Disclaimer: (looks down at scales) …Nope, wrong weight for Joss Whedon.

Rating: T

Warnings: language, sexual references

Number: 1/2 (or 3, but probably 2).

Summary: But seriously – 'I just wanted a happy ending'? He didn't know whether to feel insulted his friends bought it, or burst out laughing that Sweet did too… Post-S6:7 'Once More, With Feeling', Xander accepts the price and makes his own play for power.

Pairings: canon.

A/N: As amusing and fun as I find it to write Xander, it's often exceedingly difficult not to look at the Sweet thing and not shake my head at the man's sheer stupidity. This would be my attempt to reconcile that with the versions of him I tend to write – without taking the easy out of 'the fates made him do it'…

Tangent Stage Left: One Sweet Divergence

Part !: Damn you, Murphy!

—ox-oxo-xo—

Anya Christina Emmanuella Jenkins was a study in contrasts. She was logical, except for when she wasn't. She was honest, so brutally straightforward that one could easily forget that she had thrived for a thousand years in a vocation which embodied the phrase 'be careful what you wish for', not to mention 'to the letter of the agreement'. She was self-centred to such a degree that she had arbitrarily switched from advocating communism for humanity (albeit merely to her circle of friends and colleagues, in her customarily intense equivalent of water-cooler talk) to promoting capitalism and the profit motive when it became clear to her that she'd be the one to live with that choice.

And she loved Xander Harris, even if she had no visceral clue what to do with that beautiful, terrible knowledge, or how it came about in the first place.

Xander mused, in the cushioned, sweat-drenched depths of his couch, that it was probably because after a millennium of immortality, she thought of her human life in terms of the trappings, the trimmings, the material achievements. It was like she'd woken up to find herself living a computer game, and dealt with the freak-out by racking up the trophies with a single-mindedness that was awesome and unnerving to behold. The Game of Post-Demonic Life, played on Hellmouth Mode as a Human – and only one life to play with, which might be stretched out over a few decades if she was careful and lucky. No wonder she went as a Merchant.

"The hardest thing in this world is to live in it." Sing it, sister!

It was easier to point to those trappings, when her fear of mortality came a-knockin'. Each shiny prize denoted one more weight on the plus-scale of her current existence, the one that determined whether or not she had sufficient worth for her liking. Anyanka had been evil, but she had known to her evil bones her worth, her purpose.

Xander loved her for so many reasons. A lot of them, more than their mutual friends liked to realise, were bound in their similar personalities. Both were logical, almost always logical in fact, at least by their own internal logics – because in their world, sometimes conventional logic was just…pointless. Counter-productive, even. Both were honest, yet both reflexively relied on the context unspoken and the lost-in-translation and the incurious listener's need for simple explanations that were centred on them to convey as much of that honesty as they needed to express, and no more. (And there were, of course, some things that they might not lie about – but they'd never tell…) Both plunged themselves wholeheartedly into whatever cause, whatever purpose they believed in, whether as a reflection of their worth or in efforts to justify it.

Anya had told him once, that he'd have made a pretty good justice demon. He'd been aghast. But somewhere deep inside, in a place that he'd never tell of, the compliment had been noted and valued for its harsh, merciless truth that was meant as a truth.

She made him feel like a man. Like an adult. Like an equal, or something close enough – he'd always had a thing for strong women, especially when he also got the chance to be strong sometimes, too. Some aspects of the other were always going to be impossible to understand, but that was normal. She'd never been a man. He'd never been a vengeance demon…or a woman. They were their own people, and they understood that and moved along.

Oh, and let's not forget the sex.

It really was a pity about those trappings though, sometimes at least. Because Anya clung religiously to the trappings. Like pop-culture for immigrants to ape in hopes of fitting in, like iconic brand-names for the nouveau riche to follow in their fumbling steps along the old money's eccentric path, the metaphorical shiny things were the cues to her life as a human. Anya was a material girl, and not just in actual material – there were behaviour patterns to track and emulate, rational shortcuts to nip down and lessen the frivolous waste of precious, mortal time lost in worrying over things. She'd asked him to the prom, because the prom was a trapping. She'd wanted a kiss before she left, because that was what the romance stories demanded – another trapping. The sex had started out as a way to remove a trapping she didn't want – only to become another, far more pleasurable trapping. One that she could count off as each came, no less…pun intended.

