Disclaimer: Xander and the Scooby Gang aren't mine. They belong to Mutant Enemy, Joss, and Fox. Shelby is mine, you'll meet her later.
Author's note: There's all sorts of stories about the gang post-Sunnydale. I've written quite a few myself. Everyone has different theories, different set ups. Sometimes from story to story. That's half the fun. This was, briefly, going to be an X/F fic, which I blame on an OD of Nwhepcat and Lizbeth Marcs (two fab writers, by the way), but it isn't. It turned out to be pretty much pure Xander.
Waking Up by Casix Thistlebane
It had been six months since the final battle in Sunnydale.
The first five minutes after they stopped the bus at the edge of the crater were the easiest. Thought was only working at half-power, tops, shooting bits and pieces of images and senses in random, chaotic order, making it impossible to reflect on them. The dust rising from the collapsed wreckage, the exhaust of a school bus driven to its very limits and beyond staining the air, imprinting itself the back of his head. The soft ticking on the engine, the glare of the sunlight off the bleached sands. Flashes of bringers and swinging steel, of the ground shaking, the people screaming, the dash for the bus, memories springing out in ambush, only to be swept aside by the feel of the breeze over the band of his eyepatch. He'd been barely able to squeeze out that question to Andrew, his mind wrapped in the gentle haze of shock.
He watched numbly as the others hugged each other, ensuring that loved ones were still safe, whole. Willow and Kennedy shared a fiery kiss by the emergency door, Buffy and Dawn clung to each other, sobbing. Faith found Robin, the new slayers seeking out friendships still newly made, but forged into something much stronger by the heat of the war. He, Giles, and Andrew stood apart, watching, each of them lost in fog.
It wasn't until they'd climbed back onto the school bus, and people started asking, seriously, where they had to go, that the world came crashing back in around Xander and he realized exactly how much they had lost. He saw with startling, terrifying clarity everything they had yet to go through. He had never lived anywhere but Sunnydale, and but for England one summer, neither had Willow. Dawn and Buffy had an entire family structure to be worked out, the former potentials had families in hiding all over the world to find. Not to mention, the slayers. In a population of six billion people worldwide, they could easily be looking at over a million new slayers to find. They were the ones who gave them the power, they were responsible for taking care of the girls.
None of them had a clue as to where to begin.
Eventually they'd gone their separate ways. Many of the young slayers wanted to be the ones to find their new "sisters", many more were intent on going home and protecting their old families and friends from the world they had learned about. Buffy and Dawn wanted nothing more than to start over, somewhere far, far away from any reminders of Sunnydale and everything they had lost there. They soon learned that their father, long absent even after the tragedy of Joyce's death, kept an apartment in Rome, which he was more than willing to let his daughters use, in return for years of neglect.
Giles had it the easiest of the core group. He had a home to return to, one that he'd never really given up, even when he'd lived in California. He quickly returned to England to help the other few remaining watchers rebuild the council into something new, something capable of properly teaching the multitudes of new slayers. He'd offered a place there to any one who needed it, though Andrew was the only one who jumped immediately to follow him.
Willow and Kennedy had set out for South America, searching for shamans and witches in the jungles of Brazil. Still flushed with her success in the mass calling, Willow was eager to learn everything she could about magic of every variety, and the earthy rituals and spells of the South American cultures appealed to her desire to "not go all grrr."
Which left Xander.
He knew that he could follow any of the others and be welcome. Whether he needed to crash with the Summers girls in Rome, or go native in the Amazon with Willow, or join the ranks of the watchers in England, he'd be greeted with a smile, and helped with whatever he needed to make himself a new home, and a new family.
Xander didn't want a new family.
He didn't want much, really. A roof, a vehicle, food. A left eye.
Anya.
Without those last two, he found it next to impossible to settle in anywhere. So he traveled, bouncing from country to country, continent to continent, visiting friends, helping new slayers, basically being a handy-man to whomever needed him. It suited his desire to help, gave him a sense of duty, and never settled into a routine which might remind him of everything they had all lost.
It had been six months since the battle. Six months since they'd stood at the edge of the crater and stared into the future. And Xander was pretty sure he was still in shock.
