Prayer for the Dying
Chapter Five
Long after the violence and the vengeance, long after the mayhem and the murder, far too long after that last time I made love to my Anya, I finally got to spar with the Buffster.
She found me in my apartment, passed out on the bed, more from depression than drink, although I doubt the beer hadn't had some effect on me. And when she walked into my room, she was carrying a sword.
A sword, for Christ's sake. I hadn't even picked up my own sword in two months.
"Xander, get up."
No. No, I was going to have to refuse that request. Adam had asked me, and I'd said no. Giles had demanded me to, told me that my job was not going to wait for me, and I told him I'd told them to shove their job up their collective ass and I'd tell him the same if I had to. Dawn had simply cried outside my door. She missed me.
That one had been an almost.
"Xander, you have to get up."
Great thing about being me is, I don't have to do anything.
"You can't stay there forever."
Actually ... nah, too predictable.
And then she knelt beside my bed on the floor, stroked my cheek, and a soft, painful smile crossed her face.
"Xander, please."
Hard to say no to that smile, you know?
"Xander, are you home? Open up. I need to talk."
"Is that Willow?"
"Think so, yeah."
"You need to talk to her."
"Man, I so don't want to do this."
"Xander, she'll need this."
She told me she'd brought the sword because she'd been afraid. Buffy Summers, afraid. I didn't think that was possible. I was kinda thinking her afraid bone had been removed a long time ago.
She'd been afraid I'd attack her, afraid I'd come after her with the sword. I'd been holding it when Giles had come. No wonder she thought there was a chance I'd try slicing and dicing the resident Slayer.
She led me out of the bedroom, dragged me out into the living room and gave the couch a good push, giving us a little room.
Buffy wants me to spar with her. Do you have any idea how funny that realization was to me right then and there?
"You haven't been to work."
I laughed at that, and rubbed at the back of my neck like I did when I was nervous. "I don't have to work anymore, remember?"
Actually, asking her to "remember" that particular fact was merely speculation and expectation on my part. When Giles had so gracefully informed me that I was about to be fired by my employers, I produced a thick stack of documents that shut him up rather quickly.
I, Maxwell August Tenney, being of sound yadda yadda yadda, and having no other heirs, etc., etc., will all of my fortune, land, Swiss bank accounts, and so on, and so forth, to my ward, Alexander Lavelle Harris.
What can I say? Teach was lonely and rich.
I hadn't told Buffy, of course. But I'd told Giles, which in most cases was close enough.
She squirmed. "Okay, so you can avoid the work stuff. But you can't avoid us."
"Yeah, I've noticed," I said, gesturing towards the kitchen table. Newspapers, milk and bread, Twinkies. Considering I hadn't left the house in a while, you can guess who was getting them for me.
For a second, she looked as if she wanted to reach out to me, but her eye caught a glimpse of my blade, and she froze. "You're hurting, Xander. You can't keep that inside. Trust me, if anyone knows, I do."
I cocked an eyebrow. "And that's why you brought the sword."
"And that's why I brought the sword."
We smiled at each other, that smile you give the other guy when you're ready to play sportsmanlike and you plan on kicking his ass in a very sportsmanlike way.
And then we started fighting.
The next day, I got a complaint from the manager. No more sword fights in the middle of the night. I told him to go screw himself and moved into a nice, big house I bought with Teach's money. But I told him to screw himself in a much nicer tone of voice than I would have the day before.
It was the afterglow.
It was the afterglow of making Buffy break a sweat.
It was the afterglow of Xander Harris kicking the ass of the Vampire Slayer.
That's not to say it didn't take a while. It did. She was still stronger than I was. But I was faster, and I was better. So there.
And I finally got her. I knocked the sword out of her hand and leapt, and before she even knew what hit her, I had.
I had her pinned to the ground, and I could vaguely remember a time when I might have taken the opportunity to kiss her. But Buffy was ... well, Buffy, and at the moment -- for a long time, actually, that wasn't who I'd wanted.
"You need to see her, Xander."
I open the door, not sure what to say. My mind goes blank, and all I can see is the same quiet little girl who used to laugh at my jokes in the sandbox.
Lame, I know.
"Xander?"
It's all she says, but I can speak Willowese. There's this hurt in there, this pain of not knowing, this "I wish I would have known" that just tears at me. Those big beautiful eyes of hers are staring me down, and for a second, I'm positive she's going to try beating the crap out of me.
And then ... boom. She pounces.
She's hugging me, squeezing so hard I start to wonder if I'm going to get to experience death by suffocation by the end of the night. Somehow, I maneuver the two of us into the apartment, and close the door behind us.
And it isn't until I get her inside that I realize that maybe the tears she's letting go off aren't all because of the lies I've told, but the truth that's out there now.
You ever have to make up a gravestone?
It took us an hour, all of us, sitting around that table in the Magic Box that had started to become our second home. And occasionally, as we bantered phrases like "beloved friend" and "annoying clerk" around, one of us would glance over at her empty chair, and it was usually me who had to leave the room.
They finally settled on "Beloved." Mostly because it was the adjective that popped up the most in conversation. Me? I was hiding out in the apartment. Figured they could make up a gravestone with the best of them.
This was the first time I was seeing it. Actually seeing it in the place it was supposed to be. Somewhere under there was Anya.
Oh, God ...
I can't do this.
You can do this.
I can't be here.
You know, geography seems to be proving you wrong.
She's dead.
That isn't going to change if you show up tomorrow.
You know how in those movies, where people die in these awful ways and someone collapses in hysterics on and/or in the grave? It doesn't work that way. You don't go nuts. You just ... you just start crying. And then you can't stop. And then you do. You hack and you sob for a while, but you do stop.
You learn something new every day. Why did that have to be the something I had to learn on that day?
I have these horrible, painful dreams. I'm lying in bed with Anya, and I hear Willow at the door. And I open the front door, and Willow pounces on me like a Tigger. We just hug and hug and hug for the longest time, and I bring out the sword and the knife and we have out nice little "why didn't you tell me sooner?" talk.
And then Willow leaves, and I go into the bedroom, and I crawl into bed, and I go to wrap my arms around Anya ...
Copper and corn syrup. Smells like the first, feels like the second. It's all over my arms, and it burns in a way blood isn't supposed to burn.
Because it's her blood.
And it's coming from the hole in her neck where her head is supposed to be.
And that's the moment when I see the sword.
Damn.
Told you they were horrible.