Rust Upon Iron
Rated SAFE
Part 5 of the Kin of the Heart Universe
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Angel checked both directions for nosy neighbors before he quickly climbed the tree outside Xander's house. Knowing the elder Harris, a man climbing in Xander's window would be cause for more trouble than either he or Xander cared to deal with. Angel sometimes wondered if the beatings his own father administered weren't kinder than the words Tony Harris would use against his son. Listening to that man made Angel's teeth itch like the smell of fresh blood did.
Sometimes Angel thought this society's attempt to protect children from a whipping had just turned parental anger toward far darker paths. Angel still couldn't get the memory of The Breakfast Club out of his head. So much pain, and no villains, just people who thought that as long as they weren't physically striking the children they weren't damaging them.
But then again, parents in the past had not been limited to their use of the switch. His own father had certainly used choice words when describing Liam's faults, especially once Liam got old enough and large enough that his father feared to take the switch to his backside. Those were memories Angel liked to avoid, but being around humans so often brought back memories of his own human failings.
Once again, Angel wondered if it was worth it. He wondered if he truly wanted to live in the world. When he'd seen Buffy sitting in the sun in LA, he'd been enthralled to her beauty. He'd been ready to sacrifice everything to her cause, but now he wondered how much of that was just his pride coming through again. He'd swoop in and play knight to her damsel; however, she didn't need him. And God knows that his presence had made Buffy's life more difficult… again. Even when he tried to avoid her he still managed to hurt her. He shoved that thought aside for the night as he perched outside Xander's window and softly rapped on the window. Even if he couldn't fix the damage he'd done to Buffy, maybe he could help Xander.
Peering in through the dusty window, he could see Xander stomach-down on the bed. The radio played that song with the twangy voice that Angel particularly hated, and the lights were off. He rapped a little harder, and the only indication Xander had heard was a shifting of feet. For long minutes, Angel sat in the dim light of a sliver moon and wondered whether this was one of those times when someone needed to be alone or one of those times when they wanted someone to push back when they pushed away.
Even if he didn't miss being evil, sometimes Angel missed the certainty he'd felt before the soul. Now he had no more answers than Xander or Buffy. He had far fewer than Giles seemed to possess, not that Angel thought any of that man's answers were appropriate for their current disaster. Thoughts of the disaster brought him back to Xander laying stomach-down on the bed ignoring him. The frustration of being ignored by a sixteen year old settled the matter.
With an aggravated sigh, Angel pulled out his knife and started jimmying the window. The screen was rusted and gave a weak shriek as Angel pulled it out and propped it against the wall next to Xander's window before working the lock on the glass pane. Sliding the main window up, he thought he might have guessed right because Xander didn't turn around and start cursing him out. Xander rarely withheld his displeasure, a trait that amused Spike no end… at least until Xander turned that tongue on Spike.
Angel crawled in through the window and stood nervously next to the open window, his thoughts still focused on Xander and Spike. If not for the fact that Xander was so quick to insult Spike by calling him murderous and unpredictable and heart-attack inspiring, Spike might have tried to curb Xander's sharp tongue with some discipline of his own, but the boy did play to Spike's ego without ever understanding how the demon could preen under Xander's words. When Xander would call Spike evil, the vampire would smirk and encourage Xander to keep right on calling him names. Xander didn't understand, and Angel knew that. Angel knew it and he didn't do anything to try and educate the boy. That was one more pennyweight of guilt on his soul.
Awkwardly standing next to the open window, Angel waited for Xander to say something, but he didn't. A breeze played with the edge of the curtain, flipping it up, and Xander reached out and poked at his radio, mercifully silencing the miserable voice.
"Xander?" Angel said softly. He could hear the parents downstairs, but he still wasn't sure how Xander was going to react to him, so he stayed close enough to the window to make a run for it if Mrs. Harris and her fry pan came running after him. Mr. Harris was, no doubt, too drunk to make the effort. Xander rolled over and blinked up at him with swollen eyes.
"What?" he demanded, his voice rough and angry.
"He's left town," Angel offered, not sure what else he could offer the boy. The smell of salt sullied the air.
"Too bad. I'm sorry Buffy didn't stake his ass. He should be dust." Xander's voice didn't crack, but silent tears slid down his face as he breathed in jerky gasps.
"Maybe," Angel agreed. "I couldn't be the one to stake him, though."
