Chapter
Eight
Anya was just finishing up with the day's inventory when,
once again, the chiming of bells announced Buffy's arrival to the store. Geez, doesn't that girl ever knock,
Anya thought to herself. Even when she
was just a regular human she just barged in wherever she pleased, though most
of the time it was into some demon's nest or lair. Anya just shrugged and turned back to counting the spice and
herbal ingredients that still had to be taken from the box and put in the
cabinets.
"So, uh, where is your school stuff Willow?" Buffy asked
from by the table, where they had appeared. "I don't see any of it. Should I
go check in your room real quick?"
Willow gave a half smile and grabbed the wrap bag she had
been keeping most of her school things in ever since they had started. Having learned from last year, she managed
to get courses that were light on the bookwork, and more for diskette and paper
work. All she ever really needed was
inside this bag.
Draping it over her right shoulder, she glanced at her
watch and realized that Buffy was serious about how late it was getting. Even if she tried that teleportation spell
she used on Glory that time, she still hadn't figured out where the evil
goddess had ended up, on herself she doubted that she would make it on time.
"Uh, Buffy, I got my stuff right here, but I'm going to be
really, really late if you don't, you know, get me to class, and like right
now. So, uh, let's go, OK?" hurried the
red haired wicca.
Buffy smiled at her sister's impatience. "Don't worry Wills, I got your back. If you want, you can be the first one in
class." eased the love goddess.
Willow shrugged and muttered, "I'm usually the only
one in class anyway."
As Buffy came up beside her and took the girl's arm, Willow
half turned to her and asked something that she had been wondering, given that
"Buffy" was dead, and had quit college just before doing so. "Um, Buffy? I was just wondering, what are you planning on doing all day, now that
you're a goddess who can pretty much do everything, I mean?"
Buffy shrugged and smiled at Willow in that way the hacker
knew so well, "Well, since I did promise Tara, I'm going to hang with you. You did say that we hadn't been spending as
much time together, and I figure now is the perfect time to change that. You don't mind, do you? Me spending the day with you, taking you to
classes, to lunch, out on patrol with the rest of us?"
Willow felt a slight case of nervousness at having to spend
the day trying to keep tabs on Buffy even before she was a goddess she was more
than a handful to deal with when she was really into something. Yet it was immediately overlaid by the truth
of Buffy's words. She had missed her
best friend, and it would be good to spend the day catching up. Just before the magic shop disappeared in a
flash of light that Willow could never fully describe, she turned to Buffy and
smiled her "best friend" smile and only said, "Why would I mind, I love spending
time with you Buffy, because I love you, right?"
Buffy could only smile back and
teleported them to the classroom that she saw from Willow's mind. Having never actually been to any of
Willow's classrooms, she had to use her powers to pry the images and other certain
information from Willow's mind. Joshua
had done the same thing when he had teleported Willow and Tara to the magic
shop that first time. Gawd was that
only this morning, Buffy mused.
As Anya watched Buffy and Willow
disappear in the aura of pink, red, and gold, she secretly sighed. Ever since the time back at Sunnydale High,
when she had finally accepted the reality of living as an ordinary mortal
woman, again, she had taken it upon herself to do better for herself. She had been little more than a peasant girl
before she was so consumed by hate and vengeance that she learned sorcery to
change the man that had scorned her into a troll. That act alone had sealed her fate to be the vengeance demon
Anyanka, wielder of the wish.
After a thousand or so years of seeing only the worst and
most easy to hate of humanity can change a person. But after little more than a month with Xander, Anya sighed and
shook her head.
She loved him. There was absolutely no doubt in her mind that she loved Xander. She couldn't even begin to describe
everything that she loved about him, she only knew that she did, and so much
more than she had ever loved that troll. She knew that he loved her too. Ever since Buffy had died two weeks ago, he hadn't gone an hour without
telling her so every time he saw her.
She briefly closed her eyes, and for the moment that she
was alone, she cried a tear of happiness at her life, her mortal, short,
pathetic life, and smiled. Then the
moment was gone, the tear never made it to her cheek and she began to unpack
the boxes of inventory that had arrived last night.
An hour later, having set everything up and in its place,
she quickly double checked everything and went to the front and unlocked the
door and made sure that every sign said Open. It was barely four minutes before Jaime and Jenny, two high school
amateur witches that came in every day and "browsed". Anya had had conversations with them several times, the first of
which was an outright accusation of why they came in every day and never bought
a thing. Since then, and after many
talks with Xander and Giles about how to treat customers/strangers, they had
developed the closest thing Anya had to a friendship that wasn't a member of
the Scooby's.
"Hi girls," she greeted, "I trust that you will buy something
today. We just got our inventory last
night and now that I own the store, I expect you to give me plenty of money so
that I might get more inventory."
