Chapter Text
Xander stared at Angelus in disbelief. Something about Angelus had just changed. They had been locked in battle when Angelus just stopped fighting. Xander couldn't interpret the look on his face, but it was obvious that Angel was struggling with something painful. Slowly Angel's vamped out face faded into his human looking one.
"Wha..." Angel tried to speak, but wasn't quite sure what was happening. The sudden reemergence of his soul stunned and confused the vampire. He knew that he should know why he was standing in a torn apart room facing Xander, who was holding a sword. Angel looked over Xander's shoulder and saw Buffy lying crumpled on the ground, blood trickling down her forehead.
Xander, however, did not choose to answer Angel. In the back of his mind, Xander knew that Willow had promised to perform the soul restoring spell. However, it was too late. A giant swirling ball of light and wind and lightening had appeared behind Angel. Angel had already started swaying with the changing air pressure that surrounded him. Xander heard creaking filling the room. The statue of the demon had started to rock back and forth. Even though the spell had worked, it had worked too late to help Xander.
He knew that he only had one chance to save Angel. As much as he disliked the guy, Xander could not easily send a soul into hell. Even if that soul inhabited a vampire that had been called the Scourge of Europe. Xander quickly thought through his options. He could easily shove the stunned and unresisting master vampire through the portal. Angel was already unstable on his feet and quite close to the portal. It would only take a small shove to send him through. Xander couldn't do this unless it was the absolute last option though.
Clenching his fingers around the hilt of the sword, Xander ran through everything Giles had said about the portal. God, he wished Buffy was the one standing here making the decisions. Early in the fight, however, Buffy had taken a hit to the head, effectively knocking her out and leaving her to Angelus' mercy's. Luckily Xander had been sent with the information that Willow was going to perform the soul spell. Not that he had planned on telling her, but as his English teacher once said, "The best laid plans of mice and men..."
Xander's eyes traced the flow of blood sluggishly dripping down Angel's hand. Something clicked in his head and he could almost hear Giles' voice in his head. "Most portals react with blood. Used for both opening and closing, once the portal has gotten a taste, it requires even more for closing. Though a fair amount is usually needed to open one, one may be able to close a portal with a token offering. Blood and flesh of the conjuror of the portal is the most effective means of quickly and easily closing one of these gateways."
The sword almost seemed to move on its own accord. Without realizing what he was doing, Xander raised the weapon and cut off Angel's hand. There was no time for gentleness and if a hand could satisfy the portal that was threatening to send the whole world into hell, he would use a hand. Angel's scream of pain reverberated throughout the small room as he clutched the space where his left hand used to be.
Xander stepped around the handicapped vampire and threw the hand into the gaping maw. Unfortunately Xander's action was too little too late. The hole lost some of its diameter, but in general stayed the same size. The winds picked up. Xander looked over at the gateway again and saw it was shrinking. He gave a quick sigh of relief and turned back to Angel.
Angel was still standing in the same spot as before, clutching his wrist. As Xander looked over, Angel's knees buckled and he started to fall to the floor. The stress of fighting, getting his soul back, and then losing his hand in such a short time took its toll on the vampire. Xander quickly took the two steps to reach his once enemy. Before he could fall completely to the floor, Xander caught the fainting vampire.
Xander held Angel in his arms, noticing that his eyes were wide open, staring directly into Xander's eyes as he lay in his embrace. Neither man noticed that the wind had picked up again. They were too busy trying to figure out where the current they both felt had come from. When Xander was pulled off his feet, they were unprepared. Xander kept hold of the injured man, even when the suction became too powerful to fight. His white knight complex and his general feeling that no soul should have to experience hell, especially alone, gave him the courage to hold on tight.
Somehow managing to keep his eyes locked on Angel's, Xander felt himself being pulled into the portal along with Angel. This time, the portal closed completely. It left behind a quiet room, filled only with large piles of rubble, a bloody sword and a broken Slayer.
