Title: The X Factor
Disclaimer: I own neither BtVS nor X-Men.
Summary: Xander is not as normal as everyone thought, and when Angelus takes intrest in him, things go downhill. X-over with X-Men and X-Men Evo,
Author's Note: This is my first BtVs fic, please be gentle. Rating is for implied nature and language. I'll try to update soon.
Xander, the Zeppo, was scared. And he felt that he had every right to be too.
He'd bet that when the others had started pushing him out of the group, saying he was useless and pathetic and…
Well that was not why he was scared. He'd bet that they had never thought he would wind up standing guard outside Buffy's hospital room. Not that he had expected it either, but he had a bad feeling and in the past year or so, he had learned to trust his gut feelings.
And he had never more wished that he had been wrong.
Angelus, Deadboy extraordinaire, their all around beloved captain forehead stepped out of the shadows.
"Visiting hours are over." He was happy that even with his knees shaking bad enough to shatter, he could at least keep his voice steady.
"But I'm practically family." Said Angelus, with that lazy grin on his face that always gave him the wiggins.
"Why don't you try visiting during the daylight hours like normal people. Oh right! I forgot…you can't." He was sure that taunting someone who was four time physically stronger than him and as much faster was a bad idea. But he did not think he could do anything else. He was not about to let the creep near Buffy, she was still his friend; no matter what she and the others said to him.
"Do you think, if I wanted to enter, that you could stop me for even an instant."
"May be I can't, maybe those orderlies and that guard and those cops can't either. Do you want to find out? I'm game if you do."
Angelus watched astonished as the boy tried to stare him down. Normally, he wouldn't even have noticed, but when the eyes of the so called normal human changed from white around brown eyes to a deep pitch black, the white and brown all. A black that seemed to be sucking the light in and not growing a bit brighter, then you tended to get disturbed.
"It must kill you to know that I got there first." He taunted back, trying to hide his sudden uneasiness.
"Oh please, I got over her a long time ago." The black deepened.
"Tell her I was here." Angelus snarled and slapped the dead flowers he had bought into the boy's chest and stormed away.
Xander let out a breath. He did not believe he had backed Angelus.
Xander was sitting in the school cafeteria, doing nothing when he saw them approaching him. Oh great he thought another of her 'I-slayer-you-not' put down talks.
"Hey Buffy, Willow."
"Xander, what were you thinking? Were you even thinking? I am the slayer, I can handle a few vampires, you on the other hand…" She began in a quite but fierce voice.
"What are you talking about?"
"We know what you did Xander, that day in the hospital." Willow informed him a bit more calmly, "We saw the recordings in the security camera."
"What… Buffy you were sick and in no condition to be able to fight Angelus. Besides nothing happened, he went away."
"Xander, you were lucky that he let you live. You have no skills with which to fight the supernatural. Willow is training to be a witch, Giles is a watcher and I am the Slayer, we are part of the fight. You on the other hand are a liability. So, Xander, I want you out of the Slaying."
"You can't do that…Willow help me here! … Fine! You want me out of your lives, I am out."
He got up and began to leave.
"That's not what I meant, and you know it. Don't be a jerk Xander. Xander! XANDER!"
He ignored her calls and walked out.
Later that night, the scoobies were attacked, and Kendra killed. At the same time, Xander was forced to leave his home because his father was in one of his drunken rages. As he walked aimlessly, fingering a stake in one pocket and a bottle of holy water in the other, he had a sudden feeling of wrongness. But before he could even think about it, there was a sharp pain in the back of his head and he was swallowed by darkness.
When he came to, he was tied to a wooden table, stripped of his shirt.
"Ah, finally," Said Angelus, emerging from the shadows, "I was beginning to think you would never wake up. You know, you are quite annoying, I will enjoy torturing you. A lot"
And he laughed.
Screams.
Angelus loved screams. He liked the power that he felt over others when they screamed, shrieked, cried and then died, all at his whim, his mercy.
And right now, he wanted to hear screams, screams of the boy he was torturing.
When Liam had been turned, when he had first become Angelus, he thought he would never feel surprised again.
When his soul had been returned and he had become Angel, he had sworn he would never let himself be surprised again.
When the happiness clause was activated, he had never been more pleasantly surprised.
But this, this was something else.
The boy, the normal one of the so called Scoobies, he was apparently not so normal. Though he had already had an inkling of that when the boy tried to stare him down at the hospital outside the Slayer's room. As if he'd be scared of a weak mortal boy. Though those blacker than black eyes had put him off.
What was stranger still was that the boy was healing ridiculously fast and his skin seemed to be toughening. How could he make the boy scream if the wounds would not stay?
Oh well, there were other ways.
"Dru!" He called his childe.
She came, still looking very giddy with the slayer blood she had drank, and immediately rushed at the tied up boy, squealing and cooing as one would at a pet animal.
"Kitten! Can I have him Daddy?" She asked looking up at him, a cruel light burning in her eyes with her insanity, both at odds with her innocent voice and face.
Xander said nothing, keeping his gaze fixed straight ahead, not letting his fear show.
"Yes, Dru, you can have him, but I want to hear him scream." Angelus said, a smirk coming to his lips. He knew how rough Dru could be and that Harris was a virgin. He would scream yet.
With a delighted squeal, she pounced on the boy and kissed him forcefully, biting his lower lip and licking the blood that came out. Oh! sweet blood. Miss Edith said he had sweet blood, oh!
And then the screams came.
A full week had passed since Kendra was killed and the scoobies had noticed Xander's disappearance but no amount of looking had brought any results as to where he was. Now Giles had been kidnapped by Angelus so that he could learn how to open Acathala.
Willow had said that she would attempt the soul curse again and Buffy was on her way to Angel's warehouse to rescue Giles.
She found two minions standing guard and made quick work of them. Tow piles of dust later she was inside. She looked from doors to doors and first found Xander.
She gasped, surprised to see him there. He was tied to a wooden table, naked. He looked to be unharmed but some sort of tube was dropping a liquid on his chest drop by drop. The liquid burned a hole in his chest which immediately healed and then again and again. The smell of burned flesh hung thick in the air.
He was lying there, his eyes closed and whimpers coming out of his mouth. She felt shaken; she had never seen him like this. She went to him and removed the tube from above him.
She laid a hand on his shoulder, and he flinched away, as much as he could, tied down as he was. He opened his eyes, took one look at her and began screaming and whimpering, "GO AWAY! Not again, please not again!"
"Xander! It's me, Buffy." She said tears rolling down her cheeks.
"No, you are not real, any moment now, they will return and…" He left off, he was crying himself.
"I'm real, Xander, I'm real."
"NO!"
She knew she could do nothing for him right then but she would return after she had dealt with Angelus. He was Angelus, not her Angel and he had hurt her friend. Her first friend here in Sunnydale, the one who had made life bearable for her when she had just moved in. Angelus would pay.
The rest of the night passed away in a haze. Finding Giles, fighting Angelus, the portal opening and his soul being returned, and then Angel finally going to hell, literally.
They got Xander and Giles to the hospital and waited while he was diagnosed.
Finally a doctor came out.
"Who is with Mr. Harris and Mr. Giles?" He queried.
"We are." Buffy said, motioning to herself, Oz and Cordelia.
"Mr. Giles will be alright. He has suffered from a number of injuries but he will recover soon. Mr. Harris, on the other hand, while he has no visible injuries, he has suffered from some mental trauma and has slipped into coma."