Willow entered the library to find Xander wearing sweatpants and actually sweating and Giles wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants and also sweating and a furious exchange of clashing sticks.

"What are you doing?!" She exclaimed.

"Ouch!" Giles exclaimed as Xander's staff struck his hand. They both turned and looked at Willow.

"Giles is going to help me keep what I gained last night, Willow." Xander informed her. "Where have you been?"

"With Mrs. Summers, I went to see her first thing this morning. Have ether of you been to see her yet?"

"I've never met her, Willow." Giles told her. "And she has no idea I was Buffy's Watcher or that Buffy was a Slayer."

"And I've only met her a few times, Willow." Xander pointed out. "You spent quite a bit of time over there. Not that I'm not planning to stop by later today and talk to her. And go to the funeral, of course. Buffy was my friend too."

"So what happened last night, Xander?" Willow asked. "When I ran up to you trying to get your attention, you just disappeared."

"I ended up in another reality." And he gave her a bare bones description of last night's events.

"You still remember everything your character knew? And that's why you're training with Giles so you can keep it? But why do you want to keep it? It's not going to do you any good. The Anla'Shok don't actually exist here."

"No, but the Shadows and Vorlons might, they certainly exist in the other reality."

"Xander, it could all have been a massive hallucination, you have no proof it actually happened!"

"Not until things that happened to them happen here. On the other hand, we do have proof of one thing."

"What?"

"According to Giles, I either had a dormant ability that went active last night or Janus, the god powering the spell, made it so I could keep it."

"Keep what? The training of an Anla'Shok?"

"I'm telepathic, Willow."

"Telepathy isn't a real thing, Xander."

"Actually, Willow, it is." Giles informed her. "Some humans do have the ability and so do some demons and Xander has convinced me that he does too."

"What good does being a telepath do though?"

"Well it helped me find Cordelia last night." Xander pointed out. "Alexander did a telepathic scan of other Cordy and I was able to use that as a template and find my Cordy."

"Your Cordy? She's not your Cordy. Last night you said you melded with another Xander and had his memories, memories that included being involved with Cordelia. Why would he do something so stupid as to get involved with her?"

"Because he loved her and was happy with her."

Willow glared at him in shock.

"Willow, if everything that happened was real and not a hallucination, then in a couple of weeks you're going to meet a guy for whom you'll be his world, his everything. He'll love you and if you're open to it, then you can love him too, the way your counterpart does. But you and I are never going to happen."

"You'd rather be with someone you hate, then be with me?"

"I've never hated her, you have and just assumed everyone else does."

"Oh how easily you forget the 'We Hate Cordelia Club'!"

"You mean that club idea you had when we were ten and assigned positions to me and Jesse? The one where you wanted me to be the treasurer? Math is the only class I need help in, I'd never choose to be the treasurer of anything. Willow, we need to talk about what Alexander found out in the other reality."

"I'm not done talking about Cordelia and your sick idea that you like her! Have you forgotten how she made my life Hell?! It's against all the laws of man and god!"

"Occasionally making fun of your clothes isn't making your life Hell, Willow. Stop exaggerating." Xander said dryly. "Now Hell might be Rodney Munsen beating me up repeatedly or Tony Harris getting drunk and putting me in the hospital repeatedly when I was a kid, in both realities or Alexander's memories, fake as they are, of being taken away from his family when he was five and forced into the Psi - Corp and to serve and wear that uniform and gloves. He burned both during the Telepath War, by the way. And yes, I know that didn't actually happen. Or maybe it did, in yet another reality. But I assure you, Willow, Cordelia making rude comments about your clothes, in no way compares to any of it. And you belittle that fact by pretending it does. Now, are you going to continue to throw a temper tantrum like a little girl or are you going to listen to what I found out about us in the other reality?"

Glaring at him Willow sat down at the table and said. "Why are you acting so different?"

"I have three different perspectives in my head right now, Willow, and they're all perspectives of different possible versions of my life. And Alexander and other me had something I don't. Alexander had a purpose, the purpose of the Anla'Shok and other me had a girl who made him happy. That I happen to like, most of the time, the same girl, means there's a hope in me that I can have that kind of happiness too. And with Giles' help, maybe I can have a purpose too. Preserving life is the ultimate purpose of the Anla'Shok, after all."

"You sound like you're founding a religion."

"No, just a personal philosophy. Now, about what I found out in the other reality." He proceeded to tell her everything. Including nuclear Willow.