Tame

"Let me out!"

Xander, banging furiously on the door of the bookcage. Willow, Giles, Oz, Buffy are standing in a semicircle wearing matching little frowns. Cordelia´s a little further back, trying not to smirk too much. And Angel further back still, at the entrance to the library, watching them all.

Willow´s nearly in tears. "There´s no reversal spell! You can only get rid of it by passing it on to someone else... "

"Well, great. That´s it! Anyone got any friends who´re terminally ill?" Cordelia chips in helpfully.

Then Willow really does cry, turning furiously on Cordelia. "Shut up Cordy! And stop – smiling!"

"Sorry," Cordelia grins. "I mean–sorry" she says again with wide–eyed softness and apparent sincerity. "But it’s not like he´s dead or anything, and Xander´s always so funny when he´s frustrated!" Another smile at that, wicked and private, eyes downturned in memory. She continues. "And this is just such beautiful poetic justice."

Angel´s not sure where the poetic comes in, but he can sort of see the justice. Willow´s turned away from Cordelia in disgust. She´s listening to Giles.

"Willow, it has been reversed. A witch–doctor I know through college has done it. I was telling him about the last time and he was terribly superior about it." Giles grimaced. "I´ll write to him, and we can keep working on it ourselves..."

"Write to him? *Write* to him? Doesn´t he have a phone? We need to get Xander better NOW!"

"He´s–er, exploring the jungle in the Congo basin. Researching. He won´t even be getting any mail at the moment."

Willow moans.

"It´s OK, he´ll come back to uh, a place with a post office, in a few months," says Giles as reassuringly as he can.

"We can´t keep Xander locked in the library for a few *months*!" says Buffy. "What if someone wants to return a book?"

All eyes fix incredulously on Buffy.

"Well, they might," she says defensively. "I´ve seen it happen."

"Buffy does have a point." Giles polishes his glasses. "We can´t keep him locked here during school hours. I could–er–keep him in my house. Chained up."

"I don´t like it, Giles. He´s way too strong for you. What if he broke loose?"

Angel doesn´t like it either and steps forward. "I can take him."

Everyone turns to look.

"Angel!" cries Buffy in surprise.

"Buffy." Angel dips his head.

"Angel could take him," says Buffy thoughtfully. "Giles, Angel can take him!"

Everyone seems happy except for Willow, Giles, and Hyenaboy. Giles looks slightly jealous; Willow apprehensive.

"You won´t eat him or anything, Angel?" she says. "I mean, it really isn´t his fault."

No Willow, I won´t eat him or anything. Not that I don´t want to; I just won´t. I can honestly say it would be a new experience for me, and I thought I´d done *everything* before I got my soul back. Bet it tastes really good, that kind of aliveness. Human speech, human mind, human relationships all subjugated to purely animal instincts; the demands of the immediate moment. I´m not going to eat him; but I really want to get close to that. Just to see, smell.

With somewhat shaking hands, Giles fires a tranquilliser dart into Xander´s stomach. The boy looks indignant, sways, and collapses on the floor, and Buffy and I carry him out to my car.

In my house, Buffy tries to take him to the room with the chains. but I gesture with my head for her to come to another room. This room is bare except for the cage in the middle, about ten feet square with bars all the way up to the ceiling, big enough for a few people to live in discomfort. Buffy gapes at me.

"I never knew about–this," she mutters

"It wasn´t used much," I say. Mostly because Spike tends to eat when he´s bored and so we never really needed a place to store convenience foods. "It´s better than chaining him up." I semi–change the subject.

"Yes, I suppose it is. He´ll be more comfortable," Buffy has resorted to faux–brightness. "Can we put a bed in here for him?"

"Good idea." We concentrate on the mechanics of moving furniture, trying to shrug off the shadow that always falls on us when Buffy remembers Angelus. Then she leaves, and I´m alone, waiting for Hyenaboy to wake up.

Growling softly, he paces the cage. Something pure, something so pure and beautiful about a human in this state. Watching his body move: it´s him, his mind, moving. As if Xander is now just as much his legs and feet and–hips as he is his head and dark eyes.

Harmony in his body: he is wholly essential. No tense, awkward parts that don´t know their function or what part of space to occupy. Aware of the air, part of it; knowing his own scent is on it, letting it inform his skin. I wonder what thoughts he has. If he ever has any that are idle, wasted, paralysing, any thoughts at all that do not become action.

I took his clothes away: he didn´t want them, said they made him blind. And it´s true he now knows it better when I´m there, can feel it when I move. And I´m often there: it´s good to watch him.

Better than watching him move, is to watch him eat. Food from the butcher´s leaves him hungry and whining; he likes to crunch the bones and tear through skin.

So I bring him a live rabbit once, twice a day. throw it through the bars. Watch his naked hunger when he pounces on it. So shameless: tearing, ripping, covered in blood–so ruthless. Pure predator, and he´s dangerous: but I have him locked up and under control. And it´s good to know that this is what he is, deep down: this is how humans are without their masks.

