"Hope" is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune
without the words
And never stops at all.
Emily Dickinson
~**~
"Don't you have somewhere
you need to be right now?" Xander asked her with annoyance.
"Nope," the blonde woman
answered airily. "I don't have to eat or sleep anymore; I can't get sick. I
don't ever even have to pee now. I'm just here to be with you." She smiled with
satisfaction.
"You know, at first, that
was a great comfort. This is starting to be a little weird, now." He understood
about vampires and demons. He'd dealt head on with monsters that made your
nightmares real, and killer gods. But Xander Harris, who had lived through
things other people couldn't even imagine, was having a hard time dealing with
the apparent 24/7 presence of his dead girlfriend's ghost.
The final battle with Glory
had been horrible. The god had drained Dawn almost to the point of death before
they were able to shove her through the portal to her own dimension, and close
the thing. The damage had been enormous, and the whole Scooby gang had paid
dearly. Dawn would never leave the wheelchair she was confined to now. Tara's
mind didn't return – in fact, she was closer to catatonic than insane, these
days. The wound the Knights of Byzantium had given Giles had become infected,
and although he had recovered after a long hospitalization, he was frail and
seemed years older than he had before. And Anya was killed.
When he saw her lying there,
Xander thought she'd just been knocked out. His already overloaded mind managed
to ignore the spreading puddle of blood beneath her still figure, and he kept
patting her face, saying, "An? Wake up. An?" He had the damned ring in his
pocket – after this all ended, he was going to ask her to marry him. Instead,
she'd been buried with it on.
He still didn't remember
much – Buffy led him away, he thought. She made all the arrangements, since he
wasn't capable, and she'd done it so recently for her mother that she knew just
what had to be done. He'd acted a lot like Tara for a while – eating and
sleeping when he was told to do so, moving through life in a gentle mist that
kept him from actually feeling anything at all. A few days after the funeral,
he woke up in Buffy's guest room, crying. He didn't stop for six hours – not
until the medicine Buffy gave him kicked in. Anya's ghost came to him that
night, and had been with him ever since.
They all thought he was
seeing things – dealing with his grief in a delusional manner, Giles had said.
So after a while, he stopped talking about her, pretended he didn't hear the
stuff she said in public, and generally tried to behave like a functioning
member of society instead of a man being followed around by a ghost. And at
first, it really had made him feel better, having her there.
But the problem was, he did
feel better, now. And she wasn't going away. At least she'd finally stopped
bemoaning the fact that ghosts were unable to have sex – that had been a little
too odd a discussion topic for Xander to handle.
But she was right – they
also didn't sleep, didn't eat, didn't pee. She was more than happy, however, to
watch Xander do all those things. He'd crawl into bed every night after having
her watch him take off his clothes, wash his face, brush his teeth – and he'd
get up the next morning to her smiling face, as if she'd been sitting there all
night just waiting for his eyes to open.
And she kept noticing girls
for him. Xander had all but abandoned going to the Bronze or any other
nightspot. Anya would sit right beside him (she didn't have any need for a
chair) and chatter in his ear about how that one had nice legs, and the other
looked great in black, until he finally had to excuse himself and leave.
One night after such an
episode, she seemed a bit irritated at him. "You don't appear interested in the
pretty girls I'm showing you, Xander. Why not? Have you decided to follow
Willow's example, and turned your interest to men instead? I'm even better at
finding good-looking men," she said with grim determination.
"NO, uh, no, An, I'm not
gay. I have no plans to switch-hit in the near future – or the distant future,
for that matter. I'm not in the market for a girl just now, though, either. My
girlfriend, with whom I anticipated spending the rest of my life, just recently
died. You should know that, since it was you. Why are you acting like the
hostess for The Dating Game all the time?"
For the first time since her
ghost had arrived, Anya appeared sad. "I can't come back for real, and I don't
want you to be lonely. When I saw you fall apart, I asked if I could come help
you, and that's why I'm here."
"But An, I'm fine now. I'll
miss you – I'll always miss you – but I can go on. I love you very much, but
you don't need to take care of me. I'll be okay."
But she pouted, and shook
her head, and so, to make his dead girlfriend happy, Xander tried.
His first effort was with a
little dark haired girl he met at the bank. Actually, she was a teller there.
