In a different script she didn't die. It was Xander who was sliced by the sword of the harbinger, his body left to rot under a pile of rubble where it was never found.

"Did you see what happened?" Anya asked Andrew after she got out of the bus.

"He was incredible." Andrew had tears in his eyes. "He died saving my life."

Anya nodded and squeezed his shoulder, trying to hold back tears of her own. "That's my guy...always doing the stupid thing."

They drove to Los Angeles to recuperate in a hotel but Anya barely remembers being there. It was like sleep-walking. Everything happened around her in a fog.

She had evenings in the hotel sitting with Willow. Willow would cry and talk about the brave and silly things he used to do. Willow told Anya about the Snoopy dance, about him reenacting Buffy's vampire slayage with fish sticks and toothpicks, about the time in kindergarten when he ran across the playground wearing only his Aquaman underoos that were stuffed with jello. These were things Anya never got to see. These talks made her ache because there was so much about him she had missed out on.

Anya thought about the way he would hold her after vigorous and sweaty lovemaking. He once told her she made him feel like a man and he was powerfully in love with her. Back then her heart had been so full of hope and dreams for their future that sometimes she felt it would explode.

Anya sat for a long time. The rest of the Scoobies, or what was left of them, walked around her quietly, aiming sympathetic looks her way. She sat there and remembered all the brave and beautiful things he used to do. He'd had this way of smiling when he looked at her, like the smile reached his eyes, like she was the only thing he could see.

Xander and his crazy dancing. Xander and his carpentry skills. Xander and his jokes. "Damn you, Xander!" Anya cried, tears spilling from her eyes. "How could you? I loved you and you left me! You left me again!" That was when it finally broke for her. The tear in her heart was excruciating. Anya thought it would kill her.

When the gang left L.A. Anya knew what to do. She was going to find out who she was. She was going to be whoever and whatever she was and she would make no compromises. She wasn't somebody's vengeance demon or somebody's girlfriend or someone's fiancé anymore. She was just Anya.

It all started with Thornton's Hope. It ends with Hope. Anya was going to be Anya. She would do it to show Xander she could. She would do it for him.