friend who could teach him and then he had a burning desire to get to L.A. He looked over at the shaman.
"Can we do the cliffs notes version... and that would be the short and fast version for those who didn't grow up in the American high school system learning to cheat. I just really have somewhere that I have to be."
"Not England," the shaman guessed.
"No. No, I left someone behind who I shouldn't have," Xander said as he touched his fourth scar.
"Spirit guides are the souls of the dead," the shaman said with a frown as he watched Xander's fingers.
"Yeah, but some people who are dead are still walking around," Xander pointed out. The shaman opened his eyes so comically wide that Xander almost expected them to pop out.
"You are indeed a unique shaman," he said with a tilt of his head. "Four days, and I will teach you only the most vital of the lore. Then you will have to seek a teacher after this quest of yours because being a shaman means not only greater power but greater vulnerability."
"Deal," Xander said as he started mentally calculating the time required to get trained, drop the slayers off in England and get to L.A. His fourth scar itched, and Xander scratched it. "I'm coming Spike. Just hold on."
Spike/Xander
Warnings: magical, mystery tour here. There is branding, but not what you're expecting, and not squicky (I hope)
Spike is only kinda sorta in this part, but I will have more parts to this today.
And I don't know if I'm going to finish my damn kink table today when the muses keep trying to write epics. Grrrrrrr.
Can We Just Roleplay We're Adults? (in 3 parts): Jump to part ~1~ ~2~ ~3~
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"This iz a bad idea," the guide said as he stood in front of Xander, blocking him from the gathering ceremony.
"Oh, I'm the master of bad ideas," Xander assured him.
"You have no idea how bad this will hurt," he said as he moved to block Xander again. Xander sighed and looked at Nolizwe.
"Hey, I appreciate the whole attempt to protect me from myself, but if this is what they require for me to take the slayers, I'm okay with it."
"Manhood ceremonies... not something... you are prepared for," Nolizwe said as he reached the edge of his English vocabulary. The man had endless words for describing demons or big game, but these more subtle cultural words would slide right past him. However, Xander had been around long enough to know that manhood ceremony probably included enduring something pretty painful. He was actually looking forward to it. Pain would mean feeling something, and it'd been a long time since he'd felt anything.
"My friend, pain is also my friend. My other friend. The friend you don't want hanging around and who is always stealing your French fries when you aren't looking and putting a 'kick me' sign on your back, but a friend anyway," Xander answered as he detoured around Nolizwe. Just like he expected, the flurry of unfamiliar words left the guide dazed and confused. That left Xander free to reach the dusty village center where a half dozen elders waited in a half circle around the village shaman.
Given the number of tattoos and scars the others wore, Xander had a pretty good idea of what it would take for these men to accept him as a member of the tribe and let him take the two slayers back to England for training.
"Okay, I'm ready," Xander said as he stepped over the circle of white stones. The animal skin loincloth made him feel like an extra from a bad Tarzan movie, especially considering the elders were wearing khakis and jeans, but Xander was old friends with both humiliation and pain. And if he was an extra from a Tarzan movie, then the shaman with his body paint and piercings and animal claw necklace was one of the stars.
The shaman gestured to the ground, and Xander sat cross legged in front of him, and shifted as he felt his cock slip under the way too small cloth. And if he wasn't careful, he was about to find out if flashing the shaman was a bad thing or a very bad thing in their culture.
"You seek to be a member of the tribe, but to be part of the tribe, the spirits must meet you and approve your heart," one of the elders said seriously.
"Hey, no problem. My heart is way better than my aim or my driving," Xander assured him. The elder traded a confused look with another man, and Xander silently ordered his mouth to just stay shut. The shaman chuckled.
"We shall see," he said, and Xander blinked in surprise. That old faker. For three weeks of negotiations, he'd claimed he didn't speak English. The shaman caught Xander's expression and smiled so widely that Xander could count the missing teeth.
