Disclaimer: I don't own BtVS or Angel the Series

Thanks to lilykep for giving the fic a beta-read and helping with the flow of the story, as well as helping me out with a few ideas. Much appreciated.

Author's Note: I don't generally go in for long prefacing Author's Notes ;like this (though I have done them from time to time) but I feel like it's important to establish some expectations before we begin.

First and foremost, if you haven't read the fic "This Year's Boy", you will not really be able to understand what's going on here. If you don't read the first fic in this series and then try to read this one, you will get confused.

Secondly, while it is a spoiler, I will just be up front: Xander will not be getting his body back, or any male body in any sense. He's stuck in what was once Faith's body. That will remain true for the entire fic, that is the point of the fic. If you want something like that from this story, you're not going to get that.

Thirdly, this fanfic is going to be dealing with the complicated question of gender and gender identity. It's going to explore them, but it's not going to explore them entirely 'realistically', or at a 'realistic pace'

Right now, as the story opens, though Xander has a new identity and name, and is forced by circumstance to present as a woman with that name, in his own head he still thinks of himself as a he, and still identifies primarily by the name Xander. His friends are still going to call him Xander, at least amongst themselves. In time, over the course of the fic, Xander will start to think of himself as a she, and start internally referring to herself by her new name, and identifying as female fully.

Despite that being not entirely how this works, to put it mildly I'm going to simplify things to make the story more interesting for me and to explore the narratives I want to explore.

If any of this will bother you, please, feel free to just press the back button and move on. No hard feelings.

If you remain interested, welcome aboard.

Next Year's Girl

By Kylia

Chapter 1: I've Got Me Under My Skin

August 2nd, 2000

Anya's Apartment, Sunnydale

Xander Harris was pretty sure had spent more time in front of a mirror in the last five months than he had in his entire life previously.

Xander ran his hands down the front of his shirt, smoothing down invisible wrinkles, as if he was wearing a nice shirt where that mattered, but it didn't do much to make him feel more comfortable with what he was seeing.

He was never comfortable with what he saw in the mirror these days.

The eyes staring back at him were wrong. The whole face was wrong. Even the hair was wrong, despite his best efforts.

As soon as he'd finished coming to something resembling terms with the fact that he was stuck in Faith's body for... well, an extended period, Xander had gotten a haircut. The idea of trying to deal with Faith's long hair had struck him with a sense of mortal terror - having Buffy as a best friend, and then dating Cordelia for a year had given him more than enough of an insight into how difficult to maintain long hair could be.

Plus...

Well, it had felt like a petty act of vengeance against Faith. Or something. All Xander knew was that it had felt good to get the hair cut as short as it could be without looking like he was signing up for the Marines, or something like that. It hadn't looked good, and Xander had led it grow out a little more since then, trying to make it look as close to the hair he'd used to have in his...

In his old body.

And that never won't feel uncomfortable to say. It sounded like jumping bodies was a regular thing for him, which it really wasn't, and really shouldn't be something he could just... think, so casually.

Okay, not casually, but I can't freak out about it every time it comes up. Like vampires. Once he would have freaked out about vampires being a thing, but now...?

Well, a vampire had been his roommate for a bit, and hadn't that been fun.

Thinking of Spike, though, at least managed to bring a small smile to Xander's face. Pretty much the only real long-term upside of Faith nabbing him that night and all the insanity that had followed was that he'd gotten Slayer strength in the deal.

Punching the arrogant smirk off Spike's face as the blonde bastard had laughed at Xander's predicament had been felt really good, and the crunch of the vampire's nose under the first had been, to borrow some Giles-speak 'profoundly satisfying'.

But, vampire or not, Spike was still too pathetic to kill, mostly. Xander had gotten very close to finally dusting him when he tried to break the Scooby Gang up to make Buffy vulnerable for ADAM, but Spike had gotten away before Xander could do it, and was now giving him a wide berth.

And Buffy was apparently - for some reason Xander could not get - totally cool with Spike running around, so Xander kind of had to settle for him being alive.

Shaking his head a little, Xander pulled himself back to the now and his reflection in the mirror.

Part of the reason he kept staring at himself in the mirror like this, day after day this way was just... disbelief.

Half the time he expected to be waking up with morning wood. Sometimes, when he touched his face, the shape of it still shocked him. He often forgot - before being painfully reminded - he was half a foot shorter now. Buffy's not entirely serious suggestion of heels had been loudly and firmly dismissed, in what was in no way a panicked tone of voice.