Tonight, though, was the night for another trapping. Namely, the cliché that came with an unresolved argument:

The woman was never the one relegated to the couch. Ever. No matter whose fault it was or wasn't.

Which meant him lying alone on his uncomfortable 'resting place'. He really should've thought of that when he picked the damn thing… But to be fair to the maligned item of furniture, his restlessness tonight had very little to do with its lack of sympathy for his often-spongy muscles, and far more to do with the images that assaulted him when he tried to sleep on it tonight.

How many people had gone up in flames, since Sweet came to town?

How many deaths could be laid at his feet?

Xander gazed ruefully at the pendant and the book that had kicked off the whole mess, sitting innocently in his hands after he'd rummaged under the couch and pulled them out.

Not that he'd been the one to summon Sweet, not really. Technically it had indeed been Dawn – it was just her brand of luck to go stealing a partially-activated summoning artefact, even worse than his brand of luck (which tended to lean more in the direction of easiest humiliation more than anything else, though there was plenty of pain and a certain amount of death to stack on top of that). Seriously though – 'I just wanted a happy ending'? He didn't know whether to feel insulted at the way his friends (and Spike) had bought it, or start laughing hysterically at the way Sweet had also bought it. Yeesh, he could practically mouth along to what they must've thought – 'Oh look, Xander's playing with magic again, what a surprise, mm-hmm – when will he ever grow up and learn to leave it to the people who know what they're doing?'

Really? Sidekick he might be – a fucking mascot he wasn't. And besides, it had not at all, not in any way, escaped his notice that the so-called experts had dragged Buffy out of heaven. Or the way that the closing finale had ebbed towards its big swelling flourish while missing Buffy and Spike – what was the bet that they had their own lines to sing, for each other's ears only? What did that say about the people who were supposed to know what they were doing?

Actually… He had a pretty good idea. One that he really, really didn't want to admit. But still a good idea.

On reflection, the whole 'happy ending' excuse was exactly what he'd have gone with. Back then, though, he'd been very, very rattled – at first by the unvoiced suspicions coming horribly true about something being truly wrong with Buffy – and just blurted out the first thing to mouth.

First it was Buffy – and then by Spike, of all leashed monsters, singing all those wise, pretty words about life.

They had sang their peccadilloes, their frustrations, their fears, their deepest secrets (or at least some of them, for which he was infinitely thankful). And while their words had been caged in verse and rhythm and blown all out of proportion in spots, they had been honest. They had been true. Sometimes hurtfully so, often misleadingly so in the way of all rash words spoken in the heat of the moment, but true.

Spike was a vampire, had been one for over a century. The words were right, and had rightfully talked Buffy out of her self-destruction (he grimaced) – but, out of Spike's mouth they were a soulless parody.

Sweet had called it a 'number', and that also sounded right. He wasn't that much for musicals even before this, but Xander thought he could follow the plot here. Heroine is alone, abandoned by her friends, is in the depths of despair, until the hero saves her and she is given hope.

Strange, that. He distinctly remembered that happening once already. Strange, how that just happened to lead on to Buffy getting with the undead 'hero'. Strange, how there just happened to be another undead 'hero' handy for this number, too… of course this one wouldn't lose his soul if he got his 'happy ending', but that was only because he didn't have one to start with.

Yup. Someone up there was enjoying this. Or down there. Or both. Considering the sheer amount of shit dumped on all of them over the years, he didn't think which Side was doing it was all that important any more.

Him, His People, His Girls, His Girl, were being screwed with. And he had once again been the unwitting vehicle.

Because he was weak. And any attempt on his part to get stronger seemed to bring disaster on its heels.

—ox-oxo-xo—

There was some truly scary stuff in those dusty old books. This he'd known from the very first one he'd picked up. Back in high school, it was one of the Scoobies' ever-so-slightly morbid practices in times of dire, research-inflicted boredom to call out some of the more outright ridiculous bits of demonic trivia. But all of them had come across other bits, bits so sickening that they would instantly break out that lovely, lovely prescription known as Sunnydale Syndrome: Scooby Dosage – the finest blend of pretend after trying to rape your friend, dying in an underground cavern, being seduced by a demonic robot, getting hot and heavy with the mother of one of your students, and a plethora of whatever it is that's ailing you this time.