Another gesture and two young men came out from around a hut carrying a metal pot swinging from a hook set into the center of a long pole. They set it next to the shaman, but even from several feet away, Xander could feel the heat pouring from it. "You must spirit walk and ask the ones who walked before to help judge your heart," the old shaman said as he used a heavy cloth to pull a rod of metal from the pot. The elders shifted; one started a beat on a drum that the others picked up with chanting and rattles. The sun sank under the horizon, and the orange glow that crept around the edges of the world took on a strange life of its own.
"Why do you come?" the shaman asked. As he sank the rod of metal deep into the pot, burning sparks flew out. A thick, pungent smoke drifted through the circle, and Xander looked over to see a young man dropping green branches onto a fire.
"To get slayers. We'll train them and then bring them home," Xander answered. He'd pretty much been trying that line for three weeks, so he wasn't surprised when it didn't work.
"Why are you here? What do you seek?" the shaman demanded.
"To help the slayers," Xander insisted. This time the shaman nodded and pulled the glowing metal rod out of the pot.
"To help them, you must ask the spirits. Ask them how you can best serve the slayers." The shaman stood, and Xander braced himself as the heat from the metal seemed to make the air wave. The shaman pressed the tip against Xander's skin, right in the middle of his chest, and for a second, the only thing that Xander could think was that it wasn't so bad. Okay, the smell of burning flesh wasn't good, but the pain seemed little more than a tickle. The shaman pulled back and about three seconds later Xander collapsed to the ground screaming as the agony struck him full force.
Smoke filled his lungs and made his eyes water, and Xander tried and failed to sit back up only to find his muscles too weak to manage it. When a painted face loomed near, Xander jerked back only to have an inhumanly strong hand reach out and grab him. Aw shit. Xander was so not up for dealing with feral slayer today. The First Slayer tilted her head at him, studying him like a bug, and Xander had a pretty good idea of just how pathetic he must seem through her eyes.
The black paint around her eyes made her face look vaguely skull-like, so when she thrust her face into his, he tried to scramble away only to have her hand hold onto him.
"How would you help? You are weak."
"No, no, I’m not," Xander immediately answered. That surprised her and she sat back without letting go of his arm. "And you're not supposed to be able to talk."
"It is your hallucination," she countered.
"Oh, okay, so we're talking hallucination and not, I don't know, weird spirit realm where you're going to kill me?" Xander asked hopefully.
"I have not decided," the slayer said as she leaned in again. "How would you help?"
Xander frowned. Maybe this was some sort of native form of sodium pentothal. Maybe it wasn't the first slayer but the shaman asking.
"I can teach them about demons."
"All the demons they will meet in this place, they already know. They can feel the coxix crawling under the ground and the vampires stalking the night."
"I can teach them about others," Xander said. "And other slayers can teach them how to fight. If they have more skills, they're more likely to survive."
"Why must they leave? Why send you? You are weak." The first slayer let him go, and Xander scooted back a foot, not that it would do him any good if this was the first slayer.
"I know how to survive when everyone around you is stronger. The slayers today, they aren't as strong as you. The demons are stronger."
"Then they deserve to die."
"No, they don't," Xander insisted as he moved forward. "We always fight something that's stronger. But we win anyway. I won. I stopped Willow when she was so much stronger than me that she could have killed me with one finger. It isn't about being strong, it's about being right."
"Then why was I created?" the slayer asked as she stood up and spread her arms.
That left Xander silent for a second. "Because men were afraid. Because they didn't want to have to fight something stronger, and so instead they stole your life. But I can't just let these slayers die because the men who made you were too afraid to fight their own battles." The first slayer looked at him, and then vanished into smoke and Xander found himself face to face with the shaman who was holding him up. Xander looked around and all the elders were still in place. The music pounded into his head, and his chest burned like a son of a bitch. It burned and it smelled.
"You have taken the first step. Will you become a man and face the other spirits waiting for you or will you go home?" the shaman asked.
"If I go home, can I take the slayers with me?" Xander asked. No way was he walking away without the slayers, not after that.
