Disclaimer: I don't own Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Summary: To the outside world it looked like they had forgotten about him but they remembered.
To the outside world it looked like they had forgotten about him but they remembered, they were just very good at hiding their emotions since they had both had a lot of practice. Willow's parents were both workaholics and hardly ever home and Xander parent's well they weren't the greatest parents either they were verbally and physically abusive.
To the outside world it looked as though Xander and Willow had easily gotten over the death of their friend Jesse, but it was far from the truth. The first six weeks of Jesse's death, well after the funeral, they made their way hand in hand to the cemetery every day. They went always during the day so that vampires wouldn't be there and also so they wouldn't run into Buffy. While Buffy was their friend she didn't know Jesse like they did and they were mourning was their own.
Sometimes they would hang back behind a tree when the McNally's were there, mourning their son. They hadn't even been able to bury a body since Jesse had been turned into a vampire and then staked. Xander had been always full of guilt whenever he saw Jesse's parents at his grave, because it was fault that they didn't have a body to bury. He knew it was for the best though, if he hadn't killed him, albeit accidentally his body would still be killing people.
Jessse's parents had no idea he had been turned into a vampire, but they had believed them when they told him that their son was dead. They had considered keeping it to themselves so Jessie's parents would have hope but they couldn't do that to the Mcnally's. They were the one decent set of parents they had between the three of them. They always went to Jesse's house and Jesse's parents had treated them as if they were their own. However that had stopped the day that Xander and Willow had told them that their son was dead along with some embellishments because they couldn't tell them the real story.
Even after the first six weeks they still went every week on the day that Jesse had died, which had been a Friday. They went every Friday during the first year of his death and missed their friend together, although nobody else knew. It was their grief and their grief alone. Then for the second year they just went every 3 months. The next year they only managed to make it on the anniversary of Jesse's death.
They'd think about him every morning though when they walked to school, because the three of used to walk to school together everyday. Xander would walk to Willow's and the two of them would walk to Jesse's, where Jesse's mother used to have breakfast ready for the three of them. After they were finished with breakfast they would then they walk to school. They still walked to school and that meant they had to walk by the Mcnally's house. After Jesse's death the three years they walked to their high school, they never again set foot in the house that used to feel like their home. But they did see the for sale sign that would go up and down sporadically like they couldn't decide whether or not they wanted to stay or go.
Three years passed before Xander admitted aloud that he wasn't sure he remembered Jesse's voice anymore and he sometimes felt as if he had imagined him. They was video and pictures but Jesse had always been the shutterbug, he had been really into photography and cinema. Jesse's parents had the photos and video and neither Willow or Xander had the courage to go ask them even to barrow the only things that proved anymore that they had even had a son anymore.
That was when they started their new tradition. Saying I remember. Willow stated that she remembered when Jesse was ten and gotten his first camera. His parents and they had assumed he'd click it a few times and then it would stay on his desk that he had had in his room and would only be brought out for special occasion. That wasn't the case. He had taken a picture of everything and everyone and had to get a paper route because he took so many pictures he had to keep paying for more film and to get the film developed. Willow and Xander had helped with the paper route so that Jesse didn't have to get up so early because he was was coming to school like a zombie (which was before either of them knew that there was such a thing as real zombies). Xander said he remember skate boarding with Jesse. He had given up skating after Jesse's death because there was no one to go with and it wasn't nearly as fun without Jesse. They went on and on about things things they remembered until they both felt like they had a good grasp of who Jesse Mcnally was and why they missed him so much.
They did that every year afterwords until Sunnydale fell and they couldn't go to Jesses grave anymore. That night Xander went to Willow's room, it wasn't the same but it since Jesse wasn't actually in the grave in the ground it probably shouldn't have made much of a difference. Xander and Willow just sat on the floor with their knees touching. There was a picture of Jesse from their freshman high school year book on the floor between and did what they had done every year prior, they remembered him. No one knew that they did this every year, it was their secret. There way to make sure that every year Jesse was remembered, the way he was in life and not the way he was in death.
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