A Road Covered With Blood
Jun. 21st, 2007 12:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sevendeadlyfunPairing: Xander/?
Rating: NC-17 overall
A/N: This was written in response to Just Rewards/fangfetish Round 7 Alternate Realities/Dimensions challenge. I have to go out of town for two weeks, so this will be my last update till July. Don't throw things, I promise it will be updated. Just not for awhile...::cringes::
Summary: What if everything you thought was true turned out to be a lie?
“So,” Xander asked, following Lorne to the back of the nightclub, ‘how’s this gonna work? Because not that I don’t trust you, but I don’t want you controlling my vertical or horizontal, you know?”
“Don’t worry, sweetcheeks,” Lorne grimaced. “You’re a little too…humanitas for my taste. Besides, while I give a mean rendition of “Mustang Sally”, hurtling through dimensions is not especially my forte.”
“Right,” Xander nodded. “I’ll just sit here and think really hard then. Maybe with my massive super-secret dimension powers I can just hurtle myself. Oh wait, that’s right! Boring old humanitas here, fresh out of dimension powers.”
Lorne chuckled softly, and bestowed what Xander figured was possibly the creepiest smile he’d ever seen. Having gone toe to toe with Angelus, Spike, a Hell God, and various unsorted beasts and bumps in the night, Xander was pretty sure that seeing a creepier smile was theoretically impossible. Also, not a good a sign of things to come.
“Let’s get this straight, my luscious little latte,” Lorne murmured sweetly. “I don’t like you. I’m sure you’re a likable guy, what with the ruining of entire realities and all. But right now? You are the person I despise most in all of this and possible several other realities. So sit down and try not to do anything that might irritate me, okay?”
Xander sat, only mildly offended. Being liked was low on his priority list these days. Sure, he didn’t want to be actively despised. Tolerant indifference was really his goal. But, in the end, he was fresh out of care. All he could think about was Anya, trapped somewhere being punished for her days as D’Hoffryn’s finest. Or Spike, lost and alone, like he had been in the basement, searching desperately for some way to expiate his sins. Jesus, even the thought of Angel in Hell had him in a panic.
Partly that panic came from the genuine feelings he had for them. No matter how much he had hated them, and he had hated them all at one time or another, they’d done right by him and the world in the end. Surely that counted for something, right? Obviously not, though and that was where the other half of his panic came from. If their contributions had not been enough, what did that say about him? Was he too destined for some hell dimension for his many slights and sins, the times he hadn’t moved fast enough or hadn’t cared enough? If just trying didn’t cut it, if putting your heart and soul into the good fight wasn’t worth a golden ticket…Xander shuddered, refusing to follow that line of thought to its conclusion.
“Wow. I’ve seen you make some truly pathetic faces, Xan, but that one? Must be the most pathetic one yet.”
“Wha…Cordy?” Xander jumped up, startled out his “all roads led to torment” thoughts by that familiar voice.
“Yep,” she smiled, that famous thousand-watt Queen C smile that had captured his heart and other distant portions of his anatomy in high school. “The genuine higher being article in the not so flesh!”
“Higher being?” He stared, confused for the umpteenth time that night.
“Long story,” she told him airily. “Seer for the Powers, hijacked by a higher power, ascension due to death by mystical coma. You know, the usual.”
“Ah,” Xander forced the word out. “Dead? You’re dead. What was in the water back there? Nobody from Sunnydale ever stays dead. Well, yeah they do, but you know what I mean.”
“Rarely and for that I’m extremely grateful,” she said with a loving smile that took away the sting of her words. “But enough about me. Let’s talk about you, Oh Shaper of Realities.”
“About that,” Xander said uncomfortably. “Cordy, how is this possible? I get the mumbo-jumbo about choices and all that. But, why me? I’m just…me. Nothing special here.”
Cordy snorted, rolling her eyes. “And here we are again. You know Xander, sometimes you can be truly endearing. This “nothing special” stuff kinda takes away from that.”
“Endearing, huh? Here I thought I was lame with a side order of pathetic,” he grinned.
