Not a Joke

[madimpossibledreamer]

Happy Memorial Day if you celebrate it, and I hope the rest of you had a good day anyway!

CONTENT WARNING: The below sections are just as awful as you’d think they’d be if Miss French the Preying Mantis was not a metaphor. So that gets super dark.

In high school, Miss French had been grooming him. She targeted kids whose parents didn’t particularly care about them and who she could convince to leave a note saying they’re running away from home (i.e. kids who would not be missed). Willow turned him in. He didn’t speak to her for two months until the police announced they discovered she was a serial killer, at which point he showed up at the Rosenberg’s house in the middle of the night and cried himself to sleep. He gave testimony, Willow and Jesse sitting in the gallery and giving him the courage he needed. Jesse alternated between not understanding what was so wrong about maybe getting action from an older woman who knew what she was doing and being really mad at himself that he didn’t notice anything was wrong. He’d known what to do more with the potentially-killing part, because that’s obviously bad. He did realize that he shouldn’t say the first thing more than once, though, and that once was only obliquely.

Xander convinced the police detectives to let him look at some of the photos and to visit the scene of the crime, once they were done and with supervision, of course. Because he needed something to hold onto. He needed something to prove to himself that it’s not just a misunderstanding when his brain tries to convince him it is. He needs to be sure beyond a doubt that he’s not the bad guy for getting her thrown in jail or testifying against her. That he should squash any hope he had of marriage or a family or that she loved him—because while he can’t prove she didn’t he needs to grip the knowledge that she was using him, preying on him, tight and never let go. He never told Willow, and sometimes he still falters, but in what he calls ‘moments of weakness’ he can think back on how she’d prepared a paralytic poison dose while she’d been “dating” him. The evidence that she was a monster.

Giles feels incredibly guilty. He’d noticed some signs but Xander was so happy about the relationship and they weren’t as close due to the lack of Slayage that he didn’t bother to look further for the source of the dissonance. He helped where he could, encouraging Xander to seek the companionship of others his age for after-school activities. This led to an argument in which Xander accused Giles of not wanting to look like a predator, too, and Giles was too flustered to deny it even though his true concern was that the boy was becoming too attached to older people and not those his own age. They never actually address the fight again; Xander takes the advice to heart and starts hanging out more with Willow, Jesse, and Buffy after school, but seeking the library as a safe place during school.

Buffy was gone the summer all of this went down, and no one bothered to explain much of it to her. Her mom read the paper and was a little gossipy about it, but vaguely enough (because she assumed Buffy already knew) that it never hit her, the full extent of what went down. She made a joke about Xander’s teacher obsession once and Willow slapped her. Xander himself made a half-hearted quip about “that ship has sailed” and never brought it up again.

There was at least one good cop (Katie, maybe), who actually was super helpful to him, but the rest brushed off the indications that his home life had already been bad. His dad actually had been happy because Xander “had been less of a burden” and Miss French had been “friendly and helpful”. Mostly, he wanted Xander off his hands and she was more than willing to take him. Xander decided to live at Jesse’s from then on, and at least Jesse’s parents were fairly normal and made it clear that none of it was his fault. One of them went with Giles to chew his own parents out, but all they found was his drunk mom who couldn’t even carry on a conversation.

As aftereffects go he gets in two different moods: being secretive and oversharing. He’ll be secretive about something usually until he figures out how to word it and feels like he should talk, at which point he just rambles. He never seriously got into drugs (unless you count caffeine; he did use too much caffeine to try to avoid sleeping although once he got into college with a competent therapist who understood his situation he started being a little healthier about that). He is prone to obsessions, though, particularly once it came to Elysium Cipher (once he came to the conclusion it wasn’t a waste of time). He did still manage to do well in his classes, but when he got a spare moment he’d be there, and he wanted to share what he’d seen and understood with his girlfriend, who never really paid attention and assumed the only reason he cared so much was that he was cheating. He also does absolutely have issues with relationships. He isn’t actively seeking his own death, but he does automatically consider his life less important than others. And he’s flirty, but like Faith doesn’t mean it all the time.

He has depression but it comes and goes, so he’s not on meds all the time and prefers therapy when possible. He doesn’t talk to Willow or Buffy about the therapy. Those are the only other appointments he consistently keeps, and he actually covers up the rest, if they even notice he’s unavailable, as saying he has therapy appointments. Willow questions it and he jokes about wanting to make sure he (his therapist) keeps getting a steady paycheck. It’s a little more difficult, now, but worth it. (His first therapist was a woman and in general that actually made things worse. He didn’t really open up or trust her in general. He’s generally good around women, even older women, but gets wary if they have any sort of position of authority + trust over him. He’s good about pretending he’s not bothered but he’s on high alert at such times.)