My ScorpionBy Firehorse
"Hey, Wills," said Buffy, as Willow came into the Magic Box."Hey, Buff, Giles. Guess what?" Willow was nearly vibrating in place. Maybe she shouldn't have had that second mochaccino. "I got a letter from Xander today!" She waved the envelope triumphantly.
"Where is he?"
"How is he?"
"Guys, guys, I made copies." Willow handed Buffy and Giles each a letter.
There was a few minutes of silence, broken by comments as they read. When the phone rang, Giles put his letter down and went to answer the phone.
"And they're back!" Buffy smiled. "Well, not *back* back. You know what I mean."
The previous couple of months had been peppered with postcards from everywhere, but never a contact number, or an address. Once, when Xander had called, he'd explained that Spike hadn't wanted to be findable, in case either Buffy or Angel came looking for them.
"Yeah, and it sounds like they've been living in their new place for a couple weeks. Figures Xander would end up in another basement. Although, I suppose with Spike, lots of big windows are out." Buffy snatched the envelope out of Willow's hand and read the return address. "Relax, Buffy, I wrote it down on your copy, along with Xander's cell number and phone number. He promised to get email, too." She smiled at the Slayer.
Buffy had been more hurt than she wanted to let on that Xander had chosen Spike over her. She had finally come around, but it had taken awhile. Giles had steadied the heavy bag as Buffy had worked it out in her head, and Willow had helped the process along with a steady supply of chocolate and cookies. She had finally reached a point where she could be truly happy for her friend.
Giles came out of his office with an odd expression on his face, picked up his letter and went back in. The girls listened intently but could hear nothing more than the murmur of his voice.
"What do you think is going on?" Buffy asked Willow.
"I don't know." She didn't, but she had a bad feeling. "Guess we'll just have to wait and see."
They didn't have to wait long. Giles came out of his office looking both puzzled and grave.
"That was the Sunnydale Police. They wanted to know if I've been in contact with a Mr. Alexander Harris. Specifically, had I seen him in person recently. They wouldn't say why. When I said I hadn't, they wanted to know his current address and phone number." He rattled the now-crumpled letter in emphasis
Almost before he was done speaking, Willow was pushing past him into the office. She booted up the computer and whispered a prayer under her breath, then inserted the disk marked 'axe'. She dialled into the county's main computer. Typing in 'Harris', she activated her hack-and-search program, then sat back and waited.
"Um, you guys better see this for yourselves," she said as the retrieved info scrolled across the screen. Since there wasn't room behind the desk for them to read over her shoulders, she quickly made copies of the autopsy file for the other two.
Case Report
County of Santa Barbara
Examination at Santa Barbara County Morgue
Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner
Pronounced By: DR. BERNARD SCHOLTER
Case Reported: 03-19-01
Time: 1425
By: DET. PATRICIO of Sunnydale HomicideName of Decedent: ANTHONY EDWARD HARRIS
Date/Time of Death: 03-17-01/2300 APPROX
Marital Status: MARRIED
Date of Birth: 11-09-52 Age: 49
Primary Occupation: INSURANCE SALES
Usual Residence:
Street Address 64 GRAHAMVILLE ST
City SUNNYDALE
County SANTA BARBARA
State CALIFORNIAPlace of Death:
Street Address 64 GRAHAMVILLE ST
City SUNNYDALE
County SANTA BARBARAIdentification By: PHOTO ID ON BODY, CONFIRMED BY DENTAL RECORDS
Info or ID obtained by: DET. PATRICIONotification:
Next of Kin ALEXANDER HARRIS
Relationship SON
Notified? - NOT LOCATED AS OF THIS WRITINGPhysical Description:
Face I.D. Viewable: YES
Body Condition: POORAge 55
Race APPEARS CAUCASIAN
Ht 70
Wt 240
Hair GREY
Eyes BROWN
Moustache NO
Beard NO
Scars MINOR ONLY
Amputations NONE
Tattoo TONY THE TIGER-LEFT UPPER BUTTOCK
Deformity NONE NOTEDINVESTIGATOR'S REPORT
INFORMATION SOURCES:
