It was quite a bit later that he finally found his way out to the garden. The sun had set, the spitting rain had faded into a damp mist. The plants of the bushes that lined the stone walls glistened in reflected light from the myriad of windows along the block of row houses. Xander walked along the short, narrow pathway to the tree and sat down, taking a moment to feel the damp seep through the seat of his jeans. He leaned back against the tree, wetting his back, and watched the windows of Giles' house, catching glimpses of the lives being lived within.
It was the most he got, these days, of seeing other people's lives. The barest glimpses. Any more than that and he would be reminded of the one he was trying not to live, of the relationships he was slowly breaking so that it wouldn't hurt as badly when they were gone forever. Each of the windows glowed a different color, the blue light of Willow's laptop in one on the second floor (first floor, to the British), a warm red from Giles' study, where his tiffany lamps made reading, for Xander, a strain. Soft amber from an incandescent bulb in Andrew's room. The neighboring houses bore a similar array, colors bled through curtains and lampshades.
The bathroom light flicked on, added a hard florescent white through frosted glass, illuminating the whole patio end of the garden for the five minutes or so that whomever used it.
His own room, on the third floor (fourth floor, to the Americans), a tiny space sloped by the roof of the building, was dark.
He caught eyes with Dawn, briefly, in the kitchen, though he knew there was no way she could see him out here, sitting in the dark. She looked worried, saddened, and he realized that this whole thing, this whole party, was most likely her idea. She really worried about him, he knew that from her emails and letters, the brief snippets of phone calls. The two of them had really become close, that last year in Sunnydale, the two "normal" people in the house. She relied on him, then, to bring her out of her funk. He knew she had hoped that she would do the same for him, with this party.
It was a hard truth to learn, that there were no good birthdays, not in the Scooby gang. It was better not to remind them all that they grew old while the ones they loved didn't. It was best not to remember the childhood they'd lost, growing up in a world filled with evil and death.
He closed his eye. Dawn had made it through the battle relatively unscathed. She still had college to attend, boyfriends to meet, hearts to break. She had her sister. It hurt to think about everything she'd kept, when he'd let it get away.
A foot scuffed along the gravel path. Xander ignored it. He wanted to be alone. He hoped, if he sat still enough, whomever it was would go away.
"Never gave you my present."
The voice was familiar, but only slightly. One of the nameless girls. There was a time, back of Revello Drive, that he'd known them all, at least by name. He'd been the only one who had. Most of the girls loved him for that, sought him out amongst the core Scoobs as the "accessible" one of the group.
He suspected that Giles knew them all better than he did now. Perhaps even Buffy.
"Mind if I sit?"
"Dunno." Xander kept his eye shut. "Is Britain a free country?"
"Don't give a shit if it is."
A flash of something against his eyelid, the smell of burning herbs, then the sound of air rushing through a hollow chamber. When the voice spoke again, it was tight, holding back the smoke it had just inhaled. Xander opened his eye.
She sat on his left, but he watched the gray smoke circle against the colored lights as she finally exhaled.
He knew which one it was. Shelby, from Columbus. Of all of them, he'd have thought her most likely to head off to protect the Other Hellmouth, the one in Cleveland. She'd surprised them all by taking advantage of the meager Council funds, and leaving America behind.
Her voice was tinted, now, by the faintest of accents. She sounded Canadian. He tried to remember which country she'd decided to flee to, he knew it was in Europe. Facts escaped him.
Shelby, from Columbus. Vaguely punk, in the way that Willow was now only vaguely Jewish. A pierced nose, too many earings. Hair cut into a short, asymetrical bob. T-shirts with logos from shows she was too young to remember.
She'd been sixteen, one of the slightly older girls, when she'd come to Sunnydale, quiet in the wake of whatever disaster had brought her out of hiding. The bringers had killed her watcher, like they'd done to so many others, but she didn't tuck into the group the way the others had. She'd always kept herself to the side, watching whatever was going on, never saying much.
At the time that had intrigued Xander, the way Oz's cool, laconic attitude had. At the time he couldn't understand why she would choose to hold herself a part from the rest.
He understood only too well, now.
It figured she'd be the one to come find him.
He had sought her out, about two weeks before the disaster in the vineyard, and found her sitting alone in Buffy's backyard, back against a tree much like he was sitting now, her spiraled blue glass bowl gripped loosely in her ringed fingers, an orange lighter in her other hand. She'd offered him a hit, and hoping to break the ice, he'd taken it.
