Title: Mending the Broken

Author: Kate R.

abelard950@aol.com

Disclaimer: Not mine and never will be.

Rating: PG-13 to R

Pairings: Giles/Ethan

Summary: Someone needs to be fixed. It takes a convention of "Villains" to do it.


Mending the Broken
by Kate R.

He hated to admit it but he needed Spike. He hated this, hated going to the Evil Dead to get help but there was no one else. Helping him support the semi conscious man in his arms was Dawn. She was the one who had called him. She was the one who had found their burden lying on the floor of his apartment scrabbling feebly, trying to get up and failing. Dawn had called him and he'd come. He'd gotten the man on his feet, wrapped in his leather jacket and then they'd stumbled out of the apartment fleeing whatever had done this to the man. And now, here they were at Spike's crypt and Xander hated having to ask the bleached menace for anything but there was no other choice. His burden was getting heavy which told Xander he was sliding more toward unconscious and that wasn't good so Dawn ducked from under one still muscled arm but so weak from hunger and abuse and knocked hard.

The door was thrown open a second after the knock and Spike just stared.

"Buggering Hell!" Spike exclaimed as Xander felt his burden slide completely off his arms and head into totally black out. Xander watched him numbly fall towards the ground but then…Then Spike was there. Spike caught the burden and swung t up into his arms. He looked at Xander and Dawn and then seemed to reach a decision.

"Lets go," he said as he pulled his crypt door shut with his heel on the way. Dawn followed and so, eventually, did Xander. He followed as Spike walked quickly carrying the burden out of the cemetery and they walked for nearly a half hour and Xander wondered why they were coming here when Spike stopped at a gate to the mansion on Crawford Street.

"He needs help I can't give him, whelp," Spike said. And Xander looked down at the burden and swallowed as he finally had to face that it wasn't an it, but a badly beaten and abused man and that meant everything he'd seen could not be dismissed anymore.

"What can help him here?" Xander asked as he brushed the blood soaked hair off the pale face. Blood from a cut on his head. And Spike chuckled as he knocked on the door in a certain pattern. Someone who looked like Angel opened it immediately.

"Not him, whelp," Spike said. "This is Liam. It isn't him we're here to see either. Hang on a sec while I set him down and then I'll get the master. He can fix Giles. Or he knows who can at any rate."

"The master?" Xander asked as Spike laid Giles on a bed in one of the first floor room.

"You know him, whelp," Spike said as he headed up the steps and knocked on the huge set of double doors at the end of the short hallway. "You sent him to hell after all."

And the doors opened to reveal another look a like for Angel only this one had a presence and a menace that Angel and the younger seeming man did not. He did not speak aloud to Spike yet they did communicate because then, he, The Master, Angelus, Xander admitted to himself, walked down the steps at a quick and yet still graceful pace. He walked to the room where Giles lay in the bed unconscious and he looked at the human man, Liam, and nodded. Liam vanished and reappeared a moment later with a first aid kit and Angelus set to work.

Angelus worked in silence, patching Giles' injuries, soothing him when he flinched in pain, even unconscious as he was, and by the time he was finished, he was angry. Xander could see the anger pouring off of him. "We have to contact Ethan Rayne," Angelus said and Xander could hear the difference in his voice and tone.

"The only person who can heal the damage to his mind is Ethan. So, if you wouldn't mind, could one of you tell Willie that Lord Angelus wants to know where the sorcerer is? And then, may heaven help Buffy and anyone who helped her. You think I'm scary, boy; Chaos Unbound makes me look nice. Now, Dawn is it? Hand me that blanket. He's cold."

Dawn nodded and gave Angelus the blanket he wanted and Xander watched as the dark vampire settled in a chair. Xander realized he was watching over Giles, almost...protectively.

"William brought you to me," Angelus said. "All of you are now under my protection. Now, I'm going to stay with him until Ethan arrives. Okay?"

"Okay," Dawn said. She cuddled up on the bed next to Giles and Xander sat on the floor.

All was silent for ten minutes before there was a rushing wind and a loud crash of thunder outside. Winds howled as power flowed into the room and a man stepped out of nothing. He looked down at Giles and then up and Angelus and Xander, woken by the crash of thunder found himself staring for the first tie into the eyes of an Enraged Ethan Rayne. And he knew fear. Deep, soul-chilling fear, as Ethan gently kissed Giles' forehead and looked at them all.

"One question," the sorcerer said. "Who did this?"

"Buffy?" Dawn squeaked. "Buffy."

"Then may god have mercy on her soul," Ethan said arcticly. "Because I wont."


END PROLOGUE