Buffy had had quite a few suggestions once it became clear, after the first few days of trying, that a magical solution to Xander's predicament would take time. At best. Some, like the heels one, or Buffy's suggestions that he start wearing makeup, had been firmly and totally calmly rejected. Others, like the offer to take him shopping so he could find clothes of his own, had been helpful... mostly.

If exhausting.

Xander had thought he knew what kind of hell shopping for clothes could be all those times he'd been dragged to the mall by Cordelia when dating her. Hell, Buffy had even dragged him along to accompany her a few times.

But none of that had prepared him for Buffy in what Xander could only call a frenzy of shopping. Leaving aside how enthusiastic Buffy had been to spend her new paycheck from the Council on stuff for herself, she had been even more enthusiastic about thrusting an endless series of clothes at Xander to help him 'find his style'.

Xander liked the style he'd had before - cretin casual. Granted, it usually involved going to the thrift store and seeing what was available, but he chose the shirts he picked - clashing colors, loud patterns, anything that would make people like Cordelia and her Cordettes have a fit. And the hawaiian shirts.

Xander would have loved to just keep wearing his old clothes, but...no. Not for wearing out in public. On Faith's body, it had looked more ridiculous than even Xander was happy with, and even with a belt he couldn't really wear his old pants so... new clothes it was.

Buffy had tried to make his new look fashionable, which Xander had tried to humor while trying to grab the few shirts he could find in the women's section that actually looked like something he wanted to wear, but he'd had to draw the line when she'd tried to foist a skirt on him.

'Buff, I don't care what you say, I am not wearing that!' Xander had practically crossed himself when she trioedto thrust the item at him, but to Buffy's alternative amusement and annoyance.

'Look, Xander, it'll look good on you, if you just try it!' Buffy had taken weirdly well to his new reality, treating him even more like 'just one of the girls' than she already had, and Xander was just thankful it hadn't extended to her forgetting that Xander still liked girls.

'I'm not trying to 'look good!'

Buffy had at least dropped the dresses and skirts argument, at least then, but she had kept trying to talk him around to expanding his style.

Which he had eventually caved on, a little.

Okay, I'll admit it, Xander considered as he looked in the mirror, running a hand along his upper thigh idly, not really thinking about it. "This doesn't look half bad on me," he didn't even realize he'd said it aloud as he considered the flannel print button-shirt Buffy had talked him into buying, and the jeans he was wearing. They didn't like, cling to his body the way something Faith would have worn (Xander got too many comments from guys as it was), but... they did look nice. If he was looking at some other girl wearing something like this, he'd think she looked good.

"No, it doesn't." Anya agreed from the bathroom door, and Xander blinked, startled.

"I - Ahn, how long were you standing there?"

"Long enough to see you poke your boob again a few minutes ago," Anya said with a chuckle, and Xander felt his cheeks head a little. "You do that almost every day you know."

"Because this all still doesn't feel real! Every day," Xander's voice dropped a little as he said those last two words, going from loud and defensive to just... resigned quick enough to make even his head spin.

"I still kind of expect to wake up and realize this was all a bad dream." Xander said, not for the first time - not even the first time this week.

"I know." Anya walked over and hugged his side lightly. Being almost as short as Anya was now, Xander couldn't hug her the same way he'd used to, but he turned nonetheless, returning the hug.

It was...

Well, it was different.

Not just having a different body. Anya hugged him differently. The affection was still there, Anya still cared for him, cared about him, even loved him.

But even when it hadn't been like... about sex, whan Anya had hugged him before, it had been...

Xander didn't have the right words. But different. More intimate.

We feel more like roommates who share a bed than... you know, dating.

"Willow thinks she might have found another spell?" Anya suggested hopefully, but Xander knew she didn't believe it either. "I still haven't had any luck finding any way to get a djinn or something that actually grants wishes that doesn't involve... you know-"

"Selling literal souls, the hearts of virgins or whole gobs of cash?" Xander supplied.

"Yeah, that," Anya rolled her eyes. "Are you sure we couldn't just find some criminal and sell their soul? I'm sure there's got to be someone we could get rid of that no one would miss!"

"Anya, I'm pretty sure that's murder, so no," Xander knew Anya wasn't serious about it... mostly, but still. Sometimes...

