I was watching The Zeppo again, and I was struck by how much was in that one look Xander gave Jack and what "the quiet" might have meant to him. I didn't really touch on the quiet here, but I might in another small, barely-a-piece-of-writing like this.
.
Xander: "I know what you're thinking. Can I get by him? Get up the stairs, out of the building, seconds ticking away... I don't love your chances."
Jack: "Then you'll die, too."
Xander: "Yeah, looks like. So I guess the question really is... who has less fear?
Jack: "I'm not afraid to die. I'm already dead."
Xander: "Yeah, but this is different. Being blown up isn't walking around and drinking with your buddies dead. It's little bits being swept up by a janitor dead, and I don't think you're ready for that."
Jack: "Are you?"
Xander: "I like the quiet."
.
If the bomb went off, he would die down here with no one knowing the one selfless act he had tried to perform. His friends wouldn't know why he was in a boiler room with Jack O'Toole during an explosion, and he would never be able to tell them, or even to talk to anyone again. He tried to imagine dying like that, leaving nothing.
Xander realised, with a clarity that startled him, that it would be okay with him. Death had never been a very foreign notion to him, from those kids kidnapped from his preschool to the sinkhole at his graduation from middle school. Buffy's arrival had cemented in his mind, without even knowing it, that he was going to die. He had come to terms with his own mortality years ago.
He was afraid, but he would be damned if his last act on this earth was to fall to his knees, whimpering, and let Jack get away with minor injuries. He had seconds left, and he would spend them thinking about the people he loved.
He remembered Willow hugging him and telling him sincerely that she loved him, and Xander had known what she meant. They weren't in love, and he wasn't sure if they'd ever been, but they loved each other like siblings. Buffy had barely spared him a glance, with all her thoughts focused on Angel's potential third death, and Angel had brushed him off, not once but twice. Giles probably hadn't even noticed he was there, the way he was going on about spirit guides and the like. He tried to imagine Faith feeling sorry he was dead and couldn't.
He would miss Cordelia, wherever he was going. No matter how many times she reduced him to nothing with her words, he knew that behind it, she had truly loved him and had been wounded in more ways than one by his own stupidity and hormones. She may not have been pleasant to him in the past few weeks, but he would miss her.
He wished he'd had the chance to say goodbye and to apologise, but what happened had happened, and Xander couldn't change it, no matter how much he wanted to. His friends had thought that they were the ones about to die, and they had said what they wanted him to remember them by. He imagined that he was with them all on a quiet night, instead of stopping a zombie from blowing up the school.
Xander was okay with death, and he was finally okay with everyone thinking he was useless. He had nothing to prove to anyone but himself, and he had proved himself tonight in a way that was years in coming. The edges of his lips quirked up in a faltering smile.
"I like the quiet," he replied.