The Road to Somewhere

a BTVS/Dogma crossover

by Setcheti

 

 

Disclaimer:  Not mine, not trying to claim them, not making any money.  If you haven’t seen the movie Dogma…stop right here and go watch it!  Because 1) it’s an excellent movie and 2) this story is a crossover and you’re going to enjoy it a lot more if you have an idea of what the backstory is.  If you’re still reading and haven’t seen the movie, please be advised that Dogma, and therefore this fic, contain GRAPHIC PROFANITY and can be considered quite offensive in a religious sense.  I warned you.

 

Author’s Note:  Yes, another Xander’s Road Trip story.  Once again, Veni, vidi, scripsi. (I came, I saw, I wrote.) 

 

Oxnard sucked.

 

Not that Xander Harris had anything in particular against Oxnard itself, or against anyone in Oxnard. What sucked about it was that his car had broken down there, which meant that Oxnard marked the end of his road trip and the beginning of crawling back to Sunnydale in defeat.  Xander had a feeling that once he went back, he wouldn’t get to leave again as long as the home of the Hellmouth was still standing.

 

And that was the part that really sucked:  Knowing that all he would ever be was Tony Harris’s worthless Zeppo of a son, and the guy who’d helped blow up his high school at graduation a week ago and gotten a lot of his friends killed in the process.

 

He was still thinking about that when he got up from the booth he’d been sitting at near the back of the truck stop, paid for his lunch and went off to the bathroom.  He glanced at himself in the mirror, checking to make sure that his dark hair wasn’t too disordered and that he didn’t have food anywhere, but he couldn’t meet his own eyes.  Xander hadn’t been able to look himself in the eye since graduation; he was afraid of who he might see looking back at him.  Yet another reason he’d wanted to get away from Sunnydale for a while, since he hadn’t wanted his friends to clue in to what his brown eyes might be revealing about him either.  So much for that idea.  Xander looked back down at his hands, reddening under the too-hot water, wondering if he’d always feel like he had blood on them that wouldn’t come off.

 

“No, you won’t.”  The deep voice startled him, and Xander looked up to find a tall, dark-haired man leaning against one of the other sinks.  “Ask any general, he’ll tell you the same.”

 

Xander slowly shut off the water, and wiped his hands on his pants.  The bathroom had been empty when he’d come in, and no one had come in after him.  Not to mention that he hadn’t said anything out loud.  “Who are you and what do you want?” he asked.

 

The man smiled.  It wasn’t a threatening smile, or evil, or mocking; instead it was faintly amused.  “So speaks the voice of experience, blunt and to the point,” he said.  He peeled himself away from the sink and struck a pose.  “I am Metatron, the Voice of God,” he thundered, and a pair of wings expanded at his back.  “And I am here to talk to you, Alexander.”

 

Xander cocked his head, looking, and then started to laugh.  “Well, that’s a new one,” he said.  “I haven’t seen a demon with wings before.  What kind are you?”

 

Metatron dropped the pose and glared at him.  His wings flexed in irritation.  “Demon?!  I’m an angel, you stupid boy!  One of the cherubim, I stand in the presence of the Most High, mortals tremble in my presence!”  Xander laughed even harder, and the angel deflated.  “How could you possibly mistake me for a bloody demon?” he almost wailed.  “Demons have horns, and…and shifty eyes!”

 

“Hmm, maybe.  But some demons can look human.”  Xander shrugged.  “I’ve seen weirder things.  And you’re dressed like a vamp.”

 

Metatron looked down at his all-black ensemble and then looked back up at Xander with a scowl.  His wings flexed once more and then disappeared.  “I don’t think I’ve ever been so insulted in my whole life,” he huffed.  “Except perhaps for the time your mother thought I was a rapist.”

 

Xander stopped playing it cool.  Winged demons in bathrooms talking about his mother were seriously of the bad.  “You know my mother?”

 

“I know her better than you do – especially since you don’t actually know her at all,” the angel told him.  “Or your father either, for that matter.”