"Wasn't she important enough?" Xander asked, and the anger had started mutating into something darker. "Maybe she wasn't. Maybe Spike came to you and asked permission, what with you being all sirey. Did you let Spike kill Kendra?" Angel flinched at the hatred that came from Xander, but if he left now, he knew he'd lose the boy's friendship. Xander had many good qualities, but open-mindedness was not one. If this hatred festered until morning, Angel suspected he would lose the boy's trust forever, and he suddenly realized just how much he cared about that not happening.
"I never gave Spike permission, and he never asked," Angel hurried to promise Xander "And yes, Kendra was just as important. She was just as beautiful and worthy as Buffy. I should have protected her, but I didn't, and she's dead. I can't fix that. I'm sorry." Angel shifted uncomfortably.
Xander rolled onto his stomach, his back shuddering with sobs, and Angel could feel guilt clinging to him like oil, only this time Xander wasn't going to torture him out of his bad mood. He felt like he had lost both Spike and Xander. It wasn't a good feeling. All he needed was the taste of rat's blood in his mouth, and he would feel like he had slipped back into a life he had gratefully escaped. And still, Angel couldn't feel quite as bad about his own pain as he did about Xander and Buffy and even Willow's anguish.
"Giles shouldn't have been so hard on you," Angel said quietly as he shifted from foot to foot. Oh god, what made him think he could do this? His emotions were as rusted as Xander's screen.
Xander gave a dark laugh. "You mean where he told me that Kendra would still be alive if I hadn't fraternized with the enemy? Oh yeah, he really should have. I lost track of a little truth there for a while, which is funny because it's the truth I started out with. Vampires bad. You remember that truth?" Xander turned and gave Angel a cold glare that worried Angel more than all the hot hatred and yelling he'd heard earlier as he'd eavesdropped on the others as they gathered in the library. Giles had brought word after Spike had tracked the watcher down and bragged in his usual Spike fashion. Thankfully Giles had gone and found the body without the children. But that small bit of mercy had vanished by the time he got back to the library and had taken aim first at Buffy and then at Xander. Buffy had escaped with minor emotional damage, but Angel still wanted to tear Giles' throat out for the words he had used against Xander.
"Vampires are generally evil," Angel agreed slowly with Xander's claim.
"No, no not evil… bad," Xander hurried to correct him, sitting up on the bed. "Bad as in bad for you, like Twinkies are bad for you, only, like with Twinkies, I tried to ignore the whole badness. But here's the problem… ignore the badness of Twinkies, and cavities are in your future. Big, huge, drive a truck through cavities that leave you with the nasty whine of a dentist drill poking holes in your head. With vampires, the badness spreads like chickenpox or marker stains on your Sunday-best shirt. I let the badness in, and Kendra paid for it."
"You had nothing—" Angel started. Xander talked right over him.
"And really, that's funny because I was first on the 'vampires bad' bandwagon when Buffy was dating you. I staked my best friend in the whole fucking world because I got it. Vampires bad. But then I went and got stupid again, which is not big with the surprise because I do a really good impression of stupid. Put me and stupid next to each other, and you can't tell which is which. I am the perfect mirror-image of pure stupidity," Xander almost hissed, and Angel froze, not really sure exactly what he could say to fix this. Jesse had been one topic that Xander never wanted to discuss with him, that Xander would walk out of the apartment if it came up. This wasn't feeling like safe territory right now, and Angel had no answer to soothe Xander's pain.
"You know that first night I showed up at your apartment?" Xander demanded. "That first night, I only came over because Buffy wanted to come check on you because you'd done the disappearing act again, and I didn't want her falling into the whole big, brown eyed pouty sympathetic thing you have going, and instead I fall for it. Stupid Xander. Stupid, stupid Xander. Forgot the first rule there, Xander. Vampires bad. Vampires very bad." Xander stood up and advanced on Angel, his finger poking the air until he came close enough to poke Angel's chest, and Angel stood silent, struggling with his beast's need to push Xander back and put the boy back in his place.
"This isn't your fault," Angel offered softly. After Giles' angry words in the library, Angel wasn't sure Xander was ready to listen to that, but at least the finger stopped poking him. Xander just stood with his face twisted by all the grief he'd hidden in front of his friends as he'd comforted them and endured Giles' diatribe.
