Distant Sun: The Angie Years
By Rose Williams
Summary: Post-Chosen, Xander looks back on the last twenty years of his life and how his life imploded.
Rating: R, but nothing graphic.
Disclaimers: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all associated stuff belongs to Joss Whedon and associated people. This is for personal enjoyment only.
Author's Note: In the first chapter of Josephine Martin's Cruel Concealment there are two paragraphs on what happened to Xander after Chosen, and one on Faith and Robin. They inspired me to start this, the other side of that story. It is now completely different, but I owe her the inspiration, and it's a great story.
I have stolen the basic set up of where everyone is at the start of the story, and Angie.
This is the first story in a series, if people are interested in what happens to the others.
* * * * *
The Angie Years ended last week. The beginning of the end was the day before Elizabeth's tenth birthday. Dawn was ten when I first met her. She was ten and a half when she learnt that her sister was the Slayer. She was fourteen and a half when we learnt that she wasn't human. Well, wasn't entirely human.
This is always what happens; one thing, one thought, will take me on a trip through my memories. My memories of Dawn seem to be stronger than others. I heard somewhere that memories are subjective. Maybe it's just that, as the monks gave them to me, they didn't depend on me paying attention to begin with. I can 'remember' the look she gave me when we got out of Miss French's basement even though I know that Buffy would never have allowed Dawn that close to anything to do with sex, or lack thereof. So there's no telling why.
The night before Elizabeth's birthday I settled on the couch to look at the photos. I have two photos to remind me of the Buffy years. I think they are the only ones, and I took them as insurance against Fate. Even when Buffy told me to take Dawn I knew I would be back for the fight. I didn't have any plan to return, of course, but I knew I would see them all again. Such thoughts temp Fate. It took a while, but Buffy and Willow did teach me that one. So I took the photos, so that I wouldn't need them.
Either I didn't change the clothes I was wearing, or I never bothered to return the photos, because I had them with me when we crashed at the Hyperion. I didn't tell anyone. Buffy was mourning Spike and I was mourning Anya. Giles, Willow and Dawn had lost the last connection they had to the people they lost when the cemetery was sucked into the hellhole. I just never mentioned them after that.
Elizabeth, though, seems to have a sixth sense when it comes to photos. It might be a seventh sense, after that one that means you can clap your hands with your eyes closed. I had had the photo album out for half a minute when she appeared at the bottom of the stairs.
"Hey, Dada, what are you up to?"
She sat down next to me and snuggled under my arm. Apparently she wasn't too old to do that.
"Is that you?" she asked, pointing at Oz.
I chuckled. "Oz," I said. "Me," I added, pointing.
I was astounded that she thought I was ever as cool as Oz.
Giles had taken the photo one day in the Library. I know I was trying to pull Cordelia on to my lap. Willow was sitting on Oz's lap, playing with his hair. He seemed to be trying to pretend that he didn't like it. But you never could tell with Oz. I liked that Giles had taken such a silly photo.
Lizzie looked closely at the young me, and smiled.
"He looks sweet. And he has two eyes."
"Yes, well, I lost my in a fight many years after that," I explained.
I had told my daughters stories about 'the Buffy Years,' but not in a context they'd believe. I started when Lizzie was four, Sarah was nine, and they wanted to go trick or treating.
Before then I hadn't been able to think of any story I could tell. "There was teacher I liked once, who turned out to be a giant bug" or "our school librarian used to summon demons" or "I once thought I was a hyena." There would be automatic questions of 'what happened then?' And I didn't fancy telling them I had eaten a raw pig, let alone a live one.
Angie didn't want them to go. She felt that it was commercial and involved too much sugar.
"There won't be any real monsters," I said. "They take Halloween off, it tends to be too noisy. What do you want go as?"
"You have those gorgeous cloaks you wore for that play," Angie said. They were gingham, Sarah rolled her eyes.
"Can we be demons, mom?" Lizzie cried. She understood that Angie had given in on the issue of going at all. She could read her mother well at four.
"We've got the face paint that Robert and Lisa gave us for Christmas," Sarah explained. "And the hair spray. I can have Lizzie's baseball bat, and she can have the mini axe dad made us."
Lizzie nodded vigorously.
"But everyone will be demons. It'll be unusual to go dressed like Dorothy," Angie tried to argue.
That was a bad move. The neither remake was as good as the Judy Garland version. I knew that Angie didn't want them in make up and hair spray.
"You could be Slayers," I offered. I had it all worked out. They could dress as themselves, and carry little model scythes. I'd long been used to living in a world dominated by women, but I've never become comfortable with the joint 'you are such a guy' look.
"Hey. One Halloween we got turned into the costumes we were wearing. I thought I was a private in the army."
I saluted to them. Sarah was impressed, Lizzie laughed. Angie smiled her 'you're a silly man,' smile and kissed my cheek. I had told her that I had trained a little. I was, of course, called upon to explain the entire event. That's when I explained that one of my friends was a Slayer, whose calling was to fight demons, and she always won.
They went out the next night dressed as slayers with mini scythes. They were so cute. Sarah explained to anyone she was a Slayer, and Lizzie was a potential who was in training.
After that I was able to tell them many stories about the Slayer. I told them about the invisible girl, the Buffy-bot and how Dawn had been created by monks. Sarah spent an afternoon raging against her sixth grade teacher and then most of the night laughing about the story of Principal Snyder being eaten by a giant snake. He probably tried to tell it that it couldn't eat him because he was too important.
Angie liked the stories too. They usually drew comments like 'you have the most amazing imagination.' She never believed them. Even though they never really contradicted themselves, and sat in a timeline. I think she thought they were the stories we told to survive growing up in Sunnydale. I didn't tell her the whole truth of anything after our first meeting.