Xander was once more in England, just returned from a three week trip to Panama. He was tanned and bearded from his adventure, and he sat in the cool, misting rain in the back garden of Giles' London home, wondering where he'd be sent to next.
Three weeks had been the longest he'd spent anywhere in the last five months. He'd nearly settled in, just barely began to think that Panama might turn out to be his home. There was a certain magic there, the canal running through the midst of wild jungle. He'd immersed himself in the culture, but only one thing really stuck with him, and that came from the unit on Panama in his tenth grade social studies class. "A man, a plan, a canal. Panama." It was a palindrome, spelled the same backwards and forwards. One of the few longer palindromes that actually made literal sense.
There was something to that, Xander thought. To being the same no matter which angle you looked at it, backward or forward. Something unique and extraordinary.
There were moments when Xander found himself bizarrely jealous of that palindrome.
He couldn't help but resent them, slightly, for calling him back. But part of him knew that traveling was a part of him now, sleeping on planes and trains, buying guide books and speaking in broken versions of the native language of wherever he found himself. There was something comforting to being a stranger everywhere he went. The people he met, the people he worked with, had no idea about his past, about who he'd loved and what he'd lost. To them he could be anything, anyone. He rather liked that.
He didn't expect to be staying with Giles for more than a few days. Giles himself was often out of the house, working with the council into the late evening, waking before dawn to get back to work. He had given each of them a spare key, and an open invitation to come whenever they needed to, to consider his home their own.
It was exceedingly generous of him, the man who had been so careful when they were in highschool to keep his apartment separate from the hard life they lived, to keep it a haven of adulthood, safety, and quiet.
They'd destroyed that for him after graduation. Xander was continually surprised that Giles had forgiven them for it.
He happened to glance up, and caught a glimpse of the people living opposite Giles, through the curtained windows. The garden backed up against another row house, this one lacking the luxury of an outdoor setting. It was a narrow space, lined on both sides by brick walls too high to really see over without stretching or standing on a chair. The double row of buildings, the ones that lined Giles' street and those that faced the other side of the block, towered over the space, limiting the light that shone through. An enormous tree, possibly an oak, though horticulture had never been Xander's strong point, grew almost against the opposite house. The bare remnants of the construction worker that still lived in Xander's head noted that the root system of the old tree was probably playing hell on the foundation. There were two of them there, silhouetted against the semi-sheer material, a male and a female, the woman older than the boy. A small family, perhaps. They stood only briefly, the woman gesturing behind her, the boy looking back over his shoulder. A conflict, he thought. Then they hugged, and moved away.
And he woke up.
That was the only way he had to describe it, the sensation, the sudden realization that yes, this was real. He was really living this way, the world surrounding him was not just some simple, painted backdrop on a television set. The feeling would settle over him, making him hyper aware of every sensation, for anywhere from five minutes to three days before his mind would settle back into the comforting rhythm of life lived at half-speed. These moments, the terror and pain of wondering whether each day, each breath might be his last, would come flooding back, eroding a whole in his chest where his heart should have been. He'd watch the passersby, and remember that not everyone lived in constant fear of their life. He'd remember the days in his youth, when he, Willow, and Jesse would play adventure games, trying to carve out in their careless childhood this sense of adrenaline and danger.
He'd been an idiot then.
In seven years of living in the darkness of the world, Xander had learned that this was not a feeling to be sought out. It was a sickness, more insidious than the ones that doctors spent years and millions of dollars searching for a cure for. There wasn't, as far as Xander knew, a cure for this. This ache that landed in his chest and stuck to his ribs and his lungs, making him ache for something simpler.
Something normal.
These days, it almost made him laugh, being called the normal one of the Scoobies. There was no such thing in their world. He had a dent in the left side of his face to remind him of that.
The sound of the door to the garden opening surprised Xander; he hadn't thought anyone was home. Whoever was encroaching on his silent contemplation wasn't keen on making themselves known, they stepped carefully and didn't speak. They approached, slowly, on his right side.
It had to be someone he knew, then. All of the Scoobies had fallen into the habit of never coming up on Xander's left.
"Hey."
It was Andrew, standing with the barest remnants of his usual chaotic energy. His hands were settled into his pockets casually, and Andrew rocked slowly back and forth, heel to toe, toe to heel. He glanced at Xander out of the corner of his eye.