Slowly, Xander nodded. "This is Spike's fault. He killed her. He killed Kendra, which, you know, is like a 'duh' moment because he's been out there killing this whole time, and I just let myself ignore that as long as he wasn't snacking on someone I knew. This doesn't make me a good person."
"It makes you human," Angel disagreed.
"Go away," Xander whispered as he turned his back on Angel. The vampire instinct surged, and for a half second, Angel teetered on the edge of grabbing the boy and throwing him down in order to force a little respect into him. He physically withdrew a step just to avoid the temptation, even though the scent of his bloodmark on Xander's skin called to him.
Instead of following the beast's urge, Angel focused on quiet logic. "It you had stuck to your rules—if you had continued to insist that vampires were bad, where would Buffy be?" Angel asked with a false calm, most of his attention still focused on controlling the beast inside.
"Seriously, Angel, me and my stupidity need some quality alone time," Xander sighed.
"Someone hired the Order of Taraka. If Spike and I hadn't taken out the one-eyed bounty hunter, what do you think would have happened?"
Xander sighed and sat on the edge of the bed giving Angel a calculating look, as though trying to figure something out. Finally, he answered. "Buffy would have killed him, and then Buffy would have staked Spike, and Buffy and Kendra would have gone for ice cream after, only with no ice cream and more reports because Kendra was one for reports," Xander gave a strangled half-laugh at his own joke, and Angel could hear the desperation. "She didn't deserve to die. How could he kill her?" Xander asked in a small voice that Angel couldn't ignore. He stepped forward and let his hand rest on Xander's shoulder.
"Kendra didn't listen to Buffy or me. She went after Spike. None of us could have saved her the second she made that choice. And no, she didn't deserve to die. No slayer does, but that's what happens with slayers. They challenge some demon who's faster or who fights dirtier, and they die."
"Buffy didn't. I brought her back."
And there was the rub. The boy had managed one miracle, and he couldn't escape the expectation that he could simply pull another out of the air. Angel remembered the foolishness of youth, but he still couldn't quite understand it. But one way or another, he had to convince Xander that he couldn't carry the blame for Kendra's death. "You couldn't have saved Kendra," Angel pointed out, struggling to make a more valid argument, but really, it was so obvious that Angel couldn't quite decide how to prove it. It was like trying to prove the sky was blue.
"Maybe if I'd been there. I could have asked Spike…" Xander stopped and gasped for air, fighting the need to cry for a second. "I really do need to be checked for brain damage. One too many hits with the headstones maybe because there I go thinking of Spike like someone I could talk to when he's just a cold-blooded killer. A demon. A thing that needs to be turned into dust."
Angel sighed. Xander's guilt and his intolerance were both running high tonight, and neither were Xander's most charming personality traits. "He's the same demon he always was, with all the positive and negative traits still there."
"I thought he was a friend. How stupid am I?" Xander whispered so softly that Angel wouldn't have caught it without vampire hearing.
"You aren't stupid. In his own way, he offered you something as close to friendship as he could. Spike cares about you," Angel answered, not sure that Xander really wanted the truth right now, but that's all Angel had to offer. The others had ranted and raved… everyone except Cordelia who'd been surprisingly silent… but none of them understood Spike or his relationship with Xander. "If you had been there, maybe Spike would have stopped. He probably wouldn't have, but maybe," Angel admitted.
"He cares?" Xander asked incredulously as he looked up at Angel with a wet face. "How can you say he cares? He killed Kendra!"
"I know."
"I hate him. If he were here right now, I'd stake him."
"I know you'd try. He knows you would too, that's why he left," Angel offered soothingly.
"What?" Xander's anger yielded to confusion. "Okay, this is making sense of the not-even kind because no way would Spike leave town because of me. Spike knows he can kick my ass no matter how much I want to stake him, and I want to stake him a whole lot right now. Big with the wanting to stake him. I'd sacrifice my Batman collection to turn him back into dust."
"He thinks you might get hurt when he has to stop you from trying to kill him. William knows you aren't a threat, but he doesn't want to hurt you," Angel offered gently as he came and perched awkwardly on the edge of the bed next to Xander.