Her station was right in front of a window, so he knew she didn't have sunlight
"allergies," and when he finally asked her out, Anya started jumping up and
down and screaming. Not for the first time, he was glad he was the only person
who could see and hear her.
He called Buffy and Willow,
and got their advice on where to take her, what to wear, even what he should
order from the menu. He and An had been so comfortable with each other, they
didn't do the whole dating thing, and their relationship hadn't had the most
conventional start, either. So he felt totally out to sea when it came to a
regular-type date.
The phone rang at ten
o'clock sharp on Sunday morning after the big event. He didn't even have to ask
– he picked up the receiver and answered, "Hi, Buffy."
"Well, how did it go?" the
Slayer asked him eagerly.
He'd already been through it
all with Anya, so he felt like he was repeating answers that were rehearsed.
"Okay," he hemmed.
"Okay? No better?"
"It was just a first date –
the first date I've had in – well, maybe my lifetime, if you don't count the
prom. I wasn't expecting fabulous, myself."
"Are you going to take her
out again?"
"I dunno, Buff – she's
short."
He could almost hear her
eyes rolling. "Xaaander! How tall is she?"
"I dunno – five-two,
five-three."
"I'm five-three. Something
wrong with me?"
"Your attitude is taller.
Besides, you're Buffy," he explained, as if that made all the difference
in everything, which in his opinion, it did.
"I think you should take her
out again."
Anya thought so, too, so he
did. There was no chemistry, he explained to Willow later on the phone. But
there was something else missing – something he couldn't tell his friends
about. There was also no Anya.
Apparently, the only time
his faithful ghost wasn't right beside him was when another woman was. The
first time, he'd barely noticed, being too occupied with which fork to use and
how much twenty percent came to. And Anya hadn't said anything afterwards,
outside of quizzing him, and it hadn't occurred to him that she should know the
answer to some of those questions if she'd been there. But on the second date,
the movie wasn't really very good, and he started looking around, remembering
how he and An would have simply made out in a flick this bad, which led to the
thought that An was conspicuously absent right then. That, and the thought that
he had absolutely no desire to make out with the girl he was there with.
Maybe it was just this
girl. He decided he'd give this dating thing another try, and he asked Erica
Wilson to go bowling.
Erica worked at the home
office of his construction company, and Xander, being interior foreman, had to
go there regularly for meetings. He'd flirted harmlessly with Erica before Anya
had died, and she knew when he'd stopped, why. She'd been kind and
understanding, even sending a sympathy card, and recently, he'd begun mild
flirting with her again, just to keep in practice. So she was a safe bet, in
his opinion. And bowling was casual enough that he wouldn't feel bad if things
didn't go well between them. Besides, he wanted to see if Anya showed up.
She wasn't in the car on the
way to pick Erica up. She didn't sit beside him at the scoring desk. When he
started feeding quarters to the Quake machine, he was sure she was
nowhere to be found – she used to always watch him play and make up stories
about the people he was busy shooting, particularly the men. Her tales of
disloyalty to explain why they needed to die usually drew a crowd of women, and
kept the other guys far away. If she wasn't watching the game, she wasn't
present.
The date had been okay –
Erica was certainly more fun than the bank teller had been. She bowled
passably, and was a decent conversationalist. But he got the feeling that they
wouldn't repeat the performance, and while he did walk her to the door, neither
of them was really clamoring for a kiss goodnight, so he let it slide, giving
her an awkward hug instead.
When he got home, he shut
Anya up the minute she got started interrogating him. "If you want to know that
badly how it went, why weren't you there?" He knew he was gambling with that
opening salvo, since Xander had to admit, as much as he loved Anya, he'd never
considered having her grafted on as a permanent attachment, and so he'd kind of
enjoyed going out without her. But since being without her had been the only
thing he really had enjoyed about dating so far, he wanted to know the
reason.
Ghosts, like vampires,
didn't have the blood flow to blush. But that girl sure could fidget. She
hemmed and hawed and danced around the question until he gave her "the look,"
which he'd only rarely been irritated enough to use on her. He'd learned it
from Buffy, who used it on him in high school almost every time Angel so much
as came up in conversation. Apparently, its effectiveness was not limited to
high school boys.
"I want you to find
somebody, and I'm afraid you won't be able to focus on them if I'm there," she
finally admitted.
