stillrose | Breaking Free (28/many?)

Title: Breaking Free (28/many?)
Fandom: BTVS; Spike/Xander
Warnings: Slash, AU, Sci-fi, mild-Violence, bit of Dom kink
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Lt. “Xander” Harris and Captain William the Bloody have both suffered and lost in the on going war between the Biogens and Council. Now, Xander finds himself a prisoner of Captain William the Bloody (aka Spike). What will be Xander’s fate?

Sorry this is late. My timing is off this week. Once again I’m sorry it’s so short. But the good news…I’m on vacation next week! J

Previous parts here.

As always: Feedback make my heart go pitter-patter.

“We’ll try this again,” Angel had said while he carried Xander. “We’ll keep trying it again, Xander, until we can have this conversation without you beserking. You’ll learn control all on your own or I’ll beat it into you. Either way, you will learn.”

Angel finished wiping Xander’s face with the wet rag and then pulled the thick blanket up and over the still unconscious man. Quietly Angel stepped out of the cell and pulled the door shut.

Angel winced at the sound of the lock clicking into place. He hated locking Xander up, but Angel needed to clean himself up and take a breather. Angel couldn’t risk Xander waking up in another rage or fit when Angel had his back turned. A holding cell is just insurance, Angelus whispered.

Angel turned away from Xander’s cell and stepped into the small room adjacent to the holding area. A painful grimace pained crossed Angel’s face as he realized turning his back on the kid was exactly what he was doing. He turned the water on in the sink, rinsed the bloody rag he’d used to clean Xander and then began to clean his own bruised and bloody face.

As a rule, Angel tried to avoid his reflection. There were too many deeds from his past he still couldn’t quite manage to look himself in the eye over. Yet, there were times, like now when his face was mush, his emotions were raw and the weight of the war was too much.

Angel looked up into the mirror above the sink. The kid got in a few good licks, Angel observed through one swollen an eye: the other was a lovely purplish shade of black. Angel would have smiled but that would have set his cracked lip bleeding again.

If he’d had any decent training he’d have lasted longer, critiqued Angelus. You could help him with that. You could take all that raw passion and lithe material; turn it into a dark knight to match your Spike.

Angel ignored his darker self and continued dabbing at this face. Unwanted, but not unwelcome, memories surged into Angel’s mind. He thought about another time and another Biogen.

***

“You know I’m just goin ta kill ya when I recover,” Angelus had purred at the young dark man so carefully trying to wrap a bandage around Angelus’s torso to keep the Biogen’s intestines from falling out.

“Probably,” the young man had muttered.

Angelus grimaced but did not cry out against the pain as the young man secured the bandage. Pain was familiar. Pain was a tool. Pain was friend and foe. Right now, pain told Angelus just about every major organ of his was seriously damaged from the crash. Pain hadn’t even begun to register the other less critical laceration or broken bones. However, the young man seemed to have registered them.

“I won’t be able ta move ya until yer healed up some more,” the young man had said.

“Are ya daft or just suicidal?” Angelus had asked.

The man had laughed. “I guess that depends on who ya ask now doesn’t it?”

Then the young man had gently begun to work on the next wound. He tried resetting the first of the compound fractures in Angelus right leg.

Angelus couldn’t hold back the groan.

“Well, ya could at least tell me yer name,” the man had said and oddly the question helped Angelus focus. “I should at least know the name of the man’s whose goin’ ta kill me once he’s recovered.”

“Not a man,” Angelus hissed. “I’m a Biogen!”

“Oi! Sorry fer makin the mistake!” The young man had exclaimed with not an ounce of regret as he twisted and pulled Angelus’s leg into place. Angelus screamed and his eyes flashed gold. He stared at the young man who now held up two bloody hands as he waited for Angelus to gain composure.

“Ya can see why I made the mistake, yer blood’s just as red as mine,” the man had said before he began to set the next break.

“WHY! WHYYYY are you doing this?” Angelus screamed something coherent this time as his bones were slid into place.

“Shhh,” the young man crooned once again giving Angelus a chance to breathe and calm down from the pain. “I’m just tryin ta help. Ya’ll heal faster once we get everything bandaged and in place…at least I think ya will. I’ll tell ya a secret, I’ve never treated a Biogen before.”

Angelus blinked at the young man who was now splinting his broken leg into place. One down and one to go, Angelus thought.

“Why?” Angelus whispered.

“Name?” the man replied.

“Angelus,” the Biogen growled.

The young man paused and sat back on his haunches and looked at Angelus. He studied him for a few moments as if he thought Angelus would suddenly disappear or sprout wings or grow another head or morph into whatever nightmare made incarnate Angelus name had become across the galaxy.

“Huh,” the young man had finally said. “The leader of the Biogens himself. The one who started it all.”

“Now ya understand, boy,” Angelus had snarled. “Now ya know why you should run far and fast.”

Once again the man had surprised Angelus. Instead of fleeing he moved back to Angelus and very gently took his hand and then just as gently, but firmly shook it.

“My name is, Doyle,” the man had said.

“Why?” Angelus had just whispered. “Why are ya helping me?”

“Because I choose to,” Doyle had responded as he withdrew his hand and once again set about to work on Angelus’s wounds.

“I’m goin ta kill ya!” Angelus’s yelled.

“That’d be yer choice then wouldn’t it,” Doyle said calmly and didn’t stop working.

“Ya think this will buy ya mercy? Ya think that I won’t kill ya and any other humans I find here just because you aided me?”

