A/N: Okay, I THINK this is going to be the last post for today. I'm not sure. But in any case, this is the last post for this moment in time (about 1:30 in the afternoon) so I think I've gotten a lot accomplished since I woke up this morning.

If I ever manage to get this thing up on LJ I'll let you guys know so that you can see it there. I'm about to go post something on the _xangel community homepage to let everyone know that I've met the requirements and wrote the story.

Note on the Timeline -- This assumes that Buffy moved in during Junior year. This chapter is the summer break before Senior year starts. I will not be including Faith in this story because I simply don't have a place for her, no matter how much I love her character. Dawn also did not fit into this, even though I do quite like her.

On with the show!

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Winter Song

Chapter 3: Be My Escape

I've given up on giving up slowly

I'm blending in so you won't even know me

Apart from this whole world who shares my fate

This one last bullet you mention

Is my one last shot at redemption

Because I know to live you must give your life away

And I've been housing all this doubt

And insecurity

And I've been locked inside that house

All the while you hold the key

And I've been dying to get out

And that might be the death of me

And even though there's no way of knowing where to go

Promise I'm going because

I've gotta get out of here

I'm stuck inside this rut that I fell into by mistake

I gotta get out of here

And I'm begging you, I'm begging you, I'm begging you

To be my escape

"Be My Escape" by Reliant K (mmhmm)

Buffy, Xander and Willow had become pretty much inseparable by the end of eleventh grade. They had a bond closer than siblings; Xander came to rely on their meetings like a drug that he couldn't stop, because when he was with Buffy and Willow he could make dumb jokes and be loud and obnoxious and he didn't have to worry about it. At home his parents had taken to filling his bedroom with pamphlets to different Christian colleges. In particular, they wanted to send Xander to Liberty University – it was probably a life goal of his father's to have a personal meeting with Jerry Falwell. The thought made Xander want to vomit.

"Virginia?" Buffy asked in disbelief. "What kind of cretins are your parents?"

It had become a rule from the very beginning of their friendship that Buffy did not meet his parents. He could tell that she was a little hurt that her reputation had gotten bad enough that his parents couldn't know that they were best friends, but she was good enough to not say anything about it. What he really hated was when he walked Buffy and Willow home before heading off to some church meeting or other that he had to go to; watching Buffy give her mother a hug as her mom came home from work would have been bad enough without the pity in Buffy's eyes that she couldn't seem to suppress.

Xander led the youth group on Monday and Wednesday nights; his parents wanted to make it meet on Friday nights as well but Xander had managed to convince them that no one would want to come because that was the night at the end of the week when parents could take their kids out. Nothing motivated the Harris family more than hearing Xander talk about the traditional family unit (he could practically see the fantasies of a preacher family with nine kids growing in his mother's eyes), so they didn't have to know that immediately after dinner he snuck out his bedroom windows to meet Buffy and Willow at the Bronze.

That whole summer would always stand out in Xander's mind as pure gold. His parents were much more relaxed with his schedule over the summer because he always got his chores done, so they didn't mind that he was almost never at home.

At Willow's house he and Buffy laughed their asses off when Willow "accidentally" hacked into Snyder's home computer and found a huge collection of teacher porn stored in carefully labeled files and subfolders on his desktop – apparently he was so anal retentive that he couldn't even keep his straight-as-a-ruler lifestyle from his pornography (Xander, who hadn't had much opportunity to watch porn, watched some of the movies with a weird feeling in his stomach as Buffy and Willow stood by saying stuff like "Well, I guess blonde's not her natural color!" and "Does she think those tit implants are fooling anyone?!").

At Buffy's house Willow read a book under the huge oak tree in the backyard while Buffy exasperatedly tried to teach Xander how to throw a proper punch: "The thumb goes out of the fist, Xander!"

Although he felt kind of weird about the Wiccan aspects of it, Willow taught them the best way to grow herbs in the garden, from one of her dusty old tomes (Willow's house had an addition built onto it that was a huge library: each of the four walls was a wall of books, and the one to the left was entirely Willow's; her family had enough books to nearly fill it all). At night Xander and Buffy got their hands dirty as they dug holes in the garden and planted cherry tomatoes and zucchini (Buffy just liked saying the word "zucchini").

They went to the Bronze at least once a week, too. There Xander and Willow watched as Buffy flirted and fell for the cute, muscular Owen Thurman, and then promptly dumped him two days later. "Why?" Willow had asked, horrified (she'd had a crush on Owen at some point – "He can brood for forty-five minutes straight; I've clocked him," she'd confessed to Xander after he'd plied her with Coke).

"Because on our way home this weird guy came up to us and started screaming about Hell and then he tried to hit Owen. It was a huge fight and I had to slam the freak into a wall and then run to get Owen to stop trying to fight it out. He told me the next morning that nearly getting killed had never made him feel so alive, and he wants to go out to dark alleys at night and pick fights to get the rush again – freak," Buffy said acidly. Xander had a feeling that she was actually quite a bit more sad about this than she was letting on, but he was smart enough to not say anything about it.

