“Subject to Change”, 3/5
Jul. 1st, 2013 04:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aadlerThird segment.
3. He finally came to an understanding with Angel.
They had actually started out on a fairly good operating basis, because Angel didn’t show the least desire to protect him. He didn’t think Xander should be part of this at all, but if the boy (or whatever) was going to be in the mix, then he’d be put to use. So Xander had been smoothly integrated into the team, which consisted mainly of the familiar basics: researching, trips for doughnuts and coffee and Chinese takeout (he would have drawn the line at picking up pig’s blood, but either Angel took care of that himself or someone else did it for him), stocking up on various supplies for quasi-mystical operations, helping Cordelia scout prospects and work up client lists … but, if it ever came to fighting, Angel would toss him a sword or axe, bark out some quick instructions, and then leap into the fray while leaving Xander to hold up his end. And how funny was it that Xander preferred working with someone who didn’t seem to care if anything happened to him?
(Doyle had been right in there with the both of them, scrapping like a welterweight, usually weaponless. Xander had picked up quickly that Doyle wasn’t entirely human, had assumed it was common knowledge, and then been surprised at Cordelia’s surprise when she learned the truth. He felt a little guilty about that, but had no way of knowing if mentioning his conclusions to Cordy would have made any difference. Still, something to keep in mind for the future: common knowledge wasn’t always.)
When Wesley Wyndham-Pryce came motorcycling into town, though, and it turned out that Doyle had passed on his visions to Cordelia in that parting kiss (and might she have relayed them to Xander if the two them had actually engaged in grief-sex in the aftermath? close call there, maybe), and the three of them had to raid the demon auction to rescue her … after that, without any discussion or even announcing the decision, Angel started training Xander.
Little things at first. Showing where to grip, how to balance a weapon, what were some of the quickest and most effective strokes. Then more elaborate techniques, gradually growing into actual drills and katas, and finally it got all the way down to formal hand-to-hand instruction. Angel had gained wide experience in various martial arts in his post-ensoulment wanderings, seizing on the disciplines to help him control his hellish cravings, and it was tai chi that had given him the best results there. For Xander, though, he decided wing chun would be a better way to go.
“I think I’ve heard of that,” Xander said when Angel finally mentioned the name of what he was teaching. “Didn’t Bruce Lee start out on that, before he decided classical stuff was too limiting?”
“I believe so,” Angel agreed. “It’s a good fit for you, though. Legend says the techniques were developed by a Buddhist nun —”
Xander stopped the form he had been practicing, and looked to Angel with what wasn’t yet hostility but was poised to go there. “Oh, yeah, right. ’Cause the new, delicate Xander couldn’t handle a man’s system.”
“I don’t think Bruce Lee thought it was too delicate,” Angel returned levelly. “But in a way, yes: if wing chun really was designed by a woman to fight stronger opponents, then it would make a solid foundation for anyone facing vampires and demons. It keeps a strong centerline, focuses on balance, doesn’t let you overextend … it has a lot of the same flow as most of the other Chinese styles, but in its way it’s more direct, so Westerners don’t have as much trouble adapting to it.” He shrugged. “We could go with something else. Hapkido might be something we could look at as an alternative, but I really think you should stick with this for awhile. We can always switch out if it doesn’t seem to be working for you.”
So Xander stayed with wing chun, and it really did seem to suit him. And, over time, it developed that Wesley was a better teacher for weapons: Angel was far more proficient, but his approach relied on a level of speed and strength that no non-Slayer human could hope to match, whereas Wesley taught things that Xander could actually do. None of this — nor all of it together — made him a match for the supernatural menaces they were facing, but he got to where he enjoyed it, liked the sense of accomplishment and, well, competence, that it gave him. If nothing else, it left him less helpless … and, in the clubs Cordelia kept dragging him to, it made him more assured in deflecting overtures from hopeful males. (And occasional females; maybe Cordelia was right, and he should move away from the man-shirts.)
With one thing and another, working with Angel reached the point where it was not only tolerable, but eventually something like satisfying. The guy was a huge dork, with an ego that was beyond belief: all the brooding, the guilt and self-blame and self-loathing, the martyr-hero-penitent routine, the insistence on taking on every hopeless cause and carrying the main weight of it himself, still came back to Angel being the center of everything. He really tried, though, and he really did his best to help people, and he really cared about the people he was trying to help … and about his own people, as well. And, even if you had to squint to see it, there was occasionally something that vaguely resembled a sense of humor there.
The one thing that made it work, though, was the absence of Buffy. More specifically, the absence of Buffy anywhere near Angel. (Angel’s Thanksgiving trip to Sunnydale, followed by Buffy’s return visit to L.A., had been a massive strain; if Cordelia and Doyle hadn’t colluded unconscionably to keep Xander in the dark about those till the whole business was over, he might have gone completely postal.) Continents apart would have been better, but ‘apart’ was the vital point there. Away from Buffy, Angel was genuinely a champion; near her, he was a huge honking magnet for (or generator of) trouble and complications and heartache and tragedy that the Slayer didn’t need any part of.
