Before You

"If I had known that I would have to life my entire afterlife with all of you, I would have tried to be more creative," Anya slurred to the bartender as she swallowed another shot of cheap vodka. The chaos demon behind the counter raised his eyebrows as a huge glob of slime fell from his antlers onto his shoulder with a loud plop. She vaguely remembers turning him in the late… well, probably sometime after the Industrial Revolution… because he … cheated? On a girlfriend – no a wife – no… the mistress? Everything blurred together now, over a thousand years of the same story and the same outcome. Probably should have helped out more lesbians over the years, it's a sausage-fest down here. But… that had been another one of D'Hoffryn's girl's jobs. Anyanka had always done her job to the letter.

She eyed the bartender over the empty shot-glass still in her grip, trying to place him – a name, a date, anything to separate this slimy purveyor of liquor from the hoards of men, or men-turned-beasts as the case may be, that she found herself surrounded by. "Why did I do that to you?" She nodded at the antlers and handed him her glass for another refill.

He gave a sheepish smile – she tried not to find that small gesture incredibly endearing. "My mother… she convinced my girlfriend that I had cheated to get me to come home and by the time you figured it out …"

Anya nodded as a flood of memories overtook her. It was one of the few times that she and Hallie had found a chance to actually work together – always one was merely a spectator, always each other's personal cheerleading section – and they had thrown themselves into the task with a new vigor, both had been feeling a bit lethargic in the aftermath of so much activity in the first half of the century. Anyanka had preferred the domestic in the beginning of her life as a vengeance demon – staying far away from the battlefield. It was only when she teamed up with Hallie that she had found the women at the heart of the battle – the betrayed and hurt women lying still while the world crashed around their ears – their pain and wounds fueling the crash and conflict between men. Anyanka had gloried in making that small fact all too clear to the men responsible for their pain, though it never felt to be enough.

Anya waved away the glass of vodka he held out to her and touched his arm gently, "I'm sorry." It was a whisper, but she felt hoarse when she spoke the words – as if it had been a shout from deep within. Anya walked away from the bar and out the door, into a blinding sunlight. Anyanka had bathed in blood. Anya walked daily in tears.

Though time did not really seem to matter here, it always felt and smelled like high noon – a light source that seemed to fill the whole sky blinding everything, nearly eliminating all the colors in the world white with its brightness. Anya hesitated to call the source a "sun" because for as long as she'd been in this dimension – which sometimes felt like eons and other times felt like just a mere matter of moments – she had yet to find a source. Her body was not even able to cast a shadow. She looked back at the bar door. She couldn't remember how she had found it; there had no one else inside other than the bartender and when she looked back, there was nothing in the space behind her but the same blinding whiteness as everywhere else.

The whiteness was full of sound. When she stood very still Anya could hear the detailed tells of hunting, chasing, running… all of the creatures she had ever made were somewhere in the pureness of the surrounding light, just waiting for her. Luckily, she had only had a few encounters thus far, all relatively harmless and sad figures standing in wait for her touch. A few had been full of apologies at first sight, begging her to release them from their pain – from these she had run. Run in the unseeing light until her chest was raw, her muscles throbbed, and her head ached. What forgiveness could she give them, these men who had never betrayed her? One had looked at her with murderous intent in his eyes, but she couldn't blame him: she met his gaze with a fierceness and challenge, with a bravery she didn't know the source of. Perhaps it was easy to meet death if one was already dead. Perhaps it was easiest to meet death at the hands of one's own creation. He had disappeared into the whiteness. She had walked on. What else could she do? Most had been like the bartender, quiet and restful. Their pain was gone, their bitterness forgotten in the blank brightness of the world. She passed them on her bare feet, the ground like solid air beneath her toes, rarely disturbing their silent contemplation of the surrounding light. These countless men who had betrayed the wrong woman – a woman who felt such deep pain, it had called to Anyanka from hundreds of thousands of miles. It was these men who made up the world she now found herself inhabiting.

It had been so freeing, to be human – to let go of the pain of a world full of hurting women. How she had chosen Cordelia and Sunnydale out of all the women, she'd never really know. Perhaps it had been the painfully clear innocence of the young girl. A girl who had tried to pretend to be strong, but wasn't. It was the steely grace of Cordelia's face that had officially won her over, watching the range of emotions behind eyes that pretended so hard not to care – not to feel. She had been abandoned right in the moment when she had stopped hiding behind a wall of sarcasm and bitterness. It had been the first case in a while that she had tried so hard. Moved to Sunnydale, took the form of a high school student, really played the part for a few days so that she could really get Cordelia to trust her. Usually, women went to the bar and bitched to every single woman in the bar they can find. Cordelia didn't have this option. Anya never wondered if Cordelia would ever stoop to this level of self-pity. It was why Anyanka had chosen the teenager. It was a decision she rarely regretted.

