SPOILERS: Becoming 2, and everything before
CONTENT: PG, I think. nothing too bad. Maybe PG 13 for dark melodrama
SUMMARY: Just a little Xander introspection. It tends toward the dark. I
don't think he's as bad as I'm writing him, so don't flame me, please.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: I really liked the way Erana did "Little White Lie." I wasn't really thinking about it at the time, but this was the story that
got me really thinking DarkXander.
NOTES: I started this around midnight after reading "Bartlett's Familiar
Quotations" late at night with Buffy on the brain. It was a bad idea.
EvilXander started ranting, melodramatically in my ear. I couldn't sleep
so I wrote this.
FEEDBACK: Of course! I know the characterization is off, and so is the
language choice. It doesn't sound like Xander. It was even worse when I
first put it to paper. Also, someone smarter should tell me where the
comma's live.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Xander or Angel or anyone, & with the state they're in, I'm
just as glad they're someone elses problem. They belong to Joss, the bad
man. I have no money anyway.
"The last temptation is the greatest treason:
to do the right deed for the wrong reason."
-T.S. Eliot
"Murder in the Cathedral"
I had to do it. I had to lie. It was a tactical necessity. It was the right thing to do. There was no way I could've told her. No way I could've sent her in not ready to fight unrestrained. If I hadn't lied, if I'd told her, who knows what could have happened? She might have hesitated... lost. Then we'd ALL be rotting in Hell. I know my actions were moral.
But, in the dark, alone in my room, I know my motivations were not. All that other stuff is just what I've been trying to tell myself. What I've been trying to believe because nobody wants to be evil.
I hated him. I hated him, and I wanted him dead. I don't even mean the demon. Despite my pretense of ignorance, I CAN tell the difference. I don't need to dredge up the past few month's demonic crimes to tell you why I hated him. I hated everything about him. His hair - it was just ugly. I hated his slouching, lurking walk,and the way he'd sneak up on you with it. I hated his monochrome clothes.
I hated his Lord Byron-act, and his eyes. I loathed his eyes. The contradictory way they made him seem innocent, and lost, and full of lost innocence. They could engender so much pity and grudging respect from everyone, and no one stopping to think that it was murder and evil that earned all their admiration. That made those eyes like that.
I can sometimes think that that's the heart of it, right there. He draws all the attention and attraction to himself with his darkness, his Anne Rice sexuality. The way a black hole, cold and dead, will always have a greater command of gravity than the still-living stars surrounding it. That'd be me, all loyal and bright and twinkling. Insignificant and ignored by the astronomers in favor of the black hole, mystery of the universe. But I guess I'm getting carried away by the metaphor, and beginning to yammer.
The truth of it is, that's not really it. Oh sure, I've come to realize it's jealousy, all right. But not over something so minor. Not just that he was always more spectacular than me, just because I hadn't committed any hideous sins to regret. Not just because he won the girl I wanted without even having to try. It's so much deeper than that. I thought about what we were. I made up pretty, little, black and white descriptions of us all, myself included. I kept them in my head, and never truly changed them. They helped me understand the world.
I can only see, now, that even then I knew, deep down, what was wrong with these descriptions. I can only see it now, now that our true natures have been revealed. He was a vampire, and so I labeled him as one in my mind: evil, a demon, a monster. I was, as he once said, the "white knight." I fought for good, and was unlucky to be so nobly devoted to someone who didn't love me back.
Now though, I think about these labels, and I understand why I have really always hated him. An ally and a friend who fought for us while he could, he was thrown to the fire by his own Madonna for sins he didn't really commit. He was the virtuous warrior, abused by love, which he felt with purity.
And me? In my mind I conjure the tortured screams of this damned, innocent soul. And only a very small part of me is disturbed that the rest of me is laughing. I can no longer deny it. I am the monster. I am the beast. And, past a waning societal influence, I don't care.
I still don't believe in shades of gray. The world is still black and white, and I still think people don't morally change. Which means that, without quite knowing it, I have always been this way. I have always held this corruption in my soul, as he has always, on some level, held grace and good in his. Now you see it, right? Why I've always hated him? Deep down, even then, a part of me knew. He was what I pretended to be, and I was nothing but what I called him. Now THERE'S something to be jealous of, and it goes a lot deeper than attention or a girl. That's IDENTITY... SELF WORTH! That's what that is.
Now that I understand, I wonder if I should just give up, embrace the dark side of the Force. If I should quit this charade of morality I keep trying to fool myself with. I could focus on my own power and comfort, and just kill whoever got in my way. Or send them to Hell.
Maybe that's going too far, too soon. I still have a lingering distaste for these thoughts. Every little boy wants to be the hero, is told by the world that it's good to be good. A part of me still remembers believing that. I'm pretty sure of one thing, though. I may have saved the world when I told that lie, but, from now on, if it doesn't directly serve me, I don't plan to go out of my way to save it again. I quit this little club. I'm not one of them, anymore.
fin