 

“I think you need to explain that,” Xander said.  He took a step closer to the demon, going on the offensive, his hands clenching into fists.  His parents might not be the best, but he was their son, after all – and he wasn’t exactly the best either.  “What do you have to do with my family?”

 

Metatron didn’t back away, nor did he look at all worried, or angry.  “Amazing,” he said softly, shaking his head with the slightest of smiles.  “Truly amazing – and after being raised by drunks on the mouth of Hell, no less.”  He locked eyes with the young man before him.  “You’re wrong about yourself, Alexander, and about your parents as well.  You are not the son of Anthony and Jessica Harris.”

 

Xander forced down the tiny surge of joy those words produced, mentally smacking himself.  God, I am not that much of an asshole, no way.  This guy is just trying to psych me out.  Keep with the snark, Xan-man, keep him off balance.  He folded his arms across his chest.  “I certainly hope you’re not heading in the ‘I am your father, Luke’ direction, because it’s seriously overused,” he said.  “Maybe you’re just a perv demon who likes to hang out in the bathroom.”

 

He almost took a step back when Metatron laughed.  “In reverse order:  not a demon hanging out in the bathroom, agree with you on that line being overused, keeping me off balance might work if I didn’t know I was right, not trying to psych you out, and no you’re not an asshole – God doesn’t think so and neither do I.”  He folded his arms and raised an eyebrow when Xander’s mouth fell open.  “Yes, I can read your mind.  And the bathroom was just the first chance I’d had to catch you alone, we can certainly change venues to continue this discussion.”

 

Xander blinked, and they were sitting on a park bench not far from a softly splashing fountain.  Everything was green and pretty, and really obviously not near the truck stop.  “Where…”

 

“We’re still in Oxnard, I just relocated us a few miles from where I found you,” Metatron reassured him.  “Lovely spot, isn’t it?”

 

“It is better than the bathroom,” Xander agreed, fighting the urge to slide further down the bench, away from the so-called angel.  He took a deep breath.  “You still haven’t told me what this ‘discussion’ we’re having is supposed to be about.  And if what it’s about is contacting the Slayer, or getting back at the Slayer, or trying to take down the Slayer…then either kill me now or just walk away.  Because she may be my friend, but this one part of my life, right here and now, is not about the fucking Slayer and it’s not going to be.”

 

Metatron laughed again and clapped Xander on the back.  “Well now, you do have a pair, don’t you?” he said approvingly.  “No, this is not about the Slayer; this is about you, Alexander Harris, who isn’t actually a Harris at all.  You were kidnapped from your true family when you were just past your third birthday, by the man who has been masquerading as your father.  Your real name was Brendan Sloan.”

 

The name didn’t mean anything to Xander at first, but then he remembered something and his eyes widened.  “I don’t know how old I was,” he said slowly.  “But I think it was my birthday.  I remember there was a cake, with a little plastic clown candle on it, and it said…I said…”

 

“You said, ‘That’s not my name’.”  Xander’s brown eyes widened even further; that was, in fact, what he’d said.  Metatron didn’t look at him, and the expression on the angel’s face was unbearably sad.  “Jessica was frightened and tried to distract you, but Anthony was not in a mood to be distracted and thought it best to correct you…violently.”

 

Xander didn’t quite manage to hold back a shudder.  “I…learned my lesson.  And I still can’t stand clowns.”

 

“I would expect not,” Metatron murmured, shaking his head.  He reached over and took Xander’s hand, flipping it over and touching the palm with one long finger.  “The burn was right there, luckily it faded as you grew.  Jessica told your preschool teacher that you had grabbed something on the stove in order to explain the scar.”

 

“Dad – I mean, Tony – made me repeat the story every night before bed until I didn’t make any mistakes,” Xander added.  He shuddered again, and not just from the memory.  Now that the man was touching him, he could feel the power – and it didn’t feel like a demon, or a witch.  It felt good.  Not to mention that demons might try to psych you out, but they couldn’t read your mind.  So this Metatron was most likely telling the truth.  “You’re really an angel.”