Even here… even knowing that one small decision lead to her death, to pain, to mortality and all that being human meant – in every messy, inconsequential way, she still could not fathom regret. Even though reason dictated that she hadn't really been able to help Cordelia, not in the normal way, it occurred to her now under the heat of the blinding light, that had she succeeded – she would have changed reality in a detrimental way. Even if Cordelia had survived whatever her first wish had created, she would have been forever changed. Anyanka would have taken away the potential of a great hero. Cordelia's pain and power would generally have raised D'Hoffryn's interest – but her power was hidden under her presumed and feigned normalcy. Her power was tied inexorably to her mortality. Anya had heard whispers that she had Ascended. Granting a Potential PTB a vengeance wish would be like killing Hercules in his infancy. If there was anything that Anya had learned in her long life, it was that Heroes were born and made. Some followed their path to greatness and some stayed in the shadows, some turned their power into something villainous and some lost their power: but no Hero was placed into the human dimension without the right tools.

Anya walked aimlessly through the light, listening to the sound of her creations. In the last year or so of her human life, shortly after Xander Harris had proposed marriage, she had begun to dream of motherhood; of pregnancy and diapers and late-night feeding sessions. The idea of bringing life into the world had filled her with a sense of awe. All she had been able to create as a demon was monsters and pain – exact vengeance by channeling someone else's energy and turn it into their worst nightmare. It wasn't real creation. Vengeance was like playing dress-up with someone else's clothing, someone stronger but without much style. It was just giving a make-over without purchasing anything new. It wasn't even her nightmare.

She stopped walking and looked around. "Whose nightmare am I in, now?"

A rough hand took hers and a deep voice answered, "Who said this is a nightmare?"

"Rupert?" She tightened her grip on the large hand that nearly enveloped her own slight, small one, but was too afraid to look up. Instead, she looked down. The light prevented her from truly seeing the (she presumed bare) feet that should have been firmly planted beside her own invisible feet. "Does this mean…" She couldn't form the words; her voice cracked and stopped her from the thought. Her body rebelled from even the thought; tears streaming down her face at the only answer she knew was possible.

"Yes. I believe that I am also dead, my dear."

Anya sobbed and grabbed at the man beside her, soaking his chest (bare? clothed? did it matter here?) with her tears. Tears that she had not shed in all the time she had been here. Now, mourning another's life, she felt justified for the first time. He had not had thousands of years. His life had been well-lived and his life deserves to be mourned. All the tears she was unable to shed for her too-long life, she now shed for his too-short life.

"How long?"

"You have been gone for almost two years, and I -" his voice trailed off.

Two years? Two years of time spent wandering in the blinding light. Wandering, searching... now she felt as if she had just been waiting. Waiting - not for the person she left behind, for the person with whom she would have shared her life with - no... in her Afterlife she was waiting for something more... something that in life, would have seemed impossible. The old rules didn't seem to apply anymore.

She felt his chest shake beneath her fingertips and she squeezed him harder. In his long breaths she heard a name repeated over and over, not even a whisper but the breath itself spoke a name. The name of a girl Anya had hardly known, a name she did not expect, a name in a breath that made her chest hurt and the tears flow more freely than ever. She had lost so much and it was only now that it became clear that the greatest pain came from those that she never knew she had in the first place. Only this time, feeling her hair dampen with the tears of a man she had never guessed she had relied on - a man that she now felt in every pore.

"- I came straight to you." It was said as if no moment had passed at all since he had begun speaking. As if they both hadn't heard the wish for someone else in his every sob. As if they both weren't reaching back to the living for the life they had dreamed of. As if they both didn't know that this moment would be last moment of mourning, now that they were holding on to one another... what could be left to mourn?

She wished there was a way to show him her favorite spot. She closed her eyes and breathed in his scent, remembering the small bar in Paris 1973 hidden down a long alleyway, where she had spent hours smoking and laughing with vaguely revolutionary students wishing to be philosophers, challenging the world and their studies. She loved the bright streets in the summer, the smell of smoke and sweat and beer, the dimmed sound of the busy city filtering through the din of shouting, laughing, arguing people.

She was lost in her memory, bathing in it, when he pulled away from her - turning her around and into the street.

The blinding light was gone. She was standing on a Parisian corner, the sounds and smells exactly as she had remembered them.

He took her hand and kissed her temple softly.

"I wanted to show you..." she squeezed his hand and jumped a little in glee. The colors! Oh she could not have known what it would mean to see color again after so long in a blank slate.

He bent down to her ear and whispered, "I am sorry you had to wait so long."