Sometimes, Xander thought, he hadn’t given the basement enough credit. Admittedly, it was a dump and reeked of cat urine and something that smelled like moldy bread. And it was within easy, inconvenient hearing distance of his parents and their drunken arguments. And there was no heating or air conditioning, and the TV only got two channels, and every single moment he spent in there he felt vines growing around his ankles, tying him there to the basement, the bottom rung of the Harris family, never to escape. Like quicksand, except in the basement, you only wished you were dead.
But when he went into the basement at the end of the day, when he took off the clothes from his job-of-the-week and crawled into bed or just tried to listen to some scratchy old 45s and forget who he was, he didn’t have to clench his stomach against the sight of the woman he loved, tauntingly out of reach. Out of reach because she was dead, but there because she wanted to kill him, too. Just more slowly than she’d gone. Death by torture. Slow, but effective.
“You know what’s nice about being dead?” Anya asked idlely. The question prompted a rush of nausea in Xander, and he didn’t answer. “You get to see your old friends. You’d be surprised how often Hallie and I play cards. And my mother—she’s always fun. It’s been years—well, a millenium, give or take a century. I’m finding out all these things about her I never knew. It’s very exciting, really.”
After a moment Xander asked quietly, “Have you seen anyone else?”
“Who? You mean like Olaf? I don’t think he’s dead, is he? Just hammerless. Besides, I don’t think troll gods go to the afterlife. Possibly troll Valhalla. I’m not really sure.”
Xander flinched. “No, I mean like … Joyce, or Tara. Or maybe, uh … maybe my parents?”
Anya looked at him curiously. “Oh, are they dead?”
Xander flinched. Why, he had no idea; it wasn’t as if they were any kind of parents to him while they were alive. He’d survived, become a man, despite them, not because of them.
No, that wasn’t right, was it? They’d made him the man he was. The man who’d be so afraid of life, of the future, of ties to others, that he’d told Anya, when she’d looked at him, radiant with expectation, that he couldn’t marry her. They could have no life together.
Yeah, his parents had molded him all right.
So what the hell did he care if they were alive? That one day he’d gone over to their place and found it abandoned, drawers and boxes left open, because why bother making the place neat if you’re leaving? It was them in a nutshell: careless, gone, no word. No thought to the son they left behind. The son who’d always been an unwelcome afterthought.
God damn them, he cared.
“So you, uh, haven’t seen them?” he clarified, avoiding Anya’s question.
“No,” Anya replied simply. Before he could release the breath he didn’t know he was holding she added, “But then I was never really close to them, so I doubt they’d come all the way to see me. I mean, we’d most likely just sit around and stare at our shoes, and then your father would say something inappropriate, and then your mother would become upset, and then I’d think how unfortunate it was that I wasn’t a vengeance demon any longer, since your mother would undoubtedly be saying all the horrible things she wished would happen to your father, and then the next thing you know—”
“Fine, fine, you haven’t seen them,” said Xander hastily. He’d almost forgotten how she could make him regret asking a question.
“Well, if you regretted asking me anything, you never had a problem just taking it back, did you?” asked Anya acidly. Reading his mind in death as she never could in life.
Xander shut his eyes and pressed his lids together he saw stars. She’d be gone when he opened them.
What if she wasn’t?
Xander didn’t want to open his eyes. He didn’t want her to still be there.
“You’re going to be that way about it?” she asked huffily. “Go to all the trouble to conjure me and then don’t want me to be here? Fine, have it your way!”
“What is this, a Burger King commercial?” demanded Xander crankily, opening his eyes.
Of course, she was gone.
Xander fell back on the bed and mumbled, “I have got to get a life that doesn’t include dead people.”
He hadn’t thought he’d see her again. He didn’t know, but that talk with Willow—if Anya was just a figment, like she kept saying, why hadn’t she disappeared? He’d had his big breakthrough about getting on with life; it was the feel-good hit of the year, and why was she still coming around?
She didn’t do anything bad when she visited. She didn’t threaten him, or hurt him. Not physically. She didn’t do anything. She was just there. But he never knew when she was coming or going, knew only that he’d feel all depressed and exhausted when she left. It was slow and painful, like Chinese water torture, or a Rob Schneider movie.
She was controlling his life now more than she had when they were engaged. And hard as it was to believe, they’d broken up—he’d left her at the altar—a year and a half ago. If she was really just a figment, why in the hell was he having so much trouble letting go?
Maybe she wasn’t a figment at all.
