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Chapter 4—The Wish

Erica's first thought was, What the hell is wrong with that woman's face? One minute they had been talking, and suddenly everything was weird. "Done? What do you mean done?"

Before Erica could even finish her question, the woman's eyes rolled back in her veiny face and she fell off her barstool. Erica looked around to see if anyone else was seeing this, but no one in the bar seemed to care that a woman had just fainted. They probably just thought she was blackout drunk. Erica climbed down from her stool and shook the woman's shoulder.

The woman's face went back to normal the second she opened her eyes, making Erica wonder if she had imagined the whole thing. The woman put her hands to her forehead. "Oh, that's embarrassing. I've never had that happen before." She tried to raise her head and then slowly laid it back down. "Whoa, that one took a lot out of me. Why would..."

Erica helped the woman sit up. "What did you mean, done? What just happened?"

The woman was distracted. She felt her chest, covering up her necklace in the process. "I granted your wish." She shook her head as though trying to remember what that was. "I gave him back Anya to break his heart."

That was very clearly ridiculous. The woman must have been insane to think that she could grant wishes. Erica should have patted her shoulder and then gotten the hell away from this crazy woman, but instead she followed her down the rabbit hole. "You're saying that you brought her back from the dead?"

The woman's eyes went wide. "You never said she was dead!"

Erica nodded, mostly humoring the woman. "So that makes a difference then? Do you have rules, like the genie in Aladdin?"

The woman thought about that as she got up to her feet. "I have no idea what the rules are about this. I've never tried it before. Um, but the wish was granted. Otherwise, I wouldn't have--" She gestured at the floor behind her. "And that explains that. I think this is going to be okay. It's just one human. It'll just be some paperwork, right?"

Erica shrugged. "Sure."

The woman nodded to herself. "Right. Just to help things along, how did she die?"

Erica did not know the specifics. She always imagined that Anya was crushed or something. "She died in the Sunnydale earthquake. The big one. I don't know anything more than that."

"The Sunnydale—The Sunnydale earthquake?" The woman laughed. "Oh, you stupid girl. That wasn't an earthquake." Something occurred to her. "Oh, god, I brought back one of them." And then, before Erica could ask any more, the woman disappeared into thin air.

Erica looked around again, but no one was paying attention. Her eyes settled on her drink on the bar. She wished she could blame it all on the alcohol, but there was just no way she was that drunk. The only thing she could think to do was talk to Xander, but Xander never gave her any answers on a good day, and she was sure that he was not in a very cooperative mood at the moment. She shook her head. He would just think she was crazy. Then again, that would not be any different than usual.

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Buffy sat on the half wall outside the training facility, looking out on the sidewalk and swinging her legs. It was a nice night, and she was glad that she had decided to go outside to take Xander's phone call. "I don't remember exactly what I told her about Anya, but I really don't think I brought up what happened at the wedding."

"Did you tell her that Anya hated me?"

"No." Buffy shook her head unnecessarily. "I can't imagine who would have said that."

"She probably came up with it on her own. It's a natural conclusion." Xander was quiet for a while. "She said I let Anya die."

He sounded so sad when he said it, but Buffy could not imagine that he would actually think that was true. "Xander, that's ridiculous. Obviously..." It took her a second to remember that Erica did not know anything about their life. She had understood his decision to keep it from Erica; she remembered dating as a young Slayer. She was just amazed he had managed to keep it going this long. "She just doesn't know what happened, but Anya's death was not your fault."

"I know. I know that. It's not..." He did not finish, but it sounded like maybe he was not so sure.

Buffy kicked out her legs again. "You remember what she told Andrew, what she said about humanity? And it wasn't her first apocalypse. She knew what she was signing up for. She knew the risks. We all knew, and it could have just as easily been any one of us."

"I know," he repeated. After a second, he said, "This is stupid. I've made my peace with it. I wouldn't even think about her so much if Erica didn't keep bringing her up at every turn. It's like Erica's the one who won't let me move on. She just keeps reminding me that I already had a love of my life and that maybe I don't get to have another one."

As someone who loved and lost the One pretty early on in her life, Buffy did not like hearing Xander talk like that. "I don't think it works that way. I mean, it might seem like that now, but that doesn't mean that you can't love someone else too. It won't be the same, but..." She tried to think of how to put this delicately. "She didn't hate you anymore, but you were still broken up when she died. Even if she was still alive, you guys wouldn't be together."

"That's what Erica said," he murmured. "I think... I think maybe we would be though. I still loved her; she still loved me. We still... connected a couple times."

"Yes," Buffy said to keep him from elaborating. The one thing she did not miss about Anya was all the sex talk. "I heard about the basement."

Xander made a humming sound that told her he was going to elaborate anyway. "The basement was where we decided it was really over, but then it happened again, in the kitchen. And we--"

She felt the need to stop him right there. "When you say the kitchen, you mean at your apartment, right?"

There was an awkward silence from the other end of the line. Finally, he said, "Sure." It was obvious he was lying, and Buffy gave a shudder of disgust. She used to eat in that kitchen. Xander continued. "And we didn't really talk about it afterwards, but I felt like it was something significant. It was just that we couldn't get back together in the midst of an apocalypse. We got engaged during an apocalypse; she wouldn't have trusted that it was real."

Buffy did not know what she could say to that. She felt that maybe he did not want to relive his last few days with Anya, so she tried to change the subject. "So you and Erica are splitsville, huh?"

"I should have just married her."

