Title: Wanting
Author: Shin Willow.
Spoilers: None probably.
Category: Drama
Rating: PG
Author's Note: Just depressed one night. It was this or the pills…
People always wind up wanting, wanting more.
Xander never did, he settled for having anything at all.
Love.
Xander didn't want love.
Love and happiness and lasting contentment.
He settled for the pittance of affection and unreliable bouts of joy, and times when he wasn't wading up to his neck in worthlessness.
On some level he was disgusted with his acceptance, his capitulation to mediocrity and obscurity, his long-fucking-time relationship with both.
But Xander didn't pay that much attention to it anymore, because Xander could take it.
Xander was solid—Xander didn't change.
And he has never been consistent otherwise, and likes that in this, he is.
He remembers the last time he wanted though.
He was five, a day and stones throw away from six, and he met Willow.
He was five and he saw the future.
Kids weren't supposed to see the road ahead, kids weren't supposed to know they could die.
Xander knew, he saw the end of the line in Willow's big, wet, green wonderful eyes, and he stopped wanting.
Just like that.
Because people want more, it's what separates them from the animals of the non-sentient kind.
Willow was the future.
The future was Willow.
Jack, from that movie with the boat, the big one that lost to something bigger and colder and tougher than it, said it better than Xander ever could.
Xander was five, and he knew how the world worked.
He, with stark clarity, divined the world wanted Willow.
Smart.
She was so smart, always was.
And Willow wanted the world.
She had places to go.
Ways to grow.
Xander did not grow.
Xander had no place to go.
No place he wanted to go, but where Willow led.
Love her.
Loved her then.
Not grown up stuff or anything, but in a way that sometimes made him feel warm and tight.
Just needed to hold her hands sometimes just to be sure he could... to know that she was still real.
Because there were times when he went months without touching anyone.
And it was easy to forget people existed.
That he existed.
Nothing and no one wanted him.
How long until Willow realized she only thought she did…
Approximately twelve years.
He loved Buffy.
Xander did love Buffy.
He loved that she was trapped, she'd never go anywhere.
Couldn't, unless she was dead.
But she didn't want him
He loved Giles.
Xander did love Giles.
G-man.
Rupert.
Mr. Giles, properly said, was not his dad.
And that's cool, lined up with the voice in his head always screaming stop wanting, stupid kid.
But it was fun pretending he did.
Want, that is.
But Xander got by on needing and not getting, or getting and not keeping.
It's who he is, who he has been.
"I like the quiet."