"Why is it so important to
you that I hook up with another girl?" Xander couldn't help but ask.
"You – lost something when I
died."
"Yeah, my soon-to-be
fiancée," he pointed out. "No duh."
"More than that. Before, you
had optimism. You had hope. Even against all odds, living where you do, you
believed in 'happy ever after' – in fact, you taught it to me. When I died, a
part of you shut down. I'm not the only one who noticed. I've overheard Buffy and
Willow talking about it, too." Xander wondered how she could have heard that,
since she seemed to be knitted to his heels like Peter Pan's shadow, but he let
it go for now. "You stopped thinking in terms of 'forever,' Xan. I left you
alone. And that's part of why I came back, until you found someone else who you
could trust not to leave. Until you find hope again."
He wanted to argue with her,
but that would require examining feelings he'd made sure he buried deep. So
deep that just by acknowledging that fact, he might have to admit she was
right, and he wasn't going to go there. He did the next best thing, instead. He
talked to Willow.
He went over to her place
late enough that he was sure she'd already fed Tara and put her to bed. He knew
Willow's schedule pretty well, since she'd started calling him on a daily basis
after Anya had died, like she used to when they were kids. A lot of times, all
she had to talk about was what she was doing, and he got to know pretty much
what she did, when. Willow had always been fairly systematic about things. He
thought about telling Anya it was a date so he could talk to his best friend
privately, but he kind of felt bad about lying, so he just let her come along.
"Will, am I different since
Anya died?" he asked, once she'd stopped fussing about having company and
offering him an ocean's worth of liquids, all of which he declined. Did he not
visit her often enough? Mental note to spend more face time with best
friend.
"What do you mean?" He knew
this girl better than himself – she was avoiding the question.
"Have I given up hope, or
some silly thing like that?"
"Who said something like
that to you?" she asked nervously, and he got the impression that maybe Anya had
overheard some conversation to that effect between the witch and the Slayer,
after all.
He almost forgot himself for
a moment, and told her the truth. That would have shut the conversation down in
a heartbeat. "A couple of people have – " he fished for the word, "Implied."
Willow frowned. She knew him
pretty well, too, and knew he was lying, but wasn't ready to press the issue.
"You don't seem to be dating because you really want to, Xan."
"I'm single. I'm a guy.
They're single, they're girls. It's the way it's done – at least, I kinda
thought it was. When have I ever done things the normal way before?" He
shrugged – he could avoid the question with the best of 'em.
"Exactly," she said
confidently, then stopped. "And you don't miss Anya anymore?"
"I'll always love An," he
answered, totally honestly. "But I feel like she's always with me, and this is
what she would want." Oh, if only you knew, Wills.
"You need to talk to Buffy,"
Willow announced.
"I talk to Buffy almost
every day, Wills. You're one on my speed dial, she's two."
"No," the redhead insisted,
"You need to talk to Buffy."
"That's what you just said."
"About dating."
Something inside Xander rose
up in protest. Dating and Buffy in the same sentence with no intervening nouns
couldn't possibly be a good thing. "Why? "She hasn't dated since Riley left –
what? Almost two years ago, now?"
"Yup. So she understands
what you're going through, more than anyone. Talk to her about it."
After he kissed Willow on
the cheek and got into his car, he just sat for a few minutes. "Well?" he
finally asked Anya.
"Well, what?"
"You didn't say anything in
there. That's not like you."
"Maybe because I didn't feel
the need to add anything to what Willow said?"
"Now there's a first." The
ghost stuck her tongue out at him.
He pulled into the driveway
of the house on Revello Drive that had been more home to him than the house a
few blocks away where he'd spent his childhood. He was trying to remember the
last time he'd been there. Mental note #2: more face time with both
best friends.
Walking up the ramp to the front
door, he was vaguely aware of the filmy figure in his wake, and he wondered if
Anya would have more to say here. He raised his hand to knock on the door, and
it swung open before he made contact. "What took you so long?"
"Huh?"
"Willow called a while ago
and said you were coming."
She stepped aside, and he
walked in. "You got new drapes."
"The old ones were too long
– they got caught in Dawn's wheels and ripped."
"How is Dawnie?"
