~**~

Part 3

~**~

"Hey, Buffy. Why are you in Dr. Coyle's office? And why did they call me in, and leave when I got here?"

"Sit down, Nat. I have a lot to tell you, and I'm not sure how well you're gonna deal with some of it."

The young nurse dropped into the chair across from her friend and lifted one eyebrow at Buffy.

"Nat, do you believe in magic?"

~**~

"You know, of course, I don't believe any of it." Nat was following Buffy into the secure ward, heading down the hall to Alex Lewis' room.

"I know," Buffy said lightly, "but I also know you trust me, and you know I'm not still psycho, in spite of what I told you. Anybody else in this place would have sedated me and be right now rolling me into this ward in a wheelchair."

"How do you know I'm not just letting you walk into your new digs?" Natalie responded in an equally light tone.

"'Cos I know you could never pass up a chance to go see Alex Lewis," Buffy smirked, pushing open the door.

"Guilty as charged," Natalie whispered, eyeing the male figure on the bed.

His back was to the door, and it was clear he had to strain to lie on his side against the restraints fastened to the bed and around his wrists. He had on a short-sleeved grey tee and loose pants of the same color, in heavier fabric. His bare feet were tucked up as far as they would go, as if he were trying to keep them warm, forcing his body into a ball. A soft whimper that could only be coming from the man on the bed was the only sound in the room.

Buffy held her breath. He looked so wounded. What if she were wrong, and this only looked like Xander? Would she damage him even further? Still, she had to try. She made her way around the bed, feeling the physical lurch of her heart when she saw the familiar face. His eyes were scrunched tightly shut, and she could see tears leaking out. Every once in a while, he'd tremble. Gathering her nerve, she laid her hand softly on his face, and called to him. "Xander?"

His eyes flew open. Xander's beautiful, dark, expressive eyes. Both of them. Buffy swallowed the lump in her throat. He tried to reach for her, but his chains wouldn't allow him the distance. "Buffy?" he croaked, his voice sounding like that of a man hundreds of years older. Then more clearly, more joyfully, "Buffy! You're here." His smile widened. "Where's Anya?"

~**~

~He'd been sick, back home, and he thought he might have died, since why else would he be seeing me, his dead friend? But I felt bad when I had to tell him Anya wasn't here. He managed to choke out around his disorientation and grief that she'd died as well during the final battle to close the Hellmouth.

He didn't know why he was sick, but it had him floating back and forth between there and here, like I had before. He vaguely remembered waking up in a big, cold room with a bunch of guys shouting at him. He might have hurt one, he wasn't sure. And no, no spiney pokey demon involved, either. As time went on, not much time, but enough that I could assure him I'd be here when he needed me, he became less and less focused. Finally I lost him – he was staring somewhere far beyond me, and he stopped answering my questions. I guess he was back in Sunnydale.

Dealing with Natalie afterwards was a major big challenge. She held it together until we got back to my room, then she was mildly hysterical.~

"All that crap you told me, Buffy – he knew it. He knew about Sunnydale and demons and... Shit, Buffy, that stuff is real?"

"Shhh, Nat. The night nurse is gonna be in here if you don't calm down."

Natalie dropped to an angry near whisper. "You're telling me I could walk out of here and be eaten by a fucking vampire?" Buffy had never heard anyone squeal and whisper at the same time.

"No, Nat. It's real, yes, but not here. As far as I can tell, everything in this world that's just a scary story is really just a scary story. None of it's real here. Xander – Alex – and I come from somewhere else."

"Where you're dead," Natalie snapped with venom.

"Yeah," Buffy sighed, "and so is my mom. She and my Dad are divorced, Xander has a crappy life where his ex-fiancée died in the same fight I did, and he only has one eye. His parents are alcoholic and abusive. I don't much want to go back, and I'm not so sure he does, either. Natalie, you have to help me help him, whatever he decides. I want him here, but he needs to be the one to make the choice. I don't know what's holding him in Sunnydale any more than I know what brought him here, but I hope to find out."' She turned to the now calming nurse with fire in her eyes. "I'm not gonna let him down again, Nat. But I can't do it without you."

