It's A Wonderful Life
Title: It's A Wonderful Life
Rating: PG
Genre: Buffy the Vampire Slayer – Anya-centric fic.
Summary: Anya gets the chance to make her final wish. One-shot.
Challenge: Written for the Christmas Guild fiction challenge thing, organized by Charity. This was in response to the challenge by my "person" in asking for a Tara or Anya-centric fic. I have written both, but Anya is one of my favorites. Despite the fact I'm working on "Guardians", I wanted to write this. For a one-shot, it had to be more than 1,000 words. I think this qualifies.
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon owns the Slayer world. I'm just a picker of a plot.
Notes: To all the fans of my Anya works. And to my Guild family, who has been my writing genius for the past few years. To all dreamers everywhere, here's a Merry Christmas to You. Oh, here's to you, sweetie. Your Christmas gift, in a well-rounded Anya package. Oh, and this kills two birds with one stone, and because of that, the true person this belongs to will know it belongs to them upon reading it.
Spoilers: Anya through her death in Season 7.
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It's a Wonderful Life
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Bloody hell.
That hurt.
Why is it that everyone thought to run me through with a sword? Didn't they know that for being over a thousand years old, swords tended to make me rather pissy? I didn't really enjoy the prospect of being cut all the way through like that. It made me bleed, ruining those clothes I had spent so much money on. And what about Andrew's role, cowering in the corner, whining about swimmer's ear? Was he the one who had to see his life flash before his eyes again?
Why was I standing here alone?
I couldn't have been the only one to die. Dawn was weak. Well, she was stronger than me at times, but it didn't matter. She was like those cannon fodder, waiting to be picked off, one by one. She had some skill, but with a sword? I didn't think she knew which end went into the stupid Turok-han, much less those bloody Bringers. Bloody Bringers and their bloody swords. If I ever had a chance to repay them, I was going to try running them through with swords and see how they liked it.
There wasn't much space here to move. There wasn't much room to do anything.
Was this hell? Was this my silent agony brought back to me? What had I done to humankind to deserve such black silence?
Wait a moment… I was a former vengeance demon. I really hope they didn't expect me to undo all of my courageous acts of pride. So I had Daddy issues. I had male issues all the way around. Look at how my last relationship worked out. I had been engaged to the first man to see me as a human being in a thousand years. I had tempted him with tantalizing thoughts of both sex and nudity, something no man could turn down, least of all Alexander Harris. I still loved the idiot, no matter how many body parts he had to lose. I never did get the chance to tell him that his eye-patch turned me on, either.
The only problem is, his Buffy was always the first woman of his life. I'd accepted that. I'd even appreciated it, since Buffy had saved my life before, too. Hell, she even gave her life to the stupid world, and the end result was, she'd come back wrong. I don't care how many tried to convince themselves otherwise, but to me, screwing the unholy dead wasn't an adequate lifestyle.
Smirking, I realized that I had tried to convince myself that, too.
That tryst with Spike was beyond drunken solace. Xander had left me at the altar, to walk down the aisle at my own dream wedding. The music had been playing and I had been crying. The only tears I'd ever thought to cry on my wedding would have been happy tears of being Mrs. Anya Harris. Instead, I became Anya. Just Anya.
It was such a wonderful life.
Vengeance had been my gig for years. And now I found myself actually respecting these horrible males that had once again ripped my heart apart. I couldn't do it. I didn't want to do it. All these rules and regulations, they were damned! I couldn't help that these people wanted to screw themselves and living meaningless lives by just existing. Hadn't I just proven myself to be of the same kind?
Oh, God! Why was I still in this circle of darkness? There were no lights, and I was really starting to get claustrophobic!
I could use Willow right about now. Even if she was all anti-spells lately, she could at least make some little flickering light or else teleport me the hell out of here. I know I'm dead, but that doesn't mean she can't raise me. There were probably other Orbs around.
At least Hell had little appeal. I wondered if I would find anyone I knew there. Like Halfrek, for one. Ever since D'Hoffryn decided to kill her in punishment for my own stupid request to take back a vengeance spell, I had wondered where she ended up. She hadn't been all misogynist as I had been for so long. Well, when you're engaged to someone like Olaf, you learned to deal with the fact that men suck.
What would they call me in this place? Would I be Aud, Anya or Anyanka? I had lived a life with all three. Okay, so Aud wasn't that glamorous. She didn't have a lot of money at her disposal or nice clothes. All she had were rude women spreading horrible rumors about a poor barmaid stuck in a dead-end relationship with a drunken troll of a man. No, I didn't want to relive THAT life again. Anyanka had been some of the best and most entertaining moments of my life. I had been at the top of my power, had influence and prestige, not to mention a reputation that preceded me. I was the fricking Slayer of the past, one who brought down those men who had wronged such touching, innocent women.