"The tribal spirits have not yet met you and judged your heart. Another pushed into your visions first," the shaman said seriously.
"Yeah, the first slayer is like that. Shove into your dreams and spirit kill you first, ask questions later," Xander shrugged. The motion brought new fire to his chest and Xander gasped in pain. By the time the red cloud blurring his vision cleared, Xander could see the shaman looking at him with some confusion. "I met her once before," Xander admitted. "And if I have to face more spirits, bring 'em on," Xander said with a whole lot more confidence than he felt. His legs were trembling and his stomach would have embarrassed him by sending dinner all over everyone if he hadn't been fasting for the day.
The shaman nodded and helped Xander to his knees before he went back and pulled the metal rod out of the pot of embers. Xander thought this one was worse because he knew the agony that was about to come. He had to fight an instinctive urge to pull away that second before the hot metal touched his skin an inch below the first, and both circles instantly burned so hot that Xander couldn't breathe. The shaman pulled the metal away, and Xander fell forward onto his hands. He tried to keep himself above the smoke, but his arms trembled and then collapsed as Xander went face first into the dirt, the smoke billowing up on either side of him.
"You really are a shadow. Look at you. Pathetic. Xan, Xan the one-eyed loser man," a voice sang, and Xander didn't have to open his eyes to identify this one.
"Jesse."
"Wrong."
Xander opened his eyes and found himself nose to nose with a green-faced demon with dozens of little horns sprouting out of its face where a human would have eyebrows and a beard. With a yelp, Xander sprang back.
"I had a body. I had one. You took it from me," the demon snarled as he grabbed Xander with clawed hands. "You send me back."
"Jesse's body," Xander breathed as he realized what he was looking at. And he was so about to get eviscerated. He wondered if dying in the spirit world would give him a heart attack or something in the real world.
"Now, now. No need for rudeness. Especially not when rudeness is accompanied by blood. Messy stuff blood."
Xander closed his eyes and tried visualizing himself out of his hell.
"Oh, this isn't hell," Mayor Wilkins informed him. "Hell is much less pleasant. Not that I plan to stay there forever, of course. There will be a doorway one day, and I will make a point to look you up." Xander opened his eyes and found himself looking into Mayor Wilkins' smiling face. "You are such a little fish in such a wide ocean. However did you manage to undo so many of my plans?" The mayor tsked as he turned his back. The Jesse demon shook Xander so hard that his head felt ready to flop off.
"Hey, I was just the sidekick. Why don't you go haunt someone else's pain and drug induced nightmares, only no, don't. No haunting nightmares for either of you, go rot back in hell where you're supposed to be."
The Jesse demon growled, and then Xander's body exploded in pain. Xander looked down to see a long claw sunk deep into the second burn mark, blood sluggishly trickling down from it.
"Oh really?" Wilkins asked in that same friendly voice. "Who got the weapon to blow up the Judge? That would be you." Wilkins poked a finger in Xander's direction. "Who stopped those idiot zombies on the night they were supposed to blow up the slayer and that ridiculous vampire? You. Who set the explosives that blew me up? Oh yes, you had help from that pretentious librarian that time."
"Kitten sees through the cracks. Every picture has cracks, only he pokes and pokes until the cracks grow like fire," another familiar voice said.
"It's just old home week for psychos," Xander said sadly as he continued to watch his blood trickle out of his body.
"You're not properly dead. You being here is a breach of protocol," the mayor informed her primly. Drusilla just danced into the picture, and suddenly the featureless white room became the main hall in Angelus' mansion.
"Pet the kitty and he'll put claws in you, which you will only think a scratch." Drusilla spun several times and ended up right next to Xander. "Time for the knight to go questing," she said as she planted a kiss on his cheek, and then Xander was gasping as smoke and dust filled his nose. The shaman's hands were on his shoulders pulling him up, and Xander's fingers went to his two burns. Neither was bleeding, but just touching them set a new fire through his whole body, and Xander was left cursing brilliantly. He no longer cared what the tribesman thought about his manners.
