One: Interrogation Intervention

One: Interrogation Intervention

“We don’t have a lot of time,” Tara said. She got to her feet and paced the length of the room, and then stuck her head through the energy field at the door and glanced down the hallway. Xander coughed a little in surprise. She pulled back and looked to him. “They’re going to be here any minute. You have to do what I tell you when I say so, okay?”

“Okay,” Xander replied. He cocked his head to one side. “Say, if I’m going to hallucinate, how come I don’t get to hallucinate Anya?”

She sighed in exasperation. “You’re n-not hallucinating!”

“Okay, okay. So why would the First show up as you? We’re not like, that close, you know. I mean don’t get me wrong, I always liked you, but I just don’t get it.” His head lolled to one side. God, he was tired. He closed his eye. Bled a little. Everything back to normal in his hellish room of white. Nothing to worry about except exactly what kind of crazy he was these days.

“Xander!”

He blinked as his eye fluttered open. “Oh. You’re still here.”

“Please, Xander. Just listen. Please. They’re going to come get you in a minute, and they’re going to bring you to the interrogation room.”

“Oh no,” he groaned. He curled up and tried to push himself into the corner. “No more interrogation. I don’t remember anything!”

“It’s okay. I know you don’t. You didn’t do anything, Xander. You didn’t kill anyone. I promise.”

“That’s what I said,” he whimpered. “But they showed me. I killed them.”

“You didn’t. You have to believe that, Xander.”

“You have to say that. You’re my hallucination, after all.”

She growled in frustration. “Xander! P-please! If you don’t focus, then...Then Willow and Buffy will die!”

He stared at her. “What are you talking about?”

She lowered her eyes and spoke in a quiet, almost fearful whisper. “You’re the only one who can save them.”

Xander twisted his body around and did his best to sit up. “They’re already dead. They just haven’t found the bodies yet.”

“They’re not. I would know if they were.”

“Because you’re, what? A ghost?”

She nodded once, almost apologetically. “Something like that.”

“And I’m supposed to believe that I ca-”

A heavy metallic clank echoed through the hall and throughout his cell. He knew the sound well, and had learned to fear it. It was the sound the outer gate made when they were coming in to get him. Xander fell silent at once. Tara followed suit, whirling around just in time to face the two men dressed in army fatigues. They stood with their arms behind their backs, taking up position to either side of a young woman. Celia Witt. Special Liaison to the Initiative. Nineteen years old. Slayer.

Sadist.

“Talking to yourself, bitch?” she asked, sneering at him. Once, a long time ago, he’d liked Celia. She was confident, charming, and funny. Her father was a carpenter, and she’d spent a fair amount of time with him when he’d decided to fix up the dorm rooms for all the new Slayers at the Cleveland headquarters of the Council. They’d been casual friends.

That was before he’d killed most of her sister Slayers. Before Buffy, Willow, and all the others went missing. Before he’d been captured and given a secret military trial that had lasted no more than two hours. There was no friendship there any more. There was pain. There were questions. There was white.

“They can’t see me,” Tara said, as if he didn’t know how this sort of thing worked. She must’ve thought he was stupid or something.

“Yeah, I kind of figured,” Xander muttered.

“Hey!” Celia barked. “I asked you a question! Who are you talking to?”

Xander looked up at her. Contempt filled her eyes. Hatred. He couldn’t help responding in a secretive whisper, “The First Evil.”

Celia visibly blanched. The man on her left spoke.

“All scans are negative, ma’am. There’s nothing in there. Clean on all spectrums, all wavelengths, and all planes.” He touched a finger to a small piece of plastic in his ear. “Shamans are reporting no activity. There’s nothing there.”

“Are we sure?” Celia asked. “If it’s the First, we might not know.”

He shook his head. “Mag-Ops says we’d know. Can’t hide something like that. Not from us.”

The other man tapped his ear as well. “Psych says he was mumbling to himself for a while. They figure he’s had a break. Supposed to be a good sign.”

A satisfied smile spread on Celia’s face. “We finally broke him? Good. I was afraid he’d die before we beat the crazy out of him. Or into him. Whatever.” She snapped her fingers, and the one on her left tapped a few keys in front of Xander’s cell. The field between them dissipated, and the two men stepped into the cell.

Xander whined and tried to cover his head with his hands, but one of them grabbed him by the wrists and easily pulled him off his feet before tossing him out of the cell. He stumbled forward at Celia, who grabbed him by the hair. She held him up with absurd ease.

