It is a long time until Xander is able to laugh again.
Buffy thinks the house feels too quiet. Every time the world ends, every time Sunnydale is threatened or someone gets hurt or something goes wrong, the one constant is always him. It's always Xander's jokes, Xander's sarcasm, Xander's relentless, elaborate class-clown act that remains the same when everything feels different. For years Buffy has relied on it, on him. Even when he lost his eye—when Caleb grabbed his face in his hands and grinned as Xander screamed in agony—even in the hospital he still made jokes, stupid quips about eyes and patches and pirates.
She never thinks there will be a time when he won't be there, laughing, relieving the tension.
Buffy and Willow and Xander, the three of them don't talk very much after the apocalypse-that-wasn't. The silence is better—simple, uncomplicated. It's easier to pretend that Buffy can ignore Spike, and Xander can ignore Anya, and Willow can ignore that Kennedy isn't Tara and will never be Tara (because Tara is gone and she's not coming back, not ever). Maybe if they ignore reality hard enough, it'll bend to their will, Buffy thinks (hopes) and tries to act like she's okay. Like they're all okay.
He tells her one night, when the stars burn bright in the sky like pale scars against the black and the buzz of a little too much alcohol has made his tongue loose. How it feels. Buffy knows how it feels, knows the pain of loss better than anyone else could—but she listens anyway, because that's what friends are for. Listening.
"You know," he says, slurring, "you know, she was the one person who never lied." He doesn't wait for an answer, stares up at the sky. "God, it pissed me off. No matter what happened, no matter what anyone did, she never fucking lied. Even when the truth was the most painful thing in the world, Anya would slice you to bits with it, because she didn't know how to do anything else. It was awful."
Buffy waits, because she knows there is more he isn't telling. She's good at waiting: years of death and pain have taught her that the right words will never come to mind at the important moments, that it's only weeks, months later you think of the phrase that could have been immortalized forever in the minds of the grieving. Buffy has never been good with words, but grief is not elegant, anyway. It doesn't require eloquence and grace. Grief is the cleaving of a sword, the shattering of a rock, hard and brutal and hurry pick up the pieces because there are things to do, people to see, and no matter how hard you try, the prose that falls like poetry out of your mouth will not resurrect the dead.
"I loved her," he says, his voice breaking a little—but only a little, because the words are matter-of-fact and straightforward and it almost reminds her of Anya, the way he says it, an irrefutable fact. "I loved her, and she died."
Buffy says, "That sucks."
It's the worst understatement in the world, but she means it from the bottom of her heart, and Xander seizes it like a lifeline. "Damn straight, it sucks. I hurt her and we broke up and it was hard and messy and we had sex and I still loved her and then she died. Who the fuck does that? What kind of an ending is that? I don't—I still can't—" He struggles for words, and when he finally finds the right ones, they come out sounding ragged. "I don't know…how to live the way she did. I can't do that, I can't be like that. I can't be like her."
"Xander," she says, and reaches for him, but he pulls away. "Xander, you don't have to be like her."
"But I do," he says plainly, without a shred of doubt, "You don't understand. I have to keep her alive, I have to keep her with me."
"That doesn't mean you have to—to be like she was. It's not like that. Acting like her won't make her alive again. But you loved her, and that doesn't change. Not even if she's gone."
"What if I forget?" he asks. It sounds like a child's plea. "Buffy, what do I do if I forget about her?"
"She's there," says Buffy, and it feels like a revelation, albeit a rough, choppy one. "It doesn't matter, because she's always there. It's like no matter what you do, you'll never be able to truly forget about her, you? Because life doesn't work that way. It's not a clean slate. People aren't wiped away just because they die." She scoots over next to him gingerly, carefully, so that she can feel his warmth, his body heat. "You're alive, Xander. That's enough to keep her with you for the rest of time." She pauses, frowning. "Well, maybe not the rest of time, because you won't live that long—but the point still stands."
There's a beat, and then Xander says, "All right, be straight with me. That was scripted, wasn't it?"
"Nope. No script," says Buffy. "It's Giles—he's making me read all these books about magic and Slaying, trying to get more info on this more-than-one-Slayer thing. As in, hundreds of girls chosen to stand against the darkness instead of just one. Kind of inverts the whole thing. And, you know, to read makes my speaking English good."
"Right," echoes Xander, and laughs. Not a lot, or loudly, or even with any sort of enthusiasm—but it's real and full of genuine humor and it's enough. Enough for right now, enough for the immediate future.
"I'm done with the brooding now," he says, after a while, and Buffy pulls him down when he tries to stand.
"No. Not done. I have much more angsty brooding to do," she assures him. "It seems to be the year of angst in…well, not Sunnydale, since we haven't exactly got one of those anymore, but the Scooby gang in general."
"Fine by me," he says.
She thinks maybe, just maybe, they're going to be okay.