Chapter 18—Earth-Bound

If he looked closely enough, it almost looked like she was just sleeping.

Xander looked closely at Willow a lot. He could see a difference in her skin, how it pinked with the little nutrition that the IV fluids were providing. Her fingers were gaining little in girth, her hand no longer ethereal in his, simply thin. His voice was reedy from talking for so long; he had spoken of good times and bad, their lives from birth till the arrival of the Slayer, and how much he needed her.

He could see now that he had never let go of the feelings he had for her. As he watched her lying on the pristine hospital sheets, he wished with all his heart that he could hear her voice one more time.

“Xander?”

He rested his head on the bed, believing his wishes to be so loud in his head that he could imagine her, speaking his name. He still believed it, until her hand moved slightly beneath his.

“Xander?”

He looked up and sought out her sherry-colored eyes in her too-pale face. She gave him a weak smile, a minimal curve of her lips, and he smiled back. “Took you long enough to wake up.”

“I’m not sure I wanted to. Xander, what happened to me?” she questioned, her eyes darting around the sterile room.

He couldn’t meet her eyes. “I’m really not sure, Will. Buffy said she found you in your apartment with magic stuff around you. What were you doing?”

She closed her eyes, and tears of memory and regret dripped from their corners. “I was trying to get my powers back. I thought…maybe….” Her broken whisper stopped abruptly, and she turned her face away from him. “I can’t live without my magic.”

“You can, Will. You were fine before you knew anything about magic. You can be again.”

He watched her closely, mentally begging her to look at him. When she finally did, her face was closed against him, blocking him from her heart and mind. “Maybe I don’t want to live without it, Xander. Maybe I don’t want to live without the magic.”

“Willow….”

She turned her face away from him again. “You could never understand. You never felt it…never had it…just leave, Xander. Leave me alone.”

He stayed until her breathing evened with sleep, then crept out of the hospital room to head to the house on Revello. Willow waited until he was gone before she let silent tears trickle out of the corners of her eyes.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Xander walked slowly up the sidewalk to the house until he heard the screams that drifted out of the cracks and crannies. It was only then he that decided to run and burst through the front door.

The screaming was louder, and seemed to emanate from the kitchen, and that was where he headed. He ran into the kitchen, hurrying to save the screamer, and ran headlong into a waterfight. He skidded, trying to stop on the waterlogged floor, and fell onto his back, sliding across the kitchen to stop at the back door.

He looked up to find them all staring at him, eyes wide and mouths gaping. Buffy was the first to speak. “Xander, what’s the matter?”

“Heard screaming…thought you needed help….”

“Yeah, we could use you—make the teams more even.” A hand presented in front of his face, and he grabbed it before he realized whom it belonged to. He levered himself to his feet, and came face-to-face with Spike.

Xander snatched his hand away, and gritted his teeth against the snarky comment that came unbidden to his lips. “I came by to let you know that Willow was awake. Not that anyone cares, or anything.”

He looked around, surprised to see Anya there with the rest of them. When did she start hanging around with Buffy? He couldn’t stop the resentment from poisoning him, filling his mind with thoughts of plots within plots. Shaking it off, he glared at his girlfriend. “Making new friends, I see.”

Buffy unconsciously fisted her free hand. “They were always my friends, Xander. I just didn’t know it.”

“Didn’t waste any time either, did you?” He wiped his face with his hand, and turned to face the others. “So, what else has been happening since I’ve been hanging around the hospital? Besides consorting with dead things.”

Buffy's eyes flashed, and Xander immediately regretted his words. His pride, however, would not allow him to take them back. “Picking up the pieces of my life, Xander. That’s all. Getting Dawn to school, paying bills—you know, all the mundane things the living have to do.”

“When did Willow wake up?” Tara's soft voice filled the silence between them, and Xander relaxed slightly. At least Tara was still one of them.

“This afternoon. She’s…she seemed really depressed. She said she doesn’t want to live without her magic. I tried to talk to her, but she told me to leave.”

He stared at Tara, pleading with his eyes, and saw the softness disappear as she struggled within herself. “She brought this on herself, Xander. I can’t help her. I don’t think any of us can.”