DET PATRICIO, Sunnydale Homicide
FILE #085-12782-1692-011SYNOPSIS:
The decedent is a 49-year-old male who suffered multiple blunt-force and sharp-force traumas as a result of an apparent homicide on or about March 17, 2001. Death was pronounced by Dr. Scholter at 1420 hours, March 18, 2001. Weapons were recovered by SDH. There are no suspects at this time.INVESTIGATION:
I arrived at Santa Barbara County Morgue Annex in Sunnydale at 2125 hours, March 22, 2001 at the request of SDH, in order to obtain evidence. I was directed to room #14.I observed the decedent on a transfer table. Examination revealed multiple areas of blunt-force trauma, in addition to multiple cuts and stab wounds. Primary cause of death is exsanguination, method is the bilateral severing of the jugular and cartoid. The frontal and temporal bones of the decedent's skull had been removed, possibly with the axe found at the scene, and the brain matter excavated. The cranial cavity contained what appears to be canine fecal matter. All other organs are present, with the exception of the liver, which has not yet been located.
I responded to the decedent's residence and met with Detectives Mulitimore and Patricio. Sheriff's Photographer, Deputy Lowry, was also at the scene. Det. Patricio provided me with the following information.
The decedent had been scheduled to work a half day despite it being the weekend, but had failed to show. This was apparently not unusual, but when the decedent's employer could not reach him by telephone, he became concerned and called the police. Squad Car #154 arrived on scene, and upon finding the door open, entered the residence. The decedent and another victim (the decedent's brother Rory Harris; FILE #085-12782-1692-012) were found and Homicide was notified. A further search revealed a woman sitting on a couch in the basement. She has been admitted to Sunnydale Asylum (Case #AQ951) with a diagnosis of catatonia. She has tentatively been identified as Jessica Harris, the decedent's wife. She is not a suspect, but may be a possible witness.
Detectives recovered two small paring type knives, three large butcher type knives, and a small axe, and were not finished at the scene at the time of this report.
The decedent's employer told me the decedent is a long-time alcoholic. It is not unusual for him to be late to work, but it is unusual for him "not to call with some lame-ass excuse."
EVIDENCE/PROPERTY:
All evidence into the Evidence Locker at the Forensic Science Centre.Investigator Susan A. Kertchings #164280
---They were quiet while they thought about the implications. Buffy was the first to ask the obvious question. "Spike?"
"No, couldn't have been," said Willow. Could it? She wondered.
"Yeah, but- shit for brains? That just says 'Spike' to me," argued Buffy.
"Yes, quite," Giles added. "Spike was known for his, er, creativity."
"Pull up the other file, Wills. Let's see what it has to say about Xander's Uncle Rory. Maybe that'll give us a clue."
Willow shuddered, even as her fingers flew over the keyboard. "I never did like that guy. He gave me the wiggins. It's weird; I can remember when Rory was Xander's favourite uncle, then all of a sudden, they avoid each other like they have the plague or something. Ha, here it is."
She skimmed the file, then said, "Oh! And, um, eeww." She began quoting, "'Primary cause of death; exsanguination as a result of the removal of all external genitalia with a large, sharp blade...decedent was found in a bedroom on the second story of the house...object protruding from decedent's anus was identified as a gin bottle...upon removal, the gin bottle was found to contain the missing genitals...no suspects', blather, blather, et cetera."
They all looked at one another. Finally Willow said, "That had to be Spike, but I don't see how."
"I don't either, but if that wasn't Spike personally, could he have paid someone to do it?" asked Buffy. "He's obviously got a lot more money than we ever thought he did, if they're planning a world tour this summer. And what's with the gin bottle thing? That's just eewww."
