Anya

A/N Last one for this one, this one was really fun, really getting into detail and to grips with the characters. Hopefully this one will resolve it all nicely, exciting stuff.

Sunnydale, the world without shrimp, November 12 2002 7:49 PM

Anya was slumped over her couch, the book she was pretending to read and really was ignoring was slipping down from her hands to between her knees onto the couch itself. The knees in question were hunch up to her chest, her hair falling around her. It was brown again, and she'd cut, not one for keeping the same style for too long. And she'd needed a break anyway, after Xander had- well we don't talk about him do we? Her apartment was so quiet of late, in truth she'd been staying at the Summers' house because of her own safety, but every now and again she needed a bit of quiet, to lull and be still after a particularly horrible day of trying to find a shop that would take her.

It annoyed her, because really she was very employable, she had a high school diploma and retail experience. There's nowhere I can't work, I'm a hoot. Those stupid worthless, shop owners, I should eviscerate them. I could eviscerate them if I had my powers, but I don't so another night of wallowing. And I miss Xander. I know I shouldn't but I do and there's nothing I can think to get over him because he was mine. He was going to be my husband and now he's gone and why do I have to get over it?

Then Anya gave up on the book and picked up the remote to watch tv, shuffling around on the couch until she was comfy. It's just not the same without him, he was a person to lean on, now I just have this rubbish cushion. Anya thought, chucking the cushion to the other side of the couch, she gave out a great sigh and started flicking through the channels. The first three were all about weird animal sex positions, which at a glance Anya was interested in but after she saw a female praying mantis rip the head off the male, she decided to quit it and just put it on the late night news as she got up for a cup of hot cocoa she'd regret making later because of the sugar.

But as she was making her way to the kitchen to boil the milk, she heard a rattle in the air as there seemed to be a mystical disturbance. Usually she could feel these things, side effect from her demon days. It was a coldish-wind and then there was a friend standing on her doorstep, inside the apartment. "Hallie! What are you doing here?" Anya almost shouted, making her way over to the really rather dead vengeance demon. Running her hands through her hair to make sure she wasn't going mad and her hair had gone with it. She really hadn't a clue how Halfrek had survived such an ordeal with D'Hoffryn but now she was here, Anya could really use the friendship and some advice.

"Well, I managed to squeeze through that hell dimension and find my way back here, somehow the good ol' teleportation still works." The First lied, it had taken the form of Halfrek to intrude on Anya's life, try to get her to split from Xander even further. It could sense she would be a good ally to the slayer and pulling them apart would be the first step to taking apart their power. Anya was too tired to argue or even think clearly so she just accepted the situation as it was and gestured for Hallie to sit on the couch whilst she made the cocoa.

After a few minutes of petty small talk to pass the time, Anya sat down and handed Hallie a mug to which she shook her head vigorously and just let Anya hog the two cups, holding one between her nimble fingers as she took a sip, getting marshmallow on her nose. Hallie was her usual enigmatic self, bubbling a bright. It made Anya feel out of sorts, out of place with her clearly happier friend, she felt alone. More alone than she'd ever been. She was used to being the one on top, the one Hallie admired because she was 'the great Anyanka' with superfluous power and horrendous acts to her name. Hallie had always been a little jealous and that's how Anya had enjoyed it for decades. But now she was nothing, a human again. She didn't have any power and Hallie had just scraped her way through hell.

"So how you been? You ever get back with that Xander guy? I know how much you wanted to." Anya bit her lip nervously, no she wasn't back with Xander, no she wasn't getting orgasms on the regular, her life was going down hill. To Anya this was her midlife crisis. She was an unemployed ex-ex-ex-demon with no boyfriend, just a heart longing for a man who won't marry her. And a best friend who has been 'dead' for a couple weeks and was extremely good at flaunting her eternalness.

"Hallie, I have nothing, my life is over and I don't go out. It's not exactly going well." Anya said out loud for the first time, it made her feel worse to hear it spoken. Her entire life put out in a string of words that even sounded depressing, she wanted to cry. To let out everything she had building up in big gasping hiccups and sobs. Clutching the mug to her chest in an attempt to regain composure, she looked over at her friend with lidded teary eyes. Hallie looked less than sympathetic, but she did make a face, she'd never been much good with all the emotions.