“This is it,” muttered Xander, shoving his feet into slippers. “I can’t take it anymore.” He hurried down the stairs, and made his way across the house to the library.
He’d never liked the library. The one at Sunnydale High had been all right, mostly because he hadn’t thought of it as library; it has been more like a living room, except without a TV. Which was actually the most important part of any living room, so maybe the whole analogy was kind of lame. But this place was … sterile. Cold. Uninviting. It was like distilled Giles, except for all the good Giles parts.
Okay, maybe that analogy wasn’t too great either.
It was weird to be in the room. The only times he’d gone into it were when he’d been helping Giles with something, which wasn’t often. Their post-Sunnydale life had been pretty uneventful. Except for the whole scary thing the night before, of course. And all the exciting Anya visits over the last few months. Which was absolutely, positively not connected to the other thing.
Right?
“A little research never hurt anyone,” muttered Xander, heading over to the first bookshelf. Of course, the library at the school’d had a card catalogue, which made things easier in theory. In reality, the Dewey Decimal system was one of the greatest frauds ever perpetrated on the unsuspecting public. Everyone pretended it was great, but nobody knew how to use it. He didn’t even think Giles did.
Xander walked up to the nearest bookcase and eyed the volumes. Unfortunately, there didn’t appear to be one titled When Dead Girlfriends Attack. Finally he just grabbed a book at random and sat at the desk, flipping through the index. Gherkin, Ghirjonh, Ghost, Ghoul—wait, gherkin? There was no way he couldn’t look that up.
Gherkin—favorite food of the lower caste of the Kneef demon; frequently used as bait when infestation is a problem. Huh. Well, he had always suspected pickles were evil. And mostly used as filler.
Back to business—Gherkin, Ghirjonh, Ghost. Page 327.
Ghost—noncorporeal entity which haunts chosen locations or persons. Although not inherently malevolent, the spirit reflects the character of the deceased, and hence may be evil. Associated with sensations of cold, strange sounds and smells, calling out the names of the living, the disappearance of small objects, and interference with electrical appliances. Standard removal procedure is exorcism by a member of the church.
“Ghost! You think it’s a ghost?” said a voice over Xander’s shoulder.
Xander jumped and slammed the book shut. Jesus, if he lived to a thousand he’d never get used to Andrew’s silent walk. “There’s no ghost,” he said hastily.
Andrew didn’t look convinced. “You were following the sentence with your finger,” he pointed out. “So you now you don’t think it was thaum—thaumo—that thing?”
“It’s thaumogenesis! Or … something.”
Andrew nodded. He knew exactly what was happening. Poor Xander! Visions of his lost love were tormenting him so terribly that he could no longer bear it. But he wasn’t alone. Andrew couldn’t bear to see him suffer in solitude any longer. “Does it have something to do with Anya?” he asked sympathetically.
Xander froze, shocked. “What?”
“It’s okay,” he told Xander tenderly, putting a hand on his shoulder and nodded wisely. “I know.”
“You know? How could you—” Xander broke off as a scream from upstairs ripped through the quiet house. It was just like the night before.
This time, it was Willow.
***
Giles and Dawn were already in Willow’s room by the time Xander and Andrew got there. Buffy and Spike were there, too.
In bed with her.
“Why are you in my bed?” Spike asked, blinking his eyes against the bright light.
“Uh … that’s what I was thinking,” admitted Willow, keeping the covers up securely under her arms. Since she hadn’t planned to be there that night she didn’t have any night clothes, so Xander had loaned her a T-shirt to wear, which seemed pretty inadequate considering she was now sandwiched in between Buffy and Spike.
“’S my bed,” complained Spike, tugging at the covers.
“What is happening?” asked Giles, finally coming out of the horrified daze induced by seeing Buffy, Willow, and Spike in the same bed.
“Is this something I shouldn’t see?” asked Dawn, face reflecting her typical adolescent distaste. At least they all appeared to have clothes on. That was something, right?
Right. Like she wouldn’t be telling a therapist about this in five years no matter how it turned out.
“I’m not sure,” admitted Willow, trying to pull the covers back from Spike, who was holding on to them like a limpet.
“Do I have to threaten Spike or, uh, anyone?” offered Xander. Didn’t seem like it, but he felt he should make the offer.
“None of you hurt Spike,” Buffy demanded, clambering over Willow to Spike and patting the side of his head in an affectionate and somewhat painful way. “He’s all weak and human now.”