Buffy had not seen that coming. It seemed that he might be thinking of marrying Erica for the wrong reasons, and she felt the need to point that out. "Xander, I don't think--"

"I would have, if I'd know that it was just going to be for a year. I could have made it work for a year."

Then she realized that he was not talking about Erica, and it all made a lot more sense. "There was no way to know that though."

He proceeded like he had not heard her. "Maybe if we'd eloped. If we hadn't had the pressure of the big wedding and if my family hadn't been there... She probably wouldn't have wanted that kind of wedding. But think about how much better things would have been if I'd gone through with it. She wouldn't have become a demon again. You wouldn't have tried to kill her. I wouldn't have been stabbed by a crazy cat-eyed demon lady. She wouldn't have slept with Spike." He said the name like it was offensive to him. "We could have been happy for a year. If only I'd known."

Buffy wanted to help him, but she could not really argue with what he was saying. She had never been a fan of the whole walking out on his wedding day thing. "Her demon powers were really helpful when Willow went dark. After Tara... You know, maybe you should talk to Willow about this. All my dead ex-lovers came back. And they were dead to start with. And I'm not doing that well for myself." This was starting to get depressing. "But Willow, she's managed to find something good with Kennedy. Maybe she could help you."

"Yeah." He sounded thoughtful. "She was actually a big help back when it happened. And yeah, she has Kennedy, but..."

He continued talking, but Buffy stopped paying attention because there was something much more important happening on the sidewalk. Walking toward her was a woman who looked remarkably like the deceased subject of their conversation. Buffy shook her head to make sure that she was not just seeing similarities because Anya was so on her mind, but the woman looked exactly like how Buffy remembered Anya. Buffy interrupted "Xander , I'm sorry to do this to you, but I have to go. Something potentially huge just came up."

"Do you need me to come in?"

That was the last thing Buffy wanted. "No, not yet. Let me just figure out what's going on, and I'll fill you in later."

"Okay," Xander said, and he hung up.

Buffy did not actually believe this was Anya coming up the sidewalk, but she still felt the need to investigate further. She jumped down from the wall so that she would be able to intercept the woman.

The woman was walking slowly, looking around at her surroundings like she was very confused by them. Buffy had seconds to decide how to initiate a conversation. She went with a direct approach. "Hey, didn't we go to high school together?"

Probably-Not-Anya looked down on her like she was a homeless person begging for change. "I don't think so."

That was a very definitive response. Buffy should have been happy to leave it at that because people did not come back from the dead every day. Except, in Buffy's experience, they kind of did. And on top of her looks, this woman also sounded a lot like Anya. "Are you sure? Where did you go to high school?"

Without answering, Probably-Not-Anya continued walking down the sidewalk. Buffy was vacillating between following her and letting her go when Probably-Not-Anya stopped and backtracked to where Buffy was standing. She looked confused again. "Just to check, where did you go?"

"Sunnydale High School. Back when there was a Sunnydale, California." Probably-Not-Anya did not say anything, so Buffy continued. She figured that if she put it all out there, they should be able to clear things up. "I'm Buffy Summers. You're Anya, right? Anya Jenkins?"

She shook her head hesitantly. "No, that's... I'm sure that's not my name."

"You don't know your name?" Buffy felt that it was becoming more likely this woman was Anya.

"Of course I know my name. It's not Anya Jenkins. It's... um,... I know my name," she said in a very confrontational tone. "And I'm not from Sunnydale."

"Okay." Buffy shrugged and hopped back onto the wall. "My mistake. So where are you from?"

The woman scoffed and made like she was going to walk away again, but then she grew pensive. She came up to where Buffy was sitting. "'I'm not entirely sure. But those names and places, they don't sound right. I mean, they—I don't..." She took a deep breath. "You can't know me, if I don't know you."

Buffy thought about that for a second. "So are you saying that you have amnesia, but you won't even consider that you might be the girl I went to high school with? Because I gotta say, that sounds like Anya." Mostly Buffy just wanted to keep her talking, but it did seemed a little bit like Anya to be that stubborn.

Still-Probably-Not-Anya pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. She was clearly ready to dig in her heels on this identity thing. "I'm not saying that I have amnesia, and I'm not this Anya. I told you, I know my name. It's..." There was the slightest pause. "Christina. Chris—Chr—Christina Emmanuel." She seemed really satisfied that she had been able to come up with something. "And... and I moved around a lot, so it's hard to pinpoint just one place to say I'm from, but it's definitely not Sunnydale."

"Okay." Buffy still was not convinced one way or the other. "Well, if you change your mind about that, I run this facility, and you can usually find me here."

Christina made a few jerky movement like she was unsure whether she should just walk away. "I'm not going to change my mind." She shook her head and turned to go on her way, finally leaving Buffy and their strange conversation behind.

Buffy did not know what she was going to tell Xander, but she knew that whatever she went with, he was not going to be happy that the ball was entirely in this Christina Emmanuel's court. She climb down from the wall and poked her head into the facility. "Deidre, come here," she said, calling over the first girl she saw. Deidre obliged. "I want you to follow that woman in the turtleneck and tell me where she goes. Don't engage though, because she's not a—probably not a demon."

Deidre ran off to embark on her assignment, and Buffy felt satisfied, knowing that she had done all she could, short of actually kidnapping the woman.

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Author's Note: Generally, the only people who died in the "earthquake" were Slayers, and that's what Calreg is thinking up there.

In talking about getting back together during an apocalypse, Xander is specifically thinking about what Anya said in Two to Go. "[If things get rough...] Let me guess, you'll propose?"