Jenny laughed as Jamie only smiled at their brown haired
friend. "Don't worry Anya, we did bring
money today. Besides, browsing and
catching up on the latest magicks of the Hellmouth are not the only reasons we
come down here you know," Jamie informed her.
Anya suppressed the rare smile that almost came to her
lips. One of her favorite things to do,
not with Xander, was trade word blows with Jamie. "Then you must have come to monopolize on the market of our
customer influence. I'll have you know
that we don't give discounts, and we have the most honest rates among every
practitioner and shaman in the area. We
also have the complete library on how to turn your best friend into a rat and
keep her as a pet." Anya told them, deadpan.
Jenny smiled, recognizing Anya's own trend of humor, but
not sure if she was really serious about the rat thing or not. "You…you don't actually have a library that
tells you how to turn people into rats, do you?" the tall blond asked
nervously.
Jamie only snorted at the question and brushed her dark
brown bangs from her face. "Please,
like any of Anya's spells have ever worked out right," she teased
sarcastically.
"Actually, there is a spell to turn humans into rats. A friend of Xander's, actually a friend of
his best friend Willow knew a spell and once turned Buffy into a rat. Then, to escape being burned alive, she turned
herself into a rat. Willow's been
keeping her as a pet, trying to figure out how to reverse the spell. The spell is relatively easy, but it
requires a great deal of power behind it," Anya explained, quite serious. "You'll never be able to do it, from what I
hear of your own spells Jamie," she added with a wicked smile.
Jamie actually blushed and fumed for a little bit. Jenny's eyes widened in amazement, believing
Anya to be telling them the truth, which she was, but they didn't know
that. "Is-is that true?" Jenny
stuttered. Anya only gave her a look
that said, "What do you think?" Jenny's
eyes widened even further.
Jamie snorted again, and decided to change the subject, "So
how's Xander doing?" she asked in an unusual tone. Anytime they mentioned Anya's frequently mentioned boyfriend/now
fiancée, the strange young woman would normally only smile and blush. Today however, "He's fine," was the only and
cryptic short reply. Immediately the
two friends knew something was wrong.
"Anya, what's wrong?" asked Jenny as she came up to Anya,
who was behind the counter.
"Nothing's wrong," was the reply, but the speaker seemed to
be focused on an upside down requisition form in her hands rather than the girl
in front of her.
Jamie, not the most sensitive person in the world, could
also detect the obvious signs of wrongness. "Bull shit Anya. We may not know
everything about you or this shop, or even this town, but we know a dodge when
we see one. Something's up. You've been practically on cloud nine for
the past week about your wedding that's coming up, and today, as soon as we
mention your honey pot, your all 'he's fine' and crap. Every other time we say the Z word, it's all
we can stand to hear the G rated version without confusing this place for a
porn shop! So drop the mask Anya, what
is wrong?"
Anya was silent for a full two minutes, trying to forget
what she just heard by just doing some paperwork. Finally, she closed her eyes and only with months of preparation
and practice, lodged all of her emotions before answering, making sure that she
wouldn't burst into tears at the first words out of her mouth.
"Um, some…uh, forgotten family of Xander's has just come
back into town, and uh, it looks like that when they leave, he uh, he um…might
be going with them. Unfortunately, I-I
uh, I can't go with him when he does. So, uh, it-it…it uh, looks…looks like the wedding is off." Anya broke
down crying as she finished that last sentence.
"Oh Anya!" Jenny exclaimed as she hugged her friend. Jamie didn't say a word and only joined
Jenny in the group hug, offering her support in her friend's time of need. Anya didn't exactly push them away as she cried
on their shoulders.
After maybe thirty seconds or less of this display, Anya
backed up and wiped her eyes as dry as she could. "It's OK…I'm OK now. It's
just like all of a sudden you know. This, uh, cousin or whoever he is just arrived this morning and is going
to be staying in town for quite a while, hearing what he has to do here, but
um…when he leaves, Xander has to go with him. So, uh, even though nothing's been canceled, heck, nothing's been
planned or made yet, I'm pretty sure that Xander won't be able to bring me with
him, where he's going…" trailing off.
"But what about…" Jenny began, but Jamie cut her off.
"Have you talked with Xander about this yet? Or maybe even this jackass cousin of
his? Maybe there is a way for you to go
with them. And even if you can't it's
not like they're leaving tomorrow. You
can still marry Xander, and there are long distance relationships that work you
know. Take my brother and his
girlfriend, she lives in Seattle, and he's going to school in New York. They only see each other when they're home
on holidays, and guess what, home is here, in Sunnydale, so you can imagine how
well that attraction works out," Jamie finished.