“’m not weak!” protested Spike, struggling out of the bed and raising his hands in front of him in sloppy mimicry of a boxer. “And I’ll fight anyone who says different!”
“You’re … drunk,” realized Giles in disbelief.
“That’s not true,” asserted Spike, his speech a little slurred. “We didn’t even finish the pitcher, and I can drink anyone under the table!”
Buffy wagged her finger at him. “You’re not a vampire, remember?” she lectured him. “You’re not superhuman any more.”
He looked outraged. “Just you wait ‘til we’re in bed, missy, and I’ll show you superhuman.”
Buffy caught Giles’s shocked eye and wanted to reassure him. “It’s okay,” Buffy whispered to him loudly. “We’ve slept together a bunch of times.”
“Lotsa different positions,” Spike mumbled, collapsing onto the carpet for a short nap.
Buffy bent and patted his rumpled curls. “Lots of positions,” she agreed soothingly.
“Okay, okay, enough, we get the picture,” Dawn said hastily. God, why hadn’t she worn earplugs to bed? Or taken Tylenol PM? She didn’t want to hear this stuff!
“I think it was enough several minutes ago,” Xander agreed, wincing.
“What are you all doing in here?” asked Giles in frustration.
“We went to bed. But Willow was already in the bed,” complained Spike from the floor.
“Oh … oh! Is this the room you used last night, Spike?” asked Willow.
He didn’t answer, so Buffy nodded for him.
Willow was a little embarrassed. “Oh. ‘Cause this was my room when, uh, when I lived here.”
“Oh yeah,” said Buffy blankly. “Up, Spike! Get up!”
Xander flinched. “Uh, could you not use those exact words?”
Buffy squinted at him. “Dirty mouth!” she exclaimed disapprovingly. Bending down to Spike, she tugged him to his feet and shambled out of the room with him. “Come on, we can sleep in my room.”
The others turned to watch them disappear around the doorway. A thud and a flurry of giggles suggested they might have bumped into the wall on their way down the hall.
Willow sighed after they’d left. “Okay. Goodnight,” she said to the others, who remained rooted in place. “You guys can all leave now.” Twelve or fifteen hours of sleep would help erase the memory of the entire night, hopefully, except maybe the part about not being with Kennedy any more.
The others muttered their goodnights—Willow was pretty sure she heard Giles mumble something about brandy—and filed out, leaving only Dawn in the room. “Dawnie? You okay?”
Dawn was silent for a moment before speaking suddenly. “Were you afraid?”
“What? When?”
“When Spike was there. I mean, both of them, but … you know.”
“You mean, did I think it was the demon?”
Dawn nodded mutely.
Willow shrugged helplessly. “I thought I was at Sunnydale High, and a giant duck was jumping on my desk,” she answered honestly. Dawn squinted at her. “I was asleep, remember? As soon as I came to I recognized their voices. And, uh, smelled the beer. So I was not so much afraid of the demon, and more afraid of being thrown up on.”
“I’m not afraid,” Dawn said out of the blue.
Well, that was a sudden transition, Willow thought. “Uh—okay, I didn’t think you were—”
“And I’m not afraid to go back to my room,” Dawn added a little too bravely.
Ahhh. “Dawnie? You want to spend the night here?”
“Yes, please,” Dawn replied immediately, and dove beneath the covers. She felt a little guilty—she shouldn’t be afraid to sleep by herself. She’d fought demons and monsters and was a full-fledged Scooby. She was tough! She was powerful!
And in a few days the demon would evaporate and she’d be okay to sleep on her own. Then she wouldn’t have to bug Willow, and—hey!
“What are you doing here?” she asked Willow in surprise. “Why aren’t you at home?”
Willow flinched. “I, uh, I am.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“Kennedy and I broke up,” Willow said quietly. “I’m moving back here.”
Dawn absorbed the news. She’d never really liked Kennedy. It was the first time she hadn’t liked someone one of the Scoobies went out with. “How do you feel? Are you okay?” asked Dawn carefully.
“I don’t know yet,” Willow admitted.
After a moment Dawn said, “I’m glad you’re back.”
She nestled her head in Willow’s shoulder, the way she used to when Willow babysat her when Buffy was supposed to be there but was secretly out with Angel, and Willow felt tears sting her eyes at the impossible familiarity of it—taking comfort in a make-believe past with a manufactured almost-sister. But it felt like home, no matter how strange it sounded.
“So I am,” whispered Willow.
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