“Nah,” Cordy shook her head. “Just a little slow on the uptake. Anyways, since Lorne explained all the background info, we’ll just get you moving.”
“Uh, about that,” Lorne said hesitantly. “I,uh, I might not have actually explained it so much as…”
“As what?” Cordy whirled around. “Lorne, how the hell is he supposed to fix it if he doesn’t know anything? You know, that whole “knowledge is power” crap is actually less crap and more vital to the success of this whole freaking yahoo trip.”
She turned back to Xander and he flinched. The look on her face was damn near deadly in its intensity. Nothing stood in the way of Cordelia with that look and dying hadn’t dimmed her power one bit.
“What do you know,” she asked intently. “Tell me exactly.”
“Somewhere along the way, I made or didn’t make a choice that turned reality into a different reality and now people are suffering,” Xander said quietly. “I’m supposed to go back and, I don’t know, re-do it?”
“Shit,” Cordelia breathed. “Shit shit shit.”
“Are higher beings allowed to curse like that,” Xander asked, only half-joking.
“Oh boy, you have no idea,” Cordy answered distantly, lost in thought. “Heavenly dimensions can get pretty raunchy sometimes.”
She paced the floor. Well, not so much the floor as the few inches above the floor. Xander had always suspected that Cordelia considered herself above the mere mortals around her. Guess she was right, he snickered to himself.
“Okay,” she said finally. “It’s like this, Xan. Lorne didn’t tell you the whole truth. It takes more than one choice to alter a reality. Honestly, if it didn’t, realities would be fracturing all over the place. And not all choices have that much affect on reality. So you buy a half-fat mocha latte instead of a skim caramel latte? In the grand scheme of things that only matter to your waistline, which is mighty trim these days, by the way.”
“Thanks,” he answered gravely. “It’s my new diet. Grief and grapefruit. I imagine it’ll catch on any day now.”
“ Grapefruit is really over, Xander,” she shot back. “You’d know that if you bothered to surface every decade or so. What we’re talking about, though, is not one choice you made or didn’t make but a series of them. It’s not like you did or didn’t do one thing and boom! Reality shift. This happened so gradually that by the time we were in the next reality, it was too late for the Powers to step in.”
“So, I didn’t just fuck up once, but repeatedly,” Xander grimaced. “Good to know the old Xan-man power for destruction is still holding strong.”
“Stop,” Cordelia ordered him. “Despite what Lorne may have said, this isn’t your fault.”
“My friends are suffering eternal damnation because I made a series of mistakes,” Xander shot back. “Hard not to see that as fault.”
“Did you do it on purpose? Did you wake up one morning and go, I think I’ll alter reality for giggles? Didn’t think so,” Cordy said softly. “You and both know that sometimes things go bad. Hellmouth veteran to Hellmouth veteran, sometimes no matter what you do, the Apocalypse will come.”
“I know. But I can’t help feeling that if I’d gotten things right the first time, they’d still be here. Maybe…” Xander’s gaze turned inward, and he closed his eyes. “Maybe if I were something more, better, I wouldn’t have screwed up.”
“Because you’re the only one that ever screws up,” Cordy challenged. “Did you miss the part about my fun body hijacking? You want to know how that happened? Choices I made led to me becoming a host for a very disturbing thing that sucked me dry and spat me out, and oh along the way destroyed the lives of the people closest to me. I know a few things about rotten choices, mister.”
“Okay, okay,” Xander held up his hands. “I surrender. Just…just tell me what I have to do.”
“You have to fix it,” Cordy said firmly. “And you will. I’ll just send you back to the right reality. It’ll be a little…weird, at first.”
“Somehow, I’m not shocked,” Xander told her dryly. “Weird how?”
“Well, I can’t move you. Just your consciousness. Your body will be here and you’ll be inside the body that exists in that reality,” Cordy informed him and then she bit her lip. “And so will that Xander’s consciousness.”
“There will be two me’s in one body, huh?”