 

“An archangel, to be specific.  I am the Voice of God,” was the answer.  “Mortals cannot bear the sound of His voice, the sound of the entire force of Creation, so when mortals need to be spoken to I’m the one that does it.”  Metatron cocked his head.  “You shouldn’t feel guilty, Alexander.  Or disloyal.”

 

That got him a snort.  “I am being disloyal.  They’re the people who raised me.”  Xander gave him a pointed look.  “Honor thy father and mother, remember?”

 

“Remember? I was there when He wrote it.”  This time it was Metatron’s turn to snort.  “Ah yes, such a wonderful example of how humans have twisted the Word of God around to their own ends – a rule that was supposed to admonish adults to care for their aging parents with respect instead became the pithy catch-phrase of every child abuser on the planet.”  He shook his head.  “It isn’t disloyal to have little or no respect for an abusive drunk, especially on finding out he was also a criminal.  And no, since you’re wondering, Jessica wasn’t party to your abduction.  Anthony simply sent her ahead to Sunnydale with a moving van and had her tell everyone her husband and young son would be joining her shortly.”

 

Xander nodded.  “She always said all my baby pictures got burned up in a fire.  My birth certificate too.”

 

“Your mother has them in a book – and one from your third birthday on the mantle.  Her name is Bethany,” Metatron told him.  “Your father’s is Bob – and how the bloody hell that happened I have no idea, but he bred surprisingly true.  Your so-called ‘white knight complex’ came from him.”

 

Xander couldn’t help but ask, “Do I look like him?”

 

“You look like both of them.”  The angel considered him.  “Dark hair, brown eyes, they both have that.  You got your height from your mother’s side of the family, your father is not a tall man.”  He smiled.  “And your mother is the one who babbles, your father is…a man of few words, to say the least.  They’re good people,” he assured the young man.  “Good people who were burdened with a destiny – chosen, if you will – and who saw that through in spades.  Your father was a prophet sent to protect God’s Last Scion so she could save the world.  And she did.  And when she lost her life doing so, he carried her into God’s very presence to plead for the return of her life with his tears.”  The eyes he was looking into were wide and full, and Metatron’s voice softened.  “And God answered him…with a smile.  So I suppose I shouldn’t be so very surprised that they got together afterwards, should I?”

 

The brown eyes overflowed, and the angel put a comforting arm around his shoulders.  “Your parents love each other,” he said.  “They’ve been looking for you ever since you were kidnapped, and they have never, never forgotten you.”

 

Xander wiped away a tear.  “But how…why…”

 

“The Hellmouth.  The denizens of Heaven cannot see what goes on within its sphere of influence, nor tread upon the ground cursed by it.”  He nudged the boy to make him look up.  “We all looked for you, Alexander.  But you were in the one place our vision could not reach.  Only when you came out on your ‘road trip’ did you appear on the radar again.  I came here straightaway.”  He ruffled the dark hair.  “I can see your doubt, child, but your fears are groundless.  Your mother and father have been waiting nearly sixteen years to see you again, and your sister Belinda will be glad to have her baby brother back as well.”

 

“I…I have a s-sister?”  When the angel nodded, Xander wiped his eyes again.  “I…I’d like to meet my family.  My real family.”

 

Metatron didn’t show his relief, but he was definitely feeling it; he had a soft spot for the family in question that went back two millennia, and he hadn’t wanted to see this boy return to the closest thing to Hell on Earth.  Not to mention that if Alexander had gone back to Sunnydale, it was a good bet that Bethany and Bob would have stormed the place to get him back.  And of course then Belinda would have left college and gone in after her parents…

 

He wasn’t sure the planet would survive having the Last Scion attack the mouth of Hell.  Especially since she’d probably go in screaming, “Where the fuck is my BABY BROTHER?!?”

 

The angel shook off the effect of that unhappy image and returned his focus to the young man beside him.  “They live in Pittsburg.  I can set you on your way…but getting there will be up to you.”

 

Xander took that in stride.  “Give me the address, I’ll get there.”

 

Metatron smiled at his surety.  “It might not be so easy as all that.”

 

“It never is.”  The young man didn’t quite sigh, and the angel heard his mental lament quite clearly:  Same shit, different day for the Xan-man.  His brown eyes, however, held nothing that looked like doubt.  “But I’ll still get there.”

