Fic: The Tao of Not Murdering All Your Friends, R, part 1 of ?
Title: The Tao of Not Murdering All Your Friends
Main Characters: Willow, Not Willow, Xander.
Summary: I can't really come up with a summary that isn't spoileriffic, so I'll white it out. Highlight to view: The merry adventures of Not Willow and all her friend.
Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me. Also, I stole the "all her friend" joke from House.
Rating: R.
Ya know, people kinda tend to underestimate Xander. This one time, in junior high, I got into trouble with Ms. Beavis in lab by accidentally-on-purpose spilling this green dye thingy on Cordy's dress. Of course, back then, I saw trouble with teachers as pretty much the end of the world. I think I convinced myself that if I annoyed Ms. Beavis I would fail physics and then I wouldn't get into the advanced placement classes in high school so I wouldn't be able to get into a good college and would go through life sad and unloved because, let's face it, brains were pretty much the only thing I had going for me, and then I would start collecting cats and a handsome prince who kinda looked like Xander would come for me but he would trip over all the cats and go away in a huff or perhaps die from anaphylactic shock because handsome princes are probably allergic to cats and then I would be arrested for manslaughter and spend the rest of my life as the bitch of the inmate who made the best toilet wine. So it was a pretty big deal. Also I prefer dogs.
Anyway, Xander, who got wiggy over stuff like that too because I did and because I think he thought that me being in trouble was against the natural order of things or something, and who was standing at the other side of the room talking to some girl who wasn't me, Xander being an early developer in that regard, not that the girls noticed, besides me of course - where was I? Oh, yeah. Xander getting with the evil. When he saw I was crying, he turned a color I don't think I've ever seen on a human and shouted, “Ms. Beavis! It wasn't her! It was ...” and I could see that he was going to say it was him, which would have been kinda ridiculous because he was at the other side of the room, as I think I mentioned already, not that I am bitter, but then he said “...Harmony!” Because Harm was also right next to Cordy, you see, and everyone knew they had been fighting for weeks, plus I was little miss goody-goody-two-shoes back then, so Ms. Beavis believed him. And I was convinced for the next week that Harm was going to dig a tunnel out of detention and seek revenge for her imprisonment for a crime that she didn't commit, but she didn't, and things went back to normal. But I don't think I ever saw Xander in quite the same way again.
So, as I was saying, people underestimate him. They think that, just because he's all self-sacrificing and stuff, he doesn't have any bad in him. I know better.
Right at the moment, I really, really hope I'm right, because my stomach hurts so much I'm barely even noticing the pain in my head any more, and I'm too hungry to think and you would not believe how hard it is to find a rat in Sunnydale and it seems to be daylight all the time and the only plan I can come up with is: Find Xander. Xander make stuff better.
I don't even know for certain he lives here any more. Everything is different in this dimension.
The sun's not quite down yet, but if I wait for full darkness I don't know if I'm going to be able to stand up. I get across the street by moving from shadow to shadow. If I can make it to the door everything will be better.
I make it to the door. Everything isn't better. I knock. Fiendishly brilliant planning there. Try to get an invite to the house of a card-carrying white hat by knocking. Next week on Channel Rosenberg: we try to get into the White House dressed in a burqa with several sticks of C-4 trailing from the hem.
Xander's mom. “Can I come in?” Everything will be all right if I can get through the door.
She says “Sure” in that slurred voice of hers and promptly disappears. One good thing about this dimension, if I ever get this thing out of my head we can re-do all the fun stuff we did back home. Xander let me watch when he did his parents, which was very cool of him considering that Luke did mine before I was turned, so I couldn't really reciprocate. This time I'll make sure we do everything together. I hope he won't want to bring his friends along. It was more fun with just the two of us. I remember his mom kinda tasted of cough syrup. No! Bad Willow! Don't think of food. Don't think of food. Don't think of food. I hang onto the wall until I can work out which direction is up again. Shouldn't have let her go away. I need to check that Xander still lives here. Everything will be all right if I can find Xander. I find the stairs and start up. Step and breathe. Step and breathe. Might work better if I remembered how to breathe. His room is empty, unlived-in. Moment of glacial panic before his mom shouts up to remind me that he lives in the basement now. Start down again. Sudden vision of sliding down the banisters. Whee! Need to sit down. Can't sit down. Keep going. If I find Xander everything will be all right.
Bottom of the stairs, a door standing open. He's just gotten back from somewhere. It suddenly occurs to me that he could have been out for the evening. What would he have done if he had found a collapsed Willow in front of his door? Not reached for the handy bottle o' blood, that's for sure. Probably called wherever my alter ego is living, found out I was an imposter, staking time. Hugs and rejoicing for all. Xander, standing in the middle of his basement room, cross in one hand and stake in the other. Hello, Xander, I'm your best friend's evil vampiric twin. Back in my home dimension, I tortured you for twenty hours or so before turning you. Want to get me some blood and a brain surgeon, so that I can time myself this time and see if we can make the round twenty-four? Need to get closer to Xander. If I'm closer to Xander everything will be all right.
I step forward and boing, I'm sitting on the stairs waiting for the pretty stars to go away. Silly of me not to realize his basement counted as a separate home. People underestimate Xander, but he's not stupid. Could I make it out if I tried crawling up the stairs? I take a good look at him, standing in the middle of the room and blinking in that way he has when he's waiting for the world to start making sense. There have been worse last sights. I lean back and hug my knees to my chest and wait for the pain to go away.