"No, that's personal." Willow and Buffy turned to stare at Giles. "When someone hurts someone you love, what do you do? Or wish you could do?"
The pieces came together with blinding clarity. "Oh, my God. Right before Xander and his uncle stopped talking, I went with him to the emergency room to have his collarbone set. He said his dad did it. But," she paused, "he wouldn't sit down. He said he was too wired to sit. But when they made him sit so the could put the thingy on, it hurt, I could see it, it hurt him to sit down." Her words tumbled out in a rush and she hurried on, asking the question she was almost certain she already knew the answer to. "Do you think- the gin bottle- his uncle always drank, but I never saw him sober after that, never. And Xander's bedroom was upstairs, then, across from his uncle's." She trailed off into horrified silence, wondering how she'd missed seeing it then.
"That's personal, all right." Buffy's voice was hard. "I don't care if it was Spike, and I don't care how he did it. If what we think happened really happened, then they got what they deserved."
"Quite." Willow turned to Giles in surprise. She had expected him to say something about the Slayer protecting humans. She agreed with Buffy, but hadn't thought Giles would.
Buffy gathered up the pages of her letter and folded them into her purse. Picking up Mr. Pointy, she said, "I'm going to go patrol. Wills, coming with? Giles?"
"No, no, you go ahead. I've got to do the monthly accounts." Giles headed back into his office.
"Yep, be right with you, Buffy. Just let me get some things."
Willow reached for a box and riffled through it, cramming her pockets with useful things, then hurried to catch up to Buffy.
She didn't know whether they were going to look for whoever had helped Spike, and say thank you, or going to work out their anger with Xander's family on the local fledgling population, but either way, she was in.
---
Xander bounced down the stairs to their apartment.
"Luuuucyyy, I'm home!" he called.
Spike came out of the kitchen, a mug of blood in his hand. Playing along, he said, "Hello, dear, how was your day?" He tilted his cheek to be kissed.
"You are looking at an officially employed person. Jack really came through for me; his letter of recommendation basically says I have a halo. I start tomorrow at eight."
"That's great! Although-"
"Yeah, I know," Xander interrupted. "I don't have to work. You can easily keep me in the manner to which I'd like to become accustomed. The part you're missing, Fang Boy, is that I want to work. As strange as it may seem, I *like* to work."
He watched as Spike made the decision to drop the subject. What he would never say, that Spike probably knew anyway, was that he didn't want to give up that last vestige of independence just yet. As long as he could make and pay for his own way, he would. Spike didn't like it, but he understood, so he didn't say anything. Or rather, he did say, but then dropped the subject as soon as it was obvious that Xander hadn't changed his mind.
They moved companionably through their evening routine, making dinner and cleaning up, even though Spike insisted that since he didn't *have* to eat, he therefore shouldn't have to do dishes, either. He lost the thumb wrestling match and 'volunteered' to dry. Xander knew that Spike was surprised he'd turned into such a neatnik, but he was proud of their apartment. It was worth keeping clean in a way the Basement of Doom never had been.
They owned the whole house, but lived in the basement and rented the top part out. It wasn't just a basement; he was pretty sure Spike had spent a lot of money making it liveable. And since it was a big Victorian basement to go with the big Victorian house upstairs, they had lots of room, with odd little nooks and crannies, and no windows. Their bedroom had been the maids' quarters, and their bathroom had been the coal cellar. Surprisingly, they had even agreed on a colour scheme; royal blue and cream for the bedroom, shades of cream and coffee with royal blue accents everywhere else. And they had lots of low, squashy furniture, suitable for fucking on. They even had a chair like the one in Spike's crypt, only in considerably better shape.
After watching a movie, they went to bed. Xander was awoken several hours later by the insistent ringing of the phone. There was a reason it was on his side of the bed, and he levered himself out from under an oblivious Spike and groped around on the night table.