Sometimes Xander was tempted. There were people who didn't seem to be using their souls, after all. And if some wish-granting demon could give him his body back, or at least a guy's body back or... something...

We still have a bit of my hair left, from when they tracked Faith to L.A. Willow had said she wished she'd thought to save some of Xander's blood after he'd been shot, but by the time it had occurred to her, it was too late.

Morbid, but Xander understood.

Willow's attempt to find like, some Star Trek style body cloning from DNA spell, though, hadn't really worked. With spells to just swap his body to male out, that left more creative options.

Magically creating a new body was the simplest, but the hardest to actually do. Willow was still not giving up on that, even as she tried everything else.

"So what does Willow think this one will do?" Xander asked, pulling back from the hug. "The last one didn't work - and the one before that-" Xander flushed again, remembering the fallout from Willow's attempt to end-run the Slayer power's aversion to being in a male by changing his 'metaphysical essence' somehow, to make it... more male, without changing his body. As a first step.

Or something. Willow's explanation had gone over his head, and after the spell hadn't worked well...

"The one before that made you so horny you finally used the vibrating dildo I got for you," Anya chuckled. "I told you it would feel good."

"Anya, I thought you said you wouldn't mention-" Xander protested, voice raising in pitch but fell short at the playful smile on Anya's face.

Despite the fact that Anya wasn't attracted to girls, they had tried to make it work a few times - Anya just couldn't... return the favor orally, and it felt awkward and a bit painful the one time she'd tried to use her fingers. Xander could still go down on her, though they'd ended up doing that less and less.

First it was nightly, now it's a few nights a week. Xander liked making Anya feel good, and she always obliged by giving him a show to ah... get off to after, but still.

Getting to experience what it was like to get off as a woman - and then multiple orgasms had been a really fun thing for a bit, the novelty had worn off about the time he'd been hit with his first period. It wasn't like he didn't still do it, and it felt good, but he'd started getting very tired of just his fingers.

They'd even tried getting a strap-on (something Xander had kinda thought really only existed in porn) and having Xander wear it. Anya had had a 'decent orgasm' from riding it, in her words. Xander had enjoyed it, but in the end Anya had said it was still 'missing' something.

But despite the failures there, and her desire for him to get a 'nicely shaped male body' back as soon as possible, Anya was remarkably enthusiastic about trying to get him to experiment with his current body, saying it would serve him well once he could 'have sex with me properly again'.

And yeah, I guess having a vagina has helped make me better at getting Anya off.

She had managed to talk him into experimenting with several kinds of vibrators, but when she'd started trying to get him into using dildos on himself... Xander had balked.

'Xander, If your precious male ego can survive being stuck in a woman's body, having a period and enjoying many female orgasms, I think it can survive playing with some plastic or silicone toys!'

Despite that, Xander has resisted... until Willow's spell 'change your had not only failed to work, but left him as horny as he'd ever been during puberty and then some by the time he'd gotten back to Anya's apartment, his initial disappointment at yet another failure immediately quickly overwhelmed by the weird backlash.

And after trying the tried and true ways of getting off he'd used before in this body - fingers and then the regular vibrators, he'd tried that vibrating dildo.

And...

Yeah.

Putting that thought away now. 3...2...1.

Xander had still not elaborated on the details of the 'backfire' to Willow even after mentioning it to her later.

"She didn't say." Anya shrugged, answering his initial question about what Willow's latest idea was. "Just that she had an idea."

"She's had a lot of ideas," Xander sighed. "But may as well try this one." He stepped out of the bathroom, heading for the door. Get this one over with.

"Yes, we might as well!" Anya agreed. "This whole thing is getting quite tiresome for me, and I know you hate it too." Anya caught up with at the door, following him out. "So why are you acting like - like you don't even care?"

"Yes, I do, but I also hate getting my hopes up and then having it not work. And given my track record with magic, it's kind of crazy that none of the fallout has been really bad." There was the time his hair had turned blue for a day, the one where he'd gotten burned on his hand, and the... super horny one. But mostly Willow's failed attempts just fizzled out.

"Nothing's happened." Anya pointed out.