"Don't tell me, the evil brigade pushed in and the tribal spirits didn't get to judge my heart," Xander just about growled as he pushed himself back up to his knees. The shaman looked at him with clear distress. "Let's just do this. Sooner or later your guys have got to show up," Xander said as he gestured toward the pot of embers.
"Young one," the shaman started.
"Oh no. I’m pissed now. No way are those three keeping me from doing the whole heart judging thing. I helped kill them—well two of them— fair and square, and they are not screwing me up now. Either tell me that I can take the two slayers for training or get going with the branding iron." Xander gave the shaman his best impression of a Willow resolve face. After a second, the shaman traded looks with the other elders. Only then did Xander realize that the music had stopped. The man on the drums picked up the rhythm and the others followed as the shaman moved in to brand the third circle on Xander's chest.
Knowing the pain was coming didn't make it any easier, but Xander rode through the waves and let himself fall back into the smoke this time. Blinking his eyes open, he found himself in Sunnydale. "Well shit on a shingle. I'm guessing the tribal elders aren't here, so whoever is going to come out and threaten me, bring it on," Xander told the silent night. Footsteps came down the street, and Xander didn't even bother turning his head. Anya's face poked into his field of vision, and Xander stopped breathing.
"Ahn?" Xander sat up and reached out for her, and she took his hands in hers. "Oh god, Ahn. Is this real?"
"Real would be the wrong word. The right word exists in a couple of demon languages, but you're bad with demon languages so I'm not going to bother trying to teach them to you," she said bluntly. It was all the answer Xander needed. He gathered Anya to his chest and hugged her, ignoring the pain.
"Anya. Oh god, I should have protected you better. I'm so sorry."
"For what?"
"For letting you die." Xander pulled back and looked at Anya's face, waiting to see the disappointment and anger. Instead she rolled her eyes at him.
"You always gave good orgasms, but you are no more logical today then you were back then. I was mortal, so I was going to die."
"But not like that, not so young," Xander protested about three seconds before his brain reminded him that he didn't want Anya mad at him. She just smiled.
"But dying like that means I have another chance. I'm in balance, good and evil, so I can go back and try again. And I lived for over a thousand years, Xander, so whether I died at thirty or sixty was really not significant. I've slept through thirty years before, although D'Hoffryn was not amused. I know I'm making this harder for you," she sighed as she reached out and fingered the third brand. The pain stabbed through Xander, but he didn't stop her. "I just had to see you. I can feel your guilt, only you don't have anything to feel guilty about."
"I've screwed up a lot of stuff, Anya. You don't know."
"Oh please," Anya sniffed, and for a second, she sounded a lot like Cordelia. "You screwed up? I gave my soul to hell and cursed men's dicks to make them shrivel. I think I win on the screwing up front. And yeah, you made some bad decisions, but you are in serious danger of turning into Angel."
"What? Am not!" Xander protested.
"Are too!"
"So am not. I do not brood."
Anya nodded slowly and gave him an expression that made it pretty clear she didn't believe him. "And what are you doing in Africa?"
"Not brooding. I'm doing good work, helping Buffy."
Anya's fingers trailed down Xander's stomach and ended at the top of his loincloth where she got a very familiar expression. Xander groaned and started to harden just like the good little Pavlovian dog he was. "White faces stand out in Africa, but instead of sending an African representative, Rupert sent you?"
"Well, yeah," Xander said, and maybe it was Anya's fingers slipping under his loincloth, but he suddenly had trouble understanding the logic of that.
"What assignment had you asked for?" Anya whispered as she ran fingers over the head of his cock. Xander grabbed her shoulder and let his eyes fall closed in lust. That lasted until she poked his third burn.
"Ow!"
"Focus. What assignment did you ask for?"
"Okay, so I asked him to send me to Antarctica or to check to see whether we could set up a council house on the space station, and Andrew was weirdly excited about the idea of slayers in space," Xander admitted.