“I-It’ll be okay, Xander,” Tara said, suddenly standing beside him. “Just focus on me, okay? F-focus on my voice.”

It was hard to do that, especially since she was just a figment of his imagination. It was harder still when he was being held up by his hair, and even harder when he was thrown face-first onto a gurney. As had become familiar routine for him, they strapped his arms and legs down before he could so much as think of attempting any resistance. Those few times in the past where he’d managed to swing a wild punch or randomly kick at them had always made things worse in the long run.

“Maybe now you’ll remember what you did with the others,” Celia said, her lips next to his ear. He squeezed his eye shut, fully aware of what was coming. A second later she bit down hard on his earlobe, carefully regulating her strength to pierce the skin and make it hurt without severing it entirely. He tried not to cry out, but like was soften the case, he failed. He was half-sobbing as they wheeled him into the interrogation room.

The interrogation was just like all the others, except this time Tara was in the room with him. This time he saw her sad, pitiful expression of sympathy as he screamed, bled, and tried desperately to remember what they wanted him to remember. Sometimes he felt he almost could, if he just tried a little harder. Anything, to make them stop asking. Anything, to let him just die.

It was worse with her there. It was worse as she told him it would be okay, that she was going to help him get out of this. He didn’t want that kind of false hope. If the insanity of believing he would ever get out of there was the only kind of crazy his brain could muster, then maybe he was saner than he thought. Or his brain was just too stupid to give him a proper kind of happy crazy. If he was going to hallucinate, he’d much rather it was something enjoyable. Like if he hallucinated that he was dead. That’d be nice.

After another eternity of questions, as well as the pain that followed when he did not have answers for said questions, they finally gave him a few moments of respite. Celia wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and placed the two metal tongs on the stainless steel table next to him. She glanced at the voltage readout and snorted. “This is nothing compared to last time, Xander. I was going easy on you cause they said you broke, but here we are again with the same old story. ‘I don’t know, I don’t know!’ Am I going to have to up the voltage?”

“No,” he breathed. “No...”

Celia grinned at him, her eyes sparkling. “Then where are they?”

He whimpered. Celia clucked her tongue. He heard the whine of the machine as she upped the voltage and picked up the tongs again. His breathing quickened, but he couldn’t even think to beg for mercy any longer. That, he had long since learned, didn’t work anymore.

Celia held the tongs in front of his face. She tapped them together so he could watch the spark of electricity jump between them. He prayed inwardly that she did not touch it to the scar that was once his eye. He didn’t think he could survive that again.

“Xander,” came the soft voice. Tara. Her face swam in his vision, right next to Celia’s.

“Help me,” he pleaded.

“When she touches you,” Tara whispered, looking as pained as he had ever seen a person look. “Say these words, Xander. Say ‘Ignis Fulmineus.’”

“What?”

Celia frowned at him. She looked to the empty space beside herself. “Is this your new plan? Pretend you’re crazy and maybe we’ll give up?” She backhanded him hard across the face. “You killed over a hundred Slayers, Xander! There are only a handful of us left! You think any of us are giving up on you, ever? I’ll make sure you suffer for the rest of your miserable, crippled life!”

Then she pressed the tongs against his chest. His entire body tensed. His back arched, his jaw clenched, he spasmed and his scream died in the paralyzing pain of it. Every time he thought he was ready for it; that it could not be as bad as the last time, and every time it was. After a second or two his scream managed to escape the confines of his lungs. His anguished cry was met by another voice. Tara’s.

“Ignis Fulmineus! You have to say it, Xander! Say it! Ignis Fulmineus! Say it or you’ll die! You’ll die, Xander!”

Good. At least something would go right today.

“Ignis Fulmineus!” Tara continued to cry over the scream he could not stop. “You have to, Xander!” She was crying. Weeping. He imagined tears rolling down her cheek. Poor Tara. “You’ll die, Xander! Please. They’ll die!”

They’ll die. No, not them. Just him. Just Xander. He would die, and it would be wonderful. Not them. He didn’t mean to kill them. He would never. He couldn’t remember why he’d done it. He couldn’t remember doing it. They said he did. They were so sure.

They’ll die. They weren’t dead already? Was that hope enough to risk living?

He said the words before he could make the decision. They tumbled out.

“Ignis Fulmineus!”

The room went white, whiter than his cell had ever been or could ever hope to be. A deafening explosion of thunder made his ears ring and his body vibrate from the force of it. An instant later the world went dark and his pain went away.

Now that was more like it.