"And? Nothing's happened yet." Xander stressed. "I really don't want to push my luck." Xander countered. He pulled up short as they reached the stairs down to the ground floor, letting out a long sigh. "The first couple times I was hopeful. Now? Now I go over to Willow's knowing it's not going to work, and just dreading the day when she tries a spell and it... I don't know, turns me into a blob, or a dancing monkey, or sets me on fire, or I don't know, erases me from the space-time continuum..." Xander trailed off, shaking his head.

"I'm just tired, Ahn. I'm tired of being surprised when I wake up. Looking in the mirror and not recognizing myself. I'm even kind of tired of slaying. I would love it if this..." he gestured to himself, his body, "ended. But I'm just as tired of fighting it. Nothing we try works, I'm stuck and I just... wake up and repeat the day. I feel... stuck. Or just... like I'm acting in a really boring tv show."

The acting part especially. As long as he had these Slayer powers, he wasn't going to stop using them. He did patrol when he could, and he'd kept doing his part with the big stuff. Played his role in that spell Willow cast to combine them all with Buffy and then she used that to beat ADAM.

Xander shut down that line of thinking before he started lingering on the details of the dream he'd had, with the spirit of that First Slayer trying to kill him - kill all of them. Or so it had felt, anyway.

Xander felt Anya's arms around him again, and he returned the hug, biting his lip.

"I'm sorry you had all this happen to you," Anya murmured. "For what it's worth, you're handling this better than pretty much any man I've ever met."

Most men she's met are pretty awful. Xander's brain pointed out. So low bar there.

Then again, she had lived for over a thousand years, so she'd run into a lot of guys, in her job as a vengeance demon, and out of it.

"I guess that's good to know," Xander said, truthfully. He pulled back. "Let's go give it a shot."

August 2nd, 2000

6305 Westminster Place, Sunnydale

As was the case almost every summer since their Freshman year of High School, Willow was all alone at her parent's house. Though at least now she was an adult and the whole 'absentee parents' thing was less of an issue.

Two friends, both shit parents. Just shit in really different ways.

Willow still loved her mom and dad and Xander...

Well, Xander missed his. Both of them.

And boy was that not something he'd ever thought he'd have said. Then again, he never figured he'd have a funeral and...well, still be there afterwards, so. Xander hadn't been able to bring himself to attend, even though he probably could have gotten away with it, but from what Willow had said, even Xander's dad had actually seemed upset at the short, textbook Sunnydale funeral.

Trying not to think about it anymore, Xander pushed those thoughts down and knocked on the front door.

Rather than Willow answering the door, it was her blonde girlfriend - and hadn't that been a surprise?! - Tara.

"Hey Xander, Anya," Tara greeted them with a soft tone, stepping aside wordlessly to let them in.

Tara wasn't usually here to help Willow with her various attempts to fix Xander's 'wrong body issue', though she was at Willow's house a lot, visiting her girlfriend.

For reasons Tara hadn't filled Xander in on - and if Willow knew she wasn't sharing - the blonde witch was staying in the UC Sunnydale dorms over the summer, rather than going home to... somewhere in the Southeast, probably. Xander was pretty sure he didn't need to know the details to guess, if he had to. But he didn't.

"Helping Willow with the spell today?" Anya asked, sounding extra hopeful about it. "That means you think it will work?"

"It's a pretty complex spell," Tara answered the first question as they went into the living room. "And - I want to help," Tara added, but Xander noticed she didn't say she thought the spell would work.

"Xander, can you move the couch against the wall?" Willow asked as they came in, not looking up from where she was setting up a circle of candles on chalk paint markings on the floor.

Willow had already removed the rug and the coffee table, but understandably, lifting the couch wasn't something she could just do.

"You know, you're putting hard working contractors out of business by just being able to magic the chalk paint off the floor when you're done," Xander joked, lifting the couch up easily and taking it up against the wall, doing his best to set it down gently, though it still set down with a loud thud, shaking the floor a little.

Damnit. Xander checked the couch for a moment, but it didn't seem broken.

"Well, you're not working as a contractor anymore, and doing it with magic is just so much simpler and faster," Willow said, placing the last candle and looking up. As she stepped away from the circle, Xander saw the familiar small wooden box that contained the Katra Tara had created all those months ago, back when they'd thought just catching Faith and switching bodies would be so simple.

Should have known so much better than that.

"So what's the plan? You've got the Katra, so - did you figure out how to get the cloning spell right?" Xander asked, hoping it was that simple.