Anya reached down and kissed the third burn reverently before she stood up and looked him in the eye. "Stop being such a moron," she suggested, and then Sunnydale turned to fog and Xander found himself lying on the ground in the village with a hard on that made his cock peek out from under his loincloth. Groaning with humiliation, Xander moved his hands down to cover himself, but the shaman seemed more interested in Xander's chest. Old fingers moved to the third burn, and when Xander looked down, he realized it had healed to a scar already. The shaman looked at him in shock.
"Um, does that work in place of meeting with the tribal ancestors?" Xander asked hopefully. It took the shaman several seconds to answer.
"No."
Xander sighed. "Right then, back to the burning pain. And guys," Xander said as he looked up at the sky, "I love you, I really do, and I realize I've been doing a little too much brooding lately, but I promise to work on it if you will just not come pushing into my spirit walks here. I'm trying to get a job done, and you're not making it easy for me." The tribal music stumbled, and for a second, the elders were all on a different pattern before they could get themselves back in sync. Xander nodded and pushed himself up to his knees as he gestured toward the pot of embers.
"We should stop," the shaman said quietly.
"Not unless you're going to let me take the slayers."
"You have not been judged worthy."
"Then we keep going," Xander said firmly. The shaman opened his mouth, but Xander was already shaking his head. "You promised me that I would be able to complete the ceremony and prove my worth. So get on with the branding."
This time the shaman moved slower as he got the rod. Xander sat on his butt and put his hands behind him to brace himself. The blinding pain made him scream this time, and he was pretty sure he passed out. Waking up in chains was new, but not unexpected, weirdly. Another green-faced demon had him, so this was going to be another vampire encounter.
The demon had a branding iron of his own, and he pressed it to Xander's chest overlapping the fourth burn mark. Xander screamed, and the demon chuckled in a low voice. "Suffer, boy," he hissed.
"Aw fuck. Spike, nice to see you. You're looking horny." Xander closed his eyes and called himself an idiot the minute that word was out of his mouth, but the Spike demon just chuckled again.
"It's not the sex for them, you know. They're beasts," a quiet voice offered. "They feed on blood and power, and as long as they can get both, they don't have any other desires."
"Yeah, right, except for the ending the world kind," Xander said as he turned his head to the new voice. "Spike?" he asked, but that was not looking like Spike. That was looking like a really nerdy version of Spike with curly hair and glasses.
"William," the other man corrected him. "And if the demon tries to end the world, then it's because the human memories have told him that ending the world is powerful."
"And your demon is not about ending the world?" Xander asked as he looked over at the green vampire demon that was reheating the hot poker.
"Not so much. He learned about power through me, I'm afraid."
"Which means?" Xander asked as he pulled on the chains that held him to the wall. A book appeared in William's hands and he looked down at it sadly.
"Love."
"Okay, I’m missing the connection," Xander said. The demon was happily stirring his own pot of embers and making sparks fly.
"Love is power. He did everything to keep Drusilla because to keep love means to be powerful. He hates Angelus because Angelus left him, but he wants him too, because to earn back that love would make him powerful." At the name Angelus, the demon turned and growled at both of them, showing his teeth.
"And this is about love?" Xander asked as he pulled at the chains again.
"Yes," William nodded. "You have love. He wants loves."
"The jolly green giant is jealous of me?" Xander demanded incredulously.
"You lit his cigarette. You said kind words that made him think that he might be part of that strong love you have with the others. He thought he could have love that never strays. Willow tried to end the world, and you still loved her. Giles left you alone to deal with the pain, and you still love him. He wants love that he doesn't have to earn over and over. He died hoping to prove his love. And now he's alone. We're alone."
"In hell," Xander said softly, and even he had to admit that sucked. As much as he'd been suspicious of Spike, the vampire had stood by them time and time again, and Xander had started to think of him as a friend. A friend who you didn't totally trust, but a friend.
