Unbreakable
TITLE: Unbreakable
AUTHOR: Fyre
EMAIL: Fyredansa@hotmail.com
SUMMARY: This is NOT a nice fic. There is violence, rape, torture and brutal murder mentioned, so if you are sensitive to such issues, take this as a warning.
FEEDBACK: Tell me what ya think...please?
DISTRIBUTION: "You got the stones" and anywhere else that wants it - ask if you want it.
SPOILERS: Angel - S2
COUPLE: None
RATING: NC-17
DISCLAIMER: None of this is mine. I just play with it.
CLASSIFICATION: Single POV fic
NOTES: This is a challenge from "You got the stones?" - "Write a story about Xander to the song 'Broadway' by the Goo Goo Dolls.
Must include four or more of the following: A silver necklace or bracelet, male strippers, clowns, a mention of the band Velvet Chain, Mr. Gordo, the quotes "Does that make me gay?", and "Love is always the fault that kills..."
DEDICATED: Ashley - for tempting me with such an idea that I wrote it all in one sitting :-)
_________________________________________
//Broadway is dark tonight
A little bit weaker than you used to be.//
Ten years.
Ten dark and lonely years, waiting and hiding, wondering if I'll still be here in the morning, wondering if I still really want to be.
Over the last twelve months, I've become a regular in this bar, lurking in the dark corners, always with one drink, always ignoring anyone who dares to try and talk to me.
Trust no one - that X-Files caption has become the story of my life, since the events of a decade ago that forced me to leave the town that I had once reluctantly called home and find sanctuary here.
It may sound drastic, skipping my hometown, but when death is coming after you with some very attractive and fatalistic faces, it does make you a bit nervous of anyone in this city.
For all I know, I could be dead this time tomorrow and, in my opinion, it's taken its time to catch up with me, after my friends...
Sometimes, I wonder why I don't just do the job myself. Just drug myself into a coma and let nature do it's work or shoot myself or throw this waste of a feeble life off a building. God knows there's enough of them to pretend to fly off.
But I can never bring myself to give up. To curse myself to life. I must be crazy, but I can't let them break me, make me falter and die, just because I know they're coming after me again. Still. As they have for so many years and will do for years to come. Life is the curse I'm living with.
//Broadway is dark tonight
See the young man sitting
In the old man's bar,
Waiting for his turn to die.//
I was the only survivor, when he returned for the second time in four years, riding into town like one of those villains from the Westerns, with his posse at his back.
Once the lone-cowboy, the big old hero and all that crap, he had decided batting for the other team was more fun, joining forces with his two centuries-old whores to take his revenge on his soul that had decided to leave, determined to destroy our star, the Slayer.
Playing with the Buffster's mind seemed his priority, at least to her, especially when he emasculated her newest boytoy - Riley, I think his name was.
Funny that he decided to send me the boy's torn-off cock, tied up in a pink ribbon, still dripping warm blood when it was left on my doormat.
And that was the last of a series of presents he had left for me, him and his trio of cohorts. Leaving a mass of death and destruction surrounding me, he thought it would get to me like it had affected the younger of his bitches. The bastard couldn't have been more wrong.
By the time that fatal Friday night arrived, I couldn't have cared less. I didn't even have the heart to shed a tear, as he raped and tortured her in front of me, taunting me and telling me it was my fault that all this had happened to all my friends.
I couldn't make myself walk away until I had broken free of my bonds and had helped her.
So I pulled out a gun from my pants and shot Buffy, the dying Vampire Slayer, right between the eyes, killed her instantly, then turned the gun on the sole vampire.
Blasting his kneecaps out, I managed to get out of the cemetery before his sidekicks came to his aid, taking Giles' car, grateful for the fact he had a decent one now. Grateful that he would understand why I did what I did.
Never looked back on that bloody night, speeding away from Sunnydale like all the demons of the Hellmouth were on my tail - in reality, it was only the worst four.
Their leader's words lingered in my mind, the words he spoke as he pounded into her bloody, torn body. "Love is always the fault that kills, didn't you know that, Buff? Love. Always love."
He was mocking her, right until the end. Torturing her mentally as he tore her apart physically.
That was what gave me the strength to shoot them both, but now I know I'll never lose him, that I'll never be able to dampen his burning interest in me.
All because I had to be noble that Friday night, almost exactly one decade ago.
//The cowboy kills the rock star
And Friday night's gone too far.//
All I have to remember it by seems to be the narrow silver chain I always wear around my wrist - Buffy's necklace. I never realised how tiny her neck was. Like the rest of her. So fragile, despite her power.