“Yes, but the other you should gradually merge as the realities come closer together. Eventually,” Cordy paused, seemingly searching for the right word. “Eventually, you should become…whole. Until than, he’ll be there but you’ll be driving the bus.”
“All right,” Xander told her. “Anything else I need to know?”
“Just one thing. You won’t be reliving your entire life. This is going to be like selective replay, skipping you around to the times when what you did or didn’t do altered reality. You might get a bit…”
“Confused?” Xander filled in.
“Nauseous,” Cordelia contradicted. “Reality hopping can be hard on the stomach.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” Xander assured her. “We ready?”
“As ready as we’ll ever be,” she agreed. “Just close your eyes and get comfortable. Hopefully, I’ll see you after.”
“Hopefully?” Xander’s eyes shot open. “What do you mean hopefully?”
“I don’t know,” Cordy shrugged. “If you get this right, you’ll change reality and if the Powers know what that’s gonna mean for all of us, they haven’t told me. Maybe I’ll be alive and fabulously wealthy far from here.”
“Or dead for real,” Xander whispered. “Fuck! How can I do this? If I don’t, Anya and Spike and Angel roast. If I do, you might be gone.”
He turned to her, real fear in his eyes. “Cordy, I don’t think I can handle this.”
“You can,” she reassured him. “There’s no one I trust more, Xander.”
“I hope you’re right.” Xander shuddered. “Let’s just do this before I run screaming into the night.”
“You got it,” Cordy nodded.
The world tilted, and Xander felt himself falling. Life slid past him, words from his past echoing in his ear. The voices slurred and overlapped, rolling over him. He corkscrewed down and down, felt something tugging at him. Stronger than hands, stronger than spells, the something drew him in and he felt himself righting. With a thump, he was flesh again and as a wave of dizziness swamped him, he tried to get his bearings.
Whoa, Cordy was not joking about that nausea thing, he thought. Now where and when the fuck am I?
Looking around, all he could see were shadows and…black cotton? When in his life had he been trapped in a closet?
“Angelus!”
“Spike!”
“Oh no,” Xander groaned weakly. “I’m fucking bait again. God, I hate my life.”
Rating: NC-17 overall
A/N: This was written in response to Just Rewards/
fangfetish Round 7 Alternate Realities/Dimensions challenge. I have to go out of town for two weeks, so this will be my last update till July. Don't throw things, I promise it will be updated. Just not for awhile...::cringes::Summary: What if everything you thought was true turned out to be a lie?
“So,” Xander asked, following Lorne to the back of the nightclub, ‘how’s this gonna work? Because not that I don’t trust you, but I don’t want you controlling my vertical or horizontal, you know?”
“Don’t worry, sweetcheeks,” Lorne grimaced. “You’re a little too…humanitas for my taste. Besides, while I give a mean rendition of “Mustang Sally”, hurtling through dimensions is not especially my forte.”
“Right,” Xander nodded. “I’ll just sit here and think really hard then. Maybe with my massive super-secret dimension powers I can just hurtle myself. Oh wait, that’s right! Boring old humanitas here, fresh out of dimension powers.”
Lorne chuckled softly, and bestowed what Xander figured was possibly the creepiest smile he’d ever seen. Having gone toe to toe with Angelus, Spike, a Hell God, and various unsorted beasts and bumps in the night, Xander was pretty sure that seeing a creepier smile was theoretically impossible. Also, not a good a sign of things to come.
“Let’s get this straight, my luscious little latte,” Lorne murmured sweetly. “I don’t like you. I’m sure you’re a likable guy, what with the ruining of entire realities and all. But right now? You are the person I despise most in all of this and possible several other realities. So sit down and try not to do anything that might irritate me, okay?”
Xander sat, only mildly offended. Being liked was low on his priority list these days. Sure, he didn’t want to be actively despised. Tolerant indifference was really his goal. But, in the end, he was fresh out of care. All he could think about was Anya, trapped somewhere being punished for her days as D’Hoffryn’s finest. Or Spike, lost and alone, like he had been in the basement, searching desperately for some way to expiate his sins. Jesus, even the thought of Angel in Hell had him in a panic.