"Well, I'm sure it'll all work out, you're Anyanka, it has to." Hallie replied with little actual feeling. Being a vengeance demon did tend to drain you a little, it was the needless killing, it really took the emotional energy out of a person. "Now let me tell you about..." Hallie started to rattle on, her chatter rather annoying and Anya began staring out the window. She wasn't paying much attention to the non-corporeal evil and just drank her two mugs of cocoa without much notice, just nodding every now and again and adding the occasional 'uh-huh' at various stories and remarks Hallie insisted on telling her. Even the disgusting ones about random slimy chaos demons she met on the way out of hell, with their mucus and the antlers.

Eventually the First noticed its victim wasn't paying attention, and decided the torment would not work tonight, but it'd be back, back the same time next week to try again. It wasn't like the first to give up really, but it had other places to be, much more important places to be and people to torment. So Hallie left Anya sitting alone in the window of her dark apartment, to grieve for a life she could've had if she wasn't so unlovable. Staring into the room with her hair flowing past her ears and a glazy stare into the bare room.

She was just about the drift off when she began to think of him, she was going to be Mrs. Harris, and a part of her still desperately longed for that domestic life back, she was almost already like a housewife to him. And it had finally brought her a proper purpose, a human purpose and now it was gone. Every morning she'd wake up in his arms and she'd make him a cup of coffee and and they'd start their day, he'd go to the site and she'd shuffle around and eventually end up at the magic box. Which was a perfect job. Maybe next week she would ask Giles for her job back. No but she couldn't, he was gone, back to England, who was running the shop. Now internally screaming she put it off as a job for the next day and rested her weary head against the glass. Now the reason Giles had fired her was over the phone and a couple weeks previous when her little stint as a vengeance demon had gone too far. He said she'd needed a detox, to look at things with fresh eyes. Eyes aren't fresh anyway, you have them all in your skull, and my skull is older than most so technically these eyes are ancient.

Then there was a desperate knocking on the door, it was sharp and loud and awful. So just as Anya got up and almost threw herself at the handle the door swung open loudly, crashing into the wall behind. Anya held her breath for far too long, she couldn't. Why was he here? What could he possibly want now? Not that it was awful seeing him, she loved his face and his eyes and his sexy muscles, but she couldn't have him and that made it all painful and stupid. She was heartbroken and mortal, it was mortal and stupid. She repeated to herself as he just stood before her, now words passing his lips. Just a frightful unreal stare and a hand over his heart.

Xander looked almost broken, pushed to his limits on guilt. Guilt over leaving her, guilt over not regretting it, guilt on waiting this long to realise how wrong he'd been in wanting her back. She couldn't possibly love him and yet here he was standing on her doorstep, wanting redemption. Anything, just to kiss her. He just needed to know if she still loved him, a chance if anything. He knew he could tell from her kiss, she was far too emotional in those, and she didn't know how to control it. He still didn't say anything, but a look passed between them. Of passion but no spur. Love but loss. Grief and heartache crossed with his guilt. They needed redemption, they both needed a chance that they weren't dreaming about the feelings that often passed so unnoticed between people.

Xander took a small step, Anya took the same, leaning up drastically she crashed their lips together in a passionate embrace, a painstaking kiss. It physically hurt to kiss him, and they both knew from then on they weren't going to talk about this. It was too soon, too much emotion between them for talking, they needed action, pure heat and action. The physicality of each other to pull them from this grief spell, maybe they'd both come out id better off. They'd get over each other, much like when they'd first made love, it was an action to stop a feeling, a suggestion from Anya that would stop her thinking about him. But when the time came she could never bare to see him go again. To relive the pain of watching him walk.

So she kissed him, she pressed their lips together firmly and harshly only to get his avid response of his tongue pushing against hers. A wetness gathering between her legs and a hardness forming in his, they were forced inwards, into the apartment space and through slamming doors until they were bedroom bound and loud with desire. Wanton desire from the each other the couldn't bare to part with. This would be one night, one night of solace before real life would begin the next day and they'd have to move on with their lives.

And it wasn't real, the taunting from the ghosts, the many ghosts that'd haunted so many that night. They'd failed, their mission to separate the people keeping the slayer strong, whereas they'd just extended their love, made them form meaningful lost attachments. That no matter how hard each of them tried, Anya would never let Xander go, he was the first she'd ever fallen for. And he, Xander would never forget her, and never stop the love for her because she was his, she fitted him perfectly and he liked maintaining her, and keeping her happy.