I do not own the Buffy the Vampire Slayer property or any of the characters therein.

CONVERSATION WITH A DEAD FRIEND

It had been a long day at the office. Or the construction site, as it were. Three members of Xander's crew hadn't shown up for the new project, building a strip mall on the outskirts of town, resulting in a grueling day of back-breaking labor for the remaining workers. As foreman, Xander's role was typically more supervisory than hands-on, but today he'd been right in the trenches with the rest of the guys. Now, as he made his way down the hall toward his apartment, he was sweaty and dirty and smelly. He wanted nothing more than a quick shower then to collapse in bed.

An empty bed, he reminded himself, sliding the key into the lock. It had been nearly a year since he'd botched things with Anya (only "botched" didn't seem quite strong enough for ditching a woman at the alter, leaving her a weeping puddle), but sometimes he still felt her absence in his life like a hole in his heart, a sucking chest wound of loneliness and regret. Of course, he had no one to blame but himself. As usual.

Stepping into the apartment but not bothering to flip on the lights, Xander unbuckled his tool belt and let it fall to the floor with a clatter. The albatross removed. Rubbing at the sore muscles in his back, he started across the living room toward the bedroom door; he was halfway there before realizing there was a stranger standing in the corner.

Only when the young man stepped forward, the light from the sliding glass door to the balcony falling on his face, Xander realized the intruder wasn't a stranger at all, was in fact an old friend. Although one Xander hadn't seen in years, not since his death.

"Hey Xan-Man," Jessie said with a goofy grin.

Xander's breath caught in his throat like a piece of dry bread. Jessie looked just like he had the last time they'd seen each other. Tall and lanky, a baby face that bespoke of innocence, unless you saw the mischievous sparkle in his eyes.

Okay, so maybe that wasn't exactly how Jessie had looked the last time Xander had seen him. The last time the two had been together, Jessie had been wearing the twisted face of a demon, just before he turned to dust. But all of that was so long ago, almost seven years to be exact.

"Jeez, Xander, you look like you've seen a ghost," Jessie said then laughed. "You'd think after all these years living on the Hellmouth, you'd be prepared for pretty much anything. Unshockable, you know?"

Xander tried to speak but nothing came out but a hoarse croak. He swallowed hard, licked his lips, then tried again. "You're not Jessie."

The apparition looked down at himself. "Really? Could have fooled me."

"You can't be Jessie. Jessie's dead."

"Of course I am, never claimed otherwise. And you should know. After all, you're the one who killed me."

"That's not true. You were killed by a vampire; the thing I killed was just the demon inhabiting your body."

"That's Giles-speak if I've ever heard it. Only that's not even really accurate, is it? I mean, you were holding the stake, true, but you were just standing there frozen until someone pushed me from behind and knocked me onto the pointy end."

"What are you?" Xander said, looking around for something he could use as a weapon. Although if this truly was a ghost, weapons would be useless.

"It's me, Xan, your best bud Jessie. I've been kind of watching over you these last few years, sort of a guardian angel thing."

"And what? You've come down to visit me so you can earn your wings?"

"Not exactly. I'm just here to ask you a question, man."

"And what would that be?"

"What the hell are you still doing here?"

Xander wasn't sure what question he'd been expecting, but it wasn't this one. He stammered for a few seconds, blinked, then said, "What?"

"Dude, when we were growing up all we talked about was getting our asses out of Sunnydale just as soon as we graduated high school, but here you are still stuck in this nowhere town. What happened?"

"Things are different than they were when we were kids."

"Like what? You got complacent?"

"Things are happening here, important world-changing things. There's a lot of work to be done."

"No argument from me on that score, but what does the battle between good and evil have to do with you?"

"I help," Xander said lamely.

"You do? How exactly?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, Buffy's the Slayer, the one with the skill and the strength. Willow's Super Witch, and I have to admit I never saw that one coming. Giles, before he jumped ship, was Knowledge Man. What are you bringing to the table besides moral support?"

At first Xander, who usually could be counted on for a snappy comeback, could come up with no response. Jessie, or whatever this was masquerading as him, was playing on all the fears and doubts Xander had about himself, insecurities he'd harbored for the past seven years. His Achilles' heel, the feeling that he was the weak link in the Scooby Gang's chain.

"I'm not saying your friends don't care about you," Jessie said, stepping closer, and Xander thought that if this wasn't truly his old friend, it was one hell of an impersonation. "They want to make you feel relevant, but the truth is much as they may love you, they don't need you. There's nothing holding you here man but inertia. Why don't you break lose, go see the world, experience life? Leave the war to the warriors."

"I help," Xander said again, this time with even less conviction.

"You have some misplaced idea about what it means to be a man. I know, because I grew up with the same misplaced idea. You think you have to be brave and macho, even when every instinct you have tells you to run and hide. You know, we have instincts for a reason, and we ignore them at our own peril. The Hellmouth is not a place for guys like you and me. Stay here and you'll only wind up getting killed…just like I did."

Xander had to admit that over the years, what with the endless string of crises and near-Apocalypses, he hadn't thought much about his fallen friend, but suddenly he felt the grief and the anger all over again, like the loss was fresh, and he also felt a not-insignificant amount of guilt. "Jessie, man, we tried to save you."

"I know you did, bud, but you can't save everybody. We're standing on the gateway to hell itself; casualties are inevitable. I'd hate to see you become one of them, which is where you're headed if you stay here."