"She's actually pretty happy
these days. Whipping around in that electric wheelchair, she's the terror of
the halls at Sunnydale High." Her serious expression melted to a grin. After
everything that happened, the school had dropped the idea of taking Dawn from
Buffy's custody, and been fully supportive of both girls. Of course, they also
thought that she'd been suffering a degenerative disease that put her in the
chair, and that was used as the excuse for her prior absences and bad grades.
She'd been a model student since. "She's gonna be mad she missed you." Buffy
sat on the couch.
"Yeah. I'll have to start
coming around again more." Xander sat beside her.
"Well, with your new social
life and all…"
Xander hung his head. "I
don't know why I let those girls and all that stuff get in the way of our
friendship, Buff. I've been a little confused lately."
"Well, this sudden
compulsion to date also seemed coupled with avoidance of all things Buffy," she
said, a bit of hurt in her voice.
"I asked you for advice," he
protested defensively. Her silence clearly said 'not impressed.' Xander
appeared thoughtful. "Did we lose each other somewhere along the way, Buff?"
She was quiet for a few long
minutes. "After Anya died, you went away, it seemed."
Xander felt guilty for a
moment. With the ghost of his late lover as his constant companion, he felt he
had no choice but to pull away from his friends. They didn't understand – they
couldn't. But then a spark of anger welled up in Xander's soul. "I didn't go
away then," he said bitterly. "You pushed me away long before An died. You wanted
me to be your second on rare occasions, but you mostly let me stand around and
feel useless. You trusted Spike more than you did me."
He felt guilty again
immediately afterwards. He knew what Buffy had been going through – she lost
Riley, her mother, and then almost lost Dawn. He could see where a weaker woman
would have just given up. He had no right to chastise her for how she treated
him during that time. Except maybe about the Spike thing.
He looked up to see his own
emotions echoed in Buffy's expression. "I never did get it right with you, did
I?" She shook her head and laughed humorlessly. "I try to keep you safe, and
you always think I'm shutting you out."
"It's not good for a guy's
ego to have the girl protecting him from harm. Why do you always feel the need
to cover me with bubble-wrap and stick me in the corner, when you let Willow
put her neck on the block without argument?"
Buffy had clearly thought
about it a lot more than Xander ever imagined. "You've always had the most to
live for, Xan. The best shot at a normal life – I didn't want to see you give
that up. Once you had Anya, you had a chance at being the only one of us to get
married, have kids, grow old gracefully." She smiled for real for a moment.
"Although you've never done anything particularly gracefully." He snorted in
derision, and she looked down at her hands. "Anyway, I didn't want you to lose
that. What you and Anya had, I could only dream about. But you just kept trying
to get hurt – and before you explain, I know it's because you care about me,
and Wills, and all. But that didn't matter as much as what you and Anya had. It
shouldn't. You did it 'cos you loved us all, but Anya only did it because she
loved you. I could protect you both if I could keep you safe." He couldn't hear
the tears in her voice, but he saw her reach up and wipe her eyes
surreptitiously. "But I failed. She got killed. I took your future away from
you, Xan. I'm sorry."
He lifted her chin and saw
the tracks on her face, wiping them gently with his thumb. "You didn't take my
future – you saved everyone's future, Buff. And An did what we did because of
me, at first, but she really did care about you. She told me one time she never
thought doing something to help other people could feel so good, but that she
liked saving mankind almost as much as punishing it. I can honestly say she
wasn't bitter about dying the way she did." He looked around, but didn't see
her ghost to confirm that. Still, he was pretty certain.
"I suppose you two talked it
over when her ghost was hanging around," Buffy said, trying for a light tone
and failing miserably.
"We probably should…" he
began thoughtfully, "Have. We probably should have." He was still scanning the
area for her figure, a little concerned by Anya's absence. Half his mind did
wonder if Buffy was humoring him or had really believed An had been there with
him. His hand was still cupped around Buffy's face, and she covered it with her
own, looking for something deep in his eyes. It seemed she found it, and it
made her smile.
"Anyway," she said, this
time achieving the light tone she'd been striving for earlier, "You came over
here to talk about dating, right?" She was still holding his hand to her face,
and sitting rather close. Xander's heart rate sped up a little.
"Uhh." His mind refused to
switch gears without grinding. Anya wanted him to date; Buffy wanted him to
talk about dating. Would Anya want him to date Buffy? Would Buffy?