"In L.A.," William corrected him.
"What?"
"The amulet took us back to L.A. We nearly died again trying to fight Angel's war and earn his love. Everyone except Angel and Spike died, and now we're lost. We can't bring ourselves to love Angel because he caused so many deaths... deaths that never should have happened. We can't go back to Buffy because we saw her with the Immortal."
"Don't mention that because I'm still squicked at that one," Xander said with a grimace. William ducked his head and smiled shyly.
"We're stuck without any love, without any connection, and the beast is starting to hunt for the power he needs."
"Hunt as in you're losing control? I don't want to have to hunt Spike down. I really don't," Xander said with his voice shaky. This was coming too much, too fast. Spike was alive and alone and hurting, and part of Xander wanted to reach out to that, but if Spike was hunting again, he couldn't just let the vampire kill.
"Don't hunt us, find us," William said as he moved close and let his finger trail over the fourth burn. The caress followed the same trail down over Xander's belly that Anya had used. And then William was caressing his cock.
"I don't... I can't..." Xander stammered as he pulled on the shackles.
"You even asked Willow to gay you up, you can," William said confidently. And then Xander spotted the vampire demon coming close with the branding iron.
"With a vampire, no, really can't. I mean, could you stop your alter ego there?" Xander asked as he watched the branding iron come closer. All he could do was squirm, but then William was kneeling in front of him, his hands on Xander's hips.
"I don't control the beast, but I can love you, and he can feel possessive about you and feed from your love," William pointed out.
"Not feeling the love," Xander yelped.
"Yes, you do. He died for you. He wants love and loyalty more than he wants blood, so let me help you through this," William said as he pulled the loincloth to the side. Xander was more than a little embarrassed when his hard cock slipped free, but then William took it into his mouth, and Xander's big brain sent all the blood south. Or maybe that was Xander's little brain... either way, Xander's whole existence narrowed down to just his cock as that warm mouth worked him.
A hot flare burned down his stomach and into his cock, and Xander jerked as the heat made the whole world turn into a Technicolor streak. He was panting, writhing in pleasure even as the smell of burnt skin told him he should feel pain. He didn't, though. He felt heat, he felt a tightness in his stomach and his cock—a tightness that made the rest of the world seem like a pale imitation of life. With a scream, Xander came so hard that the world started fading to black, and the last thing he felt was lips touching his fourth scar.
Xander woke up dizzy and the sound of the drums and the rattle hurt like a knife through the brain. It took a few seconds for him to put all the pieces of reality back into place. There was the shaman kneeling beside him. Aw shit. There was his own semen staining his leg. Yep, if there were a way to humiliate himself, Xander could pretty much find it.
"I really need better friends, ones that don't keep sticking their astral projection butts in where they aren't wanted," Xander said wearily, but he had to admit that he wouldn't have sent that vision away if he could have. If Spike was back and alone, Buffy should have gone and gotten him. Yeah, the bleached wonder was a pain in the ass, but he was one of their pains in the ass. "Okay, I can do this," Xander said as he unsteadily shoved himself up and nearly toppled over in the other direction. The shaman was there holding his shoulders.
"We should stop."
"Can I have the slayers?"
"You have not been judged."
"Then I'm saying 'no' to the stoppage," Xander said firmly. He'd feel a lot better about it if the world didn't keep fading out to black and white. It was probably hypoglycemia. He definitely needed about two liters of soda to bring his sugar back up. Reaching down, Xander fingered the fourth scar. Like the third one, it was already healed, but it had doubled in size, the white puckered skin spreading out to nearly an inch.
"Young one," the shaman sighed, but Xander shook his head. "I'm not stopping."
"Young one," the shaman tried again as he grabbed Xander's hand and brought it up to his chest, sliding it below the dozens of necklaces until Xander could feel a small round scar. "One. Two." The shaman slid Xander's hand down to touch the second scar. "Three. Four. Five." Xander blinked at the evidence that the shaman had gone through this same rite. At least that meant they weren't making fun of the white guy.