 

“You’ll have some help.”  Metatron’s smile became a crooked smirk.  “A guide, if you will.  You’ll know him…when he declares himself a savior of men.  Point yourself toward Pittsburg and you’re certain to run into him.  I’ll see you later.”  And with a final pat to the broad shoulder, the angel disappeared and Xander was back in the truck stop bathroom again.

 

He looked around, wondering why everything looked the same when it was all so different…and then he shrugged, washed his hands, and left the bathroom to ask the waitress for directions to the nearest bus station.

 

 

Metatron appeared a few moments later – with considerably less fanfare – in the kitchen of a ranch-style house in suburban Pittsburgh, and unlike at his last appearance the individual he faced this time was not startled in the least.  She was a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman, and she set down the cup of coffee she’d been drinking and just looked at him.  “You’re here…why?”

 

The angel immediately struck a pose of offended irritation.  “How wonderful to see you, Metatron, won’t you have a seat, Metatron, would you like some of this coffee?” he mocked.  He frowned at her.  “You could at least pretend to be respectful of the Voice of God, couldn’t you?”

 

“If you wanted to sit down you would have; but please, have a seat.”  Her brown eyes twinkled; she was teasing him.  “Can I get you some coffee?”

 

“Not that swill you’re drinking, no,” he huffed, plopping down into the chair across from her.  A small tray appeared in the center of the bar, containing two tall, steaming mugs and a plate of biscotti.  “There, try that – it’s from a little place in Florence.”

 

She took the mug and sipped out of it, then smiled.  “That is definitely preferable to Taster’s Choice, thank you.  Now, you’re sitting down, you brought me coffee and cookies…what’s going on?”

 

His face became serious, and he reached across the bar to touch her hand.  “We found Brendan, luv, and he’s on his way here.  Your son is coming home.”

 

Bethany almost dropped the mug; it was shaking dangerously when she set it down, although she didn’t notice.  “He…where…”

 

“A place called Sunnydale, which is on the Hellmouth – a literal mouth of Hell located, most improbably, in Southern California,” the angel told her.  “That was why we couldn’t find him before, this was the first time that he’d ever left the place; he called his exodus a ‘road trip’ ala Jack Kerouak, and I admit to being surprised that an American public school graduate had actually read any book, much less been inspired to change his life by one.  He knows himself as Xander, short for Alexander, and he just graduated high school a week ago.”

 

Bethany gasped in a breath, trying to take it all in.  “You told him…”

 

Metatron’s fingers tightened around hers.  “He seemed relieved to find out the people who raised him weren’t his real parents.  Once I’d convinced him I was telling the truth, anyway.  Can you believe the child thought I was a demon?” he huffed.

 

That didn’t console her.  “He knows about demons?  Of course he does, he was living in a place called the Hellmouth, he probably saw them every day on his way to school.  And you said he was relieved?  Were they mean to him, did they abuse him…”

 

“Bethany, take a breath,” the angel insisted softly.  “Alexander is remarkably well-adjusted, polite and pleasant – in spite of the fact that yes, he was abused and no, he didn’t see demons on his way to school each day.”  Metatron took a deep breath; he had read the boy’s life from his memories, and the woman before him was not going to like what he’d found there.  “But he has been fighting and killing them since he was fifteen.  And he carries a good deal of guilt for those friends and fellow students he was unable to save.  On his graduation night, he took responsibility for arming and deploying many of them in a showdown of sorts when a major demonic player in the area attempted to extend his power.  Quite a few of them didn’t survive.”

 

Her eyes were wide, her face pale.  “You make him sound like a soldier.”

 

“He is a soldier, luv,” Metatron told her.  “Untrained, more balls than brains on occasion, and talks a better game than his skills can back up a good deal of the time…but one of the demons named him the White Knight and he is every inch that.  In fact, he very much takes after his father in that respect, I’d say.”

 

That made her smile, but it didn’t last.  “You said he was coming.”

 

“I couldn’t bring him, he has to make his own way home.”  The angel sighed.  “But he will have help.  He’ll be met by…well, at least one person who knows where you live.”