Xander grunted softly, wordlessly, in response. He hoped the meaning was clear anyway. Go away.
"I guess you're wondering why we called you here."
"Not really." Andrew said that every time Xander was called back to London. He liked to think of himself as a sort of mob boss, or manager of the Scoobies, now that he'd taken on a permanent role amongst them. Xander let the routine of the conversation lull him back into his perpetual haze.
The garden took on an odd abstractness as he settled, afternoon light filtering through the gray clouds and spitting rain. Xander was used to this, the whole world tended to be pretty abstract these days.
"Well." Andrew turned to face Xander, a grin splitting his face. "You should come inside and find out."
Xander blinked. This was something different. Usually Andrew would get rather quickly down to business, not prat around being coy about what they needed him to do. But Xander was feeling somewhat magnanimous toward the boy at the moment, his presence promising a swift release from inaction, a return to the work that kept Xander sane.
"Alright." Xander stood slowly, following the blonde back in through the kitchen. He could hear voices chatting softly in the front room, female voices, which surprised him, considering the fact that, as far as Xander knew, there were only men living in the London house at the moment.
Andrew stepped aside to let him through the doorway. Xander closed his eye briefly, a feeling of foreboding suddenly sweeping over him.
He stepped over the threshold.
A cheerful shout of "Surprise!" greeted him, and he opened his eye.
They were all there. Giles, Willow, Buffy, Dawn. Kennedy sat on the couch with Rona and Vi, grinning foolishly. Robin and Faith leaned against the far wall, holding hands. Every last one of the girls who had made it through the final battle with them was there.
It was the first time they'd all been together in six months. Xander wondered what the occasion was.
Dawn bounced up to his right side and grabbed his arm.
"What is all this?" He let the words slip from the side of his mouth as he took in the balloons and decorations that hadn't been there an hour earlier when he'd gotten in.
"It's your birthday, dumbass." Dawn kissed him softly on his cheek. "We thought, we've got a birthday and a six month anniversary, both right at the same time. We have to celebrate."
"My–" Xander blinked. He'd forgotten. He'd completely forgotten that it was his birthday, or, indeed, that birthdays existed. He looked over the decorations and the gathered people again. "Wow." He felt an odd expression take over his face, and realized with a start that it was a smile. Had it been so long since he'd smiled that he didn't remember what one felt like?
He thought about Anya, about not having really been with his friends in six months, and he realized it had.
"Open my present first." Andrew thrust a brightly and inexpertly wrapped package into his hand. It was the size and shape of a comic book, which didn't surprise Xander in the least. It had been years since he'd read a comic. He tore open the wrapping.
Transmetropolitan. First storyline, trade paperback. Spider Jerusalem returns to the city after fives years of hermitude in the mountains. It seemed painfully appropriate. He grinned. "Thanks. Thank you," he laughed. "Oh my god, thank you." He grabbed Andrew by the shoulder, eliciting a panicked look from the younger man. He hugged him, tightly. "Holy shit. This is. . . this is why you called me back from Panama."
"We wanted it to be a surprise." Willow was at his side now, grabbing his hand. "We know it's been hard for you, probably harder than it's been for any of us. You haven't settled down anywhere, made a life for yourself. We wanted to let you know that we love you, and we're there for you whenever you need it. Even if you don't know you need it."
"Thank you." Xander's mind swam in shock, but it was a different sort than the haze he'd resided in for so long. He was waking up again, but this time, the ache didn't follow. He looked over the faces of his friends, wondering how it was that even after everything they'd been through together, they could still make him forget everything he had to feel depressed about.
"So," Buffy winked at him from the couch, where she leaned against a man Xander didn't know, but recognized from pictures to be the Immortal, her new boyfriend. "How does it feel to be twenty-three?"
Xander's fingers tightened on the cover of his comic. He knew from the expression on his friends faces that he'd just gone pale.
He'd forgotten more than just his birthday. For the last six months he had felt heavy, ancient, staring at the world through an eye that had seen everything it had to offer, and found it lacking. He thought of the battles, in the library, the old mansion, graduation, the Initiative, Glory's tower, Kingman's Bluff, the crater.
