I'm a little boy with glasses

The one they call a geek

A little girl who never smiles

'Cause I have braces on my teeth

And I know how it feels to cry myself to sleep

I'm that kid on every playground

Who's always chosen last

A single teenage mother

Tryin' to overcome my past

You don't have to be my friend

Years before, they'd been friends, meeting in grade school and uniting to ignore the taunting bullies. Their friendship had continued through the years until a death had ended their closeness.  Truth be told, Willow hadn't seen Xander since the funeral. She and Dawn had been holding Buffy's children, trying to keep them from crying.

Buffy had been a single mother, barely sixteen when they were born; nineteen when she died.  Most folks in Sunnydale had figured that dying was her punishment from God for having children before she was even a junior in high school. 

It wasn't though; Dawn had explained it to the Scoobies, while Giles seemed baffled by this Slayer that knew so much about her own kind.  She'd explained that a Slayer's gift was Death.  And she'd explained that their ancestors had always been different, so she figured she would live to a ripe old age.

Dawn and Buffy had never shared with Xander all their secrets; looking back, Willow figured that Xander had started to resent his best bud being in the know while he was in the dark.

She just wished that they would have—could have remained friends and worked through their issues.

But is it too much to ask

Don't laugh at me

Don't call me names

Don't get your pleasure from my pain

In God's eyes we're all the same

Someday we'll all have perfect wings

Don't laugh at me

She knew that they didn't want the differences to be so obvious.  Her aunts had always meant well, but even watching T.V. it was clear that their family wasn't normal.  Neither she nor Liam had many friends because Liam was always made fun of and well…no one ever said being a sorceress was easy.  Maggie hoped that the other kid in the WWE would like them, that he wouldn't reject them.

Maybe this Cameron would be different; maybe he wouldn't think that having a father who didn't know you existed and a mother who was dead wasn't cause to think that you were white trash.  Maybe he wouldn't laugh at Liam when he realized that her twin wasn't the world's definition of normal.  Maybe he would think that being raised by two aunts and an uncle who was really a nephew wasn't so bad.

And maybe pigs would fly.

I'm the beggar on the corner

You've passed me on the street

And I wouldn't be out here beggin'

If I had enough to eat

And don't think I don't notice

That our eyes never meet

Spike hurried his niece and nephew into the hotel, trying not to listen to his demon who thought that the beggar on the street corner was food. Maggie looked up at him, knowing his inner battle, and smiled.  A single smile from his lil'est bit and the demon shut up.

The soul had helped plenty over the years, but sometimes he'd still see some homeless person and think of them as a happy meal on legs. It wasn't the constant battle that the sodding Poof went through because he'd never been as vicious.  That didn't mean that it was easy, though.  Thank heaven above for Maggie and Liam.

He knew that they were ostracized by the other children in their neighborhood, because they were different.  As far as he was concerned, being different was a blessing and not a curse.

If only he could convince Morganna and William of that.

Don't laugh at me

Don't call me names

Don't get your pleasure from my pain

In God's eyes we're all the same

Someday we'll all have perfect wings

Don't laugh at me

Cameron Michaels—or Hickenbottom, depending on who you asked—could still hear Shane McMahon's words an hour and a half after he spoke them.  He'd gone to him with his concerns about the two new kids, the ones his parents wanted him to be friends with.  Whenever they went back to North Carolina to visit his Uncle Jeff's father, the kids in town wouldn't even talk to him.  And it was all because his dad and Uncle Jeff had been in love with each other for years.  Granted, Uncle Jeff wasn't his real uncle, it was just easier than calling them both Dad or variations of that title.  Those hicks didn't even know his and his dad and uncle's secrets but still hated them.

When he explained to Shane about how worried he was that they wouldn't think he was normal enough to be friends with, Shane had laughed.

"Relax, would you?" Shane had told him.  "They have the same exact fears about you, because well, my cousin didn't exactly raise her wife's niece and nephew normally."

That had gotten his attention. If they'd been raised even half as oddly as he had, then they'd get along fine.

He hoped.

I'm fat, I'm thin, I'm short, I'm tall

I'm deaf, I'm blind, hey, aren't we all

He knew that even though the boy they were meeting was raised oddly, or so Uncle Shane and Aunt Stephanie kept insisting, he wouldn't like him.  No one ever did because he was so different.  Liam sighed and resumed following his sister and uncle into the hotel.

He couldn't recall a time when being different hadn't plagued him.  He could see better in the dark but he couldn't walk very well, night or day.  The doctors could never figure out why he had to use braces and crutches to walk.  It figured that neither Gadje doctors nor Roma healers could make heads or tails of his disability.

Well, he'd never let it stop him from doing what he wanted and what he wanted now was to make friends with Cameron Michaels.

He wanted so badly to know what a normal boy did and while Cameron might not have been normal, he had to be a lot more normal than him.

Don't laugh at me

Don't call me names

Don't get your pleasure from my pain

In God's eyes we're all the same

Someday we'll all have perfect wings

Don't laugh at me

Jeff Hardy, Willow Rosenberg, Shawn Michaels, Dawn Summers, and Spike Summers-Rosenberg could only hope and pray that their children would become friends with one another.  They were also praying that their respective children wouldn't have their fragile feelings shattered.  Hopefully, the three outsiders would become good friends. 

None of the three could survive the heartache that would be caused by them being enemies.