That tiny chain would never it anywhere but my wrist. Since I left, I've grown, both physically and mentally. I don't think any of my friends would even recognise me now.
If any of them were still alive.
They were the presents from the demon that is still hunting me, all presented to me long before the death of the Slayer - she thought their deaths were meant to scare her, which they did.
Poor bitch was terrified.
But she was also wrong.
Each and every death was meant to torture me, playing on my links with all our mutual associates, meant to make me crumble and collapse, weeping and wailing.
He didn't know much about my background, or else he would have known better. He didn't realise his torture didn't affect me as he intended. Stupid bastard was too set in his ways.
The first to arrive were my first lover and her hated advisor - the other Slayer and Watcher pair. I still had a place for Faith in my fantasies, but her battered, tortured body on the floor of my apartment's lounge wasn't one them.
I didn't know who had done this - someone had busted her out of jail for a reason - but there was something deliberate about how her and Wesley's mutilated bodies were propped, the rigor mortis stiffening them into a hideous tableau, her glassy brown eyes staring blankly into the distance.
Both of them had died slowly and painfully and - I was told later - the policemen that had been sent to the scene had both been physically sick.
I hadn't believed it was vampires, because there was no way - at least no way I could think of at that point - that they could have got invited in without my knowledge. I thought I didn't know who was behind it. I was wrong.
I found out how wrong, when I finally got released by the police and returned to my apartment to find eight large, wooden boxes waiting for me with the Los Angeles delivery service mark on them.
My first real girlfriend, Cordy, hacked into pieces and delivered to my front door with a note, that read "Soon."
Now, the police really started to take notice and I was in jail for the second time in as many weeks, until Giles was able to bail me out, putting me up in his house until the investigation in my home was over and I had been proved innocent.
If anything had happened to Cordelia I realised during that time, then Angel would have told us immediately, but when he didn't get in touch with us, my suspicions increased. He was the only person who would want to torment Buffy by killing her friends and allies.
But, he was tormenting me and she couldn't see it. Everything was always about her. She could never see the big picture, no matter how much Giles and I tried to explain.
"Why would he be after you?" She had asked and I couldn't honestly answer. I had hated him for so long, even when he was Mister Soul, the Broodboy. We both convinced ourselves I was mistaken, her in her naive, innocent way, me in my usual wishful-thinking way of dealing with things.
At least, until we found Willow's body.
She - too - had been carefully positioned in my apartment, on the top of my bed, her girlfriend's severed head positioned face-first between her spread, bloodstained legs.
Another note had come with her corpse, propped carefully in the deep slice that cut through her throat to the bone of her neck, as if her neck was a letter rack. "This is for you." it read.
That was the first time I let myself weep. The first and only time I let myself have that luxury. My best friend in the World was gone, killed because of me, but I knew there was nothing I could do to bring her back. That's how I've always made myself live.
It was the same when Jesse died.
It was only after Wills died that I started trying to puzzle out what the hell had been happening, why I was being targeted, how they were getting into my home.
There was one bleached-blonde who could answer my questions, but he had appropriately disappeared. Luckily for him, otherwise he would have been dust.
He had the free invite and I guessed had hooked up with his old buddies, who were interested in me. I would have battered the shit out of him if he had been within reach.
But, I couldn't find my tormentors and Anya - sweet, helpless Anya - did what she did the moment she learned about the ascension two years previously.
She ran.
But not fast enough.
Her eviscerated body was found in the middle of the road leading out of Sunnydale, two puncture-marks on her throat firmly stating who her attackers were.
It didn't even surprise me, when Joyce and Dawn disappeared. The bastards had taken almost every I had cared about. The only people left were Buffy, Giles, myself and soldier-boy. All our best girls were gone: Faith, Cordy, Willow, Tara, Dawn, Joyce, Anya.
Sometimes I think I see them in the street, but isn't that always the way, when you lose someone you care about? You try and find them, even though you know they've gone.
The memory will fade, but it will always be there, buried deep.
//The dim light hides the years
On all the faded girls.//
Sometimes I wish I'd spent more time with them, got to know them all more, instead of getting myself in trouble all the time. It seemed to be the reason for my existence.
To be picked on.
Nice to know that at least one thing hasn't changed. Only, it's not a closet gay footballer or a razor-tongued cheerleader that I go in fear of now.
My nightmare is now those ragged fangs and glowing golden eyes I imagine watching me, where ever I go.
I always hated being watched. Made me paranoid, nervous. Even when I wasn't being hunted by the Scourge of Europe...and the mid-West. They've extended their range now.
One of my worst normal memories was when I was being watched and didn't have any friends there to save me. And for once, I was glad those friends weren't there.