But at least most of what they found in Giles' library collection was about demons. What they found in the Magic Shoppe once Giles took that over… Sometimes, even upping the make-believe dosage didn't work.

After the Dark Mas…Dracula, though, Xander started trying to put away the medication.

Buffy was the Slayer, and every Big Bad she defeated just made her more powerful. Willow was getting ever-witchier, with Tara by her side aiding and abetting her, and was getting scary-powerful. Giles was running the Magic Shoppe, and importing books by the crate – he wasn't getting more powerful, per se, but was getting more experienced, more comfortable, more knowledgeable; and knowledge had always been Giles' power. Xander, though? He wasn't even being left in their wake – no, he'd been floundering and trying to coast along even keeping them in his sight. He was basically the one-percenter with an occasional idea or a plan that got them over the line, an older version of Dawn who could drive and bring in a paycheck.

He was Normal Guy. He was the Buttmonkey. And as the thing with the Ferula Gemina went to show, it was a lucky day when the Buttmonkey days only happened to him instead of happening to other people around him.

In Toth's wake, Xander could see two paths forward, two ways to find his self-worth. The two ways weren't mutually exclusive, not to a point at least, but sooner or later he'd have to either make a call as to which he'd follow, or find some way to juggle them both. The first: that encapsulated by his Confident Xander traits – the confidence to be a success at work, earn a good paycheck and make his way up the ranks; the confidence to stake his claim on the American Way… and when the time was right, the confidence to walk away from the fight and trust the ones with the supernatural power to keep the world going. To leave behind his purpose, and just live his life like a man anyway.

It was the way Anya would prefer, no doubt about it. She was there because…well, he didn't want to be conceited about it, but because Xander was there. Oh, and because co-existing with the Slayerettes cut down on the number of awkward questions about her persistent inability to fit in. And her job, because she was apparently making a bundle helping run the store, and a bigger bundle investing the first bundle. Point being, if Xander chose to walk away, then Anya would follow without more than a slightly guilty farewell to the others. And the 'guilt' would be but another trapping, one she exhibited only because the social situation called for it.

The second path: that encapsulated by… by the Xander who, in a basement under the high school in senior year, told a psychopathic zombie that he liked the quiet. The conviction to stay fighting the good fight – but more, the conviction to do anything, anything, that would help win that fight. And, the realisation that, just because he walked away or was pushed away from the fight, didn't mean that the fight would leave him out of it.

As long as he was weak, and still connected to the fight, he was going to be the Buttmonkey. So he began to keep his eyes and his mind open, keeping feelers out for a way to gain that strength, that power he needed to stop being the Buttmonkey – provided it was a price he felt he could pay.

But as stated, there were two paths to follow, and he could follow both for a while yet.

—ox-oxo-xo—

There was a saying: 'Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.' This was something Xander had noted fit exceptionally well with supernatural power-ups, which made the paths to power a risky and time-consuming proposition. So many of them required the person seeking power to be corrupted already just to even consider it, or implied advancing corruption as it was mastered. Most of them, like Willow's resurrection spell, had some ingredients and pre-requisites which said a lot about the person willing to even use them, let alone get their hands on them.

It was mind-boggling, the lengths available for people to go to. It was sadly unsurprising, though, that Xander wasn't willing to go to most of those lengths. Where the price wasn't too high to pay, Willow had her own proprietary interests and wouldn't even think about letting Xander wander into them. Not even Tara or Giles would help him there.

Anya had long forsaken her own paths to mystical power, largely because she had trouble thinking of herself as anything along those lines other than being the vengeance demon she had been. But she had less trouble thinking of Xander going at least a little way along those other paths – if for no other reason than because their relationship was less likely to come to a horrible end if Xander had some power as opposed to none. Xander leaving the fight was still the preferred option, but if he was still going to fight, then Xander-with-power was arguably better than remaining as the Buttmonkey. So she'd had some suggestions. Most had been useless to him, more like demonology than magic, but he'd had his own ideas as a result.