"Not exactly," Willow admitted. "Or at all really. The problem with that is that even if I could use your hair to create a new version of your old body - it's not actually cloning really - it would require a lot of power to just... make life. I could make a facsimile of your body, but it wouldn't be alive, just... you know, meat." She trailed off a little at the end, speaking much slower and quieter than she had at first.

"So I couldn't switch with it then."

"Not anymore than you could with a corpse, I think, yeah," Willow explained. "I mean, your hair doesn't actually have any of your DNA. This is why I wish I'd thought to save some of your blood because if we froze it it might actually still have DNA now and maybe I could actually try to clone you and then have you switch with the empty shell," Willow frowned as she kept going, "though I'd also have to see if there's some sort of spell to make a baby's body age to adulthood quickly because that's how even a magically made clone would probably be a baby, not you when you died."

"There are ways to do that, but it would do all sorts of damage to the infant's mind," Anya offered. "Which wouldn't matter in this case because we could just then kill Faith's body when we're done, kill the clone mind and a new Slayer could be called." Anya frowned, "Are you sure you can't do that? It would really make everything so much simpler."

Xander frowned, feeling like there was something wrong with that but... well, It was all neat and tidy. And the magical clone wouldn't really be a person, especially if they just made a baby and rapid-aged it somehow.

"I haven't figured out a way to do it," Willow shook her head.

"Well, I mean, Xander's old body was very nice, but it doesn't have to be his old body. I know we can't just steal someone else's body," Anya made a sour face at that, and Xander could tell that part of his girlfriend would have preferred that.

It wasn't that Anya didn't like... have morals and stuff - though when she started getting too nostalgic for when she was still a practicing Vengeance Demon, Xander did wonder a little - but she very much was one of those 'doing the right thing is so inconvenient' types of people, especially on things she actually cared about.

"Yes, well, we can't do that," Willow pointed out, frowning a moment. "And we can't just find someone willing to offer their body unless we can trust them with being a Slayer so... that kind of limits the options." She stepped away from the circle and then grabbed something off the coffee table - a picture of Xander, cut out of a larger picture that had been the whole gang, a few months before he'd gotten his body stolen.

"Remember how we met?" Willow asked Anya, "The spell you tricked me into doing to help you get your power center back?" Willow glared at her a little, as if still annoyed about being lied to about that.

"What?!" Anya defended herself, raising her voice a bit, "I wanted my powers back and you wouldn't have agreed to help me if you knew what it really was. But the temporal fold didn't work."

"You - you tried to cast a temporal fold?" Tara asked Willow, sounding very worried, "Willow, that's-"

"I just thought it was about finding a stolen family heirloom, not accessing another dimension with an evil... skanky vampire version of me!" Willow protested.

"I wouldn't say the dominatrix outfit the other you was wearing was skanky," Anya disagreed. "Pretty tasteful, compared to most I've seen." You're a connoisseur of dominatrix outfits Are you, Ahn? Xander supposed she'd seen her share by just living for so long, but still.

"You- dominatrix outfit?" Tara asked, voice strained suddenly, almost looking like she was trying to hide her face behind her long hair.

Well I can guess where her brain is going Xander didn't really want to think about his closest friend's sex life in detail, but the flush on Willow's cheeks - she was probably realizing the same thing about her girlfriend's question - was too fun to just ignore though.

"Yeah. Black leather with these red sleeve-fringe things," Xander gestured to his arms, "Very 'mistress of pain'." Tara might actually appreciate the scary visual place that line had sent Buffy and him when Willow had made that joke last year.

"Not the point!" Willow's flush seemed to be almost as red as her hair, and she looked away. "The point is I think we can use a spell like that to get you your body back."

"The spell is designed for reaching across dimensions, not actually folding time to when something was lost, Willow," Anya pointed out, and Willow rolled her eyes.

"Yes, I figured that out when I cast it, that's the whole point! We can get a version of Xander's body from-"

"From the dimension where you were a vampire, where vampires ran Sunnydale and where I'm a vampire!" Xander protested, realizing what she had to be building up to. "Willow, You do remember the part where I told you I'd rather be eaten alive by the piranha-shark-mutants that the Swim Team became rather than become a vampire, right?"

Note to self, ask G-man to cut my corpse's head off it even looks like I might rise as a vampire.

Before Willow could respond, Anya interrupted, "If you switch bodies with a vampire version of yourself, you'd be replacing the demon controlling the body with your own soul. It's not like you'd be evil."