I would have died of shame.
After Graduation, I went travelling, ended up working in a strip club and - on one of the worst nights of my life - ended up joining in the act when one of them called in sick.
Me and a group of rippling, greased-up men dancing about. It has to be one of the worst things I have ever experienced, with the exception of life on the Hellmouth.
That was the first night I discovered the refuge that drink can provide. A refuge I have been visiting far to often in the past few years, to escape reality and the life I missed out on.
//Forgotten but not gone,
You drink it off your mind.
You talk about the world
Like it's someplace that you've been.//
The only thing I could possibly have left to vaguely call a part of a life is my family.
Looking at my glass of whisky, I remember my dear old dad. If I had to place a rating on his cruelty next to Angelus, my father would come out on top.
Brutal and harsh, I only saw him when he was hitting me. Or worse. I grew up with that and suddenly, Angelus seemed like a kitten. With a pink bow around his neck.
His words used to be as cruel as his fists. I was never good enough for him. I was never the son he wanted. I was just too soft for him. Too pathetic. He'll be glad I'm gone.
Even when I was relegated to the basement, he used to torment me endlessly, which was one of the reasons I felt an insane joy at leaving Sunnydale, my 'home'.
//You see, you'd love to run home,
But you know you ain't got one
And you're livin' in a world
That you're best forgotten around here.//
I can feel the fuzzy blanket of drunkenness settling on me already, with a cosy familiarity.
I wonder if he felt like this. He was always drunk, only ever sobering to stagger to church to beg forgiveness for sins he committed when drunk, then staggering back to get pissed, beat my mother and teach me what it was to 'be a real man'.
When I finally had the guts to confront him, my mother was certain we were going to kill each other.
It was the week I had my blonde roommate. My dad had snuck down, to give me my 'lessons' only to find the blonde vampire sitting in front of the T.V.
"Who the hell is that bleached fuck in the basement?" He had growled, swaying on his feet.
"A friend." I had responded curtly, only to find myself slammed against the wall, my father's bloated face close to mine, his alcohol-scented breath making me gag.
"Don't tell me someone else has giving you lessons." His dark, blood-shot eyes narrowed, flecks of his spittle flecking my face.
I had never been more disgusted by him than I was at that moment. "Just because I have a male friend." I exploded. "Does that mean I'm gay? And why the hell would you care, you sick pervert? You make me sick. I wish I had the guts to just kill you, but I wouldn't want to hurt mom."
His saggy face turned red, his breath huffing in his lungs. "You ungrateful little shit!" He packed a surprising punch for such a fat, drunk and managed to floor me.
Spitting a wad of blood and saliva on the floor, I managed to get to my feet, in spite of the pain. "Never touch me again." I said, as quietly and as firmly as I could. His snort of derisive laughter made me see red and the next moment, I saw my fist moving in slow-motion, smashing into the side of his face.
He crumpled, blood spurting from his nose and mouth onto the floor, my mother shrieking hysterically, as I limped down into my basement to lick my wounds.
Spike said nothing, half-watching me with those expressionless blue eyes, his mouth set in a firm line. He had seen something about me that none of my friends had and I think it interested him.
He never got to see it again, though. My father never laid another finger on me and I moved out the following week. I never wanted to see his sleazy, sickening face again.
//You choke down all your anger,
Forget your only son.
You pray to statues when you sober up for fun.
Your anger don't impress me.//
Finishing the remainder of my drink, I can see the rain pelting down outside, as I get to my feet.
Unlike California, New York has a lot of rain and when it rains, it really rains. Torrents of warm droplets pound relentlessly on the heads of the people in the street.
I get some disdainful looks as I make my way out the door, my tattered, old clothes winning no prizes in the fashion stakes, my hair and beard tangled and matted with dirt.
They try not to realise that every tramp in this massive city has a story, a reason for being in the niche they live in. In my case, I look like this to hide the fresh-faced boy I once was.
That boy is long gone.
Like any sign of the good lives many of the poor, destitute people may have once had.
The rain pounds mercilessly down on all of us, all of our insignificant lives meaning nothing to the downpour, as people rush this way and that, trying to get to shelter, trying to hide from the power of the elements.
I just walk though. I have nothing to make me hurry. Its the same every night for me. One pathetic night after another, just another drunken loser staggering to a house that isn't even a home.
//The World slapped in your face.
It always rains like hell on the losers day Parade.//
Pushing passed the splintering slats, I can feel the pinpricks of wood spearing my bare hands, the dirt crusting my fingers already streaked with slashes of dried crimson.