"'Lo?" He squinted, trying to see the callerID, then gave up. "Yes, this is Alexander Harris." He sat up and tried to sound more awake than he was. Spike made sleepy mumbles at him, but sat up and paid attention at Xander's exclamation.
"What?!" Now he really was awake. "I'm sorry. Could you repeat that? You woke me up," he said plaintively.
He listened in blank confusion as the voice on the other end described his father's death, and his Uncle Rory's, and the current state of his mother.
He knew he was awake--he pinched himself to make sure--but he couldn't make it feel like it was happening to him.
He said things to the voice on the other end of the phone that he immediately forgot, and wrote down a number he wasn't sure he'd be able to read in the morning. He hung up and stared blankly at the phone until Spike interrupted.
"What's up, Xander?" Spike was sitting against the headboard, the deep blue sheets draped around his waist.
"My-my dad. Is, um, dead. And Uncle Rory." He felt queerly blank.
"What about your mum?"
"She's alive. She was- They found her downstairs. She's at the Sunnydale Asylum now. They think she saw what- They think that's why- God, Spike. She wasn't the best mother, but...you know?"
"Do they know what happened?"
"Yeah. They were, um, killed. Murdered. Probably by a human, and not something Hellmouthy. At least, it doesn't look like there's any evidence of something Hellmouthy." It slowly dawned on Xander that Spike was being awful calm about this. It was almost like he'd been expecting-
"Spike?"
"Yeah?" Spike's voice was calm enough, but his expression was wary. Now Xander was sure.
He'd expected something like this before they'd ever left Sunnydale, but not after. Not that that didn't mean Spike wasn't somehow still involved. All sorts of people, both the human and demon, owed Spike favours.
"Why didn't you kill my mom?" He could see that that wasn't what Spike had expected, but apparently he had startled Spike into the truth.
"Because she tried harder than your bastard of a father ever did."
"How'd you do it?" What he really wanted to know who had done it for Spike, and was he going to have to warn Buffy to watch out for his fledgling dad out wandering around.
"The Thark'un."
Xander sat there and stared at Spike, his mind trying to make sense of the answer he'd gotten. Thark'un...what had he heard about them? The answer came to him in a rush of remembered conversation.
"*You* did it?" he asked.
Now Spike looked twice as confused. "Yeah. You just asked me how- oh, I get it. You thought I'd gotten someone else to do it."
"You didn't," he clarified.
"No. While you were at the Magic Box, I met the Thark'un at Willy's. The clan Master had promised a favour for our help with his son. The two you met were it. We went into the back room and they stepped me to- we ended up in your basement."
He paused. Xander flapped a hand at him, meaning 'keep going'.
"I-" He stopped, clearly wondering just how much Xander wanted to know.
"You can skip the gory details; if you did it, I can guess," Xander said dryly.
Spike looked mildly relieved. "When I was...done, they stepped us back. That's the lot."
Xander pushed Spike down flat, then lay down beside him, his head in the cup of Spike's shoulder.
"Pet?"
"Quiet. I need to think." He burrowed into Spike's embrace, and tried to wrap his head around all the things he'd learned.
Item one: His dad was dead. He felt like he should feel sorry about that, but he didn't. Years of indifference, leavened with the occasional cruelty, had seen to that. He knew what he *should* feel-he just didn't. Couldn't.
He mourned, though. He mourned the loss of the chance to maybe, in some impossible future, make things better. To be civil, if not actually friendly. And now, that chance to have something approaching a normal father-son relationship was gone, and he mourned the loss of what could have been. What should have been.
Item two: Uncle Rory was dead, too. He felt sadder about that. Before the Incident had happened, he'd *liked* Uncle Rory. He'd told Spike that, and it was true. Rory had taught him how to make a kite and fly it, had helped him with his math homework, had let him sit on the edge of the bathroom counter and watch him shave.