Natalie blew out a breath. "Fine. You've got me, I'm in."

~**~

Sunnydale Reality

~**~

"BUFFY!" Xander shot upright in bed, sweating and frantic and began babbling. "It was Buffy, and she's good – she's fine. She was alive."

Slender arms wrapped around him, stroking him and soothing him. "She's dead," the gentle voice assured him. "You were just dreaming."

Xander shook her off. "No, Dawn, I know what I saw. She was there. But Anya wasn't." He grew morose at that, and finally completely listless. Dawn tucked him back under the covers, then grabbed her robe and went out into the hall, knowing Willow and Kennedy would have heard the outburst.

"He's feverish again," she said flatly to the two girls waiting outside the door in their own pajamas. "Hallucinating about Buffy."

"We heard," Willow nodded.

"Hell, Santa Ana probably heard," Kennedy groused, looking still half-asleep.

"You two go back to bed," Dawn insisted. "I'm just gonna go get some juice and then come back up."

"Do you think we should give him a shot?" Willow asked, her fear leaking from her eyes even though she kept it from her tone.

"He took the pain pills before bed – we probably shouldn't mix them," Dawn responded. Ever since the loss of his eye, they'd had strong medications around for Xander, and were all trained to administer the shots if needed. But he'd refused any drugs before the final battle. Since then, he'd been more willing to drug away the pain – although Dawn doubted it was physical, most days.

After Buffy and Anya and several assorted Slayers-In-Training had died at the hands of Caleb and the First Evil, albeit ultimately stopping them, Xander had seemed fine. Sure, he mourned. They all did.

Then the remaining girls scattered to places where there were new Watchers waiting for them. Giles went back to England. Andrew decided to move to San Francisco. Spike simply vanished – no one left really cared where.

And little by little, things went back to normal, or a reasonable facsimile.

Dawn's school got cleaned up and re-opened. Robin Wood had resigned to travel the country slaying evil with Faith, so there was a new principal. Dawn started attending classes again.

Willow completed the last couple of weeks left of her last few courses and graduated from college, taking a job at the tech support desk for a software company with offices an hour away. The commute was a killer, but the pay was good, so she managed.

Kennedy was the new Slayer, but the Hellmouth seemingly did choke on the last one. There wasn't much for her to do, but the tattered remnants of the Watchers Council had asked her to stay on, so of course she did. It didn't hurt that Willow wanted to stay, either.

And Xander did nothing.

Well, not really nothing. When he realized his boss wasn't going to create some desk job just to keep him on, he applied for disability. The investigator that handled Sunnydale didn't even question his claim. The checks began coming fairly quickly.

It wasn't enough money to keep up his apartment, but he'd pretty much been living at the Summers' house for months anyway, and there seemed no need to change that, so he let go of the lease. He had the deed to the Magic Box – for some reason, Anya had left it in his apartment. So he began working there, doing repairs and fixing it up to either reopen it himself or to rent out.

He went to the doctor's every other week.

And he began sleeping with Dawn.

It really hadn't been his idea. He'd taken the master bedroom – once Joyce's, next Willow and Tara's, then Buffy's. He'd moved out Buffy's furniture and moved his own stuff in from the apartment. But he was clearly struggling with the idea – even if Dawn was the only one to see it. After all, he was sleeping in the room where three women he'd cared about and that had died had once slept, on the bed he'd shared with his ex-fiancée, also deceased. Dawn would hear him up at night, wandering. His eyes were puffy and dark ringed in the morning. Finally she could take it no more.

Dawn got out the sexy satin tap pants and camisole she'd bought a week previously at the mall. Putting them on, she waited in her room until she heard Willow and Kennedy go into their room. Xander spent most evenings in his room with the TV running, so she knew he was there, and probably not asleep.

Buffy had been seventeen when she'd lost her virginity to an older man. Dawn had plans to follow her sister down that path, although with not so much of an older man. Besides, he needed to relax so he could sleep. She'd help him out on that. She slipped quietly in the door, but he looked up from the TV almost instantly.

"Dawn? What the hell…?" Okay, not the reaction she'd been hoping for – still not a total surprise.