They say you don't get high the first time, and Xander supposed they were right. The first time, he couldn't understand why she did it. Drugs Were Bad, and he'd avoided them like a good little boy until that moment.
He supposed he'd accepted in hopes of getting to know her better, getting a perspective on what it was like to live in her head. It hadn't worked, but they'd formed the half-beginnings of a friendship that night, sitting under the stars, watching each other's backs against the horrors of the hellmouth.
After the vineyard, after he'd lost his eye and everything had started turning surreal, she'd come to find him. She'd taken him out back, to that same tree, and let him have another hit.
One had turned to five, five had turned to two bowls. They'd finished off her stash, and she'd joked about needing to find a new hook-up.
He'd giggled like a maniac school girl. Every damned thing either of them said had been a laugh riot. They'd talked about philosophy, about vampires, about how Giles had no clue what he was doing with Chao-Ahn and seemed much calmer, albeit much more reserved, now that she was gone. Shelby had come up with some bizarre theories about crosses, about why vampires didn't like them. Something about archetypes, Jung, and shared consciousness. She'd talked about the human mind, under the grips of the demon, how something of mankind's gestalt had crossed over, making the vampires unique.
"Vampirism predates Christianity. Probably Judaism, too. So I'm thinking, is it that they discovered an aversion to crosses after the crucifixion? Or maybe that's the reason the Romans chose the cross for their executions in the first place. After all, it wasn't a special, one time only deal for Christ. They'd been crucifying people for years, the worst thieves and murderers their world knew. Maybe they chose that punishment because they knew that it was a symbol that drove out demons, evil. Maybe they were using it to cleanse their culture of that power."
"What about holy water?"
"How do priests bless the water? They make the sign of the cross over it."
Xander had felt human again that night, had felt young and irresponsible, gloriously so. He looked over at Shelby, watching the lights though half-lidded eyes. Maybe it wasn't too late to get that back.
They passed the pipe in silence several times, the only sounds those of the traffic passing by beyond the houses, and the occasional rib-shattering cough from Xander. His eye was tearing up fiercely, but the world was separating into bits of unconnected moments, and the dull ache left Xander's chest.
"It's my birthday."
He said it softly, the words carrying a hint of melancholy.
Shelby snorted. She flicked her lighter, checking her watch. "Not for much longer, it isn't."
He smiled. The expression still felt strange. He wondered if it would ever feel normal again.
"Mine is in about a month and a half. I'll be seventeen."
Xander's breath caught as she handed him the pipe. He was a moron. Here he was, moping about over only being twenty-three, but most of the people who'd survived the battle had been much, much younger. Seventeen. He could cry for them.
She took a long, large hit off the pipe, then let it all out in an enormous whooof. He turned his head to get a better look at her. She was grinning.
"Think they'll throw a party for me?"
They wouldn't. Shelby had kept herself too separate for that. Without thinking, Xander said so.
"Yeah." She let her head drop, but the grin stayed. "Had a boyfriend for awhile who thought that was the coolest thing in the world, how I would just sit and watch everything. Being an observer, set me a part. Made me mysterious. He didn't stick around long, though. Mysterious only gets you so far."
"Why do you do it?"
"You tell me." She turned to look at him. "You've been doing the same for six months." When he didn't answer, she laughed. It was soft, held no condemnation. "It's easier that way, isn't it. Don't let 'em get too close, then it doesn't hurt so much when they leave. Learned that one early on. Thing is," She swept out her arm, letting the gesture end by handing him the pipe. "It's hard to get that close."
They sat in silence for several more moments while Xander lit and pulled. He handed it back and she took it, held it without lighting.
"Doesn't seem real, does it."
It didn't, but he didn't say so.
"Whole fucking world is like one big, badly written drama. Gets to the point when you don't know what is real, don't know what is normal. You think you're going insane, just trying to figure it out."
"Shell shock." Xander let his head rest against the bark. "Post traumatic stress disorder, or something. I'm told it'll pass."
"Shit." Shelby leaned forward to light the bowl. "I've felt this way my whole goddamned life."
The ache carved itself a nitch in his chest again. He'd been losing his mind, just dealing with six months of this feeling. How could Shelby cope, having felt it all her life? How did you get beyond the feeling that your life wasn't real, to the point of actually living it? He watched the flame touch the bowl. That was how. She lost herself, almost daily, in a weedy haze.
She sat up, her nose wrinkling. "Damn. It's cashed." She tapped the ash out of the pipe, then blew through it to shake out some of the resin. She pulled a baggy, loaded with pot, from her cargo pocket. "Want some more?"
