Xander looked at the time. 11:45, five minutes after the last time he looked. Cleveland was boring. Everything cleared out after the Hellmouth erupted. You'd think there would be demons to kill, but nooo, Buffy and Faith had to shut the Hellmouth down. On the upside though, they didn't need Spike and his stupid amulet. He looked at the time again. 11:47. He decided to drive to the nearest town and have a look around. Might kill some time, he thought.
Xander arrived in Lakeview, and noticed that a circus had arrived in town. He got out of his car and walked towards the Big Top. Just as he was about to walk in, and old lady walked up to him. She was dressed in scraggy clothes, and a bit eccentric. "I have a message for you from the great beyond" she whispered, in a husky voice. "You have a message for me..." Xander started, "from the great beyond!". As the old lady finished Xander's sentence, she grabbed his arm and started dragging him to her trailer. He stopped her and said, "a message... from the beyond? Oh yeah, and leprechauns are real! Tell ya what, grab me a pen and paper and I'll start writing a letter to Santa!". Xander started walking away.
"IT'S FROM ANYA!", the old lady shouted to him. He stopped, a cold shiver ran down his spine. He slowly turned, and looked at the lady. She had a sympathetic look on her face. He started walking to the stranger, who just a few seconds ago, seemed to be crazier than Glory's victims. "How do you know about Anya?", he asked, still geting cold shivers down his spine. "I told you, she's got a message she's wants you to have", the old lady replied. "I'm Lathinia, by the way". She took his hand and led him towards her trailer.
"You know, if I was 40 years younger, maybe I wouldn't be leading you here just to talk", whispered Lathinia, with a smile on her face. As they walked into her 'home', he retorted, "and while all this kinky talk is positively... a turn-on, maybe we should just get down to business. How... how did you know me? How did you know it was me who you needed to talk to?". She just looked at him, then brought a crystal ball out from under her table. "Oh, no. This isn't gonna show me a fake-ass future, is it? Believe me, I've been there, and it's not pretty", Xander said, with a little look or terror in his eyes. "No", she replied, "this is how your girlfriend got in touch with me". He stared into the centre of the ball, and that's when he saw her beatiful face. The women he loved. The woman he was going to propose to... again, if they had survived the battle against The First. He wished he could have switched places with her, and... also thrown Andrew into the Hellmouth for not protecting her. "She sent the rest of the message into my head. It was kind of intrusive. I was trying to read for someone else", Lathinia said. "I wrote it down for you after my client left. Here". She passed Xander a piece of paper. He stood up and started to walk out the door. She stopped him, and said, "I've still got 30 minutes until my next appointment if you wanna make an old woman happy". She smiled at him, but all he could do was give her half a smile. "No. That's OK. Um... thank you for this", he said, as he started to pull his wallet out of his pocket. "No, my dear. you keep that. I was just glad to help", she replied, and gave him a little push out of the door. "You take care", she said gently. He walked to his car, and slipped into the drivers seat, and slowly opened the folded piece of paper. It read :
"Hello? Is this thing on? Can anyone hear me? Oh, there you are! I need you to do me a big favour. My boyfriend is headed to your carnival, and I need you to give him a message from me, OK? You'll know who he is when he gets there. Here it is :
My dearest Xander, I know you've been worried about me ever since, ya know, the whole bringer thing. But you don't have to, OK? I'm in heaven! Can you believe it? I guess The Powers That Be finally realised the good I did when I was human... when I was with you. I'm with Tara, believe it or not. She says to say hi to Willow for her. Honey, I just wanted you to know I'm fine here. I'm happy, and I wanted you to know that I will always love you. But I want you to be happy, too. I want you to move on with your life. find a beautiful woman, and marry her, and have kids. But if you even think of giving her more orgasms than me, I'll... throw a thunderbolt at you... or something. I thought I couldn't get through death. But being here isn't that different from being down there. I mean, me, Tara and Jenny... oh yeah, Jenny Calendar is here too... just killed a soul demon that wanted to eat me... or something like that. Tara, you really need to be clearer on stuff like this. What? Oh, yeah! So Xander, my love, I love you, and although I'm gonna miss being your sex poodle, I'm happy here. Oh, and give Andrew a dig from me. The little weasel let me die... not that I'm not happy here! Hopefully, in 50 years or so, we can be together again, but for now... be happy, live. Love you always, Anya.
P.S By the way, there are NO bunnies here! Yay!
He smiled, as a single tear fell on the last link he has to the woman he'll never forget. He folded the piece of paper up, and put it in his pocket. He started the car, and started driving back to his life in Cleveland. He knew everything was going to be OK. He was going to make sure of it. For Anya.