Kin of the Soul

[lit_gal]

Once upon a time there was Kin of the Heart where Angel and Xander learned to be friends. Now we're working towards something entirely different.

Kin of the Soul
Slash: Angel/Xander, Angel/Spike
Rated: ADULT
banner by objectivelypink


Two chapters in two days.  I am really feeling Xander's pain here, and it's time to hurt him some more. 

( Part One ) ( Part Two ) ( Part Three ) ( Part Four ) ( Part Five ) ( Part Six ) ( Part Seven ) ( Part Eight ) ( Part Nine ) ( Part Ten ) ( Part Eleven ) ( Part Twelve ) ( Part Thirteen ) ( Part Fourteen ) ( Part Fifteen ) ( Part Sixteen ) ( Part Seventeen ) ( Part Eighteen ) ( Part Nineteen ) ( Part Twenty ) ( Part Twenty-One ) ( Part Twenty-Two ) ( Part Twenty-Three ) ( Part Twenty-Four ) ( Part Twenty-Five ) ( Part Twenty-six ) ( Part Twenty-Seven ) ( Part Twenty-eight ) ( Part Twenty-nine ) ( Part thirty )  ( Part Thirty-one )  ( Part Thirty-Two ) ( Part Thirty-Three ) ( Part Thirty four )  ( Part Thirty-five ) ( Part Thirty-Six ) ( Part Thirty-Seven ) ( Part Thirty-Eight )



Xander blinked as the sun shone right into his eyes. Okay, he was about an hour from sunset, which suggested that either he hadn't lost any time in the land of the white or he's lost whole days. "Graham?" Xander looked around and his guts tightened into one solid knot. If Xander needed any more proof that the Powers that Be were just one more group of demons, this would be it. Of course, Xander hadn't really needed any proof. So this was just the cherry on the shitcake. The Hyperion rose up in front of him, her classic lines as familiar to him as his own hand.

A woman brushed by him on the street, and Xander fumbled with the potion in his hand. "Shit shit shit." He clutched the vial close and backed away from the street. Oh yeah, he was getting some odd looks, but he really didn't need to drop this thing. God only knew what the Powers had given him. Armageddon in a bottle maybe.

A tree spread its branches over the sidewalk and part of the Hyperion's front courtyard, and Xander sat on one of the exposed roots and leaned back into the rough bark. The church was right down the street. But Father Peter would have run for it, and Xander didn't actually expect the church building to provide any answers. Spike was all the way over at the university, and Xander wasn't sure he had the energy to take the damn bus over there.

Closing his eyes, Xander ordered himself to just stop playing games. The truth was that part of him didn't want to go find Spike. Part of him wanted to just sit here until the sun went down and then he wouldn't have to carry the weight of all these decisions anymore. He wasn't decision boy. Everyone else always had the answers. Father Peter would tell him that he couldn't trust anything the Powers said and talk about feet of clay and tell Xander to hand the potion and the story over to the nearest church. Spike would probably just smash it and curse colorfully. Graham was all about tactical advantages and securing more intel. Xander... he just didn't know. He'd always followed his heart, and he was pretty sure that was broken.

Looking up at the light filtering through the branches, he held the potion in his hand and waited for some sort of answer to find him. If Father Peter was right about Angel being able to earn forgiveness for his sins, then Xander was pretty sure he'd been forgiven. Angel had been about as sorry as he could get, and Xander had woken more than once to find Angel fingering a rosary while smoke curled up from his fingers. If he'd earned heaven, did Xander really have a right to pull him out of that and bring him back just because Xander's heart hurt so much that he felt like he was going to die? A tiny, cowardly part of Xander thought that dying might not be such a bad answer, and maybe that was why he was sitting outside the Hyperion. Angelus would turn him. The him that cared about trying to make the right choice—the him who was so confused and hurting would just stop existing. Maybe the confused part of him and the soul part of Angel could hang out somewhere while their vampire selves got big and bad.

"Xander?"

Xander rolled his head to one side so that his cheek rested against the rough bark. Wesley stood there shifting feet nervously.

"Hey," Xander offered with a weak smile.

"Um... yes, indeed, hey." Wesley was at his stuttering best. "What are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same thing," Xander countered.

"Actually, since I live here, I doubt the question carries the same weight," Wesley inched closer, still shifting side to side.

"Are you about to jump on me or something?" Xander asked as he watched Wesley's increasingly nervous movement.

Wesley sighed. "I had been considering it. Angelus ordered me to capture you, which did pose a rather difficult dilemma."

"Because you like me too much?" Xander asked.

