Title: My Best Friend
Author: Lysa-uk
Rating: U
Distribution: If you want it, ask first, I'll say yes.
Feedback: Of course.
Spoilers: None
Summary: Just a short piece about how Willow and Xander could have become friends.
Disclaimer: Same drill as usual. I own nothing. These characters belong to Joss Whedon, ME and everyone else who isn't me. No copyright or infringement intended.
Notes: We never found out how Willow and Xander actually became friends, only that they'd known each other since they were kids. As I'm an obsessed W/X shipper, I thought I'd get this little idea onto paper. It's amazing what taking prescription drugs makes you think of when you're ill.
"No!" Sheila Rosenberg sternly told her four-year-old daughter, prising the small wooden music box from the tiny girl's hands and placing it firmly out of her reach on the high dining room table.
"But, Mom!" Willow pleaded, using her best whining voice for emphasis. "He's my friend!" she told her. "Don't take him away from me!"
"I'm not taking anything away from you, Willow," Sheila told her daughter. "He's not real."
"He is," Willow insisted tearfully. "His name is Alex and he's my best friend. When I open my music box, he knows, he can tell, and he comes over and we play games and-and-and we talk and he tells me that we're always gonna be together."
"Willow, honey," Sheila said sympathetically, taking the little girl's hand and kneeling down in front of her. "It's perfectly normal for a child your age to have an active imagination. It's normal for you to make believe someone to keep you company and to tell your secrets to," she told her. "It's normal for you to blame someone else when you do something you know is wrong, like earlier this afternoon when you ate the full batch of chocolate chip cookies I baked for you to take to kindergarten tomorrow."
"But that was Alex!" Willow protested. "He likes cookies."
"Willow, he's not real," Sheila told her, her voice firm and unwilling to argue.
"He is," Willow told her. "He's my age, Mom, and he has brown hair and brown eyes and he smiles all the time. He told me that he doesn't like my Barbie, though, and one day someone's going to take it away from me so I can't play with it anymore, but I don't believe him."
"Willow, stop," Sheila said wearily. She turned around to her husband, who was sat at the table reading his newspaper. "Ira?" she asked. "Can you help me explain to Willow please?"
Willow's father looked at them, confused at first when he had been so engrossed in the day's events, and looked at his wife and daughter. He pulled himself away from the paper, taking off his reading glasses, folding them and placing them carefully on the mahogany finish of the table. He walked over to his wife and knelt beside her, in front of his daughter. "Sweetie," he said to Willow, "I know you believe that this young man is real--"
"He is real, Daddy!" Willow insisted.
"Well, what do you know about him?" Ira asked her. "Do you know where he lives? Who his parents are?"
"I'm four-years-old, Daddy," she told him. "I only just know where I live and who my parents are."
He smiled fondly at his daughter, shaking his head lightly as he scooped her up into his arms and stood up.
"I know that he likes cookies," Willow told her father. "And candy," she added. "Chocolate Hurricanes are his favourite in the whole world. He likes Aquaman and he said one day his Mom's gonna buy him some underoos so he'll be just like him, but he doesn't like clowns, though. And he wants to be a fireman when he grows up."
"Well, he sounds like a very nice boy," Ira said, "But how come neither me or you Mom have seen him if he spends so much time over here?"
Willow shrugged, pouting. "He's shy," she told them.
"Well, he doesn't sound very shy to me," Sheila commented, "Especially not when he's eating all my cookies."
"He's sorry about that," Willow told her mother. "But, please," she begged, looking between her parents with wide green eyes. "If you take my music box away from me, he won't come and see me anymore."
"Well, maybe that's for the best," Sheila told her. "It's your first day at kindergarten tomorrow. You're going to meet lots of new friends there, real friends, not make believe ones that live in boxes."
"He doesn't live in the music box, silly," Willow said, rolling her eyes. "He just knows when I'm sad and I open it."
"Well, that doesn't matter," Sheila said, looking at her husband and then back to her daughter. "Look, honey, I know that your father and I aren't home as much as we'd like, which is why you've developed this Invisible Friend Syndrome, but tomorrow you'll meet lots of other children the same age as you and you'll forget all about Alex."
"But Mom…" Willow pleaded.
"No arguments," Sheila told her daughter firmly. "You'll get a good nights sleep tonight and tomorrow everything will be okay."
---
Willow didn't get a good nights sleep and everything wasn't okay. She sat in the corner of the kindergarten playroom, refusing to do anything other than mope. She had been here about an hour or so, watching the other kids run around and play with toys and laugh and scream, but she didn't want to do any of that stuff.
The teachers knew that she was upset about something, but she didn't tell them what, so they told her to sit quietly until she felt like joining in and left her to it. She was glad of that because she didn't want to be here. She wanted to be at home, watching TV with Alex, but her Mom had said she couldn't do that again, and that made her sad.
Her eyes stung from crying herself to sleep the night before, red and puffy and itching as she rubbed at them again, tears pricking them again as she thought about Alex again. She wondered why her Mom and Dad didn't believe her. She was a good girl, she behaved herself, and she didn't lie. Alex was real, she knew he was, and now he was gone. She lowered her head, letting her long red hair cover her face as she felt her bottom lip begin to tremble and a tear slide down her cheek.
"What's wrong?" she heard a little boy ask.
She didn't look up at him, just sniffled loudly, rubbing her eyes again under the curtain of hair. "Nothing," she told him.
"Must be somethin'," the little boy said. "You don't just cry for no reason."
"My best friend went away," Willow said sadly. "My Mommy said that he was invis…invisab…invisabubble," she told him. "She made him go away."
"Don't be sad," he told her, sounding concerned. "I'll be your best friend," he said. "If you want…"
"Really?" Willow asked, rubbing her eyes and finally looking up at him. Her face wet from devastated to a smile that lit up the room in a second flat. The little boy who stood in front of her was so familiar, with his cute mussed-up brown hair and brown eyes, and a smile that spread all over his face. She knew who he was in an instant.
"Hi," the little boy said when he saw the little girl's face, holding his hand out for her to shake like he had seen grown-ups doing in the movies. "I'm--"
Willow grabbed him in a crushing hug. "Alex!" she exclaimed.
"Xander," he told her when she let go him. "My name's Xander."
"Oh," she said, her face blushing as she looked away, confused. "But I thought…"
"What's your name?" he asked, not seeing her disappointment as he pulled out two Chocolate Hurricanes's from his pocket, handing one to her.
"Willow," she told him as he tore into his candy. "My name's Willow."
He grinned at her. "I like your name," he told her. "You wanna be best friends?"
Willow thought about Alex, about what her parents had told her, about how this little boy was everything he had been and more, and maybe her parents had been right about everything being okay. "Sure," she told him, smiling shyly. "I'd like that."
"Your bubble friend won't mind?" he asked.
She shook her head. "I don't think so."
"Good," he said, grinning from ear to ear and ripping off a large part of his candy bar. "Come on," he told her, grabbing her hand and pulling her across the room excitedly to where a few of the other children were drawing and colouring, making her giggle loudly. "Do you like yellow crayons…?"