Pairings: Xander/Anya, Spike/Anya

This is post-Season 7, ignoring the Season 8 comic books. Five years after the finale.

It was nearing midnight and Anya was walking alone on the empty sidewalks of Dayton, Ohio with nothing but a wad of cash in her pocket and a bottle of aspirin in her hand. She knew it was late, too late to be walking the city streets at this hour, but she felt it was the least she could do for Xander considering he was letting her stay at his place rent-free. And he really needed the aspirin, anyhow, he was having a lot of migraines lately and he had run out. And she didn't want his head to keep throbbing, his moans pierced right through the thin walls into Anya's bedroom. She needed the sleep for her job interview tomorrow.

Two blocks away.

She thought, just two more blocks until a good night's sleep. She looked down at the pill bottle rounding the corner. She carefully read the dosing instructions for she didn't want Xander to accidentally overdose again.

Anya suddenly felt herself run into something- someone, and she dropped the pill bottle, startled. The cap popped off and the aspirin started rolling away down the sidewalk.

"Some safety cap." Anya mumbled, dropping to all fours to pick the tiny pills up. She saw hands reaching out for them, also, and she thought it was weird that another person was out so late.

"I'm sorry." She heard, a thick British voice that rung off a bell in her head.

"It's fine, I should have been watching where I was going." She responded, head still bent. She lifted it up the same time as the man across from her did.

There was a long, questioning silence that hung between the two as their eyes finally met. Neither one of them knew if they were hallucinating, because the one across from them was a familiar face. A familiar face that just couldn't be possible. They must be mistaken.

Finally, Anya opened her mouth. "Do I know you?"

"I was just going to ask you the same thing." The man responded.

Anya shook her head, convinced that the five years since she had seen this face had just made her mistaken, this was not him, this was just a random person. "Well, I've got to get home." She stood up.

The man nodded slowly, standing up also. "Yeah, I, uh... I guess I should, too."

They began to walk in opposite directions, slowly, both thinking. Anya looked up at the sky, the few stars she could see. No, she wasn't imagining things, she wasn't. It was impossible, sure, but she wasn't crazy. She stopped walking. Without turning around, she let out a sigh. "Spike?" She questioned, an almost broken whisper, but loud enough for the man to hear. She could hear his echoing footsteps come to an abrupt halt. She turned around the same moment that he did, and they both stood looking at each other in silence. The man looked, confused, stunned, and a bit weak. Anya guessed she was the mirror image of this.

His mouth dropped open, and it took a few seconds for him to make any type of sound. "A-Anya?"

She smiled weakly, shrugging. "Yeah." She replied.

There was a moment when neither one of them knew what to do, but Anya started walking towards him, and Spike towards her. They stopped about three feet short of each other, not knowing what the proper greeting was. Spike stuck out his hand for a handshake, but Anya decided that was much too formal and threw her arms around him, going for her usual hugging style. Spike just gave her a couple manly pats on the back and she released herself.

"Spike, I-I'm sorry, it's just... I thought you were dead. Or, or combusted, or whatever. And it's been years. I mean years since I've seen you or Buffy or Willow or Giles-"

"See, funny, because I thought you were dead." Spike interrupted her.

"Oh, I was." Anya replied, starting to walk towards her house. Spike followed along-side. "But you see, D'Hoffryn had this major drought-"

"A... drought?" Spike questioned.

"Well, a demon drought. He was kind of treating the vengeance girls like crap, so a bunch of them quit, and with D'Hoffryn's constant bad mood these days didn't help to recruit any newbies, so he brought me back."

Spike stared at her in disbelief. "He brought you back? From the dead? He resurrected you and the whole bit?"

Anya nodded. "Yep."

"I didn't even know D'Hoffryn had that kind of power." Spike shared.

"He doesn't." Anya replied curtly. "He had to recruit twenty witches for the whole process. And apparently it took a few hours. I mean, this was a big thing. And it wasn't even like when Willow resurrected Buffy, like, one second I was in Hell and the next I was lying in the middle of this big circle of witches with D'Hoffryn staring right at me and-"

Spike's steps halted. "You were in Hell?"

Anya turned towards him and her eyes seemed to grow darker. Her face turned a pale color close to that of a vampire's.

"I thought you were different." Spike stated, nodding. "I said to myself, I know I haven't seen this girl in five years, but she's different, she's different then-"

"So D'Hoffryn and his little Wiccans really did the job." Anya cut him off abruptly as the color returned to her face and the light to her eyes. She continued to walk again, pretending like nothing had ever happened. "And of course, he wanted me to become a vengeance demon again. After he tried to kill me a few years back, so, naturally, I said no... but we made a deal. He would let me go leave a normal, human life as long as I helped him recruit more women. So I did. I recruited at least a hundred, it was really quite easy. Just make with the vengeful talk and accentuate the power of immortality... the power of the wish. After that he let me go free, surprisingly keeping his promise."

Spike's head spun. "And that's how you ended up here? Is Dayton D'Hoffryn's new little hideout?"

"Not exactly," Anya sighed, "He and the Wiccans brought me back in some rural little Canadian town in Nova Scotia. But I felt too lonely there. And with the Internet these days, it's really easy to find people. Naturally, the first person I though of was Xander. And I found him... here. He refused to believe it over the phone, but when I came here in person..."

"So you and the bloke rekindled your old flame, eh?"

"No..." Anya started. "I'd like to say we're more friends now." Anya stopped walking.

Spike. "Oh yeah?" Spike looked up at the house that stood in front of them. "This your place?"

"Xander's, really." She started up the steps to the front door.

"You still love him?" Spike questioned from the bottom of the staircase.

"What?" Anya asked, taken aback by the question.

"You still love him?" Spike repeated.

"Spike, that- I-" She unlocked the door and it swung open in front of her. "Do you want to come in?"