A clattering noise. I can tell without looking that he's dropped the cross. His voice seems to come from a long way away, very formal, like he's inviting me to dance. Willow, I invite you in. Dear, sweet Xander. He's crying the way men sometimes do, cheeks all scrunched up but no tears on them. He just gave up in my dimension, too, when he found out what happened to me, although in fairness that was after he saw what Luke and his merry minions did before they killed me. Not that his giving up is going to do me any good this time. Even if it weren't for the chip in my head, I couldn't fight a moderately aggressive rabbit in my current condition. So I sit back and wait for Xander to make things better. Or, ya know, kill me.
He's saying something, his voice reverberating in my aching skull like a foghorn hooting at sea, but I'm pretty out of it. I can smell his veins pressed against my numb lips. It's unfair, really. I could turn him right now, weakness and all, if I wanted my head to explode like a festive pinata. He goes away for a bit and I whimper. It hurt less when he was holding me. Then I smell blood, good, human Xander-blood, the scent filling the air like a solid. The world spins as he props my head up, lets the blood trickle into my mouth. It tastes rich, obscenely rich after weeks of rat-blood and not much of it, and I can't hold it down at first and start coughing when it reaches my stomach. That doesn't last for long, and soon, way too soon, he pulls my head away from his arm and the world spins again as he picks me up. Something soft underneath me. Woo, a bed, long time no see. He goes away again, I whimper. You know the drill. He's gone for longer this time.
I smell the blood as soon as he gets back. Cow's blood, I think. Never had it before. Not as good as human, but a major improvement on rat. Even bigger improvement on nothing, for that matter. There's a lot more blood this time, a big glass jar full of it. My hands are shaking too much to hold the jar and he's slow and awkward trying to bring it to my lips, so I stick my head in and lap it up like a cat, strands of hair falling in and turning a deeper red. Need to re-dye it soon. Hard to get the shade even with no reflection.
He doesn't pull my head away this time. I'm still hungry when I finish, but my stomach has shrunk and I can't get any more down. I wrap my arms around him and go to sleep.
...
I feel warm when I wake up, which takes me by surprise. Not warm all the way, of course - there's a spot inside me, below the ribs, which stays cold all the time - but still, warmer than I've been since Luke. Logically, it must be his body heat, but it's odd that I've never been able to get this warm with a radiator.
I can smell his blood - not the cold dead blood from his bandaged arm, but the blood in his veins, alive and joyous. It permeates everything, the bedclothes, the whole room. I feel a sudden, urgent and profoundly unrealistic need to steal it from him.
I need a plan. What I have: One Willow-body, no longer starving, but still a long way away from peak condition. Not that it can do anything useful anyway until it ceases to be chippy. What I need: Someone who knows how to remove the chip, and a way of staying alive (well, sorta alive) until I find her. Clearly, therefore, the immediate problem is working out how to get Xander to protect me from his coterie of Pollyannas before one of them gets overenthusiastic with sharp objects. This is an entirely rational decision and has nothing whatsoever to do with any plans concerning Xander my hormones may or may not be formulating on my behalf. Luckily for me, Xander has never kept his buttons particularly well hidden. So I start screaming.
I'm not much of an actress, but I've heard enough screams to know how to do it. And it's not as if half-asleep Xander is an overly discriminating audience. He doesn't so much sit up as levitate half a foot above the bed, still hanging on to me. I must say I'm impressed.
As soon as he's awake enough to get his bearings, which is never a rapid process with Xander, he starts begging me to wake up. I stop with the cacophony, lean my head on his chest and start blubbering. It's not as if I didn't get plenty of practice doing that when I was winning awards for Most Pathetic Wimp back in high school.
Not that I'm doing so well as a vampire either. Making with the getting grabbed by soldiers within hours of landing in my new dimension, not really my proudest moment ever. Yes, Willow, let's be cautious and see what's going on before charging in. I should have just raided the Bronze right away like I originally planned. At least I'd have gotten a good meal out of it.
Not thinking about that right now. Xander reacts as expected, stroking my back and telling me he'll make everything all right as soon as he works out what it is that he's supposed to be making all right. This is way too easy. I'm starting to get bored, so I decide to inject a little imagination into the next stage: telling him about the things Luke did to me. Not that it really needs spicing up. Very imaginative guy, Luke. I still use his little tricks all the time. That thing with the pincers? Genius. Sheer genius. Xander, turning ever greener, makes it as far as the part with the chopsticks before heading bathroom-wards at a run.
That's fine with me: I need a little more time anyway to work out the pesky details like whether I should tell him about the chip. I know I can hide it for at least a while, and the prospect of his finding out eventually doesn't worry me too much. The risk of maybe getting staked six months from now is trivial compared to even a slightly improved chance of spending the rest of the day outside of Xander's dust buster. (Although, by the look of things, his dust buster is primarily for decoration.) The problem is that I need some way of explaining why I'm the only vampire on earth who doesn't eat people. Xander has always believed that I am made of rainbows and unicorns and wouldn't steal a damaged cent from Bill Gates, so telling him that I don't eat people because I'm just such a nice person shouldn't be too hard a sell. The problem is his friends. Specifically, the other me. She knows all the fantasies I had even before I became a vampire, all the dreams I used to have on the nights when I would wake up and worry I had roused the parents. She knows what I'm made of.
Rainbows do not feature prominently in the mix.
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