 

Bethany’s eyes widened even further.  “Not…”

 

Metatron nodded, grimacing.  “I’m afraid so.”

 

 

Xander, at that moment, was wishing the archangel hadn’t left quite so quickly.  He’d gathered up his stuff and started making his way to the bus station, where he was hoping he’d be able to buy a ticket to Pittsburgh.  To see Bob and Bethany Sloan, his parents.

 

His real parents.

 

Xander had left Sunnydale to find out who he’d become…and had instead found out that he’d always been someone else in the first place.  So he could be excused for being distracted as he walked, for having too much on his mind to pay much attention to his surroundings.

 

He practically ran right into the two young teenagers carrying balls and baseball bats who suddenly appeared in front of him.  Xander grinned at them and stepped aside.  “Sorry guys.  I should have been looking where I was going.”

 

They didn’t say anything; they also didn’t move.  Xander started to get a bad feeling.  He shifted the bag on his shoulder and took a slow step back.  “Go ahead, don’t want to make you miss your game.”

 

Their heads turned in unison to follow him.  Their eyes were dark circled, a little sunken, and didn’t blink.  Xander took another step back.  “Shit,” he swore under his breath.  He’d kind of hoped he’d never see another zombie again.  And a quick glance around showed that not only were there no other people around, there also wasn’t anything he could use as a weapon.  Yet another step back.  “Uh…I don’t suppose you guys would like to wait here while I go find an axe or a flamethrower or maybe a superhero, would you?  I promise I won’t be gone more than half an hour.”

 

A baseball hit him in the shoulder, hard enough to make his arm tingle, and when he ducked the second one grazed the side of his head and he fell backward to land on his ass…against a brick wall.  “Shit,” he swore again.  The zombies grinned at him, took yet another step forward, and raised their baseball bats.  Xander tried to push himself through the bricks and wasn’t happy when the bricks wouldn’t cooperate.  He dragged his bag around in front of him and got ready to use it as a shield.  Maybe he could fend them off long enough to get away from the wall and run?  Zombies were strong and fast, but not smart.  He could do this, he was going to fight them off and get away…

 

…One of the zombies pulled another baseball out of its pocket, and Xander decided to see if maybe the wall had changed its mind.  The ball that hit it and then ricocheted back into his shoulder again proved that it hadn’t, and the bat that came sweeping down toward him said that he didn’t have time to ask it again.  He was going to be too busy fighting for his life.

 

Xander had already fended off two swings of the bat and had been hit in the leg by another ball when a voice rang out from somewhere behind the zombies.  “What the fuck are you doing?” the voice demanded.  It was, thankfully, male and sounded like it meant business.  “You guys want to fuck with someone, try turning the fuck around, motherfuckers.”

 

As one, the zombies turned their heads to snarl…and Xander saw a man standing there, swinging a tire iron.  He tried to push himself up, but the leg that had been hit last wasn’t quite ready to cooperate with him yet.  And by the time he was able to put weight on it…the fight was over and he dropped back down again in shock.  The zombies were staggering away into the distance, two broken baseball bats were on the ground, and the guy was still standing there.  He was tall and thin, with dirty blond hair pulled back into a stringy ponytail at the nape of his neck, sharp features, and light blue eyes with a misleadingly vague look about them.  He was wearing faded worn jeans and an equally faded t-shirt under a flannel shirt that had seen better days, and he looked to be somewhere in his late thirties to early forties.  “Um…thanks,” Xander managed, trying not to wonder how the guy had gotten the two zombies to run off and hoping it wasn’t because he was something worse.  “I thought they had me for sure.  If there’s anything I can do for you…”  

 

The guy looked him over assessingly.  “Do you dig guys?”

 

Xander hung onto his aplomb for all he was worth, but he still blushed bright red.  “Uh…no?” he squeaked – the guy was, after all, still holding the tire iron.  “I just…no, no I d-don’t.”