That got him, Angelus thought as Doyle stopped and looked Angelus squarely in the eye.

“Ya don’t get it do ya?” Doyle said softly. “This isn’t about you; this about me. This is about my choice. This is about me doing what I think is right. Now you Biogens, ya might never had a chance ta learn this because of the way the Council brought ya into this world. They grew ya in vats and such. They placed collars and what nots upon ya. But being human is about the choices we make. There’s not a bloody lot we can do sometimes about the things that’s done to us or the things around us; but how we choose to react to those things or how we choose to deal with those situations…well that’s what makes us human.”

“I told ya I’m not human!” Angelus snapped almost defensively as if what Doyle was saying could wound and cripple him more than any of the injuries from the crash landing on this wasteland colony.

“Yer not?” Doyle said as he once again held up his red bloody hands for Anglus to see. “Ya bleed the same. Ya started out with pretty much the same DNA. Ya may have some super bugs in yer blood and some genetic tamperin ta give ya perks like strength, night vision, regeneration and all the fancies some mad doctor could dream up but yer still human.”

“I’d think even way out here in this dump of a colony ya’d get the news, boy,” Angelus growled. “There’s a war; Biogens versus humans.”

“It’s an old story,” Doyle said going back to his wound tending. “Quite borin’ if ya ask me. Back when it was first told it was called ‘Cain versus Abel.’”

“Yer daft! That’s it!” Agnelus cried as if he desperately needed it to be true.

“I’m daft?” Doyle muttered. “I’m not the one letting my former masters define who and what I am. I’m not the one goin’ on a literal bloody killin’ spree provin’ those same masters right.”

Angelus tried to jerk away from Doyle and screamed, “Leave me alone!”

Doyle paused and then moved away from Angelus. He looked at the pale Biogen with flashing gold eyes and he tried to keep the empathy from showing. Instead he turned, grabbed a blanket and covered Angelus.

“I’ll keep watch tonight but no matter how hurt ya are, I’m gonna have ta move ya away from the crash site come morning,’” Doyle said softly. “Council troops will be lookin’ for ya.”

“Why are ya doin’ this?” Angelus asked quietly and as close to breaking as he’d ever felt.

“I told ya, my poor fallen angel,” Doyle said as he smiled, “It’s the right thing ta do.”

***

Angel wiped his face again. Even after all these years he still found tears to mourn Doyle. Wish you were here, Angel thought. I’m sure you’d have found a dozen different, better, ways of dealing with this.

Angel sighed, rinsed the rag one more time twisted it and hung it over the sink to dry. He turned off the water and once again looked at his reflection. Already the nanites were doing their job. The swelling one the right eye was down while the left eye was looking more purple then black.

Angel turned back around and walked to the room with the holding cell. Xander was awake sitting on the cot.

“I’m a prisoner again?” Xander asked.

“No,” Angel said as he walked over and unlocked the cell door. “I just needed a break and wasn’t sure whether or not you were still going to want to clock me when you woke up.”

“Well, in that case you might want to shut that door again,” Xander almost growled.

Angel sighed and leaned against the door frame. “Can’t we talk first?”

“Sure, Angel,” Xander purred. “Weather sure is fine here on Hyperion.”

“Xander you were dying!”

“This is a conversation for Spike and I to be having!” Xander shouted as he stood up.

“I know that,” Angel acknowledged.

“Then why did you send him away?” Xander asked. And why did he go?

“Xander, the nanites are changing you…”

“Xan-man’s slow, Angel, but he’s not that slow,” Xander interrupted. “Kinda got clued in on the changes when I saw my right eye.”

“It’s more then just regeneration…”

“Strength, speed, night vision,” Xander interrupted again. “Been through the academy training on ‘How to Kill the Enemy.’ Course they didn’t offer a course on what to do if I become the enemy. Suicide hotline?”

“Don’t even joke about that!” Angel growled.

“What? Gonna beat that out of me?” Xander snapped.

“Is that what you want? Spike to come back and find you dead?”

“I didn’t want Spike to leave in the first place!” Xander shouted. “And I sure didn’t want to be a Biogen!”

“So what are you going to do, Xander?” Angel asked. “Mope? Bitch? Whine? Throw another tantrum? Rage and…”

“How dare you!” Xander choked once again feeling the nanites surging in him and his face shifting. “I didn’t ask for any of this! I didn’t ask to be tortured by some psycho! I didn’t ask for the magical wonder cure…”

“And I didn’t ask to be created in a vat and be a slave for a sadistic fuck,” Angel replied.

“Not the same thing,” Xander growled.

“Sometimes, Xander, we can’t control what happens to us or around us but we can choose how we react or handle the situation. You have a choice”

The thing about change is not that it happens but it’s about the choices you make when it happens. Xander froze as Jesse’s voice floated through his mind like from a half remembered dream.

“Xander?” Angel asked noting the sudden change in Xander.

“What did you say?” Xander asked quietly.

“Sometimes we can’t control what happens to us but…”

“..it’s about the choices you make when it happens,” Xander finished.

Angel nodded. Xander sat back down on the cot and stared at Angel.

“Tell me about the changes,” Xander finally said. “Tell me about being a Biogen.”

TBC in prt 29

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

vampsarecool.livejournal.com

I like this, but Since I'm an angst person I hope that Xander fights what he is just a little bit longer and make Spike suffer just a little bit. *sigh* Otherwise I loved this and I look forward to your next update.

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...Beautiful "Boys"

Breaking Free (28/many?)

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