In Sao Paolo, Brazil, there is more of the world than in a lot of other cities combined. In that it's huge. Voluminous. Chock full of people. They had committed to letting a few more people into their lives, so this would be a great place to do it, right? It was a place to get lost; a place to be found.
Brazilian women being as vain as they are, Kennedy had easily found work as a personal trainer. Willow worked as an IT consultant, often out of their apartment. It wasn't that she didn't want to see people. It was just a lot to take in, this soon after…well, seeing the world almost end.
Kennedy was thriving. She was beautiful, getting darker by the minute, looking Brazilian herself. She was relieved to be one of many, sharing slaying responsibilities with thousands, but she hadn't lost her irrepressible sense of uniqueness—in other words, her ego. She made Willow happy, relieved. She was fun, easy to be with. Having lost some of the pressure of world-saveage, she had developed a more giving personality.
Willow was withering a bit. Kennedy would touch her cheek, calling her, "My weeping Willow." She had known it would be hard. Nobody would've expected otherwise. She hadn't expected change to be so unsettling. So tiring. She knew she'd been right to break from California, to take some time to discover herself, a self beyond "the girl who does magic." She just wasn't sure there was anything to discover.
She was writing off discovery a little prematurely. After denying the possibility for almost four months, Willow went to the drugstore while Kennedy was out putting an heiress through her paces. The girl who does magic made two pink lines appear and one girlfriend vanish.
.
Xander had gone to Africa because life was so different there that he hoped time would be different, too. Maybe it would be quicker. At the very least, he would stay busy. He had gone to Nakansagwe, Zambia, to build houses with Habitat for Humanity, and it had taken him away from Sunnydale figuratively as well as literally. He was building something, every day.
For so long, he had torn down: his hometown, his friends, his family, himself. It felt good to build. Xander saw himself healing. It scared him a little to veer away from what he knew, but they had agreed to that. They'd committed to finding themselves as individuals, as more than survivors. Now Xander was helping other people survive, too. If that made it easier for him to get through his own life, it was a fringe benefit. It was definitely not escapism.
Anya was settling within him peacefully. That thought made him laugh to himself – Anya, being peaceful. That had never been one of her features. She had been honest, if not always at the best times. She'd certainly been lively. Never dull. She'd been surprisingly supportive, too. And when it came down to the wire, she had died heroically, and human. After all her protestations, being human had become important to her. After all indications to the contrary, she'd turned out to be good at it.
Xander wasn't sure he was so good at it himself. In his heart, he knew it had been right to leave California, to put miles between himself and Willow. Even after all the drifting apart they had done in recent years, it would be too easy to drift back together, to cling to each other as what was familiar, what was left of their world. It would be easy to write off the rest of humanity after what they'd seen together.
That was why they'd split – why they'd all split up. Buffy and Dawn were in Italy. Slayers were scattered throughout the country, the world. Giles and Andrew were training them. And Willow and Kennedy were in Brazil. He prayed every day that Willow was making a life there, that Kennedy was what she needed, yet a part of him hoped God wasn't listening.