Xander stared at the bag. She'd found a new source, a good one from the looks of it. Of course, with the speed she smoked it, that bag would hardly last the rest of the week. "No, that's okay."
He was toasted. More than that, he was burnt.
"Fuckin' stoned out of your gourd, more like."
"Didn't know I was saying that outloud."
"Didn't have to." She smirked. "You've got to build up a tolerance. I can smoke three bowls of this shit and still be functional."
Xander looked away. How functional could she be, living in the world like it wasn't really happening? He glanced back at the windows. Dawn was in her room now, she got her own since Buffy and the Immortal were sharing. She moved slowly through the amber light. Streaks of red lined her cheeks.
He realized he'd never gotten her present. He hadn't stuck around the party for too long, complaining about jet lag and retreating to his room. He thought he'd better go up there, thank her for thinking of him, for setting up the party. He thought of a million more things he should say to her.
He wasn't sure he could, "stoned out of his gourd" as he was. But tomorrow she could be gone, she had classes to attend in Rome. She was going to get the degree that not even Willow had managed to receive. He knew, from her letters, how much that meant to her. He shoved himself to his feet. "Have fun, Shelby. Thanks for the present."
"Any time." She looked up at him, and he suddenly saw how young she was. He wondered if he'd ever been that young, if his eyes, when he'd had two of them, had ever been so wide and hopeful. "Hey."
"Yeah?"
"They say they're sending you to Africa next."
This was news to him. He turned it over in his over-cooked brain. It appealed to him.
"Huh."
"Do you–" Shelby turned her head to one side, suddenly shy. "Do you think that, maybe, I could come with you? I've always wanted to see Africa. It'd be fun, like, I dunno, a road trip or something."
"Like we're friends?"
"Yeah." Shelby's eyes shot to the ground. "Like that."
God, he was probably the closest thing to a friend she had in more than a year. "Yeah." He smiled softly at her. "Well, you know, maybe." He shrugged, the grin starting to lose it's strangeness. "For your birthday."
Xander turned then and walked back to the house. He was going to find Dawn, he was going to apologize profusely for having let their friendship wither. They would talk long into the night.
Well, so long as nothing shiny came along to distract his pot-stained brain.
It had been six months since the final battle in Sunnydale, and Xander realized he was awake.
That he could be awake, and enjoy the adventures that Giles was sending him on. That he still had a family, that the world was real, and inspite everything he'd seen, that it could be good.
It had been six months since the battle, and Xander was finally starting to heal.
It was the most he got, these days, of seeing other people's lives. The barest glimpses. Any more than that and he would be reminded of the one he was trying not to live, of the relationships he was slowly breaking so that it wouldn't hurt as badly when they were gone forever. Each of the windows glowed a different color, the blue light of Willow's laptop in one on the second floor (first floor, to the British), a warm red from Giles' study, where his tiffany lamps made reading, for Xander, a strain. Soft amber from an incandescent bulb in Andrew's room. The neighboring houses bore a similar array, colors bled through curtains and lampshades.
The bathroom light flicked on, added a hard florescent white through frosted glass, illuminating the whole patio end of the garden for the five minutes or so that whomever used it.
His own room, on the third floor (fourth floor, to the Americans), a tiny space sloped by the roof of the building, was dark.
He caught eyes with Dawn, briefly, in the kitchen, though he knew there was no way she could see him out here, sitting in the dark. She looked worried, saddened, and he realized that this whole thing, this whole party, was most likely her idea. She really worried about him, he knew that from her emails and letters, the brief snippets of phone calls. The two of them had really become close, that last year in Sunnydale, the two "normal" people in the house. She relied on him, then, to bring her out of her funk. He knew she had hoped that she would do the same for him, with this party.
It was a hard truth to learn, that there were no good birthdays, not in the Scooby gang. It was better not to remind them all that they grew old while the ones they loved didn't. It was best not to remember the childhood they'd lost, growing up in a world filled with evil and death.
He closed his eye. Dawn had made it through the battle relatively unscathed. She still had college to attend, boyfriends to meet, hearts to break. She had her sister. It hurt to think about everything she'd kept, when he'd let it get away.
A foot scuffed along the gravel path. Xander ignored it. He wanted to be alone. He hoped, if he sat still enough, whomever it was would go away.
"Never gave you my present."
The voice was familiar, but only slightly. One of the nameless girls. There was a time, back of Revello Drive, that he'd known them all, at least by name. He'd been the only one who had. Most of the girls loved him for that, sought him out amongst the core Scoobs as the "accessible" one of the group.