"Right. I'm just the loser. I'm just the one no one listens to or worries about or whatever the hell people do with people they respect, and I obviously don't know because no one actually respects me or what I have to say. I say 'just leave it alone, Kendra,' so of course she has to go and be Wonder Woman, only with not so much wonder because she's dead. She's dead and I didn't do anything to stop the whole process of her getting dead." Xander put his head in his hands in a gesture of supreme fatigue, and Angel could feel the urge to just leave, to escape from the boy's pain, but he wouldn't. He might not know how to handle this, but he would sit and at the very least endure the pain with Xander. The room was silent as they sat side by side.
"What's wrong with me?" Xander finally whispered.
"Nothing," Angel quickly assured him as he put his hand on Xander's back and tried to figure out if he should pat him or just leave the palm pressed against the shivering shoulder.
Xander snorted. "I'm thinking there's something hugely wrong." Xander leaned forward until his head rested on his arms, which were crossed in his lap. "I killed my best friend because he was a vampire. And trust me, if vampires really do get part of their personality from the host, then Jesse-vampire was about as harmless as vampires come. Only I don't know that because he's dust. Or actually," Xander said after a pause, "I do know he was harmless because any vampire I can dust is pretty high on the harmlessness scale. So, Jesse's dead because he's a vampire. Only I go and make two brand new friends, oh, both of them are vampires, but I never even stop to question that.
Swollen eyes turned to look at Angel. "Either I killed my best friend when I shouldn't have or I didn't stake Spike when I should have, but I fucked up somewhere. What happened to my nice simple 'Vampires bad' rule? That rule made sense to me. God, I can't do this. Giles is right. I screwed up. And the Willow eyes.... I don't ever have to worry about her with the crushing again because she looked at me with those eyes that said that she was so sorry I had so completely fucked up, and I did. I fucked up, only Kendra is dead, and how much sense does that not make?"
"The real world isn't supposed to make sense," Angel said softly. "And you didn't fuck up. You told her that Spike was too dangerous to go against."
"Which is a little like waving a red flag in front of a bull… or waving a vampire in front of a slayer. Yep, we're back to me being the poster child for stupid."
Angel sighed, not sure how to defuse this cycle of self-hate. Sadly, he found himself afraid to try because at least when Xander was focused on hating himself, the boy wasn't spewing hate for Angel and all vampires. He just couldn't in good conscience allow Xander to continue to carry this burden. Not for the first time, Angel cursed Giles for allowing Willow and Xander to tangle their lives and destinies with Buffy's. He accepted that he would probably not be able to give Buffy a normal life, but now he doubted whether either Xander or Willow would have one either. And in their case, they had no destiny to steal their futures. They only had their own naïve belief that they could fix the world if they only made the right choices.
"Before you, life was simple for me. As a vampire, Darla ruled my world. When I got the soul, I suffered the way I was supposed to as a damned creature. Then Whistler showed me Buffy and then I knew I was destined to be with her. Three different lives, three very simple rules," Angel started as he struggled to find a way to explain nearly three hundred years of life to a sixteen year old.
Xander snorted. "If you start that Romeo and Juliet crap again, I'm going to point out that they ended up dead. Dead is not the happy-happy joy-joy fairy tale ending unless you're reading those old, really violent fairy tales where everyone ends up burned alive or cut to pieces or something, and dismemberment is still not with the happy unless you have a pretty serious psychological disorder. Like the kind of disorder Spike has," Xander finished wearily. "And you know, maybe you should just leave so I can get some sleep before my brain implodes." Xander sat up and looked around the dark room as though searching for an excuse to get rid of Angel. Time was running out.
"Not Romeo and Juliet," Angel promised as he ignored Xander's request for him to leave. "My mother used to sit near the fire with her stitchery and tell me stories of Lusmore of Knockgrafton."
"Which would be something I know nothing about, and tonight is not a good night for long, Gilesesque stories," Xander hinted with his usual lack of subtlety.
"Lusmore was born with a huge hump on his back. Even though he was deformed, he was a good man." Angel ignored Xander and his rolling eyes. "One day, Lusmore heard the fairies singing, and he was full of so much joy that he joined them, singing with such a pure voice that they whisked him away to their magical kingdom and cured him, took his hump off and made him whole and beautiful."
Xander stared at Angel with obvious confusion. Okay, so maybe the metaphor wasn't as self-evident as Angel had thought.
"Xander, when the gypsies cursed me with a soul, I saw the demon as a deformity that would one day be swept clean, and when I saw Buffy sitting on the stairs of her school in LA, it was like finding the fairy kingdom and knowing that I was this close to being cured. I just had to figure out how to sing beautifully enough to earn the cure."