No signs remained of the two men who had been locked in combat just a few short minutes ago. When Giles and Willow would come looking for Xander and Buffy, they would find no traces or evidence where their friend had gone.
Xander and Angel would not have the same experiences as their friends back home. When they finally stopped being thrown around, they landed in a pile on the ground. They lay there, stunned, until Xander managed to get his breath back. He scrambled to his feet, managing to only step on Angel twice before he managed to stay upright.
Angel grunted, Xander was no lightweight, and managed to stand without too much trouble. He looked around trying to figure out where they were, still gripping his stump where his hand used to be. It was still slowly dripping blood even though vampire healing was usually quite fast. This much trauma to a body part would take a fair amount of time to heal. He wasn't too worried about the injury though. If he waited long enough, the stump would grow back. For some reason, vampire physiology made sure that mutilations would not occur. Just as a vampire couldn't gain a scar after being bitten, they never could truly lose a part of their body. Hair was the only exception to this rule, but no one knew why.
After searching out the arid landscape for some identifiable feature, Angel turned to Xander. "Where are we? What happened?"
Xander, who had been looking out at the horizon, turned back to him and replied, "We're in Hell. Angelus wanted to send the world into chaos and I couldn't let him, you, do it. I followed Buffy when she went after you. I knew she couldn't kill you, even with the fate of the world at her mercy, but I could. Willow tried to resoul you before killing you became necessary, and it looks like she succeeded, however, not in time for us to prevent the portal from opening. I took your hand hoping that it would be satisfied with the blood and flesh offering. It wasn't. Now we're both stuck here." He turned back to the horizon, hoping to find something, anything that would give him some direction to go.
Angel had no idea what to say to this young man who had shown so much courage in the past few days. He knew that it wouldn't have been easy for Xander to overcome Buffy's wishes when dealing with Angelus. He, personally, would have automatically killed anything that was so much danger to his friends and loved ones. Xander was willing to do the same, no matter what the consequences were. Only a very strong person would have the courage to do so, even if it meant going against the wishes of the person he loved. And he did know that Xander loved Buffy. Buffy was the perfect girl. Hell, he should know. He was drawn to Buffy for many of the same reasons Xander had been. He even understood Xander's hatred for him.
Xander knew what Angel was. Buffy always overlooked Angel's past, but Xander remembered that Angel was once Angelus, the Scourge of Europe. This too, Angel found admirable. Not many would stand up to such evil, even evil with a soul, so openly.
"Thank you." Angel's words carried through the air, quietly but strongly.
"You shouldn't thank me."
"Yes, I should. You saved Buffy. You saved the world. You were the only one that never lost sight of who--what I was and am. You took charge when you knew that Buffy would not be able to finish out her mission and kill me. That was the only thing that prevented chaos from entering Sunnydale. You sacrificed your life to prevent that, and for that I'm truly grateful that you managed to save Buffy from finding out what sending her lover to Hell would feel like."
Xander turned back to Angel and just looked at him. Angel felt like the boy was judging him and his soul. Xander nodded, having found what he was looking for. "Let's go. We can't stay here. The mountains probably have some source of water. Here doesn't have anything but sand. I'd rather avoid anyone that's out here as well, but somehow I think we won't be able to avoid that for long. Hell is called Hell for a reason."
Xander started walking, not checking to see if Angel followed. This he did with no hesitation. He owed Xander more than he could ever repay. Angel would stay with the boy until he told him to go, and then he would only leave reluctantly. Angel knew that this world would be extremely harsh and the only way either of them would survive was to help the other. And even without that, Angel knew that after all the trouble he had caused; he needed to make amends for the damage he had caused.
The two walked until the reached the first gentle slopes of the mountain. They managed to find water from a stream and washed the dust of their journey off. Angel used his vampire strong hearing and found several animals that they could track and use for food. They would at least be able to find the basic needs the two men had and live. Whether or not they survived this strange land was still to be seen.