Xander sputtered before his words finally made sense. “You have to! She wants to die, Tara. She wasn’t herself.”

Tara took a step forward, and laid her hand on Xander's arm. “Her path and my path are no longer the same, Xander. She made her choice, and threw me out of our apartment and our life together. She chose to walk alone, and I have to respect that.”

Xander's face twisted into a mask. “So you’re not going to stand by her either, are you? What about you, Buffy? Are you deserting her too?”

“I think that there are issues that Willow and I have to work out before we can be close again, Xander. She’s still my friend, but it will take me some time before I can trust her again.”

“I thought as much. Her sacrifices to bring you back didn’t matter much, did they? You’d rather hang out with the evil dead, huh?”

Buffy took a step in his direction, and forced herself to stop. She knew she would damage him if she let herself get any closer. “Xander, you get a pass because you’re my friend, but this is the last one. Willow did what she did for her own reasons. I didn’t ask her to bring me back. I didn’t even need her help, I was finding my own way. I am with Spike because I love him. If that is too much for you to accept or deal with, then fine. But there will be no more evil dead remarks. No more degrading Spike. No more butting in. I’m done with it. All. Of. it. Any questions?”

His mask in place, he looked around the kitchen at all their faces. “Nope. No questions.” He bit his tongue against the various remarks he wanted to make, remarks that he knew would shatter what was left of their friendship. Instead, he turned and left the house.

With little to be said, a quite group of water warriors started mopping up the kitchen floor.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

He walked the streets for a while, confused about where to go. He could go home, but it reminded him of the failed relationship with Anya. He could go back to the hospital, but Willow had made it clear that she didn’t want him to sit with her anymore. He could go to his parents, but he didn’t want to listen to their drunken expositions on what he should do with his life.

He ended up at Willy’s.

Sitting between a Fyarl and a Snaggeroth, he drank shot after shot of whiskey and mourned all the things he’d lost in just the one day. His girlfriend, best friend, other friends, all gone in a heartbeat.

He found himself staring at the only other human in the bar, the bartender, Willy. He ached to feel the sensation of knuckles busting flesh and bone, and wondered where the ache came from. He held up his shotglass for another round, and saw the questioning look from the weasel behind the counter.

“Another one, Willy. I need to get really, really drunk.”

“So I see. Where’s the Slayer?” Willy asked, looking around the bar for any signs of the destructive blond.

“Don’t know, and so don’t care. Prob’ly banging her boyfriend, for all I know. That’s inside information, and I am most definitely outside of all that now.”

“Done pissed her off good, huh? Knew it would happen.”

“Huh? How did you know?”

Willy looked both ways, then leaned forward. His voice held the conspiratorial tone of a close insider, and Xander found himself straining to hear the bartender’s words. “You’re too human. Too normal. Slayers can’t handle normal.”

Xander's eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, normal?”

“Slayers. They don’t handle normal, everyday humans well because, well, they aren’t. And never will be. It’s a jealousy thing, I think.”

“You think that she dropped me because I’m normal?” Xander laughed bitterly. “No, man, she dropped me because I can’t see the ‘good’ in demons.” A growl made him backpedal, “Not you, man. Another demon. Different one. Anyway, he’s evil. He’ll tell you himself. But she lets him touch her, and it makes my stomach turn.”

“Sounds like you got a jones for the Slayer is what it sounds like to me,” he commented. He’d been a bartender long enough to know when a guy liked a girl or not.

“No! Buffy's my friend. That’s all,” Xander argued back. God, it sounded lame even to his own ears. He downed the shot, and nodded his head toward the glass. “We’ve been friends since high school. We never….”

“Doesn’t mean you didn’t want to. Doesn’t mean you still don’t. Face it, sonny, you got a thing for this girl, and nobody she’s with is gonna make you jump for joy. If you can’t be friends with her then give it up and leave her alone. Find someone else.”

“I thought I had. She left me.”

“Over the Slayer?”

“No, because I didn’t like Spike. I was talking one night….”

“Spike? You mean Spike, William the Bloody Spike?”

“Yeah. Why?” Xander was too drunk to hear the warning in the other man’s voice. “What of it? I hate the stupid bleach blond bastard. I wish I could dust him.”

