Break It All (Build Something New)

[madimpossibledreamer]

Previously on and by that i mean this is a prequel that came outta nowhere: All-American Hero (and I could've sworn I did a different one which will take forever to find augh will update if I can find it i only have myself to blame tagging wise) found it!  that was older than I thought Arrangements
Anything you think might be a Jojo's Steel Ball Run reference or a more obvious Batman reference probably is.  (SBR references aren't actually in-universe, as it isn't published until 2004 and this is one of the fics where I'm actually adhering to real-world timelines, weird as that is)
no one tell him that his canon counterpart survives the series intact by still recklessly throwing himself into situations it's a speculation he's using to cope

Main Points:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Oracle!Xan)
Summary: Xander refuses to take this lying down (even if, technically, he can't actually stand anymore).
Word Count: 855
Rating: Teen
Warnings: This is yet another Angelus permanently disables Xander fic, so warning for that, though it occurs offscreen in this one.  Light abuse mentions (because of his father).  Toxic masculinity, and the slow overcoming of it.

        At first, Xander had been devastated.  There had been the pain at first, of course, the kind of pain that you couldn’t just shrug off from years of experience with a well-placed joke and a strangely specific knowledge of cosmetics that he’d never admit to the others on pain of vampirism. Apparently, the pain was good.  On one hand, it meant that he had to have pain pills, or magic, or something to even feel like moving, let alone attempting to think.  On the other, it meant that he wasn’t completely paralyzed and had some feeling, even if most of that feeling happened to be pain.
        The thing is, he’d always seen himself as a frontlines guy, the guy to be thrown into mausoleums and cemetery fences, even if he can’t be the dashing action hero he wants to be.  He knows he can’t exactly be Buffy, which he was fairly certain would always bother him (if you were more of a man, the voice says, the voice he hasn’t fully shaken off), but getting beaten up was the closest thing he could come to fulfilling that requirement.  That’s never going to happen again.  He’s never tried to navigate a wheelchair into or around a cemetery, but he practically lives in those things and he knows exactly how difficult it’d be.  He also knows there is no way that they’re letting him go into the field again.  Not when Buffy can’t even meet his eyes, now.  Not when he’d be an utterly useless fixture in a fight, moreso than he’s ever been, which is (sadly) kinda saying something.
        He knows she feels terrible, and before, when he hadn’t been in the hospital, he might’ve blamed her for Angel.  Angelus, now.  But he can’t, because as much as he wants to whine about the way his life will be now, as much as he wants to think his life is over and he’ll never have anything again…he can’t.
        Because he had fully expected to be killed, but he wasn’t.  And yeah, it kinda has the same vibe as the scene with Batman in comics five years back, and he knows, absolutely, that he was left alive for the exact same reason—because that was seen as much more humiliating than death.  And he’d thought he wasn’t scared of death.  He’s stood up to it time and time again, especially as the Joe Normal in the scenario.  But even being left on Buffy’s front doorstep delirious from the pain, right up until the point he passed out all he could feel was relief.  Which is weird and doesn’t feel like a thing he should be feeling and is all the more poignant from that.
        So yeah.  His friends are focusing on the whole broken spine thing.  Which, don’t get him wrong, that’s a whole big deal of its own.  But they’re kind of missing the point, too, because he’s alive.  He’s alive, and they really should be celebrating that, rather than wringing their hands and looking all wounded and stuff.
        So he’s not going to be a frontman anytime soon.  They should be happy enough about that, given how often they’ve tried to gently hint that he probably shouldn’t be throwing himself in harm’s way.  And now that that’s no longer an option, he can admit to himself that they were right.  If he’d kept going, he probably would’ve gotten himself killed.  The rest of the people they know know magic, or are werewolves or Slayers or whatever, so yeah, they should probably be the ones out there making the monsters mad.  Not him.
        He’s not gonna be useless, though.  Not by a long shot.  Willow’s been ignoring the whole research aspect of things, especially the computer aspect of things, since she’d realized she could levitate pencils with her mind.  Sure, it’s the grunt work, the boring work, the putting-you-to-sleep-just-like-math-class work, but someone’s gotta do it, and it’s probably getting a little neglected and lonely out here.
        …Okay, his brain is weird, but then, right now he can blame being loopy on the meds, even if it probably won’t work on anyone who actually knows him.
        This whole thing could be called a ‘wake-up call’.  A message to get his act together and stop acting like a stuck-up brat.  Because that’s not something a real man would do (no matter what the voices on the tv or his drunk dad would say).  There’s a chance he’ll walk again, if he keeps it up with the therapy, and he’ll keep at it as much as he can.  And if that fails, it’s hardly going to end there, because he’s not going to just fade into obscurity.  The determination burns in his eyes like a fire, and he’s not going to give up on his dream of being a useful Scooby, even if it will be postponed briefly as he slips into another almost-nap.
        Maybe he’ll demand a pizza party or something after the next couple surgeries and they clear him for eating something that doesn’t seem like it was manufactured for humans in the year 2530 or something.

 

Comments

[1_mad_squirrel]

I seem to be reading these in reverse order. Again, this has such a real feel to it.

[madimpossibledreamer]

I'm glad to hear I'm doing a good job grounding this series. And don't worry about reading them out of order; it might help if I didn't write so many of these stories out of order, but for some of my series if I waited to post until everything was filled in it'd never get posted. /grins
~Dreamer~