***** 

Part 10a 
 

Later that evening, with all thoughts of Legolas and beautiful blonds banished, Xander, Spike and Buffy patrolled the cemetery where Anya/Thomas had attacked Xander the night before. 

“So, Spike, you have a plan?” Buffy asked softly as they trudged through the light rain. 

“Yeah. I do,” was Spike’s curt answer. 

“Care to fill me in?” 

“You knock ‘er out and Harris and I exorcise the bad guy.” Spike spoke without looking at her. 

“Sounds good. But how did the bad guy take over Anya in the first place?” Buffy sounded nonchalant but there was an underlying tension to her words. 

Spike sighed. “Didn’t you ever wonder why Anya fell in love with you so quickly?” He addressed Xander who was lagging behind. 

“Uh. Yeah?” Xander was thrown off balance by the question. He had been watching the vampire brush hair, sticky with rain and gel, away from his face and it had been distracting. 

“When she became human, whatever ragged, wasted little part of Anne’s spirit that was left possessed he,.” Spike contnued, oblivious to Xander’s wide-eyed gaze. 

“Who is Anne?” Buffy asked as she picked her way carefully around a group of headstones. 

“Alexander’s wife. Offed herself. Very messy.” Spike looked back at Buffy then, challenging her to ask for more. She just shrugged. She had encountered vengeful spirits before, ones that inhabited the first convenient body, too. 

“Anyway, Xan here is, I guess you can say, fated, to hurt the poor thing. He does it every time. He has an aversion to getting married, you see, because of how badly it turned out that once . . . He makes up all kinds of excuses, but it comes down to two things: he can never love her enough to marry her and he knows that he will hurt her in some way even if he did.” 

Xander had been quiet but he was listening. Never love anyone but you. Bastard. 

As if Spike had heard him he spun around gracefully in the slick grass and flashed a sardonic, tooth-filled grin back at Xander. 

When Xander mouthed, “fuck off” at him, he blew a kiss to the boy and turned back. “The betrayal that Anya felt when Xander left her at the altar was all that Thomas needed to feel Anne’s pain. That brings him to her.” He glanced at Buffy and continued, “Thomas killed Xander the first time with my help. Then, I made sure that he came back to kill him every lifetime since.” 

Buffy looked like she wanted to say something but they were all startled by the sound of laughter. “Ach, William. That was good. I feel Anne’s pain, do I? Yes. I suppose I do.” Anya walked out of the gloom towards them, her eyes shadowed and her limbs twitching. “But I love to feel Alexander’s pain, William. He’s tormented now, just like he was then, at the thought of loving you.” 

Spike growled and threw himself in Thomas/Anya’s direction with Buffy close behind. Xander stood miserably by, useless, as Buffy and Spike worked together to fight the demon possessing Anya. At one point Buffy was thrown to the side, landing awkwardly against a headstone and Xander heard the distinctive sounds of bones cracking. It wasn’t until Spike ripped a branch off of a tree and knocked Anya on the side of the head with it, that the fight came to a stop. 

Buffy gathered up the unconscious Anya in her arms and held fast calling to Spike, “Whatever you’re gonna do, do it quick.” 

Spike nodded and dragged Xander forward, pushing him to the ground before Buffy and Anya. He drew a wicked looking knife out from behind his back, and as he began carving the pentagram into the mud around the girls he began chanting the familiar summons. By the time he got to: “Hear! Come! I Call thee forth,” Robbie was standing beside Xander, his hand reassuringly solid on his father’s shoulder. “This is it, da. This is what ye have been waitin’ for.” Xander could only nod as Spike began to crumble herbs over his and Anya’s heads. He recognized rosemary, sage and angelica, but the others were foreign and their scent, mixed with the pungent odor of the wet earth, made him light headed.  

He was surprised when Spike knelt next to him and took his hands, circling the sensitive flesh of Xander’s wrists with his thumbs. “You have to say this with me, luv, just like we talked about.” He spoke as if to a small child but Xander responded, breathing deeply, hearing the echo of the words Spike had whispered in his ear before they had left the apartment. If we break the curse, all the bonds will be broken . . .even those between you and me. Did he want that? Oh God, I don’t know. The memory of Spike loving him, owning him, was too raw in his mind and the burn in his neck too fierce for him to want freedom. But, there was no time. Spike had started to speak and Xander began to mumble with him, his voice gradually gaining strength. 

By the crimson and the gold 
By the basilisks and blood 
By the lilies of the field 
By the poppies and what they yield 
Invisibly I make my shield 
To detect thee and deflect thee 
And keep thy harm from me 

Anya moaned and struggled in Buffy’s grip. 

By dragon’s blood and salamanders 
By the dragon breathing flames 
From the book of life I erase thy names 

Anya thrashed, and Buffy yelped as the possessed girl sank her teeth into the Slayer’s arm. 

Spike and Xander leaned closer to each other until their foreheads were almost touching. Their voices chanted in unison, dissolving bonds that had joined their souls together for centuries, erasing the taint of betrayal, hatred and rage from their sprits.  

Robbie, standing to the side of the lovers, was starting to fade. With a ghostly touch of benediction on each of their bowed heads, he whispered, “Slan leat, mo gradh ort, athair.” 

I cut the cord and unlock the chains 
Severed are the ties by which thee and I were bound 

There was a glitter of tears in Spike’s blue eyes as he slid one hand up Xander’s arm to cup the other man’s jaw. 