He suspected that Giles knew them all better than he did now. Perhaps even Buffy.
"Mind if I sit?"
"Dunno." Xander kept his eye shut. "Is Britain a free country?"
"Don't give a shit if it is."
A flash of something against his eyelid, the smell of burning herbs, then the sound of air rushing through a hollow chamber. When the voice spoke again, it was tight, holding back the smoke it had just inhaled. Xander opened his eye.
She sat on his left, but he watched the gray smoke circle against the colored lights as she finally exhaled.
He knew which one it was. Shelby, from Columbus. Of all of them, he'd have thought her most likely to head off to protect the Other Hellmouth, the one in Cleveland. She'd surprised them all by taking advantage of the meager Council funds, and leaving America behind.
Her voice was tinted, now, by the faintest of accents. She sounded Canadian. He tried to remember which country she'd decided to flee to, he knew it was in Europe. Facts escaped him.
Shelby, from Columbus. Vaguely punk, in the way that Willow was now only vaguely Jewish. A pierced nose, too many earings. Hair cut into a short, asymetrical bob. T-shirts with logos from shows she was too young to remember.
She'd been sixteen, one of the slightly older girls, when she'd come to Sunnydale, quiet in the wake of whatever disaster had brought her out of hiding. The bringers had killed her watcher, like they'd done to so many others, but she didn't tuck into the group the way the others had. She'd always kept herself to the side, watching whatever was going on, never saying much.
At the time that had intrigued Xander, the way Oz's cool, laconic attitude had. At the time he couldn't understand why she would choose to hold herself a part from the rest.
He understood only too well, now.
It figured she'd be the one to come find him.
He had sought her out, about two weeks before the disaster in the vineyard, and found her sitting alone in Buffy's backyard, back against a tree much like he was sitting now, her spiraled blue glass bowl gripped loosely in her ringed fingers, an orange lighter in her other hand. She'd offered him a hit, and hoping to break the ice, he'd taken it.
They say you don't get high the first time, and Xander supposed they were right. The first time, he couldn't understand why she did it. Drugs Were Bad, and he'd avoided them like a good little boy until that moment.
He supposed he'd accepted in hopes of getting to know her better, getting a perspective on what it was like to live in her head. It hadn't worked, but they'd formed the half-beginnings of a friendship that night, sitting under the stars, watching each other's backs against the horrors of the hellmouth.
After the vineyard, after he'd lost his eye and everything had started turning surreal, she'd come to find him. She'd taken him out back, to that same tree, and let him have another hit.
One had turned to five, five had turned to two bowls. They'd finished off her stash, and she'd joked about needing to find a new hook-up.
He'd giggled like a maniac school girl. Every damned thing either of them said had been a laugh riot. They'd talked about philosophy, about vampires, about how Giles had no clue what he was doing with Chao-Ahn and seemed much calmer, albeit much more reserved, now that she was gone. Shelby had come up with some bizarre theories about crosses, about why vampires didn't like them. Something about archetypes, Jung, and shared consciousness. She'd talked about the human mind, under the grips of the demon, how something of mankind's gestalt had crossed over, making the vampires unique.
"Vampirism predates Christianity. Probably Judaism, too. So I'm thinking, is it that they discovered an aversion to crosses after the crucifixion? Or maybe that's the reason the Romans chose the cross for their executions in the first place. After all, it wasn't a special, one time only deal for Christ. They'd been crucifying people for years, the worst thieves and murderers their world knew. Maybe they chose that punishment because they knew that it was a symbol that drove out demons, evil. Maybe they were using it to cleanse their culture of that power."
"What about holy water?"
"How do priests bless the water? They make the sign of the cross over it."
Xander had felt human again that night, had felt young and irresponsible, gloriously so. He looked over at Shelby, watching the lights though half-lidded eyes. Maybe it wasn't too late to get that back.
They passed the pipe in silence several times, the only sounds those of the traffic passing by beyond the houses, and the occasional rib-shattering cough from Xander. His eye was tearing up fiercely, but the world was separating into bits of unconnected moments, and the dull ache left Xander's chest.
"It's my birthday."
He said it softly, the words carrying a hint of melancholy.
Shelby snorted. She flicked her lighter, checking her watch. "Not for much longer, it isn't."
He smiled. The expression still felt strange. He wondered if it would ever feel normal again.
"Mine is in about a month and a half. I'll be seventeen."
Xander's breath caught as she handed him the pipe. He was a moron. Here he was, moping about over only being twenty-three, but most of the people who'd survived the battle had been much, much younger. Seventeen. He could cry for them.
