[
The Dirt And Dust Of Countless Ages] by
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jenooferXander/Andrew.
This is just a perfect fic: beautifully written and running alongside canon.
He knows they’ve been feeding Andrew: he and Dawn are usually the ones who get stuck with eating with him because he’s forbidden from sitting to the table with everyone else (mostly because they don’t want him around). Still, he almost looks like he’s spent the last two weeks in a concentration camp and not Buffy’s living room. Xander tries to reassure himself that it’s mostly from hiding out in Mexico with no home and no money, but it doesn’t help. The blotchy bands around his wrists are yellow and grey, like the middle of an over-boiled egg. They don’t tie him up so much anymore: just at night, and when Buffy and Willow are out of the house. Still, Xander knows he’s responsible for those bruises. He was the first to strap Andrew to that chair, and oh crap Andrew’s been sleeping in that chair for how long now? Which probably explains the shadows under his eyes, the ones that make him look so haunted. Only slightly less obvious are the two neat little puncture marks on his neck, turned bright white and pink by the water and standing out from skin that looks like it’s been scrubbed raw in the shower.
They’ve done this, Xander realises. They’ve done this to another human being. All Buffy’s reminders about him being a murderer don’t seem to wash anymore, not when Andrew’s standing there in a towel, squirming under his stare and unable to look him in the eye. He doesn’t look evil. He doesn’t even look mildly irritating. Andrew just looks like he wants to cry.