 

“Well fuck.”  The guy didn’t sound surprised, though, and only mildly pissed.  He cocked an inquiring eyebrow.  “Would you give me a bj anyway?  Since I saved your life and all?”  Xander pushed himself further into the rough bricks, shaking his head violently, and the guy sighed.  “I didn’t think so.”  He turned abruptly and stalked away.  “God dammit!  You’d think saving a guy’s life would be enough incentive to get him to go down on you, but noooo, no bj for the savior of men, noooo.”

 

Xander froze, fingers digging into the bricks until his nails hurt.  It couldn’t be, it just couldn’t be…but then again, this was the way his fucked-up life tended to go.  His angelically provided guide to Pittsburg would turn out to be a horny drug dealer type, it just figured.  He forced himself away from the wall, swallowed hard, and chased after the rapidly disappearing guy.  “Wait!  Just…wait up!”

 

The guy turned around, and the eyebrow went back up.  He assessed Xander again.  “You change your mind?”

 

Xander cringed.  “Uh, no…sorry.  But, I was supposed to…he said you would…can you help me get to Pittsburg?”

 

The eyebrow went down, and the guy’s blue eyes went wide.  “Pittsburg?  How the fuck did you…God dammit all to hell!”  He glared up at the flawlessly hot blue sky and shook an admonishing finger at it.  “You dickless son of a bitch!  You set me up again!”  His anger was mostly gone, though, the minute he returned his attention to Xander.  “Metatron, the ‘Voice of God’, right?”  When Xander nodded, he sighed.  “Yeah, I’m going to Pittsburg and yeah, you can come with me.  Think you’ll change your mind about the blow job?  It’s not like I expect you to swallow or anything.”

 

“Uh…that’s really considerate of you…but no, so not into guys,” Xander managed with the only shred of self-possession he could find.  “Nothing personal, ‘kay?”

 

“I know that.”  The guy shrugged and started walking again, obviously expecting Xander to walk with him.  “You either go that way or you don’t.  But you change your mind, you let me know.”

 

“C-can do,” Xander managed, and trotted along in his wake.  Away from the bus station.  He ventured a question.  “Um, the bus station is the other way, where…”

 

“I am not taking the bus all the way to fucking Quakerland,” the guy told him.  “And you must never have ridden in one of the fucking things before if you think it’s a good way to get around.”  Hard blue eyes glanced over.  “You only ride the bus if you got no other fucking options, understand?  It’s the loser end of transportation, all runaways and transients and end-of-the-road shithole stops in the middle of nowhere.  Even hitching is better than the fucking bus.”

 

Xander knew the sound of someone trying to impart personal wisdom, so he filed that away as potentially useful.  “So are we going to…”

 

“Nah, we ain’t gonna hitch – hitching ain’t that great either, and it won’t fucking work with two of us unless you suddenly turn into a hot, slutty chick.”  The blue look got a hopeful question in it which faded when Xander shook his head.  “Well, it was worth thinking about, anyway – you never know what people can do, I’ve seen some really weird shit in my time.  Anyway, I’ve got a car.  It don’t run so great, but it should get us a ways down the road.  If you’ve got money for gas, anyway.”

 

“I’ve got a little, yeah – hopefully it’ll hold out as long as your car does.”  He realized he was missing some information and cleared his throat.  “I’m Xander, by the way.”

 

“I’m Jay.”  Jay’s car, waiting near the back of a half-deserted grocery store parking lot, was a long Seventyish boat car with a rusty blue body and one strikingly mismatched maroon door on the driver’s side.  It smelled like the owner might have been living in it, but Xander figured that after living in the Harris basement he didn’t really have the right to turn up his nose at anyone else’s accommodations.  He threw his bag in the back seat, then cleared out the fast food bags and assorted trash that had filled the passenger side floorboard before climbing in.  Jay turned the key, the engine rattled and complained but started, and they were off.

 

After a few minutes, Xander correctly identified one of the smells in the car as lingering pot smoke and rolled down his window to air things out, praying they wouldn’t get pulled over.  He didn’t want his first meeting with his real family to happen with a set of prison bars between them.

