Title: Wishes
Author: smolder
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Joss owns Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Walking Dead is by Robert Kirkmen. I repeat, I own nothing.
A/N: Reviews are Good. This has been a subtle hint from the author - Please return to your regularly scheduled reading.
Smiling, Xander climbed the tree - making sure his safety was in place and pushing the gun strapped loosely to his chest around to his back first.
After situating himself, he carefully eyed the mêlée through his crosshairs, lined up a shot, and watched a zombie go down, moving with the kickback with the ease of familiarity. Calmly, he repeated the process.
Most of the slayers didn't feel comfortable with guns. Either they deep down thought they weren't meant to use them or they simply weren't trained with them - making the firearms a useless tool in this sort of fighting where random shooting would be much more of a danger to friend than foe. Those few who had previous experience were given one, but even they seemed to find it more natural to go for a blade in the heat of battle. That meant most of the various firearms they gathered went to him or, after he had trained them, Dawn and Andrew.
He actually thought about Anya when he did this though. That probably wasn't a good thing, probably wasn't healthy in any way – but, hey, he did.
He didn't want her to be here – didn't want her to somehow be magically alive again and be living this harsh day to day life with him (sleeping in a large group of Slayers, always on the move, chasing a huge mass target you're trying to eliminate). For one he has seen first hand how it is when someone is ripped from heaven (and he refuses to believe Anya is anywhere but heaven) and for another she would have hated this.
What Xander thinks about, what his mind daydreams as he mechanically reloads, is how he would tell this tale to her.
Sometimes after they had sex, when she was soft and relaxed against him, she would tell him stories. Not tales of vengeance, but just of her life. And Xander was always continually baffled in those moments by her age despite how young she looked, how young she often acted. But Anya had seen so much of this world and its people. Mostly bad, yeah, but still – she still held this curiosity and wonder for it under a layer of cynicism.
If he could, Xander wishes (figuratively, of course) he could have one more night with Anya. They had pretty much cleared the air near the end of Hellmouth (the end of her) and started back on the way towards being friends and possibly someday having a relationship again. He wishes (again, figuratively – you can't be too careful, even in your own head) he had one night to apologize again, to make love to her in the bed that they once shared, what feels like forever ago, in their apartment back in Sunnydale. And afterwards he would hold her and tell her about this fall. This fall of humanity that no one saw coming. He would tell it to her like one of those gritty sci-fi novels he's always loved. Realistic and engrossing, moving his hands around for emphasis sometimes like she used to.
He just wanted the right words.
Xander carefully lined up another shot..