"But I can't just cut my friends loose and leave them hanging, not with such crucial battles ahead."

"I'm sure they'd understand, maybe even be grateful not to have to look out for you in the coming trials. Besides, it might be good for you to get away from this group, develop your own identity apart from the gang, finally find the freedom to be yourself."

"What are you talking about? I am free to be myself around my friends; they know me maybe even better than I know myself."

"That a fact?" Jessie said with a sly grin. "Know about us, do they?"

Xander froze, a tiny gasp escaping his lips. "What do you mean?"

"Don't play dumb with me, Xan. You remember those afternoons after school, when Willow wasn't around, all alone in my bedroom…the stuff we did together. You remember how good it felt, I'm sure you do."

"No no no-no-no," Xander stuttered. "That's not even…it wasn't like that."

"You going to deny what happened between us?"

"We were just messing around, it didn't mean anything. We just did that stuff to each other because our hormones were raging and none of the girls in school would do it with us."

"That what you tell yourself at night? I mean, there was always sweet little Willow mooning over you, begging you in her own innocent way to take her. You were well aware that a single snap of your fingers and she'd have been naked and bent over backwards for you. And yet you turned to me instead. Interesting, wouldn't you say?"

"Enough!" Xander shouted, his face burning with anger and shame. "What we did was just a little adolescent experimentation, a lot of guys do that when they're young and then grow out of it. I've had plenty of female action since those days, I'll have you know."

"What exactly is your definition of 'plenty'? By my count, there have been exactly five women in your life. Cordelia, with whom you never did anything more than make out. Faith, a one-night stand who barely spoke to you afterwards and in fact tried to kill you not too long after. And we can't forget poor devoted Anya, a woman you drop-kicked the second you were faced with real commitment. Then of course there was your unrequited crush on Buffy, perfectly safe since she was so far out of your league she wouldn't have even given you a pity grope, and your illicit tryst with Willow who turned out to be gay herself. Almost like the two of you were trying to prove something with each other. Did any of them make you feel as good as I did?"

Xander just kept shaking his head, his entire body quaking. "No, we were just confused and lonely, it doesn't mean what you're suggesting it means. Why are you even bringing this up? What has it got to do with anything?"

Jessie stepped even closer to Xander and reached out as if to touch him but stayed his hand before making contact. "I'm just trying to show you that I know you, I know you more intimately than any of the rest of your friends. We shared things back then, secrets and dreams as well as the physical stuff. And therefore I think you should trust me when I tell you that you don't belong here, not in Sunnydale, not as part of the Scoobies, not in the massive fight that's brewing. Pack up your stuff, get in your car, and get the hell out of Dodge before it's too late."

Xander grasped the back of the sofa, still trembling, suddenly feeling 16 years old again. Nothing but a bundle of doubts and insecurities, a blathering idiot who lacked even an iota of confidence. A geek who feared his father was right and that he'd never amount to anything, that he'd always be alone, that he'd never make any significant contributions to the world. Maybe it would be better if he just slunk away in the night, started over, accepted his fate as a nobody and a nothing…

"NO!" Xander roared, grabbing a vase from the end table and flinging it at his dead friend. The vase passed right through Jessie and shattered against the wall. "You don't know me anymore, man. You used to, but you've been gone a long time, and I'm not the same guy I was then. Maybe I don't have supernatural powers or encyclopedic knowledge of demon lore, but I'm not useless either. I have determination and conviction and a willingness to sacrifice. I know exactly what it means to be a man—it means doing what you know is right no matter what the personal cost. I won't run, I won't leave my friends, and I won't let you make me doubt myself."

For just an instant Jessie looked furious. It was fleeting but Xander was sure he'd seen it. "Xan, I'm trying to help you."

"Are you? Or are you just trying to get me out of the way, weaken the group by one member? I don't know if you're really Jessie or something else entirely, but whoever or whatever you are, you underestimated me if you thought you could get rid of me so easily. Now why don't you pack up your stuff and get the hell out of Dodge?"

Silence filled the apartment then, the two young men standing across from one another, just staring into each other's eyes, like two gunslingers about to draw in a duel. Finally Jessie said, "You'll be sorry you didn't listen to me."

"I'll take my chances."

"I offered you advice in good faith, and this is all the hospitality you show me."

"If your ass wasn't incorporeal, I'd show you a lot more."

"Still want to get your hands on my ass even after all these years?" Jessie said with a chuckle.

Xander held on to his temper, refusing to be baited. "Just go."

"I won't forget this, Alexander Harris. You will pay for this discourtesy. You know what they say about an eye for an eye."

Putting his hands in the small of his back, Xander stretched until he heard a pop, his mouth working in an exaggerated yawn. "Are you about done with your cryptic threats, because I really am quite tired?"

"Be seeing you soon," Jessie said. "Enjoy what time you have left."

With that, Jessie's body started folding in on itself, getting smaller and smaller until it disappeared in a flash of bright light, leaving Xander once again alone in his living room.

Xander stood there bemused for a moment, trying to process what had just happened. He had no idea what manner of creature or manifestation he'd just encountered, but it had obviously come here to make him feel devalued and hopeless. It had succeeded in the opposite, however, inadvertently making him more determined than ever to do everything he could to battle whatever Big Bad was planning to shake up the Hellmouth.

He glanced at the phone, contemplating calling Buffy, but then he decided against it. It could wait until morning. In the meantime, he was going to continue with his original plan for the night. Shower then bed.