Oh god. He sat down slowly, blinking back tears.
Oh god, he was only twenty-three.
Author's note: There's all sorts of stories about the gang post-Sunnydale. I've written quite a few myself. Everyone has different theories, different set ups. Sometimes from story to story. That's half the fun. This was, briefly, going to be an X/F fic, which I blame on an OD of Nwhepcat and Lizbeth Marcs (two fab writers, by the way), but it isn't. It turned out to be pretty much pure Xander.
Waking Up by Casix Thistlebane
It had been six months since the final battle in Sunnydale.
The first five minutes after they stopped the bus at the edge of the crater were the easiest. Thought was only working at half-power, tops, shooting bits and pieces of images and senses in random, chaotic order, making it impossible to reflect on them. The dust rising from the collapsed wreckage, the exhaust of a school bus driven to its very limits and beyond staining the air, imprinting itself the back of his head. The soft ticking on the engine, the glare of the sunlight off the bleached sands. Flashes of bringers and swinging steel, of the ground shaking, the people screaming, the dash for the bus, memories springing out in ambush, only to be swept aside by the feel of the breeze over the band of his eyepatch. He'd been barely able to squeeze out that question to Andrew, his mind wrapped in the gentle haze of shock.
He watched numbly as the others hugged each other, ensuring that loved ones were still safe, whole. Willow and Kennedy shared a fiery kiss by the emergency door, Buffy and Dawn clung to each other, sobbing. Faith found Robin, the new slayers seeking out friendships still newly made, but forged into something much stronger by the heat of the war. He, Giles, and Andrew stood apart, watching, each of them lost in fog.
It wasn't until they'd climbed back onto the school bus, and people started asking, seriously, where they had to go, that the world came crashing back in around Xander and he realized exactly how much they had lost. He saw with startling, terrifying clarity everything they had yet to go through. He had never lived anywhere but Sunnydale, and but for England one summer, neither had Willow. Dawn and Buffy had an entire family structure to be worked out, the former potentials had families in hiding all over the world to find. Not to mention, the slayers. In a population of six billion people worldwide, they could easily be looking at over a million new slayers to find. They were the ones who gave them the power, they were responsible for taking care of the girls.
None of them had a clue as to where to begin.
Eventually they'd gone their separate ways. Many of the young slayers wanted to be the ones to find their new "sisters", many more were intent on going home and protecting their old families and friends from the world they had learned about. Buffy and Dawn wanted nothing more than to start over, somewhere far, far away from any reminders of Sunnydale and everything they had lost there. They soon learned that their father, long absent even after the tragedy of Joyce's death, kept an apartment in Rome, which he was more than willing to let his daughters use, in return for years of neglect.
Giles had it the easiest of the core group. He had a home to return to, one that he'd never really given up, even when he'd lived in California. He quickly returned to England to help the other few remaining watchers rebuild the council into something new, something capable of properly teaching the multitudes of new slayers. He'd offered a place there to any one who needed it, though Andrew was the only one who jumped immediately to follow him.
Willow and Kennedy had set out for South America, searching for shamans and witches in the jungles of Brazil. Still flushed with her success in the mass calling, Willow was eager to learn everything she could about magic of every variety, and the earthy rituals and spells of the South American cultures appealed to her desire to "not go all grrr."
Which left Xander.
He knew that he could follow any of the others and be welcome. Whether he needed to crash with the Summers girls in Rome, or go native in the Amazon with Willow, or join the ranks of the watchers in England, he'd be greeted with a smile, and helped with whatever he needed to make himself a new home, and a new family.
Xander didn't want a new family.
He didn't want much, really. A roof, a vehicle, food. A left eye.
Anya.
Without those last two, he found it next to impossible to settle in anywhere. So he traveled, bouncing from country to country, continent to continent, visiting friends, helping new slayers, basically being a handy-man to whomever needed him. It suited his desire to help, gave him a sense of duty, and never settled into a routine which might remind him of everything they had all lost.
It had been six months since the battle. Six months since they'd stood at the edge of the crater and stared into the future. And Xander was pretty sure he was still in shock.
Xander was once more in England, just returned from a three week trip to Panama. He was tanned and bearded from his adventure, and he sat in the cool, misting rain in the back garden of Giles' London home, wondering where he'd be sent to next.