"It-it's complicated…" Anya tried.
"Well there are ways of making complicated things
simple. Hell, you're the one that
taught us that!" Jamie shouted.
"Anya, is everything all right?" came a voice from the
back. Shortly, Giles walked out,
looking concerned at his assistant.
"Everything's fine Giles, just a minor argument over
nothing," turning as she answered so that he couldn't see that she'd been
crying.
"Nothing my ass," Jamie casually commented, staring daggers
at Anya.
"Anya?" Giles took a step or two closer.
"Um, hello Mr. Giles," Jenny said in greeting as the older
man stood nearby here. Giles looked at
her and smiled. He too knew Jenny and
Jamie, though not as well as Anya.
"Hello Jenny," he greeted in a friendly tone, though there
was still evidence of concern over Anya's behavior. Finally, seeming to come to some sort of decision, "Um, girls,
was there anything in particular that you came in for today? I could get it rather quickly if you're in a
hurry or something like that," he offered.
Jamie immediately caught on. "Yeah, something like that," she repeated. "No, thank you Mr. Giles, we have everything
we need for right now. It was nice
seeing you, and you'll let us know how that story ends, right?"
Giles smiled at the girl's insight and merely nodded. Taking this as cue, Jamie grabbed Jenny
rather roughly and hastily escorted herself and her friend out of the
shop. Giles waited a full minute after
the two girls had left before stepping any closer to Anya. When he did, he put his hands around her
shoulders, she didn't try to move away.
"Anya, what's troubling you?" he asked in a soft voice.
She was silence itself as she just stood there, trying not
to cry, trying to bring up the barrier of indifference that everyone thought
was just her trying to move from living as a demon to living as a human. In truth, it was just something that she
needed. With everyone except Xander.
When she was mortal, human, before… She was very emotional, and also extremely
naïve. People liked her, and she had
many friends, but they were not her real friends. They were more like the people that Cordelia had hung out with
before. She was the perky one, the one
that always got emotional at the ancient ceremonies. It was something that she found out people liked, someone open,
but not too honest in being open, and someone who liked you no matter what.
After she had "died" herself and become the demon of
vengeance, she hung around in her home village after awhile. The only people who noticed that she had
even left were her ex-boyfriend's old friends. They asked, and only once, "Hey, where's that perky wench that ogre man
used to date?" She even made a dream/midnight
appearance to the girl she had called her best friend. The woman didn't even recognize her.
It was barely one hundred years after becoming a demon that
she learned that the memories of everyone who knew her was wiped clean. But in looking at the lost memories,
possible for creatures of higher and lesser planes, she found that they had
only been interested in her for her personality and the wealth of her family
and reputation. Except for one. One girl saw her as she truly was and liked
her for that. Not her best friend, not
even her sister. But the girl that she
had teased often, but "tolerated" in front of everybody. Anya couldn't even recall the girl's name.
So when she accepted that she was mortal again, and would
not be immortal anymore, she tried something different. Instead of being open and perky, she would
still be open, but open and brutally honest, sometimes being downright
mean. She became indifferent, emotionless,
and often had to fake confusion or ignorance of things that every demon in Hell
knew about, as that they put it there for humans to use.
Except
when she met Xander, he struck something within her. He was the very man that she was sent to punish, and here she
was, falling for him and now engaged to him! But from the moment that she asked, no told him to take her to the prom,
she just felt something about him. Like
she somehow knew him, on far more intimate terms than the casual acquaintance
of Cordelia Chase, but as, well as what she knew him now to be like. When she realized she cared for him, and
helped him and his friends identify what demon the Mayor might be changing
himself into and then tried to persuade him into running away…with her, she
knew that it might be more than casual interest. Then, after graduation, when everyone else that he knew was in
college and he lived in his parent's basement, she just showed up one night and
gave herself to him, hoping that by succumbing to her body's desires that
maybe, just maybe she could get over him and stop these fantasies she kept
having. The exact opposite occurred.
Instead of being as horrible in bed as he was in a fight,
which he got better at after meeting Buffy, he was terrific. Heck, she even had to admit it now, he was
like a god in the bed. Now that she
finds out that he actually is, or was, or will be a god, she can understand why
the fantasies only got worse and she started hanging out more and more with
Xander and his friends. Then it
happened, it just happened. She became
one of them. A Scooby. A Scoob. And the wall of indifference had to stay up nearly 24/7. But as time went by and she got to know each
of them, and her relationship developed even more so with Xander, it became
harder and harder to keep all of her emotions inside and to continue to play
ignorant of everything that didn't have something to do with the demonic
world. The only thing that kept it up
anymore was the memory of being that perky popular girl that everybody liked,
but nobody remembered.
