Disclaimer: Not mine, all characters belong to Mutant Enemy / Joss Whedon. Personal opinion: Fanfics are free advertisement for what they are fanfics of.

An Unknown Path - Chapter 1

It had started out a pretty good day. No… I take that back, it had started out a really bad day, another apocalypse around the corner, Angel loosing his soul, etc. But I think it's going to end a sort of good day. I feel pretty good about myself, I was able to use the soldier stuff I had learned from Halloween to help off the Judge. I would have preferred not having the bonus job of collecting the Judge's body parts though. Still it's a good night, helped kill an unbeatable demon. Got to give Buffy the best birthday gift ever, I'm not sure I'll be able to top this next year. It would have been better if Buffy had been able to dust Angelus instead of him getting away. I just hope she finishes him before he has the chance to do some majorly bad stuff. I've read some of the stuff from the Watcher's Journals, I don't want Angelus running around doing to us what he did to that Drusilla chick. Xander paused in his thoughts as he caught sight of his home. I can't even think good thoughts in my head without getting jinxed… There is no doubt that the day is going to end poorly. There, right in front of Xander's house, were several cops. I'm pretty sure it's got nothing to do with stealing a rocket launcher, if it was it would be army guys, not cops waiting for me, right? Xander took a deep breath, summoned his courage and start towards home. I'll go deal with this, whatever this is.

"Alexander Harris?" one of the cops asked.

"Yeah…"

"Son of Anthony and Jessica Harris?"

"Yes. Is something wrong?" Almost anything having to do with me and my dad has to count as something wrong.

"I'm sorry to tell you this, but this evening your father… Well he was really drunk, and he hurt your mother, she's in the hospital and we're detaining him at the precinct."

Merciful Zeus! I never thought this would happen. I've never known him to do more than yell at Mom.

"Can I go see her?" Xander asked the cop. I'm always nervous around the police, well Sunnydale police anyway. I think that since they all have no clue when it comes to the supernatural stuff that goes on in this town they overcompensate by focusing on the things they can deal with. I bet that's why they were so aggressive about Buffy killing robot Ted, even though she confessed to doing it in self defense.

The ride to the hospital was taking so long. The cops started to tell Xander the details of what had happened, but he tuned most of it out. It turns out that his mom had been asking for him, she'd even told the cops that Tony had been hitting Xander. I don't know how she knows that. Tony had always been very good at hiding the damage he did. I have records at every hospital in town, another thing to blame the hellmouth for really. All those churches and cemeteries and no one ever mentions the huge hospital and several, and I do mean several, smaller ones in one small town. Although none of the hospital records are that recent, he hasn't been able to hit me in ages. I've gotten really good at hiding and ducking… It really helps with the vamp dusting too…

The cops want to have Xander checked out too and see if he wanted to press charges. It looks like Mom has already started the process to press charges against Dad, turns out he'd almost killed her before the cops busted in. Our new neighbors had called the cops about the noise. They hadn't been here long enough to start ignoring things. Got to love the influx of new people into Sunnydale, come for the great real estate prices, stay for the lovely cemeteries. I can't believe I'd never noticed how many new neighbors we got, never wondering where the old ones went… Dang it Xander! You need to focus, Mom needs you! ARG! Why am I thinking in the third person?

FOCUS! FOCUS! FOCUS!

Xander rushed through the hospital as the cops show him the way to his mother's room. They point to a door and tell him they'd wait outside while he talked to her.

"Mom! Mom, are you okay?" Xander shouted as he entered her room. I love my mom, but she isn't always there, I think all the booze has addled her wits a bit, sometimes I have to remind her who I am.

"Alexander." She paused and said softly, "Xander. I'm gonna be alright, it might take awhile but I'm gonna be fine."

She's sober, Mom's sober, Mom's never sober…

"Mom… What happened?" Xander asked in an attempt at a more reasonable tone. He slowly took in her form, literally black and blue. Xander winced. That had to have hurt, a lot.

"Tony was drinking, but today I wasn't joining in, he… He hit me so hard. God Xander, why didn't you tell me he hit you?" At that Xander looked at his mom, wondering again how she found out, hoping that it was a recent thing at that that she hadn't known for a long time and ignored it. Seeing the confusion on his face she explained, "Tony told me everything while he was hitting me. You should have told me."

"And what would you have done Mom? Beside I did tell you once, you were so drunk you didn't even hear me, but he did and hit me even harder, he said he'd hit you too if I told you again." Xander turned away, unable to look at her. He'd been so young then, unaware that he had other choices, other ways, to take care of it. Xander felt his mom's hand on his chin forcing him to look at her, she looked so sad.

"I could have stopped this ages ago, but you were a child and you were scared and worried about me." At this Mom paused and her hand fell down too weak to keep it up. She was thinking hard about something. "I should have told you this before, I just didn't know how. And I never realized it until now, but you've always been afraid of turning out like Tony haven't you?"

At this Xander got out of her reach and looked away again. He had been worrying about that a lot lately, afraid that he might hurt Cordy someday, even if the only people who knew about whatever was between them were his friends.

"I… Alexander, I never told you this before, I just couldn't, you were so young, but you've grown up while I wasn't looking haven't you?" At this Xander looked back at his mom confused. "Xander, Tony isn't your father." Xander did his fish impersonation. "Back in the late 70s I was doing drugs, and just about any guy I wanted, I might not look it now, but back then I was beautiful, I even won a couple of local beauty pagents… I think that's why I drink now, to try to drown away my regrets. I decided I wanted to see the world, I got my passport and left on the first flight I could catch. I went wherever the planes took me. In 1979 I ended up in London. I was just hoping for some thrills you know. Some new drugs, whatever came my way. While I was there I spent some time with this group of friends. I think they were all trying to be rebels, against what I don't know. I did however know about their orgies, I even participated in some of them…"

"Are you telling me you had orgies and I'm the result of one?" Xander asked shocked.

"Sort of," Mom replied as she reached her hand weakly back to mess with her hair in a nervous action he hadn't seen her do in years.

"I never want you to think you were unwanted Alexander. You might have been unplanned and a bit unexpected, but I was so happy to have a baby. I didn't find out I was pregnant until a couple of months after I had returned to that states. The drugs had really messed with my mind. Tony was my boyfriend when I found out I was pregnant. He was so sweet then, he had had a huge crush on me back in High School and he was helping me get drug free. We were always very honest with each other so I was very straight forward about the pregnancy. We knew you weren't his since he wanted to wait for our first time to be special. He was so excited anyway, he wanted to have children and he was willing to claim you as his own… When you were born there were complications and the doctors told me I couldn't have anymore children, I think that's what drove your fath- Tony, to drink in the first place, I think he started to blame you for the children we couldn't have."

"Do you have any idea who my real father is?" Xander asked trying to take deep breaths to deal with all this new info being thrown at him.

"Yes, your father is one of two men. They were the only two at the London orgies I found attractive." At this she paused again. "I tried to contact them when I found out about you, but the group they hung out in had disbanded and I didn't know their full names, I don't think the names they used were even their real names. I don't want you to hold anything against either of them, they still have no idea that one of them has a son. The names they went by were Rayneman and Ripper."

End – Chapter 1

REVIEWS INSPIRE ME

I wrote this chapter in August 2007, my first fanfic chapter ever. I originally wrote this chapter in the first person. So when I decided to work on finishing the story I ended up editing it to be third person. Because of the conversion from 1st to 3rd a lot of stuff was kept in as Xander's thoughts. Future chapters won't have so many random Xander thoughts in it. No matter how much I enjoy them...