Sometimes I´ve forgotten that: I have shouldered the world´s darkness alone. Scapegoat sacrificed to eternal brooding. After so many years, who can really know how humans feel? Who can say I haven´t forgotten? But I´m sure of it now, watching the savage show in the cage: this is what aliveness is.

I´ve become ever more fond of him: this Xander–shaped beast, my private zoo. There´s the sweet humiliation of an enemy: I confess to enjoying that–he´s driven his friends, driven Buffy away from him with his snarling animal–human words. They don´t visit him much anymore, spend time researching his cure instead. The things he´s said to me too, and my assumed air of saintly indifference to them. I´ve seen him naked in every way, post recovery he´ll remember that but still be forced into gratitude. Souled out or no I have enough sadism to enjoy that.

But I like him best for the kinship he offers me. Not knowingly: he still hates me, spits insults out whenever he can. But unconsciously: it´s in his sheer viciousness, his pure evil.

The second day I watched him eat, he dropped his half–alive, mauled rabbit in a sudden shift of mood. Spun around to look at me. "You know, Deadboy, we really prefer to eat corpses.

"I´d like to see you try," I said. Meant it very literally.

"You wanna step inside?"

I went into the cage, and he sprang. We wrestled, and he´s strong; but I´m stronger. He needed to learn that, I decided, when I wound up laying on top of him; holding his wrists above his head.

"You know, if we´re going to live together, we really should establish some house rules," I said. Then I chained him to the bars of his cage, and whipped him.

Necessary to teach him, not to have him spring for me in a challenge every time I take him to the bathroom.

Necessary, I think, to whip him: No–one ever tamed a hyena, and if they did they didn´t do it with kindness–pain is the only language he understands. Well, apart from English most days.

Not at all necessary, in any way, to enjoy it. But I did, although I realised later I was punishing him for the sins of my own demon, an evil I can´t physically touch. He bears scars on his back for my turning Drusilla, for my raping Spike, for my killing Darla––no, that wasn´t my demon, was it? But I hurt him for it anyway.

I don´t like him any less for that. Not like I was venting on something pure and good. And the whipping worked: he hasn´t tried to attack me, since. Watches me sullenly from half–lidded eyes, but he won´t jump on me any time soon.

We´ve managed to establish a routine: I even stroke him sometimes, pet his hair, run my fingers along his back. He actually offered me his ass once ("don´t you wanna fuck me, Angel?"), which was sweet, but I don´t fuck animals. Never have. Spike did, sometimes, when he was drunk or bored and he´d exhausted his repertoire of Fun Things To Do With Humans (never as extensive as mine.)

That shouldn´t surprise you. Spike had no finesse, and someone who doesn´t stop to listen to his victim´s screams isn´t going to care much if they neigh. But me, I just–couldn´t see the point. Liked to have a partner who knew what I was doing.

Only ever did the animal thing once, and that was to upset a farmer who happened to have a pet goat, and no daughters. ("No! Please not Ermyntrude!")

Thought it was absolutely hilarious at the time. Gotta shake off the memories. I speed up my step to the Cage Room, carrying a small pig under my arm. A treat for him, and for me also I admit. Once... more than once... I fantasised about feeding him a human. Because that would be beautiful, perfect to watch, and it would bind him to me forever.

No human. Not ever human, not by my hand. Bringing him pig, and he likes pig. There´s a routine, like I say. He can´t hunt, but I think he´s happy.

I open the door of the room to the smell of his blood. Drop the pig in shock, it squeals and scuttles off. Good pig. Clever little pig. Big, deluded, stupid Angel.

He´s happy. Tearing into the flesh of his own arm with his teeth. "What are you doing?" I take a step forward, feeling I´ve failed him, feeling irrational rage.

He looks at me with blood round his mouth. Not unfamiliar but it´s wrong blood, his own blood. "Need to hunt, Angel. Needed the feeling... of hunting and killing... You understand, don´t you?"

I can´t think. Too shocked. Upset, more than I have any right to be, that he can´t–be happy in a cage. Can´t–adjust. Be tame. Just accept it. Why can´t he? He *has* to. *Has* to.

Can only think one thought.

Gotta tame him...

Don´t know how. Do know how. Only language a vampire speaks. I seize the whip and storm into the cage.

I land the first blow across the broadest part of his shoulders, the second on his ass. That´s when I know I´m not going to be able to stop looking at my mark on that perfect, rounded little ass, feeling the urgent surge of blood to my cock.

Even while the defensive mantra of ...gotta tame him... is still repeating in my head, the frenzy I´m beating him with is more and more sexual, wanting to mar and obliterate the sweet, tempting form at my feet. Because he´s not human, but he looks it, and like every human ass ever formed his is a neon sign screaming *take me*; it´s approaching the ideal form of that generic ass–shape that´s designed to attract, to be an open invitation to predation. (you didn´t think it was just cushioning for when you sit down? Trust me on this, for I *am* a predator. It´s wise to look behind you...)

And so I hit him, more and faster, and the reason I whip his ass is that it begs me to, and the reason I stop is... not my conscience.

My demon, rather, telling me this isn´t as much–fun as it could be. That Xander´s not participating properly.