Partly that panic came from the genuine feelings he had for them. No matter how much he had hated them, and he had hated them all at one time or another, they’d done right by him and the world in the end. Surely that counted for something, right? Obviously not, though and that was where the other half of his panic came from. If their contributions had not been enough, what did that say about him? Was he too destined for some hell dimension for his many slights and sins, the times he hadn’t moved fast enough or hadn’t cared enough? If just trying didn’t cut it, if putting your heart and soul into the good fight wasn’t worth a golden ticket…Xander shuddered, refusing to follow that line of thought to its conclusion.
“Wow. I’ve seen you make some truly pathetic faces, Xan, but that one? Must be the most pathetic one yet.”
“Wha…Cordy?” Xander jumped up, startled out his “all roads led to torment” thoughts by that familiar voice.
“Yep,” she smiled, that famous thousand-watt Queen C smile that had captured his heart and other distant portions of his anatomy in high school. “The genuine higher being article in the not so flesh!”
“Higher being?” He stared, confused for the umpteenth time that night.
“Long story,” she told him airily. “Seer for the Powers, hijacked by a higher power, ascension due to death by mystical coma. You know, the usual.”
“Ah,” Xander forced the word out. “Dead? You’re dead. What was in the water back there? Nobody from Sunnydale ever stays dead. Well, yeah they do, but you know what I mean.”
“Rarely and for that I’m extremely grateful,” she said with a loving smile that took away the sting of her words. “But enough about me. Let’s talk about you, Oh Shaper of Realities.”
“About that,” Xander said uncomfortably. “Cordy, how is this possible? I get the mumbo-jumbo about choices and all that. But, why me? I’m just…me. Nothing special here.”
Cordy snorted, rolling her eyes. “And here we are again. You know Xander, sometimes you can be truly endearing. This “nothing special” stuff kinda takes away from that.”
“Endearing, huh? Here I thought I was lame with a side order of pathetic,” he grinned.
“Nah,” Cordy shook her head. “Just a little slow on the uptake. Anyways, since Lorne explained all the background info, we’ll just get you moving.”
“Uh, about that,” Lorne said hesitantly. “I,uh, I might not have actually explained it so much as…”
“As what?” Cordy whirled around. “Lorne, how the hell is he supposed to fix it if he doesn’t know anything? You know, that whole “knowledge is power” crap is actually less crap and more vital to the success of this whole freaking yahoo trip.”
She turned back to Xander and he flinched. The look on her face was damn near deadly in its intensity. Nothing stood in the way of Cordelia with that look and dying hadn’t dimmed her power one bit.
“What do you know,” she asked intently. “Tell me exactly.”
“Somewhere along the way, I made or didn’t make a choice that turned reality into a different reality and now people are suffering,” Xander said quietly. “I’m supposed to go back and, I don’t know, re-do it?”
“Shit,” Cordelia breathed. “Shit shit shit.”
“Are higher beings allowed to curse like that,” Xander asked, only half-joking.
“Oh boy, you have no idea,” Cordy answered distantly, lost in thought. “Heavenly dimensions can get pretty raunchy sometimes.”
She paced the floor. Well, not so much the floor as the few inches above the floor. Xander had always suspected that Cordelia considered herself above the mere mortals around her. Guess she was right, he snickered to himself.
“Okay,” she said finally. “It’s like this, Xan. Lorne didn’t tell you the whole truth. It takes more than one choice to alter a reality. Honestly, if it didn’t, realities would be fracturing all over the place. And not all choices have that much affect on reality. So you buy a half-fat mocha latte instead of a skim caramel latte? In the grand scheme of things that only matter to your waistline, which is mighty trim these days, by the way.”
“Thanks,” he answered gravely. “It’s my new diet. Grief and grapefruit. I imagine it’ll catch on any day now.”
“ Grapefruit is really over, Xander,” she shot back. “You’d know that if you bothered to surface every decade or so. What we’re talking about, though, is not one choice you made or didn’t make but a series of them. It’s not like you did or didn’t do one thing and boom! Reality shift. This happened so gradually that by the time we were in the next reality, it was too late for the Powers to step in.”