 

Jay, it turned out, much to Xander’s relief, was out of weed and had no plans to buy any more.  And he liked to talk.  He told Xander all about the deal he’d been making in Oxnard, and what he’d thought about the guy trying to screw him over, and how that deal compared to other deals he’d made in other places.  That led him back into talking about transportation and his opinion of all the different ways a person could get around.  Planes he dismissed pretty much outright – security was too tight, and it was too expensive.  Trains were good, comfortable, good food, better class of people than the bus but not as expensive as flying.  He’d ridden a ferry a couple of times and hadn’t liked it – no bathrooms and too many ‘fucking nasty seagulls that crap all over the place’ for his taste, especially since people got mad if he tried to hit the seagulls with something as they flew by.  Jay’s rant about the bus and why it sucked took up half the night and kept Xander awake while it was his turn to drive.  By morning, after a visit to a truck stop for a quick shower and some breakfast, Jay had moved on to what he claimed was the ideal mode of transportation: cruise ships.  “Fucking heaven,” he claimed around a mouthful of sausage and eggs.  “It’s like traveling in a hotel crossed with a mall crossed with an all-you-can-eat buffet – sort of like Vegas on the water to get you where you’re going.  And the women all running around in bathing suits, all casual about it ‘cause they know they’ll never have to see you again.  Can you think of a better way to get from Point A to Point B?”

 

“Transporter,” Xander let slip out, and then blushed.  “I mean, that kind of skips the food and sex and all, but you could always get that where you’re going or before you left – and then you’d just be there, right?  No waiting around.”

 

“True,” Jay admitted.  “But where’s the fun in that?  Interesting shit happens when you’re just waiting around – I ran into you ‘cause you were just waiting around, didn’t I?  And what were you doing when you met up with Dickless from on High?”

 

“Um, bathroom break, in a truck stop.  He just sort of appeared there.”  Xander decided to ask the question that had been nagging him.  “Why do you call him…”

 

“Dickless?”  The older man snorted and stuffed part of a biscuit into his mouth.  “ ‘Cause he doesn’t have one – no angels do, Paradise my ass.  How could it be heaven if you can’t have sex?  I mean, if you can’t even jack off?  There was this chick I met on the way to Jersey once, she was working at a strip club but she was from Up Top too, said she was amused or something like that.  Anyway, tits like a fucking porn star, ass she knew how to shake like she meant it…but no pussy.  A fucking Barbie down there, it was like waking up on Christmas morning to an empty stocking nobody can fill.”

 

 Xander conceded that that didn’t sound much like heaven to him either, but he didn’t think it could all be that bad.  “Maybe they have something else?  To do, I mean.  ‘Cause if they didn’t nobody would stay, right?”

 

Jay thought about that, nodding.  “Yeah, I guess.  There were these two guys who got kicked out of there, and they thought it would be better to end the world getting back in just for a second than it would be to stay out and live forever.  They must have been missing somethin’ pretty good to feel like that about it.”   He thought again.  “Although I think they had to live in Wisconsin, and I was there once…fuck, I might want to end the world instead of being stuck in Wisconsin for all eternity.  Nobody likes cheese that fucking much.”      

 

It was Xander’s turn to think about it.  “Maybe there’s a Hellmouth in Wisconsin.”

 

“I think it’s more like a Hell ass-end,” was Jay’s reply.  “The mouth would have to be somewhere else.”

 

“It’s in Sunnydale, couple of hours from L.A.,” Xander told him.  He twitched an almost-smile when the older man raised a questioning eyebrow.  “I grew up there.  Vamps and demons all over the place, highest death rate in the country and no one even notices.  Everybody dies from ‘wild animal attacks’ or ‘gangs on PCP’, according to the news and the cops.  It’s insane.”

 

“Sounds like it.”  Jay glanced at him again.  “So you grew up in that shit?  You ever dusted a vamp?”

 

Xander was surprised, but not unpleasantly.  “Well, yeah, lots of them.  I was helping – well, trying to help – the ‘Chosen One’ who’s supposed to fight all the bad stuff single-handedly.”  He snorted.  “I mean, what kind of morons set up a system like that?  It sounds like a bad anime plot, one teenager destined to fight all the evil alone.”