"Singing for a cure?" Xander asked skeptically.
"With one small problem," Angel shrugged. "I'm not actually all that good at singing. Spike once said he'd rather have me whip him than sing one bar song with him in the room. But I still couldn't help feeling like Buffy was the key to making everything right with me, that I just had to be smart enough to figure it out."
"That's…"
"Profound?" Angel supplied.
"Stupid," Xander corrected him. Angel frowned at him, and Xander held up a hand palm up. "I'm sorry, but it kinda is. And in your example, if the curse is the hump, then taking it off would be like curing you by taking off the soul. No offense, but after Spike's many hours of reminiscing, if you and your soul part ways, I'm vacationing on another continent. Possibly another continent in an alternative dimension."
"My point," Angel said, flinching away from even the thought of losing his soul. He knew the dark corruption lying in his heart the way no one else ever could, not even Spike. "My point is that life seemed simple. The rules were so clear—If I found a way to keep Buffy alive and happy, I'd have my cure. Then you showed up and pointed out that Buffy isn't just the slayer or a girl I had worshipped from the shadows. She is a human soul with human needs and fears and desires and a truly strange taste in music, and that is so far from simple that I feel like an idiot for ever having my Lusmore fantasies." Angel fell silent, just hoping that Xander understood this time.
"So, your way of cheering me up is to point out that I have company on the short bus of life?" Xander asked.
"My point is that you taught me to see that the more complicated truth is harder to accept but far more accurate."
"See, I know I didn't teach you that because I don't even get that. There's nothing complicated here. I screwed up by not helping Giles and Buffy go after Spike. Kendra came to help us. Kendra is dead because I didn't help Giles and Buffy. See? Simple." Xander crossed his arms as if daring Angel to contradict him.
"It's as simple as Buffy being the solution to my curse or Lusmore getting his hump removed," Angel agreed, "and just as wrong. "You know that Spike is… Spike is complicated. He's evil, but he's not particularly devoted to evil. He did far more good than evil in town, even if he only did it to keep in my favor." Angel glanced at Xander's stubbornly set face. "And to keep some hope alive that I would let him bed you," he added. Xander glared at him, and Angel had to school his face to impassivity in order to avoid laughing at the exasperation in Xander's eyes. "Life is messy. We both made choices that we wish we could take back, but neither of us is to blame for this."
"We're to blame for letting Spike live," Xander said, but this time, Angel could see that the boy said the words in the desperate hope that Angel could talk him out of believing them.
"There is no blame there. Dozens of people are alive today only because Spike ruled the Hellmouth with a vicious ruthlessness that left the minions too afraid to make new fledges. If we could go back in time and dust Spike, would we trade away the life of a mother of three in order to save Kendra? Would we really kill Spike knowing that dozens of people would then be vamped by the minions? Would Kendra even want that?" Angel could see the emotions war in Xander's conscience. "We did what we knew would save people. We don't have anything to apologize for because we did save people, many people. I seem to remember Willow having pie charts of mysterious deaths and barbeque fork accidents at one point, and the numbers showed that human deaths had dropped back down to pre-Buffy levels."
Xander did laugh at that. "That's Willow. Don't give her enough homework, and she'll just invent her own. And her pie chart was definitely on the side of Spike being good for the human half of good old Sunnyhell."
"Willow will come around first, you wait," Angel said "Her numbers prove that we made a good decision, and she'll see that. I know I should have tried harder to gain Kendra's trust so that she would allow me to place her under my protection. However, we weren't wrong for letting Spike live. Those pie charts represent people who are alive today because of that choice, Xander."
Xander sat next to Angel and stared at the wall where a poster of Seven of Nine stared back. "I want to believe that," he finally whispered to the air. Angel's hand was still on Xander's shoulder, and now he slid it around Xander's back and pulled the boy into a one-armed embrace.
"Then do. It's the truth," Angel suggested.
"But it feels… it feels wrong because I should feel guilty, but what you're saying is not guilt-inspiring."
"You shouldn't feel guilty," Angel said, and obviously he had failed because the whole point of this conversation was convincing Xander to give up his guilt, yet the boy continued to cling to it.