"Hurts, doesn't it?" Xander asked. "But I'm not stopping until the tribal elders have judged, and I don't care if I look like a connect the dots puzzle."
The shaman shook his head and reached up to touch Xander's cheek. "The fifth voyage is dangerous."
"Dangerous like OD'ing on hallucinogenic smoke?" Xander asked as he eyed the smoke around him with some suspicion.
"The fifth voyage makes one a shaman, opens a door which cannot be closed."
Okay, that made Xander stop and think. "Opens a door to hell or a door a demon can use to crawl into your dreams and kill you?" Xander asked. The very fact that the shaman had to stop and think about it made Xander worry a little.
"Maybe," he finally admitted. "Have your spirit guides not spoken to you of the final trial?" he asked as he looked at the four marks already on Xander's chest.
"These are not spirit guides. In fact, in one case, these are evil doers of the first degree," Xander said as he pointed toward scar number two.
"We may learn from good and evil, both provide a light by which to judge our own actions. But only you can know if you should take the fifth journey. "
"And if I don't, you won't let the slayers go with me," Xander guessed.
"You have not been judged."
"I'm really starting to hate that phrase." Xander reached up and poked at his first scar, hating how much the damn thing ached and itched. When the first slayer appeared across the fire, Xander screamed like a little girl and jumped to his feet.
"If you think the weak can defeat the strong," she said with a tilt of her head, but then she didn't finish her statement. Instead she looked at him again and gave a dismissive snort. "I think you will die in the judging." She vanished, and Xander was left with only the tribesman. Weirdly, they weren't even looking at him like he was weird. Xander felt weird.
"Okay, my spirit guide seems to think I'm going to get my ass kicked," Xander said.
The shaman looked at him with relief. "But I'm not good with taking advice. You should ask my friends. I really suck at listening when people tell me I'm going to fail. So fifth voyage, here we come." Xander sat down and really tried to ignore the drying semen that made his leg itch. Unfortunately, the very memory of William's blowjob and the heat from the demon's brand pushing him into something so all-consuming... Xander started getting hard again before the shaman had even gotten back with the brand.
The fifth brand set Xander's whole world on fire, and he collapsed back before the shaman could pull the brand away. The pain went on and on as Xander writhed on the ground and choked on the smoke that thickened in his throat.
"He would steal our daughters," an unfamiliar voice accused him, and Xander tried to speak in his own defense, but the smoke choked him, and he kicked his legs in desperation as death crept in on him.
"He is a good man."
"He is part of the shadow men. They steal our daughters."
"The shadow men are gone, killed by the evil they hid from."
"His path is unclear."
"He would try to do right."
The voices rose up until Xander felt like he was inside a megaphone.
"He would hurt our daughters."
Ignoring his instinctive need to hold onto what little oxygen he had, Xander gasped out the word, "NO!" All the voices fell silent and Xander was left to suffocate alone.
"Would you truly return our daughters?" a woman's voice asked.
Xander nodded his head, and the smoke thickened until the weight of it pushed down on him. "Yes, yes," Xander wheezed, and the weight of the smoke eased.
"Would you protect them?" An old man was asking, his face like a fun house mirror distortion inside the smoke.
"Yes."
"Judge his heart."
"Judge his heart. Judge his heart."
"Judge his heart. Judge his heart. Judge his heart. Judge his heart." The words from hundreds of voices, young and old, male and female, filled the gray void that Xander had fallen into.
His mouth gaping open as he struggled to breathe, Xander didn't have the strength to fight when some invisible force lifted him. His arms and legs and head dangled down and his heart pounded furiously. Xander had a feeling like someone had attached a rope to his heart and now he was dangling from it, only from the way the smoke was pushing in, he wasn't coming out on the good side of the judgment.