"Xander," she breathed, trying to sound sexy, "I know you aren't sleeping well at night. Let me do something to help."

"No," he'd said, incredulity clear in his voice.

"Why not?" she challenged, moving closer, and making sure her hips swayed just so.

"Oh, God, Dawn, you are so beautiful," he moaned. Her ego swelled – she was getting through. "And really, I'm honored you'd want me that way. But no."

She might be still a virgin, but Dawn was female, and knew all the tricks of the gender. Her eyes filled, and she pouted, then bit her lip trying to hold back the tears.

"Aw, shit…" she heard him mumble softly, and she bit her lip harder to avoid giggling. He stood up and walked towards her, and she tried not to whoop in victory.

"Dawnie, I love you so much. Too much. But…" her victory whoop was dying - she could feel it, "not that way. And I can't have sex without love anymore – that kind of love. I know it's not the way guys are supposed to be…"

Dawn conceded defeat. "…but it's one of the things that I love about you, Xander. And I do love you. That way. I really want you to be the first."

He was standing right in front of her, and although the time, the outfit and the place were all just right, she knew the type of intimacy he was offering wasn't the type she'd come for. But she also knew it was good. "I'm honored," he repeated. "Should the day come that things change, I'd be more than thrilled with that offer. You're certainly lovely, and you're not, amazingly, really that young anymore. It's just me." He shrugged, looking a bit chagrined. Then he spread his arms, and she melded against his chest, crying a little, for real this time.

Eventually the tears died off, and she calmed. She looked up at him, taking liberties she knew she hadn't been given; running her hand through his hair like a lover. "You're still having trouble sleeping, though, aren't you?" He looked embarrassed, but didn't actually answer. The aversion of his one good eye told her all she needed to know. "Could I just – stay in here with you? Keep you company?" She looked down sheepishly. "I could even change into my regular pajamas."

That night, with Dawn in his arms, for the first time since Buffy and Anya had died Xander Harris slept the night through.

The look on Willow's face the next morning when Dawn emerged from Xander's bedroom in her pajamas almost harkened back to her Black Magic days, but Dawn explained quickly. Willow admitted that Xander hadn't been quite right, even though she'd tried to ignore it, hoping it would go away. And that maybe someone there, comforting him so he could sleep, wouldn't be so bad. When you've lived your worst nightmares while wide awake, sleeping, she conceded, could be tough. She should know.

So Dawn gradually moved all her things into the Master bedroom, and took up residence there, along with Xander.

Once Buffy had accused Willow of monitoring Xander's blood pressure and temperature; now it was Dawn. She administered his medicine, balanced his checkbook, even bought his clothes. He didn't seem to have the energy left to fight her about it – he let her do as she pleased. With the exception of the time she was required to be at school, she was at his side almost constantly. And because of that, she was the first, possibly the only one, to notice he still wasn't just bouncing back from his recent losses.

He slept, which was an improvement. But his nightmares often woke her up with his pained moans and sometimes loud cries of the names of loved ones he'd lost. The most frequent were the names of her sister and Anya, but Dawn often heard him mourning the loss of Joyce, Tara, Jesse and more. When Dawn pressed him about it, he just said it was hard to lose family. After all, he'd continued, she and Willow were the only family he had left. "I don't really get Kennedy," he confided, conspiratorially. Dawn had snorted, responding, "Who does?"

He didn't eat much anymore, although he hid it well from the others. He pushed his food around on the plate, took smaller servings, threw his food away while Willow and Kennedy were busy talking.

He worked hard at the Magic Box, but the clean-up was almost done, and he couldn't commit on whether he was going to re-open it, or lease it out. With that undecided, the finishing work couldn't be done, because if it were to be rented, he was planning to offer a custom build-out on it. Dawn suspected he really didn't want to re-open the shop, since he'd had little interest or involvement with magic himself. However, if he leased it away, he'd be giving up a part of Anya by giving up something that had been so important to her.

Nobody knew that she knew exactly which box Giles had packed away Tara and Willow's old magic books in. At night, when the house was quiet and the others asleep, she'd go down and thumb through them.

She was going to find a way to help Xander and make him feel better if it was the last thing she did.

~**~