Summary: After the incident with Billy 'Ford' Fordham, Xander finds himself comparing Buffy's dead friend to a late classmate...
Disclaimer: "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" and all associated characters and situations are the property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy, used for entertainment purposes without permission or intent to profit.
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"It's How You Die"
By J.T. Magnus, 'Turbo'
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Too many people confused 'intelligence' with 'wisdom' and that confusion frequently led them to draw the wrong conclusions about people, places and situations. They considered themselves above others because of how much they knew, never considering that they lacked the ability to apply that knowledge to real-world situations instead of theories and simulations. It never occurred to them that those same others, despite a narrower knowledge base, might be smarter overall because they could use what they knew better.
Contrary to what people believed because of his grades, Xander Harris was not an idiot; his was 'street smarts', 'common sense'. Maybe he couldn't tell someone what the atomic weight of gold was or multiply that number by how many feet were in a mile, but he knew that silver was better against werewolves anyway and could run that mile faster than plenty of other people could. The problem with being street smart in a world that promoted book smarts was that people tended to ignore what the street smart had to say or what they thought. Lately, Xander had found himself thinking about the mess that had been caused thanks to Buffy Summers having no skepticism when it came to people she liked and what that led to when one of her old friends from Los Angeles had shown up knowing about vampires. It had almost cost all of them, even her, plus a whole lot of idiot 'civilians' their lives when that old friend was willing to trade an entire club full of people to the vampires if he got turned into one himself in return. Idiot thought becoming a vampire was like getting eternal life, especially since he had cancer it turned out, and refused to believe that even if his body ended up undead, he was just as dead as a person as he'd be from the cancer.
Xander supposed that what had happened to the closest thing he'd had to a brother, his best friend, and then encountering the creature that had stolen Jesse MacNally's body had given him some definite opinions on vampires and none of them were good ones. Honestly, Billy Fordham disgusted him. Not just because of what he was willing to do, sell out dozens of people - including a 'friend' - in an attempt to save his own hide, but because he'd given up. He'd decided to take the easy way out, sell his soul and give his body to a demon, instead of going down fighting. Xander kind of hoped that somewhere in Hell the guy was getting a good beat-down; not like someone else he knew.
Morgan Shay, now there was a guy; even though Xander had only known him personally for a few days, the other teen had quickly become one of his favorite people. Xander was 'street smart', not 'book smart', he didn't really know what the difference between cancer and a brain tumor was, just that they both killed a person. What he did know, though, was the difference between Billy Fordham and Morgan Shay. Fordham had done everything he could trying to run away from death, no matter who else would have to pay the price in his place; Morgan had decided that if he was going to die then he'd make his last days mean something, make a difference while he still had the chance. When that demon hunter that was trapped in the puppet's body offered Morgan the opportunity to help him find the last member of the demon group he was hunting, Morgan had taken it with both hands.
Morgan had died, but he'd died so that others could live, he'd died so that the last demon could finally be found and dealt with. Xander hoped like hell - and the fact that Sunnydale, it turned out, was on the Mouth of Hell itself made that concept strangely appropriate - that he'd have the guts to go out the same way when his own time came. He hoped that Jesse had gone out the same way, making that bloodsucking bitch work for it.
It all made Xander wonder; what was the difference, what made one person go out fighting and another person willing to sell their soul to cling to life? He didn't know the answer, probably would never know the answer, he wasn't even sure any 'wise' or 'intelligent person or any person at all ever could know the answer. What he did know was that between the two, he'd take Morgan over Fordham any day and if there was any justice in the universe they were both getting what they respectively deserved in the afterlife...