And I drop the whip, and I´m suddenly so ashamed. Demon and soul, because I know I´ve committed a coward´s crime.

Sudden flash to when I was human, church–going gentlemen who´d whip their horses too hard, sometimes race them till they collapsed. Who got off on the blood when they rode out to hounds, joyous as if the fox had somehow offended them personally. And there weren´t many whom I felt I had the right to despise, but I despised them. Venting their own animalism on creatures who couldn´t complain, wouldn´t tell, wouldn´t appreciate it. Even as a human I thought they were cowards. They believed in salvation and it made them timid.

I knew I was damned, knew it from the first time I jerked off before the crucifix in my bedroom, sometimes stopping to trace the carved torso of naked, pained, three–dimensional Jesus.

From when I used to walk around the church too slowly, examining the Stations of the Cross, paying attention the exquisitely painted agony on Our Lord´s face as he Falls the Third Time, his rather sensually painted flesh when he is Stripped of His Garments. Tried to fool myself it was devotion I was feeling: I knew it wasn´t. Knew I was really damned to Hell just like Daddy always said, and it made me brave and bold in my badness: what had I to lose?

And now my conscience, my hope of redemption, has made me a coward. Repressing to much, too long and releasing it on something helpless despite its strength, something that can never understand me: I did what Angelus would never have stooped to.

Humans can understand cruelty. Animals can´t.

And the hyena may be cringing from me now, but it would cringe the same way from a car that had run it over. He doesn´t get it.

"Sorry," I say inadequately, knowing he won´t get that either.

I creep quietly out of the cage and lock it. I have to hunt the pig before I find it: It´s fast and clever and I track it through fourteen rooms before I can catch it,, and bring Xander his supper.

And watching him eat this time doesn´t bring a pornographic thrill, just a tinge of morbid sadness as I realise his savagery isn´t cruel. It´s entirely selfish, and entirely innocent. Even feeding him a human wouldn´t have created a bond between us: it wouldn´t have meant anything to him.

Of all the people in the world, to forget that not everything with a human face is human.

I leave the room before he´s half–finished his meal.

Things are different after that. I´m still fond of the hyena, in a mostly detached sort of way. I worry about its welfare. But I feel guilty, and empty, when I look at it too long, and I only ever stroke it to reassure it I´m not angry. I don´t spend much time in the Cage Room anymore. It´s docile now anyway: it smiles at me a lot, in appeasement, I guess. It doesn´t need much watching: has never bitten itself since then. Maybe it´s too afraid to but I suppose that´s still good.

Willow says they´ve got the cure almost pieced together: they´ll take it away tomorrow, and bring Xander back. That´s mostly a relief, but I´m going to miss it.

They took him away a few hours ago. I didn´t come. I said, and thought, it would be awkward for Xander, to come to himself with me around.

I should go out and patrol, but I only seem to be getting as far as the door before turning round and walking to the other end of the room. And hey! this must be fun, because I´m doing it again for some reason. Maybe I like the noise of my own footsteps, what noise there is. Maybe I miss the sound of a heartbeat in the house.

Knock. Knock.

And that isn´t a heartbeat, cos they go boom. boom. But it is a not–generated by me noise, and as such welcome. I make one more trip across the room , but I have a purpose this time. I am going to open the door. It´s good to have a purpose.

And what a surprise, and not a surprise, to see Xander standing there. I wonder if he´s ashamed, or angry. I sniff, subtly, but he´s not hostile. Just–confused. Tense.

"Can I come in?"

I gesture him into my–hah–living room. Unliving room. Brooding room, perhaps. I don´t get many visitors, don´t know what to call it. Really don´t think Xander cares.

I sit on the floor and he moves a little closer to me.

"You were good to me," he says.

And the enormity in that statement is so preposterous that I don´t know how to query it. I make a smaller objection.

"Was it you?"

He hesitates. "Sort of. It was–me gone crazy."

I nod, glad to know that, finding it easy to imagine. A brief pause.

"I respected you," he says.

I don´t know what to say to that. I beat him, nearly took advantage of him, thought such–things...

Xander suddenly says "Oh, *that* wasn´t the crazy part." Afraid I´m joining the dots of this disjointed conversation wrong. Another pause. "I still respect you now."

And I *really* don´t know what to say to that. I *am* joining dots now, seeing the shape his conversation is making, and I´m terribly afraid I´ve got it wrong. Slightly afraid I´ve got it right.

"Not that *that´s* crazy either," he says hurriedly, and I have to smile. He grins back at me, and I feel the urge to stroke his hair again. Give in, and he relaxes under my hand, leaning against me.

And if he´ll let me do *that* while he´s sane, and he remembers... What else will he let me have?

"Angel?" he murmurs, almost purring against me. "Could I just... see the cage again?"

And this is utterly wrong, but also so very very right, so exactly what I´ve wanted all that time, that I won´t let myself question it.

I´m still aware that somehow this is a mess I´ve made. Somewhere, sometime, I´m going to have to fix it, and it will be painful and expensive. But that can wait, everything can wait, while I take Xander possessively by the hand and lead him towards his cage.

The End

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