Three weeks had been the longest he'd spent anywhere in the last five months. He'd nearly settled in, just barely began to think that Panama might turn out to be his home. There was a certain magic there, the canal running through the midst of wild jungle. He'd immersed himself in the culture, but only one thing really stuck with him, and that came from the unit on Panama in his tenth grade social studies class. "A man, a plan, a canal. Panama." It was a palindrome, spelled the same backwards and forwards. One of the few longer palindromes that actually made literal sense.
There was something to that, Xander thought. To being the same no matter which angle you looked at it, backward or forward. Something unique and extraordinary.
There were moments when Xander found himself bizarrely jealous of that palindrome.
He couldn't help but resent them, slightly, for calling him back. But part of him knew that traveling was a part of him now, sleeping on planes and trains, buying guide books and speaking in broken versions of the native language of wherever he found himself. There was something comforting to being a stranger everywhere he went. The people he met, the people he worked with, had no idea about his past, about who he'd loved and what he'd lost. To them he could be anything, anyone. He rather liked that.
He didn't expect to be staying with Giles for more than a few days. Giles himself was often out of the house, working with the council into the late evening, waking before dawn to get back to work. He had given each of them a spare key, and an open invitation to come whenever they needed to, to consider his home their own.
It was exceedingly generous of him, the man who had been so careful when they were in highschool to keep his apartment separate from the hard life they lived, to keep it a haven of adulthood, safety, and quiet.
They'd destroyed that for him after graduation. Xander was continually surprised that Giles had forgiven them for it.
He happened to glance up, and caught a glimpse of the people living opposite Giles, through the curtained windows. The garden backed up against another row house, this one lacking the luxury of an outdoor setting. It was a narrow space, lined on both sides by brick walls too high to really see over without stretching or standing on a chair. The double row of buildings, the ones that lined Giles' street and those that faced the other side of the block, towered over the space, limiting the light that shone through. An enormous tree, possibly an oak, though horticulture had never been Xander's strong point, grew almost against the opposite house. The bare remnants of the construction worker that still lived in Xander's head noted that the root system of the old tree was probably playing hell on the foundation. There were two of them there, silhouetted against the semi-sheer material, a male and a female, the woman older than the boy. A small family, perhaps. They stood only briefly, the woman gesturing behind her, the boy looking back over his shoulder. A conflict, he thought. Then they hugged, and moved away.
And he woke up.
That was the only way he had to describe it, the sensation, the sudden realization that yes, this was real. He was really living this way, the world surrounding him was not just some simple, painted backdrop on a television set. The feeling would settle over him, making him hyper aware of every sensation, for anywhere from five minutes to three days before his mind would settle back into the comforting rhythm of life lived at half-speed. These moments, the terror and pain of wondering whether each day, each breath might be his last, would come flooding back, eroding a whole in his chest where his heart should have been. He'd watch the passersby, and remember that not everyone lived in constant fear of their life. He'd remember the days in his youth, when he, Willow, and Jesse would play adventure games, trying to carve out in their careless childhood this sense of adrenaline and danger.
He'd been an idiot then.
In seven years of living in the darkness of the world, Xander had learned that this was not a feeling to be sought out. It was a sickness, more insidious than the ones that doctors spent years and millions of dollars searching for a cure for. There wasn't, as far as Xander knew, a cure for this. This ache that landed in his chest and stuck to his ribs and his lungs, making him ache for something simpler.
Something normal.
These days, it almost made him laugh, being called the normal one of the Scoobies. There was no such thing in their world. He had a dent in the left side of his face to remind him of that.
The sound of the door to the garden opening surprised Xander; he hadn't thought anyone was home. Whoever was encroaching on his silent contemplation wasn't keen on making themselves known, they stepped carefully and didn't speak. They approached, slowly, on his right side.
It had to be someone he knew, then. All of the Scoobies had fallen into the habit of never coming up on Xander's left.
"Hey."
It was Andrew, standing with the barest remnants of his usual chaotic energy. His hands were settled into his pockets casually, and Andrew rocked slowly back and forth, heel to toe, toe to heel. He glanced at Xander out of the corner of his eye.