Then Buffy had died, and Xander had asked her to marry
him. They had lived, and she said
yes. They had been making plans to
adopt Dawn, to have their honeymoon somewhere in Europe, and Giles to be the
one to give her away. Now, Giles was
going to basically die tomorrow when he re-attained his godhood, and after
Xander became Alexander, and when the Archangel took them all back to
their Realm in Heaven, she would be left alone, with no one but Dawn, and
because of the courts even that was looking iffy. She sighed as Giles waited for her answer.
"It's nothing Giles, I'm fine. I just have a lot to do, what with me being the only one here to
take care of the store now…" she stopped as she had just given him the clue to
what was bothering her. He tugged at
her shoulders a little and she couldn't keep the wall of indifference up
anymore even if her life depended on it. She started to sob as she fell back against him and turned to cry on his
shoulder. He held her and comforted her
as best he knew how, like he would his own daughter.
After a time, he pulled her so that he could face her. As he looked down upon her tear-stained
face, a sight that he had never before seen or heard of from the ex-vengeance
demon, he smiled at her. It was a smile
of understanding and consoling. Taking
her chin in his hand, he leaned down and kissed her cheek.
"He loves you very much," Giles said seriously. They both knew whom he was speaking of. Xander. "And if he was upset over me being squashed by a part of my personality
that I haven't even suppressed, then how angry do you think he's going to be
when he's told that you and Dawn can't come with us. Also, he's going to be a god, just like the rest of us, so Heaven
be damned if he can't find a way to marry you and take you with us."
"Giles, you don't know what you're saying," Anya spoke
through her tears. You can't damn
Heaven, you can damn Hell all you like, because it already is, but you just
can't Heaven.
Giles only chuckled and took a firmer grip of her face in
his hand. "Understand this, if anything
Anya, Xander loves you. And you heard
Buffy, Xander is exactly like this Alexander, God of Justice and Truth, so
believe me when I say, that he will not leave you behind. If there is no other choice, I know that he
would rather stay behind than leave you by yourself."
Anya smiled as she realized the truth of Giles' words. "Are you sure that you aren't the god of
Truth?" she asked as she sniffled and wiped away the last of her tears. He smiled down upon her and laughed lightly. Then he took her up in a hug and turned
around to the counter in front of them. "How about I help you with the rest of the things today? I can take care of all that legal stuff
later tonight. Then you can take off
early to go with Xander to pick up Dawn from school." Giles offered.
Anya smiled brightly and quickly nodded her head in
agreement. "I'd like that," she said
soulfully, with more emotion than he had ever heard from her before.
As they worked, Giles decided something then and
there. Turning to his assistant, he
looked at her and made an oath. "Anya,
I'd like to make a promise to you. Until the day that all of us "gods" actually go home, I would like to
help you every day here in the shop. Like you have been helping me."
"But Giles, you…you're getting your godhood back tomorrow,
um, I don't think that you'll still be you after that. Buffy said so…" Anya pointed out.
"I know what Buffy said, and I understand it and have
accepted it. But you have a point about
having to run this place by yourself. So I'm going to help you for as long as I can. Plus, I'll be working for you, and I'll be a god at that. Just imagine everyone of our arguments, only
in reverse." Giles explained to her.
Anya smiled as she pictured herself ordering Giles around
like he had her for most of this year. "I would love it if you would, but what's going to make a god work for
me?" she asked sarcastically, knowing that there was no certain way that Giles
could guarantee that he would do as he said that he would.
"I promise you Anya, I swear an oath to you that I, in
whatever form, will help you in every way that I can, no matter the task, until
I am no longer able to be there for you." Giles swore.
Anya could only smile and nod as she went back to work.
Two hours later, Anya noticed the time, "OH! Giles, school is almost out! I-I have to go! Xander's picking Dawn up in thirty-five minutes!"
"Then go ahead and go. If you need my car, not that I'll be needing it, here are the keys. Don't worry, I can cover the store until you
get back. I imagine that Dawn will want
to see Buffy, and she has been popping in and out of here with Willow all day,"
he replied, referring to the numerous times that day that the blond and redhead
had teleported in for one thing or another that Willow or even Buffy forgot.
"Are you sure? I
mean, I-I don't have to…" Anya was saying, despite taking the car keys, her
purse, recently bought at the insistence of Xander who kept saying she kept
losing things, and was walking even as she spoke towards the door.
"I'll see you in a few minutes Anya," Giles stated as Anya
reached the door and went through it. He turned back to the customers that were still in the store. Barely an hour later, everyone, minus Tara
and Spike, (and team Angel if you really want to count them as everyone), was
in the store and discussing that night's plan for patrol.