"I'd still be a vampire!" Xander shot back. The only kind of liquid diet Xander would ever be on was if he ever ended up like his dad and started drinking most meals. Not to mention the whole being dead thing!

"How much do you want to have your body back and have all this," Anya gestured up and down Xander's body, "be done with?" She raised an eyebrow.

"Not enough to take vampire over sitting down to pee!" Xander countered, Willow trying to get a word in, but Xander kept going, looking at Anya. "You're actually okay with me being a vampire?!" He couldn't really get how his girlfriend could be so chill about the idea.

"It's not ideal, no. I'd rather you be alive rather than room temperature" Anya said, which was a relief to hear. "But as long as you're still you and not inclined to rip my throat out, it would be acceptable."

Right, because then at least I'd have my dick and that's all you care about. Xander's immediate thought was, but he managed - somehow - to not say that out loud.

For one, Xander knew that wasn't fair. For all that Anya talked about sex a lot, it wasn't the only thing she cared about, or even the only reason she wanted him to have his body back.

For another, it wasn't like Xander didn't also want his dick back. He'd be lying if that wasn't something he really missed having. Having his real body back - even if it was undead would be...

Well, I wouldn't be able to recognize myself in the mirror but...

But -

No.

"Well, I don't think it's acceptable," Xander replied, lamely, the pause after Anya's words and his own having stretched too long. Anya opened her mouth to reply, but Willow interjected with a raised voice:

"Nobody's becoming a vampire!" Xander and Anya both turned to look at her, and Willow stared at them both, jaw set. "If you both had let me finish. I'm not going to be casting the same spell you had me cast, Anya. Just the same sort of temporal folding. Tara's helped me rework the ritual, and if this does what it's supposed to, it will take the you from that dimension right before he got turned into a vampire. Like, seconds before. So it will still be a living you. We take him from that dimension. And I changed the spell so he should appear in this circle, instead of... wherever the other me actually arrived in Sunnydale." Willow trailed off a bit, the sentence getting away from her.

"So instead of stealing some other innocent person's body, I steal my own body... and now he's the one stuck in the wrong body?" Xander frowned. "What happens to him then?"

"Well... we don't actually have to have you switch bodies with him," Willow said quickly. "I mean, we can do that, and then we can use a bit of magic to flatline him so another Slayer gets called in this dimension and then we send him back to his dimension, in Faith's body - so at least he doesn't get turned into a vampire there. You did just say you'd take being a girl over being a vampire."

Even for Willow, her babble had been pretty fast, but Xander was able to understand her just fine.

"That's not fair, using my own words against me like that!" Xander protested, but he couldn't help but feel like Willow had a point. Being a chick - especially a Slayer - in a Sunnyhell even more overrun by Vampires than this one would still be better than being a vamp.

Anything would be better than being a vamp.

"It's not as if he's actually real or anything anyway," Anya added. "That other Sunnydale collapsed in on itself when my power center was destroyed, so it's not like you have to worry about condemning this other you to some long life stuck in the wrong body."

"Wait, so they all just... died?"

"They weren't really alive to begin with. There's all sorts of dimensions, when I granted the wish that created that one, it was supposed to overwrite this dimension - and it would have, if it had been allowed to run it's course. That's how Vengeance Demon wishes work. But because it didn't get the chance, the whole thing is a self-contained bubble."

"I - I didn't know Vengeance Demons had that kind of power," To Xander's ear, Tara sounded a bit scared.

"We don't, - They don't." Anya waved a hand, "Wishes have power all their own. I couldn't have just changed reality whenever because I wanted to. And like I said, they take time to actually take effect. There's a lot that goes into changing a reality, and it's a lot easier on Hellmouths than other places anyway."

Xander stared at the casual way Anya talked about messing with time and realities and creating new dimensions. And now she's a lowly human. He had to admit... her reaction to being stuck as a human high-schooler made...

Well, it made a lot more sense now.

"I... okay, so I guess there's that plan then," Xander admitted, still feeling like it was wrong, but - it really wasn't, right? The other him was going to die anyway. He thought back over Willow's plan, then turned back to her. "But you said we didn't have to do that."

