TWENTY-THREE

* * *

Complicated. Always so complicated.

It hadn't been that way before, not in the old days. You got up, got up early so you could be off to school before the fighting began, before Dad, hung over or sometimes still drunk, would start to argue and fight with Mom, who was likewise. You got up, got to school and there you sat with Willow and Jesse and the three of you formed a wall of sarcasm, of protective wit, against Cordelia and Harmony and the others. You formed a history with them too, a life that went beyond the dull, pointless classes and the dull pointless talks by the adults, and you looked at the girls and you joked with Jesse about how you sure would like to go out with her, would sure like to kiss her, or her, or her.

All so simple then.

Then.

Buffy Summers.

He could still remember the first day, the first time, as he rode on his skateboard and saw her moving up the stairs of the school, as the swaying of her hips had caught his eye and man, there was something about her, something in those cute chipmunk cheeks, in those short, oh so short skirts she wore and something about how she was carrying a wooden stake in her purse. Something.

Something that had changed everything.

Jesse, not Jesse anymore.

Fangs, that look in his eyes that wasn't Jesse, that wasn't his friend and yet that still was.

And then was dust. By his hand.

Not even anything to bury. How was he supposed to look Jesse's folks in the eye and tell them that he had killed the demon that their son had become? How was he supposed to explain?

I can't.

And he hadn't.

Instead he had gone after what had killed his friend.

The others, Giles and Buffy and even Willow, they didn't understand this. They couldn't. They couldn't understand that it was simply a thing he, as a man, had to do.

Simple. Find vampires. Kill vampires.

It had been so simple, for a while. Vampires, demons, monsters. Find them and kill them. Even Angel; he had been right about Angel, right all along. Wherever Angel was now, he was doing harm. He was. It was what he was.

But things were complicated now. Spike was a vampire, but he had a chip. And Spike had helped them, had tried to save Dawn. Then there was Ben, who had not been a bad guy but who was also Glory who was bad as bad could be, and so Giles had choked the life of out Ben. Innocent Ben. And now there were these three idiots who kept making trouble. Like Jonathan; Xander had gone to school with the guy; Jonathan had always been the kid people picked on, the kid they loved to insult and belittle. He wasn't bad, wasn't a vampire, wasn't a demon.

Was Anya?

What was Anya?

Anya was why Xander drank now, why every day after work he took a bottle of scotch and tried to finish it before bed. What was Anya? The woman he had left, who he had stupidly abandoned at the altar because his father was a drunk, because his father was a failure, because his father was the one thing in all the universe he was most afraid of becoming?

Xander stared now, at the half empty bottle of scotch, the familiar and dulling effect of the alcohol making him blink.

You don't want to be your father, but look at you.

Go to hell.

Look at you.

"I said go to hell!"

The bottle hit the wall but didn't break, so weak was his throw.

Look at you, Xander Harris.

He lowered his head into his hands, groaned quietly.

Look at you. You helped save the world. More than once. How many times was it your action, your decision, your idea, that saved everyone? And now you're just a drunk, a sad, pitiful drunk.

Like Dad.

Oh, God ....

Xander looked over at the bottle. Much of the remaining scotch had drained into the carpet, a little still remaining.

I need it to be like it was. I need it to be like the times when Buffy and Willow and Giles and I fought demons who were demons, monsters who were monsters. I need to know I'm making a difference again.

I need.

It wasn't more than three minutes later that the phone rang.