“So, I didn’t just fuck up once, but repeatedly,” Xander grimaced. “Good to know the old Xan-man power for destruction is still holding strong.”
“Stop,” Cordelia ordered him. “Despite what Lorne may have said, this isn’t your fault.”
“My friends are suffering eternal damnation because I made a series of mistakes,” Xander shot back. “Hard not to see that as fault.”
“Did you do it on purpose? Did you wake up one morning and go, I think I’ll alter reality for giggles? Didn’t think so,” Cordy said softly. “You and both know that sometimes things go bad. Hellmouth veteran to Hellmouth veteran, sometimes no matter what you do, the Apocalypse will come.”
“I know. But I can’t help feeling that if I’d gotten things right the first time, they’d still be here. Maybe…” Xander’s gaze turned inward, and he closed his eyes. “Maybe if I were something more, better, I wouldn’t have screwed up.”
“Because you’re the only one that ever screws up,” Cordy challenged. “Did you miss the part about my fun body hijacking? You want to know how that happened? Choices I made led to me becoming a host for a very disturbing thing that sucked me dry and spat me out, and oh along the way destroyed the lives of the people closest to me. I know a few things about rotten choices, mister.”
“Okay, okay,” Xander held up his hands. “I surrender. Just…just tell me what I have to do.”
“You have to fix it,” Cordy said firmly. “And you will. I’ll just send you back to the right reality. It’ll be a little…weird, at first.”
“Somehow, I’m not shocked,” Xander told her dryly. “Weird how?”
“Well, I can’t move you. Just your consciousness. Your body will be here and you’ll be inside the body that exists in that reality,” Cordy informed him and then she bit her lip. “And so will that Xander’s consciousness.”
“There will be two me’s in one body, huh?”
“Yes, but the other you should gradually merge as the realities come closer together. Eventually,” Cordy paused, seemingly searching for the right word. “Eventually, you should become…whole. Until than, he’ll be there but you’ll be driving the bus.”
“All right,” Xander told her. “Anything else I need to know?”
“Just one thing. You won’t be reliving your entire life. This is going to be like selective replay, skipping you around to the times when what you did or didn’t do altered reality. You might get a bit…”
“Confused?” Xander filled in.
“Nauseous,” Cordelia contradicted. “Reality hopping can be hard on the stomach.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” Xander assured her. “We ready?”
“As ready as we’ll ever be,” she agreed. “Just close your eyes and get comfortable. Hopefully, I’ll see you after.”
“Hopefully?” Xander’s eyes shot open. “What do you mean hopefully?”
“I don’t know,” Cordy shrugged. “If you get this right, you’ll change reality and if the Powers know what that’s gonna mean for all of us, they haven’t told me. Maybe I’ll be alive and fabulously wealthy far from here.”
“Or dead for real,” Xander whispered. “Fuck! How can I do this? If I don’t, Anya and Spike and Angel roast. If I do, you might be gone.”
He turned to her, real fear in his eyes. “Cordy, I don’t think I can handle this.”
“You can,” she reassured him. “There’s no one I trust more, Xander.”
“I hope you’re right.” Xander shuddered. “Let’s just do this before I run screaming into the night.”
“You got it,” Cordy nodded.
The world tilted, and Xander felt himself falling. Life slid past him, words from his past echoing in his ear. The voices slurred and overlapped, rolling over him. He corkscrewed down and down, felt something tugging at him. Stronger than hands, stronger than spells, the something drew him in and he felt himself righting. With a thump, he was flesh again and as a wave of dizziness swamped him, he tried to get his bearings.
Whoa, Cordy was not joking about that nausea thing, he thought. Now where and when the fuck am I?
Looking around, all he could see were shadows and…black cotton? When in his life had he been trapped in a closet?
“Angelus!”
“Spike!”
“Oh no,” Xander groaned weakly. “I’m fucking bait again. God, I hate my life.”