Decisions
by Saone

Xander hates Spike. He thinks.

Maybe.

Basically feels the same way towards the annoying
British one as he did towards the equally annoying
Irish one. Spike. Angel. Good. Evil. Flip a coin
or something! Just, pick a side and stick with it for
God’s sake! Is that really so much to ask?

Not even going to think about Faith. Nope.

It’s the waffling he can’t stand. The indecision.
Which, of course, is always closely followed by
confusion. Xander feels he has enough on his plate as
it is without having to constantly worry about one of
the people he’s let in throwing him on a bed and
trying to choke him to...

Hey! Wasn’t supposed to think about her!

Dammit.

Not that Spike could ever do that. Well, not the
choking part, at least. But, he could do the whole
throwing on a bed thing, which, if Xander’s completely
honest with himself, he really wouldn’t mind trying.

See, that’s why Xander’s rarely completely honest with
himself.

Spike is bad. Spike is not that bad. Spike could be
a whole hell of a lot worse. No, wait, Spike is bad
again. Oh, hang on, now he’s only kind of bad,
sometimes.

Xander’ll lend him a coin. Heads, and Spike can turn
back into the arch enemy everyone knows and would
gleefully wipe off the face of the planet. Tails, he
can become a full fledged Slayerette. Xander would
even hold his hand at the body art place when he got
the requisite tattoo. He wonders what Spike’s ass
would look like with a cartoon Great Dane permanently
etched into it.

Ulp. Thinking about Spike’s ass again.

Okay, he’ll think about other things. Like, how
gruesome Spike looked when he and Giles took the vamp
back to the crypt. Spike looked awful. Spike looked
beyond awful. Spike looked like death, and not even
the warmed over kind.

Xander had cringed at the cuts and bruises. Whispered
an honest apology when his hand inadvertently brushed
against a still sensitive wound. Giles had kept up a
steady stream of questions, though he wasn’t in nearly
the kind of Inquisition mode he could be. He just
wanted to know if Spike had given up Dawn, though,
Xander thought that answer was pretty obvious.

Spike hadn’t said a word.

Xander had seen enough torture victims - once again,
his thoughts lead straight to a bout of
‘There’s-something-fundamentally-wrong-with-my-life-itis’
- to know that what happened to Spike was beyond the
pale. Beyond every shade of pale, ever.

So, why did the vampire let it happen? Glory might be
evil incarnate, but she’s not going to waste her time
playing shishkebob with a vampire when she could be
out doing whatever it is she wants to do with Dawn.
Why didn’t Spike tell?

Xander doesn’t know. And, he’s not going to ask.
He’ll just accept that their little accordion-like
circle is expanding again, for better or for worse.
For good, or for bad.

Probably for bad.

But... maybe not *that* bad.

**********
*****

Riley can admit that his mental state has been a
little south of sanity for a while now. He likes to
think that maybe Maggie did something to his head too.
That she tinkered around in his brain, cut a few of
the more important synapses or something. That’s what
he likes to think, but he knows that’s not the truth.
The truth is he was too weak.

His black and white mentality couldn’t handle all the
subtle shades of gray brought into play by... go on,
say it. The Scoobies. Tries thinking about the
absurdity of it. The foolish ignorance that
accompanies willfully calling yourself something like
that. The Scooby Gang. Makes him remember that for
the most part its members are nothing more than
children. That the reason they carry that moniker
proudly is because they’re too caught up in their
Saturday morning fantasy to see the stark reality.
Stupid. Irresponsible. Illogical. Focuses in on the
animosity, the burning not quite hatred that simmers
in his gut, knowing that if he concentrates long
enough and hard enough it’ll overshadow the aching
hole in his heart. Or maybe not his heart, his soul.


Part of him can’t help but miss them. The people who
could have been... who were, his friends. It’s the
part of him that wanted to go back even when he was
getting on the helicopter. Not just back to Buffy,
but back to all of them. If he had just stayed... But
he hadn’t. He wasn’t a member of their family. He
never would be.

He didn’t have a family anymore. He’d occasionally
wonder what his mother and father were doing. Felt
the odd pang of guilt over what they must have thought
when he didn’t show up at the farm for Christmas.
Knows he can never go back there either. Doesn’t know
what would be worse, the questions or the answers.

The answers.

At least the people he’s with now, his new team, know
to not even ask. They get told what to do. They do
it. They move on to the next assignment. Simple,
mindless, and Riley wants to love it. He keeps
remembering the Initiative before the onslaught of
annoying locals, and wants it to all click again. He
wouldn’t even care if they started more experiments,
as long as it would take him away from the mess in his
head.

Or, maybe instead of messing it up more, they could
fix whatever was wrong. Just like they could fix
Graham. And a sliver inside holds onto that. Knows
it’s complete and utter bullshit, but holds on
nevertheless. But, that small bit of hope will die,
just like...