 

“Yeah, even Sailor Moon had help,” Jay agreed.  He was still interested.  “She wear a miniskirt like theirs to ‘fight evil’, huh?”

 

“Sometimes, yeah.”  Xander grinned, but it didn’t last.  “At first she was okay, you know?  Just a girl my age who’d had this sucky destiny dumped on her, basically got told her life was over and she’d die young and horribly at the hands of monsters.  I wanted to help her, anything I could do.  But she…she changed.”  He stared out the window, not able to untangle the knot of feelings inside him.  “She’s such a bitch now, and she just doesn’t care.  About anything but herself, anyway.”

 

“Ahh.”  The older man nodded sagely.  “You were jonesing on her and she blew you off.  That really sucks – I mean, you save their life, you do shit for them, and then they always go off with some stud.”

 

Xander snorted again.  “Yeah.  She picked a vamp over me.  Slept with him, drove him insane, and then held it against me when I helped her kill the bastard so he wouldn’t bring about the end of the world.”

 

“Yep, sounds about right.”  Jay frowned.  “You’re not running off to Pittsburgh ‘cause of that bitch, are you?”

 

“No.  I didn’t even run to Oxnard to get away from her.”  Xander pushed stray strings of hash brown around on his plate.  “I just…so many people had died.  I kind of felt like some part of me had died too, like I wasn’t the same person any more – sort of like my skin didn’t fit, you know?  So I figured I’d load up and hit the road, see if maybe once I was out of Sunnydale for a little while I’d be able to figure out just who the hell I was now and what I was going to do about it.”  He shrugged.  “And then Metatron showed up in the bathroom and told me I’d been kidnapped and my real parents were living in Pittsburgh.  He seemed to think they’d be glad to see me.  I don’t know if I can believe that or not, but I guess I figured it was worth a shot.  It’s not like I’ve got anything to lose by checking it out.”

 

“Sounds like a plan to me.”  Jay pushed his empty plate away and tossed a five dollar bill onto the table; Xander dug into his pocket and did the same before draining the last of his orange juice.  “I’m headed up to the ‘burbs to visit my former heterosexual life partner.  We ran into Metatron about twenty years ago – kind of the same way I met you, we saved this chick from some zombie punks in a parking lot.  He told her we would get her to New Jersey, fought fucking zombies and demons all the way there, then fought with the fucking crazy angel from Wisconsin I told you about.  And then God showed up, and He was a chick and wasn’t that a trip, and She was pretty much nuts too but She sorted it all out and the whole mess just kind of went away.”

 

They were headed back out to the car now, Jay talking around a toothpick he’d grabbed from a dispenser on the way out, and Xander reflected that his life had actually gotten weirder since he’d left the Hellmouth, something he hadn’t thought was possible.  “I’ve never really thought much about God,” he admitted.  “I mean, it was the Hellmouth – there is no God on the Hellmouth.  Even the holy water at the church there isn’t any good.”

 

“No shit?”  Jay slid in behind the wheel of blue Continental while Xander detoured around the back to take the passenger seat again, dragging his door shut against the rasp and groan of stiff hinges and sinking back into the sprung and torn vinyl seat.  The older man had a thoughtful look on his face.  “I guess that makes sense – I’m sure any church in a place like that would have to pretty much suck.  ‘Cause if they didn’t, they’d be doing something about all the other shit going on, right?” 

 

Xander shrugged.  “I guess,” was his non-committal answer; he’d given up on wondering why none of the other residents of Sunnydale had ever taken a stab at the local vamp problems years before.  He leaned his head against the window and yawned.  “You mind if I catch a few z’s, man?” he asked.  “Then I’ll drive and you can sleep.”

 

“Sure, no problem.  I’m good for a couple hours,” Jay told him, and forced a worn cassette tape into the car’s battered stereo, cranking the volume high enough to make the windows shake.  Xander bunched up his jacket as a cushion between his head and the vibrating glass and went to sleep with a smile on his face.  If he dreamed of demons, zombies, the Slayer or Sunnydale, he didn’t remember it.

 

 

This story has not been completed.