She took a long, large hit off the pipe, then let it all out in an enormous whooof. He turned his head to get a better look at her. She was grinning.
"Think they'll throw a party for me?"
They wouldn't. Shelby had kept herself too separate for that. Without thinking, Xander said so.
"Yeah." She let her head drop, but the grin stayed. "Had a boyfriend for awhile who thought that was the coolest thing in the world, how I would just sit and watch everything. Being an observer, set me a part. Made me mysterious. He didn't stick around long, though. Mysterious only gets you so far."
"Why do you do it?"
"You tell me." She turned to look at him. "You've been doing the same for six months." When he didn't answer, she laughed. It was soft, held no condemnation. "It's easier that way, isn't it. Don't let 'em get too close, then it doesn't hurt so much when they leave. Learned that one early on. Thing is," She swept out her arm, letting the gesture end by handing him the pipe. "It's hard to get that close."
They sat in silence for several more moments while Xander lit and pulled. He handed it back and she took it, held it without lighting.
"Doesn't seem real, does it."
It didn't, but he didn't say so.
"Whole fucking world is like one big, badly written drama. Gets to the point when you don't know what is real, don't know what is normal. You think you're going insane, just trying to figure it out."
"Shell shock." Xander let his head rest against the bark. "Post traumatic stress disorder, or something. I'm told it'll pass."
"Shit." Shelby leaned forward to light the bowl. "I've felt this way my whole goddamned life."
The ache carved itself a nitch in his chest again. He'd been losing his mind, just dealing with six months of this feeling. How could Shelby cope, having felt it all her life? How did you get beyond the feeling that your life wasn't real, to the point of actually living it? He watched the flame touch the bowl. That was how. She lost herself, almost daily, in a weedy haze.
She sat up, her nose wrinkling. "Damn. It's cashed." She tapped the ash out of the pipe, then blew through it to shake out some of the resin. She pulled a baggy, loaded with pot, from her cargo pocket. "Want some more?"
Xander stared at the bag. She'd found a new source, a good one from the looks of it. Of course, with the speed she smoked it, that bag would hardly last the rest of the week. "No, that's okay."
He was toasted. More than that, he was burnt.
"Fuckin' stoned out of your gourd, more like."
"Didn't know I was saying that outloud."
"Didn't have to." She smirked. "You've got to build up a tolerance. I can smoke three bowls of this shit and still be functional."
Xander looked away. How functional could she be, living in the world like it wasn't really happening? He glanced back at the windows. Dawn was in her room now, she got her own since Buffy and the Immortal were sharing. She moved slowly through the amber light. Streaks of red lined her cheeks.
He realized he'd never gotten her present. He hadn't stuck around the party for too long, complaining about jet lag and retreating to his room. He thought he'd better go up there, thank her for thinking of him, for setting up the party. He thought of a million more things he should say to her.
He wasn't sure he could, "stoned out of his gourd" as he was. But tomorrow she could be gone, she had classes to attend in Rome. She was going to get the degree that not even Willow had managed to receive. He knew, from her letters, how much that meant to her. He shoved himself to his feet. "Have fun, Shelby. Thanks for the present."
"Any time." She looked up at him, and he suddenly saw how young she was. He wondered if he'd ever been that young, if his eyes, when he'd had two of them, had ever been so wide and hopeful. "Hey."
"Yeah?"
"They say they're sending you to Africa next."
This was news to him. He turned it over in his over-cooked brain. It appealed to him.
"Huh."
"Do you–" Shelby turned her head to one side, suddenly shy. "Do you think that, maybe, I could come with you? I've always wanted to see Africa. It'd be fun, like, I dunno, a road trip or something."
"Like we're friends?"
"Yeah." Shelby's eyes shot to the ground. "Like that."
God, he was probably the closest thing to a friend she had in more than a year. "Yeah." He smiled softly at her. "Well, you know, maybe." He shrugged, the grin starting to lose it's strangeness. "For your birthday."
Xander turned then and walked back to the house. He was going to find Dawn, he was going to apologize profusely for having let their friendship wither. They would talk long into the night.
Well, so long as nothing shiny came along to distract his pot-stained brain.
It had been six months since the final battle in Sunnydale, and Xander realized he was awake.
That he could be awake, and enjoy the adventures that Giles was sending him on. That he still had a family, that the world was real, and inspite everything he'd seen, that it could be good.
It had been six months since the battle, and Xander was finally starting to heal.