So he'd gone thumbing through his old tabletop games for inspiration, ticking off options against what he'd already read.

Warrior was out – great as it looked from a distance, he'd already had bad experiences with those kinds of power-ups. (And if Marine had any hope of working without the kind of screw-ups you could expect when dependent on illegal avenues of resupply, he would have stuck with that years ago.) Mage was out – Willow, along with Tara and Giles had those covered, and Xander had something of a bad rep (undeserved, but there nevertheless) for being hopeless at the magics. Cleric was out – for that kind of thing, you needed to believe, and Xander didn't. (That, and Anya would kill him if he even thought about taking celibacy vows.) Rogue was out, and sounded both pointless and dangerous anyway; same for Demonologist, only with added ickiness and danger. And anything with cutting-edge technology was right out.

Archer sounded good, and he'd actually toyed with the idea – but to get even close to good enough at that would take years of practice and repetition and building up specific muscle groups, and Buffy could get that down in days if she wanted. And Bard sounded flat-out useless…

…until he ran across Anya's latest consignment. At which point he'd had a flash of inspiration, where several bits of trivia and knowledge had come together into something that might be worth trying.

Their lives on the Hellmouth, and the way it all seemed to run like a soap-opera sometimes. Not to mention Murphy, and the way that spirit of bad timing liked to hover over them all with malicious glee. Xander was well aware that people elsewhere got away with saying things like 'glad that's over', 'this can't possibly get worse', the W-word and other such expressions all the time. That just never happened here, especially with them.

A piece of Star Wars backstory, about one of the less flashy yet ridiculously effective Jedi tricks. Battle-meditation, as Xander understood it, was the knack of tuning in with the Force of a given area to ride the ebbs and flows of battle and nudge the probabilities to tip luck the way of one side of the combatants. In short, a way to entice the spirit of Murphy to your side, which was nothing to be sneezed at.

The Bards of Dungeons and Dragons, and the things they could do with their music. They'd already run into Hansel and Gretel, the Invisible Man (Girl), and a bunch of other things which could have come from various horror movies and fairy tales – chances were there was a Pied Piper running around somewhere…probably on goat-legs, come to think of it. But Xander also knew that bands and minstrels had also marched with armies in medieval times, not only to help the soldiers keep time in their manoeuvres but also to buoy their spirits for the coming battles. It was a pity that Oz had missed that trick. And that Giles was still missing that trick.

Though Giles might have put that option aside because of Eyghon. The book that had been missorted into the other crate, the one that didn't contain the box of a dozen Sweet-summoning pendants, had listed out a great many options for their use; however, Sweet was a demon that represented song and dance in the same way that D'Hoffryn and his subordinates represented justice and vengeance. Giles couldn't be blamed for wanting to avoid the kinds of power-ups that demons handed out, not after his own bad experience with one of them.

Many of the pendants' uses were repugnant to him. But there was one which, after a certain amount of thought and one spark of inspiration, Xander decided was actually kinda appealing – especially when he considered that, through one plan or mishap or another, he had actually already filled the pre-requisites for that option.

To act in concert (the Enjoining spell), to lead (the Graduation Day battle), to serve (Dracula); to betray (the Lie about the soul curse), to desert (through Spike's efforts, before the Enjoining spell), and to act alone (the bomb in the school basement) – he had done not just some, but all of these. To ensnare hearts (commissioning the Valentine's Day spell), to break them (the Fluke), and to restore them (the 'hero' speech to Buffy) were three more requirements that he'd already filled. He'd even both killed and resurrected a loved one (Jesse and Buffy, both in sophomore year).

And when that wealth of experience was combined with a few mildly dark ingredients and two rituals that were nowhere near as freaky as the resurrection spell Willow had dragooned them all into, the promised result would be something that apparently worked a lot like the divination powers that anagogic demon buddy of Angel's had, only with whistling or humming as the medium instead of singing. On the one hand, it would only be a lite version of that – but on the other hand, Xander could see the plus side of even that much foresight. It would be like the knowledge of Murphy that the Scoobies had already picked up over the years, only more accurate and a little more specific.