"Kill him," the whispers started. "Kill him. Kill him. Kill him." The words echoed and grew in strength and Xander could only dangle there slowly losing consciousness. The pounding in his head echoed against the inside of his skull, and Xander realized he was dying. He'd never see Willow or Buffy again, he'd never try to stop brooding like he'd promised Ahn, he'd never find Spike. He was going to die in Africa alone. Xander could feel his eye heat with tears as the gray around him started to fade.
The chants of "kill him" slowly faded, but Xander was so dizzy that he couldn't make out the words. And then the smoke started to thin, and Xander could pull air into his starved lungs. "He is judged worthy," the voices chanted. Right now, Xander didn't care how they judged him as long as he got oxygen again. He gulped the air and felt his sore muscles start to tremble as they came back to life. The pins and needles grew to an agony that surpassed even the burning in his chest.
"He is worthy," a voice boomed so loud that Xander whimpered as it echoed in his head. "His guides shall choose his prize."
Xander felt hands run across his body, sending cold chills through him as the world darkened even more. Then red streaks began to appear, and the sound of drums in the distance made his bones ache. Part of him wanted to get as far from those drums as he could.
"Xander, don't be so thick," Anya said in that exasperated tone of hers. "I know you've listened to Giles drone on enough to know that drums are used to help you find your body again." Xander looked over and Anya was backlit with firelight, her blonde hair shining.
"I miss you, you know," he said to her softly.
"I know," she answered as she raised her hand to his third scar. "The spirit realm is all about truth. Here is where we can't hide behind all the lies we tell ourselves. I pushed you when I knew you needed someone other than me. You need someone who will obsess about you as much as you obsess about them. I was too worried about being human in general."
"Ahn, it wasn't your fault."
"Not all," she said quickly. "You were just as big of a moron trusting a demon instead of talking to someone, but that's you," she shrugged. "And if you're not careful, you are so going to turn into Angel. So get your ass back to that body of yours and make some better choices."
She gave Xander a push, and then she vanished into smoke. Xander started walking toward the drums, his head pounding harder with each step until he thought his brain might explode out his ears, but in the end, he woke up with his head in the shaman's lap.
"Welcome home, young shaman," the old man said with a smile.
"My hurts hurt," Xander groaned as he reached up to scrub his face. His fingers first noticed the embarrassing lack of an eye patch. He hated for people to see his scar. But then when he went to cover his scar from the shaman, he nearly poked his eye out... his missing eye... which wasn't missing anymore.
The shaman chuckled at the look on Xander's face. "Being a shaman always requires a sacrifice and offers a prize."
"Well, this is going to be interesting to explain," Xander sighed as he struggled to sit up. The fifth scar had landed not far above his belly button, and where the others were white, it had a faint reddish tinge to it. Xander reached out and fingered the scar and felt a shiver though his body. The other four scars were healed as well, although the fourth remained twice the size of the others, and the second one had a red spot in the very center.
"Will you stay and learn some shamanic rituals before you take the slayers to England?" the old man asked. It was on the tip of Xander's tongue to say no, to say that he had a friend who could teach him and then he had a burning desire to get to L.A. He looked over at the shaman.
"Can we do the cliffs notes version... and that would be the short and fast version for those who didn't grow up in the American high school system learning to cheat. I just really have somewhere that I have to be."
"Not England," the shaman guessed.
"No. No, I left someone behind who I shouldn't have," Xander said as he touched his fourth scar.
"Spirit guides are the souls of the dead," the shaman said with a frown as he watched Xander's fingers.
"Yeah, but some people who are dead are still walking around," Xander pointed out. The shaman opened his eyes so comically wide that Xander almost expected them to pop out.
"You are indeed a unique shaman," he said with a tilt of his head. "Four days, and I will teach you only the most vital of the lore. Then you will have to seek a teacher after this quest of yours because being a shaman means not only greater power but greater vulnerability."
"Deal," Xander said as he started mentally calculating the time required to get trained, drop the slayers off in England and get to L.A. His fourth scar itched, and Xander scratched it. "I'm coming Spike. Just hold on."