This is the place I've lived in since I found myself in the biggest city in the World - a rotting, filthy warehouse that even vampires won't use, small mementoes of my past wrapped in the scraps of a blanket.
How Mister Gordo ended up in Giles' car, I don't even want to know, but he's here with me, a small and worthless comfort.
The photographs are the things I treasure. The pictures of all of us, either in Giles' small apartment or in the library, in the good days, when we were all smiling. All in one piece each.
Giles was the second-last to go. He didn't deserve it. He had done more for any of us than we realised, being a father-figure that all of us lacked in some way: A replacement for the drunken pervert I had, someone who was actually around for Buffy and Willow, a semi-parent for Anya who had no one.
As usual, I had to be the one who found him. I had hoped he would be spared, hoped my hints would make him get out of the country. In spite of the way I treated him, I loved him like a father. I didn't want him harmed.
But, like a father should, he would never abandon one of 'his' children when they were in danger.
So, he died.
Painlessly, thank God.
Maybe they took his eyes before, maybe after. At least he wasn't put through the torture and humiliation that Wesley and all my girls were killed by. Angelus, too, had respected the Englishman, in his own perverse way.
It was only my enemy's twisted humour that meant his eyes had to be used for another purpose.
Being awoken by a drip-drip-drip on my cheek was bad enough, but looking up to find my 'father's' eyeballs suspended from the ceiling above me on string was worse.
The note that my favourite demon had attached was dripping with his usual humour. "He really was a Watcher, after all."
I never stayed in my apartment again, after that. If they could come in when I was there and I didn't even notice, I didn't want to feel that unspoken threat again.
My first home was that no longer.
//You see, you'd love to run home
But you know you ain't got one
'Cause you're livin' in the world
That you're best forgotten.//
Without my home, my friends, I had no one to help me find out why this was happening. I became Research Boy, for the first time and I found out why I was only every the Donut Boy before.
Donuts.
There's something I haven't had in a long time.
Shivering, I have to admit that its far too cold here. The winter chill is creeping in through the mouldy boards that shield the windows and doors.
I have a tiny fireplace I stack with my daily supplies of stakes, just in case I ever get so cold and passed caring, I need something to burn.
That time has come, I think. Either I succumb to the cold and give in to death, or I get warm. I could never give in. It's a bad habit. I was such a self-sacrificing hero before, but now, I force myself away from the role I used to long to play.
Now, all I have left to fight is death.
The battle is getting harder and harder. There's nothing left for me to keep on fighting for. There's no point.
//And when you're thinkin' of a joke
And nobody's gonna listen
To the small point
I know they've been missing around here.//
A dull crack behind me makes me turn, knowing the time has come to face my demons and accept whatever hand fate has to deal me, be it good or bad.
They all stand there, looking as calm and unruffled as ever, human masks carefully in place.
"Bloody hell, Xander." Spike smirks at me, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his duster. "You're a hard one to track down, mate."
"He's a bit of a mess." Darla twists her face in disgust.
"A mess can always be cleaned up." Angelus reminded her, in that soft, threatening voice. I forget that she may be his Sire, but he is now her Grandsire.
Drusilla's hands swayed in the air. "He's not afraid." She murmured huskily, eyeing me like a slab of meat. "His mind sings of despair and pain. It's quite beautiful."
My hands are still in my pockets. If I can take a couple of them out before they kill me, it'll be worth something.
I know Ill die tonight, but it doesn't matter anymore. These creatures are the only people who even know or care about my on-going existence.
//You see you'd love to run home,
But you know you ain't got one
'Cause you're livin' in a world
That you're best forgotten.//
A cool wrists claps over my mouth, a spurt of reptilian-cool blood spurting into my throat and as much as I fight, I'm too weak to fight the fate that inevitably awaits me.
Beyond my line of sight, I can hear Spike's low growls of pain, as Darla and Drusilla try and dig the bullets out of his body, ignoring their own wounds for his chest injury.
Angelus smiles coldly down at me, holding my mouth tightly against his bleeding wrist, forcing me to drink.
It satisfies me to know I never let him get to me, to break me. He may have been the one to destroy me, physically, but he never managed to break me in the way he wanted to.
All the jokes and comments about me being Super-Xander, all the teasing I took about being the loser means nothing, as darkness gathers around my vision, the sounds and light fading out.
Even as I die, at least I have found the point that they all didn't even realise about me, the thing I had that they didn't.
In spite of everything, I remained unbreakable.
And no one will ever know.
//And if you're thinkin' of a joke
Do you think that they'll listen
To the one small point
I know they've been missing around here.//
Back to the Character Index
Back to the Titles Index