Even better was the bit about increased ability with musical instruments, and the uses they might be able to be put to if he developed both his skills and his powers; while there was a definite hint of mind-manipulation to the more advanced practices, those dangers were obvious and so obviously easy to avoid. And best of all, Xander could trigger all this with just a partially-activated pendant – and because it was just a sharpening of the wiggins-senses that anyone with half a brain could theoretically develop all on their lonesome, Sweet wouldn't even need to be supplicated to in person. So Xander could get his power-up in a relatively safe area which none of the others had gone or wanted to go, beef it up and fine-tune it over the coming months and years, and could do all that without ever actually getting Sweet involved!

…Or at least, that was the theory. The theory that didn't involve witches. Evil, pendant-stealing witches who must've somehow got their hands on another pendant other than the one he'd hung onto for the ritual or the eleven he'd destroyed both because they were dangerous and because partially activating one would automatically do the same for all the others in the box. (Fortunately, the relevant song hadn't called for that much detail on his part, although that was just as much down to Willow and Tara getting offended over the whole 'evil witches' bit. Ironic, huh Wills?)

As it turned out afterwards, there had been thirteen pendants in the box, not twelve. Because the accompanying book had been in the other crate, Anya hadn't immediately known what it was, and so had left that last pendant out for Giles to take a look at when he had the chance… only for Dawn to exhibit her growing kleptomaniac tendencies and pinch the damn thing – and then unwittingly piggyback on top of his own first ritual in the week-long gap between that and the second ritual, the one which would've cemented the deal.

Although…

Xander sat up, turned the light on after making sure the door to their bedroom was closed, and started flicking through the book. If what he recalled was right, this last pendant was no longer activated after Sweet's departure. But if his luck was running true to form, there was a good chance it was still just activated enough to summon Sweet yet again…

…Nope. The Buttmonkey Syndrome had struck again.

That was, the version of it where the symptoms stuck around for just long enough for the fates that laughed at him to take advantage for maximum pain. The pendant was no longer activated – but that also invalidated the first ritual that he'd cast, which meant he'd have to start all over again. And unlike last time, Sweet's attention had definitely been drawn beforehand. Sweet was gone – but he wouldn't stay gone if he went trying the rituals again.

In other words: no soup for you!

Dammit.

Xander glumly skimmed through the rest of the book for lack of anything else to do, indulging in a morose round of Laugh at the Stupid Would-be Warlocks and their Convoluted Plans of Evil Stupidness: Solitaire Version. If anything, the rest of it was even worse than the first half of the book.

And then the last pages caught his attention.

The requirements were more of the same as the one he'd just tried. There were other, harder ones to fulfill, though, some of which he didn't qualify for. Not that he wanted to qualify for them – the one about his lover being abandoned and killed, and the one about losing an important body part and becoming disfigured being two in particular. (Ironically, he'd probably count for the 'murderer' part, what with Sweet being summoned.) There were others which were just unlikely and virtually impossible to plan for, like the one about first appropriating and then rejecting an item of power over hearts and minds, or the one about being prepared for and then saved from being a sacrifice, or the one about first abducting and then being foiled and overpowered by one's abductee.

If anything, this one sounded even more impossible than the attempted ritual had been at first glance. And while the reward sounded powerful as all hell (well, all one hell in particular anyway), the downside was a massive one for anyone who treasured the normal life. Although… he supposed if he'd just gone through all those new and excruciatingly painful pre-requisites, it might be a different story. Or, y'know, if he was a magnificent (and evil) bastard who somehow manipulated all that into happening. Which he definitely wasn't.

Honestly, the only reason he stopped to read it at all was the section header, which had him chuckling bitterly: 'The Dance-Off'.

Oh well, he thought as the sky began to lighten outside. A new day of work beckoned. But first, he should probably check in with Anya. Just because Xander had spent the night on the couch, didn't automatically mean that she would be averse to him giving her orgasms or breakfast before he left for the jobsite. God how he loved this woman…

Ending A/N: So thus far, we have…no divergence, none at all. Next chapter, as hinted at, is where the tangent runs…