Title: A Wooded Future
Author:
Archived at:
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Pairing: Xander/Spike
Rating: Mature Audiences – for content and themes
Summary: The hellmouth has its way with Xander, this time it involves Chlorophyll, Spike and a bunch of other world beings that the Scoobies are not quite used to.
Spoilers: Sometime in early season five – or possibly late six BtVS.
Warnings: M/M – if you don't like boys together, don't play here!
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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Part 1
It was early autumn and a full moon. All he had done wrong was to lean against the liquid amber at the edge of the cemetery to wait for Spike. One minute Xander was standing by the tree, and the next he… was engulfed by it.
He desperately tried to call out, but a frond slid into his mouth, effectively gagging him. The next few minutes were spent in a fruitless struggle to free himself as more and more fibres bound him tight. He was slowly raised from the ground and his unwilling form stripped of its clothing. Finally he felt the sharp pain in his side and he registered a cold chill spreading through his being, he remained conscious for just long enough to watch in horror as the veins in his arms and legs stood up and slowly turned green.
When he next woke he felt… different not in pain exactly, but aware that his life force was being subsumed. He felt his toes and fingers stretching and joining with the bark of the tree and in the haze he fancied he heard the leaves whispering before the root gagging him began to extend. He swallowed frantically as the living frond pressed down his throat and into his stomach. He registered that he was being filled with something and felt an odd chill as the cool fluids forced their way through his system changing and replacing warm for cool.
A strange tingle starting in his chest became excruciating pain as his body began to alter at a cellular level. Finally he passed out.
Spike worried. He was supposed to meet Xander before the Scoobie meeting. Xander might have been many things but unreliable was not one of them. The others thought he must simply have gone away for the weekend, but when his apartment remained empty and job unattended the following week, his friends began to worry. Willow performed a locating spell but there was nothing, simply a series of green sparkles somewhere near the cemetery. They searched the cemetery thoroughly for two nights. Spike knew he could smell Xander, but the scent was too old to track and seemed to finish at a gnarled old tree near the perimeter.
Spike asked demon acquaintances, even venturing to Willie's – despite the risk to himself. There was no body and no new fledges; there was no extra demon activity and Willie had heard nothing.
Eventually Spike even rang his Grandsire though sadly Angel's team had little to offer. Angel was at least sympathetic, knowing that despite both Spike and Xander's protestations to the contrary, the two were allies, fighting together and that Xander had taken Spike in (albeit initially reluctantly) after he was chipped. Angel knew his Childe enough to be aware that he was loyal to a fault, and would not ask for assistance from his ensouled relative before exhausting every other avenue to find a friend. Sadly they too found nothing.
After a month of searching, Giles filed a missing person's report. After four months Anya moved away, Xander's apartment was 'let go', and his friends began to believe that he might truly be dead.
…………..
It had been late autumn when the tree claimed him and he remembered waking after the initial change, but was oddly comforted by the enveloping layer of bark and the feeding frond holding him inert. He felt increasingly sleepy and though drifting in and out of consciousness for several days he eventually gave in to his tree's winter hibernation habits.
The first full moon of spring marked his partial waking. Vague memories mixed with sleepy observations from his new circumstance as he reveled in yet another torrential downpour and felt his body begin to swell as his cells absorbed the precious fluid. He felt the tree responding to the warmer earth and rejoiced with it. He reveled in the heat as the spring sunshine warmed the trunk of his prison.
He sometimes considered his position and pondered the bizarre fact that he was still sentient. He was completely aware of his own existence while feeling utterly connected to the tree who had taken him for her own. He felt her joy as buds burst open and new leaves emerged, and fancied he could feel the breeze on his own face, though knew it to be transferred sensations from the tree. He was constantly nourished by his captor, moved with her when she swayed, and felt ever more connected to the earth.
With no choice, he resigned himself to his inert role and his sense of time shifted with his reassigned status. But on the summer solstice, something remarkable occurred.
There had been chanting – Willow and four of the visiting English Coven sat in at the points of a salt pentagram in the clearing at the base of his tree to call on the Goddess to bless the season.
Xander panicked as the chanting began and his tree stirred. He was not sure how much later it was but the wind picked up and he felt a distinct prickle and shift in the bark surrounding him.
For the first time in months he was relieved to find himself able to open his eyes, but closed them again in terror as he felt the feeding root begin to withdraw. With no root he knew he would starve. Like a newborn creature, he began to breathe actively for the first time in months, though was instinctively aware that it was no longer oxygen he sought... and he yearned for the sun.
He tried to hold on to his tree, embedding his now iron hard nails into the wood of his protector, his mother, but it was too late. He (like so many before him who were chosen and made the change) had been loved and protected and was now being freed to return the favor. The witches left the clearning mere minutes before the wood nymph slipped from his tree, landing inelegantly at its roots and paused for a time to hug the bark covered safety of his relative, now his charge. For the first time he was able to take in his changed form fully.
His skin was smooth and pale like that of a ghost gum – native eucalypt of Australia, though soft to the touch. His unclad body was leaner than he had been when first taken, with the only adornment being a large piece of amber around his neck and circles of leaves growing from his ankles and wrists giving the impression that he was wearing some form of jewelry.
A soft flap of bark grew from his pubic hair line obscuring the direct view of his nether regions, though all traces of hair had disappeared, just as the hair on his head had been replaced by feather soft tresses of new leaves.
He found a puddle and sat wondering at the image of himself in the moonlight. He was just about to stand and explore his surrounds when an enormous hairy beast fell in front of him, its throat torn out. Too frightened to run, he curled up against his tree, wishing again for her to envelop and protect him as a figure in a long leather coat – obviously the hunter – approached.
"Bloody Hell… Harris?"