Prompt #287 Surely the Bitterness of Death Is At Hand

[fangstress.livejournal.com]

Surely the Bitterness of Death Is At Hand....

By Fangstress

First, Buffy died.

Xander remembered the nauseating sense of vertigo he'd experienced realizing that his assumption-- that he would be the first Scoobie to die --wasn't necessarily a sure bet. That his early death wasn't an inescapable destiny. Odd realization; because after all, he had no superpowers-- no super strength, no magic--- he was not-very-effective-canon-fodder, and he's always known that. That was his role. He'd made his peace with it. And of course, he was the Scoobies' doughnut-boy, zeppo, butt-monkey extraordinaire, yadda, yadda.

Then Buffy died again, and came back, resurrected by Willow.

Then Tara died. She didn't come back.

Then surprisingly painfully, Spike died. Saving the world.

He didn't come back, either.

For a couple of years after that, Xander kept himself busy, rounding up baby slayers scattered all over Africa. It kept him away from the former Scooby gang; and that was what he needed. He couldn't face them. Couldn't face Buffy and that guilty, broken look she got every time she had to see him wearing the patch. He couldn't face Willow, who just wanted to make it all better. Dawn only reminded him of all of the painful losses he'd suffered. Joyce. Buffy. Spike.

Spike was dust. And he wasn't coming back.

So, Xander went on with his life-- or half-life, as he often regarded it.

Now, he sat in a crappy hotel room, in craptacular LA, eating cold craptastic microwave burritos; waiting for the the Council to contact him and give him more specs on his next assignment. The Council operative who'd initially summoned him to LA had been vague, and Xander found himself puzzled as to what the assignment might be. It didn't seem to be another Baby Slayer roundup, and that had Xander worried.

His cell rang, and Xander hastily put the burrito down on the bedspread to answer it.

“Xander?”

“Angel?” Xander answered, incredulously, trying not to choke on the burrito he was still chewing. Why would Angel of all.. ah.. non-people, “Deadboy!”, Xander corrected himself mentally, be calling him? He chewed as quietly as he could, waiting to see what Angel would say. No breathing on the line, so it probably really was Angel.

Angel's voice had even less character than it did normally, flat, terse. “Xander, we've got a problem here. It's Spike.”

And Xander promptly dropped the phone, fell off the bed, and landed on the remains of his burrito.

Comments

[tamingmods.livejournal.com]

Welcome to the community! We're glad to have you here.

If you could please use the header listed in the userinfo when posting that would be much appreciated. The userinfo also states that fic posted here must be at least 500 words. Please keep that in mind when submitting fic. As your current submission is too short please lengthen it to meet the minimum number of words.

[fangstress.livejournal.com]

Hi there...

Can you tell I'm new? I will keep word counts in mind. Still learning my way around LJ communities...

If you need to remove my post, feel free; I understand.

[slaymesoftly.livejournal.com]

I vote for making it longer. I want to know how the reunion goes and why Angel called for Xander to help. :)

[fangstress.livejournal.com]

I'm actually working on that...I've been inspired enough by the prompts and other writing exercises to try to turn this into (hopefully) a novel length story. :-)So, longer-- cool!