"Giles said—"
"No!" Angel snapped, cutting Xander off mid-word. They both froze, listening to the downstairs television as they waited to find out if Mrs. Harris and her frying pan were on their way up to find out why there was shouting coming from Xander's room in the middle of the night. Angel tightened his arm around Xander, desperately hoping that he wouldn't have to run, but prepared to dart out the window when the first footstep landed on the stairs. It never came, and Xander took a deep breath as they realized they had avoided company. Mrs. Harris had probably fallen asleep next to her husband on the couch.
"No," Angel said more quietly but just as firmly, "Giles carries his own guilt, for his youth summoning demons or his failure to protect Kendra or his inability to get Buffy to take training seriously. I don't even pretend to understand his guilt or his motives for being so harsh. But for whatever reason, he has spoken to you far more sharply than he should. You can't take what he says so seriously."
"But—"
"You know how much guilt you feel for Kendra's death?" Angel interrupted as he tightened his grip a bit. "Imagine if you were the adult who had been charged with protecting her. Imagine that you had to call her other watcher or her parents and admit that she died on your watch. Imagine that you have to write a report to the bosses who expected you to keep her alive, and you have to admit that you failed in your job, a job you've been training for your whole life. Xander, you're too smart to think that Giles' anger is for you."
Xander angled his body toward Angel a little, squirming uncomfortably, and Angel just used it as an excuse to pull the boy closer. "He's angry with himself," Xander said softly. "And I'm the one who's closest to being like him what with the having a penis and all because Willow and Buffy are definitely penisless, not that I've looked or anything. But Giles is angry with himself and so he takes it out on me."
Angel nodded. "I think my father did the same thing. The Catholics were losing land and position, and my father turned against his own father and the Church, publicly denouncing his own family and marrying the protestant daughter of an English settler. When I showed any sign of rebellion, he turned on me viciously."
"Do I want to know how this story ends?" Xander asked uncertainly, but he didn't try to pull away. If anything, he sagged into Angel and let the vampire support his full weight.
"Probably not. It would give you nightmares," Angel admitted. "I don't like thinking about it."
"Just like Giles doesn't like thinking about how bad he feels, so he takes it out on me?" Xander asked.
"Maybe. But whether it's that or something else, you shouldn't believe him when he says these things," Angel answered as he slid back on the bed, scooting toward the wall and pulling Xander with him. Xander just let himself be maneuvered.
"This is freaky," Xander said softly as Angel finally got settled with his back to the wall and Xander half lying on his chest.
"Do you want me to leave? I don't want to make you uncomfortable because I'm not planning anything." Angel tensed up, suddenly remembering just how uncomfortable Xander had been at the idea that Angel had been sexually intimate with a man. Maybe the bed wasn't the best place for him to offer comfort.
"No, not that. I mean it's freaky that you get this stuff. I mean, how long has it been since you were around the whole family dynamics thing?"
"A while," Angel admitted. "I'm a little rusty sometimes, and you know I don't always understand you… or Buffy either. But maybe that distance helps me see things a little more clearly because I'm not caught up in the middle of human emotions."
"Not caught up in human emotions. That sounds…" Xander paused, "that sounds lonely," he finally finished.
Angel sat in the dark with Xander's warm weight against him, the smell of Angel's bloodmark strong because of the sweat and emotion still seeping from the boy. "Not recently," Angel admitted as he leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes.
Xander's hand clung to Angel's shirt, and the boy's breathing evened out as Angel traced circles on his back with his fingers. Eventually, the smell of salt tears faded and the familiar soft snores started a few hours before dawn. Laying in the dark holding the boy, Angel considered just how much a year had changed his world. A year ago, he would have secretly cheered Giles for his verbal tirade. Now, he recognized that anger for the weakness it had always been. No, he wasn't perfect. He didn't blame himself for not killing Spike, but when the next slayer came to town, Angel wasn't going to allow his fear to keep him from insisting on being a part of her life. Buffy wasn't his quest, but the slayers were. He would give every single one of them a chance to grow up and a fighting shot against the demons they were destined to fight. It wouldn't be simple, but hopefully it would be the right thing to do. And if he fell off the wagon on his path to redemption, he'd just have to trust Xander to point it out, just like he planned on staying around and putting Xander back on the right path when the boy's self-hatred threatened to overwhelm him.
Neither of them had parents or family who could provide the sort of support that Angel had seen when Xander had insisted they stay up for two days straight to watch a marathon of Leave it to Beaver, but they could be family to each other.
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