fandomhigh | Construction Site: Tuesday July 31st, all day

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Construction Site: Tuesday July 31st, all day

Blissfully unaware of any regime-changes that he's missed while on vacation in the future, Xander is back at the construction site. He's also staring at Fraser's safety signs with a mixture of amusement and approval.

"Glad to see you guys have been keeping up the good work while I was gone. Not that me being back is a signal to start falling off things and breaking parts we can't replace, by which I mean the ones attached to you. Or each other."

[OOC: Open!]

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"Um. Maybe," Mel said scratching her head. "I'm rather taken with the idea of hiding whenever he gets close."

"Well, I've got a spare room and a really good security system," Xander said. "Do I want to know why he might come looking for you?"

"Um. Rikku and I kinda borrowed his car," Mel said looking somewhat guilty. "Without asking. And there were a couple of accidents on the road but we gave him a really cool sunroof. And a glove compartment that makes chimichangas."

"So you tore a hole in the roof and .... okay I actually have no idea what you could've done to the glove compartment. Does it really make chimichangas? Like my phone makes twinkies?"

"Rikku has mad skills," Mel said. "She also figured out a way to make things catch on fire whenever we hit them. We hit a cow on the way home."

Xander stared at her for a moment, then buried his face in his hands. "A cow."

"There was also a thing with... I guess you guys call it a space shuttle?" Mel said looking sheepish. "So those NASA guys might be kinda pissed. Not that they know it was us."

Xander found a nearby I-beam and began slowly banging his forehead against it.

Well, where his forehead would've been if it weren't protected by a hardhat.

Mel sighed and tried to get in the way of the head-banging. "Look... I know it was a stupid thing to do but-"

Mel faltered ab it trying to find the words.

"I thought I could runaway from what happened and burn off some steam like I used to when I was a grabber," she explained. "Only it didn't help at all. In fact it just kinda made me more miserable and feel more like a disappointment to everyone."

And didn't that sound familiar - how many times had Faith glanced at his car keys like maybe tonight was the night she'd just high-tail it out of town rather than deal? Xander stopped with the banging.

"You're not a disappointment," he said. "You didn't screw up."

"I let my guard down," Mel replied looking glum. "I thought Harth wouldn't know what I was doing. Instead I got ambushed, Dawn got kidnapped and when I thought the spell had worked Harth sucker punched me and killed Erin. We would have been better off staying holed up for three days and not doing anything. I should have listened to you."

"I didn't tell you not to do it," Xander answered after a pause for way too many thoughts to blow through his mind, including the idea that maybe he should have. But he didn't. "I just said be sure it's what you want. You didn't make him crazy and evil even with a soul. You just tried to give him a choice."

Mel slumped a little at that. "Actually... It's my fault he's a vampire."

"How the hell do you figure that?"

"He was with me when we got attacked by a lurk named Icarus," Mel said quietly. "I dragged him out of the house with me to go on a grab. He didn't want to go and I just-"

She sighed and just shook her head.

"Such a rutting mess."

"You didn't bite him." Xander winced as the memory kicked him in the head of what the vampire-him might have done to Mel if they hadn't been interrupted. "Sh-- uh, stuff happens. And it sucks. It is a mess sometimes. All we can do is--" Xander waved a hand around at the destroyed and resurrected school. "Try to clean up and go on."

"I know," she said. "but the whole guilt thing tells me otherwise."

Xander nodded, realizing there wasn't a lot that just telling her he didn't think she had anything to feel guilty for would change about that.

"Buffy was like that," he said instead of repeating something she already knew. "When Angel lost his soul, and when she couldn't kill him right away, afterwards."

"What did she do about it?" Mel asked.

Not that she could relate to the situation at all. Nope. Not a bit.

"Took a lot of crap from me, back when I wasn't being the best friend in the world," Xander admitted. Time and exposure to more than one person - more than one Angel, even - who'd turned their life around after a second or fifth chance had given him some perspective on that. "I don't know if the guilty part ever went away, but when it came down to him or everybody else..."

He was about to finish that with 'She did what she had to,' but it hadn't been quite as uncomplicated as that, had it. Which left him trailing off, because he didn't really want to mention that part - even if something was telling him that maybe he should.

"She took him out," Mel prompted. "Right?"

"Eventually, yeah." If he sounded guilty or evasive there, well... yeah.

"It's never that simple though is it," Mel said quietly. "What happened?"

"Willow's resouling spell worked then, too." Which was dancing way too close to a truth he'd never told anybody, though he wouldn't be surprised if Bridge knew. "But it was too late - he started something when he was evil that would've sent the whole world to hell, and the only way to stop it was to send him instead."

Mel fidgeted a bit that. "Did he come back?"

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