He brought Buffy and Willow to his group on Wednesday night, so his parents wouldn't know about it. He figured that he could make it a bit more exciting by bringing in the "wrong element." According to Willow, Wiccans thought all gods were basically the same, so she felt perfectly comfortable in church. Buffy was fairly bored but she thought that it would be funny to shake up the "clones."

It turned out that he was right; when he introduced them there was a huge gasp from half the group and Buffy sashayed to a chair right next to Scott Hope, sitting down with a big production. Willow was a tad more uncomfortable with all the eyes on her so she sat down next to the quietest girl. Xander had intentionally left that chair open for either Buffy or Willow.

The girl's name was Tara McClay, and she was likely the kindest, most beautiful, and saddest girl that Xander had ever met. She was painfully shy and when she did talk she had a nervous stutter. She had problems meeting men's eyes and Xander had awful suspicions about her father. He went out of his way to make sure that she didn't have to talk to anyone that she didn't want to and he tended to turn a blind eye if she took out her notebook to draw and write her poetry. Once she'd let him read some of it, and he'd told her that she was amazing. Blushing fiery red, she'd whipped it shut, but since then she hadn't had as much trouble talking to him directly.

He was hoping that someone as friendly as Buffy or as calming as Willow might help to bring Tara out of her shell. He amended that to out of her closet as well when he caught the helpless way that Willow and Tara were eyeing each other, and he and Buffy both caught each other's eye and smiled before looking away.

"Okay, group," Xander started. "Why does the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego mean so much for the world today?"

He had a feeling that Buffy was a little surprised at how well he taught the group, but Xander had to admit that he had a bit of a weakness for teaching. The truth was, he never talked about many stories from the Old Testament; he preferred the teachings of Jesus. He loved his religion, he loved the knowledge that people could find pillars of strength in God and that any sinner could truly repent in their heart and find peace through God.

It was just when that teaching was twisted by people that it got a little scary.

By the end of class everyone had stopped staring at Buffy, particularly when she'd said right off the bat "It means that as long as you're strong in your faith that there's protection for you, even if it doesn't feel like it." Willow and Tara spoke in whispers through most of the meeting, and to Xander's pleased surprise Tara let Willow look at her latest drawing.

"Okay, guys, that was great. I've got three pizzas in the kitchen and there should still be some Dr. Pepper cans in the fridge. See you guys next Monday," Xander said after the hour was up. When he looked up he froze in fear. His mom was standing at the head of the group, and he thanked his stars that Willow had taken Tara off to the kitchen for some caffeine.

His mom was staring at Buffy in shock, until Buffy turned around and with more grace than Xander had ever given her credit for, she stood up and offered her hand to his mother, who shook it automatically. "You must be Mrs. Harris," Buffy said warmly. "Xander talks about you a lot in class – isn't there that verse in John about the value of sisters of the lord?"

It had to be the most skillful amount of brownnosing that Xander had ever seen. With that one sentence his mother was melting and suddenly Xander had the ability to let Buffy come over to his house, as long as they stayed in either the yard, the kitchen, or the living room – supervised, of course. It made Buffy laugh when they pretended they couldn't see his mom carefully ignoring them through the kitchen window as they sat out talking in the lawn chairs.

Xander and Buffy saw a little less of Willow that final month. She and Tara had become fast friends, but Xander could tell that for Tara at least it was a little more than that. When he asked Willow about that, she'd blushed but she'd also gone a little quiet. "I think I really like her, Xander – like, really like her," Willow had said slowly. "When she's around it's like the rest is just background noise, you know?"

He didn't know; he'd never actually felt like that with any girl before, but he nodded anyway. "But…I don't think that I'll ever have the guts to tell her."

"Why?" he asked, confused.

"Because of her family," Willow said sadly. "Tara's…not treated well. And Mr. McClay is pretty misogynistic. I think if he ever found out that his daughter was a lesbian it would be even worse than it is now. I don't know how she has the strength to be as kind and good as she is, living with that."

"I think…that maybe, even if you couldn't be together, really together," Xander said slowly, "you should tell her. If I were Tara, I'd want to know. I'd want that to make it through – she only has one year left in there until she can leave, and then she'd know that there was something waiting for her when she escapes."

"I love you, Xander," Willow had replied, her eyes a little tearful, and they'd hugged harder than they had since before Buffy had come to town. When he'd told Buffy about it later she'd sighed.

"I thought it might be like that. It makes me sick thinking of Tara going through something like that – I mean, she's so nice," Buffy said. "I'm thinking about telling my mom about it, she'd do something big time."

"I don't know if Tara needs more stress," Xander had said.

"Sometimes, you're too nice for your own good," Buffy had said, and they'd both started laughing as they headed down to her kitchen to make peanut butter and honey sandwiches.

Xander had never wanted that summer to end, and when it did it was like a crushing weight had fallen down on top of him. With the approach of senior year it was the end of his freedom. He'd have to follow his father's footsteps or…he just didn't have anything else. He walked into school that year not expecting anything different, but life doesn't work like that.

Instead, Xander met him and it was like he woke up, like everything had shattered and then nothing was ever the same again.

A/N: If my memory banks serve, you actually WILL meet Angel in the next chapter - or, if not Angel, then at least Spike. Until next time I post (which could be TODAY, you never know)!

Feedback grows writer's-block-devouring mold!