Willy pointed his finger, and Xander turned halfway on the barstool to see the named bleach blond standing behind him. “Think you should know, Whelp, my parents were married.”

Xander fell off the stool and stared up at Spike, terrified. He cringed back from the proffered hand, and Spike reached down and caught him by the scruff of the neck, ignoring the flash of pain when Xander yelped at the contact. He jerked his head at Willy, drawling, “Give us a couple of bottles, will ya?”, then dragged Xander over to one of the booths lining the wall farthest from the bar.

He tossed him into the bench seat, and sprawled across from him. Willy brought two bottles of whiskey, one shotglass, and one drinking glass, and then scurried away quickly after seeing the look in Spike's eye. With a sour look, Spike twisted the top off one bottle and filled the shotglass, then the other glass. He slid the shot across the table, and picked up the other and downed it in one long gulp.

“So, Xander, what’s your plan now?”

Xander tossed the shot down his throat, wincing at the strong whiskey before he answered. “What do you care? You have what you wanted. You’ve got Buffy and Dawn. Tara loves you. Anya respects you. Hell, you probably have Giles in your back pocket too. Why do you give a fuck about me?”

Finally. He didn’t know if it was the drink, or the timing, but finally Xander felt like he had the balls and the right to tell this freak where to get off, and if it was the last thing he ever did, he was gonna do it.

“You know, I should have staked you a long time ago, when you first started stalking Buffy. No, before that even. When you were chained to a chair in Giles' house. I should have staked you then.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I kept thinking that Buffy was going to do it. Stake you. I waited and waited for her to get sick of your sorry ass and dust you, but she never did. I should have gone ahead and did it ‘cause I knew she couldn’t.”

“How did you know?” Spike asked again in the same monotonous voice, showing no emotion.

Xander looked down at the table while Spike refilled their glasses. “Don’t ask me that, man. Not tonight.”

“All right.”

He stared down at the shot in front of him, feeling lower than low. Drinking in a demon bar with his worst enemy. This was his own private hell.

“Why are you here?” he asked the shot in front of him.

“’Cause I see a man throwing his friends and loved ones away because of a plain case of ignorance. Y’know, Harris, I’m not an idiot. I may not know exactly why you hate the sight of me, but if you let that destroy the relationships you have with the messes I left at home, you’re an idiot.”

“You’ve got some nerve….”

“What? Coming in here and telling you some hard truths? At least I have the stones to do something. You—you’d rather drown your sorrows in a demon bar with me than to go face those ladies down and beg for their forgiveness.”

“What for?” Xander sneered.

Spike sipped his second glass, looking thoughtful. “Well, how about Dawn, for instance? Did you mean to hurt her feelings? Abandon her? Make her feel unwanted and unloved? That’s what you did, and she’s in her room, crying. You never even looked at her while you were there. Never said a word to her.”

“Didn’t mean to hurt Dawnie.”

“She looks up to you. Worships you. And you step on her feelings like that just because you don’t like me?”

Xander looked miserable. “I need to tell her I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, and Glinda too. Glinda never did anything to deserve that attack today. She and Red were a done deal before Red got herself sick. It wasn’t her fault.”

“I know.” Defeated.

“And you make her feel like scum. What kind of bloke are you, Harris?”

Xander slumped down in the bench, but Spike continued to sip and muse. “Buffy? Well, hell, Buffy probably does deserve your rants. After all, she is with me. That’s enough reason to hate anyone.”

“I don’t hate Buffy.”

“Yeah, you should. Makes you feel strong and right, hate does. Done it myself. Works real well with the ego. I’m right, an’ you’re not, and I hate you. See?” Spike pounded his chest with his fist. “Kinda gets you right there, you know?”

“I don’t hate Buffy. I just don’t understand….”

“Yeah, that’s another good reason to hate. Wasn’t there a whole Klan built around that? I don’t understand, and you’re different, and I hate you. See? Back to the hate thing again.”

“Why is she with you? Why couldn’t she ever see me?”

Spike looked on Xander sympathetically. “Oh, so tha’s how it is.” He pursed his lips, and made a decision. “Let me tell you about a poet named William.”

He told Xander about Cecily.