Wesley moved to a small brick wall and sat down, his body language tight, but no longer jittery. "I fear the compulsion spell would overcome any inherent fondness or respect; however, I doubt I could succeed in an ambush. Believe it or not, I am quite skilled with combat and weaponry when I have time to plan each move and prospective countermove; however, in battle, one rarely has the ability to make such plans. That would be why I tend to trip my own allies, a trait for which Spike has threatened to shave my head. I have no illusions about my ability to overpower you given that you were trained by Angel and Spike."

"Oh, I don't know. I'm feeling pretty not up to defending myself right now."

Xander sat upright as Wesley's whole body seemed to jerk like a puppet on a string. Or a puppet on a bunch of different strings all pulling different directions. Wesley grimaced in pain and used a word that Xander normally associated more with Spike than with Wesley and all his starch.

"Wesley?"

"I truly wish you would not imply that I could overpower you. I fear it makes the compulsion to do so very..." Wesley grimaced again.

"Okay, that looks freakily painful." Xander pushed himself up and went over to crouch in front of Wesley. Wesley's hand darted out and grabbed Xander's shirt.

"Please, get away," Wesley gasped, and his mouth twisted in pain. With a hiss, he jerked at Xander's shirt with all the grace of a thing with absolutely no grace.

"Wesley, I'm not going anywhere. If I was going to go somewhere, I would have gone," Xander assured him. Resting on hand on Wesley's knee, he clutched the vial close to his stomach. "I was just planning on sitting here until sundown because my knees are pretty much knocking at the idea of walking in there on my own. Only, I have a potion that I'm fairly sure is hugely bad, so you have to stop pulling at me. If we drop this, I have no idea what would happen, and our combined clumsy factor is not really of the good."

Wesley's body slowly calmed, and his gasps turned into a sort of panting. "Why?" he finally gasped out. He didn't let go of Xander's shirt, but Xander had enough room to sit next to Wesley, dragging Wesley's arm with him so that Wesley ended up twisting around so they were facing each other.

"Was Angelus gone last night or the night before? Like for all night gone with the car type gone?"

"Yes." Wesley watched Xander with a frown that just kept growing deeper. But that was the answer that actually made this easier.

"I think the Powers that Be were telling me the truth about Angelus visiting my mom. He charmed her into an invitation into her house, and from the looks of it, he was sniffing around to see if I'd been there."

"Good lord. Is she..." Wesley stopped. It was so weird. Wesley's face and voice showed nothing but sorrow and concern, but his hand was gripping Xander's shirt so painfully tight that the fabric was digging into his underarms.

"She's okay. Angelus was all weirdly in a good mood. But if he gets frustrated, how long do you think she'd live? How long do you think the people at school would live? How long do you think you'd live?" Xander asked.

"So, you find your own life worth so little, you would trade it away?"

"I'm thinking I'm just making the inevitable happen a little faster." Xander shrugged. "Kept running, and the more I ran, the more I didn't know where I was supposed to be running toward. The Powers want me to turn Angelus into Angel again, the weird evil lawyers are just being creepily helpful, and part of Ra, the big sun god, would like me to fall off a cliff. Actually, I think the Ra lady and the Powers would like all the humans to fall off a cliff, but it's me they all seem to be noticing. How long do you think I'd survive out there?"

"So you're just back here so Angelus can..." Wesley looked away, and the hand that was holding Xander twitched, ripping out the few chest hairs Xander had managed to grow.

"Kill me? Probably." Xander agreed. "He was all interested in turning me last time. But I'm thinking the alternative is letting him lose his good mood and starting ripping through everyone I know. And I get the weird feeling that the creepy lawyer guys are going to start helping him since I said I didn't want their help."

"Wolfram and Hart?" Wesley asked, his face still turned away.

"Those are the creeps."

"Angelus has one of their lawyers in the dungeon."

"We have a dungeon?" Xander tried hard to not think about the image the Bobbsey twins had shown him.

"Apparently so." Wesley sounded so tired.

"Hey, is there any way I could transfer the spell on you over to me?" Xander asked, suddenly hopeful. Maybe he could get Wesley out of the way before Angelus went and turned him.

Wesley turned and looked at Xander, his mouth open. "You would choose to take on a compulsion that puts you in the control of a bloodthirsty monster?"

"Um, pretty sure I'm going to be under his control anyway," Xander said with a shrug. It had sounded like a good idea in his head. Now, Wesley was looking at him like Xander had just suggested they kill Bambi or something. Xander turned to watch the patterns of light on the sidewalk. This might be the last sunlight he got to truly enjoy. He reached out his free hand and watched the sun and the shadows of the leaves dance over it.

"You should leave."

