Title: Hilltop Moment
Author: Knife Hand
Feedback: Constructive feedback appreciated, flames unappreciated
Spoilers: First Six seasons of Buffy.
Rating: M
Disclaimer: Don't own Buffy.
Summary: Xander's feelings on Kingman's Bluff.
" " denotes speech, ' ' denotes thought.
Pain courses through every fibre of my being. Painfully I rise to my feet and start trying to reach her again. She's suffered a loss greater than any I can ever imagine, so I guess I can understand, in a broad way, why she is doing it. I can't remember a time in my life where I haven't known her, and I don't want to experience a time without her. If figure if I can get to her, then she'll stop, if I can't then I'm going to make her kill me. I couldn't stand watching my bestest friend since forever trying to do what she's going to do. Who knows, maybe my death will snap her out of it, but I doubt it seeing as the love of her life's death started this whole mess.
I've always used joking to hid, a way of protecting myself and the others, so I joke with her now, but she, for once, sees through it. I remember the first time I saw her. Crying over a silly broken crayon, her hair a vivid, dark crimson. Now she looks very different, her eyes and hair both an ugly black, but god help me, I still love her, just as I did in that first moment. We'll never be together as a couple, but that's not the way I love her. It was always as if she was a part of me. The part that never had to suffer at the hands of my Father, the part that revelled in knowledge as I could never find the energy to do until I started carpentry. Later she became the part of me that had the power I could never have.
As I keep repeating the simple truth of my love for her, the hate, rage and anger that had been driving her began to bleed away, taking the taint that had so altered her with it. In its place came the grief that had sparked the incident in the first place, before it had become drowned out by hate and rage mostly not of her own making. As the grief took control and she broke down crying in my arms, her hair and eyes returned to their natural colour and the black veins that had crossed her face disappeared.
I felt grief got her loss as well, apart from the fact that the part of me that was her was grieving. I had felt the same kind of love for her lover that I feel for her, how could I not. Her lover had been one of the kindest, sweetest and most innocent women I had ever known. But for the moment, I could not show my grief. I had to be the solid rock she clung to as she mourned for the passing of a pure soul well before her time. Amid the desolation of her failed attempt to end six billion lives, the greatest pain was felt for the passing of a single soul.
The End.