So when Angel got a phone call from Sunnydale, and Xander could tell it was Buffy on the other end of the line, he was seriously unhappy. Even when the call ended and he learned that it had just been a warning — Faith had come out of her coma, and the remaining Scoobies had wanted Angel to be aware of the possibility that the outlaw Slayer might come gunning for him — he wasn’t able to hide his disgruntlement and readiness to upgrade to active attack.
By chance, it had been just the two of them in the office when the call came. After Xander had unloaded the biting comments that he couldn’t keep inside, Angel sat for more than a minute, eyes toward Xander but focused elsewhere, before saying, “I know how it is with you and Cordelia. I know you still care for her, maybe more than ever, but your … your situation … means there’s no physical part to it. No attraction, no desire, nothing like that. And I know jealousy was one of the main reasons for you hating me being anywhere in Buffy’s life.” He tilted his head. “How does the jealousy hang on when the drive behind it is gone now? Or is it just a matter of habit by this point?”
Xander was ready to launch a savage rejoinder when something about the question penetrated. Huh. It was true, his thoughts — his feelings about Buffy — weren’t the same anymore. And the way he dealt with Angel was different, too. So, if so many other things were different, was this still the same? And, if so, why?
“You know what?” he finally said. “You’re right. Jealousy was always the elephant in the room there, and I never really could look past it. But that doesn’t mean I was wrong.” He leaned forward. “Actually, me being jealous meant it kept me from seeing the real reason I hated you being involved with Buffy. Or, more to it, her being involved with you.”
Angel nodded. “I’m listening.”
“She went out with Owen Thurman, and I was jealous,” Xander said. “She actually dated Scott Hope for awhile there: not just out together a time or two, they were a real couple for as long as it lasted. And … there was a guy in college, total creep but she didn’t know that at the time, she was ready to be serious if it hadn’t gone to crap because he was such an asshole. Even if the last one came after I’d done my instant transfemification, I didn’t much care for any of those, but I didn’t hate it the way I did with you.” He shook his head. “It’s weird, I can see it so easy now, and I could only feel the edges of it then ’cause it was all snarled up with my own issues. It’s just, every time Buffy got involved with somebody else, even if it was always not-me, she was doing the same thing: trying to be Buffy, a Buffy who was more than just the Slayer. Trying to hold onto some part of the life she would’ve had if she’d never got that call.”
His finger jabbed at Angel. “Whenever it was her with you, though, she was doing something else. She was giving up, giving up her life, turning the whole thing over to the Slayer. Tying herself to somebody who could never live outside the dark she had to fight. Whether she meant it or not, whether you wanted that or not, that was what was going on. And … I think, if it started to look like that was about to happen again, I think I might try to kill you to stop it.”
It was different now; the automatic, gut-deep loathing wasn’t there anymore. The two of them had fought together, learned to work with one another, learned trust and something that might even resemble respect. Which meant that Xander was now speaking from a kind of raw honesty that had nothing to do with aggression: this was how he felt, and he meant it, but he was also sharing a truth that mattered to him. And, because of this, it carried more weight than any of his acid diatribes of the past had ever borne.
That was the effect it seemed to have on Angel, anyhow; the guy was staring at him in something like wonder. “That’s … that’s why I came here. Why I left her.” He drew an unnecessary breath, let it out. “I never thought it out that deeply, but I knew I wasn’t good for her. That any life she could have with me would be … less than the life she deserved. You just named out all my reasons for being here.”
“Well, good,” Xander said. “Just don’t forget: you ever start to backslide, there’s a Buddhist nun here ready to kick your undead ass.”
Angel gave him a thin smile that, for once, didn’t have the edge that seemed always to have been there between them. “I’ll keep that in mind. In case I’m ever tempted.”
And then Faith did come to L.A. and took a shot at killing Angel, followed by cold-cocking Wesley and carrying Xander off for the ever-popular Torture part of the program (along with some seriously unsolicited lap-dances that made a kind of strange Xander didn’t want even to try to describe). Which smash-hit she followed by surrendering to Angel, at which point the masochistic big doof decided he had to protect her, and then Buffy came to town to scream about that for awhile, and she and Angel and a Watcher wet-works crew and a Wolfram & Hart assassination demon and a Los Angeles SWAT team wound up in a five-way elimination round over who got possession of the dark Slayer. Which Faith settled by turning herself in and confessing (and rotsa ruck to the DA looking for the right charges to file for “tried to help a demon mayor eat a high school graduating class”).
Xander missed the last part of that, blissed out on morphine at the hospital while Cordelia held his hand and assured him that, no, he didn’t have an extra stomach and yes, Carrot-Top probably was part-demon but probably not dangerous. Once he heard how it had all shaken out, he was cautiously pleased that the events just past had done nothing whatsoever to nudge Angel toward returning to Buffy, or she to him.
Which was good. He was getting used to this life. To having a place and a function. Even, if you came right down to it, to Angel. No, more than used to it; he was fine with it.
Just as long as that world never overlapped with Buffy’s.