"Really? And what should I do with this?" Xander held up the vial he still held in his right hand. "The magical potion that turns Angelus into Angel. Unless the Powers that Be are lying, and then it could be the big vial that opens the doorway so that their world comes pouring into ours. Or maybe they're telling the truth and this would pull Angel out of heaven and shove him back into the body of a demon so he could remember all the terrible things he did when his soul was checked out." Xander looked at Wesley. He didn't have any illusions about what Angelus would have done to prove his mastery. Spike had said it often enough—rape and evisceration were a vampire's best friends. "Wesley, I'm really sorry. It's my fault you know. I made him happy. Jenny Giles helped by canceling some of the Cordelia stress with her spell, but I made him happy. If you want to blame someone, I'm really okay with you blaming me."

"I most certainly do not blame you. And if that blasted witch cast a spell, I am more than willing to put all blame at her doorstep. If your surrender is about guilt—"

"Nope," Xander cut him off. "This is more like being practical."

"By surrendering to Angelus?"

Xander thought about that, his heart pressing so hard against his chest that he couldn't breathe. "He knows me well enough that I don’t have a chance to get away," Xander said softly. "He knows I still love him." Xander's voice broke. He was so going to hell. Angelus was evil, but he was the only part of Angel, the only part of Liam still left. He was the demon who had given up hunting to go to the suckhouse because Xander talked him into it. He was the one who was so hurt over his father's assholiness that he had tried to prove himself by raping the world. He was the only who had run hands over Xander's body after Xander had confessed his love. Yep, he was officially going to hell.

"Oh, Xander." Wesley finally loosened his hold of Xander's shirt. His hand slid down until it rested on Xander's knee.

"So, I figure I've got a couple of choices. The Powers want me to throw the potion at him. That way Angel gets pulled back into the body where he can be miserable, and they can use that misery to keep him on a short leash and Angelus gets to be miserable under all the guilt. I can't do that to either of them." Xander rubbed his eyes with his sleeve and tried to just hold it together. "And option two would be the big Romeo and Juliet ending where I take him down and go down with him and hope that we end up in heaven together and that Father Peter is wrong about gays. And I might do that, only my chances of touching him are less than zero. So, I’m going with choice three."

"Surrender?" Wesley asked. "Are you entirely sure that's wise?"

Xander laughed. The sound rushed out of him so fast that for a second, he couldn't get a breath in. "Hell no. It's just the only choice that other people aren't pushing me to make. And face it; I'm not good at following orders."

"But Xander, he's not Angel."

"Nope." Xander took a deep breath. "I figure he'll turn me, and I'll be substitute Spike until Spike actually comes back. I guess at that point it will depend on how much I've annoyed him. But I don't think it will actually be me in there, so I guess it doesn't matter at that point."

"Good lord. Spike's coming back? Have none of you any sense of self-preservation?"

Xander laughed and snuffed. "Not so much. He'll be back as soon as Cordelia is safely dead of old age, so I guess in vampire years that's not too long."

"Well." Wesley stopped. "Angelus is not quite what I would have expected given the tomes written on his penchant for torture." Wesley chewed on his lower lip for a second, and Xander could only watch. The sun was about to dip under the horizon, so it was easier now. Even if he wanted to run, Angelus would catch him quickly enough.

"No stacks of drained nun's bodies?" Xander asked hopefully.

"No, indeed not. Three watchers from a retrieval team came to town in search of some blasted prophecy, and they certainly bore the brunt of Angelus' curiosity." Wesley cringed in a way that suggested that had been far less than pleasant. Xander had a pretty good idea how that had ended... or how it had gone in the middle anyway. "However, with the exception of those three, Angelus has been far more interested in making himself felt in demonic circles."

Xander nodded. "He's not a fifty year old fledge trying to impress his sire," Xander pointed out. "He's going to want bigger and badder bad guys to kill. Spike went through that phase with killing humans, and he actually gets cranky when people bring it up. It sends him off describing the hordes of vampires and scourge and actual big bads he's killed. Killing humans is a little like killing cows. Not so much glory."

"I am beginning to think that the entire watchers' library is utter bullocks," Wesley muttered. "However, I still think this is a foolhardy decision. Your grief and possibly your romantic view of Angel are coloring your decisions with Angelus."

"Probably," Xander agreed. "And hey, maybe if I were Riley or Buffy, I'd kill myself before I'd let Angelus turn me, but if I do that...."

"Angelus would most likely turn his frustrations out on everyone else."

"Yep. Maybe this is better, but it's my choice even if it sucks. Hopefully I'll settle for just tracking my father down and eating him. My mom really has always done her best, and her best wasn't great, but considering my best consists of sitting here waiting for Angelus to come out here, I don't think I really have a lot of room to criticize."

"Oh, Xander." Wesley's fingers tightened around Xander's knee, but there really wasn't much else to say. Xander watched the fading light of sunset dance across the windows of the buildings, creating shadow monsters in the corners of the corbels.