And then I had been Anya. Just Anya. One high school student who didn't even receive a diploma turned shop girl with a capitalist's utopian view of retail turned fiancée turned new vengeance demon turned punished scapegoat turned… what? What had I been when I died? I wasn't a shop girl. I wasn't even a demon. I was just… Anya. I had been there with my wit and sarcasm, cheering on the world of good. I had been hunted by my old demon buddies, lusted after by my ex-fiancée and given the role as trainer of a bunch of useless girls who consumed food and slept way the hell too much.
And yet, for the first time, I'd been happy. I knew I would be protected. Buffy had always been the leader. She always was the star. Watching her fight was like seeing a light at the end of a very long tunnel. If someone had lived as long as I had, they would have seen her as this bright light in a world of darkness, insanity and despair I had lived for so long. She would do anything to save the world, including risking her own life, and for that, she wasn't just lucky, as I'd told her. She'd earned every last word.
Why I turned against her, I didn't know. She had just pissed me off. Going off on one of her reckless fights was something I'd come to expect of her. But seeing Xander with only one eye hard sharpened my fear. I was scared. This was bigger than anything we had ever faced. For the first time in my life, I had been part of a team.
The final fight shouldn't have turned out the way it did. I was supposed to be the one sailing off into the sunset, free from Xander and the rest of my bonds. Well, I was free now, and I didn't like it. I was miserable. I didn't want this freedom. I wanted to be alive.
And the damned circle had just lit up with white light.
Finally.
A figure came from the darkness. Biting down a moan of disgust, I realized it was none other than D'Hoffryn.
"Anyanka," he said, bowing his shiny blue head, "we meet again."
"If you're going to insult me for the rest of eternity, I want a different hell," I said, trying my own version of parley.
He arched his eyebrows at my quirkiness and frowned slightly. "I want nothing of the sort. See, there was one wish granted by one mortal boy. I believe you once knew him to be Alexander Harris."
Xander… what had he wished for?
I repeated my thoughts. D'Hoffryn just smiled and lifted his hand. "He wishes for you to have happiness. You will now go to a different dimension."
With a snap of his fingers, the air around me changed. After feeling as though I'd been repeatedly plunged in cold water, I came to and noticed the world around me.
I was in… Heaven?
"Xander wished this?" I asked softly.
"Yes," D'Hoffryn replied with an uneasy glance at the fluffy white clouds, the angels and the white-harp-yielding sprites dancing and prancing from cloud to cloud. "There is more to this world, as you will see… but I can tell you will find much happiness here, Anyanka."
I couldn't find my voice.
After all we had been through, his first thought post-battle was of the woman he'd left behind.
A tear trickled down my cheek. The idiot.
"Wait," I whispered, before he had a chance to leave. "Can I make a wish, too?"
"I suppose," D'Hoffryn said with a tired voice. "I am not the one to fulfill this wish. I was only to show you the way. For that…" He gestured behind me and I turned to see an angel standing there, large white wings floating elegantly behind her body, covered in a long, white tunic. "This is your goddess."
"Tara," I said softly.
"You had a wish request?" she asked blithely.
"I didn't know you fulfilled wishes now," I said suspiciously.
"Well, if you don't want one taken," she said, turning to walk away. But I quickly grasped her arm.
"Just kidding," I said, forcing a smile. "See, here's the thing. Xander wanted me to be happy up here with the clouds and the harp and those ridiculous wings. But I want the same to him. He's always wanted the one thing he could never touch, and now that he's lost most of his good sight, I don't want him to lose anything else."
"Aside from rambling, it sounds like you're wishing for Xander to die," Tara said, frowning slightly, yet managing to look ethereally lovely doing so.
"No," I said firmly. "I don't want him to die. I just want him to finally get a chance to have the love he's had for so long returned!"
The look on Tara's face changed. She stared down at the clouds silently for a moment. Then, "I saw it, too."
"You did, and you never bothered to tell me before my wedding?" I gasped.
"Not like it matters now, as we're both d-dead," Tara replied, stuttering as she gave me her glowing smile. I felt my heart start to release some of the anger from being killed brutally. As long as I could stay here, it wouldn't matter. "Wish granted."
I closed my eyes and said something that sounded like a blessing to the beautiful Pagan-goddess standing before me. She had always been one of the best ones. A pity she'd been killed.
Tara put her arm through mine then as we frolicked through the clouds. Well, we would have had I not been wearing my blood-stained clothes that left me slipping and sliding over the puffy surfaces. Yet, as the vision started to fade away, I found myself standing in front of one of the most beautiful sights known to man.
There were only two words I could use to describe it.
Retail. Services.
I was going to love it here.
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end
Just part one of two of Christmas goodies!