And with the clarity of hindsight, he could see how devastated Rory'd been over the Incident. He didn't see it at the time of course, but Rory truly had climbed into his gin bottle and not come out after that. His behaviour had had all the hallmarks of a guilty man who'd done a terrible thing and didn't know how to make it right. But he *had* done a terrible thing, and knowing Spike, he'd paid for it, and probably with interest.
Item three: His mom was...gone. Lost inside her own head, apparently. Had she seen what Spike did? Had she seen him do it? Or had Spike said something to her? Any of those were possibilities.
She'd been as bullied as Xander had been, and probably moreso in different ways. Still, she'd tried. Maybe she hadn't tried very hard to protect him, but she hadn't gone out of her way to try to hurt him, either. Didn't that count for something?
Xander wasn't aware that he was crying until Spike gently wiped the tears from his face with the corner of the sheet.
"Pet? Did I- Did I do the wrong thing?"
Well, that was really the question, wasn't it?
He sighed deeply. "Yes. No. I don't know. No, I knew that you were going to. Hell, I even offered! But it's different, somehow, now that it's really happened." And just how long would it take him to learn that reality was always different than fantasy?
"I'm sorry, Xander." Spike's voice was quiet, and Xander could feel him drawing in on himself.
"It's... It's just you being you, Spike. I knew- Do you like my tattoo?"
There was a pause, then, "Roll over, pet, and let me see it again." He knew that he had once again surprised Spike. Considering that their life together had started with 'conversational left turns', as Spike had put it, you'd think he'd be used to them by now.
Xander obligingly rolled off of Spike and onto his back. On the left side of his chest, over his heart, was a small, tribal-style scorpion.
It was new and still scabby, but it was healing well.
"Very nice, pet. When did you get it done?" Spike asked.
"Last night, when you were hunting." Now that the chip was toast, Spike was free to hunt, and he often did, although his diet was still heavily supplemented with pig's blood. But it bothered Xander-he was still too much the White Knight to be comfortable with Spike killing random humans.
So Spike compromised. He still hunted, just not randomly. They lived in a big city, with plenty of bad guys to eat. Spike hunted in the ugly end of town, snacking on pimps and thugs. And although he still killed drug dealers once in awhile, he didn't actually eat them anymore, not since the last one. That one had obviously been sampling his wares. Spike had said he thought the blood had tasted off, but by then it was too late. Suffice it to say that vampires and crack were a bad combination.
Spike rolled to his side and propped his head on his fist as examined the new tattoo. Reaching out, he traced lazy trails over Xander's warm skin. He'd said once that the one thing he'd miss after he turned Xander would be sleeping with a *warm* body.
"So why a scorpion, pet?" His expression was less wary than it had been, but he still seemed to expect some fallout from his actions.
"It goes with a story that reminds me of you."
"Oh? Do tell."
"You know the story of the horse and the scorpion?" He waited while Spike thought about it.
"Yeah. Scorpion needs a ride across the river, the horse refuses 'cause he doesn't want stung. He takes the scorpion anyway, stupid git, and gets stung. When he asks the scorpion why, the scorpion says 'because it's my nature'. That one?"
Xander could see that Spike knew where this was leading. "Yeah, that one."
Xander rolled to his side, facing Spike. Spike put his hand on Xander's hip, pulling their lower bodies together.
"The scorpion is you, Spike. You're a vampire-it's in your nature to hunt, and kill, and to protect me, even from things in the past that can't hurt me anymore. It's going to take me a while to wrap my head around the fact that they're...gone, and that you did it, even though I expected you to. But I will get my head around it, and I do understand why you did it-you love me. As long as it's in your nature to continue to love me, I'll be fine. *We'll* be fine."
"It is, pet, always." Spike pushed Xander over until his warm body was mostly under Spike's cooler one, then slid his hand up Xander's back until his fingers were cradling the back of his skull. Anchoring him there, he repeated, "Always," as he brought his mouth down to Xander's.
Any reply Xander would have made was lost to the heat rising between them.