"No, that's just the backup. If we have a version of your body here and alive, I'm hoping it'll be possible to make a clonme of your body for you to switch into." Willow gestured to one of the books on the coffee table. "There's a spell that a witch in the 16th century used to have a lot of her bodies she could hop from one to another."

"I-It doesn't actually... the whole spell's not there, and it's dangerous to-" Tara pointed out softly, and Willow waved a hand, dismissing her concerns.

"There's enough of the spell I should be able to reconstruct it, and it was only dangerous because she went mad trying to manage fifty bodies." Willow's confidence made Xander worry, but it also made him feel better about the prospects of this working.

What Willow set out to do, she usually succeeded at. More than usually. Almost always, really. But that also was how she'd ended up with that spell that made everything she said end up true. Magic was dangerous, and even if it was the only solution here... even if there wasn't some kind of Xander-specific mishap...

But try telling Willow that. And...

What if it did work? Without a problem? This was the first time in three months that Willow had had a plan that seemed really well thought out and planned. It even had backup options.

"Okay." Xander nodded. "So... I - what do we do, then?"

"Well, if the other you doesn't want to cooperate once he's here, you'll have to... you know, stop him from running away or anything." Willow admitted, looking away. "And if we're really lucky, I can clone him like... today."

"That sounds like something worth rooting for," Anya agreed.

Hesitantly, Tara got up and walked over to Willow, the two girls sitting down on opposite sides of the picture of Xander, which was placed on a plate, next to the circle of chalk paint. Willow lit one candle with a match, then waved a hand over it, the other candles quickly lighting in turn.

Willow reached out her hand, and Tara took it. Willow picked up a bottle of blue sand and Tara grabbed the bottle as well, both witches holding it.

Xander watched them and the circle, as they started to chant - Xander thought he could make out a few works of Greek, but that was it.

"That's a change to the ritual," Anya murmured thoughtfully, and Xander looked over at her. Anya met his gaze and waved off any question, turning back towards the two witches. Tara and Willow weren't chanting in unison anymore, trading lines back and forth as they started to tilt the bottle, slowly, over the picture. The blue sand spilling out onto it.

Anya's hand brushed against his, and Xander took it, squeezing gently. Willow said it was a different spell... so a change made sense. Especially since the last version hadn't worked as planned, so it should all be fine, right?

Right?

Yes. Right. Xander told himself. Willow had basically already done this before, by accident. She should be able to do this on purpose now.

The candles flickered, nearly going out, and Xander inhaled sharply as Willow and Tara's words started to get louder, but like... if the volume on the TV went up, not from shouting.

He balled his free hand into a fist, standing stock still, forgetting to breath as the chanting reached a crescendo and then -

There was a flash of light in the circle of chalk paint and candles...

And then no Xander. No... person at all. Not even a vampire.

Heart plummeting, Xander let go of Anya's hand and took a step forward as Willow looked at the circle, covering her mouth with her hand as she gave a horrified gasp and recoiled.

There was a photo in the circle.

It's even a picture of me, Xander noted idly, unable to look away.

It was him - his body.

His dead body. Shirtless, laying out on a metal table, like at the morgue, the bullet wound still there, a lot of the blood still there...

Xander looked down at his hands - Faith's hands - remembering the blood, remembering

You lose... Faith's last, blood-bubbling gurgled words-

Xander staggered back, the memory feeling of his body dying as he despertaely tried to stem the blood flow all he could notice as he fell back to the ground, landing on his ass - which was enough for hime to remember where he was, that he wasn't-

His body was dead. Buried.

Scrambling to his feet, Xander turned, "I need - I need to go," He tried not to run, not sure he could trust his legs as the images of that night kept flashing through his head.

"No! Xander, wait!" Willow protested. "I just - I just need a couple hours, I think I know what went wrong with the spell, if you just give me-"

"Willow, shut up!" Anya shouted, moving to Xander's side, helding him walk steady, an arm around his waist. "Are you -"

"I need some air, I need - I need out of her," Xander said quickly. "In a couple hours I'll - I'll have to be at shift for work anyway, and I - just... no more attempts Will. Nothing else. For a week. I -"

I'm so tired of getting my hopes up.

I'm...so... tired.

Xander just stopped talking and gently pulled Anya's arm off his waist. "I need - I need to go... be alone. I'll see you later Ahn. I love you," He managed to give her a quick kiss, pulling away from her and leaving Willow's house, walking numbly without paying much attention.

I'm so tired of fighting.