They were going over Intel one night, just the two of
them, experience counting more than seniority,
planning a raid on a rather large vampire nest.
Suddenly Graham’s hand closed over his forearm. It
felt like his palm was on fire. And Riley’s body very
quickly followed suit.

There were no kisses. No touches besides the bare
minimum needed to get each other off. And then it was
over, quick as it had begun. They wiped away the
evidence, rearranged their fatigues, and went back to
work.

When their job was done and Riley was back in the
shabby little room they had assigned to be his
quarters that trip, he sat on his cot and tried to
cry. He wanted to cry. Wanted to bawl like a baby.

He really should have been able to cry.

Once, when they were rubbing against each other, hips
fitted against each other so nicely, pleasure from the
contact making Riley feel more alive than he had in
months, once, he made the mistake of looking in
Graham’s eyes.

When he was a kid he always thought being dead meant
you were under six feet of dirt and had a nice,
respectable cross planted at your head. He wasn’t a
kid anymore.

Forrest. Spike. Graham. There were varying degrees
of deadness.

Before, Graham may have kept his mouth shut most of
the time, but his eyes were among the most expressive
Riley had ever seen. Teasing, sardonic, passionate,
those were words most people wouldn’t have associated
with the demure Agent Miller. But, then, most people
never paid attention to the different lights that came
into those bright blue eyes. Riley had. That was the
reason, when they were grinding together, that he had
sought out Graham’s gaze. He wanted, needed, to see
what was there.

He should have known better.

Riley hadn’t looked into his friend’s eyes since.

And, he still couldn’t cry.

**********
*****

Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill.

Lindsey’s almost used to it by now, the automatic
writing. Its former owner might be dead, but the hand
is still rightly pissed. Lindsey knows enough not to
question the absurdity of the situation. He has an
evil appendage. He can accept that.

Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill.

Until the flesh forgets he tries to keep it busy as
much as he can. Strumming his guitar. Working on his
truck. Performing any number of menial, odd,
promised-himself-he’d-never-ever-do-in-his-life, jobs.

Will work for food.

Will work to keep my evil hand occupied.

He may have spent the last several years out of touch
with his humanity, but Lindsey figures the first
saying would go over much better than the truth. Not
that he actually did need to work for food. He may
have brushed the cobwebs off his conscious, but he had
no compunctions about keeping his money, bloody or
otherwise. He had earned it. It was his. And, that
was something he couldn’t say about much in the world
anymore. So, no, he was far from destitute, and would
remain that way for quite some time. But he still had
to do something. Idle hands, and all that...

Ever the pragmatist, Lindsey did accept any money he
was offered for his labors, though most of the time
his payments were of the edible variety. He didn’t
dream of complaining though, not when his belly was
full of foods he hadn’t even seen in years. Home
fries, and Virginia ham. Rich, buttery biscuits
sopping up thick country gravy. Grits. God, how he
had missed a good plate of grits.

So, he washed dishes in Tucson, mended fences outside
Santa Fe. Mucked stalls. Painted barns. Mr. former
closet full of Armanis with paint splatters on his
sleeves, calluses on his hands, and horse shit on his
boots.

If only Angel could see him now.

If only...

Knows it wouldn’t matter, not in the least. Lindsey
could give all his money to widows and orphans and
lame puppies, he could single handedly build churches
and schools, he could dedicate the rest of his life to
saving endangered species and cleaning up oil spills,
and it still wouldn’t matter. He would still be evil
lawyer Lindsey, worthy of nothing more than thinly
veiled contempt and the occasional ass-kicking.

Damn self-righteous vampire.

Fucking holier than thou blood sucking son of a bitch.

Lindsey is also well aware of his lingering issues.

Any time his disobedient appendage relinquishes
writing control-

Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill.

Lindsey puts it down. Pours his heart, and whatever
he might have left of a soul, into words, onto paper.
After editing out the odd homicidal statement, he’s
even performed some of these emotional outpourings.
Graciously received the acclaims, shrugged off the
‘helpful’ suggestions regarding his career. Politely
states that he’s not looking for one of those. Puts
up with the looks of disappointment and pity with only
a modicum of the amount of annoyance he feels entitled
to. He wants to yell at them, wants to tell them that
he had had a career, wants to explain that he knows
all about wasting your life, and other people’s as
well.

Doesn’t though. Doesn’t care to. Bringing up the
past is contradictory to forgetting about it. He
knows the aches he feels will never truly be gone, and
he’s all right with that. Amazing lyrics can come
from pain. But, it would be nice if the edges were a
little duller. If he didn’t feel a surge of
*something* every time he hears a certain A-word.

Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill.

Maybe the hand does have the right idea. Except he
doesn't want to kill Angel, not really. Not when
keeping him on edge is so much more fun. That’s why
he’s sending the postcard.

Wish you were here.

He just won’t specify the why part... But he does
cross out the couple of ‘kill’s that worked their way
in there.

**********

the end