Xander grunted softly, wordlessly, in response. He hoped the meaning was clear anyway. Go away.
"I guess you're wondering why we called you here."
"Not really." Andrew said that every time Xander was called back to London. He liked to think of himself as a sort of mob boss, or manager of the Scoobies, now that he'd taken on a permanent role amongst them. Xander let the routine of the conversation lull him back into his perpetual haze.
The garden took on an odd abstractness as he settled, afternoon light filtering through the gray clouds and spitting rain. Xander was used to this, the whole world tended to be pretty abstract these days.
"Well." Andrew turned to face Xander, a grin splitting his face. "You should come inside and find out."
Xander blinked. This was something different. Usually Andrew would get rather quickly down to business, not prat around being coy about what they needed him to do. But Xander was feeling somewhat magnanimous toward the boy at the moment, his presence promising a swift release from inaction, a return to the work that kept Xander sane.
"Alright." Xander stood slowly, following the blonde back in through the kitchen. He could hear voices chatting softly in the front room, female voices, which surprised him, considering the fact that, as far as Xander knew, there were only men living in the London house at the moment.
Andrew stepped aside to let him through the doorway. Xander closed his eye briefly, a feeling of foreboding suddenly sweeping over him.
He stepped over the threshold.
A cheerful shout of "Surprise!" greeted him, and he opened his eye.
They were all there. Giles, Willow, Buffy, Dawn. Kennedy sat on the couch with Rona and Vi, grinning foolishly. Robin and Faith leaned against the far wall, holding hands. Every last one of the girls who had made it through the final battle with them was there.
It was the first time they'd all been together in six months. Xander wondered what the occasion was.
Dawn bounced up to his right side and grabbed his arm.
"What is all this?" He let the words slip from the side of his mouth as he took in the balloons and decorations that hadn't been there an hour earlier when he'd gotten in.
"It's your birthday, dumbass." Dawn kissed him softly on his cheek. "We thought, we've got a birthday and a six month anniversary, both right at the same time. We have to celebrate."
"My–" Xander blinked. He'd forgotten. He'd completely forgotten that it was his birthday, or, indeed, that birthdays existed. He looked over the decorations and the gathered people again. "Wow." He felt an odd expression take over his face, and realized with a start that it was a smile. Had it been so long since he'd smiled that he didn't remember what one felt like?
He thought about Anya, about not having really been with his friends in six months, and he realized it had.
"Open my present first." Andrew thrust a brightly and inexpertly wrapped package into his hand. It was the size and shape of a comic book, which didn't surprise Xander in the least. It had been years since he'd read a comic. He tore open the wrapping.
Transmetropolitan. First storyline, trade paperback. Spider Jerusalem returns to the city after fives years of hermitude in the mountains. It seemed painfully appropriate. He grinned. "Thanks. Thank you," he laughed. "Oh my god, thank you." He grabbed Andrew by the shoulder, eliciting a panicked look from the younger man. He hugged him, tightly. "Holy shit. This is. . . this is why you called me back from Panama."
"We wanted it to be a surprise." Willow was at his side now, grabbing his hand. "We know it's been hard for you, probably harder than it's been for any of us. You haven't settled down anywhere, made a life for yourself. We wanted to let you know that we love you, and we're there for you whenever you need it. Even if you don't know you need it."
"Thank you." Xander's mind swam in shock, but it was a different sort than the haze he'd resided in for so long. He was waking up again, but this time, the ache didn't follow. He looked over the faces of his friends, wondering how it was that even after everything they'd been through together, they could still make him forget everything he had to feel depressed about.
"So," Buffy winked at him from the couch, where she leaned against a man Xander didn't know, but recognized from pictures to be the Immortal, her new boyfriend. "How does it feel to be twenty-three?"
Xander's fingers tightened on the cover of his comic. He knew from the expression on his friends faces that he'd just gone pale.
He'd forgotten more than just his birthday. For the last six months he had felt heavy, ancient, staring at the world through an eye that had seen everything it had to offer, and found it lacking. He thought of the battles, in the library, the old mansion, graduation, the Initiative, Glory's tower, Kingman's Bluff, the crater.
Oh god. He sat down slowly, blinking back tears.
Oh god, he was only twenty-three.