"Maybe the whole problem is
the people you've been dating," she went on, not seeming to notice the
incongruity of their physical position and this subject. "You've hardly known
these girls. You might need to be with someone who already knows you. Maybe
they don't completely understand you," her head seemed to be resting
affectionately against his palm now, "but they'd like a chance to try."
"Uhm, Buffy," he stammered,
wondering if he was reading signs or back to his old habit of wishful thinking,
"Would you like to go out with me? Like maybe tomorrow?" His whole being
clenched, waiting for the inevitable attempt to let him down easy. He realized
that with the other two girls, he hadn't been nervous when he'd asked them out
because he hadn't that much cared. But if Buffy turned him down, again, he
wasn't sure of what he'd do. After a couple of years of not thinking of her in
'that way,' the idea that he might ever have a chance with Buffy Summers
floored him totally.
She spoke softly, and his
own mental monologue almost drowned out her answer. "I thought you'd never
ask," she whispered, turning her head and kissing his palm.
Outside, he heard the sound
of one of Sunnydale's many church bells ringing.
~**~
"You did a nice job, young
lady," the heavyset fellow in old-fashioned clothing congratulated the new
angel.
She was twisting in the air,
trying to see behind her. "Wings," Anya said in wonder. "Thanks, Cleveland."
"It's Clarence," he said
with forced patience, then softening, "and I had nothing to do with it. You
earned them." He gazed at the unaware couple on the couch as they went through
the newspaper, arguing affectionately about the movie they wanted to see. Once
in a while, one would touch the other, as if not quite believing the person
beside them was real. "I have no doubt
they belong together, but how did you know you could make this happen? You
seemed pretty certain."
Anya smiled. "I've always
known how he felt. I wasn't totally sure about her, but she'd be crazy to keep
ignoring him now, and I don't think she's nuts. My assignment was to make sure
he had the chance to be happy again, and I knew she was the only one that could
guarantee that." Her smile faded a bit. "I'm sure going to miss him." She
looked distant for a moment. "Hey!" she yelled, and Clarence jumped. "Now that
I'm an angel, can I do miracles?"
"Ye-e-es," the winged man
answered carefully, "If we clear them with the Boss."
"Well, here's my idea…" She
outlined a plan, and Clarence's face lit up.
"You surprise me still. But
your unselfishness was what earned you your chance to be an angel. You've come
a long way for a former demon." Waving a hand in the air, a small shimmer
flickered and faded. "He approved. Done." He placed an arm around her slender
shoulders, their shining wings colliding as he did so. "Let me tell you about
how I earned my wings. Ever hear of a place called Bedford Falls?" The
two filmy figures faded away, while on the couch, the completely oblivious man
and woman laughed happily.
~**~
Willow wondered what was
happening over at Buffy's. She and her best friend had talked a lot about the
current situation, and it was clear to the witch that Buffy had been hurt when
Xander had started dating and not asked her to go out. She'd seen the other
girl's feelings growing ever since she'd taken care of Xander after Anya's
death. Her tender concern had grown into something much stronger, and yet she'd
been afraid to approach him. The two of them had both been through so much,
Willow was sure there was no one else who could understand either of them like
the other could. She hoped Xander wasn't quite as dense with the Slayer as he'd
been with her in high school.
She heard a noise from
upstairs. She'd been preparing the syringe for the evening, although she'd
hoped she wouldn't have to use it tonight. Sometimes Tara woke up in the night
agitated, though, and the sedative was the only way to calm her down, so Willow
always kept one by the bed. This was far earlier than anything usually
happened, however.
"Tara," she called out, "I'm
coming, baby." She stepped from the kitchen to the living room, syringe in hand.
She stopped in her tracks when she saw her girlfriend coming down the stairs.
"Tara?"
"Willow?" the blonde said
breathlessly. "Willow!" Tara ran down the last few steps. "I'm okay. I'm all
here. It's me!"
The redhead stood
speechless, as the syringe dropped from her nerveless fingers and bounced on
the floor. "Tara?" Suddenly she awoke from her frozen shock, and ran to the
other girl, clutching her to her and crying. "Tara! Oh, thank God!"
She didn't hear the familiar
voice that whispered, "He says 'you're welcome'." Although the shiny feather
she found in the hallway the next day was always special to her.
~**~