With unbreakable walls I surround myself 
Against thy power 
Against thy evil 
Lilith! Kali! Hecate! 
 

Xander rubbed his face against Spike’s hand and arched his head back so that the cool figures could trace over the mark on his neck. 

I banish thee forever from me 

Spike’s voice had lost its accent and reverted to the lilting tones of the highlands. The sound of it rose over the sounds Buffy’s struggle with Anya and Xander’s breathless whispers as Spike moved his other hand from the boy’s wrist and slid it up Xander’s leg to rest gently on his cock. 

Thou shalt thyself be burned 

Xander jerked and whimpered, feeling 350 year-old flames licking at his flesh. Anya shrieked in pain and cursed in Gaelic. 

Xander raised his voice then, as Spike tightened his hold at Xander’s neck and between his legs. 

I banish thee! I banish thee! I banish thee! 

There was a scream, but it was Anya’s voice, free of Thomas’ rasp, and when Spike shouted the last words of the spell Xander felt a warm, sticky wetness soak his jeans. 

I am set free.* 

~*~*~ 

The night was still and cold. The moon had risen and it shed its silvery light over the four bodies in the cemetery. 

Buffy was the first to recover. She gathered the mud-soaked Anya into her arms and helped her past Spike and Xander. Her gaze, when she turned toward the two, was full of sadness and compassion. 

Xander, still entangled in Spike’s long limbs, muttered, “It’s done. They’re gone.” He didn’t know whether to grieve or to be relieved that it was over, that he was free. 

Spike moved one hand to brush the hair out of Xander’s face and responded, “Thomas is gone. Robbie is gone. But, I don’t think it’s over between us, a chariad.” 

The sound of the Gaelic endearment made Xander’s breath hitch. Spike would do that. He would lie here in freezing mud and he would be tender. No, please. I don’t understand gentleness. 

Spike said nothing else; he simply slid forward and laid a painfully sweet kiss on Xander’s trembling lips.  

“Spike…I.” Xander couldn’t finish. He was choking on emotion as Spike wrapped him in his arms and held him. Spike kept on kissing him, little fluttery touches on his cheeks and eyes, while Xander struggled to regain control. 

When they got to their feet, Spike kept a strong arm around Xander. They headed in the general direction of Xander’s apartment. It wasn’t until they were inside and Spike was striping filthy clothes off of Xander that he spoke. “What did you want to say to me?” 

Xander shrugged, mute. There was no denying that the devastating, destructive feeling in his heart was love. Whether or not he could endure it remained to be seen. 

Spike started the shower running and guided Xander in, following closely behind. The blond kept his back to the spray and was starting to wash Xander’s chest when the boy sank willingly to his knees, gripped Spike’s hips, and began to lick and nibble at the flesh of his cock.  

Xander began to relax and the turmoil, the restless questioning in his mind vanished as he began to choke on Spike’s erection. This is where I belong. I can be happy here, were the only thoughts swirling through his mind. 

When Spike’s hands tightened in his hair, he concentrated on catching all of the vampire’s come in his mouth, and then stood, pressing his mouth to Spike’s in a frantic kiss. Spike took back what he had given to Xander, bruising him with his mouth and working a soap-slick hand between the boy’s legs. 

Xander cried out at the first invasion of his sore body, arching back against the shower wall and gritting his teeth against the pain. 

Spike waited for a moment before catching Xander’s chin with his free hand. “Look at me, Xander. Let go for me.” 

Xander moaned and twisted his head out of Spike’s grip but he couldn’t escape the icy blue gaze.  

Spike took his time, slowly thrusting and twisting his hips, eliciting incoherent whines and whimpers from Xander. When he made no effort to speed up Xander latched onto Spike’s smooth back, bared his neck, and hissed, “Finish it, you sonofbitch. Take it.” 

Out of the corner of his eye he could see the vampire slide into game face and lunge for his neck. It was enough. He came without being touched, his muscles milking Spike’s second orgasm from him as the vampire drank. 

~*~*~ 

Later, as both of them lay in bed damp and spent, Xander ran his fingers carefully over Spike’s mouth, still red with Xander’s blood. It was technically Halloween, and he was still alive. Spike had saved him by loving him. The curse was broken. 

He knew from Buffy that something big was happening. She said that it might be the end this time. That seemed anticlimactic because, in a way, he felt like it had already ended for him. Loving Spike, violently, recklessly, and dangerously, and letting him do what he did to him, was an end in itself. It was, finally, an end to innocence, to childhood and to hope. His innocence had been a quality that persisted long after the rest of his friends had become disillusioned. He had remained hopeful and naive despite numerous life changing encounters over the years, but now, at last, he had grown up. This kind of love wasn’t for children; it was too deep, too dark, and too fraught with pain. 

It would be an ending for him if he stayed and fought the good fight one last time with Buffy. It would be an ending if he chose to spend his life with an immortal vampire and forgo all desire for a family, a child like Robbie. But maybe, maybe, if he left, it could be a beginning for him. He smiled to himself. It was a Cure moment. Should he stay or should he go?  

Cold is the Night in so many ways 
Luna round- full and bright 
Deep be the mud in fresh dug graves 
On yours- I recite- an ancient spell I know so well 
Success is guaranteed 
I’ll bring you back from where you’ve gone 
On All Hallows Eve  

___________________________ 

*Gaelic translation: Slan leat, mo gradh ort, athair - Farewell, I love you, father. 

*This is my version of a banishment spell adapted from The Wicca Handbook, by Eileen Holland. 
 
 

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