Xander alternated the bronze urn between each of his hands, Dracula's footsteps fading in the distance. The cold metal was so light in his firm grip. Hours earlier he had held a different Renee in his arms, and she had been something. She had been warm, and soft, and human. Now she was dust in a cool piece of metal.
"I hope you knew," was all he murmured into his lap.
He steeled his face and lifted himself from the bench. Slowly, Xander removed the lid and sprinkled the dust carefully, allowing the wind to catch and lift it before he poured more. Silently, reverently he stood alone. Just he and a pile of ashes.
Was he ever going to be able to bury the woman he loved? First Anya, now Renee. Xander had not been a cruel person in his life - the worst thing he had ever done, by far, was leave Anya at the altar, and he felt as though he had tried to make amends for that. He never would, - especially not now - but he had tried, and she had known it; he hoped that she had forgiven him. When he was at his worst, he tried to think of something he had done in his life to justify his losses. He knew that Buffy and Willow had lost just as much - more, maybe, than he had, but those were just facts, and his feelings were truer to him than they were. Facts were the cool metal touching his palms, his feelings were the way he stroked it with his thumb as though it was still Renee's soft, dark hair, exactly as he had earlier.
"Xand?" a soft voice called from behind him, footsteps much more graceful than Dracula's treading closer.
Xander turned. Simply looking, without any forced emotion painted on his face, he said, "Hey Buff."
Buffy continued to walk forward. Catching sight of the remnants of Renee's ashes, her gait slowed and she remained still. "... I'm sorry. She was a good Slayer."
Xander looked at her, pained. "Why does that have to be all she was? A good Slayer? She was a good human, and now she'll never be anything. Not again," he said bitterly.
Buffy looked apologetic. "I just meant that I didn't know her like you did."
"I know." Xander sighed. "Look, I'm sorry for bringing the crazy, I'm just, I'm tired. We've done so much good, yeah, but I feel like I have to be some... mindless automaton just to get through each day and the next." He sat, the urn still in his hands. "Every time I get close to something real it gets snatched away, or... I let it slip away. And that goes for all of us. How are we supposed to keep fighting when there's so much loss? So much pain?"
Buffy took a seat next to him, listening intently, understanding well.
He continued. "I don't want this to be a vengeance gig, I want to do this -" his arm swept over the mountain, "because it's right, but how am I meant to see what's right when the good guys are fighting ourselves, fighting all this bitterness? I look at this army and I feel proud of what we've done, but every day when they get up and they train with you I see one less face in the crowd, one girl I knew was there yesterday who will never be there again. It hurts to love this much - to feel this much. To love at all, with this many girls - it feels like it's just signing up for grief."
Buffy put her arms around Xander, holding him closely as he shifted and returned the embrace. After a minute of comforting, she pulled away.
"I know it does, but what will get us through is that we're doing what's right for these girls. We're making them stronger, better fighters, we're helping them to become who they're meant to be, and I don't just mean physically, we're making them a part of something they were born to be a part of. Something that, thanks to Will, is now bigger than one girl in all the world. Yes, it's hard to love them, it's painful, but we love more than that: we love the cause. We love what we're fighting for, and we know if we die, we die for something worth dying for.
"Several times," she added with a light smile.
Xander nodded, wiping a tear away from his eye.
"But that probably doesn't help much, huh?" She looked at him in earnest. "Buffy's-bigger-pictureisms are all well and good, but I know you've got your own stuff and one of my patented speeches won't solve that for you. Which is your fault, by the way, because my speeches kick ass."
He gave the closest thing to a smile he could muster. "Probably not, but brownie points for trying."
She nodded, rising. "You wanna be alone."
Xander indicated the silhouette in the window of Buffy's room. "And you don't."
Buffy smiled mildly. "Maybe. Maybe tonight I'm holding onto this... Whatever it is. Or maybe I'm letting it go." She sighed. "I have no idea."
Xander looked at the girl he had been through so much with, one of his two best friends, and warmth trickled into his eyes, for a second. "How about you go find out?"
Buffy departed and Xander sat alone until the sun came up.
Left only were he and the wind that kindly swept another loss from his life.